Perhaps I could leave him a note, stating that I would return again tomorrow. I pushed the door open further and walked in. I had only taken a few steps before I stopped, chilled in place as though I had just been dropped into a subarctic forest. The garish green walls were like a grove of pines, still and sentinel over what they had witnessed. My mind simply could not understand what my eyes were seeing.
Slumped over a desk on the opposite end of the room from the inquisition table and chairs was Cyril Matthews. His face was cheek down in the midst of scattered papers. I knew immediately from his ashen skin and slackened jaw that he was dead and had been dead for some time. Perhaps a day or more.
I slowly approached the man’s body. His right arm was on the desk, circling around his head like a halo. The other dangled limply at his side. And what was this?
On the floor beneath his suspended hand was a piece of paper. I picked it up and turned it over. It contained a single line.
Dead as prommised
I let it flutter back to the ground, so many thoughts whirling through my mind that they threatened to overwhelm me. The note, written in the same hand as the one I had found among Nurse Bellamy’s papers and the note Lillian Alban had given me, seemed to be informing Mr. Matthews that he was dead. As he most certainly was. Was this a murderer taunting people he was about to kill? The idea was both breathtaking and ghastly.
Or was its purpose to inform Mr. Matthews that someone else was dead? If so, Mr. Matthews would have known exactly who was now dead, given that it was not signed.
Was this relevant to my own investigation or just a very unhappy coincidence? I had no idea, but I folded the note into a small square and shoved it deep into my dress pocket.
I needed a doctor. No, this man was beyond a doctor’s help. I needed the police. Surely they would not think this to be a suicide.
CHAPTER 18
I found an errand boy to go and summon the police. Who should arrive shortly but Douglas Lyon, the constable who had come after Caroline Bellamy’s death and who reminded me so much of Richard.
He frowned upon seeing me, and I knew he recognized me but could not quite place me. I reminded him of our previous meeting and he nodded, remembering. “You seem to have had great misfortune of late.” He said it kindly, without irony.
“I’m afraid so,” I replied. “And the misfortune is greater than you know.”
His brown eyes softened and his expression became one of concern, and all of a sudden I wished I had swallowed my rash words, for the man was going to melt me. “However,” I said briskly, drawing my hands together primly, “What is important is your investigation, and I shan’t interfere with it.”
Lyon gave me a curious look but didn’t pursue whatever I might have meant by my great misfortunes. I told him of my connection to Cyril Matthews and how I had met him on only the one occasion. As I told the constable what little I knew about the dead man, he examined Matthews’s body, running his hands over it and loosening clothing here and there. Finally, he nodded. “He hasn’t been stabbed or shot. There was no blood anywhere to indicate he had been, but I had to be sure. He may have had a crisis of his heart or perhaps he suffered an apoplexy. However, if I were a wagering man, I’d say he was poisoned.”
That surprised me. “Poisoned? By what? How?”
He didn’t answer my questions but instead presented one of his own. “How well did you know the man? Can you tell me anything about him?”
I thought back to the brief meeting I’d had with him. “He was congenial enough. A very pleasant manner.” I suddenly remembered Matthews rubbing his temples. “Oh, he did seem to be suffering from a headache when I met him.”
“Ah,” Lyon said, nodding knowingly. “I’ve seen this before. I venture to say he has died of arsenic poisoning.”
“Arsenic!” I exclaimed in horror, remembering dotty Alice Drayton’s claims. “How?”
“It’s mixed with copper to make the deep green colors that everyone has become so fond of using to dye their walls, furniture, and clothing. I would stake my life that that is what happened to the man.”
“But how can that be?” I asked, walking over to the wall. I rubbed two fingers against the paper and then showed him my unstained skin. “I cannot rub the arsenic off, so how is it possible that he could have ingested it?”
He lifted both hands. “I do not know. But it is more common than you might think, with the new fashion of dark walls, to find people suffering from headaches, throat constrictions, and nausea inside homes papered this way. The moment they go elsewhere, their symptoms clear up. I will say also that the wallpaper manufacturers make the same argument you just made.”
Was it possible that the arsenic in the wallpaper created a miasma that settled into the lungs? I had so many questions at that moment, but only one created a burning sensation inside my stomach. Was it coincidental that Mr. Matthews had begun using Roderick Alban’s offices at the same time that it had been redone in arsenic-laced papers and upholstery? Was it even more coincidental that Alban had practically stopped using this space now that it had been redecorated in this vivid color palette?
* * *
It was of no surprise to me that Lady Canning swept into the Establishment the next day while I was giving my nurses a lesson on bleaching muslin.
They needed to know how to do so and not always rely on a laundress to do it for them. It would also save money if I could eventually dispense with the laundress’s services altogether, given that we had laundry facilities in the basement.
May was really the optimum month for bleaching muslin, but I didn’t intend to wait until next spring to continue lessons for my nurses. I had shown them how to dissolve a pound of white, powdery chloride of lime in two quarts of water, and now we had thoroughly soaked the long length of cloth for about twenty minutes, periodically lifting and airing it. I sent Frye and Harris outside together with the fabric to rinse in a bucket of rainwater and then lay it out across the bush line to dry. My hope was that working together in this way might cause the two of them to mend what I suspected were many quarrels.
Lady Canning arrived while Harris and Frye were outside and I was lecturing the others on how to whiten yellowed linens by soaking them in buttermilk. Charlie came downstairs to retrieve me, saying that my employer awaited me in the library.
I didn’t waste time going to my room to change into more refined clothing and instead met her as I was in my plain working dress. I was sure I stank of the bleaching powder’s sharp odor, but that simply couldn’t be helped.
I held out a reddened hand to her and she shook it, although I caught her quickly shuttered expression of distaste. No doubt Lady Canning thought laundry was beneath me.
Two years ago, I would have agreed with her.
“Roderick Alban told me about Cyril Matthews, the poor soul,” she said. “Cyril’s wife is quite beside herself but is taking his funeral arrangements in hand with the help of his brother.”
I was happy to know that Mr. Matthews had someone to care for him in death, but surely this wasn’t the only reason my employer had come here today.
Lady Canning frowned as if deciding upon the right words to use. I invited her to be seated, but she refused, so I knew she had merely come to make some sort of pronouncement and would be gone.
“You should know,” she began, “that both the men’s and women’s committees have been fully apprised of everything that has happened here. Nurse Bellamy, your fall, the attack on your librarian, and so forth. Now we have poor Cyril’s death.”
It was remarkable how quickly news traveled even when one didn’t wish for it to do so. “I didn’t think I should burden you regarding my—”
Lady Canning held up a hand. “Please allow me to finish, as I’m not sure that your withholding of more tragic events is really the worst of our problems at the moment. The committees have become gravely concerned about the future of the Establishment.”
“No doubt Mr. Alban is urging
their concern,” I said sarcastically, instantly regretting it.
Lady Canning gave me a sympathetic look. “Roderick can be difficult, but he really is a wonder at fund-raising. Hence I must take his anxieties seriously. I do not wish to lose you, my dear, but I cannot lose him. Do you understand?”
Unfortunately, I did.
“I’ve spoken privately to several key committee members, asking them to reserve judgment until you straighten up the Establishment. They are willing, but for how long? And I’m not sure how long I can restrain Roderick. What I’m saying is, if you don’t clear the Establishment’s name quickly, my hand may be forced. Especially since…” She let her words trail off, but I knew what she was thinking.
Especially since I no longer had my defender in the form of Cyril Matthews.
* * *
I wanted my mind as bleached clean as the muslin, so despite the dire nature of Lady Canning’s warning, I spent the rest of the day in instruction with my nurses and tending to patients. I slept in surprisingly blessed peace that night and awoke the most refreshed I had been since arriving at the Establishment.
I bathed, dressed, and had breakfast, ready to begin my investigation again. Mary then arrived as if she knew the exact moment to do so.
“Goose, today we shall examine our charts and attempt to make sense of them.”
She seemed pleased by my cheerfulness, which I realized had not been present of late, and we secreted ourselves away in my study for several hours, writing and discussing. We ended up with a list that attempted to establish a relationship between Caroline Bellamy and everyone associated with the hospital.
Lady Canning—hired her
Roderick Alban—affair?
My nerves prickled about this. Would someone as arrogant as Roderick Alban have had an affair with Nurse Bellamy? Wouldn’t his aim be higher? Lillian Alban’s claims rose up in the back of my mind. Perhaps the better question was whether someone as disturbed as Lillian Alban would kill her husband’s mistress.
Cyril Matthews—sympathetic to her plight
Charlie Lewis—affair?
Polly Roper—part of a riches scheme with her?
John Wesley—found her locket in the secret room (tryst location?)
Persimmon “Mims” Jarrett—body found in library she manages; overheard talk about money scheme to include Bellamy
Margery Frye—believes Harris to be a murderess … is it relevant to Bellamy?
Nan Wilmot—witnessed Bellamy sneaking out; claims Bellamy was unsociable
Clementina Harris—a prior murderess?
Marian Hughes—socialized with her; altered her clothes; knew of the money scheme
So who was the liar, Wilmot or Hughes? Had Nurse Bellamy been aloof and cold or merely particular about the company she kept?
Ivy Stoke—cat knows secret room
Alice Drayton—believed Bellamy to be poisoning her
Hester Moore—??
Dunstan Moore—claims Bellamy told him she would be rich soon
Moreover, if Persimmon Jarrett, Marian Hughes, and Dunstan Moore were all independently aware of some sort of money scheme involving the nurse, did that scheme make up a critical part of the answer?
As I examined our list, it seemed to me that only one person within the Establishment had been on any sort of admitted good terms with my dead nurse.
It was time to talk to Nurse Hughes again.
* * *
Mary accompanied me on a search for Marian Hughes. She wasn’t with any patients, although Mrs. Stoke said she had been in earlier and was headed to the kitchen for some lunch. We went to the basement, and Polly Roper said Hughes had eaten but gone into the rear gardens for a walk. Outside, Charlie was digging up bulbs and told us she had only been out briefly before going back inside via the front door. Back inside Mary and I went, finally finding her in her room. Nurse Hughes sat in her chair next to her bed, picking through a box of buttons that she had dumped onto the coverlet.
“Miss Nightingale,” she said, gathering up the button cards. “Did you require me to do something? I’m still waiting on some fabric to start the new uniforms.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed across from her while Mary remained in the doorway. “You needn’t put these away, and I’m not worried about the uniforms for the moment. I just want to ask you some questions.”
She blinked those bland, colorless eyes at me. “Me? What sort of questions can I possibly answer?”
I picked up one of the button cards. The button secured on it was brass and appeared to be a souvenir of the queen’s 1840 wedding. It held a relief of Victoria and Albert facing away from each other. I put it back down.
“Nurse, I would like you to tell me more about your background.” Hughes shrank back against her chair. “Is there something about your life I should know?”
“I don’t think so, Miss. I am very ordinary.” She was sounding skittish.
“I understand. But you seem to be the one person within the Establishment with whom Nurse Bellamy had any sort of relationship, and I’d like to know why. It would be helpful to me to know what you had in common, beyond her desiring you to alter her clothing. For example, did she share your love of buttons?”
Hughes frowned. “Not especially. No one thinks they are anything but silly.” She picked up the Victoria and Albert button card and stroked it, almost as if it were a pet.
They were odd, I had to say, but there was no harm in them. “Did Nurse Bellamy have a collection of any sort?” I knew the answer to this, for I had been through the woman’s room.
She shook her head. “No, Miss. No collections that I know of.”
She wasn’t going to make this easy for me. “You said your parents are gone. Was Nurse Bellamy also an orphan?”
She slowly nodded her head. I had landed upon something. Both women were orphans and both had ended up as nurses. “I remember you told me you had been a nurse elsewhere, in Southwark, wasn’t it? How did you come to that position?”
I thought my question innocent, but to my surprise, tears welled up in Hughes’s pale-blue eyes. “To be truthful, Miss, I didn’t want to do it,” she whispered.
Most women did not; hence it was a profession mostly occupied by the worst of women. But Hughes appeared to have been scared by the position. I kept my voice low and calm. “Did you not have a choice in the matter?”
She sniffed and shook her head. “No. I had to take care of myself somehow and it was all I could think of to do. You see, it all started after my papa died. We lived on a nice estate up north, in Lancashire. But it was entailed, and when Papa died, my cousin who inherited turned us out. Poor Mama. We had very little besides the clothes on our backs. We made our way to London, because Mama heard that there was opportunity here for a woman willing to work.” She sniffed again, and I asked Mary to fetch a handkerchief from somewhere.
“Mama was willing to work, but no one told her that she needed a skill—sewing, cooking, and the like. She found a bit of work as a maid here and there, but no one wanted to have to house a child along with her, and no one much believed that she was a widow and not a woman who hadn’t gotten herself into trouble. You understand my meaning, Miss.”
I did, and I shivered. How likely was it that this would have happened to my own mother had my father died when Parthenope and I were younger?
“So Mama’s opportunities got fewer and fewer until finally she, she—”
Mary returned in that moment with a handkerchief, which I gave to Hughes. She held it up to her face, patting her eyes and nose.
“Until finally she…?” I prompted her.
Hughes sighed. “Until she was finally reduced to that profession that no woman wants. She did it for me, I know. So we didn’t starve.”
“Of course she did,” I murmured sympathetically.
“Well, eventually Mama did fall into trouble. She went to a woman to, you know…” Hughes looked at me, pleadingly. She didn’t want to have to say it.
> “To take care of it,” I said to help her, even though I felt sickened over the whole sad tale she was telling.
“Yes.” Now Hughes’s voice was barely a whisper and I had to strain to hear her. “Mama took sick with a fever afterward, and she died. She only had a single dress, the one she was wearing. It was repaired a lot of times, and the buttons on it were all mismatched as they had been acquired in random ways. I took the buttons as memories, and I suppose I keep adding buttons to keep Mama’s memories alive now that I earn a little money.”
I nodded. “And then you managed to find work as a nurse?”
An expression of pain passed over her face. “Not how you might think. Mr. Maxwell, the man I was nurse to, well, he was the one who … who … got my mother in trouble. He was a regular customer. I think he felt guilty about what happened, so he took me on as his nurse. He was an old man, you see, and it seemed like work I could do, fetching him pillows and tea and the like. But it turned out he was hoping I might eventually take my mother’s place when I was old enough. I avoided him as long as I could, and then I just ran away.”
I was silent for several moments, acutely aware of how often the laws of entailment sent women and children into poverty. Perhaps Mother hadn’t been quite so unreasonable in expecting me to rescue the family fortunes.
“About Nurse Bellamy,” I finally said. “Did she have to endure what your mother did?”
Hughes shook her head. “I don’t think so. But only because she enjoyed men’s attentions. I don’t mean she was paid or anything, only that she enjoyed spending time with men who made her happy.”
But perhaps Bellamy had been paid. In dresses and other finery. And in assurances of a golden future. But who had made promises like that?
And hadn’t she been a married woman escaping an abusive husband, according to Lady Canning? How did all of this fall together?
* * *
Just as it was no surprise to have had an unexpected visit from Lady Canning, it was also no shock to receive a note from the Herberts requesting that I call on them.
They were with their eldest son when I was admitted into their drawing room. Sidney was on the floor with George, setting up random objects on the Turkish carpet to demonstrate Russia’s perfidy to his three-year-old son. Liz sat in a chair by the window, picking idly at a piece of embroidery as she watched her husband and son.
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