by Adair, Robin
Was she nervous perhaps? wondered Dunne. He marveled at this other side to the Queen of the Drabs. At least he now knew what Levey had meant about the fat lady singing!
Madame announced that she would sing the “‘Calcutta Cholera Song,’ for all old India hands.” Her voice was surprisingly light, yet clear and carrying, although she still seemed under strain, as she sang:Spurn the Hooghly waters,
As the foul miasmas creep.
They steal our wives and daughters,
In pits of lime they sleep.
But raise your rum, be merry,
Ere the depths of hell you plumb.
Pay a toast to those we bury,
And to those with death to come!
On the last notes she had faltered; now she shook her head as if to clear it, clutched at her belly and took a clumsy step toward the audience. Then she collapsed as if she had been shot.
Barnett Levey ran out from the wings, looked down at his fallen star and yelled, “If there is no surgeon here, send to the hospital!”
The patterer and Captain Rossi, with Miss Dormin at their heels, headed for the evening’s most dramatic tableau.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Come, madam, you are now driven to the very last scene of all your contrivances.
—Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer (1773)
THEY HAD CARRIED THE COLLAPSED MADAME GREENE TO AN empty chamber (by grim coincidence it was called the green room, a place where performers could rest) by the time a doctor arrived. He was Dr. Thomas Owens, wearing, as usual, a long scarf and thick gloves.
The mood in the room was far from relaxed. The air stank of sweat, urine and feces. The whoremistress was no longer the domineering figure she usually seemed. She sat over a chamberpot, dressed only in a shift; her prized gown had been stripped from her and tossed over a chair.
Dr. Owens appeared to listen to her chest and back through a device strange to Nicodemus Dunne, a seemingly simple wooden cylinder about nine inches long, not unlike a flute without tone holes. Then he recalled that he had read of an invention by a French physician, René Laënnec, a decade before. The medical procedure was called, he believed, stethoscopy.
Owens frowned. Madame Greene’s breathing was labored. “The heart rate is 110, at least thirty beats above normal,” the patterer thought he heard the doctor mutter. “She is passing thin, liquid bowel motions and is urinating too regularly.”
All the onlookers could see clearly that Madame was sweating profusely, despite the caked maquillage on her face, and even though Owens said her extremities were like ice.
Madame Greene pointed urgently to her mouth. It was apparent she could not speak; moments earlier she had complained of a constricted, painful throat. Now she suddenly vomited into the bowl for which she had desperately mimed.
The patterer was ashamed of his sudden urge to flee from the room. He felt discomfort, the common reaction of the young and healthy to illness in another, but there was more; he was afraid. All of which made him amazed and impressed by Miss Dormin’s behavior. She was proving more helpful to Dr. Owens than anyone else in the room. With Owens’s assent, she used a washcloth to clear off Madame Greene’s heavy makeup, then threw away the ruined cloth with a look of distaste. The face that emerged from the gluey mess was of surprisingly smooth complexion, though white as death.
“What is it?” asked Captain Rossi suddenly, articulating Dunne’s fears.
“At first glance,” replied the doctor, “something so potentially serious that I would not be offended if you all retired.”
No one among the observers moved and Owens went on.
“Dysentery presents itself as a prime suspect—the griping pains, mucous evacuations, even bloody ones, inflammation of the intestinal glands and the mucous membrane. One also has to consider typhus, although, God knows, no one wants to. It’s fatal enough. So far, we’ve been lucky here. It classically breeds in the filth of crowded cities and often in army camps.”
His audience needed no reminders. Little more than a decade before, the disease, as much as General Winter, had destroyed most of Bonaparte’s 600,000-man Grande Armée in his Russian disaster.
Owens drew breath as his listeners held theirs. An equally dire alternative hovered in their minds.
As if able to read their fears, the doctor continued, “Cholera? That hasn’t really escaped from the Indian subcontinent into Europe or elsewhere—”
At that moment, the door to the green room burst open and, eluding the arms of Rossi and Dunne, a small woman dressed all in black charged toward Madame Greene. The patterer and Owens managed to seize her before she could throw herself on the ill woman. “Oh, Madame! Oh, Madame!” she wailed, before collapsing on the floor.
“Who the devil is this?” asked Dunne.
“Why,” said Miss Dormin, “I do believe it is Madame Greene’s personal maid. Elsie, isn’t it?” The woman nodded miserably.
“Yes,” said the doctor. “I know her now. She is indeed Elsie.” And a very personal maid, he thought. He knew that Madame Greene had long ago lost interest in men, apart from taking their money; physical intimacy with them was unsuitable to her taste. Not that she had abandoned the quest for sexual satisfaction; she now simply had what were discreetly described as “Uranian” or “Sapphic” desires.
Over his shoulder, as he returned his full attention to his patient, Owens asked Elsie about her mistress’s eating and drinking habits. He knew (although many of his colleagues did not agree) that febrile fluxes were often transmitted by infected food or liquids.
“Oh, sir,” said the maid between wracking sobs. “She is very, very particular—all those soldiers in the house, you know. You never could tell where they’d been. I taste everything myself before she eats or drinks. How could I fail her?” She burst into fresh sobs, then added defiantly, “Nothing passes her lips that don’t pass mine. Nothing!” Elsie fell silent, then frowned in deep thought and suddenly burst out, “Oh, I tell a lie, sir! There was something I never tested—the medicines, sir, those medicines you gave her.”
The doctor smiled. “Of course you didn’t,” he said easily. “Those were special medicines, Elsie, to help your mistress.”
The woman was stubborn. “Not the lozenge. That wasn’t medicine. I saw you give it to her. And she ate it.”
Owens waved a hand. “I don’t recall a lozenge.”
But Captain Rossi had grown impatient. “You haven’t yet told us what you think is wrong.”
“Patience,” soothed the doctor and then asked them all, “Tell me, does anyone notice any particular, unusual odor permeating the room?”
Dunne wrinkled his nose. “You mean, apart from …”
“Of course I don’t mean those obvious odors.”
“Well, there is one aroma, quite pungent, but I’m not familiar with it,” Rachel Dormin agreed.
Then Rossi burst in, almost triumphantly. “I know it. It’s garlic!”
Owens turned to Elsie. “Did Madame habitually eat garlic—you know what it is? Did she have some today?”
“No, sir. She would never eat”—she looked sideways at Captain Rossi—“begging your pardon, sir, foreign muck.”
The doctor laughed and clapped his hands. “I rather thought that was the case.”
Before anyone could ask the significance of this exchange, Madame Greene moaned and swayed alarmingly.
“Enough,” said Owens. “Now we must get our patient to the hospital.”
The patterer managed to interpose one question. “Is there any danger of contagion to others?”
The doctor paused. “I’m beginning to think not, almost certainly not.”
While the distraught maid was gently urged to return to the High House, Rossi rigged up a hammock stretcher from some theater canvas and recruited two reluctant stagehands to carry the woman to a carriage. Attended by Dr. Owens, Madame Greene, now drifting in and out of consciousness, was transported the four or so blocks to the Rum Hospital.
With four passengers, a driver and a large theatrical costume hamper that Rachel Dormin had commandeered to carry away Madame Greene’s bulky discarded clothing, plus luggage of her own, the patterer was glad that Rossi’s choice of transport was a brisky, and not a smaller vehicle. The popular open curricle, for example, even with two horses, had room only for two, with a seat at the back for a groom. The brisky, however, was a versatile vehicle that enjoyed widespread approval (the real name was britzka, reflecting its Polish origins). Two horses gave it power and its light body, made largely of woven wicker, gave it roominess and speed. It was tough, too. A groaning, sturdy brisky had carried Governor Macquarie and his lady on the first vice-regal traverse of the rocky, precipitous road across the just-conquered Blue Mountains.
The captain announced he would first drop off Miss Dormin.
Damn, groaned the patterer inwardly. He had hoped to sit beside her for longer, pressed close together as they were under the darkened privacy of the closed calash top. Dunne was to be delivered next and then Elsie.
When Rachel Dormin stepped down they waited until she was safe at her front door. As Dunne handed over her bulky luggage—she refused any further assistance—Elsie called, “Good night, miss. Thank you again for what you have done.” Then she burst into tears.
Rossi urged his departing companion always to be careful when she was out and about alone after dark. She nodded and spoke softly up to the carriage: “I will not concern myself about calling for the police.”
“Well, always think about it; we are here to help,” advised Rossi, and was rather put out when all Miss Dormin seemed to do in reply was to frown at him, then hide a smile. The young seem to think they are invincible, he thought testily, as the door closed and the brisky rolled on into the chilly night.
Elsie the maid was still weeping and locked in her private world of misery when she was finally delivered into the sympathetic arms of the girls on Gallows Hill.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Physicians, of all men, are most happy; what good success soever they have, the world proclaimeth; and what faults they commit, the earth covereth.
—Francis Quarles, Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man (1638)
MADAME GREENE DIED DURING THE NIGHT. NICODEMUS DUNNE heard the news when he was summoned to the hospital at about ten A.M. Dr. Owens, his eyes shadowed with fatigue, met him at the front entrance.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “She was too far gone.”
“What was it?” asked the patterer. “Dysentery?”
Owens shrugged. “Well, there was a flux, as you well know, but not because of one of those tropical or other febrile scourges. There was massive purging and dehydration. And organ failure; her liver and kidneys failed—among other things.”
He caught the surprised look on Dunne’s face. “Oh, yes, I have already anatomized her. Why? Because, from the start, something about the case troubled me mightily.” He took his companion’s elbow in a gloved hand. “Come.”
“Where to? Not to that death-house again!”
Owens did not answer, just continued to propel the patterer along the corridor. They entered the dissecting room, which looked much as the unwilling visitor recalled from his earlier encounter. There was only one change: The sole examination table now in use had a fresh occupant.
Madame Greene lay under a sheet with only her head exposed, her outlined body seemingly shrunken to a size that didn’t tally with Dunne’s recollection of her living bulk. Her head was grotesquely haloed by her shock of green hair. They approached the table, Dunne hesitatingly.
“I won’t ask you to look at the body,” soothed the doctor. “In any case, I imagine it would be a mark of disrespect if you did. My having to is enough. Many women in life are reluctant to let even a doctor see their mysteries. I suppose that one day there may be female doctors—and it will be the turn of the men to be shy. So, we will allow her modesty to remain intact. I will remark about the torso only that there is, and was earlier, an abdominal rash, apart from which the body’s skin is as clear as a babe’s. Nonetheless, you can directly observe some other important physical matters.” He pointed. “For instance, look at the nails.”
Dunne looked. They were not worn, split or chipped as were many working women’s. But they were not attractive or healthy, and were rather coarse in texture.
“And the face.” Even in death her complexion was decidedly beautiful, that of a younger woman. “I just don’t know why she caked herself with all that muck,” sniffed Owens. “Her eyes see nothing now, but even as I treated her last night they were wide and glittering; her pupils were dilated.” He then fingered her hair and remarked that it was shiny but thin to his delicate touch.
“What are you driving at?” asked the patterer, not really understanding what he was being shown. “Exactly what disease are you talking about?”
“Patience,” begged the doctor. “There’s no hurry. Not now. She is not suffering by my deliberate manner.” Then his attention seemed to wander, for he went off on a tangent. “Years ago, a French acquaintance, a very perspicacious artist named Horace Vernet, told me that in all matters—and I take this to apply to medical issues—when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. My examination shows that, despite some suggestive symptoms, she did not die of dysentery. The same goes for typhus. True, in Madame’s case there was great prostration and a petechial eruption—the red spots I referred to on the belly—but that doesn’t always attend typhus, and in this case certainly did not. And although I rule out cholera, there are some similar indicators—puckered lips and a hollow facial appearance—apparent in her case. Please remember that.”
“What then,” inquired Dunne, “is the truth, the improbable that must be the truth?”
Owens grimaced. “The truth is that she died of acute poisoning.”
“Why is that so improbable?”
“Because, my dear young man, I simply have no idea how it could have occurred. I suppose I was reasonably sure of the what—if not the why—when I realized what the unusual odor in the room was. You recall, I’m sure, the smell that Captain Rossi so acutely identified as garlic, which Elsie stoutly denied her mistress had ever touched. A reek of garlic can be a pointer to the presence of arsenic in a body. Very confusing in Latin countries, no doubt!”
“Could it not all have been an accident?” asked the patterer.
The doctor shrugged. “Perhaps. A lot of women take small doses of arsenic to improve their complexion. And deadly nightshade can be used by the ladies to highlight the allure of their eyes. That poison’s other name is, of course, belladonna—in words other than the Italian, ‘fair lady.’ Even the late king’s doctors dosed him with emetic tartar during treatment for his madness. That nostrum contains antimony, which is commonly contaminated with up to 5 percent arsenic. So you can see that the toxin has respectable medical usage.”
“So, in a nutshell, she died by taking too much arsenic,” said the patterer.
“‘Taking’ is the problem word,” replied Owens. “Yes, arsenic killed her, but did she ‘take’ it, in the conventional sense? I tend to believe what Elsie, her distraught lover, told us at the theater—that no contaminated or otherwise infected food or water passed her or her mistress’s lips. And the same must be true of poison: Ergo, there is no possible agent in that manner, unless the poison was self-administered.”
“You are saying she killed herself, either accidentally or deliberately?” Nicodemus Dunne was not especially religious, but he had a superstitious dread of suicide and all it could mean, of bodies refused rest in hallowed ground and supposedly being buried at crossroads.
The doctor shrugged. “This poisoning was a gradual process. A suicide would surely end it all with one large overdose. And I have recently treated Madam
e Greene for debilities I now realize were the symptoms of her progressive poisoning. But I believe she was a woman who wanted to live.”
Breaking the train of his discourse and pulling the patterer closer to the corpse, Owens poked a flat instrument into the mouth, between the slightly open lips. He withdrew it and remarked, “Nothing.” He turned away and continued, “So, to sum up, I have drawn your attention to the rash, the coarse nails, the clear complexion, the once-glittering eyes, the thin, shiny hair—all symptoms of arsenical poisoning, which I have confirmed by postmortem. And … ?” He paused and looked at the patterer inquiringly.
Dunne frowned. “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the mouth,” said Owens.
“There was nothing in the mouth.”
“That was the curious incident,” remarked the doctor.
Dunne did not understand.
The doctor explained, “The deceased’s mouth lining and tongue contain dissipated traces of the poison. Most of these traces have been deposited by the passage and residue of vomit—you will remember her retching in the green room? Now, why did I charge you to recall the fact that Madame’s face had the shriveled and puckered look associated with cholera—if I also told you that the disease was not involved?”
From the patterer, no response.
So the doctor, slightly irritated by his companion’s inability to match his mind, continued. “What is now missing from Madame’s appearance, her image as you remember her? And I remind you again of the collapsed face.”
Dunne recalled the vivacious, always smiling woman, then he said suddenly, almost shouting, “Teeth! She has no teeth! But how so?”
“Because,” said Owens, “I have them!” In the dramatic manner of a prestidigitator, he whipped away a cloth from a small mound on a side table. Revealed was a set of artificial teeth for the upper and lower jaws.
