Lethal Remedies

by M. Louisa Locke

  Crossing the room, the older woman confirmed Ella’s guess by saying, warmly, “Miss…I mean Dr. Blair, I’m Ruby Prentise. I am so pleased to make your acquaintance. Phoebe spoke quite highly of you. It’s my understanding you were the one who was responsible for the good care that was taken of her after her operation.”

  Ella stammered her thanks and then said, “I am equally pleased to meet you. Mrs. Truscott spoke of you often, and the notes and little gifts you sent did much to lift her spirits. However, I do wish you might persuade your niece to let me see her. While I have every confidence in the success of the operation, that doesn’t preclude her current illness being connected in some fashion to its after-effects or even being the result of a return of the initial disease…and if there is any chance of an infection…”

  “If there is an infection? Whose fault would that be?” Richard Truscott said with impatience. “No, I won’t subject my poor wife to any more of your so-called cures.”

  “Now, Richard, calm yourself. Phoebe is waiting for you upstairs. She will want to hear all about today’s sermon. Go to her, and I will see Dr. Blair out.”

  Richard Truscott looked as if he were going to object, then he shrugged his shoulder and, like Joan, left the room.

  Miss Prentise shook her head as she watched her nephew retreat. “I do apologize for Richard, Dr. Blair. I did raise him to have better manners. As you can imagine, however, seeing his sweet wife indisposed again has quite undone him.”

  “I completely understand,” Ella said. “But it would ease my mind if I could just see Mrs. Truscott for a moment.”

  “Well, my dear, I confess I am more concerned with easing Phoebe’s mind than yours. She has been quite firm in saying she doesn’t want anything more to do with the Pacific Dispensary or any of its doctors.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Ella thought that this didn’t fit with Joan Carpenter’s more positive response to her presence.

  Miss Prentise said, “Is that a note you have written her? I will be glad to give it to her, and she knows how to reach you if she should change her mind.”

  Ella hesitated then handed over the note, not knowing what else to do. She stood for a moment, trying to think of some additional argument she could make to persuade this woman to let her see Phoebe. But Richard’s aunt had already turned her back on her and walked towards the hallway, clearly indicating that Ella should leave.

  As she passed the older woman in the hall, Ella said, “Please, do tell Mrs. Truscott to contact me if she needs anything, anything at all. Even just to talk.”

  “Aren’t you a nice young woman? So earnest. But let me assure you, Phoebe is in good hands, as she is being treated by one of the finest doctors in the city. Under Dr. Skerry’s skilled care, I am quite sure she will recover fully.”

  Chapter 17

  Monday afternoon, February 27, 1882

  Pacific Dispensary for Women and Children

  * * *

  Since Annie, accompanied by Kathleen, was returning the boxes of files to the dispensary this afternoon, she again used a hansom cab to get there. This time, however, she didn’t ask the driver to return to pick them up. She wasn’t sure how long they would stay because Annie needed to ask Ella Blair a few questions, and she didn’t know when she would be available to talk. In addition, Abigail had done so well with her absence last Friday that she wasn’t feeling quite as anxious about getting back at a certain time.

  Her daughter seemed to be growing and maturing before her very eyes. Yesterday afternoon, she and Nate worked together in their downstairs office while Abigail sat at their feet. Annie had put down a thick quilt on the floor, and Abigail, bolstered by cushions, had played happily for an hour with a sock doll Miss Millie had sewn for her. Well, she mostly picked up the small doll and chewed on it, drooling copiously. Nate kept finding excuses to break away from his legal briefs to get down on the floor and play with her, making ridiculous faces that had both Annie and her daughter grinning.

  It had been good to get some work done for her other clients, but today she wanted to try to fill in the gaps she had found in the dispensary records. For instance, it wasn’t clear if one of the last two bills from a pharmacist had been paid. If the bills had been paid, the shortfall between expenses and income for the year would be narrowed down considerably, and any deficit that remained could be covered easily if the Truscotts paid their bill. But that was a lot of ifs.

  As the cab pulled up to the dispensary, Kathleen said, “Ma’am, if you go on in and get the door to the office opened, I will start to shift these boxes from the cab.”

  Annie found Miss Keene, the young volunteer she had met last week, in reception, speaking to a young boy who had a bunch of newspapers under his arm. From the rear, he looked so much like Ian Hennessey, Kathleen’s brother who sold papers afternoons and weekends, that Annie started to say something to him, until the boy turned around and revealed he was a gap-toothed stranger. He tipped his cap to her and hurried out of the reception room.

  She heard an exclamation in the hallway from Kathleen, some murmured conversation, and then her maid came in, holding one of the large boxes in her arms, exclaiming, “Ma’am, you’ll never guess who I ran into in the hallway…Ian’s friend Sean, one of the newsboys he knows. He said he was here to see the boy Jocko.”

  Miss Keene laughed and said, “Sean’s here every Monday, without fail, bringing copies of the Sunday papers for Jocko to read.”

  Annie remembered that the bedridden boy upstairs was named Jocko. But she had trouble understanding why one of the city’s newsboys would be taking the time to bring him newspapers. Well, if anyone would ferret out that information, it would be Kathleen.

  Annie opened up the office door and took the box from Kathleen, saying, “You go and get the others; we don’t want to keep the cab driver waiting.”

  A few minutes later, Kathleen had brought in all the boxes and kindled a fire in the fireplace. The room had probably been closed up since Friday and was quite chilly, so Annie hadn’t yet taken off her coat. Instead, she tried to keep warm by moving back and forth, putting folders and reports back into the file cabinet. She hoped whoever got the next job as treasurer would appreciate that all the folders were now neatly labeled.

  She had just finished this task when Dr. Blair appeared at the door.

  “Oh my,” she said. “It is cold in here. I really should have thought to ask one of the servants to start a fire earlier.”

  “Well, since I wasn’t entirely sure I would be back today, it would have been a shame to waste money on firewood.”

  “Oh dear, are things that bad? Of course we do need to keep the patient rooms warm, but maybe we need to institute a rule about not keeping a fire going in the dining room downstairs in the evenings. The patients seldom stay there long. On the other hand, the dining room is the place where the nurses and the staff tend to gather before bedtime. You see, none of their rooms are heated.”

  “Good heavens, Dr. Blair, that isn’t what I meant. I would hate to suggest that you condemn any of your hardworking staff to chilblains. However, if you could spare me a few minutes to answer some questions, I’m hoping your answers might help me identify more sources of funds to better balance the books.”

  Annie showed the young doctor the pharmacist’s bills that hadn’t been marked paid and a letter from a plumber that mentioned an outstanding bill.

  Ella said, “I expect the pharmacist bills have been paid or Mr. Sears would have mentioned something to one of us, since someone from the dispensary goes to his pharmacy several times a week to fill prescriptions or buy bandages and such. But if you don’t mind, I will write a note for Miss Keene to take to him this afternoon to make sure of this. The man has been terribly generous, selling us most of what we need at cost, and I would hate for him to feel we are taking advantage of him.”

  “What about the plumber?”

  “I don’t know. Dr. Brown told me once that the former treasurer, Mrs. Easton,
the one before Mrs. Branting, had worked very hard to get all the outstanding bills from the changes that had to be made to this building covered before she left her position. I even heard she stayed on the job for a couple of months to help Mrs. Branting through the move, which happened last April, a month after Mrs. Branting was to take over. Mrs. Easton had moved out of town before I took up my position last June, so this is all second-hand information on my part. But I suppose it is possible that there were still some bills that came in after she left, but you would think that Mrs. Branting would have taken care of them by now.”

  Annie picked up the plumber’s bill and said, “That makes sense. The files are quite complete through the first of May. That’s when the files start to be so disorganized. There are signs that Mrs. Branting was paying bills, because there are occasional receipts for the monthly rent, fuel costs, grocer bills, and so forth. But they aren’t all marked as paid, and there are gaps. She certainly didn’t keep any kind of running tab of receipts and disbursements, which would have told her if there was a problem.”

  “How do you find out what bills might still be outstanding?” Ella asked.

  “I will write letters. That’s what my task is today. I will start with those bills like the plumber’s. I need to craft a letter carefully so it sounds like I already know the status of the bill, just need confirmation. I don’t want someone to think they can recharge the dispensary for something that has already been paid.”

  “Oh, no, that would be awful. Would someone do something like that, to a charity?”

  Ella Blair sounded so naive. Dr. Brown had mentioned that the doctor was in her mid-twenties, so only a few years younger than Annie, who would turn twenty-nine this May. But Annie’s naiveté had been destroyed by the time she was eighteen, when in the span of twelve months she lost her father, her husband, her fortune, and, temporarily, her faith in humanity.

  Kathleen interrupted this melancholy thought, saying, “Ma’am, I was wondering if I could go up and meet this Jocko that Sean told me about. Said he’s real famous among the newsies. Thought Ian and Jamie would be interested. Then, if she’s awake, I thought I could go visit that girl, Hilda. See how she’s doing. If you don’t need me?”

  “That would be fine, if it’s all right with Dr. Blair.”

  “Certainly, that’s an excellent idea, Kathleen. I think you will enjoy meeting Jocko. And I really appreciate you taking time for Hilda. She hasn’t had any visitors, you see, and we really don’t want her moving around. I know it’s hard on her to be so confined.”

  Once Kathleen left the office, Ella said, “I hope the girl will be more open about her past with your maid. We have no idea if she has any relatives or even friends in the city, someone who might help her out once the baby comes. We don’t even know where in the city she had been working or living…much less who the father is. And I fear she may have been either seduced or worse…a girl that young. It’s simply terrible.”

  It turns out the young doctor isn’t so naive, after all.

  “Kathleen has a good head on her shoulders, as well as a good heart,” Annie said. “And I know she will share any information she gets that is relevant. Before you go, I wanted to let you know that Nate, my husband, feels confident that the document the Truscotts signed should protect the dispensary and its staff, legally. He’s going to reach out to Mr. Truscott, see if he can’t get things sorted out.”

  Ella frowned and said, “I’m afraid Mr. Truscott won’t be very amenable to talking to your husband. I saw him yesterday morning, and he was still quite angry. Vowed he wouldn’t pay the dispensary a penny.”

  She then went on to describe her attempt to see Phoebe Truscott Sunday morning.

  “At least I got a brief description of her symptoms from her maid, and it didn’t sound to me as if she was suffering from an infection. If that were the case, I would have expected to hear that she had a fever and that her symptoms were becoming steadily more severe. Instead, Joan described her mistress as having several ‘spells,’ with the primary symptoms being nausea and vomiting. While cysts can cause some of these symptoms, they could just as well be associated with some sort of gastro-intestinal illness.”

  “That couldn’t be blamed on the operation, could it?” Annie asked.

  “It wouldn’t be usual, although ovariotomies have only been done with any regularity for the past decade. As a result, there have been few medical treatises detailing the long-term after-effects of the operation. But, even if Mrs. Truscott isn’t suffering from some sort of post-operative infection, that doesn’t mean that her husband doesn’t believe there is a connection between the two, and that remains the problem.”

  “Especially if this Dr. Skerry is encouraging him to believe there is a connection. Did he mention Dr. Skerry to you?”

  “No, but his aunt did, in rather effusive terms.”

  “Oh, dear, that could be a problem. Dr. Mitchell, a friend of my husband’s who recently got his medical degree, told us that there was some well-known feud between Skerry and both Dr. Brown and Dr. Granger. Laura, my sister-in-law, who among other things is a budding journalist, thought she would see if there was anything in the medical journal that Skerry publishes that would explain the origins of that feud.”

  Ella exclaimed, “Dr. Mitchell? Martin Mitchell? Who just graduated from Toland Hall? Irishman, tall, ginger mustache? Seems to think he’s a wit?”

  Annie laughed. “The very one. Laura’s friend Caro Sutton, who has just started taking classes at the University of California’s medical school, said he appeared ‘a bit too full of himself.’ Sounds like he made a similar impression on you.”

  Ella said, “I wouldn’t say he was any more arrogant than most of my male colleagues. What I found tiresome was his constant need to make some humorous comment during clinical lectures. I doubt he has a high opinion of me, since I told him off once when he made some childish joke about one of the female patients. Told him to show more respect for the patients.”

  Ella paused, then she said, “That’s not important now. What did he say about this feud?”

  “He didn’t have many details. That’s why I hope Laura will be able to unearth something concrete. Although I suppose I could simply ask Dr. Granger, or Dr. Brown when she returns.”

  Ella sighed and said, “I would hate the idea that the dispensary, or Phoebe’s well-being, was being threatened by some argument between doctors, even though I know that this sort of thing can happen.”

  Annie thought about the stories Mitchell had told them and nodded her agreement. She said, “Yes, that would be a shame. But my husband has sent a letter to Richard Truscott, asking if they could meet for dinner tomorrow. He’s been quite successful in getting parties to settle amicably out of court, even in divorce cases, which can be especially difficult.”

  Annie had seen and approved the letter Nate wrote before setting off to work this morning. With any luck, he’d get a reply in the late afternoon mail. Mr. Stein had come home from Portland yesterday, and Annie had asked him if he knew anything about Richard Truscott or his father. In her experience, what Herman Stein, a very successful commission merchant, didn’t know about San Francisco businesses wasn’t worth knowing. He told her that Richard Truscott’s father had been a partner in a grain shipping company. His memory was that the son had worked for the firm for a number of years but not very energetically.

  Mr. Stein said the father had died suddenly about eight years ago, and the next he’d heard anything about the son was that he had found himself a very rich wife and was currently dabbling in stock speculation.

  Annie knew from personal experience how dangerous it could be when a young man without much business sense tried to play the stock market. That’s why she had suggested to Nate that he should try to determine if Richard Truscott was refusing to pay for his wife’s medical bills because he had gotten himself into some financial difficulty. Maybe, if this was the problem, something could be worked out.

  Ella s
aid, “Oh, Mrs. Dawson, I do hope he is successful. Perhaps Mr. Truscott will reveal more details about his wife’s condition to your husband. I’m really worried about her.”

  Annie respected that the doctor’s concern seemed primarily with the health of Phoebe Truscott, but trying to keep the larger picture in mind, she said, “I will be pleased if we can at least get Mr. Truscott to set up a payment plan, which might do a lot to satisfy Argenta Branting and forestall any sort of mass defection from the board.”

  Chapter 18

  Tuesday, February 28, 1882

  Montaigne’s Steak House, San Francisco

  * * *

  Nate had chosen to meet Richard Truscott at Montaigne’s Steak House on Market, one of the best restaurants in town, because he knew that being able to get a table at the last minute would impress the man. The restaurant’s cashier and hostess, Miss Pinehurst, was a former boarder in Annie’s boardinghouse. Because Nate had played a small part in helping Annie rescue Miss Pinehurst’s sister from the clutches of a fraudulent medium, he knew Miss Pinehurst would ensure he got a good table and excellent service. He tried not to take advantage of her graciousness too often, but he thought that trying to settle the dispensary’s problems with this man was sufficient cause to send her a note this morning, asking if she could reserve a table for him at seven this evening.

  As he had hoped, when Nate ushered Truscott into the restaurant, Miss Pinehurst was there to greet him. She made it clear that he was a valued customer as she ushered them to a prime table. The waiter added to the overall impression by welcoming Nate by name and asking after his “charming wife.”