“Yes, miss,” Bobby said and began to trudge up the stairs. Ella gathered her skirts in one hand, clutching the medical bag in the other, glad at least to get out of the cold, wet wind that held a spattering of rain.
There didn’t appear to be any heat in the building nor the usual mingle of cooking smells and coal or wood smoke. Nor were there any sounds, except for the boy’s footsteps on the stairs. “Deathly quiet” was the phrase that came to mind. Normally at this time of night, a building like this would have emitted a cacophony of children’s laughter, babies’ cries, and mothers’ shouts.
However, as they turned on the landing to go up the next flight of stairs to the third floor, she saw some light filtering down, and when they got to that floor, she saw there was a single gas fixture emitting a small flickering light.
Bobby went to the only door in the hallway that was ajar and knocked.
When nothing happened, Ella knocked again and pushed the door open a little more, saying, “Hello, I’m Dr. Blair from the Pacific Dispensary. Am I at the right place?”
Abruptly, the door was pulled open by a hunched-over old woman, and Ella stepped into a room that was as cold as the rest of the house and only illuminated by a candle sitting on a table next to a narrow bed. Dark shadows in the corners gave the impression that there was other furniture in the room, but nothing like a stove.
Ella’s immediate thought was, No chance of boiling water. Thank goodness, she had packed the bar of carbolic soap, although she wasn’t certain there would even be a source of water in the house.
The woman, her face obscured by one of the numerous shawls she was wearing, gestured towards the bed, where Ella could see someone was lying on their side, the candle only revealing a glimpse of a pale face and tangled hair.
She turned to the woman and said, “I understand that the young woman is pregnant and having some difficulty. Can you tell me exactly what has happened?”
The woman just shook her head and moved to one side of the bed. Ella wondered if she even spoke English. And where was the man who sent Bobby? A husband, boyfriend? Wouldn’t it be just like a man to make himself scarce now that help had arrived.
She put her bag down on the floor and said, “Bobby, come in and bring the lantern so I can see better.”
Leaning over to get a better look at the girl on the bed, Ella instantly recognized her as the dispensary’s missing laundress. She put her hand on the girl’s shoulder and said, “Brenda, what are you doing here? Are you ill?”
Instantly, she was grabbed from behind. A large man, smelling of beer and tobacco, lifted her up and crushed her against his chest. He growled into her ear, “Don’t even try to scream, doctor. No one will hear you.”
Ella tried to wiggle free, but her feet got caught in her skirts, and all that happened was that the man’s arms tightened around her. She let out an involuntary cry of pain.
“Shut your trap or I’ll give you something real to cry about,” he said. Then he yelled something to the woman about checking to see if the boy was gone.
Ella went still, trying to catch her breath.
“That’s better. You stop flailing around, and I’ll stop trying to break your ribs. Sit in that chair and listen to what you’re going to do.”
Suddenly released, Ella was pushed down onto a wooden chair next to the bed and was able to see her attacker for the first time. Not surprised, she recognized Charlie McFadyn, who was smiling and holding a very large knife that he waved in front of her.
“Yes, I thought the knife would get your attention. Now, doctor, I suspect you know what I want. I want you to go and bring me my boy. Tonight.”
Ella tried to tell him he was insane if he thought she would do that, but she no longer seemed in command of her own voice, so she shook her head.
“Don’t you go telling me you can’t or you won’t. Not until I explain things real clear to you.”
He turned and barked out instructions to the woman, who no longer looked either old or hunched over but instead looked like the woman who’d tried to get Hilda to leave the dispensary with her.
McFadyn said, “Look into the bag, Tessa, and see what we have to work with.”
The woman brought the lantern that Bobby had left in the doorway and put it on a table, opening the medical bag and rummaging around inside. She grunted triumphantly when she discovered Ella’s set of obstetrical tools, which included two different-sized speculums, forceps, and the scissors and clamp for the umbilical cord.
McFadyn said, “What do we have here! Looks like you were planning on doing one of them illegal operations on this young lady. Got the instruments of torture all ready and waiting. So you see, you get my boy or Tessa and the girl will testify that you came here to practice an abortion on this poor girl who used to work for you.”
Finding her voice, Ella said, “No one would believe you! Every doctor who’s been called to attend a pregnant woman carries these instruments.”
Looking over at the girl, who was now sitting up in bed, Ella reached out and grabbed the girl’s hand, saying, “Brenda, are you all right? What has this man done to you?”
“Don’t you worry about Brenda. She’s pregnant, right and tight. Just ripening, so no one will believe you were here to help deliver her baby.”
“Yes, they will; there were witnesses who will testify that I was told I was being called out to attend a woman who was in early labor or having a miscarriage.”
“Witnesses, really? You think the boy’s going to talk? Not if he wants his family to stay safe. Tessa, show her the bottle.”
Ella saw the woman wave around a stoppered glass bottle then put it in her medical case.
McFaydyn said, “We’ve got a bottle of tansy. Brenda here says the rumor is that’s the stuff that Hilda used, ungrateful girl. I’ll call in the police, say I caught you here trying to abort my child, having talked poor simple Brenda into doing the terrible deed, and that bottle’s additional evidence. Get you charged on that alone. Ruin you, ruin your precious dispensary and all the doctors that work there. You really want to risk it? No matter what happens, I’ll still get my boy, just maybe later rather than sooner, and I won’t promise that Hilda will survive that reckoning.”
Ella saw the truth in everything he said. But how could she make this decision alone, a decision that could destroy the dispensary and the reputations of everyone who worked there? She had to get out of here, get to the dispensary, send for Dr. Brown, figure out what to do.
McFadyn leaned over and knocked her lightly on her forehead with the flat of the knife. “I can see you thinking, girl. Don’t even try to outsmart me. You’ll not go to the dispensary alone. Tessa here will go with you, and you’ll hand my boy over to her. Brenda’s my hostage to make sure you don’t try anything funny.”
Brenda moaned beside her and said, “Do what he says or he’ll cut me.”
Do no harm. That’s what Dr. Granger always said was a doctor’s first duty. How do I do that? If I get the child, that harms both Hilda and the baby. If I don’t, Brenda could be harmed and the dispensary most certainly will be damaged. What do I do?
McFadyn stepped back and said, “Tessa, I’m tired of waiting. Take the doctor out of here. I don’t care if she ends up with a few bruises. Just get her to the dispensary and on the way convince her that she don’t want to cross you.”
Ella suddenly noticed a slight movement in the doorway behind McFadyn and the silhouette of a man she was coming to know well. Her heart sank. She’d insisted he not bring a gun to the dispensary again. Said it was too unsafe. But McFadyn had a knife. If they fought…
I’ve got to do something to give him an advantage.
Before she could lose her nerve, Ella launched herself at Tessa, scratching and clawing the way she’d done as a child when she fought with her sister. A couple of thuds and curses to her right told her that Mitchell had tackled McFadyn.
Suddenly, a deafening sound of gun fire froze everything for a moment.
> Then Ella pulled away from Tessa’s grasp and saw McFadyn and Mitchell in a tangle on the floor with Officer Blakely standing over them, holding a smoking pistol.
Chapter 52
Sunday, early morning, March 12, 1882
O’Farrell Street Boardinghouse
* * *
Annie moved the lamp on the desk closer in order to better see the manuscript she was reading. The further back in time in Dr. Granger’s memoirs she went, the fainter the ink. As a result, she was finding it increasingly difficult to decipher the words. After getting home from the dispensary yesterday, she’d made a good deal of progress—when she wasn’t tending to Abigail or trying not to worry about Phoebe.
Annie had found the whole conversation between the young woman, her husband, and his aunt extremely revealing. On the surface, the interaction between everyone seemed fairly typical of a number of marriages she’d witnessed, including her first marriage to John. Two young people, blinded by romance, who rushed into marriage and, not surprisingly, found themselves disappointed by their spouses when they encountered real-life problems. Another familiar element was what happened when other people, in this case a maid, an aunt, and a homeopathic doctor, took sides in the inevitable conflicts that occurred. However, this was the first time she’d faced the possibility that someone in the mix might be trying to kill the young wife.
This thought gave her a slight chill, and she turned up the flame in the oil lamp, glad of the little bit of extra heat it generated. At least the rain storm that had blown through during the night seemed to have passed, although it was still a cloudy day with occasional gusts of wind that rattled the windows.
She was having difficulty concentrating this morning because she was tired. The lightning and thunder that accompanied the storm last night had woken up Abigail several times, her wails in the nursery loud enough to wake Annie in the next room. After the first episode, Annie brought her to sleep in the crib that was still in their room. At least then, Kathleen and everyone else in the boardinghouse could get a good night’s sleep.
Nate had taken turns with her in comforting and rocking their daughter back to sleep, pleased to wipe out the memory of the difficulty he’d had in soothing her on Friday afternoon. He also volunteered to oversee Abigail’s morning ritual so Annie could finish up reading the memoir before it was time to attend church.
Her strategy had been to read the memoir in ten-year chunks, starting with the most recent decade, assuming that any important clue would be in the more recent years. For the section set in the seventies, Granger mostly described his role in establishing and staffing the Medical College of the Pacific, particularly how dedicated he was in supporting female applicants. He also detailed his early contributions to the Pacific Dispensary as one of their first consulting physicians. None of this was new to Annie. And nothing suggested who might have had reason to kill him.
She did find it interesting that in the section where he discussed his work on the California Medical Society, he made it clear that Dr. Skerry wasn’t the only local physician who’d been rejected for membership and complained in the press. However, Granger seemed to have taken these complaints, even Skerry’s, as a sign that he and the other medical board members were doing a good job.
She had finished the volume covering the last half of the fifties and the sixties yesterday. Here, she read a detailed account of what Martin Mitchell had described to them two weeks ago. First, the famous Cole-Toland feud, then the rivalry between Toland’s medical school and the one set up by Dr. Samuel Elias Cooper, and finally the failure of that first rival to Toland’s school. Again, nothing new and nothing that suggested that any of the people involved might have held a grudge that would result in violence all these years later.
Throughout this section of the memoir, he also wrote about his growing medical practice and his family—showing obvious pride in his son’s medical career, bemusement over his youngest daughter’s success as an illustrator, and sadness when his wife’s health deteriorated and his older daughter no longer could act as his assistant in his medical practice. Again, nothing that she thought Thompson would find “relevant” to his investigation.
This didn’t mean that there weren’t people with possible motives. For example, those doctors who’d been denied board certification, colleagues at the medical school who disagreed with him over the decision to let in women, even a son who didn’t always agree with him over the correct medical treatment for certain patients. But the way Granger wrote about these conflicts made them seem innocuous. He even expressed pride in how his son was willing to stand up to him.
All in all, if Granger’s memoir were to be believed, he was an easy-going fellow, didn’t hold grudges, and generally got along well with both patients and other physicians.
Annie knew from experience that how people saw themselves wasn’t necessarily a good measure of how others saw them. However, for her purposes, the memoir wasn’t proving to hide any deep, dark secrets or motives for murder. On the other hand, this did suggest that if someone came to the doctor’s office, he probably wouldn’t have viewed them as a threat, especially his son. The son who supposedly didn’t hear the telegraph messenger ringing his office door bell…right around the time his father was being killed.
“I heard that sigh,” Nate said, coming into the office. “No luck with the memoir?”
“No. How did things go with Abigail? I didn’t hear any screams, so I gather she was in a sunnier mood this morning.”
“Absolutely. She found all my jokes hilarious, obediently opened up her mouth for me to insert the spoon, and only spit out about half of her porridge. I even got to towel Abigail off after Kathleen gave her a morning bath. All in all, a very successful morning. Kathleen took her down to the kitchen to bang on some pots.”
Annie smiled at her husband’s smug tone.
She said, “I’ve got just a few more pages in this last section of the memoir to read, then I’ll go down and see if she’s driven them to distraction yet. I’ve read about Granger’s youth and his experiences in medical school; now I’m reading about his very first cases as a young doctor in Pennsylvania. Really interesting reading, but I am having difficulty imagining someone coming out of that distant past to kill him, much less anyone who might also be interested in poisoning Phoebe Truscott.”
Nate said, “You really do think the two are related? I mean, seems to me that if someone was poisoning Phoebe Truscott, it must be either her husband, who was trying to kill her in order to get her money, or Dr. Skerry, who simply wanted to make her sick in order to further her own agenda. In addition, given your description of the aunt’s behavior yesterday morning, it’s possible the aunt was helping Dr. Skerry, either on purpose or unwittingly. As for the death of Dr. Granger, the suspects are much wider. The murderer could be Charlie McFadyn, a dissatisfied or addled patient, some drug-seeking thief, or even his son. However, as far as I can see, none of the three people who are suspects in the Truscott case have any reason to murder Dr. Granger.”
Annie shrugged and said, “I know. Try as I might, I can’t see Dr. Skerry being so deranged in her vendetta against Dr. Granger that she would want to kill him. Nor can I see Richard Truscott or his aunt killing Dr. Granger on Dr. Skerry’s behalf. But I can’t accept that there is no connection, that it was just coincidence that someone was poisoning Phoebe Truscott and, at the same time, someone else wanted Dr. Granger dead.”
“Well, I’ll leave you to it; I’ve got some work of my own.” Nate went and sat down at his desk and started shuffling papers.
Annie turned the page and started to read Granger’s explanation for why he’d made the decision early in his career not to include obstetrics as part of his practice. He sounded defensive, which wasn’t surprising given that most physicians, particularly in rural areas and small towns, were expected to deliver babies as part of their routine care. She was speculating over how much income this decision cost when, unexpectedly, a familiar name jumpe
d out at her.
“Nate, listen to this. In 1854, the year before Granger came out west to San Francisco, a young woman under his care died in childbirth. The baby was breech, he failed to turn it, and he decided in a panic to use forceps. He was successful in delivering the baby, a boy, but the mother hemorrhaged, probably from his use of the forceps, and she died. He found the whole experience so traumatic that he came out west and started anew. And Nate, this couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, could it? The name of the woman who died was Garnet Truscott.”
Nate stood up hurriedly and came over to look at the section of the manuscript.
He said, “Well, well, that looks very much like you did find some connection between the two cases. But what are you thinking? That the baby who lost his mother is Richard Truscott? And Aunt Ruby is the dead woman’s sister?”
Annie said, “It fits in terms of timing, and it certainly provides a motive. Either Richard or his aunt could very well have been nursing a terrible hatred for the doctor who was responsible for Garnet Truscott’s death, a hatred which could have led them to kill Dr. Granger.”
“But why wait so long? And how does this fit with the possible poisoning of Phoebe?”
Annie said, “I don’t know. I mean, if someone was capable of poisoning Phoebe for their own ends…”
“Like her husband?”
“Yes, then it is not far-fetched that they would be willing to kill Granger as some sort of long-term grudge.”
Annie was cut off by the sound of the office door opening. Kathleen rushed in, saying, “Ma’am, sir, Sergeant Thompson is here to see you. Says it’s urgent.”
The sergeant swept into the room right behind her and said, “I’m glad I found you both at home, because I’m going to need help from both of you.”
Nate shook Thompson’s hand and offered to send Kathleen down to get him something to eat or drink.
Lethal Remedies Page 35
