For Dead Men Only: An Alexandra Gladstone Mystery Read online

  “I knows where she went. I knows what to do!” Rob was impatient, ready to leave.

  “Go on, then,” Nancy said. “Artie and I will stay here and care for Zack.”

  “Sorry to cross ye, Nance, but I ain’t stayin’,” Artie said.

  “Don’t argue with me, young man!” Nancy warned. She watched Rob hurry away, and turned back to Artie. “Take Zack to the parlor and sit with him in front of the hearth. You know his favorite spot. Go on, now! Do as I say. I have some work to do in the surgery.”

  Artie frowned and hesitated for a moment before he led Zack toward the parlor.

  “Rub his head,” Nancy called to him. “He likes that.” She watched Artie move away with slumped shoulders. “Go on!” she said again. “I think I can find extra scones and some jam for us to have when I finish my chores.”

  Artie gave her a quick glance over his shoulder and continued toward the parlor. Nancy was too worried about Alexandra to enjoy even a moment of self-satisfaction for coming up with the bribe.

  It took her no more than twenty minutes to put away vials and bottles and medicine, remove the sheet from the examination table, and replace it with a fresh one. They were all chores she should have done earlier, but she’d been too distracted by worry. Fetching the scones and spreading them with jam took even less time. When she walked into the parlor carrying two plates and the scones, neither Artie nor Zack was there.

  —

  The tremendous roaring sound of a train approaching was the first thing Alexandra noticed, but the sound grew fainter. That meant the train was leaving, not approaching.

  It wasn’t a train.

  There was no click-clack of metal wheels on metal tracks, only a steady roar. Was she near the sea? She opened her eyes and saw nothing but darkness. She was in bed. Not her own bed, but one filled with rocks and soil and…and what? Something cold and slimy slithered along her leg. She cried out, at the same time kicking her leg in an attempt to shake the thing off her.

  The thing flew up into the air briefly, then hit the floor with a thump. No, it wasn’t the floor. It was packed earth. She was lying on the ground. She heard a sound. Swish, whish. The thing was moving among the dried leaves. Moving away? Or moving toward her? Get away from it! She must get away from it, but when she tried to move, a pain bit into her leg.

  She remembered now. She’d hurt her leg. The tibia, and it was painful to move. She passed her hand along her leg. The skin wasn’t broken, except for an abrasion, but she could feel the break in the bone beneath her skin. How had it happened? She couldn’t remember. Couldn’t remember why she was lying on the ground at night. Couldn’t remember why her mouth and lips felt dry. She tried to moisten her lips with her tongue and tasted dust.

  While she sputtered and spat, she heard the swishing sound again. The slimy, slithering creature was coming back. She tried to kick with both of her legs to keep it away, but she could manage to move only one leg. It seemed to work. The rustling in the leaves had stopped.

  No. It was still moving. On her foot. Upward on her injured leg.

  Sliding, gliding, creeping.

  She tried to shove it away with her other foot. The heel of her shoe dug into her leg, and at the same time, the thing twined itself around her ankle. She screamed, but the darkness around her was so heavy, the sound was muffled.

  —

  “Artie! Zack! Where are you?” Worry slunk into Nancy’s veins and clotted, making it hard to move as she tried to hurry through the house, upstairs and down again, calling their names. She stepped out the door and was met with a cool dampness that freed her a little from the heavy feeling. She called their names again and waited, but there was still no response. Running to the stables, she fumbled in the darkness until she found the second lantern, always hung next to the one Rob had taken. She would have to run back to the house, through the darkness, to find a lucifer to strike and light the oil-soaked wick of the lantern. If only Zack were there, she would feel at least a little more secure fumbling around in the darkness. But he wasn’t there. And neither was Miss Alex, or Artie, or Rob. For a moment, she felt a gush of anger at all of them for leaving her abandoned and fearful. She shook her head to force away the irrational emotions and lit the lantern. She found her cloak and hurried out of the house, holding the lantern in front of her.

  Standing there, holding the light, she felt a moment of uncertainty. Should she go toward the Malcolms’ cottage, as she’d told Rob to do? Artie was probably on the way there now. With Zack? The dog would try to follow, wouldn’t he? Would he be too sick and fall by the wayside? Perhaps it would be wiser not to try to look for any of them, but to wait at the house in case one of them came back and needed her. Of course, that’s what she should do. She should wait. That was the wise choice.

  Fear and worry kept wisdom from taking root, and she hurried down the road toward the Malcolm cottage, the lantern swinging at her side as she ran. She called their names: Miss Alex, Artie, Rob, Zack! The effort of shouting and running at the same time stole breath from her lungs, and she gave up using her voice and ran silently until she reached the Malcolms’ house.

  The dwelling sat hunched against the darkness, with no welcoming lights from the windows. That could only mean Alexandra wasn’t there. Perhaps they’d seen her, though. She had to stop and ask.

  A groggy and disgruntled Samuel, dressed in his nightshirt, came to the door when Nancy knocked. Behind him the baby cried. “Oh, ’tis you! How many more of ye are comin’ tonight?” he said when he saw her.

  Nancy was puzzled by his response. “How many…?”

  “The bloke what works fer the doc. ’E came here looking for ’er. I told ’im she’s been gone from here coupla hours, and I’m tellin’ ye the same. All this knockin’ at the door in the middle of the night wakes the babe. Ye hears that, don’t ye? All that cryin’? And if ye think ’tis easy to get ’im back to sleep, ye don’t know nothin’.”

  “Give him a bit of pap, and he’ll go back to sleep,” Nancy said as she turned away.

  “Pap? Wot’s pap?” Samuel called to her.

  “Soak a bit of bread in milk till ’tis soft. Boil the milk first,” she answered.

  “She’s all right, ain’t she? The doc, I mean,” he called again. “Ain’t a good sign that nobody can find ’er.”

  “No,” she said. “Not a good sign at all.”

  The next stop would be the Wolcott cottage. All of the lanes in the neighborhood were darkened, without a single light burning in a window. It gave her little hope that she would find Alexandra there, but she knew of nothing else to do except keep walking. Not only was there no lighted cottage to walk toward, but there was no hint of Artie or Zack or Rob along the way. She felt energy and hope draining from her.

  She’d walked only a few yards when she heard something in the distance. It took her a moment to realize it was the sound of hooves hitting the ground in a rapid and rhythmical pattern. She kept walking, holding her lantern high and hoping that the rider would stop and give her word of Alexandra and the others.

  “Ho, there!” she called as the rider charged toward her. “Slow down, please. I would ask you a question.”

  Horse and rider ignored her call. She tried to move to avoid a collision, but as she veered away, the man on the horse turned toward her again. Seeing the flash of a knife blade, Nancy fell to the ground when the horse’s powerful shoulder muscles struck her body.

  Light and darkness swirled around her. A woman appeared in the mists of her vision. An angel?

  Chapter 15

  Alexandra smelled the rain before she felt the soft, teasing mist. It was fresh and earthy, the scent of spring, but it was accompanied by a slashing knife of wind that cut through her clothes and into her flesh.

  The wind and the ache in her leg made her forget for a moment the horrors of the night before. The pain was referring itself into her foot and ankle now. She sat up suddenly, her hands flailing at her legs when she remembered the slimy, slithe
ring thing she had battled in the darkness. There was nothing there on her legs, none of the things she had imagined—snakes, rodents, unnamed crawling creatures. There were only her torn stockings, ripped skirt, and clumps of dirt and mud.

  When she heard the rustling in the leaves again, she knew she hadn’t imagined the creature, but a surge of pain in her leg made her forget for a moment. Her head whirled with dizziness, and for a moment she thought she would be sick. She lowered herself down onto her bed of dirt and pebbles and exposed roots, all of it dampened and cold from the rain. She lay there for a moment, trying to will away the sharp agony, trying to remember what had happened and why she had spent the night in such misery. Looking around, she remembered the fall, remembered the steep slope of the ravine. She was at the bottom of a canyon of sorts, where no one could see her. Wouldn’t Nancy and the boys call out to her as they searched? Or had they called and she hadn’t heard? She knew she’d slept part of the night. Now she had to force herself to stand and find a way out.

  A spasm grabbed her leg and bit into it with long, jagged teeth when she tried to lift herself. Her body felt abnormally heavy. She settled back to a sitting position and attempted another examination of her leg. Skin and tissue were swollen and tender, making it impossible to confirm her initial diagnosis of a fracture. She lifted herself slightly so she could manipulate her leg, and another, even more violent crescendo of pain came, accompanied by a moment of nausea.

  She needed to force the broken ends of the bone together, and then stabilize it. Nancy always helped her with this procedure, and she usually gave the patient laudanum to dull the senses before she began. She would have the luxury of neither laudanum nor an assistant this time. Using both her hands, she pressed the upper and lower sections of her tibia, turning it slightly and manipulating it in an attempt to get the two ends joined as one might do a broken table leg, yet trying not to exert enough pressure to cause another break. Everything around her spun again, and she felt herself slumping forward as the world grew dark for a few seconds. With great effort, she pulled herself back to consciousness and pushed the bone pieces again while sweat, mixed with the mist of rain, ran down her head and into her eyes. She vomited once before she convinced herself that the bones were joined. Leaning back against the side of the embankment, she took in gulps of air until the pain subsided. It never let go of her completely, but there was enough of a respite to allow her to concentrate on the next step. The fractured limb must be splinted to keep it from breaking apart again.

  Searching the space around her, she pushed away pebbles, twigs, and dried leaves as she looked for a suitable piece of wood. She picked up a rounded stick, too thin to be of use, but when she started to throw it away, it moved.

  The snake!

  It twisted itself around her hand. It was an adder! Her father had taught her to recognize the deadly viper by its big, flat head.

  She screamed. Flung it away.

  It landed a few feet out from her and slithered away.

  She was almost too frightened to move, but she forced herself to examine her hand and arm, looking for signs of the penetration of fangs, the release of deadly poison into her veins. There was nothing on her body except dirt and debris, but she searched again, trying to push away the horror she felt.

  For several seconds she sat, stiff and unmoving, too stunned and frightened to do anything else. Finally, she forced herself to search again for something to use as a splint, this time poking at the debris with a slender twig and hoping nothing would again move under the leaves. There was bound to be a broken branch that had fallen from the trees above the ravine that would serve her purpose.

  When at last she found one she thought would do, her next problem was to find how to secure it in place. She had no bandages. It took only a moment for her to realize that of course she had bandages. The petticoats and skirt that had made running difficult and that had done their part in causing her fall would redeem themselves now. She tore a strip of white cotton from the bottom of her top petticoat, and then another and another and did the same with the bottom petticoat. The dress she wore was made of a lightweight wool flannel that would be sturdy enough to hold the bandages in place.

  By the time she had wrapped the leg several times and used the wool flannel as a final wrap, she was sweating. Her leg throbbed, as did her head, and wave after wave of nausea returned. A weak dawn peeked over a distant horizon and advanced with slow, timid caution. Finally, it overruled the mist, but not before it had left her drenched. An overwhelming surge of fatigue pulsated from her insides, and she leaned against the side of the embankment once again.

  She slept. There was no way to know how long, but she forced herself awake and tried to call out for help. She called for Nancy, Artie, Rob, and Zack. Her voice was weak, and her mouth so dry her tongue seemed uncommonly thick. The effort to speak was too great. She gave in to exhaustion once more and slumped to the ground.

  When she awoke, the snake was there again, wet, slithering, this time moving against her face and her mouth.

  —

  Nicholas had already retired to his bedroom, where he was reading, when he heard a commotion downstairs. At least two people were shouting in unusually loud voices. Walls and doors in the centuries-old house at Montmarsh were thick and solid so that sound didn’t penetrate them easily. When he could actually hear a fracas going on, it clearly bore investigating.

  Throwing on a dressing gown, he hurried downstairs. Along with the sound of scuffling, he heard Stokes’s voice, much louder than usual, and the vociferous screech of a young boy.

  “Stokes! Is something wrong?” Nicholas called, just as he rounded the curve of the staircase and saw his butler and the boy. “Artie?” he said, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m terribly sorry, my lord,” Stokes said. “I tried to contain the noise and the disturbance so it wouldn’t awaken you, but the young hoodlum insisted that he see you. I was doing my best to keep him—”

  “It’s all right, Stokes, I know the boy. Something’s wrong, or he wouldn’t be here.”

  “She’s disappeared, and she ain’t sent word back to us like she always does,” Artie screeched, “so Rob went lookin’ all by hisself, ’cause Nance wouldn’t let me go, but I went anyways, wif Zack. Snuck away, we did, ’cause I knowed you’d come help, and good as Rob is, ’e ain’t got no carriage or no fast horse like ye has, me lord, but Zack turned back ’cause ’e’s sick. Poisoned, the doc says, and if ’e dies the doc won’t never get over it, if she ain’t dead already, so you got to ’elp us, me lord, that’s wot I was tryin’ to tell the bloke what opened the door, but—”

  “Artie! Artie! Slow down, I can’t make heads or tails of what you’re trying to tell me. Who has disappeared, and who has been poisoned?”

  “Doc Gladstone.” Artie was near tears.

  “Doctor Gladstone has been poisoned?”

  “I’m terribly sorry, my lord,” Stokes said again. “Clearly the boy isn’t making sense. I’m afraid his sort starts imbibing spirits at a young age. Please, my lord, go back to bed, and I’ll see to it that he leaves—”

  Nicholas barked at Stokes, ignoring his protective attitude. “Have my carriage readied!”

  “Best take yer ’orse,” Artie said. “ ’Twould be faster.”

  “We’ll need the carriage to transport Dr. Gladstone,” Nicholas said. “You know where she is, I assume?”

  “No, me lord.”

  “Then how do you know she’s been poisoned?”

  “She ain’t the one wot’s poisoned. She’s the one wot disappeared, and we’re all afeard she’s kilt.”

  Nicholas could hear his own blood rushing in his pounding head, but he forced himself to be calm. He’d dealt with difficult and confused clients and witnesses in his law practice. The trouble was that he’d never dealt with one when it involved someone he cared for as deeply as he cared for Alexandra Gladstone.

  “All right,” he said, with as much calm a
s he could manage. “First tell me how you know the doctor has disappeared.”

  “ ’Cause she didn’t come home tonight after she went to see them sick people, and when she knows she has to be late, she always gets word to us somehow. Then it got plumb dark, and we still didn’t hear nothin’.”

  Nicholas pulled the story from Artie, little by little, including the fact that Zack was sick, and Nancy and Alexandra thought he might have been poisoned, and that he had turned back when Artie left for Montmarsh.

  “Who would do such a thing? Poison a dog?” Nicholas was already on his way toward the staircase. He would go up and change clothes.

  “I ain’t fer knowin’ that, me lord, but maybe ’twas the same person wot kilt the doc.”

  Nicholas felt as if his heart had dropped from his chest, and he stopped, partway up the stairs. “You don’t know that for certain, do you? That she’s dead, I mean.”

  “Don’t know nothin’ fer certain,” Artie said, looking forlorn.

  Nicholas dressed quickly, and by the time he was downstairs again, the groom was waiting outside the door with the carriage. Nicholas scooped Artie up and placed him in the seat and got in beside him. “We’ll stop by the doctor’s house first, in case she’s returned. If she’s still not there, we’ll try to retrace her steps, since you say you know where the two patients she was going to visit live.”

  It was a two-mile ride to the Gladstone house, but they made it in record time. When they arrived, the first thing Nicholas noticed was that there were no lights burning in either the surgery or in the main part of the house.

  “Ain’t like Nance to go to bed when the doc’s gone,” Artie said. “Maybe she’s back. Maybe she ain’t dead or disappeared.”

  Nicholas jumped from the carriage, followed by Artie, and pounded on the door for several seconds, calling out to Nancy and Alexandra, but there was no answer. “Was Nancy here when you left?” Nicholas asked Artie.