An Improper Death (Dr. Alexandra Gladstone Mysteries Book 2) Page 18

  “He didn’t mean young Will killed his father, did he?”

  Nancy had once again spoken the words Alexandra had not dared speak herself.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Neither Alexandra nor Nancy were in the mood for conversation at breakfast the next morning. When Alexandra started her daily rounds to visit homebound patients, her movements seemed slow, labored, and heavy.

  Even Zack seemed in a dark mood as he lumbered along beside Lucy as Alexandra rode to the first stop. Zack’s head was bowed, and his customary breathy low growls sounded like moans. The substance on his coat that Nancy had failed to remove was sticky and attracted dust along with the black grime from chimney smoke, so that he took on the look of a worn, dirty carpet.

  The first stop of the day was the Talbot house. Alexandra knocked at the door and tried to steel herself for Hannibal’s ungrateful complaining.

  The door opened slightly, and Mildryd Talbot’s face, pale and drawn, appeared around the edge. Her wide, perpetually frightened eyes were outlined with dark weariness that threatened to suck an observer in with their neediness.

  “’Tis Dr. Gladstone,” she said in a whisper so soft it could not have been meant for anyone to hear. She opened the door and stepped aside, her glance flickering from Alexandra to Hannibal, in his bed by the stove, and back again to Alexandra.

  Alexandra stepped inside, and Zack, knowing he’d been allowed in before, assumed he now had permanent rights and walked in with her.

  “Who’s there?” Hannibal called from his bed, his voice a weakened bellow.

  Mildryd followed Alexandra to the bedside and stayed behind her like a timid child. When she didn’t answer her husband’s question Alexandra spoke.

  “It’s Dr. Gladstone. I’ve come to see how you are progressing.” She went to his bed and bent over him and placing the end of the stethoscope on his chest to listen for signs of pneumonia.

  “How I progress? What do you expect when you slash me privates?” She removed the stethoscope from her ears where his amplified voice still reverberated.

  “There is a great deal of pain, of course, but you’ll see improvement in a few days.” She placed a hand on his brow, checking for fever. There was none.

  “I’m pissin’ blood,” he growled, and then groaned again.

  “The blood will disappear soon.”

  “Ye’ve damaged me for good, woman. Ye’ve made it so I can’t diddle me wife the way a man should.”

  Behind her, Alexandra heard Mildryd gasp.

  “The operation will have no effect of that kind,” Alexandra said as she touched the blanket that covered him from the waist down. “I must have a look at the incision.”

  “I told you, you’ll not be lookin’ at me privates again!” He grabbed the blanket from her and brought it to his chin, clutching it tightly. There was another gasp from Mildryd.

  “As you wish.” Alexandra stepped away from the bed and picked up her bag, folding the stethoscope inside. Custom was not to examine the body of either sex if he or she was not comfortable with it. “Continue to use the laudanum, but use it sparingly and drink plenty of water. No spirits. If you develop a fever, you must send for me immediately.” She closed her bag and glanced at her patient one more time. “Good day, Hannibal.” She turned aside, prepared to inquire of Mildryd about her health and to urge her to rest more when Hannibal distracted her with another weakened but angry yell.

  “What is it ye’ve done to the brute? He’s filthy as swine, he is.” He looked at Zack with an expression of sympathy for the abuse the two of them had endured at her hands.

  “I’m afraid he got into something in the woods. Whatever it is, it defies a washing.” Alexandra picked one of the black strands she had thought was grass from Zack’s back. It appeared more like threads than grass now, however.

  “In the woods you say?” He still spoke with the same angry tone, and he raised up slightly to have a better look at Zack. “’Tis pitch mixed with tar. Ye’ve had ’im in a rowboat, ye ’ave. Any oyster man worth ’is salt knows the look and smell of the pitch and tar that stops a leak in a small craft. The brute’s too big for a rowboat. Could tip it over, he could, what with the fidgets a big ’un like him gets. If ye had any sense, woman, ye’d not put a brute that size in a rowboat. Could drown ye both.”

  Alexandra was prepared to defend herself by declaring she’d never had Zack in a rowboat, and that she, in fact, had nothing to do with Zack’s dirty coat. But she said nothing. Her thoughts turned to Admiral Orkwright and the ladies’ drawers he was wearing. Nancy had identified the sticky substance on that garment as pitch. If it had been used as sealant for a rowboat, did that mean the admiral had been in the rowboat? Had the boat capsized, causing the admiral to drown and then be washed ashore? Had the boat washed ashore and Zack had found it somehow?

  “Dr. Gladstone? Are you all right?” It was Mildryd bringing her back to the present.

  “What? Of course.” She took a moment to reorient herself. “And you, Mildryd, you’re not resting well, are you?”

  The woman seemed surprised at the question. She wasn’t used to having her feelings sought out, but when she finally admitted her fatigue, Alexandra prescribed the daily ingestion of yeast along with an infusion of skullcap. She was about to leave with her soiled, four-legged companion when Hannibal called out to her again.

  “Gladstone!”

  She turned around. He looked at her a moment, apparently reluctant to speak. “The stones,” he said finally. “Me wife showed ’em to me. The ones what ye cut out of me.”

  After another long pause, Alexandra gave him a brief nod and turned to walk away. His next words stopped her again.

  “I thank ye.”

  The words surprised her, and she turned around slowly, prepared to acknowledge his thanks, but he was staring at the ceiling and refusing to look at her. “The pleasure, Hannibal, was all mine,” she said. She saw him flinch at what her statement implied, and she managed to make it out the door before her suppressed laughter erupted.

  Her merriment didn’t last long. When she glanced at Zack again and saw his soiled coat, her thoughts returned to Admiral Orkwright and the mystery that shrouded his death. Those thoughts were never far from the surface of her consciousness for the remainder of the day, even after she had seen the last of her patients in her surgery. There had been a large number of patients, most of them complaining of catarrh, or a cold as it had become fashionable to call it. There was no cure, of course, but she had dispensed several ounces of her usual remedy to control symptoms: a snuff of bloodroot, bayberry bark, and myrrh.

  Mrs. Sommers had been in with her usual complaint of gastric uneasiness and flatulence. Since she had steadfastly refused to change her diet, Alexandra had provided a compound tincture of lavender, which she kept in her pharmacy. Along with the lavender, the mixture included oil of anise, cloves, mace, red saunders, brandy, and Jamaica rum. It took some time for the medicine to be prepared, since it had to be macerated for fourteen days, and then carefully filtered. She had taken to relying on an apothecary for this and other complicated compounds, a practice which her father had never approved. He preferred to mix everything he administered. She consoled herself for having departed from his teaching by reminding herself that the town had been smaller and life less complicated in his day.

  Nancy prepared an early dinner for the two of them. Alexandra occasionally wished she could enjoy a leisurely afternoon tea as others of her status did, but her profession did not allow for that nicety, much less for an elegant, multi-course late dinner when she had to rise so early for her rounds. As they ate, Nancy listened to her account of her day.

  “Of course!” she said when Alexandra told her of Hannibal’s assessment of where Zack had gotten the sticky substance in his hair. “I should have thought of that myself. And if it’s the same substance we found on the admiral’s drawers, then he was in a boat when he drowned. The same boat Zack seems to have found at Gull House.”
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  “It does seem likely, doesn’t it?” Alexandra carefully cut a small square from the boiled meat Nancy had prepared.

  “More than likely, I would say.” There was a note of excitement in Nancy’s voice. “And that means someone rowed him out to sea and drowned him and then rowed back. Someone at Gull House.”

  Alexandra moved her head slowly from side to side. “But if it’s common for all boats to be sealed with this mixture, then the admiral could have taken one out to sea himself, and the one Zack found, wherever it is, may have no bearing on the case at all. The one the admiral was in could have been dashed against the rocks somewhere and destroyed after he tumbled out.”

  “Or was pushed out,” Nancy said.

  “Yes, that’s possible.”

  “You’ve said all along that he didn’t drown himself, that he was murdered,” Nancy reminded her.

  Alexandra didn’t argue with her. She was still rolling it all around in her mind. “The truth is that it doesn’t seem likely that he fell out of the boat, and it was then dashed to pieces, does it. If he had been in a boat, it most likely would have washed ashore just as he did. Or if it was dashed to pieces, the admiral’s body would have been as well.”

  “Unless someone pushed him out of the boat and rowed back to shore,” Nancy said.

  Alexandra laid her fork aside and pushed away from her plate. “In that case it seems unlikely that young Will could have done it, doesn’t it? He’s not likely to have been strong enough to row out to sea.”

  “It was ridiculous for us to have considered him in the first place,” Nancy said, then added. “I’ve some turpentine somewhere.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Turpentine. I can use that to clean Zack’s hairy back if ’tis pitch and tar he got into.” Nancy gave the dog a scowling look. “I’ll use it tonight, you bad tempered beast, and there’ll be no quarreling on your part.”

  Zack obliged her with a low mumbling growl that sounded like a grumpy old man.

  “I seem to recall you saying you’d never bathe him again,” Alexandra said.

  “No matter what I said, he’ll not sleep in this house looking like that.” Nancy’s voice was firm and full of authority and contradiction.

  Alexandra shook her head, smiling to herself and argued no further. She went to the parlor prepared to read, but before she could open her book, Nicholas appeared at her door. Once again she was unexpectedly happy to see him.

  “What in heaven’s name is that noise?” he asked when he had settled himself into one of the chairs next to the fireplace.

  “It’s only Zack,” said Alexandra. “Would you care for some sherry?” He accepted and she poured it for him. She wasn’t going to risk distracting Nancy by asking her to serve.

  Nicholas took a sip of the sherry. “Did you say it’s Zack making all the fuss?”

  “He’s arguing with Nancy because this is the second bath she’s given him in two days.”

  Nicholas wore a puzzled frown. “Why on earth would she do that?”

  Alexandra explained about the pitch and tar used for sealing the seams of rowboats, and explained that Zack must have gotten into one while they were at Gull House. Nicholas offered the same theory she and Nancy had devised, that, since it appeared to be the same substance found on the garment the admiral was wearing, then he could have been in the same boat the admiral had been in.

  “We must set out to find it.” He was exuberant. “I shall pick you up in the morning before you start your rounds. No need to have Lucy saddled. I shall hire a carriage.”

  Nicholas had not yet arrived the next morning when Fin Prodder knocked at her door. He had ridden all night from Bradfordshire where he’d been with his mother, Mary, as she lay in her bed in Bradfordshire Hospital. Since Nancy had taken breakfast to Artie and Rob, Alexandra opened the door herself. Fin stood before her shivering in the cold dampness of a still dark February morning.

  “’Tis me mum, Dr. Gladstone. She’s taken a turn for the worse.” His voice was hoarse with weariness, and he clutched his workingman’s cap in both his hands.

  “Pneumonia.” It was not a question. Mary had spent several hours helpless on the ground in the cold of February. And if that wasn’t enough, experience had taught Alexandra that an elderly patient, rendered immobile by the splint that was necessary after a broken hip, more often than not succumbed to pneumonia.

  Fin nodded. “Aye.”

  “Please come in,” she said, stepping aside for him. “And what do the doctors say of her chances?”

  “There is no hope.” Fin’s voice was choked with emotion.

  In spite of the fact that the news was no surprise to Alexandra, she felt the pang of helplessness and the sense of ineptness she always felt when a patient was dying. At the same time, she was aware of Fin Podder’s pain. “Please, Fin, come into the parlor. I’ll have Nancy—”

  Fin shook his head. “I’ve no time for the niceties of your parlor, Dr. Gladstone. I’ve rode since the darkest hour of the night from Bradfordshire to come here to fetch you.”

  “To fetch me? I don’t understand. The doctors at Bradfordshire Hospital are more experienced at—”

  “I got no complaint about the doctors at Bradfordshire.” Fin clutched at his cap again. “’Tis you she wants. Says she cannot die in peace until she talks to you.”

  “Perhaps it’s the delirium,” Alexandra said. “A pneumonia patient is often out of her head.”

  “Out of her head you say? Sure she is at times. But I knows me own mum, don’t I? She was in her own mind when she asked for you. Don’t you see? ’Tis her last request I’m trying to grant her. She’s entitled to that, ain’t she?”

  Alexandra sensed a hint of guilt in what he was saying. He must have known his mother’s life was miserable living with his wife, Edith, and he was now, in some way, trying to compensate for that. “Have you any idea what is it she wishes to tell me?” She was already reaching for her cloak. “Fin,” she said when he didn’t answer. She assumed he hadn’t heard her, but when she looked at his face, she knew he had, yet he seemed reluctant to speak.

  “’Tis something about the admiral.” His voice trembled slightly. “She says ’tis something you should know. Says she cannot go to her grave until she’s sure you understand.”

  Alexandra felt her heart miss a beat. What could Mary Prodder possibly know about Admiral Orkwright? She’d had no association with him, except that she’d been Jane Orkwright’s dressmaker. It was possible, of course, that either Jane or the admiral had confided in her, but about what?

  Alexandra took the time to tell Nancy she’d been called away. She was careful not to mention that Mary Prodder wanted to tell her something about the admiral, though. It would take too long to convince a curious and perceptive Nancy that there was no reason for her to come along as well. She left her instructions as to what patients she must see for her during the morning rounds. Nancy was more than competent but would not attempt to minister to patients in a way that was beyond her skill and training. She knew without asking that Nancy would open the surgery for the usual afternoon hours, and she would also not step beyond her rightful bounds, leaving the sickest of the patients for Alexandra when she returned. Alexandra gave her instructions to give her apologies to Mr. Forsythe, who would be arriving soon and to explain that she’d been called to Bradfordshire to see Mary.

  It was not until the mention of Mary’s name that Nancy became insufferably inquisitive.

  “Mary’s in hospital, isn’t she? Are the physicians there not capable of treating her?”

  “Mary is dying, Nancy. I suspect there is nothing any physician can do, neither I nor the ones in Bradfordshire.” Alexandra silently chastised herself for even mentioning Bradfordshire or Mary Prodder.

  “Then why—?”

  Rob, who had delivered a load of coal to the kitchen was now enjoying a cup of tea Nancy had given him. He interrupted Nancy before she could complete her question. “’Tis a deathb
ed confession, ain’t it? I seen it before. There’s many a old lady or old man I seen dying what wants to unburden theirselves and tell you the wicked things they done before they croak. ’Tis like if they give you their secret, God and the devil won’t hold it against ’em.”

  “Rob!” Alexandra spoke sharply. “You’re being disrespectful to the dead and dying. I’ll have no more of it.” In spite of her reprimand, Alexandra knew that Rob, as well as little Artie, as orphaned urchins of the piers before they came to her, had seen more than their share of death among the poor.

  Nancy, who under most circumstances, would have been the first to scold, was, instead, preoccupied. Finally, she spoke, as if the truth had just come to her. “Rob tells the truth, does he not? She wants to tell you something! She knows something about Mrs. Orkwright and the admiral!”

  “So now you are clairvoyant, are you?” Alexandra gave her a friendly smile. “You know what someone eight miles away wants to tell me. Perhaps I should save myself the trouble of the journey and simply listen to you.” Alexandra was trying to hurry out of the kitchen.

  “Oh that’s it, all right. I can tell when I’ve hit upon the truth when you take that attitude.”

  Alexandra resisted the temptation to ask Nancy to clarify what she meant by that attitude. It didn’t matter. Nancy was about to reveal that bit of truth to her anyway.

  “Remember the time when we were children and I guessed that you were secretly reading that naughty French novel your father had forbidden you to read?”

  “Nancy, I don’t believe it’s necessary to recall old—”

  “‘Oh, Nancy,’ you said. ‘If you are so clairvoyant you can tell me what book I’m reading, why not just tell me the story and save me the trouble of reading it,’ you said. And that’s how I knew.”

  “The doc reads naughty books?” Rob said, then laughed until he made tea come out his nose.

  Nancy, however, didn’t laugh, and neither did she scold Rob for his bad manners. She simply looked at Alexandra, holding her gaze for a moment before she spoke. “She knows something. A dressmaker always does.”