Medium Dead: An Alexandra Gladstone Mystery Read online

“ ’Tis no disrespect to call her old lady, for that’s what she was,” Rob protested.

  “Was she a demon?” Artie, the younger boy, asked.

  “Of course not,” Alexandra said, “and I won’t have you suggesting she was.”

  “But she hobnobbed with the dead, they say.” Artie’s eyes were wide with what might have been fear or perhaps awe.

  Alexandra smiled and ruffled Artie’s mop of hair. It was impossible to stay angry with him. “Don’t believe everything you hear, Artie,” she said. “Let us just say that she wanted people to believe that.”

  Rob laughed, a loud guffaw that was meant to sound manly. Artie wasn’t convinced. “I know some who say it really happened. Her calling up the dead, I mean.”

  “I wager you even believe they’s mermaids out there looking for the likes of you to come sailin’ out,” Rob said with a laugh and motioned with his head toward the sea.

  “All I can say is they’s some that says they’s seen ’em out amongst the rocks just beyond the shore,” Artie said, making Rob laugh louder.

  Alexandra left the boys to argue over the supernatural and let herself into the house she’d lived in all her life, using the surgery entrance. Her father, who had been the first Dr. Gladstone, had built the surgery onto the house after he inherited it from his own father. He’d provided the attached surgery with a convenient entrance for patients. As Alexandra opened the door, she met the rotund Mrs. Pickwick, who was just leaving.

  “Dr. Gladstone!” she said, as if she was surprised to see the doctor entering her own surgery.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Pickwick. How are things at Montmarsh?” Mrs. Pickwick was the head cook at Montmarsh, the large country home of Nicholas Forsythe, sixth Earl of Dunsford. At Montmarsh, she was known simply as Cook.

  Mrs. Pickwick rolled her eyes. “It’s not my place to complain, now, is it? Even if it gets to the point that I need a tisane to stop the headache brought on by the turmoil.”

  “Turmoil?” Alexandra was at least mildly concerned. Mrs. Pickwick was not given to exaggeration and was not one to ask for medication often.

  “Aye, there’s turmoil, there is. Not so easy to please, that one.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Pickwick,” Alexandra said, removing her hat and cloak. “I hope Nancy was able to give you something for your headache.” She smoothed her dark auburn hair where the hat had mussed it. She knew without asking Nancy, who served as her nurse and her maid-of-all-work, that the remedy would be to bathe the patient’s forehead with spirits of vinegar along with administering several drops of essence of peppermint by mouth.

  “Nancy’s a good one, she is,” Mrs. Pickwick said. “But I fear ’twill take more than vinegar and peppermint this time. Her nibs is not an easy one to please.”

  Alexandra gave Mrs. Pickwick a noncommittal nod, although she had no idea who “her nibs” was. She had never known of the earl to bring a woman to Montmarsh, and she was fairly certain he wasn’t on the premise anyway. Rather, he was in London, where he still maintained a law practice, in spite of his recent rise to the peerage.

  “Oh, yes, her nibs is there,” Mrs. Pickwick said when she saw that Alexandra was not going to pry. “The earl’s mother is in residence, she is. And with a guest that I must say is even more demanding than the Lady Forsythe herself. And one I dare not make a mistake with, I might add.”

  Alexandra gave her what she hoped was a comforting pat on the arm. “If the vinegar spirits and peppermint don’t give you relief, please send for me. Or come back here if you prefer,” she added, thinking Mrs. Pickwick might want an excuse to escape the troublesome guests at Montmarsh for a while. Alexandra had never met the earl’s mother. Since she was a countess in her own right, she had her own even larger country house elsewhere and had apparently never found a need to visit Montmarsh. By several relationships, birthrights, and marriages, the family seemed to be connected in a complicated way to most of the empire’s aristocracy and had access to the grandest of estates.

  Mrs. Pickwick breathed a heavy sigh and left the surgery, shaking her head. As Alexandra stepped inside, she saw Nancy putting away vials of medication.

  “Ah, you’re back,” Nancy said when she saw Alexandra. “And was Alvina dead of a slit throat, as they say?”

  “By all appearances.” Alexandra knew Nancy had undoubtedly heard the gossip from some of her patients. Nancy had a way of attracting all of the latest news when she was left in charge of the surgery. “I suppose the whole of Newton knows the story by now.”

  Nancy shrugged. “Couldn’t say, what with me being stuck here in the surgery, seeing nothing but quinsied throats and a few knees swollen with rheumatism and hearing no more than coughs and moans.” Nancy was busy with a teapot as she spoke.

  Alexandra smiled to herself at Nancy’s feigned innocence as she poured water in a basin to wash her hands in preparation for the next patient.

  “You were busy while I was gone, then,” Alexandra said, tying a long white apron around her dress. “Who besides Mrs. Pickwick?”

  “Nell Stillwell claimed she had aches all over, but I found nothing wrong with her. Then there was Mr. Taylor with his usual complaint of indigestion, and Young Beaty stopped by to ask you to bring a tonic and a plaster to his father for his rheumatism before night falls.”

  John Beaty, though he was past fifty, was still known in the village as Young Beaty because his father, who was well into his seventies, was Old Beaty.

  She accepted the cup of tea from her maid. When Nancy had poured her own cup, she sat down at the small table in the surgery with Alexandra. The relationship between the two of them was more relaxed than most mistresses and hired girls. Nancy had been Alexandra’s companion since childhood when Nancy’s mother was the old doctor’s maid-of-all-work and surgery nurse. They had even shared the same tutor for their schoolwork, since, being females, neither was allowed to go to school. It was Robert Snow who had been their tutor. Before he took the position of constable, he’d been a schoolmaster. His salary as a teacher had not been remarkable, and he was happy to have the extra work as a tutor for the two girls.

  “If truth be told, I say ’tis Young Beaty who’s in need of your services as much as his father,” Nancy said.

  “You believe he’s ill?”

  “He’s of a poor color and his hands trembled. Was distracted, too. If he’s not coming down with a complaint of some sort, then he’s carrying a heavy weight on his soul, I’d say.”

  “If he’s sick of body, perhaps he’ll send for me or else show up at the surgery door again. If it’s his soul that’s troubling him, we shall have to trust he’ll go to the vicar,” Alexandra said.

  “Young Beaty’s the one who brought Alvina in to Percy Gibbs. Brought her in his wagon. And he’s the one who notified the constable.”

  “Did he indeed?” Alexandra said, not at all surprised that Nancy had garnered this tidbit of information. “And I suppose he was the one who found her in the graveyard as well.”

  “Oh, no,” Nancy said. “That would be young Lucas. The poor half-wit has a habit of wandering around at night, you know. Young Beaty said Lucas came running to fetch him. Showed up at his door as white as a dead man and as frightened as if the dead had spoken to him.”

  “Poor Lucas. I can well imagine he was frightened.” He was a young man of sixteen years, but with a mental age of little more than five or six. Alexandra and Nancy each had a special fondness for Lucas Pendennis, as well as for his mother, Gweneth, who was a lace dealer in Newton-upon-Sea. Most of the villagers held both Lucas and his mother in disdain, Lucas because of his mental deficiency and because he was a bastard, and Gweneth because she’d borne the boy out of wedlock. Alexandra’s own father, the late Dr. Huntington Gladstone, had claimed that women who indulge in carnal acts before marriage most likely suffer from a uterine disease that affects their minds and makes them act in immoral ways. Therefore, according to him and others of the same education, it was no surprise that a mentally
deficient woman would have an imbecile child. Alexandra was of the firm belief that the theory was wrong. It was one of the few times she had disagreed with her father and one of the equally few times their disagreements had resulted in a heated argument. Nancy had been privy to most of the arguments, but neither she nor Alexandra ever spoke of them.

  “If you ask me, Young Beaty was just as frightened as Lucas,” Nancy said. “There was more he wanted to tell, I’m sure of it. I just couldn’t get it out of him.”

  Alexandra smiled to herself once again, knowing that Nancy had no doubt done her best to get Young Beaty to talk more.

  “Pickwick herself said she thought Young Beaty was troubled. She came in just as he was leaving. ’Tis wife trouble in her estimation, but I don’t think so, myself,” Nancy said. “ ’Twas finding the body of poor Alvina that has him troubled, I say. Pickwick would have none of that. Didn’t want to talk about Alvina. Kept trying to change the subject. A person would think Pickwick killed the poor woman herself, the way she was acting so skittish about it.”

  “You shouldn’t say such things about Mrs. Pickwick,” Alexandra said. “She’s your friend and a good woman.”

  “Ah, you know I didn’t mean it,” Nancy said and immediately went on relaying more gossip to Alexandra while they had their tea. Alexandra listened with more interest than she liked to admit until they’d both finished their tea, and Nancy had stacked the cups and saucers on a tray to take them to the kitchen.

  Nancy was hardly out of the room when a patient came to the surgery door wanting an infected splinter extracted from his thumb. A steady stream of patients kept Alexandra occupied until five o’clock, her normal time to close the surgery for the day. Nancy, as always, worked by her side.

  “I’ll have the boys saddle Lucy again so I can take Old Beaty his tar plaster for his rheumatism,” Alexandra said to Nancy as she locked the door.

  “Mind you don’t stay too long,” Nancy said. “I’ll have dinner ready in an hour, and you won’t want it cold.” Alexandra considered Nancy’s culinary skills adequate but uninspired. Still, it was best not to raise her ire by not appearing eager to eat what she prepared.

  “I’ll be home as soon as possible.” As she spoke, Zack, her large black-and-white Newfoundland, rose from his resting place by the hearth, allowing his long tail to wiggle his entire behind as if he were still a puppy. She stroked Zack’s long back and saw the question in his big, round eyes. “Yes, you can come with me,” she said to the dog. He was accustomed to following her on all of her rounds, but he had missed the privilege earlier in the day because of her call to the undertaker’s.

  Zack, as usual, waited outside when Young Beaty ushered her inside to see his father. The oysterman’s greeting was little more than a distracted grunt as he led Alexandra through the immaculately kept parlor and upstairs to his father’s bedroom. Young Beaty’s demeanor made Alexandra suspect Nancy and Mrs. Pickwick could be right about his being troubled. He was usually cordial and affable. Wordlessly opening the door to his father’s bedroom, he left Alexandra with the elderly man.

  “Ah, Dr. Gladstone, ye’s here at last,” Old Beaty said when he saw her. He was sitting in a chair next to the fireplace, his legs covered with a blanket and another around his shoulders. “They’s a damp spell coming, I tell you that. ’Tis me shoulder tells me so. And me knees as well, if truf be told. Ye brought the plaster for the shoulder, did ye? And a tonic for the aches in me knees?”

  “You know the weather like any good oysterman,” Alexandra said, referring to Old Beaty’s past profession. “And yes, I brought the plaster. And a tonic for your aches,” she added.

  When she’d applied the plaster to his shoulder and given him a few ounces of the whiskey he referred to as tonic, she left him with an admonition to stay warm and her usual warning that he should make the whiskey last for at least a week. He was still protesting that she’d hardly given him enough for one toddy when she bade him goodbye and left his room.

  Young Beaty was nowhere in sight when she got to the parlor, but his wife, Wilma, emerged from the back, wiping her hands on her apron.

  “Dr. Gladstone. I was hoping I’d catch you before you left.” She spoke in an anxious voice.

  “Are you ill, Wilma?”

  “No, no, ’tisn’t me. ’Tis me husband.” She glanced over her shoulder as if to make sure Young Beaty wasn’t listening. “That woman he brought to the undertaker? She must have put a spell on ’im. Even though she was dead, she still done it. He ain’t been right since—”

  “It ain’t old Miss Alvina what’s got me.” Young Beaty interrupted his wife as he entered the small parlor. “ ’Twas something else.”

  Alexandra waited for him to say more, but he didn’t speak for several long seconds.

  “I knows who done the killin’.”

  Wilma sucked in her breath as if she’d known what her husband would say. “Husband, you mustn’t—”

  “No, no, I has to tell somebody. It wasn’t in me to tell the constable, but I can trust the doctor. Just like I could trust her father before her.”

  “Mr. Beaty,” Alexandra said in as gentle a voice as possible. “If you know who killed the poor woman, you must tell Constable Snow.”

  “No!” he protested, louder this time. “How can I tell him it was Her Majesty the queen herself what killed her?”

  “The queen?” Alexandra wasn’t certain she’d heard him correctly. “You must be mistaken. Her Majesty is not in the parish, nor is she likely ever to be.”

  “I seen her leaving the grave where Alvina lay sprawled with her throat cut. Lucas seen her, too, before he comes to get me. She was still there when I got there. Just leaving, I tell ye, and Alvina’s body still warm.”

  “But Mr. Beaty—”

  “ ’Twas Her Majesty Queen Victoria herself killed that woman.”

  Chapter 2

  “And when I asked him how he knew it was the queen, he said he saw the royal carriage when he went back to the graveyard with Lucas.” Alexandra spoke to Nancy as they ate their dinner. “He also claims he saw Her Majesty as she got back into the carriage.”

  “How could he tell it was the royal carriage?” Nancy asked.

  “He claims he knows a royal carriage when he sees one,” Alexandra said. “Says he saw it once in London. Claims he’d recognize it anywhere, even though the royal insignia was covered with a black drape.”

  “Doesn’t make sense at all, now, does it?” Nancy said as she sawed away at the roast beef on her plate. “Why would Her Majesty be in the cemetery at Newton-upon-Sea?”

  “Why would she be in Newton-upon-Sea in the first place?”

  “Precisely,” Nancy said. “Young Beaty’s gone batty, if you ask me. Must have taken to nipping on his father’s tonic.”

  Alexandra laid her fork and knife aside and stared into the space behind Nancy as if she would find an answer there. “I don’t think that’s the case,” she said.

  Nancy gave her a surprised look. “Surely you don’t believe—”

  She turned her gaze to Nancy. “I do believe Young Beaty thinks he saw the queen, and I don’t believe he was delusional because of alcohol or anything else. I simply don’t know why he thinks he saw her.”

  “You’ve always been a bit gullible, now, haven’t you, Miss Alex?” Nancy dabbed her napkin at her mouth and stood to clear the table. “As for the Beatys, like father, like son, I say, and there’s no question that the senior Beaty likes his spirits, so it follows that—”

  “Nancy…”

  “Very well, but if he wasn’t drinking, then why would he say such nonsense? Her Majesty indeed!”

  “As I said, I simply don’t know.”

  “Could be he’s lying.”

  Alexandra raised her eyebrows. “Why would he lie?”

  “To protect someone. Maybe he really does know who did it. Or maybe he did it himself.”

  Alexandra rubbed her throbbing temples. “Don’t assume I didn’t th
ink of that, but—”

  “But you don’t like thinking that, I know,” Nancy said. “Don’t like thinking Young Beaty could be a killer.”

  “If he killed the woman, why would he bring her body to the undertaker, knowing he would notify the constable?”

  Nancy shrugged. “To make himself look innocent?”

  Alexandra didn’t respond. She sat motionless for a few seconds, contemplating Young Beaty’s puzzling pronouncement, before she stood and made her way down the long, dark hall that led to the surgery. It was the same routine they followed every night. While Nancy cleaned up after the meal, Alexandra went to the surgery to make certain all the notes on the patients she’d seen that day were complete. Later, they would meet in the parlor to read awhile before bed.

  Nancy had already settled into her favorite chair next to the fire when Alexandra entered the parlor. Nancy was engrossed in one of her romantic novels that often caused her to gasp and squirm in her chair or wipe a tear from her eye. Alexandra had learned not to disturb her. Instead she picked up the book she’d been reading—a relatively recent publication of a book by the American Henry James.

  When she’d first started reading the novel, titled The American, she’d been fascinated by the confrontation of New World and Old World societies, but now she found it tedious and difficult and completely incapable of holding her interest. She could think of nothing other than Young Beaty and his claim of seeing the queen in the graveyard and of Nancy’s suggestion—more plausible than she wanted to admit—that he could be the killer.

  She bid Nancy good night, although she wasn’t certain the maid heard her, involved as she was in the book she held in her hand. Sleep didn’t come easily. Had it not been for Zack’s rhythmical and soft snore lulling her as he lay on a rug next to her bed, she might never have slept.

  —

  The next morning, as soon as she’d had her breakfast, she started on her rounds. Her last patient was the six-year-old son of Berth and Hugh Mason, whom she’d ordered confined to his bed with croup. He smelled of the camphor and coal oil–soaked cloth she’d placed on his chest the day before, but he was much improved. There was nothing to do except tell Berth to keep him in bed one more day and feed him warm liquids. That meant she finished her rounds early and had just enough time to stop by the Beaty cottage. She wanted very much to talk to Young Beaty again.