Half A Mind TO Murder (Dr. Alexandra Gladstone Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  Alexandra saw as soon as she removed the bandage that the wound need not be serious if it could be cleaned and the bleeding stopped. She couldn’t help but hear the conversation taking place at the table next to the bar as she tended Mr. Sheridan, who was called Sherry by all who knew him.

  “Is it a bad un?” asked the oyster fisherman who’d been sent to fetch her. He was known to the village as Young Beaty.

  “Just bring me a basin of water and some soap,” she said.

  The soap and water appeared quickly, and as she set about cleaning the wound, the customers lost interest and turned their conversation to another topic.

  “As I wuz sayin’, ’tis unnatural to cut a man’s heart out. I says ’tis the work o’ the devil.” Young Beaty made the pronouncement as he set his glass of beer down on the table, sloshing a little over the side. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and nodded to reaffirm his statement. Young Beaty, at the age of forty-six, no longer fit his name, but the name had become indelibly his to distinguish him from his father, Old Beaty, who sat across from him, silent except for the slight sucking noise when he drew on his pipe.

  “Devil?” said Tom Stillwell, the town’s butcher who also shared the table. “I doesn’t know about devils, I doesn’t, but I knows this… The man what done it knew ’is work when it comes to dressin’ meat.”

  Old Beaty’s eyes grew wide and alarmed. He pulled his pipe from his mouth and broke his silence. “Ach! Watch what yer sayin’, Tom. ’Twasn’t a carcass o’ beef what was layin’ in the alley, ’twas old Ben Milligan.”

  “Ain’t sayin’ ’twas a carcass o’ beef.” Tom sounded defensive. “I’m just sayin’ the one what done it knew ’ow to slice meat good as any butcher.” Tom glanced at Alexandra, who was now picking shards of glass from the wound. “You seen the body, mostly likely, didn’t ye, Doc? And ye’ll back me up. ’Twas a fine job o’ slicin’ what was done.”

  “It was brutal, Tom. That’s all I can say.” Alexandra pulled a needle threaded with cat gut from her bag and used it to stitch Sherry’s flesh together, making an effort to concentrate on her work. She didn’t want to talk about the mutilated body or even to think about it. She’d seen her share of blood and gore, of course, but there was something evil about this. The malevolence had hung in the air surrounding the body like a foul smell when she’d arrived with the constable to examine it. As for the butchering skill of the killer, Tom was right. It did show a certain amount of finesse.

  “Unnatural, I says.” Young Beaty turned his face away from Sherry’s hand as he spoke, unwilling or unable to watch the stitching. “’Twould have to be a madman if ’tweren’t old Satan hisself.”

  There was a murmur of agreement.

  “A lunatic.” Young Beaty’s voice grew louder as he emphasized his point. “The likes o’ the idjet Lucas.”

  Alexandra stopped her work and glanced up suddenly at the accusation. “Not Lucas. That’s ridiculous.” A heavy silence descended on the room as she spoke, and all eyes focused on her. “Lucas is not a madman. Not in that sense. He is simply—”

  “Lucas Pendennis?” Someone at a table across the room laughed as he spoke the name in a booming voice. “A madman if I ever seen one. Thinks ’e talks to pigs, ’e does. And what’s worse, ’e thinks they talks to ’im.”

  Where there might have otherwise been raucous laughter at such a statement, there was now only a nervous twitter, and another voice shouting, “Killed Seth Blackburn’s sow, ’e did. Done it without layin’ a hand on ’er. Killed ’er with black magic.”

  There was another twitter that quickly grew to a loud murmur, and then another voice shouting. “It ain’t black magic ’e’s usin’, ’tis poison, but ’e’s a madman just the same.”

  Alexandra felt a momentary void in her chest that was soon filled with dread. Blaming Lucas because of his odd behavior and deficient mental state was, in itself, insane. She knew him to be a gentle person who would never harm another creature intentionally.

  She’d always felt protective of Lucas and of his unfortunate mother as well. Still, she knew it was true that Lucas’ behavior had become even more odd recently as he mourned the death of Blackburn’s sow. He spent long hours at the pig sty and even longer hours walking around town talking to the spirit of the dead sow and assuring her there would be others of her kind to join her in heaven. That strange behavior on his part obviously helped make him a target of blame for the ungodly death and mutilation of Ben Milligan, not just in Young Beaty’s mind, but in the mind of others as well. She left the tavern as soon as she could finish stitching and bandaging Sherry’s hand.

  It was not surprising that the hideous murder was on the minds of everyone in the three houses where Alexandra made calls the following morning. What was surprising, though, was how quickly the suspicion of Lucas Pendennis had spread and intensified. Edith Prodder, who was given to enjoying her ailments, was less concerned now about her sprained ankle than she was about the fact that Ben’s body had been found in an alley very close to her house. She’d had a visit that morning from her friend Nell Stillwell, the butcher’s wife, who described the killer’s skill with a knife.

  “Nell says her Tom could not have done a cleaner job hisself,” Edith said as she lay on her bed with her foot and swollen ankle elevated on pillows. “’Twas never a gent’ler soul than Ben Milligan, so if it could happen to the likes of him, then none o’ us is safe, I say. There’s a madman loose, I tell ye, and we all know who ’tis.”

  “Oh do we?” Alexandra massaged tincture of camphor on Edith’s ankle. “I wasn’t aware Constable Snow had solved the crime.”

  Edith wrinkled her face in disgust. “Constable Snow? Pshaw! What does he know about solving crimes? A weaker man I never saw. And immoral, too, I suspect. Always running off to London to visit some woman of questionable character, I dare say.”

  “You’ve met this woman?”

  “Of course not. I’m a decent woman myself.” Edith shifted her position as if to emphasize her point.

  “Then how do you know—?”

  “How do I know? For what other reason would he be running off to London four times a year? I know what I’m talking about, my dear. You, being a spinster, doesn’t know about the darker side of a man’s yearnings, I dare say. But mark my word, they’s many a man what ought to be married to calm the beast in ’im. Otherwise, he’s bound for the sinful life, one way or t’other.” She shook her head in disgust.

  “If Constable Snow hasn’t solved this crime, then who gets the credit?” Alexandra replaced Edith’s foot on the pillows and picked up her medical bag.

  “Doesn’t take more than common sense to solve it now does it?” Edith said. “Anybody with half a mind knows that it had to be the work of a lunatic like Young Beaty says.”

  Alexandra turned her head toward Edith, surprised. “You’ve already heard the gossip?”

  “But he’s wrong about one thing, I can tell ye that,” Edith said, ignoring the question. “’Twasn’t likely Lucas. The boy’s a pure idjet, but ’e ain’t a madman, now is ’e?”

  Alexandra felt a moment of relief. “Of course he’s not a madman, he’s simply—”

  “Borned that way, I know,” Edith said, interrupting again. “’Tis ’is mother what’s the crazy person. I says most likely ’twas her what done it.”

  Alexandra dropped the bottle of camphor she’d been trying to return to her medical bag. “Mrs. Pendennis? Why would you say that? I’ve never met a saner woman in my life.”

  “’Tis Miss, not Mrs.” Edith almost shouted her correction. “She’s never entered the holy state of matrimony. Poor idjet Lucas is a bastard.”

  “You’re right, of course. Gweneth Pendennis has never been married,” Alexandra had begun to tremble. “But that doesn’t make her a lunatic.”

  “’Tis common knowledge, the kind of thing she done—gettin’ ’erself in trouble—is symptom of a madness. A uterine disease. Makes a woman crazy. Your own father, may ’e rest in
peace, was the one what told me that. Now there was a doctor for ye.”

  Alexandra had become accustomed to her patients in Newton-Upon-Sea comparing her, usually unfavorably, with her late father. As for his position on the uterus and female insanity, it was true that he subscribed to the theory that female symptoms of insanity were associated with disorders of the uterus and the reproductive system. He also believed that the menstrual discharge common to all women predisposed them to insanity, since insanity was believed to be a disease of the blood. He had not, however, gone as far as the renowned London physician, Dr. Isaac Baker Brown, who routinely performed surgical removal of the clitoris as a cure for female insanity.

  Yet, her father would have, as Edith suggested and as Alexandra knew all too well, considered Gweneth Pendennis’s indiscretion a symptom of an overly aggressive sexual appetite, which, in females, indicated insanity. On more than one occasion, he had administered leeches to the labia and cervix of women of such appetite as a treatment for female insanity.

  She was also well aware that her own personality sometimes caused him concern, since strong resolve, force of character, and a certain fearlessness also were traditionally considered symptoms of insanity in women. Somehow, though, he had come to terms with these suspicious characteristics in his daughter and had eventually even encouraged them. He’d even shown a large measure of pride in her unconventional choice of a career as a doctor of medicine. She could only be thankful that he had never known the full extent of her independence.

  Alexandra was grateful for all that her father had taught her about medicine, in spite of the fact that she sometimes found herself disagreeing with him. His likely diagnosis of Gweneth Pendennis, for example. Alexandra knew with certainty that one indiscretion did not mean a woman was overly sexually aggressive. But if, by chance, a woman was a bit aggressive in that respect, did that mean she was given to insanity? The question troubled Alexandra.

  Her next stop was to check on the Blackburn boy who had developed whooping cough. His stepmother, Helen, had taken excellent care of him, and he was recovering quickly. Enough so that Helen’s concern was now less for the little boy and more for her husband’s pigs, since two more besides the renowned sow had died.

  “Some say the devil has cursed us.” Helen’s voice was choked with worry. “The devil in the body of that Pendennis boy, some say. He’s always out there looking at them pigs, you know, and talking to ’em. ’Tisn’t natural. He’s crazy, just like his mum. People say madness is inherited.”

  Alexandra tried to explain that Lucas Pendennis was not an embodiment of the devil and that his mother was not insane, but Helen was in no mood to listen. She was far too worried about what the loss of the pigs would do to their livelihood.

  Even old Mrs. Leander had heard about the murder. She was confined to her home with severe dropsy and could hardly speak without running out of breath. Yet she was able to gasp out her fears that everyone in Newton-Upon-Sea was now in danger, and that she, herself, might expect to be murdered in her bed some night.

  “Please don’t worry, Mrs. Leander,” Alexandra said, trying to comfort her. “You’re sure to be safe here in your home. I’m certain it must have been that Ben put himself in danger by being out late at night in places you would never be.”

  Her words were of little comfort to the woman, however, and Alexandra knew that she would be even more difficult to comfort once the gossip about the Pendennises reached her. Yet, all of Mrs. Leander’s fears, as well as those of everyone else, were not without reason. The shocking details of the murder were enough to strike terror in anyone.

  Having only those three patients to visit, Alexandra finished her work earlier than usual, but her concern over the murder as well as the rapidly spreading gossip left her feeling as exhausted as she might have been after seeing three times the number of patients. If the frightened mood among the villagers escalated even more, she feared Lucas and his mother’s safety could be at stake.

  She rode her little mare, Lucy, home as Zack followed alongside. They arrived an hour before Alexandra would have to open the surgery for walk-in patients. She looked forward to a few relaxing moments enjoying a quiet conversation with Nancy over lunch. Nothing would please her more than talking about something as mundane as Nancy’s garden. She was quite expert at growing some of the herbs Alexandra needed for medications as well as lovely flowers and vegetables. Perhaps there would even be some beans fresh from the garden for lunch.

  As soon as they entered the front door, Zack lumbered over to his favorite spot near the hearth, and Alexandra started upstairs to her room. She was part way up when she heard voices coming from the kitchen. One of the voices was Nancy’s, but the other, a female voice, was not familiar. She started to ignore it, but, decided to have a look, since the voice might belong to a patient whom Nancy had, for some reason, taken into the kitchen with her.

  As she opened the kitchen door, it was Polly Cobbe’s plump and pleasant face she saw. Polly was seated at the table with a cup of tea. She had been chatting with Nancy, who was busy stirring a pot on the stove.

  Nancy turned around from the stove, a look of guilty surprise on her face. “Miss Alex. You’re home early.”

  “Yes, I had only three patients to visit,” Alexandra said, not taking her eyes off of Polly. “What a pleasant surprise to see you,” she said.

  Polly stood quickly. “Thank you, Dr. Gladstone, but I’m sure I must be going now. Sherry was kind enough to allow me some time away, since I, too, finished my work early, but I mustn’t take advantage.” Her voice and manner of speaking, as Alexandra had always noticed, were refined and educated. She felt the same pang of regret that Nancy had expressed earlier, that Polly was now reduced to the job as charwoman in the Blue Ram.

  “But you won’t be taking advantage,” Nancy insisted. “Didn’t you say Sherry said you could have the entire afternoon?”

  Polly looked slightly embarrassed. “Well, yes, but—”

  “Please do stay,” Alexandra heard herself saying, in spite of her earlier resolve for a quiet lunch with Nancy. “It would be so pleasant to have you for luncheon.”

  “Oh no, I mustn’t. I know you’re very busy, and I—”

  “Nonsense!” Nancy was already placing three plates on the table. “We’ll have a nice little chat together, won’t we?”

  “Of course we will,” Alexandra said, settling in to one of the chairs. “But we shan’t talk about the murder. I’ve had quite enough of that for one day.”

  Nancy placed a cup of tea in front of her. “Of course we won’t. Far too gruesome for luncheon conversation.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence before Alexandra spoke again. “Please, do go on with whatever your conversation was before I interrupted.”

  Nancy, who had seated herself next to Alexandra and across from Polly, cleared her throat nervously. “We were…ah, talking about the murder. I was just saying how odd the circumstances. The condition of the body, I mean. The heart missing. Truly odd.”

  “But of course you’re right, Dr. Gladstone,” Polly added. “It’s hardly the proper thing for luncheon conversation.”

  “Indeed!” Nancy nodded her agreement with enthusiasm. “Anyway, ’tis plain to see how stressful ’tis been for you, Miss Alex. I’d wager it was all your patients could talk about. I suppose people think they have the awful business of the crime solved by now, and they all feel obligated to give you their opinion.”

  “Mmmm,” Alexandra said, taking another sip of her tea and wishing they truly could get off the subject.

  There was another moment of silence with no sound except silver clinking against china until Nancy could hold still no longer. “So who is the favored suspect?” she asked.

  Alexandra gave her a stony look, then took a deep breath, put down her fork, and relented. “They’re saying it’s the work of a madman—or woman.” She glanced at Polly. “I’m sure you’ve heard this as well. It’s all they could talk about in the
Blue Ram.”

  “I try as best as I can to stay away from the customers and their conversations,” Polly said with a sad look in her eyes.

  “Of course,” Alexandra said, feeling distressed.

  “Any one in particular?” the intrepid Nancy asked.

  Alexandra sighed and looked at Nancy, realizing she should have expected her curiosity and insistence. “The blames appears currently to fall upon Lucas Pendennis and his mother.”

  “Not Miss Pendennis. And Lucas, too?” Polly sounded distressed. At the same time Nancy inhaled audibly, expressing her alarm.

  “I’m afraid so,” Alexandra said.

  “But why?” Polly asked.

  “Of course.” Nancy said before Alexandra could respond. “The murder seems so obviously the work of a madman, so they’re blaming poor Lucas, who’s not mad at all.”

  A puzzled frown creased Polly’s forehead. “And neither is Miss Pendennis.”

  “There are those who think she is,” Alexandra said after an awkward silence. “She gave birth to her son out of wedlock.”

  “Oh yes, of course,” Polly said. “We merely laugh behind our hand at a man’s indiscretions and condemn a woman to Bethlem for the same thing.” Her words came out sounding more forlorn than bitter.

  “I’m afraid that is sometimes the case,” Alexandra said, picking up her fork and wishing again they could talk of something else.

  Polly pushed her plate back, apparently having lost all interest in her meal. “What I know of Miss Pendennis leads me to believe that she is a truly virtuous woman. She is a good and loving mother and a conscientious worker. Why, practically all the customers who used to come into the apothecary always said they’d never seen finer lace than hers. And I myself know her to possess the virtues of kindness and generosity.”

  Nancy nodded without looking up from her plate.