A Sudden, Fearful Death Read online

  “Good morning, Mr. Monk.” Her voice shook a little. She searched his face and saw something in its expression that frightened her. “What is it?”

  He closed the door behind him. This was going to be acutely painful. There was no escape, no way even to mitigate it.

  “I am afraid that what I told you yesterday was not the truth, Mrs. Penrose.”

  She stared at him without speaking. The shadow of surprise and anger across her eyes did not outweigh the fear.

  This was like looking at something and deliberately killing it. Once he had told her it would be irretrievable. He had already made the decision, and yet he found himself hesitating even now.

  “You had better explain yourself, Mr. Monk,” she said at last, her voice catching. She swallowed to clear her throat. “Merely to say that is not sufficient. In what respect have you lied to me, and why?”

  He answered the second question first. “Because the truth is so unpleasant that I wished to spare you from it, ma’am. And it was Miss Gillespie’s wish also. Indeed, she denied it at first, until the weight of evidence made that no longer possible. Then she implored me not to tell you. She was prepared to accept any consequence of it herself rather than have you know. That was why it was necessary for me to speak to her this morning to tell her I could no longer keep my word to her.”

  Julia was so white he was afraid she would faint from lack of blood. Very slowly she backed away from the table with its bright flowers and reached behind her for the arm of the settee. She sank into it, still staring at him.

  “You had better tell me what it is, Mr. Monk. I have to know. Do you know who raped my sister?”

  “Yes, I am afraid I do.” He took a deep breath. He tried one last thing, although he knew it would be futile. “I still think it would be better if you did not pursue the matter. You cannot prosecute. Perhaps if you were to find some other area for your sister to live, where she could not encounter him again? Do you have a relative, an aunt perhaps, with whom she could stay?”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Are you suggesting that this man who did this thing should be allowed to go entirely unpunished, Mr. Monk? I am aware that the law will not punish him, and that a prosecution would in any case be as painful for Marianne as it would ever be for him.” She was sitting so tensely her body must ache with the rack of her muscles. “But I will not countenance his escaping scot-free! It seems you do not think it a crime after all. I confess I am disappointed. I had thought better of you.”

  Anger boiled up in him, and it cost him dearly to suppress it. “Fewer people would be hurt.”

  She stared at him.

  “That is unfortunate, but it cannot be helped. Who was it? Please do not prevaricate any further. You will not change my mind.”

  “It was your husband, Mrs. Penrose.”

  She did not protest outrage or disbelief. She sat totally motionless, her face ashen. Then at last she licked her lips and tried to speak. Her throat convulsed and no sound came. Then she tried again.

  “I assume you would not have said this—if—if you were not totally sure?”

  “Of course not.” He longed to comfort her, and there was no possible comfort. “Even then I would prefer not to have told you. Your sister begged me not to, but I felt I had to, in part because you were determined to pursue the matter, if not through me, then with another agent. And also because there is the danger of it happening again, and there is the possibility she may become with child—”

  “Stop it!” This time the cry was torn from her in a frenzy of pain. “Stop it! You have told me. That is sufficient.” With a terrible effort she mastered herself, although her hands were shaking uncontrollably.

  “When I taxed her with it, she denied it at first, to protect you.” He went on relentlessly. It had to be finished now. “Then when it was obviously true from her own testimony, and that of your neighbors, she admitted it, but implored me not to say so. I think the only reason she made any mention of the incident at all was to account for her extreme distress after it, and for the bruising. Otherwise I think she would have remained silent, for your sake.”

  “Poor Marianne.” Her voice trembled violently. “She would endure that for me. What harm have I done her?”

  He moved a step nearer to her, undecided whether to sit without invitation or remain standing, towering over her. He opted to sit.

  “You cannot blame yourself,” he said earnestly. “You of all people are the most innocent in this.”

  “No I am not, Mr. Monk.” She did not look at him but at some distance far beyond the green shadow of leaves across the window. Her voice was now filled with self-loathing. “Audley is a man with natural expectations, and I have denied him all the years we have been married.” She hunched into herself as if suddenly the room were intolerably cold, her fingers gripping her arms painfully, driving the blood out of the flesh.

  He wanted to interrupt her and tell her the explanation was private and quite unnecessary, but he knew she needed to tell him, to rid herself of a burden she could no longer bear.

  “I should not have, but I was so afraid.” She was shivering very slightly, as if her muscles were locked. “You see, my mother had child after child between my birth and Marianne’s. All of them miscarried or died. I watched her in such pain.” Very slowly she began rocking herself back and forth as if in some way the movement eased her as the words poured out. “I remember her looking so white, and the blood on the sheets. Lots of it, great dark red stains as though her life were pouring out of her. They tried to hide them from me, and keep me in my own room. But I heard her crying with the pain of it, and I saw the maids hurrying about with bundles of linen, and trying to fold it so no one saw.” The tears were running down her own face now and she made no pretense of concealing them. “And then when I was allowed in to see her, she would look so tired, with dark rings ’round her eyes, and her lips white. I knew she had been crying for the baby that was lost, and I couldn’t bear it!”

  Without thinking Monk put out his hands and held hers. Unconsciously she clung to him, her fingers strong, gripping him like a lifeline.

  “I knew she had dreaded it, every time she was with child. I felt the terror in her, even though I didn’t know then what caused it. And when Marianne was born she was so pleased.” She smiled as she remembered, and for a moment her eyes were tender and brilliant with gentleness. “She held her up and showed her to me, as if we had done it together. The midwife wanted to send me away, but Mama wouldn’t let her. I think she knew then she was dying. She made me promise to look after Marianne as if I were in her place, to do for her what Mama could not.”

  Julia was weeping quite openly now. Monk ached for her, and for his own helplessness, and for all the terrified, lost, and grieving women.

  “I stayed with her all that night,” she went on, still rocking herself. “In the morning the bleeding started again, and they took me out, but I can remember the doctor being sent for. He went up the stairs with his face very grave and his black bag in his hand. There were more sheets carried out, and all the maids were frightened and the butler stood around looking sad. Mama died in the morning. I don’t remember what time, but I knew it. It was as if suddenly I was alone in a way I never had been before. I have never been quite as warm or as safe since then.”

  There was nothing to say. He felt furious, helpless, stupidly close to weeping himself, and drenched with the same irredeemable sense of loneliness. He tightened his grasp a little closer around her hands. For several moments they remained in silence.

  At last she looked up and straightened her back, fishing for a handkerchief. Monk gave her his, and she accepted it without speaking.

  “I have never been able to think of getting with child myself. I could not bear it. It frightens me so much I should rather simply die with a gunshot than go through the agony that Mama did. I know it is wrong, probably wicked. All women are supposed to yield to their husbands and bear children. It is our duty. But I am so terrifi
ed I cannot. This is a judgment on me. Now Marianne has been raped because of me.”

  “No! That’s nonsense,” he said furiously. “Whatever is between you and your husband, that is no excuse for what he did to Marianne. If he could not maintain continence, there are women whose trade it is to cater to appetites and he could perfectly easily have paid one of them.” He wanted to shake her to force her to understand. “You must not blame yourself,” he insisted. “It is wrong and foolish, and will be of no service to you or to Marianne. Do you hear me?” His voice was rougher than he had intended, but it was what he meant and it could not be withdrawn.

  She looked up at him slowly, her eyes still swimming in tears.

  “To blame yourself would be self-indulgent and debilitating,” he said again. “You have to be strong. You have a fearful situation to deal with. Don’t look back—look forward, only forward. If you cannot bring yourself to consummate your marriage, then your husband must look elsewhere, not to Marianne. Never to Marianne.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “But I am still guilty. He has a right to expect it of me—and I have not given it him. I am deceitful, I cannot escape that.”

  “Yes—that is true.” He would not evade it either. It would not serve either of them. “But your deceit does not excuse his offense. You must think what you are going to do next, not what you should have done before.”

  “What can I do?” Her eyes searched his desperately.

  “This is a decision no one else can make for you,” he answered. “But you must protect Marianne from it ever happening again. If she were to bear a child it would ruin her.” He did not need to explain what he meant. They both knew no respectable man would marry a woman with an illegitimate child. Indeed, no man at all would regard her as anything but a whore, no matter how untrue that was.

  “I will,” she promised, and for the first time there was steel in her voice again. “There is no other answer for it. I will have to swallow my fear.” Again for a moment her eyes overflowed and there was a choking in her voice. Then with a superlative effort she mastered herself. “Thank you, Mr. Monk. You have discharged your duty honorably. I thank you for it. You may present your account, and I shall see that it is met. If you will be so kind as to show yourself out. I do not wish to appear before the servants looking in a state of distress.”

  “Of course.” He stood up. “I am truly sorry. I wish there had been any other answer I could have given you.” He did not wait for a reply which could only be meaningless. “Good-bye, Mrs. Penrose.”

  He went out into the hazy sun of Hastings Street feeling physically numb, and so crowded with emotion he was barely aware of the passersby, the clatter, the heat, or the people who stared at him as he strode on.

  3

  CALLANDRA DAVIOT had been deeply moved by the story that Monk had brought her regarding Julia Penrose and her sister, but she was helpless to do anything about it, and she was not a woman to spend time and emotion uselessly. There was too much else to do, and at the forefront of her mind was her work in the hospital of which she had spoken when Monk had called only a few short weeks before.

  She was a member of the Board of Governors, which generally meant a fairly passive role of giving advice which doctors and treasurers would listen to more or less civilly, and then ignore, and of lecturing nurses on general morality and sobriety, a task she loathed and considered pointless.

  There were so many better things to do, beginning with the reforms proposed by Florence Nightingale, which Hester had so fiercely advocated. Light and air in hospital wards were considered quite unnecessary here at home in England, if not downright harmful. The medical establishment was desperately conservative, jealous of its knowledge and privilege, loathing change. There was no place for women except as drudges, or on rare occasions administrators, such as hospital matron, or charitable workers such as herself and other ladies of society who played at the edges, watching other people’s morality and using their connections to obtain donations of money.

  She set out from home instructing her coachman to take her to the Gray’s Inn Road with a sense of urgency which had only partly to do with her plans for reform. She would not have told Monk the truth of it—she did not even admit to herself how profoundly she looked forward to seeing Dr. Kristian Beck again, but whenever she thought of the hospital it was his face that came to her mind, his voice in her ears.

  She brought her attention back sharply to the mundane matters in hand. Today she would see the matron, Mrs. Flaherty, a small tense woman who took offense extremely easily and forgave and forgot nothing. She managed her wards efficiently, terrorized the nurses into a remarkable degree of diligence and sobriety, and had a patience with the sick which seemed almost limitless. But she was rigid in her beliefs, her devotion to the surgeons and physicians who ruled the hospital, and her absolute refusal to listen to newfangled ideas and all those who advocated them. Even the name of Florence Nightingale held no magic for her.

  Callandra alighted and instructed the coachman when to return for her, then climbed the steps and went in through the wide front doors to the stone-flagged foyer. A middle-aged woman trudged across with a pail of dirty water in one hand and a mop in the other. Her face was pale and her wispy hair screwed into a knot at the back of her head. She banged the pail with her knee and slopped the water over onto the floor without stopping. She ignored Callandra as if she were invisible.

  A student surgeon appeared, scarlet arterial blood spatters on his collarless shirt and old trousers, mute evidence of his attendance in the operating theater. He nodded at Callandra and passed by.

  There was a smell of coal dust, the heat of bodies in fevers and sickness, stale dressings, and of drains and undisposed sewage. She should go and see the matron about nurses’ moral discipline. It was her turn to lecture them again. Then she should see the treasurer about funds and the disposition of certain monies to hand, the review of charity cases. She would do these things first, then she would be free to go and see Kristian Beck.

  She found the matron in one of the wards filled with surgical patients, both those awaiting operations and those recovering. Several had developed fevers during the night or become worse, their infections already well advanced. One man was comatose and close to death. Although the recent discovery of anesthesia had made all sorts of procedures possible, many who survived operations died afterwards of infection. Those who survived were a minority. There was no way known to prevent septicemia or gangrene, and little that would treat even the symptoms, let alone provide a cure.

  Mrs. Flaherty came out of the small room where the medicines and clean bandages were kept; her thin face was pale, her white hair screwed back so tightly it pulled the skin around her eyes. There were two spots of angry color on her cheeks.

  “Good morning, your ladyship,” she said brusquely. “There is nothing you can do here today, and I do not want to hear anything more about Miss Nightingale and fresh air. We’ve got poor souls dying of fevers, and outside air will kill the rest if we listen to you.” She consulted the watch hanging from a pin on her thin shoulder, then she looked back at Callandra. “I’d be obliged, ma’am, if next time you talk to the nurses about morals and behavior, you would particularly mention honesty. We’ve had more thefts from patients. Just small things, of course, they haven’t got much or they’d not be here. Although I don’t know what good you think it will do, I’m sure.”

  She came out into the ward, a long room with a high ceiling, lined on both sides with narrow beds, each blanketed in gray and with someone either sitting or lying in it. Some were pale-faced, others feverish, some restless, tossing from side to side, some lying motionless, breathing shallowly, gasping for air. The room was hot and smelled stale and close.

  A young woman in a soiled overall walked down the length of the floor between the beds carrying an uncovered pail of slops. The odor of it, strong and sour, assailed Callandra’s nostrils as she passed.

  “I’m sorry,” Callandra
replied, snatching her attention back to the matron’s request. “Lecturing them isn’t the answer. We need to get a different kind of woman into the trade, and then treat them accordingly.”

  Mrs. Flaherty’s face creased with irritation. She had heard these arguments before and they were fanciful and completely impractical.

  “All very nice, your ladyship,” she said tartly. “But we have got to deal with what we have, and we have laziness, drunkenness, thieving, and complete irresponsibility. If you want to help, you’ll do something about that, not talk about situations that will never be.”

  Callandra opened her mouth to argue, but her attention was distracted by a woman halfway down the ward starting to choke, and the patient next to her calling out for help.

  A pale, obese woman appeared with an empty slop pail and lumbered over to the gasping patient, who began to vomit.

  “That’s the digitalis leaves,” Mrs. Flaherty said matter-of-factly. “The poor creature is dropsical. Passed no urine for days, but this will help. She’s been in here before and recovered.” She turned away and looked back toward her table, where she had been writing notes on medications and responses. The heavy keys hanging in her belt jangled against each other. “Now if you will excuse me,” she went on, her back to Callandra, “I’ve got a great deal to do, and I’m sure you have.” Her voice on the last remark was tight with sarcasm.

  “Yes,” Callandra said equally tartly. “Yes I have. I am afraid you will have to ask someone else to lecture the nurses, Mrs. Flaherty; perhaps Lady Ross Gilbert would do that. She seems very capable.”

  “She is,” Mrs. Flaherty said meaningfully, then sat down at her table and picked up her pen. It was dismissal.

  Callandra left the ward, walking along a dim corridor past a woman with a bucket and scrubbing brush, and another woman seeming no more than a heap of laundry piled up against the wall, insensible with alcohol.