A Sudden, Fearful Death Read online

  At the end of the corridor she encountered a group of three young student doctors talking together eagerly, heads close, hands gesticulating.

  “It’s this big,” one red-haired youth said, holding up his clenched fist. “Sir Herbert is going to cut it out. Thank God I live when I do. Just think how hopeless that would have been twelve years ago before anesthetic. Now with ether or nitrous oxide, nothing is impossible.”

  “Greatest thing since Harvey and the circulation of blood,” another agreed enthusiastically. “My grandfather was a naval surgeon in Nelson’s fleet. Had to do everything with a bottle of rum and a leather gag, and two men to hold you down. My God, isn’t modern medicine wonderful. Damn, I’ve got blood all over my trousers.” He pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket, dabbed at himself without effect, except to stain the handkerchief scarlet.

  “Don’t know why you’re wasting your time,” the third young man said, regarding his efforts with a smile. “You’re assisting, aren’t you? You’ll only get covered again. Shouldn’t have worn a good suit. I never do. That’ll teach you to be vain just because it’s Sir Herbert.”

  They jostled each other in mock battle, passing Callandra with a brief word of acknowledgment, and went on across the foyer toward the operating theater.

  A moment later Sir Herbert Stanhope himself came out of one of the large oak doorways. He saw Callandra and hesitated, as if searching his mind to recollect her name. He was a large man, not especially tall but portly and of imposing manner. His face was ordinary enough at a glance: narrow eyes, sharp nose, high brow, and receding sandy hair. It was only with closer attention one was acutely aware of the power of his intellect and the emotional intensity of his concentration.

  “Good morning, Lady Callandra,” he said with sudden satisfaction.

  “Good morning, Sir Herbert,” she replied, smiling very slightly. “I’m glad I’ve managed to see you before you begin operating.”

  “I’m somewhat in a hurry,” he said with a flicker of irritation. “My staff will be waiting for me in the theater, and I daresay my patient will be coming any moment.”

  “I have an observation which may be able to reduce infection to some extent,” she continued, regardless of his haste.

  “Indeed,” he said skeptically, a tiny wrinkle of temper between his brows. “And what idea is that, pray?”

  “I was in the ward a moment ago and observed, not for the first time, a nurse carrying a pail of slops the length of the room without a lid.”

  “Slops are inevitable, ma’am,” he said impatiently. “People pass waste, and frequently it is disagreeable when they are ill. They also vomit. It is in the nature, both of disease and of cure.”

  Callandra kept her patience with difficulty. She was not a short-tempered woman, but being patronized she found exceedingly hard to bear.

  “I am aware of that, Sir Herbert. But by the very nature that it is waste expelled by the body, the fumes are noxious and cannot be good to inhale again. Would it not be a simple thing to have the nurses use covers for the pails?”

  There was a burst of raucous laughter somewhere around the corner of the corridor. Sir Herbert’s mouth tightened with distaste.

  “Have you ever tried to teach nurses to observe rules, ma’am?” He said it with a faint touch of humor, but there was no pleasure in it. “As was observed in the Times last year—I cannot quote precisely, but it was to the effect that nurses are lectured by committees, preached at by chaplains, scowled on by treasurers and stewards, scolded by matrons, bullied by dressers, grumbled at and abused by patients, insulted if old, treated with flippancy if middle-aged and agreeable-natured, seduced if young.” He raised his thin eyebrows. “Is it any wonder they are such as they are? What manner of woman would one expect to take such employment?”

  “I read the same piece,” she agreed, moving to keep level with him as he began to walk toward the distant operating theater. “You omitted to mention that they are also sworn at by surgeons. It said that too.” She ignored the momentary flicker of temper in his eyes. “That is perhaps the best of all the arguments for employing a better class of woman, and treating them as professionals rather than the roughest of servants.”

  “My dear Lady Callandra, it is all very well to talk as if there were hundreds of wellborn and intelligent young women of good moral character queuing up to perform the service, but since the glamour of war is past that is very far from being the case.” He shook his head sharply. “Surely a moment’s investigation would show you that? Idealistic daydreams are all very pleasant, but I have to deal in reality. I can only work with what there is, and the truth is that the women you see keep the fire stoked, the slops emptied, the bandages rolled, and most of them, when sober, are kind enough to the sick.”

  The hospital treasurer passed them, dressed in black and carrying a pile of ledgers. He nodded in their direction but did not stop to speak.

  “By all means,” Sir Herbert continued even more brusquely, “if you wish to provide covers for the pails, do what you can to see that they are used. In the meantime, I must report to the operating theater where my patient will come any minute. Good day to you ma’am.” And without waiting for her to reply, he turned on his well-shod and polished heel and went across the foyer to the far corridor.

  Callandra had scarcely drawn breath when she saw an ashen-faced woman, supported on both sides by solemn-eyed men, making her painful way toward the corridor where Sir Herbert had gone. Seemingly she was the patient whom he had expected.

  It was only after a tedious but dutiful hour with the black-coated treasurer discussing finances, donations, and gifts that Callandra encountered one of the other governors, the one of whom Mrs. Flaherty had spoken so approvingly, Lady Ross Gilbert. Callandra was on the landing at the top of the stairs when Berenice Ross Gilbert caught up with her. She was a tall woman who moved with a kind of elegance and ease which made even the most ordinary clothes seem as if they must be in the height of fashion. Today she wore a gown with a waist deeply pointed at the front and a soft green muslin skirt with three huge flounces, scattered randomly with embroidered flowers. It flattered her reddish hair and pale complexion, and her face with its heavy-lidded eyes and rather undershot jaw was extremely handsome in its own way.

  “Good morning, Callandra,” she said with a smile, swinging her skirts around the newel post and starting down the stairs beside her. “I hear you had a slight difference with Mrs. Flaherty earlier today.” She pulled a face expressive of amused resignation. “I should forget Miss Nightingale if I were you. She is something of a romantic, and her ideas hardly apply to us.”

  “I didn’t mention Miss Nightingale,” Callandra replied, going down beside her. “I simply said I did not wish to lecture the nurses on honesty and sobriety.”

  Berenice laughed abruptly. “It would be a complete waste of your time, my dear. The only difference it would produce would be to make Mrs. Flaherty feel justified that she made an attempt.”

  “Has she not asked you to do it?” Callandra asked curiously.

  “But of course. And I daresay I shall agree, and then say what I wish when the time comes.”

  “She will not forgive you,” Callandra warned. “Mrs. Flaherty forgives nothing. By the way, what do you want to say?”

  “I really don’t know,” Berenice replied airily. “Nothing as fiercely as you do.”

  They came to the bottom of the stairs.

  “Really, my dear, you know you have no hope of getting people to keep windows open in this climate. They would freeze to death. Even in the Indies, you know, we kept the night air out. It isn’t healthy, warm as it is.”

  “That is rather different,” Callandra argued. “They have all manner of fevers out there.”

  “We have cholera, typhoid, and smallpox here,” Berenice pointed out. “There was a serious outbreak of cholera near here only five years ago, which argues my point. One should keep the windows closed, in the sickroom especially.”
/>   They began to walk along the corridor.

  “How long did you live in the Indies?” Callandra asked. “Where was it, Jamaica?”

  “Oh, fifteen years,” Berenice answered. “Yes, Jamaica most of the time. My family had plantations there. A very agreeable life.” She shrugged her elegant shoulders. “But tedious when one longs for society and the excitement of London. It is the same people week after week. After a time one feels one has met everyone of any significance and heard everything they have to say.”

  They had reached a turn in the corridor and Berenice seemed to intend going into a ward to the left. Callandra wished to find Kristian Beck and thought it most likely that at this time of day he would be in his own rooms, where he studied, saw patients, and kept his books and papers, and that lay to the right.

  “It must have been a wrench for you to leave, all the same,” she said without real interest. “England would be very different, and you would miss your family.”

  Berenice smiled. “There was not so much to leave by the time I came away. Plantations are no longer the profitable places they used to be. I can remember going to the slave market in Kingston when I was a child, but of course slaving is illegal now and has been for years.” She brushed her hand over her huge skirts, knocking off a piece of loose thread that cling to the cloth.

  With that she laughed a little dryly and walked away along the corridor, leaving Callandra to go the other way toward Kristian Beck’s rooms. Suddenly she was nervous, her hands hot, her tongue clumsy. This was ridiculous. She was a middle-aged widow, of no glamour at all, going to call upon a busy doctor, nothing more, nothing of any other meaning.

  She knocked on the door abruptly.

  “Come in.” His voice was startlingly deep and touched by an almost imperceptible trace of accent she could not place. It was mid-European, but from which country she did not know, and had not asked him.

  She turned the handle and pushed the door open.

  He was standing at the table in front of the window, papers spread out in front of him, and he looked around to see who it was who had come in. He was not a tall man but there was a sense of power in him, both physical and emotional. His face was dominated by dark eyes that were of a beautiful shape and a mouth both sensual and humorous. His expression of preoccupation vanished when he saw her and was replaced immediately with one of pleasure.

  “Lady Callandra. How good to see you again. I hope your visit does not mean that there is something wrong?”

  “Nothing new.” She closed the door behind her. Before she came she had formulated a good excuse for being here, but now the words escaped her. “I have been trying to prevail upon Sir Herbert to have the nurses cover the slop pails,” she said rather too quickly. “But I don’t think he sees much purpose to it. He was on his way to the operating theater, and I had the feeling his mind was on his patient.”

  “So you are going to persuade me instead?” His smile was sudden and wide. “I have never yet found above two or three nurses in the hospital who can remember an order for more than a day at a time, never mind carrying it out. The poor souls are harried from every quarter, hungry half the time and drunk the other half.” His smile vanished again. “They do their best according to their lights, for the most part.”

  His eyes lit with enthusiasm and he leaned against the table, engaging her attention. “You know, I have been reading the most interesting paper. This doctor, sailing from the Indies home to England, contracted a fever and treated himself by going out on deck at night, stripped of his clothes, and taking a cold shower with buckets of seawater. Can you believe that?” He was watching her, searching the expression in her eyes. “It relieved his symptoms marvelously and he slept well and was restored by morning. Then in the evening his fever returned and he treated it the same way, and was again restored. Each time the attack was slighter, and by the time the ship docked he was fully himself.”

  She was astounded, but his eagerness carried her along.

  “Can you imagine Mrs. Flaherty if you tried drenching your patients with buckets of cold water?” She tried not to laugh but her voice was shaking, not so much with amusement as with nervousness. “I cannot even persuade her to open the windows in the sunlight let alone at night!”

  “I know,” he said quickly. “I know, but we are making new discoveries every year.” He grasped the chair between them and turned it so it was convenient for her to sit, but she ignored it. “I’ve just been reading a paper by Carl Vierordt on counting human blood corpuscles.” He moved closer to her in his keenness. “He has devised a way, can you imagine that?” He held up the paper as he said it, his eyes alight. “With this kind of precision, think what we might learn!” He offered her the paper as if he would share with her his pleasure.

  She took it, smiling in spite of herself and meeting his gaze.

  “Look,” he commanded.

  Obediently she looked down at the paper. It was in German. He saw her confusion, “Oh, I’m sorry.” A faint pink flushed up his cheeks. “I find I speak with you so easily, I forget you do not read German. Shall I tell you what it says?” He so obviously wanted to that it was impossible to deny him, even had she thought of it.

  “Please do,” she encouraged. “It sounds a most desirable treatment.”

  He looked surprised. “Do you think so? I should hate to be drenched with buckets of cold water.”

  She smiled broadly. “Not from the patient’s view perhaps. I was thinking of ours. Cold water is cheap and readily available almost everywhere, and requires no skill to administer, nor can the dosage be mistaken. A bucketful too much or too little will make no difference.”

  His face relaxed into sudden, delightful laughter. “Oh, of course. I fear you are far more practical than I. I find women often are.” Then as quickly his expression became grim again, brows drawn down. “That is why I wish we could draw more intelligent and confident women into the treatment of the sick. We have one or two nurses here who are excellent, but there is little future for them unless beliefs change a great deal.” He regarded her earnestly. “There is one in particular, a Miss Barrymore, who was with Miss Nightingale in the Crimea. She is remarkable in her perception, but I regret not everyone admires her as they might.” He sighed, smiling at her with sudden total candor, an intimacy that sent a warmth racing through her. “I seem to have caught your zeal for reform.”

  He was saying it as if joking, but she knew he meant it with the utmost seriousness, and that he intended her to know it.

  She was about to reply when there was a shout of anger in the passage outside, a woman’s voice raised in furious temper. Instinctively both of them turned toward the door, listening.

  Another angry shout followed a moment later, then a shriek as of pain and rage.

  Kristian went to the door and opened it. Callandra followed and looked outside. There were no windows, and no gas lit during the day. A few yards along in the dim light two women were struggling together, the long hair of one of them hanging loose and untidy, and even as they watched, her opponent made another lunge to snatch at it and pull.

  “Stop it!” Callandra shouted as she passed Kristian and advanced on the women. “What is it? What’s the matter with you?”

  They stopped for a moment, largely out of sheer surprise. One of them was in her late twenties, plain-faced, but not unappealing. The other was at least ten years older and already looking worn and aged by hard living and too many drunken nights.

  “What is it?” Callandra demanded again. “What are you fighting about?”

  “The laundry chute,” the younger said sullenly. “She blocked it by putting the linen in it all in a bundle.” She glared at the older woman. “Now nothing will go through and we’ll all have to carry everything right down to the boilers ourselves. As if there weren’t enough to do without going up and down them stairs every time there is a sheet to change.”

  For the first time, Callandra noticed the bundle of soiled sheets on the floor b
y the wall.

  “I didn’t,” the older woman said defiantly. “I put one sheet down. How can you block it with one sheet?” Her voice rose in indignation. “You’ve got to be a real clever bitch to put down less than one at a time. What do you want? I should tear it in ’alf, then sew it back together when it’s clean again?” She stared belligerently at her foe.

  “Let us see,” Kristian said behind Callandra. He excused himself between the nurses and looked down the open chute which took linen straight to the laundry and the huge copper boilers where it was washed. He peered down it for several seconds and they all waited in silence.

  “I cannot see anything,” he said finally, stepping back again. “There must be something blocking the way or I would be able to see the baskets at the bottom, or at least a light. But we will argue later as to who put it there. In the meantime, the thing is to remove it.” He looked around for something to accomplish the task, and saw nothing.

  “A broom?” Callandra suggested. “Or a window pole. Anything with a long handle.”

  The nurses stood still.

  “Go on,” Callandra commanded impatiently. “Go and find one. There must be a window pole in the ward.” She pointed at the nearest ward entrance along the corridor. “Don’t stand around, fetch it!”

  Grudgingly the younger woman started, hesitated, and glared back at her companion, then continued on her way.

  Callandra peered down the chute. She could see nothing either. Obviously the obstruction blocked it entirely, but how far down it was, she could not judge.

  The nurse came back with a long-handled window pole and gave it to Kristian, who poked it down the chute. But even when he leaned as far as he could, he met with no resistance. The obstruction, whatever it was, was beyond his reach.

  “We’ll have to go down and see if we can dislodge it from below,” he said after another unsuccessful try.