A sudden, fearful death (11 page)

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 especial-ly."

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 by 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.