An Improper Death (Dr. Alexandra Gladstone Mysteries Book 2) (17 page)

Nancy went on for several minutes more about the perils of bathing Zack. She kept on until she was shivering in her damp clothes and grew even angrier when Zack gave another shake to rid
himself of the last droplets that clung to his coat, sending the water all over both she and Alexandra.

Alexandra finally sent Nancy upstairs with instructions to change into dry clothes. When Nancy was gone, she went to the kitchen to brew tea and to make a sandwich of cold tongue,
then went upstairs to knock on Nancy’s door. Nancy opened it wearing a fresh kitchen dress of dark muslin.

“What’s this?” she asked, looking at the tray.

“Your supper, Nancy.”

“My supper?
But where is your own?” Nancy accepted the tray in spite of her protest.

“I’ve no appetite at the moment.” Alexandra moved into the room and, without waiting to be asked, seated herself in one of the chairs near the fireplace.

Nancy sat in the other chair facing Alexandra. “Oh yes, I certainly know what you mean. All that’s been happening—the admiral drowned in ladies underwear, someone shooting at our patients! Why ’tis enough to take any decent person’s appetite.” She took a hearty bite from the sandwich.

“And the constable seems paralyzed, unable or unwilling to act.” Alexandra studied the blaze in the fireplace as she spoke. Zack pushed the door open with his nose and came to lie at her feet, warming himself by the fire. For a moment Alexandra let herself be lulled into relaxed contentment until Nancy spoke again.

“There’s some who say old Snow has his reasons.” She put her sandwich aside for a moment and leaned toward Alexandra. “Do you think ’tis true? That he’s in love with Mrs. Orkwright?”

“I have no way of knowing that.” Alexandra’s voice was a little too harsh. “It’s only gossip, and it does not become either of us to indulge in it.”

Nancy studied Alexandra’s face for a moment. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, I say. And don’t you find it odd that he hasn’t called Rob in for questioning? ’Tis as if he wants the whole thing to go away.”

“Eat your sandwich, Nancy,” Alexandra said with growing impatience. “And tell me, when did you ever bathe an elephant?”

“Hmphff,” Nancy said with a disdainful glance at Zack before she took a bite of her sandwich. Then, still chewing, she touched her napkin to her lips and said, “Annie’s the mystery, I say. You figure that one out and you’ll understand the whole lot of it.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” Alexandra spoke without much conviction and without moving her eyes from the hypnotizing blaze in the fireplace. Then she glanced at Nancy and, with her weariness evident in her voice, said, “When I saw Annie earlier at Gull House she showed no sign of having been out roaming and shooting at anyone. She was extraordinarily calm and collected.”

Nancy shook her head. “She’s an odd one, that one.”

“And we still haven’t come up with a truly good theory for why she would want to kill John,” Alexandra said.

Nancy was uncharacteristically silent for a long moment. Finally she spoke. “Now that I think of it, I wonder if he tried to give me a reason. Still…it doesn’t make sense.”

“What do you mean?” Alexandra sounded even more tired.

“After you left for your rounds, and as Mr. Forsythe was trying to get John out of bed and into the carriage, the young man said something. Something odd, now that I think of it.”

“Odd?” Nancy had gotten Alexandra’s full attention.

“Yes, Mr. Forsythe had asked him, of course, if he knew of any reason why Annie would want to kill him. ‘So ’twas Annie did it and not the coppers,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ he says. ‘The old she devil’—his words, mind you, not mine. ‘The old she devil has always wanted both of us out of the way.’ Now of course Mr. Forsythe asked him what he meant by that, but he wouldn’t say. Then, just as the carriage was leaving, young John stuck his head out the window and said to me, ‘It must have been Will.’ Said it in a whisper, he did, as if he wanted no one else to hear it. But what did he mean?”

“Why haven’t you told me this?” Alexandra demanded.

“I didn’t think it was important. He seemed to be a bit out of his head. You’ve seen patients like that, of course. Especially when they’re taking laudanum. But now that I think about it, I wonder….”

Alexandra stood, suddenly agitated. “We must talk to him again.
As early as possible tomorrow, before he’s sent off to London.”

“He didn’t mean young
Will killed his father, did he?”

Nancy had once again spoken the words Alexandra had not dared speak
herself.

Chapter Fifteen

Neither Alexandra nor Nancy were in the mood for conversation at breakfast the next morning. When Alexandra started her daily rounds to visit homebound patients, her movements seemed slow, labored, and heavy.

Even Zack seemed in a dark mood as he lumbered along beside Lucy as Alexandra rode to the first stop. Zack’s head was bowed, and his customary breathy low growls sounded like moans. The substance on his coat that Nancy had failed to remove was sticky and attracted dust along with the black grime from chimney smoke, so that he took on the look of a worn, dirty carpet.

The first stop of the day was the Talbot house. Alexandra knocked at the door and tried to steel herself for Hannibal’s ungrateful complaining.

The door opened slightly, and
Mildryd Talbot’s face, pale and drawn, appeared around the edge. Her wide, perpetually frightened eyes were outlined with dark weariness that threatened to suck an observer in with their neediness.

“
’Tis Dr. Gladstone,” she said in a whisper so soft it could not have been meant for anyone to hear. She opened the door and stepped aside, her glance flickering from Alexandra to Hannibal, in his bed by the stove, and back again to Alexandra.

Alexandra stepped inside, and Zack, knowing he’d been allowed in before, assumed he now had permanent rights and walked in with her.

“Who’s there?” Hannibal called from his bed, his voice a weakened bellow.

Mildryd
followed Alexandra to the bedside and stayed behind her like a timid child. When she didn’t answer her husband’s question Alexandra spoke.

“It’s Dr. Gladstone. I’ve come to see how you are progressing.” She went to his bed and bent over him and placing the end of the stethoscope on his chest to listen for signs of pneumonia.

“How I progress? What do you expect when you slash me privates?” She removed the stethoscope from her ears where his amplified voice still reverberated.

“There is a great deal of pain, of course, but you’ll see improvement in a few days.” She placed a hand on his brow, checking for fever. There was none.

“I’m pissin’ blood,” he growled, and then groaned again.

“The blood will disappear soon.”

“Ye’ve damaged me for good, woman. Ye’ve made it so I can’t diddle me wife the way a man should.”

Behind her, Alexandra heard
Mildryd gasp.

“The operation will have no effect of that kind,” Alexandra said as she touched the blanket that covered him from the waist down. “I must have a look at the incision.”

“I told you, you’ll not be lookin’ at me privates again!” He grabbed the blanket from her and brought it to his chin, clutching it tightly. There was another gasp from Mildryd.

“As you wish.”
Alexandra stepped away from the bed and picked up her bag, folding the stethoscope inside. Custom was not to examine the body of either sex if he or she was not comfortable with it. “Continue to use the laudanum, but use it sparingly and drink plenty of water. No spirits. If you develop a fever, you must send for me immediately.” She closed her bag and glanced at her patient one more time. “Good day, Hannibal.” She turned aside, prepared to inquire of Mildryd about her health and to urge her to rest more when Hannibal distracted her with another weakened but angry yell.

“What is it
ye’ve done to the brute? He’s filthy as swine, he is.” He looked at Zack with an expression of sympathy for the abuse the two of them had endured at her hands.

“I’m afraid he got into something in the woods. Whatever it is, it defies a washing.” Alexandra picked one of the black strands she had thought was grass from Zack’s back. It appeared more like threads than grass now, however.

“In the woods you say?” He still spoke with the same angry tone, and he raised up slightly to have a better look at Zack. “’Tis pitch mixed with tar. Ye’ve had ’im in a rowboat, ye ’ave. Any oyster man worth ’is salt knows the look and smell of the pitch and tar that stops a leak in a small craft. The brute’s too big for a rowboat. Could tip it over, he could, what with the fidgets a big ’un like him gets. If ye had any sense, woman, ye’d not put a brute that size in a rowboat. Could drown ye both.”

Alexandra was prepared to defend herself by declaring she’d never had Zack in a rowboat, and that she, in fact, had nothing to do with Zack’s dirty coat. But she said nothing. Her thoughts turned to Admiral
Orkwright and the ladies’ drawers he was wearing. Nancy had identified the sticky substance on that garment as pitch. If it had been used as sealant for a rowboat, did that mean the admiral had been in the rowboat? Had the boat capsized, causing the admiral to drown and then be washed ashore? Had the boat washed ashore and Zack had found it somehow?

“Dr. Gladstone? Are you all right?” It was
Mildryd bringing her back to the present.

“What?
Of course.” She took a moment to reorient herself. “And you, Mildryd, you’re not resting well, are you?”

The woman seemed surprised at the question. She wasn’t used to having her feelings sought out, but when she finally admitted her fatigue, Alexandra prescribed the daily ingestion of yeast along with an infusion of skullcap. She was about to leave with her soiled, four-legged companion when Hannibal called out to her again.

“Gladstone!”

She turned around. He looked at her a moment, apparently reluctant to speak. “The stones,” he said finally. “
Me wife showed ’em to me. The ones what ye cut out of me.”

After another long pause, Alexandra gave him a brief nod and turned to walk away. His next words stopped her again.

“I thank ye.”

The words surprised her, and she turned around slowly, prepared to acknowledge his thanks, but he was staring at the ceiling and refusing to look at her. “The pleasure, Hannibal, was all
mine,” she said. She saw him flinch at what her statement implied, and she managed to make it out the door before her suppressed laughter erupted.

Her merriment didn’t last long. When she glanced at Zack again and saw his soiled coat, her thoughts returned to Admiral
Orkwright and the mystery that shrouded his death. Those thoughts were never far from the surface of her consciousness for the remainder of the day, even after she had seen the last of her patients in her surgery. There had been a large number of patients, most of them complaining of catarrh, or a cold as it had become fashionable to call it. There was no cure, of course, but she had dispensed several ounces of her usual remedy to control symptoms: a snuff of bloodroot, bayberry bark, and myrrh.

Mrs.
Sommers had been in with her usual complaint of gastric uneasiness and flatulence. Since she had steadfastly refused to change her diet, Alexandra had provided a compound tincture of lavender, which she kept in her pharmacy. Along with the lavender, the mixture included oil of anise, cloves, mace, red saunders, brandy, and Jamaica rum. It took some time for the medicine to be prepared, since it had to be macerated for fourteen days, and then carefully filtered. She had taken to relying on an apothecary for this and other complicated compounds, a practice which her father had never approved. He preferred to mix everything he administered. She consoled herself for having departed from his teaching by reminding herself that the town had been smaller and life less complicated in his day.

Nancy prepared an early dinner for the two of them. Alexandra occasionally wished she could enjoy a leisurely afternoon tea as others of her status did, but her profession did not allow for that nicety, much less for an elegant, multi-course late dinner when she had to rise so early for her rounds. As they ate, Nancy listened to her account of her day.

“Of course!” she said when Alexandra told her of Hannibal’s assessment of where Zack had gotten the sticky substance in his hair. “I should have thought of that myself. And if it’s the same substance we found on the admiral’s drawers, then he was in a boat when he drowned. The same boat Zack seems to have found at Gull House.”

“It does seem likely, doesn’t it?” Alexandra carefully cut a small square from the boiled meat Nancy had prepared.

“More than likely, I would say.” There was a note of excitement in Nancy’s voice. “And that means someone rowed him out to sea and drowned him and then rowed back. Someone at Gull House.”

Alexandra moved her head slowly from side to side. “But if it’s common for all boats to be sealed with this mixture, then the admiral could have taken one out to sea himself, and the one Zack found, wherever it is, may have no bearing on the case at all. The one the admiral was in could have been dashed against the rocks somewhere and destroyed after he tumbled out.”

“Or was pushed out,” Nancy said.

“Yes, that’s possible.”

“You’ve said all along that he didn’t drown himself, that he was murdered,” Nancy reminded her.

Alexandra didn’t argue with her. She was still rolling it all around in her mind. “The truth is that it doesn’t seem likely that he fell out of the boat, and it was then dashed to pieces, does it. If he had been in a boat, it most likely would have washed ashore just as he did. Or if it was dashed to pieces, the admiral’s body would have been as well.”

“Unless someone pushed him out of the boat and rowed back to shore,” Nancy said.

Alexandra laid her fork aside and pushed away from her plate. “In that case it seems unlikely that young
Will could have done it, doesn’t it? He’s not likely to have been strong enough to row out to sea.”

“It was ridiculous for us to have considered him in the first place,” Nancy said, then added. “I’ve some turpentine somewhere.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Turpentine.
I can use that to clean Zack’s hairy back if ’tis pitch and tar he got into.” Nancy gave the dog a scowling look. “I’ll use it tonight, you bad tempered beast, and there’ll be no quarreling on your part.”

Zack obliged her with a low mumbling growl that sounded like a grumpy old man.

“I seem to recall you saying you’d never bathe him again,” Alexandra said.

“No matter what I said, he’ll not sleep in this house looking like that.” Nancy’s voice was firm and full of authority and contradiction.

Alexandra shook her head, smiling to herself and argued no further. She went to the parlor prepared to read, but before she could open her book, Nicholas appeared at her door. Once again she was unexpectedly happy to see him.

“What in heaven’s name is that noise?” he asked when he had settled himself into one of the chairs next to the fireplace.

“It’s only Zack,” said Alexandra. “Would you care for some sherry?” He accepted and she poured it for him. She wasn’t going to risk distracting Nancy by asking her to serve.

Nicholas took a sip of the sherry. “Did you say it’s Zack making all the fuss?”

“He’s arguing with Nancy because this is the second bath she’s given him in two days.”

Nicholas wore a puzzled frown. “Why on earth would she do that?”

Alexandra explained about the pitch and tar used for sealing the seams of rowboats, and explained that Zack must have gotten into one while they were at Gull House. Nicholas offered the same theory she and Nancy had devised, that, since it appeared to be the same substance found on the garment the admiral was wearing, then he could have been in the same boat the admiral had been in.

“We must set out to find it.” He was exuberant. “I shall pick you up in the morning before you start your rounds. No need to have Lucy
saddled. I shall hire a carriage.”

Nicholas had not yet arrived the next morning when Fin Prodder knocked at her door. He had ridden all night from Bradfordshire where he’d been with his mother, Mary, as she lay in her bed in Bradfordshire Hospital. Since Nancy had taken breakfast to Artie and Rob, Alexandra opened the door herself. Fin stood before her shivering in the cold dampness of a still dark February morning.

“
’Tis me mum, Dr. Gladstone. She’s taken a turn for the worse.” His voice was hoarse with weariness, and he clutched his workingman’s cap in both his hands.

“Pneumonia.”
It was not a question. Mary had spent several hours helpless on the ground in the cold of February. And if that wasn’t enough, experience had taught Alexandra that an elderly patient, rendered immobile by the splint that was necessary after a broken hip, more often than not succumbed to pneumonia.

Fin nodded.
“Aye.”

“Please come in,” she said, stepping aside for him. “And what do the doctors say of her chances?”

“There is no hope.” Fin’s voice was choked with emotion.

In spite of the fact that the news was no surprise to Alexandra, she felt the pang of helplessness and the sense of ineptness she always felt when a patient was dying. At the same time, she was aware of Fin
Podder’s pain. “Please, Fin, come into the parlor. I’ll have Nancy—”

Fin shook his head. “I’ve no time for the niceties of your parlor, Dr. Gladstone. I’ve rode since the darkest hour of the night from
Bradfordshire to come here to fetch you.”

“To fetch me?
I don’t understand. The doctors at Bradfordshire Hospital are more experienced at—”

“I got no complaint about the doctors at
Bradfordshire.” Fin clutched at his cap again. “’Tis you she wants. Says she cannot die in peace until she talks to you.”