Protection (4 page)

* * *

B
y the time Joseph Cooper returned to his cell, just minutes before reconfinement, Gabriel had already made himself at home. He had precious few possessions – a Bible from his sister Maureen, a packet of personal letters, and a signed photo from the Marlene Dietrich Fan Club. This last had served him so admirably when it came to his late-night needs; he wasn’t ashamed to admit he’d obtained it by writing a fan letter. Marlene, though every inch a woman, had the verve, courage and hardness of a man. Kissing Lonnie’s mouth might do nothing for Gabriel, but kissing it while imagining Marlene’s flawless legs in those delicate stockings was surprisingly effective.

“What – what are you doing here?” Cooper stopped dead, hands curling around the bars behind him and squeezing until his knuckles turned white. “They told me I’d be alone until a cellmate was assigned.”

“And here he is.” Gabriel restrained himself from laughing in the other man’s face. “Didn’t I say I expected a kiss before bed?”

Wentworth’s guards, in their infinite, cosmic wisdom, chose that moment to begin reconfinement a full five minutes early. They strode down each long hall in turn, slamming cell doors and locking them tight. Once the all-clear was asked, confirmed and shouted back, the main switch was thrown and the overhead lights snapped off. As F-block went dark Gabriel sprang to his feet, a long-fingered hand closing around Cooper’s soft white throat.

“This is where you say yes or you die,” Gabriel whispered in Cooper’s ear.

F-block’s only illumination came from a single battery-powered square, glowing faintly near the ceiling in case of emergency. The light bounced off the cell’s shaving mirror, revealing Cooper’s compressed lips and wide, desperate eyes.

“Yes,” he breathed. “Just kill me first. Do anything you like, but kill me first.”

The plea lodged in Gabriel’s stomach like lead. The damned fool was serious. Cooper’s pulse beat frantically beneath Gabriel’s fingers like the wings of a trapped bird, but his voice was steady.

“Jesus, boy.” Releasing the younger man, Gabriel pushed him onto the bottom bunk. Dropping down beside him, Gabriel caught Cooper’s head in the crook of his arm, as he might have done to a younger sibling. Pulling Cooper close, he planted a kiss on the other man’s forehead, then let go.

“One kiss paid up. You’ve earned yourself a quiet night,” Gabriel said, feeling in his top breast pocket for cigarettes and matches.

Cooper sucked in his breath, staring at Gabriel. The look in his large gray eyes was hard to take.

“Have one.” Gabriel shook a Pall Mall out of the box.

Looking like he didn’t know what else to do, Cooper took it. He held it steady as Gabriel lit it. Then Cooper’s eyes brimmed over and he began to weep, gaze downcast, tears forming and dropping down each full white cheek.

“Oh, for Chrissake,” Gabriel muttered, looking away. “Some wrongs can’t be undone. There’s no going back, only forward. Don’t sit there bawling. It won’t bring that poor woman back to life, nor her babe.”

“I didn’t—” Cooper began, and stopped himself. He made a sound more like choked laughter than tears. “It doesn’t matter. God knows it won’t matter to you.”

“Perhaps not. I’ve never cared for doctors and that’s a fact. But if you’re innocent, go on,” Gabriel said. “Tell the tale. Mind you, every man inside is innocent. I’d find a guilty man’s story more diverting.”

Cooper mastered himself. Drawing in a double lungful of smoke, he shook his head.

“You’re sure? Confession and the soul. You know what they say.”

Cooper shot Gabriel a sudden, vicious look. “I didn’t kill Jane Wheaton or her baby. I did my best to save them.”

Gabriel didn’t throw the details he’d already heard in Cooper’s face. In Wentworth, the correct response when a convict told his story was to listen. Even if it was all bollocks, even if anyone who’d scanned a newspaper in the last ten years knew the real story, the only proper reaction was to listen. The judge, the jury, society at large – all three entities had already weighed in on what was true and what was false. The last thing a man inside needed was another inmate calling him a liar.

“You do know I’m listening?” Gabriel prompted at last.

“The thing is, I
wanted
to go to Findley,” Cooper said suddenly, as if Gabriel might argue the point. “I was over the moon to join a physician as distinguished as Dr. Pfiser. I had other offers but never considered them.” Cooper put the cigarette to his lips. “God knows where I’d be if I had. Not here, that’s for damn sure.”

Striking a match, Gabriel lit a Pall Mall and waited.

“It started fine. I liked Dr. Pfiser. He was so – encouraging. Never tried to take the mickey, never corrected me in front of patients. Even when he disagreed, he only said, ‘That approach doesn’t work for me,’ or ‘I’ve had no luck with that treatment.’ Never what I expected – ‘Don’t argue, I’m a well-known physician and you’re a nobody who only saw the inside of Oxford because of a scholarship.’”

Gabriel, who’d finished school at thirteen to learn his trade, carpentry, was more curious about university and the scholarship process than Cooper’s relationship to Dr. Pfiser. But now was hardly the time to say as much.

“Dr. Pfiser let me work independently more often than I expected, especially at night or on weekends.” Cooper looked sidelong at Gabriel. “I should have been suspicious. But when you come out of training, after being second-guessed and watched like a hawk at every turn, it’s a great feeling, being the bloody physician. Not Cooper the student but Dr. Cooper, thank you very much.” He gave a bitter laugh. “So, yes. During the trial, the Crown mentioned my hubris. My overweening pride. And I guess there was some truth to that point.”

Gabriel thought of Dr. Bekins, who’d botched his little brother Robbie’s fractured leg, setting the bone so crookedly the boy healed with one limb two inches shorter than the other. Dr. Bekins was a learned man; no one in the old neighborhood disputed that. He was wise about breeding women and colicky babes. But when he’d been at the laudanum, he made mistakes, and patients like Robbie MacKenna had to live with the results.

“Nights and weekends, you say? A family man,” Gabriel said. “Or a drunk.”

“A drunk.” Cooper stared straight ahead into the darkness. “If he’d let me handle Jane Wheaton’s labor alone it would have been all right, I think. But he didn’t dare. Dr. Pfiser was a personal friend of Lord Wheaton. So when Dr. Pfiser turned up with a red nose and a booming laugh, I …” Cooper took another deep drag off his cigarette. “I didn’t speak up. Didn’t steer Dr. Pfiser away from Jane’s bed and say I smelt the whiskey on his breath. Didn’t warn Jane or Lord Wheaton. I knew my place and kept my mouth shut. That was my real crime. Perhaps that’s why God put me in here. If there is a God.”

“Oh, there’s a God, rest assured of that.”

Cooper looked at him with such naked surprise, Gabriel felt warmth rise in his cheeks. Since taking his pleasure in the showers – he wouldn’t call it rape, it was just the way of things at Wentworth, what dominant men did to weaker ones – Gabriel had assured himself it was only another sin of the flesh. Now, sitting beside the other man, submitting to that stare, a suspicion crept into Gabriel’s mind. Perhaps no matter what Cooper was, it didn’t give anyone the right to use him against his will. Not even if he sacrificed pregnant women at the full moon and ground their bones for his bread.

“I didn’t proclaim myself a godly man. I only said there is a God,” Gabriel snapped, looking away. “So the doctor turned up drunk and you knew it. Go on.”

“Dr. Pfiser took charge of Jane’s labor. She was pained, of course, and he kept saying she was only afraid, that nothing was truly wrong. All the Wheaton heirs had been born at Wheaton Manor and Jane wanted to preserve the tradition. The boy was already named – John Carothers Sergeant Wheaton. His christening gown and silver cup were laid out.” Cooper’s eyes shone. “Dr. Pfiser was confident, half-asleep in his chair, but I was concerned. Jane’s color was bad. Her urine smelled of sugar and her lower legs were swollen. Have you heard of diabetes?”

Gabriel shook his head.

“It’s deadly in children and pregnant women. Sometimes it doesn’t present until a few weeks before labor. Dr. Pfiser missed the signs. But that could happen to any doctor,” Cooper added. “The point is, once we realized Jane’s condition, labor at Wheaton Manor was too dangerous. She needed transport to hospital right away. I told Dr. Pfiser as much. He said I was a good lad, but green as grass and dead wrong. To disrupt Jane’s labor, to anger Lord Wheaton, would be the unmaking of my career. And that,” Cooper sighed, swiping at his eyes, “that frightened me. So I held my peace.”

Gabriel frowned. So far Cooper had confessed to two misdeeds, neither of which were actionable in British courts. As the supervising physician, Dr. Pfiser carried the liability for both. Gabriel shifted, unsettled, as if danger crouched at the very edge of his peripheral vision.

“When things went bad, they went bad all at once,” Cooper continued. “Jane’s pulse turned thready. She started gasping. And the baby presented placenta first. That meant Jane would bleed to death, no doubt. She was already hemorrhaging fast. Outside of a hospital there was no way to save her life, and if we wasted time transporting her, the baby would die, too. There was nothing left to try but a Caesarian.” Cooper looked at Gabriel. “Do you know what that is?”

“How Julius Caesar was taken from his dead mum’s belly.”

“Yes. Dr. Pfiser had been dozing. He woke up sober, for the most part, and frozen, completely at a loss. I opened his black bag. Pulled out the surgical instruments. Jane was dead, or as near as made no difference, so I performed the Caesarian. I’d just pulled the baby free when Lord Wheaton burst in.”

Gabriel could imagine the scene all too easily. He saw a posh bedchamber, a four-poster with old-fashioned bed curtains, the ancestral site of consummations, conceptions, births and deaths. He saw a young mother, dead. And blood everywhere, soaking the bed linens, sprayed on the walls, spattered on the motionless woman and Cooper alike.

“Was it alive?” Gabriel asked, meaning the infant.

“Barely. Lord Wheaton slapped the baby out of my hands. He was wild over the sight of – of Jane laid open that way, viscera exposed, covered in blood. He struck me so hard, I fell and lost consciousness. When I came around, the baby was dead.” Stubbing out his cigarette, Cooper tossed down the dog-end and wiped his eyes. “And Lord Wheaton had summoned the constables.”

“But you told your story, didn’t you?”

“No one asked. Dr. Pfiser told me to go back to my room above his surgery. Said we’d discuss it in the morning. I didn’t sleep that night, but not out of fear. I was too foolish to be afraid.” Giving a little laugh, Cooper accepted a new cigarette from Gabriel, allowing the other man to light it. “I was sad over the loss of our patients. Not guilty. Sad.

“And so.” Putting the Pall Mall to his lips, Cooper drew in another double lungful as if he couldn’t get enough. “Next morning, in comes Dr. Pfiser. He’s stone-cold sober, more serious than I’ve ever seen him. Hands shaking with the DTs. You know about those?”

“Delirium tremors,” Gabriel said, biting back a smile. “I
am
Irish, if you didn’t guess.”

Cooper almost smiled back. Then wariness returned to his eyes. “Well. Dr. Pfiser called me into his office. Took out vellum writing paper and a fountain pen. Showed me how terribly his hands shook. He couldn’t have written clearly if it meant the firing squad. ‘I need you to take down my words,’ he told me.” Cooper closed his eyes. “And I did. God help me, I did. Word for word. How Dr. Pfiser felt sure he could manage any birthing complication. How he craved Lord Wheaton’s patronage. How he shunned all assistance and caused a mother and child’s death.”

Gabriel caught his breath. He saw it again, the showers, Cooper beneath him and crying out to God for mercy. What had Gabriel told himself? That a bad doctor deserved what he got?

“Dr. Pfiser stitched you up.”

“Yes. I’m not sure he meant to, not at first,” Cooper said. “Maybe he did. But at some point, Dr. Pfiser realized the confession had been written just as he dictated it, in the first person. A constable came round to arrest me next morning. Said he had a confession in my own hand, a witness – Lord Wheaton – and my own mentor Dr. Pfiser ready to give evidence against me. At first I thought the truth would out. Isn’t that what we’re taught, growing up? The truth will out?”