The Bone Garden: A Novel (23 page)

The three students shook their heads.

“It begins with a locked jaw, with the mouth clamped into a grotesque grin. It progresses to paroxysmal flexion of the arms and extension of the legs. The muscles of the abdomen become rigid as a board. Sudden spasms make the torso bow backward with such violence that it can snap bones. And through it all, the subject is awake and suffering the most heartbreaking agonies.” He set down his empty glass. “Amputation, gentlemen, is only the first horror. Others may well follow.” He looked at the students. “Your friend Charles faces dangers ahead. All I’ve done was remove the offending limb. What happens next depends on his constitution, his will to live. And on providence.”

Upstairs, Eliza had ceased singing her lullaby, but they could hear the creak of floorboards as she paced Charles’s bedroom. Back and forth, back and forth. If a mother’s love alone could save a child, there would be no medicine more powerful than what Eliza now dispensed with every agitated step, every anxious sigh.
Did my own mother hover with such devotion over my sickbed
? Norris had only one vague memory, of waking up in a feverish daze to see a lone candle flickering by his bed, and Sophia bent over him, stroking his hair. Murmuring: “My one true love.”

Did you mean it? Then why did you leave me that day?

There was a knock on the front door. They heard the parlor maid scurry down the hall to answer it, but Dr. Grenville made no attempt to rise. Exhaustion had pinned him to his chair, and he sat unmoving, listening to the conversation at the front door:

“May I speak to Dr. Grenville?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the parlor maid answered. “We have had a crisis in the household today, and the doctor is not up to seeing visitors. If you would leave your card, perhaps he will—”

“Tell him that Mr. Pratt of the Night Watch is here.”

Grenville, still slumped in his chair, wearily shook his head at the unwelcome intrusion.

“I’m sure he’ll be happy to speak to you another time,” the maid said.

“This will only take a minute. He will want to hear this news.” Already they could hear Pratt’s heavy boots stomping into the house.

“Mr. Pratt, sir!” said the maid. “Please, if you could just wait while I ask the doctor—”

Pratt appeared in the parlor doorway, and his gaze swept across the men gathered in the room.

“Dr. Grenville,” the maid said helplessly. “I did tell him you were not taking visitors!”

“That’s all right, Sarah,” said Grenville as he rose to his feet. “Clearly Mr. Pratt feels the matter is urgent enough to warrant this intrusion.”

“I do, sir,” said Pratt. His eyes narrowed as he focused on Norris. “So here you are, Mr. Marshall. I’ve been looking for you.”

“He’s been here all afternoon,” said Grenville. “My nephew has taken seriously ill, and Mr. Marshall was kind enough to offer his assistance.”

“I wondered why you were not at your lodgings,” said Pratt, his gaze still fixed on Norris, who felt sudden panic. Had Rose Connolly been discovered in his room? Was that why Pratt was staring at him?

“That’s the reason for this interruption?” asked Grenville, barely able to conceal his scorn. “Merely to confirm the whereabouts of Mr. Marshall?”

“No, Doctor,” said Pratt, turning his gaze to Grenville.

“Then why?”

“You have not heard the news, then.”

“I’ve been occupied all day with my nephew. I’ve not even left the house.”

“This afternoon,” said Pratt, “two young boys playing under the West Boston Bridge noticed what looked like a bundle of rags lying in the mud. When they took a closer look, they saw it was not rags, but the body of a man.”

“The West Boston Bridge?” said Dr. Sewall, straightening in his chair at this disturbing news.

“Yes, Dr. Sewall,” said Pratt. “I invite you to examine the body yourself. You’ll have no choice but to draw the same conclusions I have, based on the injuries. In fact, it seems pretty clear to me and to Dr. Crouch that—”

“Crouch has already seen it?” asked Grenville.

“Dr. Crouch was on the wards when the body was carried into the hospital. A fortunate circumstance, actually, because he also examined Agnes Poole. He saw, at once, the similarities in the injuries. The peculiar pattern of the cuts.” Pratt looked at Norris. “You would know what I’m talking about, Mr. Marshall.”

Norris stared at him. “The shape of a cross?” he asked softly.

“Yes. Despite the…damage, the pattern is apparent.”

“What damage?” asked Sewall.

“Rats, sir. Perhaps other animals as well. It’s clear that the body has been lying there for some time. It’s logical to assume that his death coincided with the date of his disappearance.”

It was as if the temperature in the room had suddenly plunged. Though no one said a word, Norris could see stunned realization on all the faces.

“Then you have found him,” Grenville finally said.

Pratt nodded. “The body is Dr. Nathaniel Berry’s. He did not flee, as we all believed. He was murdered.”

Twenty-four

The present

J
ULIA LOOKED UP
from Wendell Holmes’s letter. “Was Wendell Holmes right, Tom? Did that case of childbed fever have anything to do with Charles’s blood poisoning?”

Tom stood at the window, staring out at the sea. The fog had started to lift that morning, and although the sky was still gray, they could finally see the water. Gulls skimmed past a background of silvery clouds. “Yes,” he said quietly. “It was almost certainly related. What he described in his letter barely begins to touch on the horrors of childbed fever.” He sat down at the dining table, across from Julia and Henry, and the light through the window behind him cast his face in gloomy shadow. “In Holmes’s era,” said Tom, “it was so common that during epidemics, one of every four new mothers died of it. They died so quickly, hospitals had to cram them two to a coffin. In one maternity ward in Budapest, laboring mothers had a view of the cemetery through the window, and a view of the autopsy room down the hall. No wonder women were terrified of childbirth. They knew that if they went into the hospital to have a baby, there was a good chance they would come out in a coffin. And you know the worst part of all? They were killed by their own doctors.”

“You mean through incompetence?” said Julia.

“Through ignorance. In those days, they had no concept of germ theory. They wore no gloves, so doctors used their bare hands to examine women. They’d perform an autopsy on a corpse that was putrid with disease, then they’d go straight to the maternity ward, with filthy hands. They’d examine patient after patient, spreading infection right down the row of beds. Killing every woman they touched.”

“It never occurred to any of them just to wash their hands?”

“There was one doctor in Vienna who suggested it. He was a Hungarian named Ignaz Semmelweis, who noticed that patients attended by medical students were far more likely to die of childbed fever than those attended by midwives. He knew that the students attended autopsies while the midwives didn’t. So he concluded that some form of contagion was being spread from the autopsy room. He advised all his colleagues to wash their hands.”

“It sounds like common sense.”

“But he was ridiculed for it.”

“They didn’t follow his advice?”

“They hounded him out of his job. He ended up so depressed, he was committed to a mental institution. Where he cut his finger and suffered blood poisoning.”

“Like Charles Lackaway.”

Tom nodded. “Ironic, isn’t it? That’s what makes these letters so valuable. This is medical history, straight from the pen of one of the greatest doctors who ever lived.” He looked across the table at Julia. “You do know, don’t you? Why Holmes is such a hero in American medicine?”

Julia shook her head.

“Here in the United States, we hadn’t heard of Semmelweis and his germ theory. Yet we were dealing with the same epidemics of childbed fever, the same appalling mortality rates. American doctors blamed it on bad air or poor circulation or even something as ridiculous as wounded modesty! Women were dying, and no one in America could figure out why.” He looked down at the letter. “No one, that is, until Oliver Wendell Holmes.”

Twenty-five

1830

S
HELTERED IN A NOOK
beneath a doorway, blocked from the worst of the wind, Rose gazed across the hospital common, her eyes fixed on Norris’s attic window. She had been watching for hours, but now that darkness had fallen, she could no longer distinguish his building from among the rooflines silhouetted against the night sky. Why hadn’t he come back? What if he did not return tonight? She hoped for a second night under Norris’s roof, for a second chance to see him, to hear his voice. This morning, she’d awakened to find the coins he’d left for her, coins that would keep Meggie warm and fed for another week. In return for his generosity, she’d mended two of his threadbare shirts. Even if she hadn’t owed him, she’d have been happy to mend those shirts, just for the pleasure of touching fabric that had brushed his back, fabric that had known the warmth of his skin.

She saw candlelight flicker to life in a window. His window.

She started across the hospital common. This time, he’ll be anxious to listen to me, she thought. By now, he’d surely heard the latest news. She eased open the door to his building and peeked inside, then quietly slipped up the two flights of stairs to the attic. At his door she paused, her heart thumping hard. Because of her run up those steps? Or because she was about to see Norris again? She patted her hair, straightened her skirt, feeling foolish even as she did it, because all the effort was for a man who wouldn’t give her a second glance. Why would he bother to look at Rose after dancing with all those fine ladies last night?

She’d glimpsed them as they’d left Dr. Grenville’s house and stepped into their carriages, those lovely girls with their swishing silk gowns and velvet mantles and fur muffs. She’d watched how carelessly they allowed their hems to drag across the dirty snow, but of course
they
would not have to wash out the stains.
They
had not spent hours, as Rose had, bent over needle and thread, sewing in light so poor that her eyes would one day be pinched as permanently as if she had stitched puckers into her own skin. One season’s round of parties and dances, and the poor old dress would be retired anyway, to make way for the newest styles, the latest shade of gauze. Lurking in the darkness outside Dr. Grenville’s home, Rose had spotted the very gown that she herself had sewn, with the rose-colored silk. It adorned a round-cheeked young miss who had giggled all the way to her carriage.
Is that the kind of girl you prefer, Mr. Marshall? Because I cannot compete with that.

She knocked. Stood with back straight and chin raised as she heard his footsteps approach the door. Suddenly he was standing before her, the light spilling from behind him into the gloomy staircase. “There you are! Where have you been?”

She paused, confused. “I thought I should stay away until you came home.”

“You’ve been gone all day? No one has seen you here?”

His words stung her like a slap in the face. All day she’d been hungry to see him, and this was the greeting he gave her? I’m the girl he wants no one to know about, she thought. The embarrassing secret.

She said, “I only came back to tell you what I’m hearing on the street. Dr. Berry is dead. They found his body under the West Boston Bridge.”

“I know. Mr. Pratt told me.”

“Then you know as much as I do. Good night, Mr. Marshall.” She turned.

“Where are you going?”

“I haven’t had any supper.” And would probably have none at all tonight.

“I’ve brought food for you. Won’t you stay?”

She paused on the stairs, startled by the unexpected offer.

“Please,” he said. “Come in. There’s someone here who wishes to speak to you.”

She still felt the sting of his earlier comment and sheer pride almost drove her to decline the invitation. But her stomach was rumbling, and she wanted to know who this
someone
might be. She stepped into the attic and focused on the little man standing near the window. He was no stranger; she remembered him from the hospital. Like Norris, Wendell Holmes was a medical student, but she was quick to spot the differences between the two. What she noticed first was the superior quality of Holmes’s coat, which had been expertly tailored to his small shoulders, his narrow waist. He had eyes like a sparrow’s, bright and alert, and while she studied him, she knew that he was studying her in kind and cannily taking her measure.

“This is my classmate,” said Norris. “Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.”

The little man nodded. “Miss Connolly.”

“I remember you,” she said.
Because you look like a wee elf.
But she did not think he would appreciate that observation. “I’m the one you wished to see, Mr. Holmes?”

“About the death of Dr. Berry. You’ve heard about it.”

“I saw a crowd gathered near the bridge. They told me they’d found the doctor’s body.”

“This new development greatly confuses the picture,” said Wendell. “By tomorrow, the newspapers will be stoking terror.
West End Reaper still at large!
The public will once again see monsters everywhere. It puts Mr. Marshall in a most uncomfortable position. Perhaps even a dangerous one.”

“Dangerous?”

“When the public’s frightened, it can turn irrational. It may try to mete out justice on its own.”

She said to Norris: “Ah. So that’s why you’re suddenly willing to listen to me. Because now it affects
you.
”

Norris gave an apologetic nod. “I’m sorry, Rose. I should have paid more attention to you last night.”

“You were ashamed just to be seen with me.”

“And now I’m ashamed of my behavior toward you. My only excuse is that I had much to consider.”

“Oh, yes. Your
future.
”

He sighed, a sound so defeated that she almost felt sorry for him. “I have no future. Not anymore.”

“And how can I change that?”

“What matters now,” said Wendell, “is that we learn the truth.”

“The truth only matters to those who’re unfairly accused,” she said. “No one else cares.”

“I care,” Wendell insisted. “Mary Robinson and Dr. Berry would have cared. And the killer’s future victims will most certainly care.” He came toward her, his eyes so sharply focused on her that she felt he could see straight into her mind. “Tell us about your niece, Rose. The little girl whom everyone is searching for.”

For a moment she said nothing, weighing how much she could trust Oliver Wendell Holmes. And decided that she had no choice
but
to trust him. She had reached her limit, and now she was nearly faint with hunger.

“I’ll tell you,” she said. “But first…” She looked at Norris. “You said you brought me food.”

She ate as she told the story, pausing to rip into a chicken leg or stuff a chunk of bread into her mouth. This was not the way one of those fine ladies might eat, but then this meal didn’t come with pretty china or silverware. Her last meal had been that morning, a shriveled scrap of smoked mackerel that the fishmonger had planned to toss to his cat but, out of pity, had handed to her instead. The few coins that Norris had left her that morning had not gone toward a meal for herself. Instead she’d pressed them into Billy’s hand and asked him to deliver the money to Hepzibah.

For another week, at least, little Meggie would be fed.

And now, for the first time in days, she, too, could eat her fill. So she did, devouring both meat and cartilage, sucking the marrow, leaving a mound of broken chicken bones, gnawed clean.

“You truly have no idea who fathered your sister’s child?” asked Wendell.

“Aurnia said nothing to me. Though she hinted…”

“Yes?”

Rose paused, setting down the bread as her throat closed tight from the memories. “She asked me to fetch the priest for last rites. It was so important to her, but I kept putting it off. I didn’t want her to stop fighting. I wanted her to live.”

“And she wanted to confess her sins.”

“Shame kept her from telling me,” Rose said softly.

“And the child’s father remains a mystery.”

“Except to Mr. Gareth Wilson.”

“Ah yes, the mysterious lawyer. May I see the card he gave you?”

She wiped her greasy hand and reached in her pocket for Gareth Wilson’s calling card, which she handed to Wendell.

“He lives on Park Street. An impressive address.”

“A fine address doesn’t make him a gentleman,” she said.

“You don’t trust him one whit, do you?”

“Look at the filthy company he keeps.”

“You mean Mr. Tate?”

“He used Eben to find me. Which makes Mr. Wilson no better, no matter how fancy his address.”

“Did he say anything at all about who his client might be?”

“No.”

“Would your brother-in-law know?”

“Fool that he is, Eben wouldn’t know a thing. And Mr. Wilson would be even more a fool to tell him.”

“I doubt this Mr. Gareth Wilson is any sort of fool,” said Wendell, looking at the address again. “Have you told any of this to the Night Watch?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s useless to speak to Mr. Pratt.” Her tone of disdain left no doubt what she thought of the man.

Wendell smiled. “I’d have to agree.”

“I think Dim Billy would make a better constable. Mr. Pratt wouldn’t believe me, anyway.”

“You’re so sure of that?”

“No one believes the likes of me. We Irish need to be watched all the time, or we’ll pick your pockets and steal your children. If you doctors didn’t slit us open and poke around inside our chests, like in that book over there”—she pointed to the anatomy text on Norris’s desk—“you’d probably think we didn’t have hearts that look just like yours.”

“Oh, I have no doubt you have a heart, Miss Connolly. And a generous one at that, to take on such a burden as your niece.”

“Hardly a burden, sir. She’s my own family.” Her only family now.

“You’re certain the child is safe?”

“As safe as I can make her.”

“Where is she? May we see her?”

Rose hesitated. Though Wendell’s gaze was unflinching, though he’d given her no reason to doubt him, still, this was Meggie’s life at stake.

Norris said, “She seems to be at the center of it all. Please, Rose. We only want to be sure she’s well protected. And healthy.”

It was Norris’s plea that convinced her. From their first meeting in the hospital, she had been drawn to him, had felt that, unlike the other gentlemen, he was someone she could turn to. Last night, by his charity, he had confirmed her faith in him.

She looked out the window. “It’s dark enough. I never go there in daylight.” She stood. “It should be safe now.”

“I’ll call a carriage,” said Wendell.

“No carriage will make it down the alley where I’m taking you.” She wrapped her cloak tight and turned to the door. “We walk.”

In Hepzibah’s world, shadows always reigned. Even when Rose had visited while the sun was shining, the light barely penetrated into the low-ceilinged room. In her zeal to keep warm, Hepzibah had nailed her shutters closed, turning her room into a dark little cave where the far corners remained eternally invisible. So the murky space Rose saw that night looked no different than always, with the fire reduced to glowing coals, and not even a single candle burning.

With a joyful laugh, Rose swept up Meggie from the basket and brought the little face up to hers, breathing in the familiar scents of her hair, her swaddling clothes. Meggie responded with a wet cough, and tiny fingers reached out to grasp a handful of Rose’s hair. Mucus gleamed on her upper lip.

“Ah, my darling girl!” said Rose, hugging Meggie to her own empty breasts. Wishing that she could be the one to nourish her. The two gentlemen standing behind her remained strangely silent, watching as she fussed over the baby. She turned to Hepzibah. “Has she been ill?”

“Started coughing last night. You haven’t been here in a few days.”

“I sent money today. Billy brought it, didn’t he?”

By the faint glow of the hearth, Hepzibah, with her fat neck, looked like an enormous toad planted in the chair. “Aye, the idiot boy brought it. I’ll be needing more.”

“More? But it was what you asked.”

“She’s keepin’ me up now, that one. Coughing.”

Norris said, “May we take a look at the baby? We’d like to confirm that she’s healthy.”

Hepzibah eyed him and gave a grunt. “Who might you gentlemen be, to care about some fatherless child?”

“We’re medical students, madam. We care about all children.”

“Ooh, fancy that!” Hepzibah laughed. “I can show you ten thousand of ’em, when you’re done wi’ this one.”

Norris lit a candle at the hearth. “Bring the baby here, Rose. So I can get a better look at her.”

Rose carried Meggie to him. The baby gazed up with trusting eyes as Norris peeled away the blanket and examined her chest, prodded her abdomen. Already he had the sure and confident hands of a doctor, Rose observed, and she imagined him as he would one day look, his hair streaked with gray, his gaze sober and wise. Oh, she hoped she would know him then! She hoped she could watch him gaze down at his own child.
Our own child.
Thoroughly he inspected Meggie, whose plump thighs were testimony to an adequate diet. But the baby was coughing, and strands of clear mucus trickled from her nostrils.

“She seems to have no fever,” said Norris. “But there is congestion.”

Hepzibah gave a dismissive grunt. “All the little ones have it. Not a child in South Boston who doesn’t have snot under his nose.”

“But she’s so young.”

“She eats more than enough. And for that as well, I’ll need to be paid more.”

Wendell reached into his pocket and withdrew a handful of coins, which he placed in the wet nurse’s hand. “There’ll be more. But the child must stay well fed and healthy. Do you understand?”

Hepzibah stared at the money. And she said, with a new note of respect, “Oh, she will, sir. I’ll be sure of it.”

Rose stared at Wendell, stunned by his generosity. “I’ll find a way to pay you, Mr. Holmes,” she said, softly. “I swear to you.”

“There’s no need to talk of payment,” said Wendell. “If you’ll excuse us, Mr. Marshall and I need to speak alone.” He looked at Norris, and the two men stepped outside, into the alley.