The Moon by Night (51 page)

“All right. I suppose it was because of the way the patients kept talking about the laudanum tasting just like whiskey.” Dev explained the progression of thoughts that led him to believe Dr. Marcus Pettijohn was connected to many of the problems they had been experiencing. His dark gaze rested gently on Cheney as he concluded, “So you see, if he has been tampering with the drugs and the supplies, it could have caused some of the complications we've seen lately.”

Cheney moaned. “Rebecca Green…oh, Dev, if she was taking watered-down laudanum and I tried to compensate for her apparent growing immunity to it by giving her too much morphine—”

“No, Cheney,” Dev interrupted sternly. “One thing all of us must realize as pure truth right now is that we did nothing wrong. Anything that happened as a result of Marcus Pettijohn's crimes is Marcus Pettijohn's fault. If we start to blame ourselves, then we must also blame Carlie for not tattling on him, as he says; and we must blame my wife for hiring him; and we must blame Nurse Flagg for not discussing Dr. Pettijohn's shortcomings with us—”

“And me,” Cleve said glumly. “I saw him down here late one night. He had all kinds of supplies and
materia medica
spread out everywhere and had a big ledger. He told me that the hospital had gotten a big shipment in that day and he hadn't had time to do all the proper paperwork. I knew it was odd, but as soon as I got back upstairs, I forgot all about it.”

“I did even worse than that,” Shiloh said regretfully. “Because I
didn't
forget it. I came in the hospital that night, the first night that Officer Goodin brought Wilhelmina and Geraldine in. I saw him using oil and charpie on her arm. I didn't say anything, because it was part of a situation that I've promised to keep confidential, but I sure could've said something about the charpie without breaking that promise.”

“Charpie!” Cheney exclaimed. “We've got charpie mixed up with the good linen gauze? Oh, horrors, how are the attendants going to know the difference? And what about the other things—the prepared drugs, the bases that may be tampered with, the tinctures that may be watered down—”

She stopped abruptly, and they all looked at each other with appalled faces. Then, as if they were a Greek chorus, they all turned to look at the far end of the room, at the endless rows of shelves, stuffed from floor to ceiling with medical supplies and drugs.

After a long heavy silence Dev muttered, “We're going to have to go through every single item in the hospital. And only the doctors can do it. Only we can make a decision about whether it is usable or not.”

“I'll help,” Shiloh said sturdily. “I will know.”

Cheney looked sharply up at him. He said quietly, “You know it's true, don't you, Doc?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“I want to help,” he said simply. “I honestly do.”

Cheney smiled and took his hand. “We need your help, Shiloh. We always have.”

****

Later that morning, Officer Goodin came to the hospital to report. “He got away clean as a whistle,” he said flatly to Dev and Cheney, who were tending to patients while Shiloh and Cleve worked on the supplies in the cellar. “But I'm not going to give up on that lowdown cheating sharp. I don't even understand what he was doing, or stealing, or whatever, here at the hospital. But I'd like to put him away for good after seeing those little girls. And I've got several questions about his poor wife's death too. I'll find him. May take me a while, but I'll find him.”

Late that evening Cheney met Shiloh on the stairwell leading down to the cellar. “Hi, Doc,” he said easily. “I was just coming to sweep you off your feet and take you away from all this.”

“And I was coming to find you,” she said, taking his hand. “Before we go home, I want you to come with me.”

She led him to the men's ward, to one of the private rooms, and they went inside. Chairs were placed by the unconscious man's bed, and Cheney sat, motioning for Shiloh to take the chair next to hers.

“His name is Cornelius Melbourne,” Cheney said softly. “It was two weeks ago that he picked up his new phaeton and drove to pick up his girl and take her for a ride to show it off….”

Her voice, gentle and soft and low, wove Shiloh in a spell as he listened to the story in the warm, dim room. He watched his wife's face, so animated, so expressive, so vivacious, as she told him how the dying man had come to hold such an important place in her life in such a short period of time. When she told him of the kiss, he felt pain and it darkened his face, but he never took his eyes from her, and she kept speaking, telling him everything that had happened, and everything that she had felt, and everything that she had thought.

“And so I didn't tell you, Shiloh, because I was deliberately drawing away from you, trying to hurt you,” she said, her voice now raw and pained. “I was angry because you didn't want to be a doctor and be involved in this part of my life, so I did things like that to punish you.” She took a deep ragged breath and closed her eyes for a moment. Then she looked at him, looked deeply into his eyes and said, “I am so very sorry, Shiloh. I will try never to be so selfish and hurtful again. Will you forgive me?”

“Always,” he said instantly. “I love you more than my own life, Cheney. How could I stay angry with you? It would be like stabbing myself. I would only suffer. I forgive you today, tomorrow, forever.”

She leaned over, took his hands, and bent to press her lips to them. Quickly she straightened and nodded, her eyes bright in the firelight with unshed tears. “Thank you,” she said simply.

They sat in silence for a while, watching Cornelius Melbourne. He constantly strained, small animal grunts coming from him as his muscles contorted again and again. He was skeletal, his skin like old yellowing wax, his face so distorted it looked more like a naked skull than a man's features.

“He's already gone, you know,” Cheney said quietly.

Shiloh looked at her curiously. “Is he?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

She smiled serenely. “Because God is good, full of mercy and grace, and His loving-kindness endures forever. He gave Neil peace, and then He gave his parents peace, and now that I have been his final and faithful witness and told you of him, God has given me peace. I know that Neil is home in heaven, and I don't have to fear anymore.”

Shiloh stood up and held his hand out to her. “Cheney, it's time for you to come home now.”

She grasped his hand, rose, and said gratefully, “Home…yes, it's time for me to come home.”

****

Two hours later, they were sitting on their gigantic bed, sipping tea and eating big slabs of Sketes's German coffee cake. The one Shiloh had brought to the hospital had been such a huge success—it was the first one Sketes had ever tried—that she'd made another one.

“Fiona and Jauncy thought they were going to eat this one,” Shiloh told Cheney greedily, “but they were sadly mistaken. I took it away from them.”

“For shame, Shiloh!” Cheney scolded. “Taking cake away from them to feed to these horrible dogs!” Sean and Shannon had somehow, in the past days, managed to worm themselves into the bedroom at night, and now they were up on the bed itself. Once again Shiloh and Cheney's bed seemed too small for them.

“They're just babies. They need their nourishment,” Shiloh grandly pronounced. “And besides, I noticed that you're not exactly denying yourself so that the poor starving peasants may have cake, Madame Antoinette.”

Cheney intoned, “Fie on them. I'm hungry. And I do feel like some kind of libertine, taking off when there are four thousand things going on at the hospital and none of them good. I don't care. I might as well sink on down into full debauchery. I'm going to eat another piece.” She took another enormous bite of cake, all the while being watched intently and soulfully by Sean and Shannon. She broke off a couple of very small pieces—the dogs' tails thumping
ploomp-ploomp
against the down comforter—and gave them to the puppies. “Here, we may as well all sink down into the depths of iniquity together.”

“To be so depraved, Doc, you sure look pretty and sweet and happy. In fact, you look about fifty times better than you have in days. You're really all right, are you?” He spoke lightly, but his eyes were narrow and critical as he stared at her.

“I feel amazingly well, and yes, I am happy because I'm so glad to be home with you,” she said, her eyes bright.

He searched her face a few moments longer, then nodded, satisfied. “Okay, Doc. It's hard to believe you're doing so good after all that's happened. Let's start with that crazy murdering lunatic,” he said darkly. “What's the story on his poor wife?”

Cheney sighed. “I don't think she was murdered, Shiloh. She had a bump on her head. It had rough splinters in it and it had bled profusely, but there was no weapon found at the scene. You know that people can sustain a blow to the head that begins fatal bleeding in the brain, but they can live and even feel fairly well for hours, sometimes days. I think she fell and died of a subdural hematoma. I think she was taking so much laudanum—probably also Dev's presurgery absinthe prescriptive—that she was walking around in a drugged stupor.”

“Poor lady,” Shiloh said in a low voice. “Evidently she'd sunk pretty low since she came here. Mrs. Bowdoin said she was a successful opera diva in Paris.”

“I know. Victoria said she'd heard of Manon Fortier, that she had been well-known for several years. Do you know what the sad thing was, Shiloh? In the autopsy I found that she had hyperthyroidism.”

“She did? That thyroid disease? Did she have goiters?” he asked shrewdly.

“Yes, she did,” Cheney answered sadly. “Very small ones, but they definitely were pressing on her trachea. Enough to have affected her voice—particularly her operatic voice, as fragile as is that gift.”

“I thought that people with hyperthyroidism had tendencies to lose weight and have a lot of nervous energy. Manon had gained weight, hadn't she?”

“Yes, but my theory is that Dr. Pettijohn prescribed laudanum for her so that he wouldn't have to bother with her problems. And I think she became addicted to it, and therefore probably was very inactive, so she gained weight. I don't think he ever realized her thyroid condition. That is so easily cured. She could very possibly have continued with her career. I think if Dr. Pettijohn had known that, he certainly would have been pushing her back onto the stage.”

Shiloh frowned darkly. “I wish I could find that sorry wretch. I'd teach him a thing or two about skulking around down in cellars. Me and Syl Goodin would have him buried
under
the cellars in the Tombs.”

Cheney sighed. “You know, when Dev and I were trying to figure out exactly what Dr. Pettijohn had done, the enormity of his crimes almost overwhelmed both of us. It's been a long time since Dev horsewhipped anyone,” Cheney said with melancholy humor, “but I shudder to think what he would do if he had a horsewhip in his hand and Marcus Pettijohn in front of him.”

“He'd have to take his turn,” Shiloh grunted. “Anyway, Doc, besides his poor wife, what else did he do? I mean, I assumed he must be messing around with the drugs and supplies and probably had found a way to make money on them. Like the laudanum. He was watering it down, wasn't he? What was he doing, cutting it with whiskey and then selling the good stuff he'd siphoned off?”

“That's exactly what he was doing. Though Marcus closed his father's apothecary shop, old Mr. Pettijohn had developed a very lucrative mail-order business. He had initially set it up by personally calling on clients in all of the five boroughs, and in a couple of years it had developed so well that he didn't even have to make personal sales calls anymore. Well, Marcus kept the mail-order business going, and that was his outlet for the supplies and drugs he stole from the hospital. He was fiddling the paperwork and doing all sorts of clever things. Put all together, Dev and I think he may have been making two or three hundred dollars per month.”

“But what about the effect on the patients? I knew I shoulda said something! Do you think that filthy charpie and that gunk he was putting on her arm is why Wilhelmina got gangrene?” Shiloh asked, obviously worried.

Cheney took his hand and looked him straight in the eyes. “Shiloh, I think Wilhelmina got gangrene for the same reason that Geraldine got puerperal fever. I think Dr. Pettijohn thought he was so much better and smarter than everyone that he didn't think he needed to wash his hands like us barber-surgeons. I think he provided very poor care to Wilhelmina, and then he examined Geraldine and infected her. And I know for certain that it was not your fault, and it was not your responsibility. It was Marcus Pettijohn's fault and his burden to bear.”

Shiloh listened to her gravely. “You're right. You're exactly right, Doc. So you know this about the other patients too? Like Rebecca Green and especially Cornelius Melbourne?”

Cheney sighed. “You know, Shiloh, it's possible that Marcus Pettijohn may have caused their deaths. Mrs. Green's, by weakening the laudanum so that when I gave her a true morphine injection, she overdosed. And Neil Melbourne may have contracted tetanus from those cheap horse-gut sutures Pettijohn bought and substituted for our good sutures. But we'll never know. We'll never know Rebecca Green's cause of death because even an autopsy may not reflect her particular difficulties with her idiopathic reactions, and she certainly did have a terminal illness anyway. And Neil may very well have contracted tetanus from the street mud.

“But God has given me grace, and peace, about these poor patients, Shiloh. My conscience is clear, for I know I did the very best I could do. And so have you, my love. Especially with Mrs. Green.”