by Emma Jameson
* * *
The next two weeks were busy, pleasantly so, as all of Mrs. Cobblepot’s not-so-psychic predictions came true. According to the orders the Army had issued him, Birdswing village was home to over one thousand souls, and its neighbor, the hamlet called Barking, had just under a thousand. Of course, with most men aged eighteen to forty conscripted into the service, that population was down by almost half, but it was still a goodly number for one physician to serve. Once Ben was back on his feet, he would be expected to help at St. Barnabas Hospital as well, particularly in the event of air strikes. The villagers knew this, knew Ben might even be required to travel back and forth to Plymouth if the southwest was heavily hit. Still, the steady influx of new patients not only kept Ben busy but Mrs. Cobblepot, too. After “requisitioning” a dented filing cabinet from her brother, Acting Constable Gaston, she now spent each evening sorting Ben’s notes and transferring them into neatly labeled files.
“You shouldn’t have to fret over that. You work hard enough as it is,” Ben said one night as he rested against the parallel bars set up in his front parlor. As the tea leaves foretold, Lady Juliet had sent them over, announcing that a woman as busy as she had no use for old gymnastic equipment gathering dust in Belsham Manor. Ben’s right leg had responded beautifully to his self-directed therapy, but his left leg was a different story. So it wasn’t the housekeeper’s organizational skills that put him on the verge of suggesting she retire with a novel and a cup of tea, and let him worry about chart making. It was the vicious throb in his left leg, radiating from his poorly mended femur to his knee, that made him eager for an excuse to stop. He wasn’t certain he’d ever enjoy another day altogether free from pain.
If so, what of it? Men will be back soon enough without arms or legs, or never return at all, buried in foreign soil. At least I’ve graduated from wheelchair to crutches and can stand five minutes without falling. Some would give their eyeteeth for that.
“I enjoy it.” As she looked up, Mrs. Cobblepot’s horn-rimmed glasses flashed in the lamplight. To ensure they obeyed blackout restrictions, she not only covered Fenton House’s windows with cardboard, she did all her evening chores—washing up, mending clothes, chart work—by the light of a single lamp. The result was heavy gloom from supper to dawn but prevented her brother from pounding on the cottage door shouting, “Douse that light! Douse it in the name of the king!” Mrs. Cobblepot professed love for her zealot-brother, but had also mentioned in her matter-of-fact way that if he accused her of signaling enemy aircraft once more, he’d be the one pulling himself along on the parallel bars, learning to walk again.
“It’s you who needs a rest,” she added, placing a completed chart on the day’s pile. “Next Monday will bring another flood. Two or three may even be sick, if you can find them amid all the friendly mums and marriageable young women.”
Ben mopped his brow with a flannel. “I suppose it would be churlish of me to complain.”
“Nonsense. You’re newly widowed. It’s a scandal the way these mothers hurl their daughters at you. You’d think the menfolk were never coming back.” She picked up the next page, a brief note—“healthy, well-nourished, mild headaches, recommend fresh air and adequate sleep”—on yet another ostensibly ill young woman who’d turned up in his office perfumed, beribboned, and kitted out in her best frock and patent leather heels. “Mind you, many of them won’t be coming back. And Lord knows how long the war will go on. Men in reserved occupations are more romantic than dukes and cinema stars.”
Fitting his crutches under each arm, Ben let that remark pass. Romance was the last thing on his mind, as each day was struggle enough. Not just with his rehabilitation but with running a medical practice with Victorian paraphernalia, not to mention a local chemist who seemed to have crawled straight out of the Dark Ages.
Mr. Dwerryhouse, a little man with a hooked nose and a left shoulder several inches higher than his right, distrusted Ben’s prescriptions for sulfa drugs. And though he’d stocked the newfangled medicines Ben requested, he advised his customers not to take them. At his shop, cod liver oil was the supreme cure-all, followed closely by a health tonic made with arsenic and mercury for stubborn cases. Apparently he’d enjoyed a close working relationship with old Dr. Egon and felt obliged out of loyalty to thwart the man’s replacement at every turn.
Heaven only knew when the modern medical equipment Ben had sent away for would arrive. The Army got first pick of everything, naturally, and many scientific companies had converted their factories to manufacture nothing but military supplies. Viewed from that height, the needs of a country physician were too small to be seen.
At least no more mysterious notes had arrived, although Ben sometimes wished they would if it would light a fire beneath Mr. Gaston’s rear. The man toiled from daybreak to well past dusk, laboring on his backyard bomb shelter, painting curbs white so they would be more visible during the blackout, and conducting surprise inspections of rubbish bins to determine if food was being wasted. According to rumor—and it was true what Lady Juliet had said, the birds did sing in Birdswing—Mr. Gaston had also advised Mr. Vine and Mrs. Daley to begin voluntarily rationing food in advance of government decree, offering to stand guard himself as the new rules were applied “to forestall a riot.” For a man of his years, Mr. Gaston seemed to be in all places at once, his fingers in every pie but one—the question of whether Penny Bones’s death had been an accident or murder.
I’ll ask Lady Juliet how to proceed. Ring her up at the manor first thing tomorrow, Ben thought, suddenly too tired to follow through with his plan of sitting down beside Mrs. Cobblepot and helping her finish the day’s charts. So he said good night, squinted against the semi-darkness, and went half-blind to his temporary bedroom, crutches thumping all the way.
As always since moving into the cottage, sleep came swiftly and deeply. When Ben sat up in bed, jerking awake to the sound of more thumps, he had the absurd notion his crutches were roaming Fenton House by themselves. He started to laugh, but the sound froze in his throat, swelling like water into ice that seemed to cut off his air.
Why was the bedroom so cold?
Passing a hand over his face, he waited, listening. Just as he started to settle back under the covers, there came another thump, then a smaller noise like a rattle.
Someone is in this house.
He knew it, knew it absolutely, and wished he owned a hunting rifle or cricket bat to drive them away. In a village like Birdswing, the housebreaker might be a tramp. But might also be a fringe dweller, a smallholder desperate enough to break into the crippled doctor’s home.
There’s a cricket bat in that old chest. Or my crutch might do. Ben swung his legs over the side of the bed with a suppressed groan. He was decent, at least, wearing the striped cotton pajamas he’d purchased after Mrs. Cobblepot moved in, lest a midnight air raid reveal he preferred to sleep nude.
Decent? Fitting the crutches beneath each arm, he exited the converted sewing room. I’m turning into a true villager if I’m worried about decency while surprising a housebreaker … .
It was pitch black inside the parlor. As Ben ran his fingers along the cold plaster wall, searching for the light switch, he heard another sound, dry and slithery, like rustling robes. It sent a jolt of fear up his spine and directly into his heart, which leapt into overdrive.
“Who’s that?” he shouted into the dark.
Silence.
Heart thudding hard against his ribs, he ran his shaking hand over the wall again. It touched something clammy.
The switch!
Even as he flipped it and the low-wattage lamp came to life, casting yellow incandescent light in a muted circle, he felt—imagined?—something brush against him as it passed by. It was like passing a hand through water and feeling spiders instead; life where it shouldn’t be, eyes where they couldn’t be, a vitality both familiar, alien, and utterly out of context.
As his eyes adjusted to the lamplight, he noticed the batter
ed old steamer trunk. It was pulled forward a few feet, and open. The cricket bat he’d thought to arm himself with lay on the carpet, no doubt the cause of at least one thump. The “talking board” he’d examined, so similar to the one his grandmother had once forbidden him to touch, was also out. So was the doll, in two pieces.
“Dr. Bones! You almost frightened me to death!” Mrs. Cobblepot appeared in the opposite doorway in kerchief and wrapper, face oddly defenseless without her horn-rimmed glasses. “Did you get up for a glass of water and trip in the dark?”
“No. I heard something. A housebreaker,” he said, still staring at the Ouija board. The doll’s body had fallen in a heap. Its round, wide-eyed, solemn face stared at him from atop the word HELLO.
“Housebreaker?” Seizing the cricket bat from the floor, she announced in tones that must have terrified many a naughty student, “Anyone who trespasses here will get a right walloping!”
Chuckling weakly, Ben realized the worst of his fear had passed. It was hard to maintain superstitious terror with an armed old woman bellowing threats into the night. “I’m not sure anyone was ever here. Fringe benefit of the blackout—no need to go round checking windows for one that was jimmied open. This place is shut up tight as a drum.”
“Well, someone must have been here. They’ve rifled poor Lucy’s things.”
Gooseflesh rose on Ben’s arms. “That stuff belongs to her?”
“Belonged, yes. We let the house remain furnished for too long after she died,” Mrs. Cobblepot said, replacing the cricket bat inside the battered trunk. “People were so afraid of the gas, you know, after all that on the wireless about possible gas attacks from Germany. We didn’t make a clean sweep until Lady Victoria and Lady Juliet decided Fenton House would be yours. Almost everything went at auction, but most of us who knew her took a keepsake or two. Miss Jenkins—she teaches primary school now—took this trunk, but brought it back a few days later. Said it gave her bad dreams.” Putting the broken doll and Ouija board inside as well, she closed the trunk and pushed it back into its usual spot. “Just wait until the next evacuation sends a wave of city children our way and her little class is overflowing. She’ll have no time for dreaming then!” Peering at the mantle clock, she added, “We still have a good few hours before dawn. Would you like me to warm some milk for you?”
“No, thank you.” He always frowned when the housekeeper coddled him like that, but in his secret heart, he rather liked it. “Only—if no one broke in, what happened? Who rifled Lucy’s things?”
“Well, I don’t sleepwalk, so it must have been you, Dr. Bones.”
“No. I heard the thumping… at first I thought my crutches were walking around by themselves… something about being decent….” He stopped, realizing how silly it sounded, as garbled as the average dream.
“And woke up in here,” Mrs. Cobblepot concluded for him. “When I called your name, you looked stupefied. Hair mussed, mouth open. Asleep on your feet.”
Ben, who’d never walked in his sleep, took up the notion eagerly. “You’re right, of course. If I still used the wheelchair, I suppose it would have been sleep-rolling. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. Goodnight, Mrs. Cobblepot.”
Once in bed again, it took a long time to drift off. Upstairs, a proper bed awaited, as soon as he was strong enough; this mattress was thin, the sheets scratchy, the pillow as flat and uncomfortable as a punctured tire. Lucy McGregor had used this room for sewing; he would make it his chart room, and possibly store emergency medical supplies here as well, assuming the Army allowed any to be shipped his way. Curling up as much as his stiff left leg allowed, Ben started a mental inventory. Gauze bandage rolls. Iodine. Cotton wool. Smelling salts….
He tried to keep his thoughts marching stolidly down the list, but the last thing he saw before he fell asleep was that pale solemn doll’s face, lying beside the word HELLO.
Venom
28 October, 1939
“Yes, indeed,” Lady Juliet said before Ben could finish asking her to lunch. The telephone lines between Birdswing’s high street and Belsham Manor often yielded a static-filled connection, but her strong voice came over like she was in the next room. “We’re preparing to winter the roses here, and I’ve never been more thoroughly frustrated in the whole of my life. If I ever profess so much as a passing fondness for children again, have me dragged into the village square and flogged.”
“Children?” he repeated, thinking he’d misheard.
“I fear so. Mother continues her crusade to be of use to the community, and therefore, I continue to suffer. She’s invited Miss Jenkins and what can only be described as a passel of little ones to spend Saturday in the gardens, learning about horticulture by helping me,” Lady Juliet scoffed. “Next year I shall grow carnivorous plants large enough to make a dent in any would-be assistants. So, yes. Lunch. But I fear you must come to me, as even reluctant hostesses are permitted no egress. Are you driving yet?”
“No.” Clearly she hadn’t heard about his attempt a few days before. The vehicle had three pedals—clutch, accelerator, and brake. And while he could manage the clutch with his left leg, trouble braking had caused a near-collision with the speeding Mrs. Sutton and her mud-spattered Citroën.
“Very well, I’ll send the car around. I fear Cook will be serving boiled mutton with potato pastries and prune sponge. Are you averse?”
“Not at all. I should tell you this is more than a social call. I intend on begging a bit of advice.”
“Naturally. And you needn’t plead for it to start, though you may plead for it to stop.” She rang off.
Chuckling, Ben put the receiver back in its cradle. Perhaps Lady Juliet’s tendency to skip goodbyes was only a habit, not a form of censure.
He arrived at Belsham Manor just before noon. It was a lovely day, mild enough to be late summer, with a gentle breeze that sent puffy clouds scudding across a bright blue sky. Oaks in their reddish-orange autumn finery still looked robust, but the yews were half bare already, drifts of golden leaves around them. The manor itself was less jarring on second viewing, though with Halloween approaching, Ben had no trouble superimposing a little agreeable spookiness atop the asymmetric heap. That reminded him of Lady Juliet’s comment—“Until I was eight, I assumed we were secretly vampires”—and he smiled. What would she make of his apparent sleepwalking the previous night?
“Over here, Dr. Bones!” Lady Juliet boomed as he disembarked from the car. After thanking the driver, Belsham Manor’s ancient retainer, Robbie—once in normal tones, then twice in a shout, since Robbie was deaf as a post—Ben thumped along on his crutches over dying grass and gravel paths toward the sound of her voice. Children were everywhere, a few older ones pulling weeds or raking leaves, the rest dashing here and there, giggling, shouting, calling back and forth. Alone by a wrought iron obelisk covered with white climbing roses sat Mrs. Daley’s daughter, Jane. She couldn’t have been more than four years old, with skinny limbs, café au lait skin, and a storm cloud of frizzy brown hair. Her eyes followed him as he went, perhaps because of the crutches, but when he tossed out, “Hallo,” she looked away.
Ben found Lady Juliet seated in a summerhouse alongside Lady Victoria and a petite young woman with shoulder-length ginger hair. Seeing him approach, the redhead smiled, and Ben smiled back, some automatic masculine instinct warning him not to grin too widely. In the last two weeks, the hopeful mothers of Birdswing and Barking had paraded some pretty girls across his path, but now he’d come face to face with the prettiest.
“Dr. Bones!” Lady Victoria looked splendid as ever in a pale blue tea-length frock, hat, and gloves. Rising, she came forth to greet him, beaming as he easily traversed the summerhouse’s three shallow steps. “What progress you’ve made. I know you’ve been practically under house arrest in your new office, held captive by all the aches and pains of Birdswing. So perhaps you haven’t yet been introduced to our primary school teacher, Miss Rose Jenkins.” Turning to the redhead, who was dressed in a
practical chambray skirt and blouse with a yellow kerchief round her neck, she said, “Miss Jenkins, I’d like you to meet Dr. Benjamin Bones.”
“Hello, doctor.” Rising gracefully, Miss Jenkins accepted his hand, meeting his gaze with sea-green eyes. “I’ve been meaning to bring over a pie to welcome you to Birdswing, but there was practically a line to the street.”
“All of them female,” came a comment from Lady Juliet’s vicinity, but when Ben managed to look away from Miss Jenkins, Lady Juliet seemed not to have spoken. Hands folded in her lap, she watched the children.
“Yes, well, it will keep me out of the bread line.” Usually Ben could think of something to say, could make polite conversation like grown men had done since the dawn of civilization, but at the moment his mind was blank. Instead of commenting on the fine weather, the children’s efforts to help, or gardening in general, he heard himself say, “With those eyes and that hair, I can’t help but wonder, are you Irish?”
“God save the King,” Lady Juliet burst out, surging to her feet like a force of nature. “No, Mother, I’m not swearing, I just suffered a sort of patriotic spasm. To answer your question, Dr. Bones, Miss Jenkins is as English as you or I, a wonderful teacher, and very pleased to meet you, if I do say so myself.” With scarcely a pause for breath, she continued, “Now. Lunch was promised and I’m famished. Mother, Miss Jenkins, would you mind terribly if Dr. Bones and I drove into Birdswing for lunch? He’s come seeking my advice, and I intend to give it at length, which is sure to bore you to tears. No doubt you two have something wonderfully feminine to discuss in the meantime.”
Folding her arms across her chest, Miss Jenkins looked away. “I’ll be glad to stay with Lady Victoria and the children,” she said in a determinedly cheerful tone.
Lady Victoria gave her daughter a cool-eyed smile, conveying refined disapproval without saying a word. As rebukes went, it was so discreet, Lady Juliet could have pretended not to receive it. Except she appeared incapable of letting her mother have the last word, even if that word was silent.