The Dr Benjamin Bones Omnibus

by Emma Jameson

  “Why did this Mrs. Freeman loathe Penny?”

  “Penny’s dad cheated Mrs. Freeman’s husband, or so the story goes. I never got it from the horse’s mouth. Some bad business in the last year or two.”

  Ben made a mental note to ask Lady Juliet about those moan sessions, assuming Mrs. Archer was correct. Just because she spoke the truth as she saw it didn’t mean those statements were accurate. “Where’s your husband now?”

  “In Plymouth.” Mrs. Archer stubbed out her dog end. “Lives with his aunt and stays down the pub more than he works. Never sends a farthing home to the boys, so I won’t let him put one boot over my threshold. At least we aren’t divorced.” She sighed. “I thought of him, truth be told, when you and Penny were struck down. Wondered if he’d started romancing the bottle on the job as well as off. Wouldn’t that be something, if he’d managed to kill his one great love because of his other great love?”

  “Wait. Are you saying Bobby drives a lorry?”

  “Yes, of course he does. If I were trying to investigate a murder—and heaven knows I’d have no choice in this village, what with that fool of an acting constable—I would have started with who owns a lorry, or drives one. That makes the most sense, doesn’t it?”

  Warmth crept up his throat, threatening to rise in his cheeks. Naturally, she was right. In London, the scope of such an inquiry would be impossible for a citizen acting alone, but Birdswing was perhaps small enough to manage. Why hadn’t he thought to begin with the murder weapon?

  “You are going to smoke the rest of it, aren’t you?” she asked, indicating his cigarette, which was transforming itself into a long cylinder of ash on the edge of his saucer.

  “No. I really must quit.” Ben passed it to her. “Mrs. Archer, I’m terribly grateful to you for sharing so many personal details. But I must ask you a still more difficult question. Do you think… do you imagine it’s possible—”

  “No.” She put him out of his agony with that one word, then puffed contentedly for a time before speaking again. “I told you. Bobby thinks Penny was his own true love. He’d never have killed her, except with whiskey breath and soppy promises. His aunt sent me word after he heard Penny was dead. Said he tore his clothes and pulled his hair and bawled like a baby. I never laughed so hard in my life.”

  He turned that over in his mind, wishing he had seen something, that he had some useful memory of that moment beyond the earthshattering smack of impact.

  “But you don’t have to take my word for it,” Mrs. Archer continued in her dull, uninflected way. “Bobby drove Singer’s lorries, the ones that carry furniture and carpets. Why don’t you call Mr. Singer and ask him if one of those lorries got a dented bonnet two months ago?”

  * * *

  “I told you she’d be happy to relate her tale of woe,” Lady Juliet said as she drove them back to Belsham Manor. “And the notion of asking about a damaged lorry is sound. I would have thought of it myself, I’m quite certain, if I weren’t trying to get my preparations for winter concluded. It’s the sort of gardening I don’t fancy at all. Raking, and loading the wheelbarrow, and dumping, and doing it all over again until you want to strike a match and have done with it.”

  “Isn’t that why your mum called in Miss Jenkins and the children? For help with all those menial tasks?” Ben allowed his first needle to sink in, then jabbed her with another. “Yet you said something about not letting them come near your roses, didn’t you?”

  Lady Juliet upshifted rather abruptly as they left the village, turning right onto Old Crow Road. As a result, the Crossley leapt forward so sharply it jarred him from tailbone to back teeth. “Don’t vex the driver.”

  “Point taken.”

  “However,” Lady Juliet went on, lifting her chin as she kept her hands at ten and two and her eyes on the road, “while you had your tête-à-tête with Mrs. Archer, I enjoyed a period of reflection beneath the hornbeam tree. Your suggestion that I may have misjudged Miss Jenkins is noted. When we return, I shall extend the hand of friendship. And, if she deems it appropriate, allow her class a more active role.”

  “That tree worked a miracle.”

  “I rather think it was the pie.”

  Once again they slipped into easy silence as they traveled. To his surprise, Ben found himself enjoying the ride, letting questions of Bobby Archer, the man’s affair with Penny, and a dented lorry temporarily fade. He often did the same with troubling patients, and these brief mental breaks seemed to help him redouble his concentration later. Though it still seemed somewhat unreal to him, Britain was a country at war. This land around him, these gentle hills and green-brown fields, was no longer safe; no part of the England he’d taken for granted would necessarily remain in a year, a month, or even a day. Lord Gort and over one hundred thousand men Ben’s age were already in France, with more preparing to go. He’d been chosen to remain at home—not his old home, London, but his new home, Birdswing. Surely that conferred upon him a responsibility to enjoy autumn’s splendor in the English countryside as much as he could.

  The first sign something was wrong came as the Crossley’s tires struck gravel, signifying the start of the long, winding drive that ended in a loop in front of Belsham Manor. Robbie trundled toward them in the manor’s old Bedford truck, hunched over the steering wheel with his gaze pointed down, as usual. Lady Juliet had to blow the horn to make him look up and perceive they were on a low speed collision course. When he did, he veered left, half onto the grass, and honked back at her, gesticulating behind him. It was the first time Ben had seen the old man appear agitated. It was the first time he’d seen the old man appear anything, come to think of it.

  “Good heavens. Is he having a fit?” Lady Juliet accelerated, taking the next rise fast enough to kick up dust. Near the stone fountain were Lady Victoria, Miss Jenkins, and her entire class. A few of the children were wandering here and there, but most had formed a loose cluster around their teacher, who knelt before something. The moment Lady Victoria caught sight of the Crossley, she began calling, “Dr. Bones! Dr. Bones!”

  As Ben approached on his crutches, wishing he’d thought to bring his doctor’s bag, Lady Victoria shooed the children aside. “We’re of no use here. Miss Jenkins and Dr. Bones will take care of Jane. Let’s all go inside and see if Cook has any treacle tarts left over, shall we?”

  As the class followed Lady Victoria up the stairs and through the manor’s double doors, Ben found Jane Daley sitting on the fountain lip. Her eyes were red, but she wasn’t crying. Her breath came in the quick, shallow hitches of a child in pain. Releasing Jane’s hand, Miss Jenkins rose to her feet so Ben could get closer. The girl looked up at him and moaned.

  “She’s shy of strangers,” Miss Jenkins said. “Jane, dear, Dr. Bones is here to help you. Tell him where it hurts.”

  The girl jumped off the fountain, or tried to. Her knees struck the gravel, eliciting a high thin cry almost like a whistle. Ben looked at Lady Juliet. “Help me down beside her.”

  It hurt, of course, getting down on both knees, but it had to be done. Jane’s thin chest heaved up and down inside her dress; her eyes were wild, darting like a cornered animal’s. Above him, Miss Jenkins was trying to give a history, but Ben tuned it out.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to fix this,” he told Jane. “Have you thrown up?”

  Jane shook her head, frizz bouncing.

  “Been to the lavatory a lot?”

  Another head shake.

  “Does something hurt?”

  “We think perhaps she ate something spoilt and her stomach—”

  Ben silenced Miss Jenkins with a stern look. Bad enough to put ideas in the minds of adult patients. Prompting a little one at the wrong moment could confound everything, because young children, trained to please adults, would nearly always declare the statement true.

  “Jane.” For the same reason, his physician-tone was useless—no point intimidating the chronically intimidated—so he spoke normally, pers
on to person, looking her in the eye. “What were you doing before you started feeling bad?”

  “Climbing… a, a… tree.”

  “Why did you stop?”

  The girl’s eyes flicked to Miss Jenkins. Clearly she’d been told to come down.

  “What did you do next?”

  “Put….” More quick, shallow breaths as Ben felt her forehead, which was damp with perspiration and a little warm. “Put my shoes on.”

  “Then what?” He shifted to her upper arm, pressing two fingers against her brachial artery. Her pulse raced.

  “It… it hurt.”

  “What hurt?”

  “My foot.”

  The girl whimpered when Lady Juliet lifted her back onto the fountain lip, and Ben tried not to whimper as she hauled him to his feet. Leaning hard on his crutches, he said, “Get Jane’s shoes and stockings off.” A thought had come to him, a notion put there by Mrs. Archer, of all people. It seemed today was his day for guidance from an unexpected source.

  The right foot proved unblemished, but a bit of blood marked the white stocking on the left. Beneath it, in the center of Jane’s heel, was a small wound surrounded by a circle of redness.

  “Is that a snakebite?” Miss Jenkins cried.

  “Spider bite, more likely,” Lady Juliet said. “Look, here’s the little bugger, flattened inside her shoe. A false widow, I’ll bet, though it’s too squashed to tell. Autumn brings them out.”

  “False widow? Like a black widow?” Miss Jenkins shrilled. “But those are deadly!”

  Jane tried to gasp, but all that came out was another thin whistle. Her airway was closing.

  “Pick her up!” Ben ordered Lady Juliet. “Take her to the car, now!”

  “Hospital?” Lady Juliet already had Jane in her arms.

  “Is the chemist’s closer?”

  “Yes.”

  “The chemist’s, then, fast as you dare!”

  And if that snake oil salesman didn’t stock every drug I asked for, Jane Daley’s as good as dead.

  “I Saw Him”

  28 October, 1939

  Although the tires of Lady Juliet’s Crossley struck every pothole between Old Crow Road and the sharp left turn onto Stafford, Ben hardly registered his own pain. Holding Jane tight in his lap, he stroked her hair and murmured to her, thanking God each time the jolting car forced a high-pitched moan from her lips. But as the Sheared Sheep and Daley’s Co-Op came into view, Jane sagged in Ben’s arms, silent but for a soft, tortured whistle of breath. Her airway was nearly closed.

  “Should we stop for her mum?” Lady Juliet asked, or tried to ask.

  Ben cut across her. “I said the chemist!”

  The Crossley lurched forward as Lady Juliet floored the accelerator. A dozen things came to Ben all at once—what if a farmer chose this moment to drive his sheep from east pasture to west? What if timid Mr. Piedmont was on the road, creeping with glacial slowness from home to grocer and back again? What if Mr. Dwerryhouse had nothing but castor oil and excuses when they—

  “Clear the road!” Lady Juliet cried, honking several times for good measure. The boys in the street, who appeared to be setting up some type of roller skate relay, leapt out of the way, knocking over a row of rubbish bins in the process. Shouts, a thrown rock, and some surprisingly adult words followed, but then the boys disappeared in the Crossley’s cloud of dust. Up ahead was Birdswing proper—neat houses, paved high street, and just visible, Dwerryhouse’s CHEMIST sign in black Gothic letters. Ben shook Jane gently, but her eyes were half-closed, and she made no sound. The child’s skin was clammy, pulse thready.

  “I can’t leave her,” Ben said as Lady Juliet skirted a car moving at normal speed, striking the curb and shaking the Crossley in the process. Something popped—a tire?—but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered, except that he issue orders and be obeyed. “Park as close as you can. Run inside—no, don’t look at me like that, you can run and I can’t!” Pretending not to recognize the terror in Lady Juliet’s face, he issued his instructions, forcing her to repeat them twice as the car thumped and bumped to a halt outside the chemist shop. A tire was indeed blown, and as Lady Juliet threw open her door and leapt out, Ben saw she’d struck a fence when she jumped the curb. The white wooden gate hung from the Crossley’s side panel, still trailing a few torn clematis vines. As Lady Juliet sprinted into Dwerryhouse’s shop, ARP Warden Gaston emerged from Morton’s scowling ferociously, his OFFICIAL AIR WARDEN BUSINESS notebook in hand.

  “Hang on,” Ben told Jane, praying in that wordless way that sometimes came to him: desperate, fervent, hopeful beyond reason. He’d never prayed for a miracle for himself, not in his entire life, but he’d often asked on behalf of his patients. “Don’t be afraid, sweetheart. You’ll be all right, you’ll be all right.” Her lips were turning blue.

  “What’s the meaning of—” Sticking his head into the cab on the driver’s side, Gaston trailed off when he saw Jane in Ben’s arms. “Something t’matter with the wee one?”

  “Anaphylaxis,” Ben shouted, hearing Dwerryhouse’s objections as the stooped, crooked-shouldered little man emerged with a cardboard box in one hand and a bottle in the other. Gaston hastily moved aside as Dwerryhouse passed over the box. Tearing it open, Ben fitted the 25 gauge, stainless steel needle into the glass hypodermic.

  “Lady Juliet told me spider bite.” Dwerryhouse’s high thin voice sounded more suspicious than usual. “What use is adrenalin chloride for—”

  Snatching the bottle away, Ben checked the concentration, did the math for a pediatric dose in his head—please God, please God, a misplaced decimal point could kill her—and flicked the hypodermic twice. A bit of adrenalin chloride, also known as epinephrine, squirted out, taking the air bubble with it. He plunged the needle into Jane’s thigh. “Gaston, do you have a car?”

  “Of course.”

  “We’ll need it to get her to St. Barnabas. Even if this works….” Ben stopped, staring at Jane. The blueness was spreading through her face. Her pulse still beat in her brachial artery; he could feel it against his fingertips, and that meant the adrenalin was coursing through her, undoing her allergic response to the false widow’s bite. Jane’s airway, temporarily sealed by swollen tissues, should be opening enough to permit at least shallow breaths. But the child still wasn’t breathing.

  Only desperation could have triggered what came next. He’d done such a thing twice in the maternity ward, once to a happy ending, once to no avail. Sometimes during labor, the baby received too little oxygen, emerging blue-faced and terrifyingly silent. Most textbooks recommended nothing but vigorous backside slaps. Yet seasoned doctors and nurses knew that sometimes, sealing one’s mouth around the infant’s nose and mouth and breathing into its lungs could elicit the babe’s own respiration. Jane was much too old for that; Ben had never heard of anyone trying such a thing. He didn’t know why he covered her mouth with his and forced his air into her lungs, because he wasn’t thinking, not truly. He was still praying that stubborn, fervent prayer, permitting his physical instincts to take over.

  “Doctor!” Mr. Dwerryhouse sounded shocked.

  “What on earth—” Gaston began, breaking off with an oof. Something or someone had silenced him, but Ben’s concentration was fixed on Jane. He filled her lungs twice, drew back, did it again. The fourth time, her legs jerked, and she pulled away, coughing.

  “God almighty,” he breathed as the girl’s cheeks regained their natural color, lips turning pink again. “Thank you.”

  “What did you do?” Dwerryhouse’s usually mistrustful tone carried a hint of wonder.

  “Something an old midwife taught me.” Ben rocked Jane in his arms as her weak coughs continued. She was damp with perspiration and trembling all over—shock was setting in—but St. Barnabas Hospital would treat her for that. And monitor her throughout the night, as her body disposed of the false widow toxin that usually left only a minor flesh wound yet had caused such a catastrophic reaction in one susceptible
little girl.

  “You hurt me,” ARP Warden Gaston accused Lady Juliet. Rubbing his side, he gave her a dark look.

  “Write me a citation for disrespect. I’ll happily pay it. After you drive Dr. Bones and Jane to St. Barnabas. And I am sorry for elbowing you,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. Eyes meeting Ben’s, she smiled. “I’ve never heard of such a thing, but it worked. You saved Jane’s life.”

  “We saved her life.” Everyone was watching him, seemingly expecting him to say more, but he had no desire to hear his own voice. The only thing he wanted to listen to was that thin, pained, steady intake of breath, the sweetest sound in the world.

  * * *

  Breakfast the next morning was a special occasion, thanks to Mrs. Cobblepot and the gratitude of Birdswing’s high street. Every resident who’d been home when Lady Juliet’s Crossley jumped the curb, sideswiped a fence, torn off a gate, and brutalized a clematis had come out to watch the commotion in front of Dwerryhouse’s. Ben hadn’t noticed; he’d spent the afternoon at St. Barnabas’s, getting to know two physicians who were expected, along with him, to oversee triage and direct dozens of nurses should their little corner of England suffer bombing raids. Both doctors were too old for military service, suspicious of adrenalin chloride for anything but asthma treatment, and astonished to hear that maternity ward “rescue breathing” had worked for Jane Daley. The child was well on her way to recovery by then, mother at her bedside, and Ben saw no reason to linger. By the time he made it home, catching a ride back to Fenton House with a gaggle of friendly nursing students bound for Plymouth, he’d missed dinner. But Mrs. Cobblepot had been busy in his absence.

  It wasn’t that rationing had taken its toll on their daily meals yet—there was only the two of them, after all, and Mr. Vine’s efforts to fairly distribute his reduced stock was still informal, though ration books were reportedly on the way. Mrs. Cobblepot insisted to Ben she was always allowed to buy just enough, and with careful management and creative use of leftovers, he rarely noticed what was missing: fish, which was “dear beyond reason” according to his housekeeper, corned beef, bananas, and oranges. The sugary puddings he liked had been replaced with more savory desserts: butter, margarine, and lard seemed easy to come by, while each sugar purchase was noted in Mr. Vine’s ledger. Rumors of shiny limousines pulling up to village grocers, and fur-clad city women rushing in to buy up all the sugar and tinned goods, had been taken as fact in Birdswing. Vine’s Emporium had even placed a sign in the front window: LOCAL TRADE AND FAIR SHARES STRICTLY ENFORCED. Mrs. Cobblepot could only buy enough bacon to serve twice a week, Wednesday and Sunday. So when Ben entered the kitchen that Sunday morning, the sizzling pop of bacon didn’t surprise him. It was the rest of the spread that made his mouth fall open.