A Deadly Fortune

by Stacie Murphy

  On his second visit to one of the police stations, Jonas found the only real clue. A plump Irish sergeant, one who’d not been there on the day of his first visit, stopped him as he left. He’d heard something about a girl fitting Amelia’s description, and he was willing to talk, for a price. After a brief negotiation, they’d settled on an amount that was probably at least a week of the man’s pay. But if he had information, it was worth the cost. Jonas set his teeth and motioned for the man to get on with it.

  The sergeant told the story with relish. “Fought like the very devil, she did. Raved and choked and left bloody scratches on the first poor lad who tried to take her in.” He shook his head. “And her language. She sure didn’t seem like no lady, you’ll pardon me for saying so.”

  He gave Jonas a sly look and a nudge with his elbow. “But then, that’d be your business, whatever she is. I’m sure you’ve a good reason for looking for her, a wildcat like that.”

  Jonas ignored the innuendo. “You saw her when she was brought in? What did she look like?”

  “I couldn’t say, filthy as she was. But she was strong for such a tiny thing. But then, they say the mad have a wild sort o’ strength, don’t they? I remember one time, my first year with the force, when—”

  “Where is she now?” Jonas asked through clenched teeth.

  The man shrugged. “When they couldn’t get her to make any sense, they sent her over the river—out to the madhouse. I’d guess she’s still there. Sure didn’t look like she was fit to be out in the world. What they ought to do is—”

  Jonas did not stay to hear the end of the thought. He tossed the man his money and headed for the docks.

  According to the sergeant, Amelia had been out of her head when she was taken away, unable to communicate. It had been weeks since she’d disappeared. Surely she’d have come to herself by now? If she was still unwell… He grimaced. It would account for why no one had sent for him. But in that case, would they let him show up and take her away? What if she didn’t recognize him?

  He stopped on the sidewalk, ignoring a muttered oath as someone behind him was forced to check his steps. He needed more information. There was a sign ahead for a doctor’s office. Perhaps they would have a telephone he could use.

  They did, along with a directory and a pretty young nurse who was no match for the full force of his smile. Jonas paged through the directory and lifted the receiver.

  “How may I direct your call?” the operator asked.

  “City 1028-18, please.” He gave the nurse another quick glance. She blushed and busied herself with a stack of files.

  There was a click as the call connected, then a half dozen shrill rings before someone answered.

  “City Asylum, how may I assist you?” The voice was that of a young man, polite but distracted.

  “I’m looking for someone. I believe she may have been brought to you several weeks ago.”

  “Name and date of admission?”

  “Amelia Matthew,” he said, “and it would have been on or shortly after March twenty-first. She may also have been unidentified when she was brought in.”

  “One moment, please. I’ll check the ledger.”

  Jonas reminded himself to breathe.

  “I’m sorry, there’s no one here by that name. And there were no unidentified patients admitted that month.”

  “I was told she was brought to you,” Jonas said quickly, sensing the man wanted to end the call. “She must be there. Could I come to the island to look for her?”

  “Are you her husband or father? Because,” he continued before Jonas could answer, “if the doctors have not cleared her for release, then only her father or husband can take custody of her without an order from the court. If she were here, which she is not.”

  Jonas considered. He was too young to be Amelia’s father. “I’m her husband,” he said. From the corner of his eye, he saw the nurse stiffen from across the room.

  “Then, theoretically, if she were here, yes. You would bring your marriage certificate—”

  “My marriage certificate?”

  “Yes, or some other proof of the relationship. We can’t release a vulnerable patient without it. But really,” he said, a hint of compassion coloring his tone, “it’s a moot point. Your wife is not here. I wish you the best of luck in finding her.”

  He hung up.

  Jonas replaced the receiver and turned, not surprised to find the nurse now glaring at him. He fished some coins from his pocket and laid them on the desk as he left.

  Back on the street, he started toward the dock again, mostly because he didn’t have any better idea. He developed a vague notion of going to the island and trying to bluff his way through the lack of a marriage license. But he couldn’t be certain Amelia was even there.

  Thirty minutes’ walk brought him to the dock, where he was surprised to find he wasn’t alone. A number of other men, and a few women, waited with him. The men smoked and watched the women—obviously nurses, with their tidy uniforms and practical shoes. They stood apart and chattered in small groups, the younger, prettier ones making a show of ignoring the looks directed their way.

  The men were dressed less formally, in nondescript brown tunics and heavy trousers. They varied in age and build, some hulking, others small and whipcord thin, but with obvious sinewy strength in their arms. Jonas flexed his own biceps under his coat as he worked out the best approach. By the time the ferry arrived and a similar group disembarked, he’d decided. When those on shore boarded, he followed.

  Getting hired at the asylum was the easiest con he’d ever pulled. Apparently the turnover was appalling, because no one cared about his lack of qualifications. He’d been prepared to spin some sort of story, but the man who hired him merely looked him over, assessing the breadth of his shoulders and the muscles in his arms. He muttered something about faces that were too pretty before nodding.

  “You can start tomorrow. Three dollars a week, and you bring your own lunch. You’ll work some nights to start.”

  Jonas suppressed a grimace. Sabine wouldn’t like that. He nodded, and the man went on.

  “The job’s simple enough.” He looked Jonas in the eyes. “You do as you’re told, and mark me: no bothering the nurses.”

  Jonas promised not to seduce any nurses, and that was that.

  During the first week of work, he moved about as much of the facility as he could, trading shifts so he could work different wards and observe each of the doctors. Tyree was his favorite. He was the friendliest of the bunch, and he wasn’t averse to answering questions about the work. He’d even allowed Jonas to borrow books from the asylum library. They made for interesting reading, even if they didn’t help with his current quest. Harcourt was brusque and busy, almost never in the wards. Klafft was contemptuous and dismissive—and that bootlick of a secretary of his was no better. Most of the orderlies preferred working with Dr. Lawrence, who forgot they were there and, as a result, never required anything of them. Cavanaugh seemed decent enough, though Jonas hadn’t spent much time around him.

  Blending in with the orderlies was easy. He sat three times a day, cigarette in hand, taking an occasional pull to keep the tip burning and tapping ash onto the packed ground. He watched. He listened. And earlier in the week, his desperation and persistence had paid off: He’d spotted her. Amelia was there.

  He descended from the little rise where the tree stood and broke into a jog to catch up with the group. Out of habit, he kept one ear on their idle talk. Every now and then he picked up a useful tidbit. Most of his mind, however, focused on the thing that occupied him day and night: how to get Amelia away from this place.

  All legitimate channels were blocked. Jonas wasn’t her husband or father. He wasn’t technically a relative at all, come to that. And now that he was known by the staff, he couldn’t attempt the bluff. He grimaced. He might have been too clever by half there, but he’d been desperate.

  A bribe, perhaps. But he hadn’t yet identified a po
tential target, and, more to the point, he wasn’t sure they had enough money left. He hadn’t worked steadily since before Amelia’s injury, and two weeks of an orderly’s pay wasn’t going to tempt anyone.

  He looked up in time to avoid bumping into the man ahead of him. The clump had drifted to a stop as they turned the corner to the staff entrance. Outside the wide doors, a horse and wagon stood, the pale wood of one of the asylum’s cheap pine coffins just showing above the wagon’s sides. As they watched, the driver hauled himself into the seat, took up the reins, and clucked the old horse into motion.

  Deaths weren’t exactly common on the island, but neither were they rare enough to be surprising. Last night’s was the first since he’d arrived. Some sort of heart ailment, he’d heard. A good number of the patients were elderly, or sickly, or simply worn down by the harsh lives they’d lived. And there were always some few who were suicidal. Jonas sketched a reflexive sign of the cross as the coffin passed, then caught himself with a wry chuckle. Perils of a Catholic upbringing.

  He followed the group inside, glancing back one last time at the wagon carrying one of the only women he’d seen leaving the asylum since he arrived. As it disappeared over a rise, a little seed tumbled through his mind and took root.

  13

  The river was hammered bronze beneath the dawning sun. Andrew resisted the urge to check his watch yet again, knowing it wouldn’t get him onto the ferry any faster. There had been a death on the island overnight, it seemed, and the dockworkers refused to unload the coffin until the city wagon arrived to carry it away. Fair enough. In their place, he wouldn’t want to be left with a corpse and nothing but a promise that someone would come and take it away. But the delay—and its cause—only further increased his unease.

  He’d woken shortly after midnight from ragged, ponderous dreams and tossed for several hours before resigning himself to wakefulness. He lit the lamp and sat at the desk to reread the letters Ned had given him, already knowing he wouldn’t find anything new. The maid’s—Ellen’s—letter recounted precisely the story Ned had told him the day before, though he’d thought of several additional questions for her. He would ask Ned for the address, or perhaps have him write to her. Julia’s letter was unremarkable. There was no hint of any mental distress or disordered thought. The letter was warm, full of news of her daughter and the little doings of her household. The kind any fond sister might write to a sibling.

  The kind Susannah might have written to him someday, had things been different.

  Andrew folded the letters back into their envelope without looking at the photographs. He remembered well enough what they showed. The first, a simple portrait, revealed Julia Weaver to be a plain-faced, solemn woman—though there was kindness in her eyes. The other was a wider shot of Julia seated, her arm around the shoulders of the little girl standing beside her—Catherine, presumably. Julia was turned toward the child, and the angle of her hat meant only part of her face was visible. It would be next to no use in identifying her. It could have been anyone.

  The photos had lingered in his mind. In the most unsettling of the night’s dreams—the one that drove him from sleep and spurred his eventual rising—Andrew opened a door and came upon the precise tableau in the second photograph. For a moment, his dream self was delighted—Ned had asked him to find Julia, and there she was. Then the woman turned her head toward him. The face beneath the hat’s brim was Susannah’s.

  A little shudder ran through Andrew. He put his hand in his pocket and traced the outline of Susannah’s locket with his thumb. He’d plucked it from his desk that morning along with Julia’s photographs, which now resided in the pocket of his waistcoat. He had no idea why he’d brought both photographs, except that Ned had presented them as a pair, and so, to Andrew’s hazy, overstimulated brain, a pair they must remain. He shook himself alert as the wagon arrived. Still holding the locket, he waited as the coffin was carried away, then boarded the boat.

  Once on the island, Andrew fetched himself a cup of the asylum’s burned, tarry coffee, dumped in enough sugar to kill the taste, and got to work.

  By the time the head clerk, Winslow, arrived, Andrew had done a thorough review of the admissions register. There was no Julia Weaver or Julia Glenn anywhere in its pages.

  He questioned the young man, just to be certain. What, precisely, were the admissions procedures? Did patients ever arrive without paperwork? What happened when a patient’s name was unknown? Was Winslow absolutely certain that every patient in the asylum was in the register?

  Winslow answered his inquiries, at first easily and then with a growing thread of carefully suppressed irritation in his voice. Andrew finally realized he was verging on insult and forced himself to break off the interrogation.

  “Thank you,” he told the young man, who nodded stiffly and handed him his ward assignment before turning toward the pile of paperwork on his desk.

  Andrew left the main office strangely deflated. It seemed his initial instinct had been right. Ned’s sister wasn’t here. He would have to give his friend the news that evening. But perhaps he could still help. Andrew had contacts at other asylums, knew many of the small, private facilities that didn’t advertise. Julia could well be in one of those. He could at least give Ned a list of other places to look.

  That decided, Andrew glanced at the paper in his hand and couldn’t suppress a sigh. Ward five again. His mood darkened further when he arrived to find Klafft already there, preparing to begin “cold treatment” of a catatonic patient. The older doctor’s preferred methods were, according to everything Andrew had read, at least a quarter century out of date. But the man persisted in using them, and as Andrew had discovered, he was deeply resistant to newer theories.

  The woman in question lay on the cot, her eyes vacant and staring. She appeared entirely indifferent to the fact that she was about to be repeatedly dunked in icy water, wrapped in a wet sheet, and left to lie in a frigid room for several hours.

  But the plan struck Andrew as not only useless but actively cruel, so he ignored Klafft’s warning scowl and attempted to intervene.

  “I must question the utility of such a treatment,” Andrew said carefully.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw a pair of nurses exchange a knowing look. The two doctors’ tendency to clash had been noted by the staff, and Andrew suspected many of them found it entertaining. He reminded himself to remain calm.

  “Nonsense,” Klafft snapped. “It’s well-documented that cold baths are effective in treating the physical roots of hysteria and other feminine neuroses.”

  “But given Donkin’s theory that such neuroses are often the result of intellectual repression—”

  Klafft’s face tightened. “Intellectual repression! What rubbish. The average female brain weighs five ounces less than that of the average man’s. That alone must prepare us to expect a marked inferiority of intellectual ability—”

  “But if—” Andrew began.

  “—as well as greater risks from prolonged mental exertion,” Klafft continued. “It therefore follows that such exertion would lead to poor outcomes. Women’s minds and bodies are not equal to those of men. When they step outside their appropriate sphere—whether mentally or physically—they risk becoming unbalanced. Hysteria and other forms of instability”—Klafft indicated the patient without looking at her—“are the result. Physical treatments are a logical response.”

  Andrew’s resolve failed him. “That is an utterly antiquated notion,” he snapped. “Next you’ll be prescribing cures for a wandering womb. Any modern practitioner should know better than—”

  Klafft put up a hand, his face stony. “Enough. Dr. Cavanaugh, I have been treating mental disease for thirty years, and I will not be lectured to like a rank novice. Six months’ reading and an overenthusiastic self-regard do not entitle you to question my judgment.

  “You claim,” he continued, “to have come here to learn, and to do a particular kind of research. But I cannot say I’ve se
en you doing either. Instead, you persist in inserting yourself into cases I and the other doctors already have well in hand, and which clearly do not fit your so-called research criteria, all the while putting no apparent effort into finding those that do.

  “You want to treat patients?” Klafft made a sweeping gesture with one hand. “There are more than enough of them here. Go find your own and leave off interfering with mine.”

  He turned his back in unmistakable dismissal.

  Andrew swallowed a retort as the nurses whispered to each other and glanced in his direction. His face flaming, he left the ward with as much of his dignity as he could scrape together. Damn the man for a quack. Leeching that poor woman would do as much good as half freezing her.

  He stalked through the main hall, brooding, though a touch of chagrin crept in as he neared the main office. Klafft might be a jackass and a poor excuse for a physician, but Andrew had to admit he was not entirely wrong in his observation about Andrew’s work. It was true he spent much less of his time than he’d intended seeking subjects for his research. Partly, this was because all the cases were interesting in their own way. And with such overcrowding and poverty, his skills as a general practitioner were much in demand.

  But it was also because he was a coward.

  He’d meant to start at once. He wanted to understand, needed to. He owed it to Susannah to—