by Sara Donati
“You do know me,” Oscar said. “What’s on the stove?”
* * *
• • •
THE SQUAT GLENWOOD stove, recently blacked, gleamed in the cool dim of the kitchen. The windows were wide open, but the smells were unmistakable: braising beef bones, stewing carrots, burnt sugar, milk brought to a boil, bread baked at sunrise. There was a faint smell of carbolic in the air, because of course Amelie Savard would scrub every surface as if she planned to conduct surgery on it.
She put out a loaf of bread and a platter of bacon cooked crisp, still slightly warm.
“Now tell me what really brings the two of you all the way out here.”
While Oscar told her about the Dakota she added a bowl of cheese curds and another of hard-boiled eggs to the table. She shook her head as he described carved banisters and bathrooms as big as her kitchen.
“You see what mischief people get up to when they’ve got too much money,” was her conclusion.
“You wouldn’t want to live in the Dakota if somebody offered you an apartment?” Jack could guess the answer but was curious to hear her reasoning.
“I like my comforts as well as the next person.” She sat down across from him and pointed with her chin at the kitchen window. It was covered with a fitted screen, as were all the windows in the house. An innovation that must have cost her a great deal, but she thought it well worth the cost.
She said, “But you’d think people would learn by a certain age that soft living won’t make you easy in your own skin.”
“This is a restful place you’ve got here, simple as it is,” Oscar agreed.
She glanced at each of them, her eyes narrowed. “Now, come along,” she said. “Tell me the rest of it. Something is on your mind, spit it out.”
“Tonino Russo,” Jack said. “He’s at Sophie’s house, sick.”
One brow twitched. “Go on.”
“We went to Greenwood for the weekend, so Sophie could see it. The boy has been off-color for more than a month. Anna hasn’t said so directly, but it looks about as bad as it can be.”
Amelie wrapped her arms around her waist. “Those poor girls.”
“Telling them he had to come back to the city was not the easiest thing we’ve ever done,” Jack said. “There was no peace to be had until we agreed to let them come too.”
He told her what he knew about the plans Anna and Sophie had made for Tonino.
“I’d have done the same,” Amelie said. “Dr. Jacobi is the right one to call in. Now you need to keep your mind off what you can’t help. Nothing more on the sorry business from last summer?”
Oscar was already rifling through his pockets and pulled out a handful of newspaper clippings.
“What are you looking for?” Jack asked him.
“The Visser death notice. I thought I had it.” He unfolded a couple of clippings and put them aside to sort through the others.
Like Anna, Amelie seemed unable to resist something to read. She picked up one of the clippings and held it out at arm’s length, squinting. Her nose wrinkled. “Gamblers.”
The next clipping didn’t interest her either, but then she took up the article Oscar had shown Jack earlier in the day. This time she reached into her apron pocket with her free hand to pull out a small magnifying glass and bent over it to read.
Oscar cleared his throat but Amelie held up a finger, asking him to wait.
Jack moved closer, hesitated a moment, and then sat down at the table across from her while her gaze moved down the page steadily.
When she looked up at him there was something unusual in her expression.
“This missing woman, Charlotte Louden, is this your case?”
Oscar cleared all the clippings to one side. “It is. Is the name familiar to you?”
“I know her,” Amelie said. “I delivered all four of her children.”
Oscar gave a soft grunt of surprise.
Jack said, “You were her midwife?”
Amelie’s attention returned to the article and then shifted to Jack. “She’s been missing so long. This is very alarming.”
“It is,” Oscar said. He didn’t offer false hope. Not to Amelie. “When did you last see her?”
“Before I moved up here,” Amelie said. “More than ten years.”
Jack said, “How did you end up with someone like Charlotte Louden as a patient?”
It was a logical question: the Louden and Abercrombie families were among those who set the tone in all social matters, including medical care. The ladies of the Four Hundred—those deemed by the most prominent as worthy—would have nothing less than the best, and according to Anna, they preferred doctors to midwives. Certainly to midwives who looked like Mohawk grandmothers.
Anna had said, “Oddly enough, once male doctors realized that they could charge a rich man a lot to tend his wife in labor, they started to push the midwives out. All they had to do was convince the husbands that their wives were too valuable a commodity for anyone but a man who had trained at the best hospitals and had all the latest instruments. It didn’t take long,” she said with more than her usual dry tone. “Of course everybody else still depends on midwives, and rightly so. Any woman would be far better off with Amelie than a doctor from Woman’s Hospital.”
But somehow Charlotte Louden had ended up with a woman of mixed blood as her midwife. And Amelie was distraught over the news of her patient’s disappearance, but not distraught enough to forget herself.
“You know I can’t talk to you about a patient. I hope you’ve learned that much from Anna.”
“She bought me my own copy of the American Medical Association’s Code of Ethics,” Jack said. “But I understand from it, and from talking to her, that you may share information if the patient is no longer living, and to assist in determining the cause and manner of death.”
Amelie’s brow folded. “If you really believe she’s dead, then why this article in the paper?”
“We don’t know that she is dead,” Oscar said. “But it’s a strong possibility. Stronger every day that goes by without any clue of where she might be.”
“If you don’t know she’s dead, I can’t talk to you about her.”
“Then don’t,” Jack said. “But in general, I’m interested in how it is that patients found you. Mostly by word of mouth?”
“That, and from the lists kept by the neighborhood druggists and apothecaries.”
“Like Smithson’s,” Oscar prompted.
“Yes, they referred patients to me before old Mr. Smithson died. Not after.”
There was a small silence while they considered Nora Smithson, who was still withholding evidence about her grandfather’s role in the multipara deaths.
“But there must have been other times you came by patients, let’s say, when you didn’t expect to,” Jack said.
For a long moment she considered him with narrowed eyes. “Yes, I was called on now and then in an emergency to someone I had never seen or treated.”
“Tell us about a time that happened,” Jack suggested. “No names, of course. Just the circumstances.”
She did not look pleased, but she pushed out a long sigh and nodded. “The situation was very unusual. I was just about to cross Fourteenth near Monument House when a fine carriage pulled over and a man jumped out, shouting for help. He looked like he was going to have an apoplexy. The excitable type, not much good in an emergency.”
One corner of Oscar’s mouth quirked, and Jack knew he was thinking of Louden.
“It was crowded and noisy as it usually is there, the worst traffic in the city. Nobody paid him any mind, of course. So he starts shouting that there’s a baby coming, right now, right now, right now, and he needs a doctor.”
“And you volunteered,” Jack said.
“Not exactly. I called over to him, I
said, ‘I’m a midwife.’ And he gives me this look like I offered to scalp him. But then a colored woman stuck her head out of the carriage, looked at me, and said to him, ‘Mr. Louden, sir! You get that midwife in here now.’ She didn’t yell it, but she had hit just the right tone, the way you talk to a man who is at the end of his rope.”
That would be Leontine Reed, Jack thought.
“And that’s what happened. He got out of the carriage and I got in. Baby was crowning already, but the mother was young and strong and she had her wits about her, though it was her first. And her maid was a help.”
“And you never saw her again?”
“I always called on women I delivered. The day after, the week after, the month after. More often, if there was any kind of trouble.”
“But not in this case.”
“Not ever with—that patient. Not that first time or for the ones that came after.”
“You attended every birth. Didn’t her family object?”
“Oh,” she laughed. “They objected. But she was strong willed. She’d only have her maid and me to attend her. Not even her mother was allowed in the room.”
Oscar said, “What about after she was done with the business of having children? Did you see her after that point?”
Amelie considered the question for a moment. “Yes.”
“You aren’t going to tell us why, or for what purpose,” Jack said.
“No.”
Oscar slapped the table with the palm of his hand. “Now I’ve got another question for you, something else entirely. Do you happen to know a lady’s maid by the name of Leontine Reed?”
Amelie shook her head at him, irritated and resigned both. “Yes, I know Mrs. Louden’s lady’s maid.”
There was a thrill that came when a race Jack feared lost suddenly opened up and the possibility of winning came back into focus. The first hint came when he saw recognition on Amelie’s face as she read the newspaper article, but now it flared to life.
“And when is the last time you saw Mrs. Reed?” Jack asked.
Amelie turned the magnifying glass over once, twice, three times as she thought. When she looked at Jack there was something of amusement in her expression.
“Not so long ago. She was here for a week and then she went off on a trip.”
Oscar’s jaw fell open and then snapped shut.
She said, “Leontine comes to me every year for part of her holiday.”
“And where is she now, do you know?” Jack kept his tone easy, or he meant to. But she wasn’t fooled.
“She turned sixty-six this past January, and Mrs. Louden gave Leontine a pension. She was free to do as she pleased, for the first time since she was a girl.”
“So where did she go?” Oscar asked, letting his agitation rise.
“To Boston, to visit her nieces. Before you ask, all I know are their first names. I couldn’t tell you how to find them. That’s really the truth, I wouldn’t know where to start looking for Leontine. Eventually she’ll write a letter, but it may be weeks still before I hear from her. Or longer.”
“Well,” Oscar said, slumping in his chair. “Ain’t this a fine kettle of fish.”
“She doesn’t know that Mrs. Louden is missing,” Jack said.
“How could she?” Amelie said. “Unless this article ran in the Boston papers?”
Oscar shook his head. “We can make that happen but it will take a day or two at least.”
“I don’t know that finding her would be of any help to you, anyway. From what I read here it looks like Mrs. Louden disappeared a week after Leontine got here.”
“Let me see if I have this straight,” Oscar said. “Leontine Reed is a friend of yours, and has been for years. She comes and stays when she has holiday.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Did Mrs. Louden know about your friendship?”
Amelie looked surprised at the question. “I doubt it. It’s not the kind of thing a lady like Charlotte Louden wants to hear about from her maid. No matter how long she’s been in service.”
“Fine. Now, after she left here she went to Boston, but you don’t know where exactly.”
Amelie shook her head. “Leontine never talked much about her family, and I didn’t push.”
“Tell me this,” Jack said. “You attended her mistress four times, at least. Anna has said to me that you get to know a lot about a woman as a midwife. Would you agree on that point?”
“I’d say that’s true the world over, yes.”
“So can you imagine Charlotte Louden leaving her family without a word of explanation? Does that feel right to you?”
Amelie pushed herself away from the table and went to the stove, where she hefted the water kettle and then set it back down. He was asking her to violate an oath, to reveal information about a patient. Whether she answered him would give them an idea of how desperate she believed the situation to be.
“No,” she said, her back to them. “I don’t think she’d do that, not of her own free will.”
* * *
• • •
WHEN SHE HAD made tea and poured it she sat back down at the table and Jack saw that her eyes were damp. He had just about decided that they should give her some privacy and be on their way when Oscar asked a question that changed the mood entirely.
“Charlotte Louden would be around forty-five. Is it possible she’s in a family way, could that be?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s just one line of thought.”
Amelie tapped the table, her irritation coming to the fore. “And if she were?”
Oscar shrugged, but his gaze was unwavering. “That’s the question. If she were, what then?”
For a full minute Jack watched the thoughts chase back and forth behind her eyes. He saw an idea come to her, and he saw her push it away. And then give in to it.
“She’d send for me.”
Jack cleared his throat. “She would come to your house across from the Northern Dispensary?”
A flicker of amusement crossed her face. “Mrs. Louden? No. When she had need of me she sent word, and I came to her.”
“When did that last happen?”
“Maybe twelve years ago. I could check my day-books, but what would that mean to you?”
“Here’s the question.” Oscar rolled his empty cup between his palms. “Say she decides she needs to consult you. Does she know where to call? Does she think you’re still in the city?”
“I don’t have any way of knowing that.”
“But logically,” Jack said. “Is it possible she might go looking for you where you used to live?”
“That’s only logical if she actually knew where my house was. And I doubt she did. When she needed me she sent the driver or Leontine to get me—” Her face went slack. “But she knew what apothecary I used. I brought her medications and teas and such in apothecary tins and bottles, and those were always labeled.”
Oscar said, “So let’s say Leontine’s gone, and Mrs. Louden wants to find you. You think she would have asked at Smithson’s?”
Jack leaned toward her. “Hold on a minute, Amelie. You look like you’re going to be sick.”
“I feel like I am too.” She produced a handkerchief and wiped her face. “Before we go any further, you never answered the question I asked first. Have you made any progress with the multipara homicides since I talked to you last?”
“Strange you should raise the subject,” Oscar said slowly. “We have another victim. Or at least, Anna and Sophie think we do. The case is different than the others, but the similarities were obvious to them. What’s the connection?”
Amelie crossed her arms at her waist and made a low sound in her throat.
“Tell me about this new case,” she said. “And don�
�t leave anything out.”
* * *
• • •
WHEN JACK AND Oscar had related as much detail as they could remember about Nicola Visser, her last months and her death, Amelie just sat and thought for a long moment.
“Anna and Sophie think this is a multipara case.” It was more a statement than a question.
Jack said, “On the basis of the autopsy. Nicholas Lambert seems to lean that way too. It’s hard to discount all three of them.”
Oscar got up and began to pace the kitchen, from table to window to door and back again, turning suddenly toward Amelie.
“What are you holding back?”
Amelie flapped a hand at him as she would at a pesky fly. “Oscar Maroney, how well do you know me? If I could give you what you need to stop women being cut up and tortured, you think I’d hesitate?”
The air went out of him. “No. I know you wouldn’t. But there’s something, I can see it on your face.”
Jack watched the two of them hold a whole conversation, glance by glance, and waited.
“I’ll say this much,” she said, grimly. “There’s something, some detail that’s picking at me. Maybe something relevant.”
“About Charlotte Louden, or the new case?”
She shook her head. “Don’t ask me any questions just now. I need to go back through my day-books to figure it out.”
Oscar spread his arms out. “No time like the present, say I.”
Her mouth compressed briefly, and in that moment Amelie reminded Jack of his own mother when she was balanced on the fine edge between irritation and anger. Before he could intercede she said, “Fine. You two go out and do some digging for me in the garden and I’ll see what I can find in my day-books. And you’ll accept my word, Oscar Maroney, if I don’t have any information for you in the end.”
She had gotten through to him, finally. He looked both affronted and ashamed, an unusual expression for Oscar.
“Of course,” he said, shrugging off his jacket. “You’ll find us in the garden when you’re ready.”