Jack, Knave and Fool

by Alexander, Bruce

  I thought to say something reassuring. “Where you might be made well.” Lady Fielding came up behind, asking what Clarissa had said. Having been informed, she kept up a steady stream of encouragement to the girl through the courtyard and back down Half-Moon Passage as we made our return to the waiting hackney coach. I know not whether Clarissa truly understood, yet she seemed to take heart somehow as she bumped along in my arms.

  Those who passed us by seemed to give us a wide berth. They shrank back, stared, muttered to one another. There was then in London even greater fear than today of sickness of any sort. Therefore I was not much surprised when, upon our arrival at the hackney, the driver protested strongly against accepting Clarissa in her state as a passenger. Yet I was somewhat taken aback by the fierceness with which Lady Fielding met his protests. She threatened him with the power of the magistrate; she threatened him with the Bow Street Runners; she assured him that it was more than likely he would never again be permitted to drive a hackney coach in Westminster or the City if he did not return us now —and quickly —to Number 4 Bow Street.

  Cowed, intimidated, all but brought to his knees (speaking figuratively, of course), the poor fellow gave in with a single question.

  “She ain’t got the plague or some such horrible disease, has she?” “Certainly she has not!” said Lady Fielding most emphatically. (I found myself wondering just how she could be so sure.) “Awright, then,” said the driver, “put her aboard, and let’s get it over with.” That was easier said than done. Coach doors are none too wide, and to work Clarissa and myself through one could not be accomplished without a struggle and a bit of bumping. Still, it was done, and when I had the girl upright on the facing seat, I found her eyes open and her mouth twisted in a smile; she seemed to be coughing — but then, only then, did I realize that she was laughing at me.

  “Well, Miss Pooh, I’m glad to see you’re not so ill that you can’t have a bit of fun at my expense. I apologize for the bumps. I did the best I could.”

  Then did Lady Fielding enter the coach, pull the door shut, and take a seat beside her.

  “What’s this? What’s this? Having a conversation, are you? You shouldn’t tire her if she’s awake. Here, child, lean on me. It won’t be long until we have you warm, and in a proper bed.” Then did she halt, quite suddenly aghast. “Oh, but Jeremy! Where shall we put her?”

  The answer to that, as I had foreseen, was in my bed. Sir John and Lady Fielding’s was out of the question. Annie’s, which was wide enough, could not be shared with one so ill. Mine alone would do, and so I offered it, volunteering to sleep in the kitchen on a pallet before the fireplace. My offer was accepted.

  Getting her out of the coach was not near so difficult as getting her in. Lady Fielding aided, and Clarissa, now fully conscious, was also able to be of some help. Nevertheless, it was I who carried her into Number 4 and would have taken her alone all the way upstairs were it not for the help of Mr. Fuller, which was offered along the way. He and I ascended quite slowly, careful of the load we carried between us. Such concentration called for quiet, and in our silence above I heard voices rise from the courtroom below. One of them I recognized as Mr. Donnelly’s. I knew that I must fetch him from the inquest ere he left for his surgery.

  Thus it was that when at last we eased her down upon my bed high in the little room above them all, I left Lady Fielding to arrange things properly and returned downstairs with Mr. Fuller. There I entered the courtroom and stood by the door, searching the room for Mr. Donnelly.

  He was not hard to locate —except he had his back to me. Standing before Mr. Trezavant, he was just concluding his testimony: “… and so, in summary, I would say that the ulcerated areas of her esophagus and stomach, the blisters upon her tongue, and the damage to her kidneys are of the sort that one might indeed expect to find in a case of arsenic poisoning.” (Perhaps there was more and greater detail, reader, but having no medical knowledge to speak of, I commit here to paper only that which I can recall with some degree of exactitude.) Having made his statement, he kept his silence as Mr. Trezavant took a moment to confer with Sir John, who sat beside him at the table.

  Concluding, Mr. Trezavant dismissed Mr. Donnelly and summoned Dr. Isaac Diller. As Mr. Donnelly turned round to take his seat once again among the witnesses, I waved at him, caught his attention, and beckoned him to I Indoor. He came, frowning.

  “What is it, Jeremy? Can’t it wait?”

  “I don’t think so, sir. Lady Fielding has brought in a patient, a girl of about twelve. Could you look at her? She seems quite ill —fever, difficulty breathing, all of that.”

  “Well … all right. Just let me get my bag.”

  As he went to fetch it, I surveyed the room once more and noted that among those witnesses present were Arthur Paltrow, the new Lord Laningham, and Maggie, the deceased lady’s maid. The coroner’s jury was in no wise impressive; most had probably been bribed off the streets to take part in the proceedings. As Mr. Donnelly returned, bag and hat in hand, Mr. Diller began to hold forth in rotund tones upon his qualifications and honors. From the sound of him he would be at it ten minutes or more before getting on to the true subject of the inquiry.

  Mr. Donnelly simply nodded to me, and we exited the courtroom. I led him up the stairs, explaining as I went that the girl had been put in my bed up on the top floor.

  “That may not have been wise,” said he. “We know not what manner of contagion she may carry.”

  “Nevertheless, sir, that is where she is.”

  “You say she’s but twelve years old?”

  “Eleven or twelve, sir.”

  “Is that not a bit young for one in the Magdalene Home?”

  “Oh, she’s not one from the Home,” said I.

  “Then how did she come to be brought here by Lady Fielding?”

  I hesitated. “It’s rather a long story, sir.”

  “All right, later perhaps.”

  Not another word passed between us until we reached my room. Lady Fielding was there bending over Clarissa, giving her close attention. On top of the wrappings the girl had worn on her trip to Number 4 Bow Street were now the two blankets under which I slept.

  “I’ve stopped the chill,” said Lady Fielding, “but now she seems a bit too warm.”

  A few drops of perspiration stood out on Clarissa’s brow.

  “It’s a fever of some sort, right enough,” said the medico, putting a hand to her head. Then to Clarissa: “Can you speak?”

  She nodded. “A little,” she said with a bit of difficulty. Her breathing was shallow and labored.

  He sat upon the bed and pulled back the mountain of covers over her upper half and unbuttoned the frock she wore beneath it all.

  “She coughed up some nasty stuff,” said Lady Fielding. “I wiped it from her face with my handkerchief.”

  “Is there blood in it?”

  “No, see for yourself.”

  She opened the handkerchief and displayed a slimy mess of gray-yellow.

  Mr. Donnelly gave it a brief look, then returned his attention to Clarissa. He spread her frock wide upon her flat chest; she had not even the beginnings of a woman’s breasts. Putting his hand gently upon one side and then the other, he studied her face.

  “Do you feel pain here in your chest?”

  “Hurts …” She panted. “To breathe … right side … difficult … to breathe.”

  With that, he opened his bag and pulled from it something quite like a small ear trumpet. Then did he place the horn end upon the left side of her chest and put his ear to listen at the other end. After listening to the right side in this manner, he repeated the exercise, though first thumping soundly with his middle finger upon the place he listened. Then he threw back the covers and sat back. Glancing first at me and after at Lady Fielding, he then addressed Clarissa direct.

  “My girl,” said he, “you have pneumonia. It is not so much a disease as it is a condition, an infection of the lungs. Luckily for you, only one
lung is affected, the right. It no doubt began as a cold, a catarrh. Did you have a discharge from the nose and coughing for a few days before your chest began to hurt and your breathing was impaired?”

  Clarissa nodded.

  “Well, then, that infection descended and settled in your right lung, filling it with fluid, mucus, and such. So long as that infection is there and that mucus, you will have trouble breathing.”

  “Now” —and here he addressed Lady Fielding and me —“as for treatment, here is what you must do. She must have liquids—water and clear broth, as much water as you can get her to take — for the fever has dried her out. I shall give you some quinine bark with which to make a strong tea. It works well with the ague to bring down fever and may well help here. You can get more of it at a chemist’s shop. I’ll come back this evening to see how she fares, and in the meantime, I’ll consult my books to see if anything more may be done for her. The important thing now is to bring down her fever.”

  Now to Clarissa: “You heard all that, my girl?”

  Again, she nodded.

  “Then I’ll expect you to cooperate. You must drink water, and the tea will taste quite disgusting, but you must drink that, too. Cough up as much of that mucus as you can. You must get it out of you. You’ll have a cloth for that. You’ll see to it, Jeremy?”

  And so, having attended to her, he dropped into his bag the device with which he had listened to her lungs and rose to go. He invited me down to the kitchen that I might receive instructions in brewing the tea.

  Once there and once so informed, I listened as he expounded further upon the case. “I expect,” said he, “that it is to you and Annie that most of the nursing will fall, so a few more words to you on the care of the patient. You have no fireplace in the room, and she must be kept warm during the night. Another blanket, if necessary —but a charcoal brazier would be better. Haven’t I seen one about somewhere?”

  “Downstairs, sir, for the Runners.”

  “Filch it, borrow it, whatever you must do. Bring water up to Lady Fielding now, and then begin on the tea, which should be administered to her twice daily. And by the bye, you’re all very fortunate.”

  “Fortunate? How is that, sir?”

  “It’s a risky matter to bring anyone into your home with an illness that has not been diagnosed. Fortunately for you pneumonia, though serious, is not terribly contagious. More than likely it developed, as I said, from a catarrh. All of you here are well fed and strong. You should be able to fight off a catarrh without difficulty. That girl upstairs, on the other hand, seemed ill fed and underweight, easy prey to illness like so many children in this district. What is her name, by the bye?”

  “Clarissa,” said I, “Clarissa Roundtree.”

  “Rather a fancified name for one in such modest circumstances. She seemed to speak well, too, the little I heard from her. Something fine about her. Yes, I do wish to hear her story, but just now I must get myself downstairs and learn the outcome of this inquest.”

  “Yet it seems certain, does it not?”

  “Nothing is certain, particularly not -when dealing with such … well, never mind. I shall see you this evening, no doubt.”

  So did he bid me good day and left by way of the stairs for the courtroom. For my part, I made hastily to follow his instructions regarding the patient. I filled a pitcher with water and set beside it a cup to take upstairs. Then remembering what had been said in the sickroom, I pulled an unused cloth from the drawer which contained my supply of cleaning rags. All this then I took in hand as I trudged up above.

  “Ah, there you are, Jeremy,” said Lady Fielding by way of greeting.

  “Here is the cloth to trap her mucus.”

  She held it up and looked at it rather critically. “It could be cleaner,” said she.

  “But its purpose is to be soiled,” I argued.

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “And here,” said I, “is water and a drinking cup. Mr. Donnelly said she is to be given as much as she will take.”

  “Of course! I know! I heard him plain!”

  She was right. What could I say? I cast a glance about me, and it fell upon Clarissa. In spite of her difficulties, there seemed to be a look of amusement in her eyes at my speechlessness — quite the same look I’d got from her in the hackney. There was mockery in that girl.

  “Well,” said I at last, “I’ll go down and see to the tea.” Then did I turn to

  “Jeremy,” Lady Fielding called after me, “forgive me for speaking sharp at you. You’re a good lad, none better.”

  My hurt feelings thus mended, I returned to the kitchen.

  There was much up and down the stairs that day. After the quinine tea was delivered, Annie arrived and heard my account of our morning’s activities, then went up to the sickroom to visit the patient and receive her orders from Lady Fielding. I took that opportunity to fly down the stairs to discover what I could of the outcome of the inquest.

  To my surprise, the proceedings had only just ended. I caught sight of Mr. Donnelly disappearing out the door of the courtroom, with Dr. Diller close behind. Both of them, I supposed, had patients to see at this late hour. Those who had served as the coroner’s jury milled about, seemingly reluctant to leave. I sought Sir John and saw him turning away from Mr. Trezavant, who was obviously taking his leave. Sir John, it seemed to me, looked none too happy. I approached him cautiously, for once his back was turned, the look upon his face had gone from displeasure to plain exasperation. Yet approach him I did. Sir:

  “Who is that? Jeremy? Were you here through this … this …” He hesitated. “Is that fellow Trezavant anywhere within earshot?”

  “No, Sir John, he’s out the door as we speak.”

  “Then I shall say it —this travesty of a proper inquest. In all truth, I wish to stay on good terms with him, for it does no good to have a magistrate and a coroner at odds. But dear God, he does make it difficult for me to maintain a good opinion of him.”

  “Uh, no sir, I was not present.” Though I dreaded asking the question, I felt I must: “What was the finding?”

  “Death by natural causes.”

  “What?” I was truly astonished. “Did he direct the verdict?”

  “Oh no, though he may as well have done.”

  Sir John disclosed that Mr. Donnelly had been unwise enough to use in his testimony the clinical term “ulceration” in describing the raw burns in the throat and stomach of Lady Laningham. When Dr. Diller testified immediately afterward, he, too, used that term. Mr. Trezavant asked him to define it, which the doctor did right enough as “an erosive condition in the skin, a burning,” then went on to explain that in this instance the condition existed in the inner skin —the stomach lining and the walls of the esophagus. Then did the coroner inquire in all apparent innocence if this condition in the inwards did not sometimes occur from natural causes as a kind of disease of the stomach; Dr. Diller agreed that it sometimes did. And the penultimate question: “Was not your original opinion on the cause of Lady Laningham’s death acute indigestion?” The reply: “Yes, originally, but — ” “Would not ulcers of the sort that you and Mr. Donnelly described cause acute indigestion?” “Of course, but — “

  The coroner’s jury was never permitted to hear the doctor’s objections. What they heard instead was a long disquisition from Mr. Trezavant on death by poisoning, which he said was very rare, and death from ulcers “of the sort described by our two medical witnesses,” which was much more common. In this summing-up, he touched upon the information given by the maid that Lady Laningham had declared, “I’ve been poisoned,” and had asked that Sir John Fielding be sent for. “But the magistrate himself has appeared before you, and in his testimony conceded that he may have put the notion of poison in her mind in an earlier conversation in which he suggested the possibility of poison in the death of her husband.” Mr. Trezavant pointed out that by Mr. Donnelly’s testimony, no chemical test existed to prove the presence of a pois
on of the kind he suspected in her body. It was only by means of its effect upon the body, chiefly the ulcers upon the lining of the stomach, that he believed that poison had caused her death. Yet we have heard from Dr. Diller that ulcers of this kind may come also from a sickness of the body. The question is: Were these ulcers caused by poison, as Mr. Donnelly has strongly suggested, or did they exist before the attack that caused her death? If the former, then your verdict must be ‘willful murder by person or persons unknown.’ If the latter, then it would be ‘death by natural causes.’ It is up to you, gentlemen of the jury, and only to you, to make the decision.”

  (I readily confess, reader, that Sir John’s account of the proceedings was not so detailed, nor as complete, as what I have just given. What he said there in the courtroom was augmented by his later remarks and those of Mr. Donnelly. Sir John did, however, conclude as follows:)

  “Then, Jeremy, he allowed the jury to confer amongst themselves right there before us. They argued the matter and argued it some more, throwing out questions from time to time to Mr. Trezavant, which he answered to suit his purpose. Their so-called deliberations were like unto some dispute in Bedlam and made just so much sense. I became so annoyed with the jury that I left the room to confer with Mr. Donnelly. We were both mightily disgusted. After near an hour, Trezavant himself concluded they had talked it through quite enough and demanded a verdict. He got the one he wanted.

  “Death by natural causes,” said I.

  “Indeed,” said Sir John. “He had bewildered them completely with his talk of-”

  Seeing the approach of one quite unexpected, I touched his arm to halt the swift flow of his speech.

  He responded in a whisper: “What is it, lad?”

  “Lord Laningham comes —Mr. Paltrow.”

  Before he could quite compose himself, the putative nobleman was upon us, his face fixed in a frown.

  “Sir John, I wonder might I have a word with you?”