by Baird Wells
Now Simon looked up and pierced him with a stare. “I see that she has been paying you a small fortune for your treatments.”
“She pays what they cost,” he agreed, taking a chair without being offered and feigning the same innocence as Simon. “In the country I wasn’t not used to extending credit, and everyone pays full cost. My treatments are actually working, so some of her willingness is probably gratitude.” He shrugged, lie smooth while his heart galloped. “But I assumed that you knew what and how often she was paying. I refused her at first, but a man in my profession does receive some compensation. When she insisted, I didn’t think it prudent to tell her that someone else was footing the bill. Particularly not you; that would put her off me and we’d never discover anything.”
This seemed to mollify Simon, who sighed and slumped in his seat. “Glad to see her throwing a hundred pounds at a time to something besides the women’s poorhouse or that damned suffrage league.” He winced at a bad taste left behind, by the words or the idea. “I am certain you have the money in trust? It is not payment to which you are actually entitled, after all.”
James bristled at the slight and then pulled back a smile. Typical of Simon to huff and stomp over something that in no way belonged to him. “Of course. You compensate me well; I assumed you would want it back.” It was half true; he and Hannah were keeping the money, just not for Simon.
“Very good. My man will get with you beginning of next week and settle the matter.”
The broad and hazy edges of his timetable with Hannah closed into a short tunnel. “Whatever day is convenient,” he ground out, because none of them were.
Simon turned his attention back to the desk. “Good day, doctor.”
James stood up and hovered over-long, to give the impression of working up his nerve. “One more thing, sir. Lady Hannah has asked to see me on Sunday. She said there is something grave she wishes to share, something that she hasn’t told anyone else.”
Simon raised above his chair and stared with the wide-eyed heat that James had come to know. “This is it; it must be!” His face hardened. “Your persistence has been more fruitful than the half-efforts of some people.”
“I think it would be helpful if you could call Miss Maddox away again. We want Lady Hannah at complete ease.”
James felt chest-aching gratification watching Simon’s teeth grind over having to speak with Margaret.
“Can you entice her to meet sooner?” Simon’s pen trembled between his fingers.
“Not between my obligations and hers. Besides, if I’m too eager and I’ll frighten her off.”
“I can wait.” Simon closed his eyes and exhaled. “I can wait for Sunday. I’ll call Miss Maddox away in the early afternoon. Tell Hannah you’ll come for dinner, and then you can have the evening to draw her out.”
James spun on a heel, but in perfect metaphor, Simon reeled him back with another request. “Doctor Grimshaw, an acquaintance of mine has made a recommendation for Hannah’s headaches. You’re a decent physician and I’ve no doubt that, aside from this other necessary business, you do wish to treat her.” Simon poked at a small glass bottle atop his papers. “A physician I know thinks that this will be helpful to her. He suggests three times daily, at least.”
So, Simon’s bid to put Hannah in the asylum wasn’t done after all. Three doses daily of something stronger than aspirin, that wouldn’t kill her, was bound to make her loopy enough for the institution and powerless to fight it. He squeezed his fists and counted down from three. “That is not how medicine is done, sir. I cannot take his suggestion, or yours, in how I treat a patient. It isn’t ethical.”
“Hannah is not ethical!” Simon’s fist struck the desk and jarred the bottle almost to tipping. His face beeted up, and then faded under a slow exhalation. “Are you so proud, doctor, that you cannot accept ideas other than your own? Ideas, I’d point out, that have failed to cure your patient or get me answers thus far.”
How many men in London were born without a spine? Plenty, James guessed, if such brutish tactics got Simon his way. “Why doesn’t this doctor offer it to her himself? If he’s aware of her condition and better suited to treat it, seems he could best make the case to her for taking it.”
“Ah, but she is your patient.” Simon smiled, the first James could recall, a slight curve of menace. “Wouldn’t that also be unethical?”
Simon had him by his own logic. No matter; it was easy enough to say one thing and do another. He’d been doing just that since the beginning. James made a small bow, and reached for the medicine.
“And doctor? If I think you’re not following my instructions, not doing what is in Lady Hannah’s best interest, I would certainly have to warn her of your malfeasance. The results of your treatment will be monitored.”
They’d moved to blackmail now. James wondered that it had taken so long. He pocketed the bottle and said nothing more, staring Simon down.
Simon dropped his eyes back to the letters atop his desk. “You may begin your treatment when you visit her on Sunday.”
“A perfect plan.” James bowed and strode out before Simon could press him more or interfere. He waited out front for a brougham to stop, waving his arm at each one that passed between teeming afternoon traffic. When the minutes ticked by and none stopped, he gave up and rushed on foot along the square toward Hannah’s house. Crossing his street, he considered what he should do when he arrived, and made the turn towards his own address at the first break in carts and carriages. He barreled in just long enough to grab his leather bag and then root around in the kitchen, startling poor Mrs. Fitzgerald into a flail of arms and spoons.
From home, he dashed between congested streets by the veins of their abandoned alleyways, only crossing at wide corners when he must, until he reached Hannah’s doorstep. He’d barely rapped when Mrs. Delford threw back the door and slouched, a hand pressed to her crisp white apron front. “Oh, Doctor Grimshaw! Thank the lord; I was just sending Bethany to fetch you.”
“Why?” he demanded over a knot in his throat. “What has happened?” He’d arrived too late, a warning answered inside his head.
Mrs. Delford’s silvery brows drew together like bird wings. “Lady Hannah just wasn’t herself after tea. She’s taken to her bed on account of it, and now she has the most frightful headache.”
He brushed past her, inside. “How long ago was tea?”
“An hour, perhaps.”
Of course it was. “Miss Maddox?” he whispered, bent to Mrs. Delford’s ear. She raised a finger and pointed upstairs.
“I’ll go up and see Hannah,” he murmured. “No need to disturb Miss Maddox, thank you.”
Mrs. Delford’s answer was a grim nod, and she led him as far as the stairs.
He fought to take them carefully, one at a time, and not bound up and draw Margaret’s attention. When he reached Hannah’s door, he moved the knob by small turns so that nothing would give him away.
Hannah lay in the center of her bed, bodice half-unbuttoned and on top of the quilts, flushed from her bosom to her hairline. “Did Mrs. Delford send for you?” she whispered.
“No. I was already on my way here.” He settled beside her and took her frigid hand between his.
“I feel so out of sorts,” she breathed, head lolling from side to side. “I had a headache this morning, probably from anxiety. It was better, but now much worse, since Margaret came home. I think this is her doing.”
“I know that it is. I heard her today, at Simon’s.”
Hannah’s eyes snapped open, revealing a steady trickle down her left cheek though there was no sadness in her expression, a hallmark of poppy intoxication. “What did she say?”
“She wishes to be with Mister Hilton, but Simon’s forbid it. I think she means to kill you to get her way. And if she doesn’t, Simon will.”
Her cheeks lost their color, and she struggled up the headboard and raked her hand at the nightstand. “Will you get me some more tea?” she croaked. “Th
at pot’s been tampered with, I’m sure of it.”
He leaned over, claimed the white china cup, and paused when it passed under his nose. He brought it close and sniffed deep, and looked again at the wetness trailing Hannah’s cheek.
“What?”
“Laudanum,” he confirmed. “And who knows what else. Don’t drink anything else that you don’t make with your own two hands.” He got up and opened the window, and threw the tea out into the garden below. “That explains your headaches.”
Hannah’s head hung down forlornly. “Of all the terrible things she’s done…” She shrugged. “I told myself that we endured one another, and I never thought that she would harm me.”
“I don’t know about before, but this Mister Hilton business has made it clear that Margaret will do anything to further her own desires.”
She exhaled and sank into her pillows. “She was kinder, once. For both of my pregnancies, she made me mint tea and brought me biscuits. During the miscarriages, she mopped my brow, when the cramps were more than I could bear and I was convinced that the bleeding would kill me.” Hannah pressed her fingers to her eyes. “I just thought…I assumed if I just let her and Gregory be and didn’t interfere, that we could tolerate each other.”
James hung at the mattress’s edge and strangled her hand. He’d stopped listening sentences before, stuck on a horrible detail which Hannah had announced without the slightest idea of its ugliness. “Mint tea,” he ground out. “Where did she get it?”
“I don’t know.” Hannah shook her head, brows furrowed. “I think she picked it herself? No, probably not. I have no idea.”
“Did she give it to you before or after the miscarriages?” He’d heard what she said, but he had to be sure.
“Before. From almost the moment I learned I was pregnant. She said the mint would settle my stomach, and it did. I was so awfully sick from the start, both times.” She struggled to sit up further, a shadow just beginning to color her features. “James, why are you asking me this?”
In that moment, he could stand up and go to Margaret’s room and press the breath and then the life right from her. His limbs trembled with a hunger for it, and he clenched Hannah’s fingers to anchor himself. “Pennyroyal is a mint, Hannah. Not the same as spearmint or peppermint, but that can’t be told when it’s mixed with other things. The miscarriages it causes are violent, sometimes fatal.”
“Oh, my God.” Hannah pressed both hands to her belly and slumped forward so that he couldn’t see her face, just the telltale heave of her shoulders. He had sympathized with a thousand losses, but rarely had he understood them as he did now. He wrapped her stiff frame and forced her to him, gentling her with nonsense whispers because he knew she couldn’t hear him. She was deafened by bitterness and every scenario where in hindsight she might have, or nearly had, caught on. That part of her anguish, he knew best: What if?
“I will make her sorry,” she stuttered against his shoulder. “I will make her so, so sorry for what she’s done. And if I can’t…” Hannah sobbed again, “I’ll at least make her sorry that she’s done it to me.”
“We have to go, Hannah, now! You have to delay your revenge, at least until we’ve built a safe place.” He wanted to seek it for her, exact it for her, but in giving up Jack, James had appreciated how much Hannah could sacrifice, how many years could pass while she sought a reckoning. If he didn’t make her leave now, she would still be locked up with Simon and Margaret decades from now, if one of them hadn’t killed her by then. “Simon has pressed me to drug you. If Margaret doesn’t kill you, he will, and I think he means to blame her for it. Or me, or both. Either way, we have to go,” he repeated, shaking her gently so that she met his eyes.
She pressed her wrist to her face and caught a ragged sniffle. “Go where, James? Simon will never stop, not even if he has the house and the money. He’ll pursue me until he has evidence, which he never can get, or until I’m dead, which you’ve just said he’s already about. We’ve hardly put away any money. Simon thinks it outrageous, but it’s not enough to buy us range beyond his grasp.”
“We’ll think of something, and if we can’t then…” He shrugged. “We’ll eat mutton and brown bread.” He kissed her with a fierceness that sealed his promise. “We’ll disappear in the middle of the night if we have to, and no one will ever see us again. Whatever it is, we start now, this very moment.”
Hannah patted over herself with trembling hands, tapping her pieces back to place. Color came back into her face, and strength into her body, giving him hope. She breathed deep a handful of times, and met his eyes with her old determination. “This very moment.”
James took her hand, and, in covert tones, together they began to build a plan.
* * *
James left Hannah’s room to find Margaret coming up the landing, and tightly palmed Simon’s glass jar, starting to drop it into his bag and then pretending he’d only just noticed her.
“Miss Maddox,” he drawled, which gained her attention in a snap of her head, an uncharacteristic loss of decorum for Margaret. It was plain by her face that she wasn’t accustomed to a Dr. Grimshaw that she couldn’t bully with criticisms about social calls. Hannah’s resigned tolerance of Margaret’s furrowed brow or chastising cough had made the woman confident of a lofty perch in the pecking order. James chuckled inside, preparing to knock her from it. “A word.”
“I’m on my way out for the afternoon.”
“A word,” he repeated, planting himself in the hallway with what he hoped was a permanence similar to the bannister or windows.
Margaret’s answer was an arched brow, and he waved to her along the hall toward the sitting room. “Miss Maddox, I have a concern,” he began, and glanced back in the general direction of Hannah’s room.
He went into the sitting room first and turned back, amused to find her twisting the key, in imitation of Hannah. She didn’t sit and he didn’t ask her to, and he settled his case on the chair and the medicine beside it while he made a fuss of rifling inside. “Hannah is showing symptoms,” he offered vaguely. “Grave ones.”
Margaret raised on her toes, looking full of curiosity. “Symptoms of what?”
“Of the laudanum you’ve been giving her.”
Pale spaces between her freckles flushed, her eyes narrowed, and he studied her in answer. He had seen women like her a handful of times, at hospitals for the criminally insane, inside the white cages of the asylum. A hot glow of instinct, of self-preservation, burned somewhere far back inside eyes that were always dead on the surface and which saw no humanity, nothing beyond their own urge to grasp and claw. It banked a little, though, when he closed the distance between them and Margaret seemed to recall that they were locked in the room together,
“I’m not well regarded at cards. Odds tend to escape me, but two murderers under the same roof?” He whistled.
“I give her laudanum when she’s unwell.” Her expression was even and matter-of-fact. “A duty of my station in this house is tending my mistress.”
“By dumping things into her cup without her knowledge?”
“My desire is to help her, nothing more. She wouldn’t accept it if she knew.” The words jagged with bitterness.
“Without her knowledge, and against the care and orders of her doctor, you’ve been dosing her…out of kindness?”
“Her headaches are awful! They would inspire compassion in the hardest soul.”
“Laudanum causes those headaches!”
Margaret opened her mouth, and then closed it into a frown. “But it calms her. She’s been taking it since –” She caught whatever she’d been about to say.
“Since whatever else you used to put in her cup?”
He caught the tension in her shoulder, a warning before her hand drew back. It bought him a moment and he blocked her slap with a quick arm. Margaret’s pretty face twisted and she started to speak, but he closed on her with a finger pinning her breastbone. “Hannah will not eat anything you give
her, drink anything you prepare for her.” He grabbed his bag, tipping the bottle to the rug where it bounced in a few dull thuds. Reaching past Margaret, who came as close as she probably ever had to cowering, he snapped over the key. “If you have designs, on Mister Hilton or anyone else,” he saw a dawning in her eyes, realization that he’d overheard her at Simon’s, “you ought to go to them now. For your own good.”
He hammered down the staircase, stomping out into a Saturday afternoon mill of strolling couples. He stalked as far as the next alley, between Hannah’s set of townhouses and the next, where he ducked in and waited. Margaret was only a few breaths behind him, appearing in time with her carriage pulling ‘round, stabbing her blue hat clean through with a pin. He pressed against the stones until she clattered away, waiting a minute or two longer, to be certain her driver had taken the corner, before he walked back to the house.
Mrs. Delford got the door, composed until she saw him, and then she started. “Doctor Grimshaw. I didn’t know you’d gone and now you’re back. My word, everybody in and out today!”
He laughed despite the day he’d had. “And in a moment, I hope we’ll all leave you in peace. I’ve forgotten something upstairs; if I could just dash up and get it.”
“Of course. No one’s been up to tidy yet, or I’d have had it sent ‘round and saved you the trouble.” She waved him in, and over to the stairs. “If you wish. Unless you need my help…”
“Just up and back down,” he promised.
“Dinner never arranges itself,” she moaned, looking relieved as she passed into the next room.
He longed to go to Hannah first but had to know if he’d be proved right or wrong, before anything else. He crept to the sitting room and saw from the doorway that the bottle was gone. He skimmed the mantle, bookcase, and side tables, without success. No one else had come up, according to Mrs. Delford. Margaret, without a hint that she’d seen it, must have taken it. He wondered if she’d seen it already, on Simon’s desk. Maybe she’d already been longing to use it.