Must the Maiden Die

by Miriam Grace Monfredo

  So Neva had been surprised by the girl speaking. Which meant she didn't know about Tamar's supposed confession; if she had talked of a knife, Neva surely would mention it. "When you took out those pellets," Glynis asked, "was she covered with the sheet at the time?"

  Neva frowned in thought. "I think so, yes. I had to get her clothes off before I worked on her. They were soaked with rain and swamp water."

  "And did she object? When you took off her clothes?"

  Neva frowned again. "Not much, as I recall. Although she was in shock—she may still be. Why, do you think her reaction was due to modesty?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, whatever the case, I have to remove that pellet."

  "Can you do it now," Glynis asked. "While she's asleep?"

  "I hope so. Though I didn't give her much laudanum. It can be dangerous to someone in shock, and it's pretty much a matter of guesswork as to the right amount. If she comes out of it while I'm working on her and carries on like she did before...that scalpel is sharp."

  Neva moved to a large table at the far side of the bed, which held a tin tray of instruments, among them a scalpel and forceps. "I need to go to the pump to wash these," she said, picking them up along with a tin basin filled with bloody water.

  "Neva, I expect her mother should be here soon."

  "She has a mother? I thought she was indentured to Brants because she was orphaned."

  "Yes, I can see why you might have thought that. It's rather a long story."

  "Tell me when I get back," Neva said over her shoulder as she left.

  Glynis pulled one of the room's two straight chairs closer to the bed and sat down. Softly, she said, "Tamar?" to see if the girl's sleep was sound.

  She stirred slightly, but didn't open her eyes. Glynis took a lower corner of the sheet and began to lift it.

  Almost immediately, the girl grabbed the sheet with her right hand, and her eyes opened; eyes the clear blue of October skies. "No, don't hurt me," she said, her speech slurred by the laudanum. But at least she was speaking.

  When the dog began to growl, Tamar's eyes closed. She must sense its protection, Glynis decided, and guessed the dog belonged to Gerard Gagnon.

  She thought it best to take him outside while the girl was quiet. Glynis had to coax some before the dog limped after her, and then not willingly. Once outside, it occurred to her that he might try to find his master—and Gerard did not need him as much as the girl did—so she tied him to a hitching post. Then she stood gazing down the road to see if Elise Jager was coming. The moon was rising to outline the factories and warehouses along the canal, and she looked for the one that had been owned by Andre Gagnon before Roland Brant had foreclosed. She thought it might be the stone building directly across from the library. If so, she recalled little activity there in the past days.

  Finally, seeing no one approaching, she went back inside to wait for Neva, and heard the dog whimper as she closed the door. She experienced a pang of longing for her terrier Duncan—gone many years now and still so sorely missed that she could not yet bring herself to have another. She almost relented and brought the shepherd back inside. But he would be unmanageable if he sensed the girl was in distress.

  "Good, you took the dog out," Neva said when she came back. "Her mother isn't here yet?"

  "No, although she must have been notified by this time."

  "Well, let's get this over with."

  "Tamar's half awake, I'm afraid," Glynis said, and told Neva of her experiment.

  "Then we'll have to tie her down."

  When Glynis started to object, Neva added, "I can't wait for infection to start."

  "No, I suppose not. It just seems so—"

  "So heartless," Neva said, moving to the table where two additional lamps sat. "But letting her die would be more heartless, wouldn't you say?" She turned up the two lamp wicks.

  Glynis nodded. Moreover, the girl didn't protest when they loosely tied her hands with cotton cord to the bed's spindled headboard. Glynis hoped Tamar's earlier reaction might have been only a reflex, perhaps to the sheet rubbing against her wound.

  But as soon as Neva lifted the sheet, the girl began to pull at the cords.

  "Tamar," Glynis said to her, "it's all right. Dr. Cardoza-Levy is just trying to help you, and it will be over soon."

  Neva was meanwhile swabbing wood alcohol over the swollen area of the girl's thigh, muttering, "Who knows if this works, but Dr. Ives swears by it. And much as I dislike alcohol in any form, if it helps to ward off infection, I'll use it."

  Tamar was by now straining at the cords, saying, "No, don't hurt me." She still sounded dazed from the laudanum. Glynis felt her protest was due to something other than pain from the wound, especially since Neva had barely touched her yet.

  But then Neva started to probe with the scalpel. "No, please no!" the girl cried, tossing her head back and forth, her eyes open and wild with fear.

  "Glynis, hold her legs down," Neva said crisply. "She's thrashing around too much."

  "I don't think I can bear to," Glynis said with mounting distress. "She's terrified."

  "You have to do it!" Neva retorted. "Else we'll need to tie her legs down, too."

  Glynis tried to comfort the girl by talking to her quietly while Neva worked, but Tamar continued crying, "No, no," over and over again in a drugged voice. Outside the dog howled as if he were mad with despair.

  ***

  Glynis returned from the refuge kitchen with two cups of tea. After handing one to Neva, she sank into a chair. She had felt such pity for the dog that as soon as Neva finished, Glynis brought him back inside, but by then he'd surely wakened all of Seneca Falls. Now he was again stretched out beside the bed of the sleeping girl.

  She stroked the dog's head and told Neva, "I could never be a doctor!"

  "Days like this one," Neva answered, "I don't think I can be either. But at least the scurrilous bounty hunter responsible for those injuries"—she motioned to the girl—"is now rotting in hell. And don't look at me like that, Glynis. Just because I'm a doctor doesn't mean I can't subscribe to an eye for an eye, et cetera. He probably murdered more than one person with that shotgun, and the girl could easily have been killed. You saw the size of that pellet!"

  She had seen it. Mercifully there had only been the one.

  There was sudden knocking at the outside door. When Glynis went to answer it, Liam Cleary stood there, shivering in the cool night air. He told her he'd come because Cullen said Gerard Gagnon would drive them to drink by his constant demands for information about the girl.

  "Come inside, Liam. We need to keep it as warm as possible in here."

  After she closed the door, Glynis said to him, "You can tell Gerard Gagnon that the girl is holding her own. Dr. Cardoza-Levy removed all the shotgun pellets. Tamar is sleeping quietly and so is his dog."

  He nodded and turned as if to leave.

  "Wait, Liam," Glynis said. "Mrs. Jager isn't here yet. Did you see her at Carr's Hotel?"

  To her astonishment, his face turned red, the blush extending to his carrot-colored hair. "I did, yes, Miss Tryon, but.... That is, I saw her, but I didn't exactly talk to her. Not much."

  "What did you do?" Neva asked, coming out of the dispensary.

  "I didn't do anything. She was... that is, she had. ..."

  "Liam," Neva snapped, with the impatience of fatigue, "what is the matter with you? Just spit it out!"

  Liam swallowed, and mumbled, "She, Mrs. Jager, she was in her, ah, undress."

  "That's hardly scandalous," Neva said, eyeing Liam narrowly. "You've surely seen a woman in a dressing gown before."

  "But that's not all, exactly," Liam said, now staring earnestly at the floor.

  "All of what?" Neva demanded.

  "I guess she was...was entertaining. Yes, that's what she was doing!" he said, obviously relieved inspiration had struck. "She was entertaining."

  "Entertaining whom?" Neva asked. "Her husband?"

  "Ah,
no. No, Constable Stuart said that Mr. Jager left town today." Liam gazed with pitiful eyes at Glynis, obviously seeking support, but she was too bewildered to help him. And she also wanted this sorted out.

  Neva must have decided to change tactics, as her approach became milder. "All right, Liam, steady as you go, and let's try this again. Who was with Mrs. Jager?"

  "He must have been a gentleman caller," Liam said. "I think that's what he was."

  Glynis and Neva exchanged a look.

  "Did you recognize him?" Glynis asked.

  "I didn't see much of him," Liam said, blushing again.

  Neva, with characteristic bluntness, said, "And just how, exactly, was Mrs. Jager entertaining him?"

  "Ah...well, that's.... that's hard to say," Liam stammered. "He didn't seem...he didn't have many clothes on."

  This brought them all to silence.

  "And you're sure this man was unfamiliar to you?" Glynis finally asked gently, as she thought that Liam had made himself as clear as he was capable of doing.

  "I'm sure."

  "Then how can you possibly know he was a gentleman?" Neva persisted.

  "I don't," Liam said. And then added, "But I'd like to think so."

  Which, Glynis decided as she sent Neva a shake of her head, was altogether a most charitable response.

  "Were you able to give Mrs. Jager the message about her daughter?" Glynis asked Liam, as he began to back toward the door with a determined expression.

  "I tried to, Miss Tryon. But she closed the hotel room door so fast, I don't know if she heard me."

  These were Liam's last words before he yanked open the refuge door and sped off into the night.

  After Neva and Glynis spent a long moment staring at each other, they went back into the dispensary. Neva checked her sleeping patient, then sat down and took a long swallow of tea before saying, "Liam Cleary is not a fool, so why does he insist on acting like one? Didn't you want more from him, Glynis, about Mrs. Jager? You, whose curiosity is notorious?"

  "I thought we'd gotten as much as we could without embarrassing poor Liam further," Glynis murmured.

  Neva glanced sideways at her. "You are a better person than I."

  "No, you save lives, Neva."

  "In another way, so do you. You have an uncanny ability, Glynis, to associate the most unrelated subjects. You take one thing from here, one thing from there, then add them together and come up with an answer of three! Cullen Stuart should just sit back and relax, because sooner or later you'll figure out who killed Roland Brant. Now, not that I want to change the sordid subject of murder, or even the sordid, if fascinating, subject of Elise Jager's callers—"

  "We don't know that it's necessarily sordid," Glynis protested, although not very strongly. "There might be a perfectly respectable explanation."

  Neva's brows raised. "If you say so. But I'm due in Waterloo tomorrow to urge granting of the Brant autopsy request, which means some sleep would be welcome. And we need to discuss something before Abraham arrives and drags me home. You're sure you don't mind staying here tonight?"

  "Not at all."

  Neva glanced again at the girl. "You did see that bruising, didn't you? On her inner thighs?"

  Glynis sighed. "Yes, I saw."

  "Those are not fresh bruises," Neva stated. "They look to have been made at least a week or ten days ago. Maybe more. Tamar is malnourished—no one that thin is healthy—and she probably doesn't heal well."

  "Yes."

  "Yes? Glynis, you sound as if this is old news to you. How long has she been with that Gagnon man?"

  "Not long enough," Glynis answered. "Not to have done that. Unless she's known him longer than I think she has. But I've met Gerard Gagnon, and I don't think he's to blame."

  "Then who is? It's not only those bruises, there's been other tissue damage in her genital area. In my opinion, that girl has been violated. And certainly not willingly, if her behavior tonight was any indication."

  "I'm afraid I think you're right."

  Neva moved forward to the edge of her chair, and stared at Glynis. "Why are you so calm about this? You don't seem at all shocked! Does that mean you knew about it?"

  "Not for certain, not until tonight. But I had begun to suspect it."

  "Which is why you asked those questions earlier?"

  Glynis nodded.

  "Well, who did this dreadful thing to her?"

  "I'm not sure. Not yet."

  "Since she lived at the Brant house, was it one of those men?" Neva asked, her voice now strident with anger.

  Glynis didn't immediately reply. When she did, it was to say, "I wonder—and I'm just guessing here—if perhaps Gerard Gagnon knows the answer. Tonight Cullen said something to the effect that Gerard seems to hold all the Brants responsible for his father's suicide. But Andre Gagnon's death might not be the only reason for Gerard's hatred of that family. Earlier tonight, he was adamant, desperately so, that Tamar could not go back to the Brant house."

  "I think that goes without saying."

  "Not necessarily," Glynis said. "Remember, her father sold her into servitude there. I very much doubt he would give a second thought to sending her back—although surely he doesn't know about the harm done her there! He may be callous and indifferent, but I can't believe he would overlook that kind of brutality. And now we have to worry about her mother's judgment. I've been uneasy about Elise Jager before tonight, though my reasons may not be good ones. But Neva, this poor girl! She has no one. Nowhere to turn, except perhaps to a young man who is now sitting in Cullen's jail."

  "So what should we—"

  Neva broke off at a knock on the refuge door. "That will no doubt be my weary husband," she said, as she got to her feet. "We'll talk more about this tomorrow, Glynis."

  Abraham had opened the door, but then stood leaning against the jamb, looking just barely able to keep awake.

  "You must be exhausted after that search," Neva said to him.

  "It has not been one of the shorter days of my life," he agreed. "Are you coming home, or do you need to sleep here tonight?"

  "No, Glynis has offered to stay with the girl." She turned to say, "You know what to watch for, Glynis. Redness, swelling, fever, the things I listed. And if anything changes—"

  "I'll come and get you."

  But as Neva and Abraham left, Glynis did not feel as confident as she had sounded. There remained the very real possibility that Tamar's apparent confession had been genuine. That she had indeed murdered Roland Brant.

  After checking the sleeping girl once again and finding her forehead cool, and her bandages free of blood, Glynis turned down the wicks of the two lamps still burning. She lay down on the other dispensary bed, intending to simply rest.

  Sometime later she was wakened by a clattering crash. Followed by a series of barks. She pulled herself upright to see Tamar crouched at the edge of the other bed, staring with frightened eyes at the tin tray of instruments still vibrating on the wood floor. The dog stopped barking and was investigating the tray warily.

  Glynis slid off the bed, being careful to keep her distance from the girl while saying to her, "Don't be frightened, Tamar. It's only the doctor's instruments making that racket."

  The girl looked at Glynis, the confusion in her face clearly adding to the fear revealed in her eyes. The dog, however, had returned to stand in front of her, his tail switching back and forth. When Tamar looked down at him, her expression became less fearful.

  "Yes, the dog is all right, Tamar, as you see. My name is Glynis Tryon, and I'm a friend of..." A friend of whom? she asked herself, her mind still clouded with sleep. Certainly it wouldn't ease the girl's distress to say a friend of the Brant family. Or of the father who had sold her into a servitude of immense harm.

  "I'm a friend," she repeated, leaving it there. "I met you once in my niece Emma's dress shop, but I don't know if you'd remember that. And I'm the town librarian," she added, for no particular reason other than that she herself would have f
ound this a reassuring fact to know about a stranger.

  The fright in the girl's eyes had diminished. It was probably due more to the presence of the dog than to anything else.

  "Did you need something?" Glynis asked. "For instance a chamber pot?"

  The girl gave a nearly imperceptible nod. Glynis went to the table and pulled the chamber pot from beneath it. Still keeping her distance, she said, "You may be unsteady on your feet, so I'll help you, if you like."

  The girl shrank back against the bed, and Glynis quickly added, "Or you can hold onto the headboard until you know whether you can stand without dizziness. Then I'll leave you by yourself."

  The girl gave her a long look, then put her hand on a wooden spindle and stood up. A moment later, she sank back down, a sheen of perspiration on her forehead.

  Glynis, whose impulse was to go to the girl, remained where she was with effort. "It's an awful feeling, isn't it?" she said. "I was once sick in bed for a number of days, and afterwards, when I first tried to walk, I decided I'd rather be sick again." She smiled tentatively at Tamar. "It passes, though, once you've been on your feet for a while."

  The girl seemed to be studying her, the outright fear replaced by a guarded expression. She again tried to stand, but this time she did it more slowly, and with one hand placed on the dog's back. When she finally straightened, she seemed to be fairly steady.

  "I'll be right outside the door if you need me," Glynis told her. "Please don't be afraid to call. We're the only ones here, except for a few women who are sleeping in the wing of the refuge."

  As Glynis left the room, she could feel Tamar watching her. She pulled the door closed with some misgiving, but the girl did not look feverish and the laudanum seemed to have worn off. Better to give her some privacy, than to intrude unnecessarily. And surely the dog would bark if the girl fell. Glynis's concern was more about the fact that Tamar hadn't spoken. That she had again withdrawn into silence.

  Moonlight coming through the large warehouse windows was bright enough for Glynis to read Neva's desk clock. It was a few minutes past three. So the girl had been asleep for some hours; as had she, Glynis thought with a start of guilt. But apparently no harm had been done, unless Tamar had been lying there awake and in fear.