I suspected what they did have to eat was potatoes and watery soup, too, not exactly the meat- and milk-rich diet I preferred to see my clients consuming. I had urged Charity to practice family spacing but had so far been unsuccessful.
“Remind me of Howard’s job.” I pulled the tape measure out of my bag and measured the mound of her uterus from the fundus at the top to the pubic bone at the bottom. Because the womb expands with the baby, the measurement is an indication of fetal size. This number also wasn’t quite what I would expect for a woman twenty-four weeks gravid.
“He’s a chandler, like his pap and his grandpap before him. But now, what with all the gas and electric lights, why, nobody wants candles anymore. He’s been trying to become known as an odd-jobsman. He’s handy with a hammer and whatnot, and the man can fix anything. But the work just isn’t coming in.”
“I dare say thee could bring this matter to the Women’s Business Meeting, Charity.” I jotted down the measurement and her heart rate in her chart before turning back to her. “They might be willing to organize temporary assistance, and perhaps spread the word of thy husband’s ready skills.” My grandmother’s clock on the mantel chimed once, a clear bell I’d been hearing for my entire life. I was fortunate never to have gone hungry, unlike many. And I was sure we had odd jobs around this very house we could offer Howard, if I could persuade Frederick to pay for the work.
Her shoulders sank and she shook her head. “Despite my name, I never wanted to ask for help. I’d rather give it, but I’m not in a position to do so. Because of my little ones, I did, anyway. I went to the women and appealed my case.” She worked her thin, worn fingers in her lap, staring at them. She glanced back up at me. “Does thee know what they said?”
I shook my head, waiting.
“They did offer food assistance, which I reluctantly accepted. Donations of milk and bread began to arrive this week. But.” She swallowed. “They also advised me to seek the care of a different midwife. They said they disapprove of thy stepping out with a gentleman who is not a Friend.”
So it had begun. Oddly, learning of the elders admonishing Charity did not throw me into the panic I would have expected. My heart did not pound and my hands did not sweat. I felt the inner calm of a smooth sea free of storm or turbulence. “If thee believes thee must see a different midwife, I will not stop thee,” I said gently.
“No! I don’t care whom thee loves, Rose. I trust thee, and Orpha before.” She sat up straight, the first energetic move she’d made since she arrived. “I’ll not leave thy care, and I’ll tell anyone who asks why I’m staying. Thee is an expert in thy called profession, but even more important, thee is a gentle and caring presence.”
“I thank thee, Charity.” I smiled. “Thee is indeed in a position to give. Thy faith in me, and thy willingness to give testimony about my skills, are a greater gift than any material good.”
twenty-two
The afternoon post clacked through the mail slot in the door early, at a few minutes before two o’clock. Mother had just ridden off in the hack to Newburyport, and I hoped her mission to Clarinda was a successful one. I flipped through the letters, sorting out Frederick’s, then slit open one addressed to me but missing any return address.
I sucked in a quick breath as I read the message, written in blocky capital letters.
STOP SNOOPING WHERE YOU DON’T BELONG OR YOU WILL DIE NEXT. YOU ARE BEING WATCHED.
I let the plain white paper fall to my desk, my hands suddenly icy. The murderer was threatening me. I glanced out the window. The snow had started to fall. Was he watching me right now? My heart thudded against my ribs. Had I locked the door after Mother left? I shivered, feeling bolted to my chair, my feet leaden.
I swallowed hard. I would not let this immobilize me. I’d been threatened before, although not in writing. Not this directly. Still, I’d survived then and I would survive now. I couldn’t let fear govern my life. I clenched my hands into fists and then shook them out, trying to release the tension. Closing my eyes, I held myself in God’s grace, trying to calm down and trust He would protect me and reveal my way forward. But my agitation persisted.
I stood and hurried to the back door. I turned the key, and checked the front door, too. I paced in my room, too restless to do anything. I kept checking the front windows for someone lurking out there. I needed to take the note to Kevin, but thought it wiser to wait until a family member could accompany me at the end of the day, or until the snow ended. I wished once again for a telephone, and vowed to find a way to pay to have one installed.
As I paced my mind raced. Which of the suspects could have sent the letter? I sat at my desk and pulled out the paper where I’d written down what I knew about the case. Certainly neither Hilarius nor Leroy could have sent such a message from jail. I’d asked questions of all three of the rest: Zula, Elbridge, and Oscar. Of course, Rowena’s murderer might be someone else entirely.
A movement outside caught my eye. A man trudged along the path which served as our road. But he was in plain view, not trying to hide. This couldn’t be the letter’s author. He was both taller than Oscar and slighter than Elbridge. To my surprise he turned up the walk to our house and a moment later rapped on the door. This had all the signs of me being called to a birth. In the snow.
I opened the door. The fellow was barely older than Luke, although he was taller than I. His nose was covered with the unfortunate acne pimples of the teen years, and straight light hair poked out from his cap.
“Miss Rose Carroll, the midwife?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He handed me an envelope. “Gent paid me to bring it to you, miss.”
“Who was it?”
“Dunno, miss.” He tugged at his hat and ran down the steps.
“I thank thee,” I called after him and shut the door.
In my parlor, I puzzled over the note.
Please come attend my wife. She’s laboring with our first child and we have no family in the area. We’re in an apartment in the carriage house.—James Smith
I examined the note in a moment of fear, but the writing did not resemble the threatening note, and my heart slowed. This looked to be an authentic request for midwifery assistance. The man had added an address far up the steep hill on Powow Street. Interesting that they were in the carriage house. Perhaps the husband was the stable man, or a driver for the family who lived in the big house perched on the side of Powow Hill.
I didn’t have any clients currently with a surname of Smith, so his wife hadn’t received antenatal care from me. Had anyone else watched over her pregnancy? And I certainly hadn’t done my usual home visit. Maybe they’d recently moved to town. I groaned. I had no choice but to go. This was my calling, to help women birth their babies. Like the postal service, I could not allow bad weather to get in my way.
At least I’d had a nice lunch of beef stew and more bread and butter with my mother not too long ago, so if it turned into an extended labor, I would be fine for some hours. I’d wanted Annie to accompany me to the next birth I attended, but I had no way of contacting her at her workplace, and this weather didn’t permit me going to fetch her in the opposite direction from the laboring woman. One more reason to obtain a telephone.
I checked my birthing satchel and left the family a message on the table about my mission. I pushed the threatening note to the back of my mind for now, donning bonnet, gloves, scarf, and cloak. I exited the house and, with my hood up, clutched my cloak close around me and made my way a block away to Powow to begin my climb. The wind picked up, blowing the white weather sideways in front of me. When I was younger I’d once ascended Mount Wachusett, the state’s highest mountain, with my father. He’d said, “Be as a camel. One foot in front of the other.” His advice came in handy this afternoon.
As I trudged, I thought again about the name. Now that I pondered it, one of my clients had mentioned a pre
gnant friend with a last name of Smith. Had it been Emily? Or Lyda? I couldn’t recall. But there were Smiths aplenty in every town, and this must be a recommendation from a client of mine. Otherwise how would James know to send for me?
I finally arrived at my destination. The last neighboring home I’d passed was much farther down the hill, and had been a beacon of lamplight and chimney smoke. Here the house stood dark, unpeopled. The family must be away.
I headed around the right to the carriage house. It was one of the larger ones, to match the scale of its master house. Its architecture also matched that of the main residence, and it was certainly large enough to include a few rooms for a caretaker. I slid open the wide door and stepped in. A Bailey carriage was parked within, but I didn’t see any horses in the stalls. A set of stairs hugged the wall to the left, so the apartment must be above, partitioned off from the hayloft.
“Hello,” I called. “It’s the midwife.”
No answer. The door to the apartment must be closed since I couldn’t hear the woman’s labor cries and groans. I was about to slide the door shut and head up the stairs when I froze, hearing a small still voice inside my brain.
Danger, it whispered. Danger.
I had no time to heed it. A blow crashed onto the back of my head with a mighty force. I cried out and fell forward.
twenty-three
A scrabbling noise awoke me. My head pounded and my hands were icy. What? I opened my eyes but my glasses were askew. Why was I sprawled on the floor of a … a carriage house? I pushed up to sitting, straightening my spectacles. A gray mouse scurried past me and darted under the carriage. A carriage house … Oh.
I’d come for a labor. Someone had attacked the back of my head. The note had been a ruse to lure me up the hill. I now knew without even looking that there was no apartment upstairs, no woman in travail, no baby on its way.
I pushed up to standing, dusting off my still-gloved hands, wincing at the pain the movement brought to my head. I reeled with a moment of dizziness. I heeded it, standing still until the vertigo passed. I needed to get out of here. I grasped the door’s handle but it didn’t budge. My knuckles on the handle tightened, and I swallowed down a sudden lump in my throat. Someone had not only attacked me but had locked me in.
I stared at the door. I tried to slide it again, putting all my weight into the effort. It wouldn’t move. I shivered from the cold, and even more from fear. If I didn’t come home after dark, the Bailey family wouldn’t worry. They were accustomed to me going off to births and staying up to several days. My heart beat so hard I could barely breathe. Whoever attacked me hoped to have left me for dead. Just like Rowena. I removed a glove, lowered my bonnet, and touched the back of my head. My hand came away damp with blood, but not a lot. I must have been unconscious for some time for the blood to be already coagulated. Scalp wounds were heavy bleeders.
I was about to dissolve into tears, but crying would help nothing. “Be strong, Rose,” I scolded myself out loud. “Thee must think.”
I looked around and decided to make a circuit of the carriage house interior. I didn’t see any other egress, and the only windows were shut tight, the light filtering through them dim from the storm. I couldn’t tell how late it was except night hadn’t yet fallen. I passed a water trough and ran my hand inside it, but it was dry.
I turned to look at the stairs. I was sure there was no apartment but I lifted my skirts and trudged up, anyway, to be certain. Sure enough, all I saw were bales of hay. No bed, no lamp, no laboring woman crying out for my help.
As I sank onto one of the steps halfway down, my heart sank, too. I was alone and cold in a snowstorm with no way to get out. This had to be the doing of the murderer, who wanted to assure that my questioning self was well out of the way, possibly permanently. I was an idiot. My brain had deserted me, letting a note delivered by a boy persuade me to come to a birth of a woman I’d never met, especially after receiving the anonymous threat. The whole thing was a trick. There was no James Smith, nor a pregnant Mrs. Smith. I should have paid attention to the small, elusive voice I’d heard in my head after I’d entered. But it was too late now.
My throat was thick with fear and worry, and my full eyes threatened to overflow. I had to find a way out before despair overwhelmed me. I might survive here for a few days, but without water, I wouldn’t last much longer than that. I didn’t have any hope of the property owners returning before spring. The only person who might open the door would be the one who lured me here in the first place. Next time he might have a gun to finish me off with.
Or was it a she? If Zula were the guilty party, she could have done the luring, hitting, and locking. Although the boy had said a man gave him the note.
I shook my head and sniffed back my self-pitying tears. Right now it didn’t matter who the villain was or how scared I was. What mattered was getting out. My exit was going to involve going out a window. I went to each fenestration in turn and tried with both hands and all my strength to raise the sash. None would budge. They must have been painted or even nailed shut. At least they were the newer style of window where the glass was in two pieces broken up by only one vertical wooden muntin. I prowled the carriage house, searching for a tool I could use to pry open one of the windows, but I came up empty handed.
Was I going to have to break the glass? I spied my birthing satchel near the door where I’d dropped it. I rummaged through the bag, but the only sharp object I had was my scissors, and I expected they would break if I tried to use them as a pry bar. I made the rounds of the windows again and my heart sank even further. While the front of the carriage house was at the level of the road, it was, of course, built on the hill. The bottom of the side windows stood a good eight feet from the ground outside, and the one in back was even higher. I was going to have to jump out.
I hurried around the space, searching for something with which to break a window until I located a metal bucket with a handle near the trough. I had to get out of here before the storm got any worse, or before my attacker returned. Widening my stance, I braced myself and turned my head away, not wanting to risk shards of glass flying into my eyes. I swung the bucket fast at the glass. My aim was poor though, and my improvised hammer bounced off the wooden window frame.
“Haste makes waste,” I scolded myself out loud. I took a good look at where the pail needed to go, braced my legs into a strong stance, turned my head, and swung again.
With a crack, the glass shattered and made a tinkling sound as it fell on itself. I glanced down to see an icicle-shaped piece embedded in my woolen cloak and I carefully extracted it. I drew a cloth out of my satchel and wrapped it around my hand, making something like the padded boxing glove I’d seen in a newspaper article about the violent sport. With great care I punched out the flimsy muntin and the jagged shards all around the frame. The cold air rushed in along with the driven snow. My teeth began to chatter but I kept moving. I found a dusty lap rug in the carriage and spread it, thickly folded, on the bottom of the sash’s frame, since I couldn’t get all the points of glass out.
The window’s sill was three feet off the ground inside. Grateful for my long legs, I hoisted myself up and swung one leg over the sill. No! I’d forgotten my satchel. I climbed back down and grabbed it, then repeated my moves until I sat with both legs out the window. The snow now covered the ground and it swirled in the air such that I couldn’t tell if any obstacle lay under the white covering. I had to take my chances. I took a deep breath and leapt.
twenty-four
I lay stunned in the snow. My right hand burned and my knee ached. My head throbbed something fierce. But I was alive and out of my prison. When I put pressure on my hand to sit up, it stung even worse. I held it in front of my face to see a shard of glass poking straight into my gloved palm like I’d been shot with an arrow. No wonder it hurt. I took hold of the shard with the fingers of my other hand and steeled myself as I yanked it o
ut. When I sensed warm blood gushing into my glove, I grabbed a fistful of snow and squeezed tight on it.
I pushed up to standing. Retrieving my satchel from where it had fallen a few feet away, I trudged toward the road. At least my spectacles hadn’t gone flying. Snow crept into my shoes, stung my face, clouded my glasses. Setting the satchel down for a moment, I removed the spectacles and stashed them in the pocket of my cloak. I could see no worse without them than with them coated in snow. Then I had a terrifying thought. What if my attacker was still lurking, making sure I didn’t get away? My heart started thudding all over again.
What else could I do but face the unknown? I crept toward the road. And let out a cry of relief when the front of the carriage house was deserted. I couldn’t see any vehicle, no horse, and not a human soul. Of course, I hadn’t seen any signs of life when I’d approached the building, either. Whoever hit me and locked me in must have been hiding as I approached. He’d likely left his transportation farther up the hill.
I hurried down Powow Street as fast as I could. No one was about and the storm was worsening. “I am never going on a call like this one again,” I shouted to the road, to the storm, to the world—but mostly to myself. “I’ll just tell them they have to go to the hospital.” Although of course I wouldn’t want to send them elsewhere. It was quite harsh to refuse to assist a woman in her travails. My foot slipped on a hidden patch of ice and I cried out, flailing my arms, but I remained on my feet, just.
When I reached the occupied house I’d passed on the way up, with its lights signaling warm signs of life, my spirits lifted. I considered knocking and asking for help. I was halfway home by now, and pushed on instead. I passed Lake Street a few minutes later and was almost to Central Street, where I would turn to reach the path leading to my own warm home.
Turning the Tide Page 15