Deadly Affair: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance)

by Lucinda Brant

  “But, Mr. Halsey, sir, I told you. I—”

  “Wait up!” the old man interrupted on a sudden thought, cane swishing from immoveable footman to proprietor. He poked Barr gently in the chest. “What letter?”

  Barr’s gaze lowered to the cane held to his chest and he quaked.

  “Letter?”

  “You said you discovered somethin’ about Mrs. Bourdon sent to you in a letter. Who sent it? When?”

  “Ah! Yes, the letter. A most illuminating piece of script that confirmed my suspicions about the guest in the Arch apartment and her—”

  The old man poked the proprietor’s chest.

  “Who. When.”

  Barr laughed nervously and touched his fingers lightly to the end of the cane. It was not removed.

  “I received the letter only today, sir. It was delivered by this morning’s post and I happened to be reading its most astonishing contents when the gentleman visitor to this apartment made his hurried exit from the establishment.”

  “Who.”

  “Lady Rutherglen.”

  “Rutherglen?”

  Barr gave an involuntary yelp, not in response to the old man’s thunderous declaration but because the cane jabbed him hard in the sternum.

  “Apologies,” Plantagenet Halsey muttered and let drop the cane. “You can have that letter fetched. I’m very sure Lord Halsey will be most interested in her ladyship’s slanderous discourse! And now,” he added with another sigh, his cane swishing up and across to point at the immobile footman guarding the door to the Arch apartment, “tell that gorilla to move!”

  “But, sir, that’s what I tried to tell you: I cannot do as you command for two very good reasons.”

  “Damne! For God’s sake, man! What bloody reasons?”

  The two footmen, Miss Musgrave, her maid and three guests, a beknighted farmer and his wife and young son, who had just joined the eavesdropping party on the landing, all leaned forward, waiting the response to the old man’s explosive question.

  “Firstly: the door has been locked from the inside and secondly, and I presumed it was at Lord Halsey’s instigation and thus that is why I wish to speak with him because, as your eyes can surely attest, there is indeed a mute footman the size of a gorilla obstructing access to the door. And if he does not belong to Lord Halsey, then I, like you, sir, am just as befuddled by whose order he guards that apartment.”

  Janie found the spare key to the servant door of the Arch apartment hanging on a hook in the housekeeper’s pantry and took it without asking. She did not have the time or the inclination to explain herself. And to do so would surely cause unnecessary gossip about her young mistress; events would soon conspire to do that anyway. The red-haired young man did not seem to mind her theft, in fact his grim smile held a wisp of encouragement as she slipped the key off the hook and pushed it up her sleeve out of sight, holding it in place with her arms folded. She prayed it did not slip and fall with a clatter to the stone floor as they darted amongst the kitchen servants too busy preparing the evening meals to be bothered questioning the trespass of two servants unknown to them and thus belonging to guests staying upstairs.

  When Janie had earlier gone up to the rooms via the narrow servant stairwell carrying a vase for the flowers, she was surprised and alarmed to discover the servant door locked. She had scratched on the paneling and called for her mistress and receiving no response had been about to descend the stairs to take the carpeted corridor used by guests to enter via the main door when she had heard a faint calling out. It was Mrs. Bourdon and an involuntary fretful groan alerted her to the possibility that her mistress may have gone into early labor; that the door remained locked heightened Janie’s dread. And then Mrs. Bourdon had cried out for her to fetch the friend of Mr. Plantagenet Halsey; the youth with the red hair. He could help her, and Janie was not to send for a physician or a man-midwife, only for the youth with the red hair. And to be quick about it!

  Janie had promised but was skeptical, yet reasoned that a woman suffering the pangs of childbirth could have whatever she wished if it lessened her suffering. What the fresh-faced Thomas Fisher could do for her she had no idea. He was not a man-midwife and he was much too young to be a physician. Yet, when she glanced over her shoulder, as he followed her up the circular stone stairwell, she was reassured by his look of grim determination.

  The key turned in the lock and opened the door, much to Janie and Tam’s relief. Tam let Janie go on ahead, the girl giving him a queer look before she bustled into the bedchamber from the sitting room because he was shrugging out of his frockcoat.

  Flowers were strewn across the carpet from the windowseat to the fireplace hearth, where a fire still crackled low, as if flung out violently, the delicate petals of fuchsias, red sage, and dahlias crushed, and stems broken. Everything else in the room: tapestry and damask cushions on the windowseat, two wingchairs, a low walnut table, and a basket holding needlework had, in Tam’s quick appraisal, not been disturbed. There being no signs of struggle or distress, other than the wanton destruction of a bouquet of autumn flowers, Tam followed the maid across the room, throwing his frockcoat across the back of one of the wingchairs. Yet, on the threshold of the bedchamber he stopped and waited. It would not do to barge in unannounced. Despite the maid saying Mrs. Bourdon had asked for him, he waited to be beckoned within.

  He pulled off his plain white ruffles and rolled up the billowy shirtsleeves to the elbow. Six years experience as an apprentice to a master Apothecary came to the fore and subordinated all considerations and fears of a youth not out of his teens, mind focused on the patient beyond the bedchamber door. He needed his apothecary’s travelling cabinet fetched from Mr. Halsey’s apartment. He required soap, hot water and bath sheets from below stairs. He presumed there was a washstand in the bedchamber. The porcelain jug would need to be refilled with fresh hot water, the porcelain bowl rinsed out and replenished. A hot brick wrapped in a soft cloth to keep the newborn warm, the maid could fetch from the kitchen when the time came. A pot of brewed tea, too; a cup of the same laced with a strong narcotic to help ease Mrs. Bourdon’s pain. There were several drugs to choose from in carefully labeled glass bottles hidden in the secret compartment in the back of the mahogany travelling cabinet, but he must choose the right one and administer the correct dose to ensure the mother was still able to bear down strongly when required to do so by the contractions. What did the pharmacopeia suggest as the correct dosage for…

  A cry of distress, then a half groan, half whimper sliced through his pharmaceutical musings and he flung back the bedchamber door, polite consideration aside, and was two strides from the four poster bed when Janie threw herself in his way.

  “I don’t know what to do! Tell me what to do for her!”

  Tam looked over the distraught maid’s head. Miranda Bourdon had her arms wrapped tightly about the carved mahogany bedpost, head slumped forward and was groaning softly. Tam’s gaze flickered beyond the dressing gown to her chemise and his heart beat faster at the dark spreading stain. Her waters had broken.

  “She needs you to be strong, Miss,” he said stridently to Janie. “And you need to do precisely as I say when I say it.”

  He disengaged himself and held the shaking maid at arm’s length to look into her tear-filled eyes and tell her what he needed. He made her repeat his orders and when she nodded and was calmer he let her go and stepped forward, saying firmly but gently to Miranda,

  “Ma’am, you asked for me. It’s Thomas Fisher. I’m here to help.”

  Miranda moaned and shuddered as another contraction wracked her body; this one stronger than the last. She took a series of shallow breaths, arms tightening about the bed post, and finally looked up at Tam through a tangle of hair. The terror in her blue eyes was palpable.

  Tam swallowed. The self-confidence he had brought into the room, that he was as capable as any man-midwife of delivering a newborn, after all he had helped his master bring more than two dozen babies into the worl
d in Mr. Blackwell’s parish of St. Jude, washed away in the panic of what the terror in her eyes revealed.

  The lying-ins where he had assisted his master deliver the babies of London’s poorest were all mothers giving birth to their third or fourth baby, sometimes it was the woman’s sixth or seventh labor, and while all thrilling events in Tam’s limited experience of such matters, were considered rather pedestrian by his master. There were no complications and only one of the babies had not survived, and that because the little life had pushed its way into the wider world too early.

  Despite women dying in childbirth everyday, Tam thanked providence he had been witness to only one such tragic event, it also happened to be his first experience of childbirth, thus it had etched itself into his memory. His master had been called to St. Judes for what he deemed an uneventful labor; he had tended the girl for the last two months of her pregnancy and being a healthy and hearty creature was not likely to have any trouble giving birth. He offered Tam to accompany him and if the opportunity presented itself he would allow him to assist but he was sworn to secrecy; this mother and her child were unlike any other his master had attended upon in St. Judes and Tam was to forget all that he saw and heard. Was that understood? To which Tam readily gave his consent and understanding.

  And so he had not been surprised to discover that the young mother-to-be was only a girl, not much more than fifteen years of age, but what did surprise him was her fine white hands with nails that were not ragged but manicured, the hands of a lady who had not done an hour least of all a day’s manual labor in her young life, hands that had not known the abject poverty of St. Judes. Surprise turned to astonishment when he realized there were two young girls: one pregnant, one not; both with dark ringlets and fine features; both exceedingly beautiful.

  It was an easy thing to do as his master had asked and forget his attendance at this young mother’s lying-in because it was the most traumatic experience of his young life. He had been almost fifteen years of age and although he had seen a great deal of poverty, disease, and death in the three years of his apprenticeship thus far, nothing prepared him for the trauma of seeing a baby ripped from its dying mother’s belly. His master had saved the infant’s life but its mother had died from exhaustion and loss of blood, no longer able to push, the baby unwilling or unable to enter the birth canal.

  Tam had sat huddled with the dead mother’s cousin in a cold corner of a small, dark, dank room pungent with the odors of birth, blood and sweat, and which was no longer filled with the mother’s screams of agony, silent and forgotten. And then the decision was made between the vicar and his master to cut the baby out of the mother. And before Tam could take the cousin from the room, before there was time to shield her from the sight, the grisly deed was done and the baby was pulled up and out by its little legs, a finger flicked in its little mouth to remove mucus so that it could breathe. And then it screamed, or was it the girl beside him who had? He could not remember and tried to forget. The recurring bloody nightmares of the dead mother’s belly being cut open and the infant extracted took much longer to subside.

  Four years on here he was with a young woman who was about to give birth, no longer the assistant of an experienced apothecary-physician but alone, still an apprentice but her only help and comfort. She looked as terrified as he felt. With all the mental muscle he could muster he forced himself to focus on the task before him and to put all other considerations aside. He was an apothecary. He had surely passed his entrance examination to be admitted to the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries. He was capable of helping this young woman deliver a healthy baby. He kept telling himself this as he quickly went to the bed and flung back the coverlet, smoothed down the sheets and hastily brought the pillows that were against the ornate mahogany headboard halfway down the length of the bed which would allow him to more easily examine her from the foot of the bed.

  The bed made ready and comfortable, Tam took Miranda by the elbow and gently prized her from the bedpost, offering her soothing words of encouragement and comfort as he led her to the head of the bed, all the while thinking that despite not being one for making wagers, he would safely stake all his meagerly possessions, and everything belonging to his master, Lord Halsey, that Miranda Bourdon was about to give birth to her first child.

  “I don’t know what to do, Thomas,” Miranda pleaded, her words uncannily similar to those spoken by Janie, and confirming Tam’s dread. “You do. You can help me.”

  “I will, ma’am. I will take good care of you and the babe. Here, sit on the edge of the bed a moment. Janie will return soon and then I will be able to give you something to help relieve the pain a little. Don’t worry. I won’t leave you until a physician—”

  She gripped his forearm hard.

  “No. No physicians and no midwives. No one else. Just you… You were there… We were there… Do you remember, Thomas?

  Tam looked up from her blood-covered fingers into her blue eyes. At first he had no idea what she was talking about and although he suspected pain was addling her brain, she was so very calm and lucid for a young woman in labor, and then her next words sent him hurtling back into the terror of that night he had just been remembering and it made him, too, wonder if in truth Miranda Bourdon was indeed a ghost.

  “The shawl, Thomas. What happened to Sophie’s shawl?”

  Alec walked along the passageway to the landing outside the Arch apartment and into a verbal mêlée. A crowd four deep had gathered in front of the door while a knot of curious bystanders hovered on the top steps of the staircase, neither coming up nor going down, yet trying their best to appear as if they were not lingering to eavesdrop.

  Miss Musgrave recognized the tall and darkly handsome Lord Halsey and with a quick tittered whisper near the ear of the person in front of her, the crowd fell apart with the whisper’s deliverance down the line, giving Alec easy access to his uncle and the proprietor who had come to an impasse in their argumentative conversation. But it was at the large footman, log-like arms and legs akimbo and filling the doorframe, that Alec’s astute gaze lingered, intrigued. His light blue eyes flickered across the man’s impassive face, then over his well-kept footman’s attire, fixing on the silver buttons of his frockcoat which caused his left eyebrow to rise a fraction in interest; without putting on his spectacles he was unable to make out the engraving but he had a hunch as to what was inscribed and it quickened his pulse, though he was able to say smoothly to the proprietor who was waiting his pleasure with a servile smile,

  “You wanted to have speech with me, Barr?”

  “That I did, my lord.”

  Alec turned a shoulder to the onlookers. “Without an audience…”

  While the proprietor was busy having the small crowd disperse, Alec said to his uncle in an undervoice, a jerk of his dark head at the Arch door, “Notice the silver buttons, Uncle?”

  Plantagenet Halsey had not and he peered keenly at the large servant. His bushy eyebrows shot up which was enough to convince Alec his gut feeling was proved correct and he smiled when the old man said in wonderment,

  “Well, I’ll be damned! Bees!” In the next breath he was grinding his teeth and his pale gaze flashed up at his nephew. “I knew it!” he hissed. “I told you Cleveley was up to his neck in Stanton’s dirty dish water!”

  “What has me intrigued is how his Grace knew Mrs. Bourdon would be here at Barr’s and not at the farmhouse, and if he knows that, does he know that her daughter is neither at the farmhouse or here with her mother? And what does he hope to achieve, keeping her prisoner of a lodging house?”

  Plantagenet Halsey pointed his cane in the direction of the servant. “Well, it’s a damned waste of time guardin’ her door because the poor woman has gone into labor, so couldn’t flee even if she wished to.”

  “Labor? She’s having her baby, now?”

  The old man smiled at the panic in his nephew’s voice. “Aye. The boy’s in with her.”

  “Tam? Tam is delivering her
baby?”

  “Think of anyone more competent?”

  Alec pulled his uncle aside, out of earshot of the proprietor and footman. “Well, yes, if I knew the names of any physicians or man-midwifes in the vicinity! Uncle, you said it yourself: Tam is a boy. I doubt he’s seen a woman fully undressed; as for—um—down there, I can’t imagine a situation requiring him to—”

  “Zounds! You do think him ignorant!” the old man said with a smile and a shake of his grizzled hair. “Well, he ain’t and hasn’t been for years. What do you think he’s been doin’ with his apothecary skills? Playing dispenser of medicines behind a shop counter and naught else?”

  “If I’d had my way, yes. That’s what a boy of Tam’s age would be engaged in doing,” Alec stated with annoyance, a heightened color to his shaven cheeks and a glance back to the proprietor who was making shoeing motions at two of his servants to hurry them along. “That others exploited his skill in the past by taking him into unsavory and unsafe places such as St. Judes, I can do nothing about. But I can and will do something about Tam’s present situation—”

  “Poor females ain’t any different to their rich sisters in their needs for medicinals and salves for all sorts of female complaints,” the old man interrupted belligerently. “And there ain’t many physicians who will venture into a parish such as St. Judes to tend to a poor woman when she’s in childbirth, when’s she’s in any predicament! Blackwell was fortunate to have the services of Dobbs and Thomas—”