The Rose in the Wheel: A Regency Mystery (Regency Mysteries Book 1)

by S K Rizzolo

  “Were you worried, love? But you received my note and the painting?”

  “Yes, this afternoon.”

  “What did you think of it, the portrait I mean?” he asked eagerly.

  “’Tis your best work yet, as I make no doubt you are well aware. How could you? How could you so forget your honor as to threaten Constance Tyrone? And those dreadful sketches that have quite blackened her reputation. She didn’t deserve such treatment, Jeremy.”

  He reached under the shawl for her hand. “I assure you I shall undertake to express, and to feel, all the regret you would have of me. But you know I never meant for those drawings to be exposed to the public gaze, albeit only fools would find aught objectionable in them. As for threats, I meant nothing of the kind. I merely sought to pursue an advantageous connection.”

  “You deny that Mr. Partridge paid for your silence?”

  “I deny it utterly,” he answered, squeezing her fingers. “Oh, he advanced me some funds to see me through a few weeks. ’Twas only fair since he had desired me to lie low until the furor should abate. I was doing him a favor really, for I might have cleared myself simply by telling the truth about him and Miss Tyrone.”

  Penelope desperately wanted to believe him, and perhaps he was, in some sense, telling her truth. “I suppose you’ve heard the Irishman Kevin Donovan has committed suicide to avoid the gallows. But he wasn’t the one, Jeremy, I am nearly certain of it. Now with this horrible Ratcliffe affair, no one cares for Donovan anymore, nor for his wife and child left to face the world alone.”

  His eyes were tender. “Like someone else with whom we are well acquainted, eh? My poor Penelope. You’ve had a rough time of it, but that is all at an end now.”

  “Well, it isn’t over. I have been thinking of writing a piece about the life of Miss Tyrone. She…she haunts me, Jeremy. You know how I’ve always wanted to attempt something in that line.”

  He had already turned away to lead her to the settee. “Perhaps you will then, one day. In the meantime let us talk of our own affairs. I have much to say to you. You cannot but own that I have treated you with all forbearance, but even now I’ll not compel you, love—though you are my wife.”

  “What do you want?” she said warily as she seated herself at his side.

  “We cannot go on thus. Now that I am to receive payment for the portrait, I shall be somewhat beforehand with the world. I have come for you and Sarah, Penelope. What say you we go to Dublin? I’ve an acquaintance there who has promised to put me in the way of some commissions.”

  Penelope stared at him. “You cannot be serious.”

  He grinned. “Why not? As I said, I’ve missed you and my lovely Sarah too. A man and his family belong together, Penelope. You need me, and the Lord knows I have need of you. Besides, I’ve no doubt we can contrive to keep ourselves tolerably well amused.”

  The bitterness welled up. “Yes, until something, or someone, more to your taste comes along. I tell you fairly, Jeremy—” She broke off in consternation as a tiny, nightgown-clad figure appeared in the doorway.

  “Mama?”

  “Sarah!” Jeremy was on his feet in an instant, sweeping his daughter high in his arms. “Hello, my love,” he said, his face close to hers.

  “I’ve been waiting for you, Papa,” she said clearly, the reproach strong in her tone. “You’ve been ever so long. You won’t go away again, will you?”

  “You had best ask your mother that question,” he replied, holding Penelope’s gaze. For a long moment she hesitated as fear, guilt, and sorrow warred with some other emotion she would not define.

  “Oh, Sarah,” she said finally, “I am so sorry, my darling.”

  ***

  Chase was trudging up the stairs, his hand resting heavily on the banister, when the landlady, Mrs. Beeks, called from below.

  “I’m glad you’re home, sir. These days a body sleeps easier with a man in the house. Will you take a bite of supper?”

  He turned back. “Just bread and cheese in my room tonight, Mrs. Beeks.”

  “As you will, sir.” Nonetheless, she went on, anxiety clear in her tone, “If I might speak to you about Leo, I should be most grateful. The boy insists he wants to go to sea, Mr. Chase, and how to put a spoke in his wheel is what I don’t know—”

  But he had already moved into his room, and her only answer was a firm click. Mrs. Beeks stood for a moment looking up at the closed door.

  In his chamber Chase removed his greatcoat and collapsed on the bed. For a while he lay listening to the flutter of a light rain against the window. At last he lifted himself up and walked slowly to the dresser to retrieve Abigail’s miniature. With no other motive than loneliness, he carried it to his sitting room. Pouring himself a snifter of brandy, he folded his body into an armchair, too exhausted to bother lighting a fire. He was content to remain in the cold and dark, sipping the fiery liquid and clutching the picture. He didn’t need to look at it. He knew every detail. Tracing a finger idly around the frame, he drifted…

  Chase had no idea how much time had passed when the ghost woke him with a feather touch on the shoulder.

  “Do not forget,” said Constance Tyrone.

  In his state of dream-like acquiescence, he felt no surprise or alarm except that her voice sounded different than he would have thought. Not like Abby’s, richly warm, yet strong and decisive. Instead, shockingly, it was Penelope’s voice, pitched higher and softer. Chase peered into the dimness, trying to see her more clearly. But her head was bent, black hair falling across her cheek and neck.

  “I’m supposed to be done with you,” he told her. “More gruesome murders, other fish to fry. The public has a short memory for victims. Murderers, however, become legend.”

  Without answering, she disappeared, and Chase slipped away again…

  The next awakening jarred him cruelly. He gave an enormous start, his entire body stiffening, heart thumping painfully. He thought, please God, don’t let it touch me.

  Beside his chair stood a faceless shape dressed in charred rags and reeking of decay—George Kite’s friend Crow.

  One of Crow’s arms ended in a blood-red stump. His remaining hand grasped a clod of damp earth which he crumbled in his fingers and sprinkled on the carpet. He tossed his head restlessly back and forth, his flashing eyes alive with rage and betrayal.

  “What do you want?” Chase forced each word through a tight throat.

  Crow was silent.

  Watching the trickling dirt, Chase said, “You told Kite there wouldn’t be any digging on the night you were hired to move Constance Tyrone’s body. What sort of digging did you mean, Crow?”

  “You know.”

  “You and Kite are resurrection men, aren’t you? Grave robbers? That’s why the job was perfect for you. Only this time the corpse didn’t need to be unearthed.” Chase stared up into the shrouded countenance.

  “And Ursula. You had something to do with that, didn’t you? You and Kite were the ones who stole her body. Where did you take her?”

  “You know the answer, mate.” Crow laughed, a terrifying sound.

  Chase struggled to keep his mind clear. “I do know, must have known without realizing, but I’m too tired. You were killed for your pains, weren’t you, Crow? Someone did not want you around to tell the tale.”

  Crow disintegrated.

  Then someone spoke from behind in smooth, cultured tones that he recognized, yet couldn’t place. “You are out of time, Mr. Chase, and your suspicions will avail you nothing.”

  Chase’s muscles would not obey him as he tried to turn his head, and he felt himself drifting again, this time into a slumber so deep it was like death. But just before unconsciousness came up to embrace him, he was able to identify the voice.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “Ring the bell to summon the handlers,” said Reginald Strap. “And have the patient brought in.”

  As an assistant scurried out, Strap waited, quite at ease, regarding the faces that stared d
own from the tiers of standings. Packed with surgeons’ dressers and pupils, the standings curled in a semicircle around three sides of the room. In the arena at the bottom stood the surgeon, illumined by the sun pouring through the skylight.

  Penelope was aware of the precise moment when he noticed her, squeezed in on the top row, for he looked, then looked again and inclined his head with a slight, ironic smile. Penelope nodded back, trying to ignore the sidelong frowns cast in her direction. As far as she could see, she was the only woman present in the operating theatre at St. Thomas’s hospital. It was not a circumstance in which to take comfort.

  The crowd hummed with excitement as Strap ushered several important-looking guests to their seats in front. Next, he stripped off his coat and hung it on a row of pegs. After rolling up his shirtsleeves, he donned an old purple frock coat, turned up the collar to cover his linen, and tied on a wide, bloodstained apron.

  “Today I shall operate to bypass an aneurysm of the popliteal artery which, as you know, runs behind the knee. We place the ligature in the thigh, tying off the diseased artery and thereby forcing the collateral vessels to take up an increased blood flow. For this purpose, I will use the site in the thigh known as Hunter’s Canal, so named, of course, after John Hunter, the first to perform this surgery in 1785…”

  As he was speaking, a door at his back opened, and two thickset men entered, supporting a drooping, blindfolded figure between them. It was a woman, drunk or merely stupefied with fear. Wearing a shapeless gown of some coarse stuff, she had a strapping frame and lank brown hair bound at the neck. Her cheeks and arms were mottled with large copper colored blotches. The men lifted her onto a plain deal table swathed in an oil cloth. One of the handlers held her fast at the wrist and shoulder.

  Strap approached. “Do you agree?” he demanded.

  At the woman’s mute nod, he motioned to the handler who assisted her to lie back. Without vision, sounds must be magnified, thought Penelope. The woman could hear the cacophony of voices, the hurried footsteps, the clatter as a dresser dropped one of the surgeon’s instruments on the small side table—and her flesh would be shrinking as she waited for the knife to descend.

  Strap moved away, and the hospital chaplain stepped nearer to address the patient in a voice designed to carry. “Sickness is a forerunner of death. Are you prepared?”

  Giving a feeble shake of her head, the woman seemed to be struggling to sit up. She said something Penelope couldn’t hear. The handlers pushed her down.

  The surgeon turned to his work, but before he could begin, a pupil called, “Mr. Strap, a question if you please.”

  Strap was not encouraging. “Yes?”

  “Can you tell us the reason for this woman’s affliction? Has she been injured?”

  The surgeon’s eyes flickered over the patient indifferently. “I believe the cause to be untreated syphilitic infection.”

  Daringly, the questioner called out a second time: “Is it true that the great Hunter, pioneer of the technique you apply today, actually inoculated himself with venereal effluent in order to study syphilis and gonorrhea?” Strap held up his hands for silence. The light seemed to magnify them, and Penelope suddenly realized the strength his forearms must possess. “So it has been said,” he replied. “But how foolish a risk for a trained professional. Much better to conduct one’s inquiries as Mr. Jenner did, for instance, when he tested his inoculum for the smallpox on a young boy. We all know the happy results of that experiment.”

  Murmurs of agreement and a few “hear, hears” greeted Strap’s statement; the admiration he inspired was palpable. And yet his words echoed hollowly in Penelope’s head as she rubbed a hand across her clammy brow. Last night after she had finally managed to tear Sarah from Jeremy, Penelope had tumbled back into bed, only to find troubling dreams that had taken their toll. Now the malaise she had felt all day intensified.

  Strap joined the surgeons and other observers clustering around the table. “Enough preliminaries, eh? Let’s get on with it.” His expression was rueful, as if in apology for allowing any delay. Carefully, he lifted the woman’s gown to her hips.

  Seeming to forget their intention to give her a wide berth, the men around Penelope pressed in closer. She began to feel stifled, her discomfort made worse by the thought of the woman’s coming agony.

  Expectation grew heavy as Strap took up his knife and glanced up, saying, “Time me, gentlemen.” Several eager spectators hurried to comply, producing pocket watches and holding them aloft. The handlers’ grip on the patient tightened.

  To Penelope, it seemed as though the light had leached from the rest of the room to isolate the surgeon and the woman in a bright bubble so that the other figures on the crowded floor were somehow dark, indistinct. She heard a hiss of indrawn breath as the pupils leaned eagerly over the railings. “Heads, heads,” those in the back cried, pushing at each other to gain a better view.

  Then Strap’s arm plunged so fast that Penelope caught only the gleam of the knife. The woman screamed, and bright blood spilled over the oilcloth to run in rivulets off the table. Wood scraped against wood as Strap kicked a sawdust-filled box across the floorboards to catch the fluid. He repeated, “Time, gentlemen.”

  A chorus of voices answered him. As cheers erupted, Penelope found her gaze riveted upon the exuberant, glistening countenances of the men who waved their pocket watches. She felt the crush of bodies sway toward her again, and her vision blurred.

  Spinning around, she pushed her way to the staircase at the top of the standings. Head bent and elbows clasped against her body, she clattered down the steps and through the passageway, bursting out into the theatre’s small lobby, where she nearly collided with an old woman swathed in a voluminous apron.

  “What were you doing in there? Ain’t fitting for the likes of you.” The woman grinned, displaying teeth reduced to black stumps.

  Penelope tried to hide her dismay by speaking briskly. “I’ve come to see Mr. Strap, but I see he is occupied at present. Is there somewhere I may wait?”

  The woman gave her a knowing look. “Why yes, miss, if you’ll come with me.”

  She set off at a clip, leaving Penelope little choice but to follow. They descended to a colonnade that wrapped around the wards. The woman continued, her ragged skirts dragging in the dust.

  Penelope’s nausea faded, and she began to look about with interest. According to the porter who had conducted her to the theatre, St. Thomas’s had been part of a medieval priory destroyed in the early 1200s by fire and rebuilt on its current site on the east side of Borough High Street, Southwark. Named originally in honor of St. Thomas à Becket, the hospital had been closed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, reopening later under the new name of St. Thomas the Apostle. Early in the last century the crumbling structure had been replaced by three enormous red brick quadrangles.

  They had passed into the men’s block, her companion, presumably a nurse, informed her. Penelope glimpsed the rows of wooden bedsteads and was astonished by the clamor arising from the patients.

  Slackening her pace, the woman threw back a smile. “You get used to it, miss. Lying abed for so long makes some a bit peevish, you might say.”

  When Penelope caught up, the nurse went on, saying seriously, “But this here’s a godly place. Why, we have a rule that all our people go to chapel to give thanks for their deliverance before we send them home.”

  “Yes, indeed.” But Penelope wondered how many patients were actually discharged cured. Seeing this place, she could more easily understand Fiona’s reluctance to seek treatment.

  They continued to a small side court where the nurse halted. “Here’s where the foul wards is for them as got the French disease. Men over there, women just beyond. Around and below us is the warm and cold baths, brewhouse, bakehouse, and the morgue.”

  “Are the surgeons able to effect many cures for the pox?”

  She shrugged. “I seen some as make out. They say your Mr. Strap be the best m
an for that.”

  Opening a door, she ushered Penelope forward. “Here we are then, miss. You sit right here, and Mr. Strap’ll be along.”

  Penelope found a windowless room which someone had taken pains to render more elegant. Reposing in one corner was a brass-inlay desk, covered by neat stacks of papers, a lamp, and a walnut standish. Faded but of obvious quality, the crimson and gold Oriental carpet held a dragon motif. Framed testimonials and a painting or two adorned the walls. To her right was a connecting door.

  One of the certificates caught her eye, so she stood to examine it more closely. The handsomely framed parchment commemorated Reginald Strap’s work for the East London Vaccination Institute for the Eradication of the Smallpox. It was a glowing testimonial to “herculean efforts on behalf of the poor” and “battles waged against ignorance and superstition.”

  Penelope read it over several times, trying to pinpoint the curious feeling that she was missing something. She had experienced the same momentary disorientation in the operating theatre when Strap had spoken of Mr. Jenner’s vaccination experiments.

  Turning away, she perused the titles on Strap’s bookshelves. Works of science and medicine dominated, particularly treatises on venereal illnesses, although he was also interested in history and philosophy. Not surprising, she thought, for he seemed a man of refinement. In truth, Penelope had been surprised by the roughness of many of the pupils and surgeons in the operating theatre.

  But Mr. Strap was almost a gentleman, and she remembered that he had once sought Constance Tyrone’s hand. It was a shame he had not approved of Constance’s vocation, believing it too much for her frail health. Had he fully supported her endeavors, they might have made a happy, productive marriage and given valuable service to the needy.

  Yet, she mused, the “needy” didn’t always appreciate such efforts, since uneducated people were often wary of innovation. How had Strap persuaded someone like Winnie to undergo his vaccination? What was it she had said?

  “I ain’t been right since that doctor dosed me…The Lord never intended such mucking about with a body’s innards.”