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

by S K Rizzolo

  “You cannot think that I…I did stop to see Constance that day, but she wasn’t there, I swear it.” His gaze didn’t waver. “And Strap could not be so vile. It is true, we spoke of an… arrangement, but he cared for Constance. My God, he wanted to marry her.”

  “What arrangement, Tyrone?”

  A choked sob burst from the other man and, for a minute or two, he couldn’t respond. Chase opened his mouth to push further, but shut it again when Bertram jerked to his feet and stumbled to the decanter. After pouring the wine, he remained by the table.

  “Constance had grown ever more unpredictable, almost zealous about her charitable work,” Bertram said. “I had come to believe that marriage would be the best solution for her, and Strap, well, he was still interested. Oh, I wasn’t blind to the advantages on his side: looking high indeed for a mere surgeon. Yet had they wed, I might have counted on him to safeguard her interests.”

  Chase eyed him shrewdly. “And to keep Miss Tyrone in line. So what did you do, apply the screws to your sister?”

  “Nothing like that. I merely told Strap I should speak to my father, and were the outcome favorable, I might attempt to persuade Constance. They shared an interest in philanthropy, you know. I am certain he meant to afford her reasonable latitude, but he would not have allowed her to exhaust herself.”

  “So your concern was for your sister’s welfare, sir? Though I don’t doubt that once Strap had control of her fortune, he’d have made it worth your while, perhaps by guaranteeing you a generous allowance to remove your gambling debts and free you of an unwanted betrothal?”

  “Strap could not be so vile,” he repeated in a broken voice. “How attack Constance in broad daylight? What possible motive could he have?”

  Chase suppressed an unwelcome twinge of pity. “The motive is linked to at least two suspicious cases of the pox among the St. Catherine women. In both instances there is some question as to how the contagion was effected. I can only assume these women were the victims of some sort of medical wrongdoing.

  “As for how the murder was accomplished: there were no witnesses. The doorkeeper, Winnie, was ill that day, and all the other women were at work in the adjacent house. After your sister returned from her errand, she repaired to her study, where Strap must have surprised her before she had even removed her cloak, though she did change her muddy footwear.

  “She may have fled outside, but not far because her slippers weren’t soiled. She very likely just reached the terrace. In any event, he throttled her and left her for dead in the garden shed.

  “Then his luck ran out, for, as I’ve just learned this day, your coachman observed him near where Miss Tyrone was secreted. Were she discovered there, Strap would have been under immediate suspicion. Still, he thought of a clever dodge: the employment of two resurrection men who were to dispose of the body late that night. These men, however, were frightened off when the ‘corpse’ suddenly twitched.” Chase nodded as Tyrone sat forward, his eyes stark pools of horror.

  “Yes, you might well be shocked, sir. Your sister was alive. She had been gravely injured in the original attack, but for all that she might have survived had those ruffians not dropped her in the street to be smashed by a passing carriage.”

  “Chase, I swear I had no hand in her death. You must believe me. You can prove this business about Strap?”

  “To my satisfaction but not, I fear, to anyone else’s.”

  “The grave robbers?”

  “I believe the surgeon sent one to his eternal reward, seeking to wrap up the matter cleanly. The other claims ignorance of the man who employed them.”

  “Strap has influential friends, Mr. Chase. He is well respected and clever. You won’t catch him out.” Tyrone got to his feet.

  Chase stood too. “If you believe me, sir, perhaps together we may hit upon a way to bring guilt home to the villain.”

  “Villain?” said a soft voice. Chase glanced up in surprise to see a slight figure garbed in a dressing gown standing in the open doorway. Receiving no answer to his question, Ambrose Tyrone drifted across the room to join them.

  “Good day, sir,” said Chase, wondering what the devil more he ought to say. Surely the boy’s older brother was the proper person to enlighten him. It seemed to Chase that the truth was the lightest of the debts that must be paid were justice ever to be done to Constance Tyrone and all who mourned her truly. And, if he could help it, such payment would be forthcoming.

  Bertram Tyrone stared at his feet as Ambrose reached out to take up the gold cross that lay on the table.

  The boy turned to Chase, a pathetic eagerness in his tone. “You bring us news, I think.”

  “Mr. Tyrone?” said Chase.

  At this, Bertram looked up. Even without candles in the lengthening shadows, his despair and self-contempt were plain to see.

  ***

  The coach tossed to one side, pitched drunkenly, then righted itself. Hunched against the cold, the jarvey flicked his whip and urged the horses on. He ignored Buckler’s muttered curse. Praying they would not be overturned, Buckler cast a glance at the man’s profile. Only one glittering eye and a heavy, lowered brow were visible above the scarf wound about his ears. One end of the scarf undulated in the wind.

  Buckler clutched at the seat and pondered his situation. Choosing to ride on the box in order to clear his head, he had bundled Maggie and the children into the relative warmth of the interior and paid well above the usual fare in advance. But they raced headlong into darkness, armed only with a half-formed and outlandish scheme. While he knew he had to do something if Penelope were truly in danger, the conventional barrister in him warned that he was not a man of action. It would have been more prudent to approach the authorities.

  Wheels rumbled on stone as the coach swept onto Blackfriars Bridge and slowed to merge with the early evening traffic. Buckler had instructed the jarvey to take this route rather than London Bridge, believing they could make faster time even though the other bridge terminated right by the hospital.

  As they picked up speed again, Buckler thought of the Thames, an unseen blackness below, and felt his anxiety grow. He could hear Penelope’s voice saying, “After all, those boats down there hold flesh and blood men all going about their business, some happily. They are not Charon bearing souls to the land of the dead.” And he found himself wondering if she really understood the wickedness of which flesh and blood men were capable. A ride with Charon might indeed be preferable.

  He shook off reflection and concentrated instead on keeping his seat as furious gusts buffeted him and withdrew to gather strength for the next onslaught. Trying to judge if rain were imminent, he glanced at the sky, but the mist that had hovered on the horizon all afternoon now nestled lower to land. The lamps on either side of the bridge were a line of frail beacons staving off this night of December 21, the longest of the year. They would be of little use soon, he judged.

  Crossing into Southwark, they wended their way to Borough High Street. No sooner had the hackney set them down near St. Thomas’s than the driver took up his reins and disappeared into the fog. Buckler and his companions moved ghostlike down the desolate street, the children strangely quiet. Then as the hospital loomed, he raised his eyes to the tall iron gates. The carriage entrances were closed.

  When Buckler pulled the bell rope at one of the pedestrian doors, the resultant chime sounded distant, yet it produced an old porter who hobbled up and pressed his face to the bars. He lifted his lantern to throw light on their faces.

  “What do you want?”

  Maggie stepped forward. “That’s no way to treat honest poor out Thomassing on a bitter night.”

  “It’s late. Honest people is gone. We’re closed but for the accident gate round the side.”

  “Well, the hour don’t make us any less poor,” retorted Maggie. “Nor honest neither if that’s what you’re saying. My husband and children are tired and hungry.”

  Seemingly on cue, the baby began to cry, with Sa
rah and the little boy joining in.

  The porter backed off a step. “Quiet them pups down, or you’ll have the whole place in an uproar. Right, then. I’ll take you through to the kitchen.” He turned a lock, and the gate swung back. “Now stay with me and don’t let those children wander off, or you’ll be the worse for it.”

  They walked in, the gate clanging shut behind them. Buckler, Maggie, and the children followed the porter’s bobbing lantern through an arcade with benches at intervals. They moved toward the cross building where a frontispiece was set over a wide opening. At the top under the pediment was mounted a clock, its face lost in shadows. In the niches below stood the dim figure of Edward VI overlooking other statues of afflicted patients.

  As they swept by several wards, Buckler noticed that every other window was bricked in. Penelope could be anywhere, and how was he to find her? He would have to inquire for Strap without making the porter suspicious.

  Casually, he said, “A friend of mine was once saved from a gangrene by one of your surgeons here. A Mr. Reginald Strap. Do you know him?”

  “’Course I do,” growled the porter without turning around. “He’s the stiff-rumped one as physics the foul wards. Likes to fancy he’s a cut above the rest.”

  “Oh? I imagine he has a consulting room? In this yard?”

  “Naw. The foul wards is beyond the third court. Who’d want ’em near decent folk?”

  Buckler exchanged a look with Maggie. “I must get away,” he whispered as they approached the kitchen, which was off the passageway stretching under the frontispiece.

  “Yes, sir.” Forthwith, she doubled over and grasped at her stomach. “Oh my, oh my.”

  The porter spun around. “I told you to be quiet. What is it?”

  “It’s my belly,” wailed Maggie. “I’m with child, sir, and I fear there be something wrong.”

  “Mama, mama,” cried the little boy, and Sarah resumed her heartrending sobs.

  “Help her,” said Buckler. He gave Maggie an admiring look.

  “What’ll I do?” said the porter nervously.

  “This is a hospital, man. Fetch a doctor!”

  As the porter ran off in confusion, Buckler mouthed a thank you, patted Sarah on the head, and slipped down the steps into the next court.

  Buckler wished he knew more about the hospital’s layout. That it was built around a series of courtyards reminded him of the Temple, so the place felt eerily familiar. By the light of lamps in sconces, he could see figures milling about. The tower of St. Thomas’s church rose to his right, and beside it he could make out a gate, probably the accident entrance which the porter had mentioned. He strode down the colonnade.

  No one challenged him as he made his way to an irregularly shaped yard off the third quadrangle. Overpowering odors of must, dirt, and sickness buffeted him. The pox sufferers would be housed nearby.

  Removing his overcoat, he folded it under his arm, for if he encountered someone, he hoped to appear at least somewhat respectable. He walked on, but the chill was deadening.

  When a ward opened up in front of him, Buckler stepped over the threshold. Obtaining information here might prove to be less risky than confronting hospital workers, he decided. Perhaps one of the patients had seen Penelope or would know where to find Reginald Strap. He looked around.

  Lining the walls were wooden trough-shaped bedsteads, occupied by forms covered in sacking. A single lamp on a bare wooden trestle table provided the only light, a meager fire at one side of the room the only heat.

  He looked up at the large plaque affixed to the wall in front of him. It read:

  THE INTEREST OF THE POOR AND THEIR DUTY

  ARE THE SAME

  FOR

  CLEANLINESS GIVES COMFORT;

  SOBRIETY BRINGS HEALTH;

  INDUSTRY YIELDS PLENTY;

  HONESTY MAKES FRIENDS:

  RELIGION PROCURES PEACE OF MIND,

  CONSOLATION UNDER AFFLICTION,

  THE PROSPECT OF GOD’S BLESSING, THROUGH CHRIST,

  IN THIS LIFE, AND THE ASSURANCE OF

  ENDLESS HAPPINESS AND GLORY

  IN THE LIFE TO COME.

  Suddenly, he heard a faint mewling like the sound a kitten makes when hungry, and he turned to see one of the patients motioning at him. Buckler drew near, leaning over the bench at the end of the bed.

  Though the man’s chin and sunken cheeks looked human enough, his nose was eaten away to a gaping cavity, his swollen lips contorted in a toothless grimace. The flesh of his face and arms was pitted with deep scars. My God, thought Buckler, recoiling instinctively.

  The creature had noted the involuntary movement. “I know you,” he croaked. Something like a chuckle escaped his throat.

  Wanting to flee, Buckler nonetheless advanced another step. He heard rustles from the other patients as they shifted in their straw, but no one appeared to be paying any attention.

  “You’re the one as brought me the sweets and the pint of ale that time. I never forgot.”

  “You’ve mistaken me for someone else, I fear.”

  The sick man struggled to one elbow, and Buckler saw that he was young, no more than thirty-five. Sweat-streaked, filthy hair tumbled across his unlined brow. “He looked like you,” he said. “You got anything for me? A bit of tobacco?”

  “No, I am sorry.”

  The black eyes darted to Buckler’s. “I used to walk the earth like a real man, you know. Ethan Ash’s my name.”

  “I seek Mr. Strap, the surgeon. It is most urgent I locate him.”

  “Mr. Strap has a consulting room down the corridor. I was there once myself. Or he’d be in the operating theatre. But not now. Come back tomorrow.” He enunciated carefully, turning each word over in his mouth.

  “If Strap were working late, where would he be?” Holding Ash’s gaze, Buckler struggled to prevent his horror from showing.

  “Perhaps in the dead-house, carving up some poor cull like them surgeons always do. Only by the time it’s my turn, there won’t be much left.” The mewling noise sounded again, and Buckler realized it was the man’s breath whistling through his cavernous nostrils.

  “I appreciate your help, sir,” Buckler told him, his tone respectful. He began to back away.

  Ash did not reply, so Buckler thanked him again and left. With relief, he re-entered the courtyard and stood for a moment to reorient himself. Ash had said that Strap’s consulting room was close by. But before Buckler could move, a swarm of porters all carrying lanterns hurried by.

  Buckler stopped a man as he passed. “What’s all the excitement?” he asked officiously.

  “A crazy woman is loose, sir. She’s run to ground in the operating theatre.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Mr. Strap gave a charming smile. “I am sorry I was delayed, ma’am, but I see you’ve been entertaining yourself.”

  “Yes, I have. Your specimens are…fascinating. I hope you don’t mind my having a look around whilst I waited.” Penelope turned away from the shelves and took a few steps toward the door. Her imagination might be playing tricks, but if the misshapen hand had once belonged to George Kite’s accomplice Crow, she did not want the surgeon to notice her interest.

  Strap, however, mistook her intention and offered his arm, his lips lifting in another chillingly intimate smile. “Not at all, Mrs. Wolfe. Your interest is gratifying. May I point out a few items of note?”

  She took his arm, feeling its solid warmth beneath the elegant jacket. He had removed his blood-spattered frock coat and scrubbed his hands clean. They were well-molded hands, strong with shapely fingers and close-clipped nails. Penelope shivered.

  “You see, ma’am,” he said as he guided her down the room, “these specimens are essential, the life’s blood of a surgeon’s inquiries.” He pointed at a hyena’s head, carefully labeled and preserved in its jar. “Studies in comparative anatomy may reveal great truths of human physiology. And, of course, the unusual or the deformed must always tempt us, though it is,
in actuality, the study of the whole and healthy that lays bare the workings of disease.”

  He allowed a glimmer of humor to surface. “A fact which doesn’t stop us surgeons from competing over unique specimens, paying dearly for the privilege of owning them. You know, John Hunter once gave five hundred pounds for the corpse of an eight-foot Irish giant and boiled away the flesh in order to extract the skeleton.”

  Penelope lowered her eyes. Were she fortunate, he would attribute any show of nerves on her part to feminine sensibility. He mustn’t discover what she suspected, even though it was difficult to see how she could be endangered in so public a place as a hospital.

  “Our endeavors are often not understood by the public, I’m afraid,” he continued after a moment. “At times we face quite hostile resistance. Yet if medical science is ever to relieve the varied ills that beset mankind, such inquiries are vital.”

  “I make no doubt you and your colleagues render assistance to a multitude of unfortunates, sir.” She slowed, trying unobtrusively to retract her arm. Strap allowed her grip to fall, but took a step closer.

  “That is my fondest wish,” he murmured, his gaze skimming over her face.

  She wrenched her arm away under pretense of examining the timepiece pinned to her dress. “The hour advances, and I must think of returning home. It has been a most stimulating afternoon.” To her own ears her voice sounded strange, high-pitched and artificial.

  Strap’s gaze assessed her. “But you have yet to achieve your purpose in coming here, ma’am. Would you not care to discuss Fiona’s treatment and view the wards? I think a course of Van Swieten’s liquor would do her the most good. Perhaps combined with a regimen of baths and enemas to help purge the system of impurities.”

  Without waiting for a response, he strolled toward the connecting door, and Penelope relaxed a little. If she could get him out into the wards, all would be well. She even thought she could keep up her pretense of ignorance with other people around. It was only that the flirtatious glint in his eyes unnerved her so much she was sure her dread would seep out and spread over her body like a rash. In that moment, she devoutly wished she had agreed to Jeremy’s proposition. Very likely she never would have come here today at all. There wouldn’t have been time what with all the necessary arrangements…