No Comfort for the Lost

by Nancy Herriman

  Maryanne exhaled as the current pain passed. “John leaves early and gets home so late from supervising that crew at Martin and Company,” she said. “He can’t help with the baby. And he can’t help with the cooking and the cleaning, either.”

  If Celia had a penny for how many times she’d heard the like from her other patients, she would have been as rich as Croesus by now.

  “And don’t tell me to hire a nurse,” Maryanne added. “You know we’ve little money.”

  A situation that was easily observed by a quick scan of the cramped and gloomy bedroom where Maryanne lay. The meager contents consisted of a rope-strung bed topped by a straw mattress, the chair Celia occupied, and one chest of drawers that looked as though it had been rescued from a rubbish pile. The linens were clean, however, and the damp air coming through the window was fresh and smelled of the ocean. Celia had seen worse lodgings. Far worse.

  “Yes, I know.” Celia released Maryanne’s hand and stood. She folded away her stethoscope, returning it to the black portmanteau that served as her medical bag. “But you must spend more time resting. Ask a neighbor to help. Surely there is someone nearby who can stop in for an hour or two.”

  “To help a Mick and his wife?” Maryanne asked, cynicism in her light brown eyes. “We should’ve moved to the South Beach area among our own kind rather than live near the Italians and the Spanish and their endless guitar playing. But no, John had to move up here.”

  Her infant daughter’s bawling increased in pitch and volume, and Maryanne looked toward the door. “And that one with the colic. What am I to do? Some days I think you’re a lucky one with no children, ma’am.”

  Celia would not call it luck. And she expected she never would have children, especially given her singular lack of a living husband.

  “You will feel more cheerful after the baby is born, Mrs. Kelly.”

  “That’s what John says, too.” Maryanne managed a smile, and Celia helped her sit.

  “Take some sage tea to ease your pains or a teaspoon of paregoric if the tea does not work.” Celia snapped shut the portmanteau and gathered up her wrap. “For your daughter’s colic, you can try some ginger tea, if she’ll have it. Otherwise, a warm compress on her belly might help.”

  “Thank you,” the other woman said. “I just wish John could be here more often. I’m worried he won’t be with me when the baby finally does come. But I wouldn’t want him to lose his job because he’s tending to me. Not when he’s had such poor luck at the other work he had before we came to San Francisco. He won’t go back to being a ranch hand or a miner.”

  “Do ask a neighbor for help, Mrs. Kelly. You might be surprised who is willing to assist a woman in labor.” It was a common enough condition among the women who lived in the lodgings that spilled down the hills toward the Golden Gate, and many would be sympathetic.

  “I would be surprised,” said Maryanne, hauling herself to her feet, a hand on her protruding belly.

  “There’s no need to show me out,” said Celia. “Good night.”

  “Do you need a candle to light your way home? The fog’s come in thick tonight.”

  “I’ve only a few blocks to walk, Mrs. Kelly.” Celia fastened her navy wool wrap atop her crimson garibaldi and grabbed her bag. “I will be fine.”

  “You’ve more courage than I do to walk these streets alone at night, ma’am.”

  “They are not so bad.” Which was what she always told her housekeeper as well. Addie Ferguson tended not to believe Celia either.

  Mrs. Kelly thanked her, and Celia let herself out the front door. The fog was indeed thick, the corner gaslight a fuzzy spot of yellow. The mist swirled around a horse and rider passing on the intersecting street, a shadow moving through the blanketing white like a specter. After an anxious inhalation of breath, Celia descended to the street, clutching her portmanteau close.

  It was only a few blocks to reach home, she reminded herself. She was well-known in the area and would be perfectly safe. Better still, she was a very fast walker.

  • • •

  Aside from a momentary fright caused by a cat darting across her path, Celia arrived home without incident. Next door, their neighbor was scolding one of her children in a burst of Italian, and the dog across the street found something to bark at. Life was normal, safe and sound.

  Rolling her tense shoulders, Celia climbed the steps to her comfortable two-story brick home. She had just reached the porch when the front door swung open.

  “You’ve missed dinner, ma’am,” said Addie, her hands fisting on her hips.

  “I trust you have a bowl of mulligatawny at the ready for me.” Celia stepped past her housekeeper into the warmth of the entry hall.

  “I ought to let you starve, if you canna keep normal hours like other doctors.”

  An idle threat, coming from a woman who enjoyed mothering Celia, even though she was three years younger and, moreover, a servant. “I am not a doctor, Addie—only a nurse, as you well know. And as my patients do not keep normal hours, neither can I.”

  Piano music drifted through the closed doors to the parlor off to her left, followed by peals of girlish laughter. Barbara was entertaining a friend that evening, something Celia had sometimes feared would never happen for her half-Chinese cousin.

  “Have the girls eaten?” she asked, dropping onto a chair to remove her boots and slip into the soft leather mules she kept in the entry hall.

  “Two hours ago, ma’am,” said Addie. “And that Grace Hutchinson, for all she’s as skinny as a reed, has a healthy appetite. Maybe they dinna feed her at that fancy house of theirs.”

  “I am certain her mother feeds her, Addie,” Celia replied, smiling as she thought of Jane Hutchinson, the woman who’d become as dear of a friend to her as Grace was to Barbara. Though Grace was only her stepdaughter, Jane doted on the girl. “But who else makes a mulligatawny like you do?” Celia added.

  Another burst of giggling erupted in the parlor.

  “Och, those two! They’re like as not still laughing over their little joke about Mr. Knowles from the butcher shop.” Addie snatched up Celia’s boots and collected her wrap. “Asking me if we’re to get our meat delivered for free if I marry him.”

  “It is a reasonable question. I hope we do,” teased Celia.

  “Me, marry that galoot? Och, ma’am. What a thought.”

  With a harrumph, Addie hung the wrap on a wall peg and marched with the boots into the kitchen at the end of the hallway. Smiling, Celia slid open the parlor doors and went through to where the two girls, both seated at the rented piano, had their heads bent close together.

  Barbara sat bolt upright at Celia’s arrival. “Cousin, you’re finally back.”

  Grace Hutchinson rose to her feet. “How is your patient, Mrs. Davies?”

  Barbara followed her friend’s example and stood, too, wavering on her disfigured left foot before she regained her balance. The girls could not be more different—Barbara, black-haired and dark-eyed, her features an echo of her deceased mother’s Chinese heritage; and Grace, her hair a paler blond than Celia’s, with eyes a snapping hazel, willowy and already taller than Barbara although she was a year younger. Grace was a polite, cheerful girl, and anyone who could make Barbara laugh was welcome in their house.

  “Well enough. Thank you for asking, Grace.” Celia consulted the Ellery watch pinned at the waist of her brown holland skirt. Nearly nine. How had it gotten to be so late? “I did not expect to see you two still up at this hour, however.”

  “We were both hoping to sit with you by the fire and read before we retired,” said Barbara, and Grace nodded in agreement. Grace was staying the night; Celia expected there would be more giggling and whispering before they finally fell asleep.

  “If you are exhausted tomorrow, Grace, your mother will not be happy with me.”

  “My mother would nev
er be unhappy with you, Mrs. Davies. She thinks you’re so strong and brave, and I can’t tell you how much she admires you,” Grace insisted. “I mean, who else would’ve been so daring as to go out and discover her friend’s killer?”

  Celia heard Addie, setting the bowl of stew on the table in the adjoining dining room, clear her throat in disapproval. The story had been in every newspaper in the city, as the reporters in San Francisco loved to write about the sensational or the merely strange. A nurse finding the killer of a Chinese prostitute had apparently fit both categories.

  “Yes, that,” said Celia sternly, dissuading any further conversation on the topic. It was best left buried in the past.

  “So, can we stay up for a little while longer?” pleaded Barbara.

  “I suppose so,” Celia replied.

  “Should I bring in some milk and shortbread?” Addie asked.

  The girls grinned.

  “Yes, Addie, please do,” answered Celia, and went to sit at the dining room table.

  Barbara and Grace ran back to the piano and plopped onto the bench, and Grace began singing to Barbara’s tentative accompaniment. Celia smiled. Two friends, two bodies with one soul inspired.

  “Indeed so, Mr. Pope,” she murmured to herself.

  She’d taken only a bite of the mulligatawny when someone pounded on the front door.

  “Och, not another patient at this hour!” Addie called out from the kitchen. She leaned through the dining room doorway on her way to the foyer. “I’m turning them away, ma’am. You’re closed.”

  She bustled off. Celia heard Addie release the front door lock, then give out a screech. Celia jumped up and hurried through the parlor.

  “Stay there, girls,” she told Barbara and Grace, shutting the doors on their startled expressions.

  Owen Cassidy stumbled across the threshold, gasping for breath. He was covered in coal dust and dirt from head to toe; the only pale part of him were the whites of his wide green eyes.

  “Och, lad,” chastised Addie. “Dinna even think of coming inside—”

  “Ma’am! He’s dead!” he cried, gaping at Celia. “He’s dead!”

  “What nonsense are you blathering?” asked Addie.

  “The fellow in the cellar! He’s dead!”

  Nancy Herriman received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Cincinnati, where she also took courses in history and archaeology. She’s a past winner of RWA’s Daphne du Maurier Award for Best Unpublished Mystery/Romantic Suspense, and when she isn’t writing, she enjoys performing with various choral groups. She lives in central Ohio with her husband and their two teenage sons.

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