by Kate Gray
I’ve smoked every day for years now. Can’t be too bad fer ya’. My old gran used to take it medicinally.” Otto Johansen sat at his kitchen table, alternately sipping tea and coughing.
“Be that as it may, Otto,” said Doctor Poole, rolling his eyes, “I suspect the tobacco inhalations may be making worse your tubercular condition.”
“Eh?” Otto stared at him with the sanguinity of a bull contemplating tulips. Poole sighed.
“Smoke is smoke, Otto. It’s filth, and the filth is crowding your lungs, making it harder to breathe.”
“Hmm. Mebbe. I likes my pipe, Doc. Relaxin’ an’ all.”
Doctor Poole knew a losing fight when he saw it, and began packing his bag back up.
“Where ya’ goin’, Doc?”
Far away, if at all possible, Poole thought impatiently, only then noticing the glint of mischief in the old man’s eyes. Two could play that game.
“Well Otto, as you’re not interested in your health, I may as well head along to my next patient.”
Otto looked crestfallen, but then he pulled out his next card to play.
“Missus Baxter brought me these fine little cakes and biscuits, fresh made today.” Otto shook the basket temptingly at Poole. Clearly, his call out here had been nothing but a ploy for company. The old codger was a widower after all.
It was a bit inappropriate, but Poole knew he’d not get any refreshment at his next house call. He sighed and plopped down into a chair, plucking a cinnamon tea cake as he did so. Otto grinned widely and held up the teapot.
“Do ya’ take sugar?”
An hour later, Poole was dusting crumbs from his waistcoat, checking his pocket watch. Minutes to spare. The old bird up at the big house would be hissing at him anyway; at least this time she’d have a reason. He was glad after all that he’d taken time for a bite to eat. A nice long time.
He trudged along the back lanes until reaching the footpath that would lead him to Whitegate House’s back property. The path was still a bit mucky from the rains that had kept the summer cool up until now, and the crops struggling not to rot away. Otto’s garden was the only other he’d seen along his travels that seemed to be impervious. He wondered how the old man managed it, given his bad knees and chronic lungs.
Poole managed to walk delicately along, avoiding the worst of the mud, though some of it was deceptively hidden under drier layers. He’d just have to be sure to wipe his boots along the tall grass. Irritating nonetheless. The back gate of his destination came into view, however, and all his irritation flew away.
This area of the property was something he looked forward to, even if his visit with the old woman was not. There were fruit trees dotting the back border, along with the occasional beech and walnut. All of them were studded with infant drupes that would be mature by autumn, barring more rainy spells.
He walked on, scraping the mud from his boots with a long stick, appreciating the sweet smells wafting in and out of the well-tended back gardens. Sweet pea, snapdragon, and hyacinth tangled knottily around the edge of a stony, man-made pond. In and out the shadows and shallows, large white and orange fish darted. Mint of every variety grew in the shade, alongside tall ferns, bee balm, and cultivated mushrooms.
This was Mary’s domain. She was evident in every inch of the garden space, even where she’d planted her mother’s favorites close to the house, under the windows of the elderly woman’s rooms.
Further away, beyond the bounds of aged and limited sight, Mary had put all her own desires to work. That sweet girl was the only reason David Poole had not told Prudence Whitegate to find herself another physician.
He shuddered. Mrs. Whitegate rankled his every nerve and offended all sensibility. She had engaged him, she claimed, because she knew he didn’t partake of “demon liquor” or tobacco. He knew it was because the woman was too skin-flint to pay for a private physician. He tolerated it all: abuse, measly and missed payments, and never a lick of gratitude. All because he was able to see Mary nearly every visit.
Oh, naturally, he’d kept his feelings as close to the vest as he could manage. Old Prudence had once threatened to thrash him with her late husband’s ironwood cane if he “oogled” her Mary ever again. Since then, he’d been much more cautious.
The image of the ivory-topped implement sprung to mind and he shuddered. The ivory had been carved into the shape of a rampant lion. A souvenir, he supposed, from travel in the Dark Continent. The truly unsettling thing about that lion was that its creator had, in some gruesome joke, painted the maw of the beast all tinged with blood.
He couldn’t quite imagine why Mary’s father had purchased it; it certainly didn’t fit the way she always spoke of him. Far more suited to the declining tyrant herself, as she clutched it like an ancient king on his throne would have.
Certainly, Mary had seemed to be having difficulty watching her mother slip away. The old woman was her only remaining relative to speak of. There was Eliza, but she’d escaped to California, well out of her mother’s clutches, and Sally was locked away, poor thing.
Poole crouched down to pinch a bit of lavender off its stem. He tucked it into a buttonhole, and made his way to the house. When he looked back up, he saw someone in the library. He squinted, finally recognizing that it was Mary’s newfound cousin, Charlotte.
She was a strange character, he ruminated. One wanted to like her as a bold spirit, and was somewhat attractive, except for that odd girlish voice she had. Always he was left with a peculiar aftertaste on parting from her company; somewhere between savory and bitter, desirable and repellent.
Charlotte, for her part, had watched him quite carefully during his visits to the house. She’d scrutinized him so closely that he’d felt a manic paranoia begin to creep in. He’d almost given in to the desperate fear that she or her brother must know of his proclivities for gaming.
Ian certainly had the look of a barely reformed reprobate, but that must have come from his time in the army. Queen and country, Poole thought mockingly. Ian did like to make a fuss over the whole thing, as if he’d been right at the edge of that black hole business in India.
Poole had asked Mary whether her mother was aware of the houseguests; the old girl usually despised any trespass on her privacy. It was a good judge of how far gone she might be, in his mind. Mary’s response had been just shy of alarm; she had begged Poole never to discuss Charlotte or Ian in her mother’s presence, no matter how comatose she seemed.
It was then that Poole had learned of the family history, of the rift between the families of the two brothers, and the old decree of William Whitegate. He thought it all perfectly foolish, but agreed to say nothing, if it were only to please Mary. Rationale seemed to dictate that this was the source of the air of strangeness about Mary’s cousins. He did his best to forget his worries regarding them, for Mary’s sake.
Today, he hoped to wrangle a moment or two alone with Mary, partly to prevail upon her to bring her mother’s account with him a bit closer to date. He’d had a terrible run of luck at the tables the prior week, and owed some money.
Forty dollars, to be exact, a debt which had been directed to a large Irishman called McKenney. By week’s end, McKenney’s titanic brothers would be visiting him. It was a possible future that Poole wished to avoid entirely.
Old Mister Johansen had even given him a visiting fee. In spite of being as poor as a church mouse himself, Otto always made sure to pay. Poole made a vow to himself never to fall that far in the hole again. It was vexing, though, how over the course of an evening, he could be flush one moment, and then it would be gone in a blink.
He wiped his palms off on his trouser legs; they’d gone damp just thinking about McKenney and the whist tables. Taking a deep breath, he forged on, pushing through the large glass doors at the rear of the house. These would take him into a large dining hall, in the style of a large country manor over in England.
As he walked through, he glanced off to his right, and saw that Mary seemed to have joined Char
lotte in the library. Ah well, he would have to try to find her alone later on. He slipped in, quietly shut the doors, padding through the hall into the large receiving area at the foot of the grand staircase.
For some odd reason, the staff were rather scarce, in spite of it being a weekday. He wondered what might be going on, but that thought was quickly supplanted by the unpleasant task that lay ahead. Ascending the stairs, he made faces at the portraits of Whitegates past, especially at hoary old William Whitegate.
Overhead, the centerpiece of the home’s construction rose another storey or so above him. A pumpkin dome, designed by Henry Whitegate to replace parts of the house destroyed by fire some years back. Mary had once shown Poole the inspiration for it, from the Roman emperor Hadrian’s villa.
She’d told him shyly that she would like to have an oculus placed at its peak, glassed in, of course. Otherwise this part of the house was dark and gloomy, seeming to reject visitors in the same way its mistress did.
He paused outside the door to Mrs. Whitegate’s rooms and envisioned himself girding for battle. What was it the old gladiators were supposed to have said? Mary had told him once. Something about saluting in the face of death. He thought it unlikely.
They had probably felt as he did right then: unready and unwilling. Yet he pushed on as they must have done, because there was no other