Sidney cleared his throat. “We won’t worry about replacing Fenton too quickly. His loss is great.” Sidney’s voice cracked on the word great.
“Darling,” Liz said to her husband. “Do you believe Fenton may have been expressing regret for his gambling habits? Could he have possibly been in debt?”
I hadn’t thought of that. It was an interesting idea, although I wasn’t sure whether I should pursue it. Even if Fenton had owed money to someone unsavory, surely it had nothing to do with the attack on Liz.
Sidney shrugged. “I couldn’t possibly know. But Fenton was competent and loyal, and I’ll not have him buried with a slur against his name.”
Hopefully I could bring him a small bit of comfort there. “Morgan Undertaking will be bringing him back here in a sealed coffin. I did not know where else to have him taken.”
“Quite right,” Sidney said, composed once more except for that small tic at the corner of his right eye. Surely the shock of losing two trusted servants in as many days was overwhelming.
However, the hairs on the back of my neck were prickling for another reason. Was it possible that what the General had said was true? That Fenton had merely been expressing remorse over possession of the dice? Still, it seemed to me that as a lifelong military man, the General should have been able to identify the dice the moment he saw them.
I made a mental note to show the dice to Charlie Lewis. Perhaps he could explain to me what the dice meant. Maybe he could even tell me why a man of elevated rank would disavow any knowledge of them.
As I contemplated Fenton and his mysterious dice, Sidney sniffed at the air, his expression puzzled. Knowing exactly why he did so, I stepped backward as gracefully as I could, pretending I was consulting with Mary on what she was writing down in her notebook. Sidney frowned and shook his head, then examined the die in his hand again. “What of your brother, Liz? He’s been known to spend an evening in his cups playing cards. Would he know what these mean?”
Liz bristled, and I knew she didn’t like to hear her family member being insulted in front of guests, even if those guests were an old friend and the friend’s companion. “Charles Henry is educated on a variety of topics. But he’s in Wiltshire now with Emily, and I’m sure he doesn’t plan to return to London until next season. Surely you can find someone at the War Office who could identify the symbols.”
“Good Lord, no,” Sidney protested. “I don’t want there to be a hint of unsavory rumors floating around Westminster started by asking around about my dead servant’s dice. I would be heaped with questions and become the subject of great innuendo. Absolutely not. Florence, I’m afraid we must rely on you to discover what Fenton meant with the dice.”
“At this point, I must agree,” the General said, his voice the calmest I’d heard it since he had arrived. “Charles Henry can be of no help in the situation, and we must let him be with his new bride if we are to hope for more additions to the family name.”
Liz’s face registered surprise. “Why, Papa, that’s the kindest thing you’ve said about Charles Henry since … well … in a very long time.”
The General harrumphed, clearing his throat. It sounded very gurgly, and I wondered if he had a deep chest cold he was hiding. “Well, your old papa doesn’t need to point out the boy’s flaws too often. And certainly not when he isn’t here to receive the benefit of my wisdom.”
“Papa! He attended St. John’s College at Cambridge as you’d hoped, he’s an MP for Wilton, and now he has even married Emily Currie, also as you wished. No, no.” Liz waggled a finger back and forth at her father. “Do not protest and do not think I don’t know that she was your idea. You can hardly suppose that a milquetoast like Emily was Charles Henry’s cup of tea. He’s done everything to please you. You know where his passions lay.”
The General rolled his eyes. “Yes, in those ridiculous tubes of paint. The boy is damnably lucky that I took him by the ear and guided him onto a proper life’s path. You were never so recalcitrant, Elizabeth, and see how successful your life is.”
Liz bit her lip. I knew she adored Sidney and her children and had a full society life. Thus, she had no proper argument against her father, but I would also have been willing to bet she sometimes tired of her expensively furnished cage. I was about to intervene to save Liz from this conversation when an interruption saved me the trouble.
The doors—which I was certain had clicked shut when I pulled them closed—burst open. It was George, breathless and red-faced. “Mama! Have you seen Alberto? He’s after something, and we—” George stopped short at seeing his father in the room. His heavily lashed eyes opened impossibly wide, and then he threw himself at Sidney’s legs. “Papa! You should come play with us. I’m training Alberto to be a great hunting dog.”
I could see that the General thoroughly disapproved of George’s outburst, but Sidney was not a typical father. He swept the boy up in his arms, probably grateful to have this bundle of life barging in to take his mind off all the death surrounding him. “Is that right? Have you taught him commands the way I showed you?”
“Mmm, I think so.” George looked up in the air as if trying to remember what his father had told him as long ago as the previous day.
More commotion arrived in the form of a darting little mouse, with Alberto racing and yelping close behind it.
“Alberto!” George shrieked, pushing out of his father’s arms to join the zigzagging trail of dog and mouse around the room. This awoke William, who began howling in outrage over his disturbed slumber.
The General muttered about “lack of discipline” and “not seen in my day,” but both Sidney and Liz seemed bemused by the antics.
As for me, I just didn’t want the puppy urinating on me again. I scooted close to Mary while the scene played itself out.
Now an experienced mother of three, Liz didn’t react in panic to William’s crying but simply went to his cradle. Settling herself in the chair next to it, she began rocking him while making soothing noises that were completely inaudible over the din of everything else.
Finally, the mouse managed to do what mice always do—discover a previously unknown hole between the floorboards and disappear. Alberto barked and stamped at the tiny slit through which the animal had escaped, but soon gave up when it was apparent that the chase was over and he was not the victor.
“We’ll find another,” George promised the dog in consolation, offering it a childish pat on the head. In response, probably fearing that the boy was going to grab him again, Alberto tore off again, nails scrabbling against the wood floor. This time, though, he banged straight into Sidney’s legs. Although Sidney reacted with no more than a grunt, the poor dog must have been stunned. A dark stain began to spread beneath its hind legs.
Sidney sniffed the air again, and I knew that he was recognizing a familiar odor. It was time to depart this lively scene of family domesticity. I made a hurried departure with a promise to return as soon as I had information about the dice or anything else I might discover in Soho.
But reaching Soho was not going to be easy, for Mary chose the moment of leaving Herbert House to turn into a stubborn mule.
* * *
“Miss Florence, it is folly to go to Soho. I’ll not go, and your mother would cook me for breakfast if she knew I had allowed you to go there.” Mary stood obstinately at the cab stand in Belgrave Square, while around us well-dressed nannies pushed prams in the late-August heat. Not even the treed park provided much relief from the sun.
Why had she picked this moment to suddenly discover her spine?
“Goose,” I explained patiently. “Surely you realize that without going directly to the location where the attempt was made upon Mrs. Herbert’s life, and where presumably Fenton contracted cholera, we cannot make any steps forward in discovering who may have wished Mrs. Herbert dead, and who may still be intent on seeing her put into a coffin. And, just as importantly, how cholera is spread.”
Mary was shaking her head before I
even finished my sentence. “It will be us put into coffins if we go there. Of what use are you to Mr. Herbert if you’re dead?” She squeaked out that last word.
What was I to do? It probably wasn’t safe for a woman to be alone there, particularly not a woman wearing a silk taffeta dress. I could return to the Establishment and ask Charlie Lewis to look at the dice and then return to Soho with me, but he would be of little help in note-taking. Mary understood instinctively how my mind worked and what I considered to be important information. I wasn’t sure Charlie was even literate.
No, Mary must be convinced that she had a duty to go with me.
“Don’t we have a responsibility to see what sort of services the Establishment can provide to the sick and dying there?” I asked.
She considered this for only a moment, then shook her head vigorously, a lock of hair tumbling out of its pin beneath her hat as she pushed up her falling eyeglasses. “There are plenty of London relief societies who can do it. Mrs. Herbert was just talking about the one in Southwark. We have no reason to willingly enter that den of disease. Not even to pursue a criminal,” she added, stopping me before I could utter the words.
I tried another tactic, hoping my suggestion would ease her primary fear. “What if we were extra careful about avoiding any miasmas, and we left if we smelled anything foul?”
She stared at me, aghast. “The moment the odor comes to us, it will be too late. We will be covered in noxious air! It’s bad enough that we don’t know how much of it that Mr. Fenton brought in.”
I was beginning to believe that Mary was far more clever than I had given her credit for. There must be a way to have her accompany me without complaint. Time was elapsing at a critical rate as we stood arguing in front of a bronze statue of someone who must have once been very important or heroic. I looked away from her so I could think and espied a young couple walking arm in arm. It gave me an idea.
I did not much enjoy manipulation as a rule but felt desperate enough to attempt anything. “What would Mr. Clarke say about this were he here with us? Would he wish to run back home, or would he bravely face whatever elements he might encounter in Soho?”
Milo Clarke had been shy, studious, and completely unable to tether my juvenile self to his method of teaching, but he had been the sun, moon, and stars in Mary’s life. I wasn’t really sure what he would have done in the hypothetical situation I presented, but I knew Mary would be absolutely certain of her husband’s mettle and fearlessness.
“Why, I suppose he would—well, my Milo was not one to run from trouble, I will say that,” she declared, her consternation palpable.
I let her continue thinking it through. “He always said that problems were to be worked through, much like mathematical equations.” Now she was frowning deeply and hugging her notebook to her.
“Oh, Miss Florence, Milo would want me to do whatever I could to help.” Mary said this as an anguished cry, as though it was the worst realization of her life.
She finally agreed to enter a taxi with me, wearing the doomed expression of a criminal on her final ride to the hangman’s noose. I couldn’t say I didn’t share her concerns, but justice had to be served.
CHAPTER 5
The cab driver was well aware of the Soho outbreak and refused to drive us any farther than the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, leaving us to walk to Broad Street, where Liz’s carriage had been attacked.
I was struck by how quickly our surroundings deteriorated. The buildings were small, cramped, and dilapidated, and some were so near to completely crumbling that I feared they might topple over into the street at any moment. They were blackened so deeply from coal soot that they appeared to have all been in a raging fire at some point, with only the charred brick remains still standing. Or leaning, as the case might be.
What a difference in scenery the two miles between Belgravia and Soho made.
I admit to having had a very comfortable youth and adulthood, although I had certainly visited some of the poorer cottages in my village of Wellow down in Hampshire. I had become known for my enthusiasm in nursing the sick, yet I confess I had never, ever experienced anything this vile.
Children and adults alike sat not only on poorly built stoops that were tilting and rotting, but inside windowsills as well, their dirty legs and feet dangling in the air. I assumed it was cooler and fresher in the August air than inside. The sorts of miasmas that must fill these places was beyond my imagination.
I noticed a boy seated in the corner formed by a stoop and a building. He had his arm around a younger girl—his sister, I assumed. One of his unshod feet had an enlarged toe that oozed pus. He seemed oblivious to it, and the two of them sat there, staring listlessly at me as though I were a fly on a piece of rotting fruit.
I felt something catch in the arch of my boot. I lifted my foot, and whatever it was ran squeaking off.
Not a blade of grass, nor a stump of tree, nor a shoot of plant, was visible anywhere. Perhaps all manner of flora had simply given up and withered away here. As a result, there was no color. Everything was dull shades of ebony and ash.
There was little horse traffic here, as well. Our taxi had refused to enter, so why would I have supposed anyone else would either? The street was crowded enough, but unlike in prosperous areas, the people did not have the busy air of those going about their business. Indeed, I almost had the sense that they were apathetically passing time until they could permanently lie down.
I now understood, deep within my soul, Mr. Dickens’s complaints about slums and why he felt compelled to write about them. My mind swiftly flew to what sort of medical care was available for these poor creatures. I would have to ask Liz if the Southwark Female Society—or any of the other charities to which she belonged—had doctors numbered among them.
A small, painfully thin boy tentatively approached me, and I stopped, despite Mary’s attempt to pull me along.
“Mama,” he said, peering up at me from beneath a tattered cap.
Was he so malnourished that he was delirious and confused about his surroundings? “I am not your mother,” I said gently.
He shook his head in frustration. “My mama,” he said, and turned to point toward a narrow, two-story building whose roof had a large hole in it.
I was beginning to understand. “Is she hurt?”
He nodded.
“What is your name?”
“Lucky. Lucky Reeve.” The ironically named child stared up at me with eyes that were enormous in his tiny face. I saw a louse crawling through his tousled hair and shuddered.
How could I walk away from this needy young lad? What if his mother was dying? Did he have any other family to care for him? I started following him toward the building, although I fervently hoped his mother was not on the second story, as I was seriously doubtful that it was structurally sound enough to hold Mary and me.
“No!” Mary hissed in displeasure, but I ignored her. She must have realized that I intended to enter the building, for she sighed loudly and dramatically enough for even Alice Nichols to envy her talent, then scurried to keep up with me.
The stench of the house was a jolt to my senses before I even crossed the threshold. It was bad enough that I actually took a step backward, then paused to gather my courage. In doing so, I glanced in the doorway of the building to the right of the place the boy called home.
Directly inside the doorway were several steps leading down to where a man, a woman, and two teenage boys appeared to be assembling leather shoes and boots. A heavy rain would surely flood their little shop. That’s when I noticed the sign outside their door, almost completely faded from the weather, that read, “Sorrell Quality Shoes.” I wondered what emporium was buying their sad goods.
I remembered my own urine-soaked foot covering. What had seemed so calamitous earlier was now hardly a thing of note.
I pulled aside the patched sheet hanging that passed for a door. It was so dark inside the boy’s home as to be nearly murky. There was
n’t even a candlestick burning in the cramped room, which had only a single chair and table, a bed with a lumpy mattress, plus a tiny fireplace.
Nestled inside the dying embers was a pot, containing what appeared to be an unappetizing, pasty gruel that had congealed.
As my eyes adjusted more to the darkness, I realized that there was a woman on the bed. She was as lifeless as everyone else I had encountered, her head lolling back against the wall and her eyes closed. She held a tiny, mewling babe to her breast. I doubted she was able to provide milk.
Mary gasped, and in that moment I saw what she saw.
Lying on the bed next to the mother was a small form, wrapped in a dirty sheet.
Good Lord, had cholera already visited this house? I turned as calmly as I could to the young boy. “Who is that?” I asked.
“Jenny,” he said. “My sister.”
“What happened to her?” I held my breath for his answer.
The boy shrugged. “Mama rolled over on her.”
“Pardon me?” I was trying to comprehend what he was telling me. No wonder the woman was stupefied. “How many people sleep in this bed?”
He looked at me, puzzled. “All of us.”
I blew out a breath. I had been worried he would reveal that cholera had come to the house. The truth was so much worse.
“Where is your father?” I hoped such a man existed, but had there really been four people and a baby sleeping in this bed?
“He’s at Tyburn,” the woman said, lifting her head and giving me a dull gaze. So the mother wasn’t insensible after all. She looked at me, coughed, then turned her head and spat on the floor. “Public hanging today. He sings street ballads. Hangings draw crowds and people pay him good money for his songs.” She began coughing again, this time more violently. When she spat again, I saw blood.
A Murderous Malady Page 6