A Murderous Malady

by Christine Trent

“You need a doctor,” I said, my obvious words sounding foolish in my own ears.

  She gave me one more bleak look, then tilted her head back against the wall again.

  Her son tugged insistently on my skirt. “Help my mama,” he pleaded.

  “I—I—” I felt completely helpless. This household needed so much more than just a doctor, although certainly to lose his mother would put the boy—and the infant in his mother’s arms—in a perilous position.

  “Miss Florence,” Mary said. “Do you think Dr. Killigrew would come?” Mary had performed a complete turnabout in the situation.

  Dr. Killigrew was the physician to Lady Canning, who had been the driving force behind starting the Establishment. He mostly attended to society people and only made weekly visits to the hospital as a favor to his patroness. Would he be willing to make a trek to this depressing place? Should I wait until I could see about a doctor associated with the Southwark Female Society?

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I shall ask him, but I couldn’t promise anything.”

  “You can convince him, Miss Florence,” Mary said. “This poor mite …”

  At that moment, the makeshift doorway curtain was pushed aside, providing a moment of light, enough to illuminate the man who now entered, whistling as he jangled coins in his pocket. The boy shrank back around me, while his mother turned her head in the direction of the brief light without opening her eyes.

  He was tall, but as gaunt as everyone else in the hovel. I definitely saw the resemblance between him and Lucky. He narrowed his gaze at me as both whistling and jangling ceased. “Who are you two fancy ladies? You’d best not be soliciting my boy.”

  Mary gasped in indignation. “Why, I never! I’m a respectable matron. My husband—bless his soul—would be most angry to hear—”

  The last thing we needed right now was Mary’s death-induced righteousness. “My name is Florence Nightingale. This is my companion, Mary Clarke. We are in this neighborhood seeking information about an attempted murder upon a friend of mine. Your son asked for help for your wife, who I can see is very ill.”

  Lucky slowly stepped from around me to face his father.

  Mr. Reeve’s expression was skeptical. “And you just decided to twirl your parasol on down here to do a bobby’s work, is that right? And then you nosed your way in here.”

  I couldn’t blame him for being suspicious of us. “Not at all. It is as we say. In fact, I would like to seek out a physician for your wife, and you must realize that your daughter—”

  “So then you’re one of them Baptist charity women, come to preach fire and brimstone and then drag us off to the workhouse? I’ll have you push off now. I can take care of my family myself.”

  I sighed. “Mr. Reeve, I mean no ill intent toward you or your family. Your son stopped me in the street for help for your wife, who is clearly unwell, and that’s how we came to be here.”

  Reeve turned his ferocious gaze on Lucky. “I’ll deal with you later, boy.”

  Lucky shrank around me again. I was becoming irritated. “We are neither from a church nor a workhouse, nor are we prostitutes. We are merely passersby.”

  Now he sneered at me. “Now I know who you are. You’re one of the lawyers’ wives, come to inspect and fine me for something.”

  What was he talking about? “What lawyers? For what would I fine you?”

  He pulled a penny out of his pocket and threw it in my direction. “There you are. Have your husband tell the vampire who owns this place that you collected as much as whatever damage you dreamed up is worth.”

  I ignored the coin, which flew past me, hit the wall next to the fireplace, and landed on the worn floorboard with a tiny clink. The man had brought up an interesting point. “Who does own this place?”

  “I’m sure you know it belongs to Reverend Whitehead at St. Luke’s.”

  I kept thinking I’d heard the most outrageous thing possible, but then Mr. Reeve would surpass himself with yet another statement. “Reverend? Are you saying that a churchman owns this sorry place?”

  “Don’t act like it’s of surprise to you. It’s them and the fancy lords what own everything down here. They never visit themselves but have their bootlicker lawyers come down to complain about lead stripped from roofs or panes stolen from windows. Then they fine us whatever they want.”

  I hardly knew how to respond. I was outraged to think that a man of God would permit this filth and squalor. Reverend Whitehead would be receiving an unwelcome visit from me in short order. However, my present visit could be likened to a train run completely off the rails and into a cow pasture.

  I took a deep breath. “Mr. Reeve, let us focus on the vital matter at hand. Not only is your wife gravely ill, but your daughter …” I indicated the shrouded lump on the bed, which he had ignored since arriving. Were we really arguing about rents and fines when his dead daughter had yet to be acknowledged?

  Reeve grunted. “What’d you do, Amy?”

  His wife made no response. Her shallow breathing was the only indication that she had not also departed the world.

  I lowered my voice. “I believe she rolled onto your daughter during sleep. An accident, I’m sure.”

  The airless room was silent for several moments except for the breathing and the faint crackling of embers. When Reeve made no move to do anything whatsoever, I went forward and knelt on the floor at the side of the bed where the child lay. I clasped my hands together to pray for her poor anguished soul.

  Mary also dropped down next to me, sniffling and digging into her pocket for a handkerchief.

  As we did so, Reeve came alive again. He shouted at his wife that she was the Whore of Babylon, his son was a devil’s imp, and I was Satan’s bride. Then he turned on his heel and stomped out of the hovel he called home.

  Whore of Babylon. Hadn’t Liz told me her attacker had accused her of being the Babylonian Whore? I hoped it was merely a distasteful coincidence.

  * * *

  I gave young Lucky some coins before we left, and promised I would send an undertaker to them, reassuring the boy that I would pay for a shroud and a spot in a pauper’s grave from my own purse.

  We passed back into the street. Even without a cholera outbreak, this place reeked of despair and death, although the outside now seemed charming and welcoming compared to what we had experienced in the Reeve household.

  Despite the warmth of the day, I was chilled, as if the specter of Death were hovering over my shoulder. I could not banish the images of the dead child, the dying mother, and the outraged father from my head.

  “Miss Florence, I told you this was a horrid idea,” Mary whispered, clutching the notebook to her chest with one hand as she grabbed my arm with her other. However, as daunting and disheartening as everything was here, its citizens seemed to be working hard to give us a wide berth.

  We reached a small road junction that impossibly had seven different roads jutting out from it. In the center of the junction was a tall column topped by several sundials placed around its circumference.

  As we stood there, I saw that nearly every visible building was a tavern or public house. They had names like “Dirty Dick’s,” “The Crooked Bobby,” and “Hangman’s Noose.” Who could blame anyone living here for wanting to drown his misery in the bottom of a foul tankard of ale?

  “This must be Seven Dials,” Mary said, pointing up at the column’s multiple sundials. I felt her shiver next to me. Her earlier bravado had evaporated. “We are in a terrible part of London. Dear Lord, please rescue me from my foolishness in agreeing to come here. I know now that my Milo wouldn’t have wanted me here and that I let my pluck get the better of me. Dear Lord, please send someone to rescue us. Dear Lord, please—”

  “That’s enough, Goose.” I spoke more sharply than I intended. I was going to lose my own nerve if she didn’t stop, and I was determined to see this through.

  A new question was forming in my mind, though. Why ever had Liz chosen to come this wa
y to the British Museum? Surely she could have circumvented it.

  Unless her father had chosen the route, but he had no reason to do so either.

  As if she’d read my thoughts, Mary said, “Miss Florence, I don’t think Mrs. Herbert and the General would have come this far into Soho to get where they were going, do you?”

  I didn’t dare agree aloud for fear she would balk like a mule and refuse to go any farther.

  “It’s impossible to know right now. Let’s not waste the trip,” I said, selecting St. Andrew Street at the junction and continuing to walk. St. Andrew Street, indeed. What would this disciple of Christ’s have to say about the squalor of his namesake road? Which reminded me that I needed to locate St. Luke’s Church as well.

  St. Andrew Street opened into Broad Street, and by now Mary was no longer a stubborn mule but a cat dancing on coals. She was so anxious about proceeding any farther that I thought I might have to find her some laudanum.

  We now had a large building on our right, better built and in better condition than most of the others on the block. In the street in front of us was a large, octagonal metal structure with perhaps a dozen men and women crowded around it while others entered through an opening along one side and still others departed it on the side opposite.

  The stench wafting from it was the most disgusting that we had yet encountered here in Soho. Surely not all the area was like this. Public flushing toilets had started popping up in London over the past couple of years, ever since one had been displayed at the Great Exhibition in 1851.

  A little farther past the toilets was a water pump, recognizable as a black, round metal column with a pipe jutting out from the middle of it and pointing downward. Water poured freely from the mouth of the pipe, and people—mostly women and children—collected water in buckets, bowls, or whatever implement they had that didn’t leak. With containers full, they left the pump, presumably to return to their own dark, dank hovels.

  I glanced up at the business sign painted above the fourth-story windows of the building next to us.

  Lion Brewery

  John and Edward Huggins, Proprietors

  INDIA PALE and NO. 3 STRONG ALES

  Bottlers of ALE and STOUT for Exportation

  A trademark barrel drawing adorned the sign.

  There were at least eight windows running across each of the upper stories of the building’s front facade. Surprisingly, few of them had broken panes. Soaring over the roofline were at least as many smokestacks, gently but persistently puffing smoke into the air. On the ground level, the door was freshly painted scarlet, an incongruence in this place of drabness and despair. Above the door was a pub sign on a pole attached perpendicular to the brick building. It swung listlessly in the light breeze. It indicated that through the door was the Red Lion Inn, and the words were on a backdrop of, naturally, three languid lions, emulating those on the royal arms of England.

  I was about to make the highly inappropriate suggestion that we enter the public house together to see who might be in there who could give us information. It might be a mere public house, but it was certainly the nicest building in the area, so I assumed we would be safe.

  Before I could utter the words, though, a middle-aged man stumbled out of the building, groaning and clutching his head. He fell upon the roughly cobbled street, begging for someone to bring him death.

  CHAPTER 6

  Was it not possible to walk more than a couple of blocks through this part of Soho without encountering death and misery? And were we now facing another cholera victim? Perhaps we should have returned to the Establishment for some bone broth before coming here. This man could certainly use the nourishment, as could the Reeves.

  Mary sighed in exasperation, too, but at least this time she didn’t attempt to pull me away.

  “Sir,” I said, leaning over the man, who was now on his back, a hand clawing at his heart as though he were trying to remove it in some ancient ritual. “Can you speak to me?” I quickly assessed him as best I could, given that he was writhing and moaning.

  Like most of the residents, he wore threadbare clothing. When he had first stumbled out of the building, I had guessed him to be around forty years of age, but up close I realized he was younger than that. Maybe thirty?

  His teeth showed the initial signs of decay. They were spaced far apart, and the two front ones were twisted in toward each other. His pitted face suggested he had once had smallpox or some other disfiguring ailment. He was as tall and skeletal as Lucky Reeve’s father.

  He finally opened his eyes to look at me. “Bella?” he said, a cloud of confusion in his eyes. His words were carried to me on a cloud of liquor fumes.

  “Who is Bella?” I asked softly. “Is she your wife? Your sister? Your sweetheart?”

  The man was sweating profusely. Although I smelled a generous helping of whatever was being served inside the Red Lion Inn on him, I did not smell excrement, nor did he seem to have a fever. I did not think he had cholera. Mary and I had now been fortunate twice. Could this luck continue?

  “Wife,” the man said, panting but at least no longer thrashing. “Bella!” he cried out. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.

  I stood up straight. A firm hand was needed here. “Sir, I cannot help you if you do not speak rationally to me. I’m going to help you to sit up. Do not resist me.”

  I signaled to Mary to help me and, to her credit, she did so willingly. She was blowing both hot and cold at me, but I couldn’t really blame her. This had been a very peculiar day thus far. We had witnessed a man die at the Establishment, then spent time in a Belgravia mansion, and now here we were in a dreadful part of London, having already witnessed one tragic situation and likely about to be involved in another.

  And, to the man’s credit, he was also cooperative. Once he was in a seated position, I realized that many of the people who had been clustered around the urinal across the street were now far more interested in watching us—in a lethargic sort of way. I suspected that if the man were to die in an instant, the people in the street would turn their attentions back to their conversations at the urinal.

  Speaking of which, I was concerned that the miasma from the public toilet would impact the man, particularly since I was not quite sure yet what ailed him.

  Mary and I were crouched on either side of him. He was still breathing rapidly but was not sweating. “Sir, what is your name?” I asked.

  “George,” he said. “George Maddox.”

  Surely this was not the same man Fenton had begged me to care for with his dying breath? I hated to plague the suffering man with questions, but when might I have another opportunity to discover what I needed to know? “Sir, do you know a servant of the Herbert household named Fenton?”

  He grimaced with the effort of considering my question. “Fenton, yes. Believe … he is … a frequenter of the Lion. Keeps to himself. Good dice player.” Maddox seemed exhausted with the recollection.

  A gambler Fenton might have been, but he certainly recognized pain and misery in others.

  Maddox’s pitiable condition made me feel even worse about continuing to interrogate him, but I had to proceed. I pulled Fenton’s dice from my pocket. “Do you recognize what these are?”

  The man squinted at the three cubes in my open palm, then looked at me in confusion. “They are dice. Don’t you know that?”

  I was being obtuse. “My apologies. I mean, do you recognize these as being Fenton’s personal dice? And do you know what the symbols on them mean?”

  “Ah.” He squinted again and picked one up, examining it. “’Fraid I don’t know much about gambling. Not my particular vice,” he added sheepishly before putting it back in my palm.

  I refused to bother this tormented man any further. “Well, Mr. Maddox, I am a nurse, and I think you are sick and need rest. Where do you live?”

  “No, no,” he protested, shaking his head. “Not sick.” He allowed himself to be pulled up to standing. “It’s my wife, Isabel
. She and my son, Arthur, are sick.”

  I was thoroughly confused. His wife and son were ailing and he was out imbibing spirits until he became senseless? “Are they at home?”

  He nodded yes.

  “Then we are going straight there,” I said firmly, taking one of his arms while Mary took the other. He didn’t resist and instead nodded again, this time in resignation.

  Thus did we walk three abreast until we reached his meager quarters in Museum Street. I could see the British Museum looming in the distance, a beautiful, imposing building overlooking all the squalor and misery of Soho.

  It still didn’t seem possible that Liz would have chosen this route just a couple of days ago. I needed to remember to ask her what routing they had actually taken.

  For now, though, I had some possible patients. I silently prayed that Mrs. Maddox and her son did not have cholera.

  Unfortunately, they did.

  * * *

  I wouldn’t have guessed it possible, but the Maddox quarters were only marginally better than those of the Reeves, primarily because although the space was twice as large, the entire front part of it was occupied by Maddox’s upholstery shop. The waist-high table in the center of the shop was heaped with fabrics, brass tacks, springs, lengths of rough Hessian cloth, and cones of thread. Bags of feathers lay in a pile on the floor. A nearly finished armchair done in a garish shade of yellow sat in the window ledge, which was low to the ground and enabled pedestrians to peer in. I refrained from grimacing at the work.

  The damask pattern of the fabric was completely askew. The piping where the fabric met the wood was crooked, as though it had been applied by a palsied hand.

  George Maddox was a terrible upholsterer.

  But perhaps he wasn’t as efficient as he typically was because of his sick wife and child. Or perhaps it was the spirits he imbibed. Mary and I followed him through a narrow doorway behind the shop to his living quarters.

  The stench was overpowering, particularly in the August heat. I swallowed against my impulse to gag from the suffocating air surrounding us. Mary coughed behind her gloved hand and did not remove her hand once her convulsing was over.