There were a couple of candles illuminating the room, and I almost wished I could blow them out to blot away the image before me.
Poor Isabel Maddox, dressed in an old, dirty chemise, sat in a chair with an overflowing slop bucket on the floor next to her. The woman was wild-eyed in her illness, and her hair was so tousled it was as if I were in the presence of a witch. This was no Amy Reeve, nearly unconscious in her misery. Mrs. Maddox seemed ready to do battle with the supernatural darkness. Actually, she would have made an interesting figure in Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors.
Her son lay curled up, sleeping fitfully in a trundle bed pulled halfway out from under the parents’ bed. He was towheaded and reminded me of John Wesley. Our appearance in the room did not rouse the boy, so consumed did he seem to be from a nightmare or other disturbance.
I could not be sure which of the two was sicker. No wonder Fenton’s dying words were a plea to help these poor souls.
“Bella?” Mr. Maddox inquired tentatively. “Here are some nurses come to see you.” For his part, Maddox was beginning to recover from his fit in the street, which I now believed was less liquor-induced and more a reaction of grief and frustration.
She turned her head to one shoulder to peer at me through one eye, as if she were a hawk. “What do you want? Have you come about the murderer?”
I froze. Had Isabel Maddox witnessed the attack on the Herbert carriage? “What did you say? How do you know about that?”
She cackled. “I know more than most people do. I see more than most people, too. Including you, Barton.” Her features changed instantaneously into a glare for her husband before transforming yet again into that of a wise sage to address Mary and me. “He’ll be back again to take us all. All of us who see.”
Her eyelids shut halfway, and I could see her pupils darting back and forth beneath them. Surely she was merely delusional. Who was this Barton of whom she spoke?
As if reading my mind, George Maddox murmured, “My dead brother. She has been fixated on his memory as of late. Was there actually a murder somewhere?”
I nodded quietly but did not elaborate. I saw no reason to upset the man any further.
“My wife has the gift of sight?” he gasped in wonder.
At this point, I wasn’t ready to believe or disbelieve anything.
After a few moments, Isabel’s eyes flew open again, and it was as if she were seeing me for the first time. Her gaze had an intensity to it that was almost unearthly. She pawed at her hair and cried, “George! Where is my mirror? You didn’t tell me we had visitors.”
“Mirror?” George said. “We don’t have—”
I held out a hand to stop him. The mirror wasn’t important. “Mrs. Maddox,” I said calmly. “Tell me again about the murderer. How many of you are there who ‘see’?”
The eyelids began to close again. “Doesn’t matter. We will all die.”
Bella Maddox was eerily mercurial, and my skin began to prickle. Was she this way because of choleric delirium, or was this simply the woman herself?
“Ah, oh,” she moaned, clutching her stomach. “I’m afraid I’m not up to visitors. You must go now.”
I wished to stay with her to at least figure out how to take care of the disgusting slop bucket, but George refused me, desiring to leave his wife in privacy. Mary and I followed him the few steps out into the shop.
I wanted to offer him some hope. “I should like to return with a couple of my nurses tomorrow. We will bring some nourishing broth and toast for all of you. That will help make your wife and son strong. And I would like to clear the air in here.”
I saw a faint glimmer of optimism in his eyes. “Do you think that would save them?”
“I cannot promise anything, but I believe it will provide the best circumstances possible for them to get well.”
However, I had already concluded one thing. While the boy was far sicker with cholera, Isabel Maddox was far more ill in her mind.
* * *
I was exhausted by this point and wanted nothing more than to return to the Establishment for a steaming cup of tea before I had to assemble some of my nurses to make a plan for returning to Soho the next day. I suspected we would end up helping more than just the Maddox family. And I had still accomplished absolutely nothing with regard to Sidney’s request.
Mary and I made our way back into Broad Street with the intent of seeking out a taxi once we got out of the immediate area. “Are you quite all right, Goose?” I asked her. Her expression was pensive as we dodged around a particularly foul carcass of what might once have been a cat.
“It’s quite frightening, isn’t it?” she said, wrapping her arms around her own substantial form as we walked, even though it was stiflingly warm out.
There was so much here that was disconcerting that I wasn’t sure what she specifically meant. I was momentarily distracted by a haggard, toothless elderly woman sitting in an upper-story windowsill who was staring intently out at the sky as if expecting an owl or a hawk to swoop in for a visit. I lifted a hand in a wave, but the woman frowned suspiciously at me and disappeared inside her accommodations.
I returned to my friend’s vexation. “What do you mean?” I asked.
A ball made of rags rolled clumsily into Mary’s path. She held up her skirts and gently kicked it, but it gained a distance of only perhaps five feet. A boy darted out from nowhere to snatch it up and run away with it again. Mary gazed after the boy, and I saw her eyes fill with tears. “It’s frightening how much sadness and tragedy exist in this place, really only steps from us, and they get their misery further compounded by cholera.”
I nodded in solemn agreement. Her thought was truly sobering.
“Two very different households we encountered today, yet both seem to be steps away from total devastation. I can hardly imagine what your nurses can even do to improve the lot of the Maddoxes.” She stopped in front of the Lion Brewery and frowned at me. “I confess I should be most angry with you, Miss Florence, for dragging me into this pestilent place. Yet all I wish for right now is a safe place for a cup of tea.”
“My own thoughts exactly,” I declared.
“Hmm,” my companion said. “After I’m done with that, I am sure I shall return to chastising you for putting me in this awkward position with your parents. Imagine what your mother would say if she knew that you not only walked straight into Seven Dials, but that I personally accompanied you! She would bake me for supper, she most certainly would. And that you went into not one, but two, houses visited by cholera. Oh yes, she would serve me up with a glass of fine burgundy.”
Poor Mary. Even though she had decided to throw in her lot with me and defy some of my mother’s expectations, the specter of Fanny Nightingale still periodically rose up in her mind and terrified her. I couldn’t help teasing her.
“Don’t forget that you also permitted me to walk through town with dried urine on my boots.”
“What?” Mary said, aghast. “What are you talking about? Did you step in it here in Soho?”
I explained what had happened with Alberto, the Herberts’ puppy.
“Oh, that’s fine, then. I cannot be held responsible for things that occur at the homes of my betters.” The look of relief on Mary’s face was amusing, and yet I had no heart to tease her further.
We proceeded farther down Broad Street, seeking the narrow intersection with St. Andrew Street that would lead us out of here.
I heard the commotion before I saw it, a riotous banging accompanied by screeches, laughter, whistling, and even some liberally sprinkled cheers.
Mary’s relief was now ended. She stopped and clasped a hand to her heart. “What is that? It sounds like an invading foreign army. I hope we are not to die here today.”
Although I thought Mary a little melodramatic, I was also concerned by the grand cacophony that pierced the muted despair of this neighborhood. Wishing to be cautious, I pulled Mary to one side of the street, so that we walked uncomfortably cl
ose to the bereft souls lounging on their crumbling stoops.
No one bothered us. In fact, they all seemed focused on the approaching noise as well.
Just as we reached St. Andrew Street, the source of the tumult came into view. Leading what could only be termed a small mob was a man dressed in a shabby suit. He was himself unremarkable except for his long, flowing beard, which he had tucked over one shoulder. Attached to his torso with over-the-shoulder leather straps was a brightly painted box. The man was working some sort of handle on the right side, and discordant music ground its way out of the box. On top of the box was a scrawny little monkey in a yellow vest, the source of the screeching we had heard.
Accompanying the man was a teenaged boy carrying a drum, which he beat with the enthusiasm of the blissfully untalented. The musical duo had a following of at least twenty people, presumably residents of the neighborhood, who yelled and shouted their appreciation of the music and danced with abandon behind them.
It was dreadful by any cultured standard.
Despite our efforts to blend into the background, it was impossible for a woman wearing clean, pressed silk to go unnoticed, and the organ grinder made straight for us as soon as he espied me.
His ragtag troupe of followers straggled behind him, continuing their gyrations. With his free hand, he held out a cup and shook it. I presume a few coins clinked together inside it, although it was impossible to know, given that the music did not cease for a moment but instead blared in our faces.
We were surrounded on three sides by the organ-grinder and his people, and behind us were the stoop-sitters, whom I could sense rustling restlessly behind me.
In distress, Mary clutched my elbow with a trembling hand.
I wasn’t quite sure if we were in danger or not, and it was impossible to even speak over the din of pounding, singing, screeching, and organ sounds. Finally, I held up my hands in surrender, which cued the man to hold up his own hand to silence his group. Except for the monkey, of course, who jumped down from the organ box to more effectively lecture me for some unknown offense by chattering and hopping back and forth on spindly, furry legs.
The organ-grinder shook his cup at me with bold insistence, and I shook my own head in reply. “Sir, we are minding our own business and seek no trouble with you.”
I started to leave, with Mary still attached to my side like a tumor, but the organ-grinder started up his blaring music again and made to follow us.
That’s when I realized that the money was not just desired, but expected, and that he and his band would follow us relentlessly until I gave him some coins.
I reached down into my dress pocket and found my coin pouch. Hurriedly extracting a few without even looking at their value, I handed them to him. The music died down again, and this time the monkey did not fill the void with his insane chatter. “Thank you for the entertainment, sir,” I told the man through clenched teeth.
“Pickle is my name, ma’am,” he introduced himself, removing his hat and sweeping into as much of a bow as the organ strapped to his middle would allow. “I’m mighty grateful for a fine lady such as yourself ’preciating my music.”
I nodded, not wishing for any further conversation but merely desiring to extract Mary and myself from our present predicament.
Pickle bowed once more and turned to continue up Broad Street from the direction in which Mary and I had come. The monkey jumped back on the box, and he and everyone else in the entourage began making a racket again.
Mary breathed in relief as we resumed our journey, but I found myself watching the backs of our tormentors in fascination. For it occurred to me that even though Pickle was extorting money from people in a most unsavory way, he was bringing joy to those who chose to follow him. There was surely little enough of that in this neighborhood. Perhaps not every single thing here was misery, and slivers of happiness could cut through the oppressive fog of hopelessness no matter whom it surrounded.
“Miss Florence, perhaps we shouldn’t return tomorrow. Or ever. We were lucky today, but perhaps we will be murdered when we come back. Or worse, forced to join that band!” Mary shuddered next to me as we picked up our pace on St. Andrew Street.
I had recovered from my initial fear, though, and knew that between my investigation for Sidney Herbert and the welfare of the two families we’d just met, we would be back. Repeatedly. We would have to get used to death and calamity outside the walls of the Establishment.
“I think it far more likely that we would fall prey to a miasma of cholera, don’t you?” I said as cheerfully as I could. I meant it as a joke, but the sound of Mary’s strangled cough told me that I should leave the humor to Dr. Killigrew.
* * *
By the time we returned to the Establishment, the undertaker had removed Fenton’s body, and the savory aroma of thyme filled the kitchens as Mrs. Webb prepared supper for the hospital’s inmates.
The afternoon mail delivery was piled upon the entry table. I stayed behind to go through it while Mary went to her room to take a nap “after our harrowing adventure.” I had hardly begun glancing at the Times’ headlines when I noticed another, less pleasant, odor around me. I sniffed tentatively at the air and realized that, although a cup of tea followed by a nap would be most pleasant, I needed a change of clothing first. Or at least I needed to get out of these boots.
I knelt to inspect the damage that Alberto had wreaked on my feet when the heavy leopard’s-jaw knocker on the front door clanged loudly, nearly causing me to start and tumble backward. With both my boots and the mail forgotten, I answered the door.
To my great surprise, in front of me stood Sidney Herbert.
“Flo,” he greeted me. Was I mistaken, or did my friend look embarrassed?
I welcomed him into the Establishment and invited him to sit in the library, the scene of so much activity since I had been at this hospital. The loose squirrel had only been the latest commotion.
“May I offer you some tea?” I offered, once more hoping he didn’t notice the smell of dog urine on me. The smell had faded some, hadn’t it?
He declined, and as I couldn’t very well request a tray be brought up just for me, my hot cup of tea would have to wait.
I sat in my favorite chair and indicated another nearby for him. The moment I sat down, I felt an overwhelming weariness seep into my bones. It had been the longest day I had had in recent memory. I stifled a yawn.
Sidney noticed it. “I shan’t keep you long. I just needed to talk to you—privately, you see.” He shifted uneasily in his seat and crossed one leg over the other. “I apologize that I didn’t say this earlier, but I couldn’t do so in front of Liz and her father.”
I was instantly awake again. “What is wrong?”
He templed his fingers. “It’s about Fenton. There’s something important you need to know about him. It’s my fault he’s dead.”
I gasped in a most unladylike fashion at him. “Pardon me? He died of cholera. How could it possibly be your fault that he’s dead?”
Sidney sighed and passed a hand over his eyes, then put both hands on the chair’s arms, as if doing so would prevent him from falling. “I sent the man into Soho to do some quiet investigating into Liz’s attack. I figured he could more easily move about down there than you could.”
Now I was positively irritated. “Then why did you bother me at all?” I snapped. “Why not just let your manservant do your bidding and figure out for yourself who attacked Liz’s carriage? I do have a hospital to run, Sidney. And there are cholera cases arising that I may need to address. I do not sit around with needlework waiting for a waddling goose to wander by so I can set to chasing it.” I heard my own voice rising an octave.
“Flo, Flo, please,” he begged, obviously trying to soothe my riled spirits. “Let me explain.”
I waited, my lips compressed so firmly I was certain they looked bloodless. Had I endured this entire day for no reason?
Of course, I reasoned with myself, it was no wron
g thing that I had encountered two families who desperately needed help that I could provide to some small extent.
But still …
“Fenton was a valuable servant,” Sidney began. “Very intelligent and willing to do most anything for the Herbert name. But he has—had—no clout. And I believe there may be some, shall we say, ancillary deeds occurring that will require investigation by someone who is not part of the household.”
My anger evaporated in a mist of curiosity. “What do you mean?” I asked.
He paused as if carefully gathering his thoughts. “Everyone has at least one event in his past that he wishes he could erase, as a schoolboy might eradicate a bad work on his sums on a chalkboard, right?”
“Yes.” Why did I have the sudden feeling I wouldn’t like what I was about to hear?
“And so did Fenton appear to have a past with gambling, a past about which I did not know. No doubt if he were alive, he would like to wipe that part of his life clean.”
“Yes,” I said again, waiting for a salient point to be made.
“I imagine even you would like to erase something from your past, Flo,” Sidney suggested, loosening his grip on the chair’s arms and templing his fingers again, a sign that he was relaxing.
Naturally I would have erased many things. The memory of Richard, for starters. Which reminded me that I still needed to decide what to do with the letter he had written me. I mentally brushed that cobweb out of the way. Time spent thinking of him could ensnare me like no organ-grinder ever could.
“Are you accusing me of something, Sidney?” I asked.
“No, no, of course not. I’m just making a point. None too well, it would seem. What I am trying to say is that I think there are secrets of the past in my own household. And although I sent Fenton into the streets in an attempt to call out whatever miscreant actually fired the shots, he would have had no capacity for calling out whoever was behind the trigger-puller.”
Sidney gazed at me steadily, and I sensed that he was trying to communicate something he could not say aloud.
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