Mary nodded and flipped to a blank page farther in her notebook, folding it in half vertically. “I shall confine notes about cholera to the pages before this one, and notes about Mr. Herbert’s investigation to the pages after it.”
It was as good a system as any. “And you can make notes for future nursing instructions inside the cholera pages,” I said.
“Oh no, Miss Florence,” Mary objected, shaking her head. “I keep those in a separate notebook.”
Even better.
We finished up by redrawing all of Reverend Whitehead’s notes, putting his gathered information into tables and trying to assess any patterns with regard to whom was being struck by cholera in conjunction with his map of where the concentrations seemed to be. All I could ascertain was that, with few exceptions, entire households were being swallowed up once King Cholera knocked on a door. There seemed to be little reprieve for the young and hale, nor any relief for those who worked outdoors versus inside a factory.
I studied Whitehead’s map until my eyes were bleary. In frustration, I turned the map this way and that, upside down and right side up. It was then that I had an inspiration. “Goose, do you think you could redraw the reverend’s map without the circles?” I asked excitedly.
She looked at it. “Certainly. It won’t be as fancy, but—”
In my eagerness, I interrupted her. “That’s fine. We just need lines showing the various streets.”
While she worked on that, I devised a coding system for myself. A circle would indicate a location where one person had died and then the disease had gone away. A square would mean two to three people had died in a location, a triangle would mean four to six people had been taken, and so on.
With my coded legend complete, I went through my recharted information of Whitehead’s, dredging out information about the numbers of people who had died in specific locations. I felt a flush of excitement creeping up my neck, for I was certain I was on the verge of a discovery.
When Mary had finished her crude map, I applied circles, squares, and triangles to the map according to what knowledge I had gleaned through the better organization of Whitehead’s compilations.
I held up the newly marked map for Mary to see.
She pointed to the center of it. “It’s obvious. Most outbreaks are along Broad Street.”
I nodded my assent to her astute declaration. “Yes, but why? What is so tragically special about that area? Is it somehow seeping up from the ground?”
Mary gave me a shocked look. “Miss Florence, I think we should be more concerned about how much time we are spending down there, and whether we are risking our very lives. Why, we might exhibit symptoms at any moment!” She laid her open notebook in her lap and rubbed her arms with her hands, as if warding off a chill inside the warm building.
I was far too animated by my findings to worry about contracting cholera. I needed to visit Reverend Whitehead again to show him my conclusions. I needed to make meeting Dr. Snow a priority as well. I could travel to see both men after I concluded my work at Middlesex Hospital tomorrow.
Sidney would be furious at my delays, but it would only be one more day. Besides, what hope did I truly have of determining who it was that had attacked Liz?
I turned my attentions back to the cholera outbreak, thinking about the people we had witnessed in Soho, both in the streets and in their meager quarters. Cholera was striking some down within hours, causing others to linger for days in agony—such as Isabel Maddox—and in some instances people recovered completely. How pernicious yet capricious this illness was.
But as I examined my newly marked map, it occurred to me that some residents of the area were obviously not afflicted at all. Take, for example, George Maddox. Was it curious that he had not contracted the disease, or just one of those unexplained coincidences of life?
I was about to open my mouth to discuss this when Mary brought up the carriage attack. “I think it wise to concentrate more upon Mr. Herbert’s situation, don’t you? To catch a murderer rather than miring yourself in the foulness of cholera. You should probably spend tomorrow interviewing General à Court, and maybe even seek out this Caroline Norton of Mr. Herbert’s.”
I smiled. “You are concerned solely about justice, are you, Goose?”
She reddened. “I am concerned for your health and well-being, of course,” she said primly. “But I also have a theory about the carriage attack.”
That immediately caught my attention. “A theory about who the attacker was?”
Mary nodded, self-satisfied. “Isn’t it obvious? That Mrs. Norton was responsible. She is jealous of Mrs. Herbert and wants to see her rival eliminated.”
I had to protest, even though my heart wasn’t in it. “But Sidney said he doesn’t know where she is, that she may have returned to her parents in the country or even gone to the continent.”
Mary gave me a wry look. “Men can be so foolish sometimes, even great men like Mr. Herbert. You mark my words, that woman is here and trying to get rid of poor Elizabeth Herbert. It’s obvious just from the method employed.”
“You mean a deranged man rushing the carriage and then possibly someone else shooting wide and accidentally killing the coachman? That is a society lady’s method of attempting murder?”
Mary raised her chin. “What I mean, Miss Florence, is that clearly this man was hired to do the work. However, he was also a bumbling fool. Most men of any class would have enough reach into the lower classes to find an expert assassin to do the job. A woman might be stuck with a lesser sort because she wouldn’t know the proper people to accomplish the task.”
“So you are saying”—I raised a speculative eyebrow—“that Caroline Norton—whose satin slipper has probably never touched the ground outside of Mayfair—managed to find someone in Soho who was willing to undertake a crime for her?”
Mary nodded. “Through a friend. Or maybe through a well-worded advertisement in the paper. She probably hired the first man that came along, because you can’t exactly check references on these sorts of things, now, can you?”
I was trying to give credence to what Mary was saying. “And what was Mrs. Norton going to do once Liz was dead?”
“She would plan to comfort Mr. Herbert in his grief, and thus make her way back into his life. With his affections secured, she could move into Herbert House.”
“But she hasn’t been able to secure a divorce!” I exclaimed in order to pop her hypothetical bubble.
Mary put a finger to the side of her nose. “Since Eve in the garden, women have been willing to perform acts way outside the bounds of decency and rule to accomplish their desires. If her marriage was that abusive, she might risk societal disdain to have an escape to Mr. Herbert’s house. Even if he does have that awful dog.” She shuddered. “Of course, most women are not in Mrs. Norton’s position. My Milo was not capable of doing anything that could even cause me to raise my voice, much less cause me to act in a manner—”
I let Mary ramble on about her sainted dead husband while I contemplated her theory, ridiculous as it sounded. If Caroline Norton was somehow responsible, would Sidney really want this investigated? I couldn’t imagine he would want to see his ex-lover committed to the gallows.
Yet since Sidney had come to confess his affair with her to me, it was reasonable to assume he did not think her guilty of anything, else he would have kept it buried. I would never have known otherwise.
I interrupted Mary, who was in the middle of a story about Milo once rescuing a fawn who had gotten stuck on an ice-covered pond, to share my thoughts. Afterward I added, “It can’t be Mrs. Norton, because it would almost imply that Sidney was involved.”
Her immediate reaction surprised me. “Then how would the attacker know when the carriage was coming through unless Mr. Herbert told him? Or her.”
That stopped me. It did point in Caroline Norton’s direction, but worse, it also pointed in the direction of the General, or even Liz herself. And half the servants of th
e Herbert household would have known when the carriage was departing, including Fenton. Any of them could have innocently or purposely told someone about the routing to the British Museum.
“You accused a jealous wife once before, and you were wrong,” I reminded her.
“But was I really?” Mary countered defensively. “I perhaps guessed the wrong culprit, but I did understand the motive.”
I thought back on my Nurse Bellamy, who had been murdered last year inside this very room because of jealousies. I couldn’t very well argue Mary’s point.
When Mary and I had exhausted ourselves talking, I decided to shoo her off to her own quarters before it got too late for her to be in the streets. Her lodgings had previously been mine, but I hated to live outside the premises of my hospital and had taken rooms on an upper floor not long after first arriving. I had given my old rooms over to Mary not only so that she would have her own private space but so that I could have time alone, too. The lodgings were a short distance on foot, but I still worried for Mary’s safety. Even the best streets of London had the occasional robber or murderer skulking about on them.
With Mary gone, I gathered up the two nurses I had decided would help at Middlesex Hospital: Lambert and Hughes. I had weighed having Harris go, because I knew how quietly efficient she would be, but now, with much of my time taken up by cholera and the Herbert problem, I needed someone who could oversee things at the Establishment in my absence. Harris was just the one for that. And Lambert had already dealt with cholera at the Maddox household, while Hughes had the right temperament for what I knew would be backbreaking work.
Yes, I was satisfied that I had selected the correct nurses, and both of them expressed gladness for the assignment. I spent an hour going over what our anticipated duties would be at the other, larger hospital and told them to be ready early the following morning.
I then checked on all the inmates, feeling a warm glow spread inside my chest as I saw that I had no complaint whatsoever with any of their conditions. All bedcoverings were clean, rooms were aired out, and no half-eaten trays of food lingered at any inmate’s elbow. My nurses were learning well.
As I climbed the staircase up to my bedchamber, I caught a glimpse of Charlie Lewis with little John Wesley. They were sitting together inside a closet, the door opened wide and the glow of a lantern on the floor beside them illuminating their activity. They had Dash between them, and Charlie appeared to be trying to entice the young red squirrel to do tricks using bits of boiled eggs as reward.
John Wesley was completely entranced by what the hospital’s manservant was doing, and I smiled to see the boy so happy.
Which immediately reminded me of young Arthur Maddox, whom I expected was probably gone by now. How cursed and unfair the world could seem.
CHAPTER 13
What a sight the four of us—Nurse Lambert, Nurse Hughes, Mary, and I—must have made, marching determinedly down New Cavendish Street to Middlesex Hospital. The nurses wore the apron-topped uniforms that I had designed and Hughes had created last year. Mary was in her usual plain, solid-color dress—today a muddy brown. For myself, I wore a day dress in the silk taffeta of which I was so fond, this time a naval-blue jacket over a corresponding blue skirt with two horizontal ebony stripes encircling the lower part of the skirt. I, too, wore an apron over my dress, unsure of what spills and mess the day might bring.
Behind us was Charlie Lewis, dragging a small cart loaded up with hospital supplies, such as clean sheets, pillows, feeding cups, and the like.
I had sent John Wesley off to the grocer’s to order the food supplies we needed and to request that the grocer deliver it all to the hospital as soon as possible. There had not been time to send a list to Middlesex to have them do it.
Despite Dr. Goodfellow’s assurances otherwise, I was not going to assume that all had been done according to my wishes and figured my nurses and I would likely have to make things right once we arrived.
There were still victims sprawled about on the lawn—thank goodness it was late summer and not one of our country’s damp winters—although I noticed that most of them were now females. How curious. I was glad Mary carried her notebook with her, stuffed full of Reverend Whitehead’s and my own charts. I would have to make note of all Middlesex’s inmates.
Dr. Goodfellow greeted us in the hospital’s entry and had an orderly assist Charlie with bringing in everything on the cart. Along with the hospital’s nursing staff, we went straight to work. I quickly walked through the hospital again with Mary and my nurses, showing them the deficiencies I had noticed the previous day. Unfortunately, the slop buckets and water closets still overflowed, the kitchens hadn’t been touched, and not a single inmate’s bed had been freshened.
In fact, of all the instructions I had left with the hospital’s leadership, the only task accomplished had been to open the windows. Even that had been executed poorly, with someone having lifted just a single window in large rooms containing six or eight of them.
I was mentally furious, but it would do no good to upset the inmates nor the nurses or orderlies, who all looked at me expectantly once I returned to the hospital’s lobby with Lambert, Hughes, and Mary. Also awaiting me were the physicians I had met with the previous day. It seemed as though an eternity had passed since my first visit.
Goodfellow introduced the hospital staff members I hadn’t met before. There were too many names to remember, but I did take note that most of them looked as bedraggled as the members of my own staff had a year ago. I worried how many thieves, drunks, and swindlers dwelt among this group, but there was nothing to be done about that now.
I instructed my own nurses to inspect each inmate in every ward, with a priority on bathing them and changing the linens as they saw fit. “If we run out, Mr. Lewis can return to the Establishment for more, or we will have him scour London for them, or as a last resort buy six-foot lengths of cotton and wool from a draper and we will hem them ourselves.”
Once every bed and its occupant were clean, I wanted them to make note of symptoms, sores, and the verbal complaints of each inmate, which would be compiled into a report for the hospital’s doctors. “You won’t get to all of the inmates in a day, but we will keep returning until they have all been reviewed.”
I made full use of the orderlies, telling them to burn any bedcoverings the nurses deemed unfit for human use and to ensure that linens in decent condition were sent out to a laundress. After that, I wanted all water closets thoroughly cleaned out. “And,” I ordered sternly. “I do mean thoroughly. You should go through many cakes of carbolic soap. After that, the kitchens will need a meticulous scrubbing, particularly the stoves.” They had been coated in so much grease it was a wonder all the filled cook pots didn’t slide right down to the floor. “Keep a special eye out for the beetles and crickets that have found the place to be fertile breeding grounds.”
They eyed me with disdain, and one man protested, “We are orderlies, not housemaids.”
I maintained my temper and shot back, “You are strong, muscled men, and this work requires the stamina and brawn of oxen. Do you suggest that women attempt such exertion?”
The man who had spoken out lowered his gaze.
As for the Middlesex nurses, well, I could hardly trust them to deal with the freshly bathed inmates. I contemplated them for a few moments and said, “Dispose of all the food from the larder and cold pantry so that the orderlies can clean them. Then I want all the floors scrubbed, both in and out of wards. The orderlies will, of course, take care of the kitchen floors. Once you are done with that work, you may retire to bathe yourselves. By then the replacement groceries should be here, and I will show you how to properly feed the bed-ridden and weak.”
With everyone having received their instructions, and Dr. Goodfellow having offered a very short speech in which he stated that I was to be obeyed without question, I had Mary accompany me to the medicinal supply cabinet in one of the wards. Some of the boxes of hospital goods tha
t Charlie had toted here were stacked up in front of the cabinet. With Mary’s help, I pushed them aside so that we could clean out the cabinet itself.
I attempted to be thoughtful in reorganizing the cabinet, but everything was so brittle, moldy, or cracked that I decided to do a clean sweep of it all, much as I hoped the Middlesex nurses were doing down in the kitchens. Then I brushed out all the dead insects from inside the cabinet. It seemed as though I was covered in dust from head to toe in mere minutes, and already there were streaks of dirt across the front of my apron.
Mary grimaced as she watched me working. “Miss Florence, how do you suppose this many flying and crawling creatures have gotten in here, given that the first time in the hospital’s history that a window was opened was probably yesterday?”
I couldn’t help it; I laughed aloud at her comment. “Goose, that is an excellent question.” From the corner of my eye I saw a desiccated spider corpse on my sleeve, which I brushed away. “But we are going to set everything to rights for these poor inmates.”
I then had Mary help me unlatch the crates of supplies, and together we organized the shelves with ointments, syringes, bandages, invalid drinking cups, and other items.
When we were finished, I clapped my hands together and said, “That’s the first one.”
We then proceeded to work on the other cabinets within the hospital, going through the same routine of jettisoning everything existing in each cabinet, cleaning out the insect remains, and reloading it in an orderly manner. Our only interruption was from Dr. Goodfellow, who stood and observed us for several minutes before walking away, shaking his head and muttering about the increased admission cost.
After several hours of working, Mary began to plead exhaustion. I reluctantly stopped so that we could track down Lambert and Hughes for a break outside. We four stood out on the expansive hospital stoop, which put all the outdoor sufferers directly in my line of vision.
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