A Murderous Malady

by Christine Trent

  “Actually, Flo, there are only three doctors and a scattering of orderlies.”

  I stared at him until I thought my eyes would pop out of my head. “Pardon me? Surely you are joking. Sidney, that must be rectified immediately. How can hundreds—or even thousands—of men be adequately treated by a handful of men? That is the worst atrocity of all. You need nurses there, lots of them.”

  Sidney looked at me thoughtfully. “I see.” He abruptly changed the subject. “Why don’t I take you to Liz?”

  * * *

  “Flo!” Liz exclaimed as brightly as her husband had upon seeing me. She removed William from her lap and placed him in a bassinet. The other children were clumsily playing marbles together. “I’m so glad you came to visit. What news have you?”

  She proffered her cheek for Sidney to kiss. He nodded to me with a warning look as he left the room.

  “Not much, I’m afraid.” I sat down on a chair across from her that was probably meant for an older child. It actually wasn’t that uncomfortable. I told Liz the same story I had told Sidney, although I softened my thoughts on the General and made no mention of Caroline Norton.

  She looked crestfallen. “I had so hoped we might know who attacked me by now. But to think someone might have been after Papa is even more heartbreaking. It distresses me to think this evil man is gallivanting about London, completely unscathed.”

  “I am trying. There’s just so much in the way, particularly with this cholera outbreak.”

  Liz clucked her tongue. “I’ve read about it. No doubt you will banish cholera from the city by giving it a stern lecture followed by your caring ministrations to its sufferers.”

  “You flatter me, Liz, but I will try to live up to your adulation. Meanwhile, I just wanted to see how you’re feeling. You seem to be getting on well.” My friend looked much better. Her coloring was rosy, and she was back to her usual self.

  “I am, as long as I don’t think too much about what happened. Sidney has been so concerned, and of course Papa has been like a prowling Bengal tiger over it all. He says he is waiting for an opportunity to hang the guilty party himself. To be truthful”—Liz dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper—“I am worried about Papa. I’ve caught him muttering to himself on more than one occasion. He is so very troubled by the attack, I think because he feels as though he did not adequately protect me. Now that you believe he may have been the target, my fear is that—”

  I could readily finish her train her thought. “That the longer this goes on, the more disturbed the General will become, and you are worried that he might lash out foolishly before I have a chance to discover the perpetrator. Yes?”

  Liz laughed nervously. “I didn’t realize you knew my father so well.”

  “I suppose I have become well acquainted with human nature. Any loving father would react as the General has.” I couldn’t express my doubts about Liz’s father to her. There would be time enough for her to be shattered if and when I was actually able to accuse him of something.

  I noticed that Alberto had somehow made his way into the room. He sat at Liz’s feet, still wearing his little wool coat, and offered her a delicate whine. Liz reacted as though the dog were one of her children running to her over a stubbed toe. “Poor little dear, are you unhappy?”

  She picked up the greyhound, and he curled up in her lap. From a table at her elbow, which was also covered in children’s drawings, she plucked a tiny nugget of some sort from a covered dish. “Does handsome little Alberto sweetboy want some pressed duck?” she cooed, holding it just above the dog’s nose. He licked at Liz’s hand, which made her laugh in delight. She dropped the treat into his mouth and Alberto turned to look at me. I could have sworn the dog gave me a self-satisfied smirk.

  I presume he needed me to understand my lowly place in the family compared to his own exalted one. I’d had no idea dogs could be so competitive.

  Alberto’s triumph lasted mere seconds, though, for George and Sidney caught sight of the dog from across the room, and with squeals and shouts went after it. Alberto scrabbled out of Liz’s lap and went tearing out of the nursery, a young boy and his toddler brother on his heels.

  Liz looked after her children’s retreating backs with undisguised affection, even as she mildly protested their noisy departure.

  Liz’s maid, Alice Nichols, entered the nursery carrying a tea tray, casting me a furtive glance before addressing her mistress. “Mrs. Herbert, the kitchen maid was on her way up with a spot of refreshment, and I told her I’d bring it the rest of the way.” Nichols pushed aside the box containing Alberto’s treats to make room for the tray.

  Nichols bobbed quickly at Liz and turned to leave, again eyeing me questioningly as she left the room, pulling the door closed behind her.

  Liz poured out cups for us, then offered me a warm slab of Eve’s pudding. I eagerly accepted, so she poured rich golden custard around the sponge cake–topped base of sugared, cooked apple slices before handing me the plate. For a moment I forgot about all the anxieties and burdens in my life as I gave myself over to the luscious sweetness. It was not often that I was so enamored of food. I suspect in this case it was simply a diversion from the overwhelming list of tasks that lay before me.

  By the blissful expression on Liz’s face, it would appear that she, too, enjoyed the culinary diversion. When she had dredged the final bite of cake through the custard and finished it off with an unladylike smack, she said, “Oh, I should tell you that my brother is coming today for a monthlong visit. I haven’t seen him since his wedding back in March. You’ve never met Charles Henry, have you? I was hoping he was coming with his bride, Emily, since they’ve only been married a few short months. But he wrote to me that one of Emily’s cousins is getting married up north in York, and Emily wishes to go stay a while and help with the planning. Charles Henry had no desire to be part of that, so he decided it was a good time to make a visit to his favorite sister.” Liz laughed at her own joke.

  I laughed politely, too, but my mind was reaching back to what Alice Nichols had told me of her love affair with Liz’s brother, spoiled by his engagement to Miss Emily Currie. Nichols surely knew that Charles Henry was scheduled to arrive here—alone. Perhaps that was the source of her covert glances at me. Did she wonder if I remembered what she had told me and if I was to be trusted not to mention it to Liz once I discovered that Charles Henry à Court was going to be staying under the same roof with her?

  I considered this silently as Liz chattered on happily about how much the children loved their Uncle Charles Henry and how much she looked forward to riding out to see the reconstructed Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill with her brother. “They say it’s an entirely new experience from the Great Exhibition, with various courts showcasing important historical eras—there’s an Egyptian court, a Grecian court, a medieval court. I’m looking most forward to the Renaissance one. Flo, is anything the matter? Did the pudding upset you?”

  She was making me realize that I had an important question for her. “Liz, I would like to talk about the carriage attack.”

  “Again?” she said, shuddering.

  “Yes, please. When you decided to travel to the British Museum, did you know that cholera had broken out in Soho?”

  She frowned, considering this for the first time. “I suppose I had some awareness of it.”

  I reached over to put my cup and saucer on the table next to Liz, then sat back down, leaning forward earnestly in my little seat. “Then why did you go to the museum that way? Why not go up through Mayfair and Marylebone to get there?”

  “I didn’t choose the routing.”

  “Who did?” I asked.

  The furrow in her brow was deeper. “I hardly thought about it at the time. I supposed our coachman simply went in a manner he considered most direct. No, wait.” She looked upward in thought. “Didn’t Papa want to drive through St. James’s Park? That would have meant it only made sense to go to the museum the way we did. Why is it important
to know that?”

  “I—” Now the pudding really was souring in my stomach. “I’m just glad you and the General didn’t contract cholera on top of everything else.”

  “Yes, that would have been terrible, wouldn’t it? I would have especially been devastated if my father had taken ill. Papa is still a very vigorous man, but he is getting up in years.”

  My friend’s father was not just a vigorous old man, but an old man with secrets, of this I was certain.

  CHAPTER 17

  I found the General in Sidney’s study. George must have tired of chasing Alberto, for he and his grandfather were now positioned across a table from one another, moving tin soldiers around on an enormous paper map. Clearly the boy adored the General, who spoke to his grandson as an adult as he instructed him on battle tactics and troop movements. It appeared that they were recreating the Battle of Waterloo.

  I cleared my throat from the doorway. The General turned to see who was interrupting his lecture on the unsurpassed swordsmanship of the Household Brigade cavalry troops and the heroic fearlessness of one of Major-General Ponsonby’s regiments of heavy dragoons after Ponsonby was captured.

  “Miss Nightingale,” he said gruffly.

  “May I speak with you privately, sir?” I said.

  He nodded and sent George away, promising that later they would work on the Battle of Hastings. The eldest Herbert child bounced out of the room, and the General raised himself to full height. “My son will be here for a visit soon,” he said curtly. “What can I do for you?”

  Apparently, I would not be welcome once Charles Henry arrived. “I wish to speak with you regarding the carriage attack.”

  “I’ve told you all I know.”

  I shook my head in open dispute. “I do not think this is true. Can you tell me why you specifically routed your carriage through Soho, which you must have known was not only experiencing a cholera outbreak, but is also not as—pleasant—a path for your open carriage as say, Mayfair, would have been?”

  His expression was incredulous. “What bearing can that possibly have on the lunatic who shot at my dear Elizabeth? Are you suggesting that whoever wished to harm her would have been thoroughly unable to do so in Mayfair? Does a pistol only fire in downtrodden neighborhoods?” The General’s face was flushing red as he vented his anger on me.

  But I noticed that he had not directly answered my question, and it did not appear that he intended to do so. However, I tried once more.

  “You do know that Sidney has asked me to assist in this investigation. I would think you would be eager to share anything you know or think.” I nearly put my hands on my hips like an angry governess dealing with an incorrigible pupil but caught myself before doing so.

  The General grunted. “I have no bone with you personally. I just don’t think that a nurse, no matter how polite and privileged she may be, has the qualifications for the surveillance and foraging required to find out who the culprit is.”

  “Your son-in-law does not agree,” I maintained.

  “My son-in-law has many foolish thoughts and has done many foolish things, particularly as of late. I worry that he has lost his head as I have so done in the past. But he has become an important man, even more so than I have been, so I must weigh my options carefully when deciding what to do to protect my daughter. Currently I am in a tactical withdrawal, given that I am on disadvantageous ground.”

  I knew Sidney too well to ever think him a fool. I reached into my pocket and withdrew Fenton’s dice yet again. “Is it that withdrawal that caused you to lie to me about these?”

  The General looked at me blandly. “And why would you think to so accuse me?”

  I held the three cubes out to him and he reflexively accepted them. “You know what the markings above each crown side mean,” I asserted.

  He picked one die up out of his hand and hefted it in the other. He replaced it in his palm and picked up another die, also scrutinizing it heavily.

  “If you think I know what they mean, then you have probably already figured it out for yourself,” he said, once more fending me off.

  “I believe so,” I said. “I met a man who was present for the retreat at Kabul in 1842,” I said.

  The General’s eyes narrowed. “Did you? What of it?”

  “He did not have kind words for you, sir. He implied—actually, he directly stated—that you were in part responsible for the tribal chiefs launching the attacks that resulted in the withdrawal from Kabul, which I do not believe was tactical in the least.”

  He continued to watch me carefully. His next words were those of an overbearing military commander. “Who was this disloyal turncoat? I will see him strung from the highest gibbet I can find.”

  Now it was my turn to be incredulous. “I should hand over to you one of the only sources of information I seem to have at the moment, given that you seem to be concealing yourself behind a figurative battlement? Not likely, sir. Moreover, I learned from a man of the cloth that those symbols, the “5,” the “G,” and the “D,” must refer to some sort of military unit. The fifth something or other. If a mere minister could decipher it, how was it possible that you couldn’t?”

  The General rolled the dice in his palm, as if buying time before responding. His fingers were leathery from years in the sun. “Never said I didn’t know it.”

  “What? I showed them to you, Sidney, and Liz almost as soon as they came into my possession. You told me you didn’t know what they meant.”

  He shook his head and smiled coolly. “You remember our conversation incorrectly. I said no such thing. I merely said that it was unconscionable that one of Sidney’s servants was off gambling. But since you have trapped me like a honey badger corners a wood mouse, I will say that I had my suspicions of what the dice engravings meant, but I could not be certain. And it would not have done me any favors for them to be symbols for a military unit.”

  I was becoming confused. “Why is that?”

  He rolled his eyes. “The mere fact that you have to ask me such a question is proof of your being unfit for this task. Sidney’s servant had not done any service in the Army nor the Navy, as far as we know. These sorts of carved dice are usually carried by jack-tars, but these symbols are of an Army unit. I believe they stand for the Fifth Dragoon Guards.”

  “Fifth Dragoon Guards,” I repeated. “What does that mean?”

  “They are a cavalry regiment. Been around since the late seventeenth century. Raised by the Duke of Shrewsbury and they’ve seen plenty of action.”

  “Were the Fifth Dragoon Guards in Afghanistan?” I asked, and I could see that my arrow had flown true.

  “Yes,” he said, his expression pained. “But Sidney’s manservant had never been there, I’m sure of it. I would have remembered him, and he would have addressed me properly as his commanding officer rather than just acting as an obsequious servant.”

  The man before me bore all the hallmarks of a military leader: proud, decisive, and accustomed to having his way. Yet I had no idea what troops he had actually led. I did recall Liz once telling me that her father had been made a companion of the Order of the Bath on the occasion of old King William IV’s coronation. But that had to have been nearly a quarter century ago.

  “Who is under your command?” I asked.

  He drew himself up and stated what I already knew. “I have the colonelcy of the 41st Welsh Regiment of Foot.”

  “I presume this is not cavalry.” I really had no idea what the myriad British force groupings were.

  “No, my boys are brave infantrymen. The Duke of Wellington joined the 41st as a young lieutenant, back in ’88.” The General swelled with pride. Military geniuses like Wellington didn’t come along that often, so it was probably justifiable for him to boast about the duke having once been in the regiment’s ranks.

  Now that I understood a little about the General’s authority, I asked, “Why do you say it wouldn’t have done you any favors for the dice to have a military inscript
ion?”

  “Do you truly not understand? How simple would it be for even a half-witted journalist to put together a trail of crumbs leading from those dice to their owner to Afghanistan to me?”

  I still didn’t comprehend the man’s thoughts. “But you did want this investigated by the police.”

  “Yes, I had demanded that before you showed up with the dice. I couldn’t very well have changed my mind in that instant, could I? If I ever find the man that attacked my girl, I will hold his windpipe until the light leaves his eyes, but I do not wish any bad publicity upon this family.”

  “But the truth must be found out, no matter what it is, sir.”

  “Why is that, Miss Nightingale? Is it your intent to destroy my reputation? How does that serve you? How would it look for Sidney Herbert to have a disgraced general as a father-in-law? Have a care, for I do not believe he would appreciate a friend creating an embarrassing stir for him. Imagine if he were to be forced from his position because of your indelicate and careless meddling.” He brought his fist down heavily on the table, and several of the soldiers fell over as if wounded in battle. I started involuntarily, not expecting the noise.

  Seeming pleased by my reaction, he continued, “I believe you can be most helpful by forgetting about the damned dice and finding some known derelict who would soon be picked up for another crime anyway and let him carry the blame for this crime as well.”

  I had regained my composure and was determined not to be cowed. “That would be grossly unfair and immoral, General; not to mention that it would mean a murderer still remained free.”

  “Good Lord,” he said, sweeping a hand across the table and knocking over most of the remaining upright soldiers, reminding me now of a boy no more than George’s age having a tantrum. “What must I do to make you disregard issues that do not concern you?”

  But I was deeply concerned. I thought the General was hiding a great deal behind his bluster.

  The General went to the wall and tugged on a bell pull that lay against floral wallpaper next to a stormy shipwreck painting. Within moments, Alice Nichols appeared, breathless. Was she the only servant on duty today?