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He arrived and entered by the kitchen door again, and asked to speak to Percival. He faced him in the housekeeper’s sitting room this time. The footman was pale-faced now, feeling the net closing around him, cold and a great deal tighter. He stood stiffly, his muscles shaking a little under his livery, his hands knotted in front of him, a fine beading of sweat on his brow and lip. He stared at Monk with fixed eyes, waiting for the attack so he could parry it.
The moment Monk spoke, he knew he would find no way to frame a question that would be subtle. Percival had already guessed the line of his thought and leaped ahead.
“There’s a great deal you don’t know about this house,” he said with a harsh, jittery voice. “Ask Mr. Kellard about his relationship with Mrs. Haslett.”
“What was it, Percival?” Monk asked quietly. “All I have heard suggests they were not particularly agreeable.”
“Not openly, no.” There was a slight sneer in Percival’s thin mouth. “She never did like him much, but he lusted after her—”
“Indeed?” Monk said with raised brows. “They seem to have hidden it remarkably well. Do you think Mr. Kellard tried to force his attentions on her, and when
she refused, he became violent and killed her? There was no struggle.”
Percival looked at him with withering disgust.
“No I don’t. I think he lusted after her, and even if he never did anything about it at all, Mrs. Kellard still discovered it—and boiled with the kind of jealousy that only a spurned woman can. She hated her sister enough to kill her.” He saw the widening of Monk’s eyes and the tightening of his hands. He knew he had startled the policeman and at least for a time confused him.
A tiny smile touched the corner of Percival’s mouth.
“Will that be all, sir?”
“Yes—yes it will,” Monk said after a hesitation. “For the moment.”
“Thank you, sir.” And Percival turned and walked out, a lift in his step now and a slight swing in his shoulders.
5
HESTER DID NOT FIND the infirmary any easier to bear as days went by. The outcome of the trial had given her a sense of bitter struggle and achievement. She had been brought face-to-face again with a dramatic adversarial conflict, and for all its darkness and the pain she knew accompanied it, she had been on the side which had won. She had seen Fabia Grey’s terrible face as she left the courtroom, and she knew the hate that now shriveled her life. But she also had seen the new freedom in Lovel Grey, as if ghosts had faded forever, leaving a beginning of light. And she chose to believe that Menard would make a life for himself in Australia, a land about which she knew almost nothing, but insofar as it was not England, there would be hope for him; and it was the best for which they could have striven.
She was not sure whether she liked Oliver Rathbone or not, but he was unquestionably exhilarating. She had tasted battle again, and it had whetted her appetite for more. She found Pomeroy even harder to endure than previously, his insufferable complacency, the smug excuses with which he accepted losses as inevitable, when she was convinced that with greater effort and attention and more courage, better nurses, more initiative by juniors, they need not have been lost at all. But whether that was true or not—he should fight. To be beaten was one thing, to surrender was another—and intolerable.
At least John Airdrie had been operated on, and now as she stood in the ward on a dark, wet November morning she could see him asleep in his cot at the far end, breathing fitfully. She walked down closer to him to find if he was feverish. She straightened his blankets and moved her lamp to look at his face. It was flushed and, when she touched it, it was hot. This was to be expected after an operation, and yet it was what she dreaded. It might be just the normal reaction, or it might be the first stage of infection, for which they knew no cure. They could only hope the body’s own strength would outlast the disease.
Hester had met French surgeons in the Crimea and learned of treatments practiced in the Napoleonic Wars a generation earlier. In 1640 the wife of the governor of Peru had been cured of fever by the administration of a distillation from tree bark, first known as Poudre de la Comtesse, then Poudre de Jesuites. Now it was known as loxa quinine. It was possible Pomeroy might prescribe such a thing for the child, but he might not; he was extremely conservative—and he was also not due to make his rounds for another five hours.
The child stirred again. She leaned over and touched him gently, to soothe as much as anything. But he did not regain his senses, rather he seemed on the border of falling into delirium.
She made up her mind without hesitation. This was a battle she would not surrender. Since the Crimea she had carried a few basic medicines herself, things she thought she would be unable to obtain readily in England. A mixture of theriac, loxa quinine and Hoffman’s liquor was among them. She kept them in a small leather case with an excellent lock which she left with her cloak and bonnet in a small outer room provided for such a purpose.
Now, the decision made, she glanced around the ward one more time to make sure no one was in distress, and when all seemed well, she hurried out and along the passage to the outer room, and pulled her case from where it was half hidden under the folds of her cloak. She fished for the key on its chain from her pocket and put it in the lock. It turned easily and she opened the lid. Under the clean apron and two freshly laundered linen caps were the medicines. The theriac and quinine mixture was easy to see. She took it out and slipped it into her pocket, then closed and locked the case again, sliding it back under her cloak.
Back in the ward she found a bottle of the ale the nurses frequently drank. The mixer was supposed to be Bordeaux wine, but since she had none, this would have to serve. She poured a little into a cup and added a very small dose of the quinine, stirring it thoroughly. She knew the taste was extremely bitter.
She went over to the bed and lifted the child gently, resting his head against her. She gave him two teaspoonfuls, putting them gently between his lips. He seemed unaware of what was happening, and swallowed only in reaction. She wiped his mouth with a napkin and laid him back again, smoothing the hair off his brow and covering him with the sheet.
Two hours later she gave him two more teaspoonfuls, and then a third time just before Pomeroy came.
“Very pleasing,” he said, looking closely at the boy, his freckled face full of satisfaction. “He seems to be doing remarkably well, Miss Latterly. You see I was quite right to leave the operation till I did. There was no such urgency as you supposed.” He looked at her with a tight smile. “You panic too easily.” And he straightened up and went to the next bed.
Hester refrained from comment with difficulty. But if she told him of the fever the boy had been sinking into only five hours ago, she would also have to tell him of the medication she had given. His reaction to that she could only guess at, but it would not be agreeable. She would tell him, if she had to, when the child was recovered. Perhaps discretion would be best.
However circumstances did not permit her such latitude. By the middle of the week John Airdrie was sitting up with no hectic color in his cheeks and taking with pleasure a little light food. But the woman three beds along who had had an operation on her abdomen was sinking rapidly, and Pomeroy was looking at her with grave anxiety and recommending ice and frequent cool baths. There was no hope in his voice, only resignation and pity.
Hester could not keep silent. She looked at the woman’s pain-suffused face, and spoke.
“Dr. Pomeroy, have you considered the possibility of giving her loxa quinine in a mixture of wine, theriac and Hoffman’s mineral liquor? It might ease her fever.”
He looked at her with incredulity turning slowly into anger as he realized exactly what she had said, his face pink, his beard bristling.
