A Sudden, Fearful Death

hesitated, as if searching his mind to recollect her name. He was a large man, not especially tall but portly and of imposing manner. His face was ordinary enough at a glance: narrow eyes, sharp nose, high brow, and receding sandy hair. It was only with closer attention one was acutely aware of the power of his intellect and the emotional intensity of his concentration.

'Good morning, Lady Callandra,' he said with sudden satisfaction.

'Good morning, Sir Herbert,' she replied, smiling very slightly. 'I'm glad I've managed to see you before you begin operating.'

'I'm somewhat in a hurry,' he said with a flicker of irritation. 'My staff will be waiting for me in the theater, and I daresay my patient will be coming any moment.'

'I have an observation which may be able to reduce infection to some extent,' she continued, regardless of his haste.

'Indeed,' he said skeptically, a tiny wrinkle of temper between his brows. 'And what idea is that, pray?'

'I was in the ward a moment ago and observed, not for the first time, a nurse carrying a pail of slops the length of the room without a lid.'

'Slops are inevitable, ma'am,' he said impatiently. 'People pass waste, and frequently it is disagreeable when they are ill. They also vomit. It is in the nature, both of disease and of cure.'

Callandra kept her patience with difficulty. She was not a short-tempered woman, but being patronized she found exceedingly hard to bear.

'I am aware of that, Sir Herbert. But by the very nature that it is waste expelled by the body, the fumes are noxious and cannot be good to inhale again. Would it not be a simple thing to have the nurses use covers for the pails?'

There was a burst of raucous laughter somewhere around the corner of the corridor. Sir Herbert's mouth tightened with distaste.

'Have you ever tried to teach nurses to observe rules, ma'am?' He said it with a faint touch of humor, but there was no pleasure in it. 'As was observed in the Times last year-I cannot quote precisely, but it was to the effect that nurses are lectured by committees, preached at by chaplains, scowled on by treasurers and stewards, scolded by matrons, bullied by dressers, grumbled at and abused by patients, insulted if old, treated with flippancy if middle-aged and agreeable-natured, seduced if young.' He raised his thin eyebrows. 'Is it any wonder they are such as they are? What manner of woman would one expect to take such employment?'

'I read the same piece,' she agreed, moving to keep level with him as he began to walk toward the distant operating theater. 'You omitted to mention that they are also sworn at by surgeons. It said that too.' She ignored the momentary flicker of temper in his eyes. 'That is perhaps the best of all the arguments for employing a better class of woman, and treating them as professionals rather than the roughest of servants.'

'My dear Lady Callandra, it is all very well to talk as if there were hundreds of wellborn and intelligent young women of good moral character queuing up to perform the service, but since the glamour of war is past that is very far from being the case.' He shook his head sharply. 'Surely a moment's investigation would show you that? Idealistic daydreams are all very pleasant, but I have to deal in reality. I can only work with what there is, and the truth is that the women you see keep the fire stoked, the slops emptied, the bandages rolled, and most of them, when sober, are kind enough to the sick.'

The hospital treasurer passed them, dressed in black and carrying a pile of ledgers. He nodded in their direction but did not stop to speak.

'By all means,' Sir Herbert continued even more brusquely, 'if you wish to provide covers for the pails, do what you can to see that they are used. In the meantime, I must report to the operating theater where my patient will come any minute. Good day to you ma'am.' And without waiting for her to reply, he turned on his well-shod and polished heel and went across the foyer to the far corridor.

Callandra had scarcely drawn breath when she saw an ashen-faced woman, supported on both sides by solemn-eyed men, making her painful way toward the corridor where Sir Herbert had gone. Seemingly she was the patient whom he had expected.

It was only after a tedious but dutiful hour with the black-coated treasurer discussing finances, donations, and gifts that Callandra encountered one of the other governors, the one of whom Mrs. Flaherty had spoken so approvingly, Lady Ross Gilbert. Callandra was on the landing at the top of the stairs when Berenice Ross Gilbert caught up with her. She was a tall woman who moved with a kind of elegance and ease which made even the most ordinary clothes seem as if they must be in the height of fashion. Today she wore a gown with a waist deeply pointed at the front and a soft green muslin skirt with three huge flounces, scattered randomly with embroidered flowers. It flattered her reddish hair and pale complexion, and her face with its heavy-lidded eyes and rather undershot jaw was extremely handsome in its own way.

'Good morning, Callandra,' she said with a smile, swinging her skirts around the newel post and starting down the stairs beside her. 'I hear you had a slight difference with Mrs. Flaherty earlier today.' She pulled a face expressive of amused resignation. 'I should forget Miss Nightingale if I were you. She is something of a romantic, and her ideas hardly apply to us.'

'I didn't mention Miss Nightingale,' Callandra replied, going down beside her. 'I simply said I did not wish to lecture the nurses on honesty and sobriety.'

Berenice laughed abruptly. 'It would be a complete waste of your time, my dear. The only difference it would produce would be to make Mrs. Flaherty feel justified that she made an attempt.'

'Has she not asked you to do it?' Callandra asked curiously.

'But of course. And I daresay I shall agree, and then say what I wish when the time comes.'

'She will not forgive you,' Callandra warned. 'Mrs. Flaherty forgives nothing. By the way, what do you want to say?”

'I really don't know,' Berenice replied airily. 'Nothing as fiercely as you do.'

They came to the bottom of the stairs.

'Really, my dear, you know you have no hope of getting people to keep windows open in this climate. They would freeze to death. Even in the Indies, you know, we kept the night air out. It isn't healthy, warm as it is.'

'That is rather different,' Callandra argued. 'They have all manner of fevers out there.'

'We have cholera, typhoid, and smallpox here,' Berenice pointed out. 'There was a serious outbreak of cholera near here only five years ago, which argues my point. One should keep the windows closed, in the sickroom especial-ly.'

They began to walk along the corridor.

'How long did you live in the Indies?' Callandra asked. 'Where was it, Jamaica?'

'Oh, fifteen years,' Berenice answered. 'Yes, Jamaica most of the time. My family had plantations there. A very agreeable life.' She shrugged her elegant shoulders. 'But tedious when one longs for society and the excitement of London. It is the same people week after week. After a time one feels one has met everyone of any significance and heard everything they have to say.'

They had reached a turn in the corridor and Berenice seemed to intend going into a ward to the left. Callandra wished to find Kristian Beck and thought it most likely that at this time of day he would be in his own rooms, where he studied, saw patients, and kept his books and papers, and that lay to the right.

'It must have been a wrench for you to leave, all the same,' she said without real interest. 'England would be very different, and you would miss your family.'

Berenice smiled. 'There was not so much to leave by the time I came away. Plantations are no longer the profitable places they used to be. I can remember going to the slave market in Kingston when I was a child, but of course slaving is illegal now and has been for years.' She brushed her hand over her huge skirts, knocking off a piece of loose thread that cling to the cloth.

With that she laughed a little dryly and walked away along the corridor, leaving Callandra to go the other way toward Kristian Beck's rooms. Suddenly she was nervous, her hands hot, her tongue clumsy. This was ridiculous. She was a middle-aged widow, of no glamour at all, going to call upon a busy doctor, nothing more, nothing of any other meaning.

She knocked on the door abruptly.

'Come in.' His voice was startlingly deep and touched by an almost imperceptible trace of accent she could not place. It was mid-European, but from which country she did not know, and had not asked him.

She turned the handle and pushed the door open.