“What? What did you see?”
“I can’t tell you. Please, can you just give me some medicine?”
I drew in a long breath. I was desperate to find out what had happened to her and put the degenerate behind bars. But I told her I would give her medicine for her bronchial problems and then proceeded to vibrate the nerve roots that supply the uterus, the second, third, fourth lumbar and the second, third and fourth sacral. “This may work,” I told her. “But it may not. You need to eat more. You need to be healthy for your monthlies to return.”
She shrugged. “I’d just as soon they didn’t. One child to care for is enough. And I haven’t much of an appetite,” she added.
Before she left, she politely requested use of my privy. “It’s not very decorous,” I told her.
She laughed. “My father was demoted from his profession and forced to clean the urinals at St. James Palace for four shillings a week to make a living. He used to say, ‘Royal or not, it all comes out the same.’ I don’t like to crouch in broad daylight to relieve myself on the pavement. But I don’t exactly have a coach with a bordalou waiting for me, and I can’t afford to buy anything to have the right to use one in a confectioner’s or milliner’s shop.”
It was an unexpected admission from such a well-dressed and well-spoken woman and it made me curious. But I restrained from probing,
She disappeared behind closed doors. When she came out, she thanked me again as I gave her a bottle of ointment for her back and said, “It’s too late to apply something cold to your back to ease the swelling. Otherwise, I would send you home with a raw beefsteak that you could eat later.”
She smiled and laughed again.
I handed her my scarf to cover her face. She shook her head but I forced it into her hands. “I have another,” I told her. “Now, to help with your female problem,” I said, “a course of vibratory treatment over sixty to ninety days is usually suggested. Will you come back?”
“What will you charge?”
I had accepted whatever they could give, a shilling here, a pence there, all morning. “We’ll work something out,” I assured her. “Now I want you to soak in a hot tub. And then have someone apply this,” I said, handing her some ointment. “Dilute it in water first, though, because it can excite irritation in the skin when it’s torn and you do have some lacerations.”
“What is it?”
“Tincture of arnica. Use some caution with the first application. Will you come back in a few days’ time so I may check your progress? And perhaps we can then give you another female treatment.”
She nodded. “Yes, yes. I can do that. Thank you. You are very kind.”
“And here is some medicine for your breathing.”
She wrapped the scarf around her neck. “This is lovely,” she said, lifting the edge of the scarf to look more closely at it.
“It was a gift from my aunt. She brought it from France.”
“Oh.” She started to unwind it and I reached out to touch her hand. “Bring it back when you return.”
“I shall, I promise.”
“And you’ll try to eat better? You will promise that as well?”
She nodded again. “Thank you. Thank you for helping me. And for being so brave.”
“Brave?”
“You have the courage to push ahead in a profession that does not welcome women.” She tucked the scarf in tightly and added, “But it will be women who do something about this abominable veil of soot, mark my words.”
“Twelve hundred died during the Great Fog of December 1873,” I said, remembering my uncle’s tales about the overcrowded hospital. “And still the factories belch their smoke despite the laws against it.”
Though reform has been tried, the domestic hearth still went unchallenged. My father had told me that the year after I was born, 1856, Lord Palmerston introduced the Smoke Nuisance Abatement Act, so mills, factories, printing houses, iron founders... most industries were ordered to consume their own smoke as were steam vessels west of London Bridge. But all that changed was the onslaught of litigation.
“The courts hear dozens of cases a year,” I said, “but the factories just claim technical problems and households go on unrestricted.”
Nodding, she agreed. “Yes, I know. And so London is still a city of smoke and fog. It’s clear that sometimes it takes death to force change. Perhaps a few more blokes have to fall off the West India Docks for someone to do something about this noxious smoke that seeps into everything. Maybe it will take a few more deaths for the Queen to-”
She stopped abruptly, and put her hand on the doorknob. “Thank you again, Doctor Stamford. I’ll be back for another treatment soon. Oh, and happy Christmas.”
“What is your name again, Miss?”
She paused for a long moment and stuttered, “Penelope. Penelope Potash.”
“Happy Christmas to you as well, Penelope.”
With that, she opened the door and disappeared down the hall. The encounter left me with a sinking feeling in more ways than I could count.
Chapter 5
It was dinner time when I returned to Uncle’s house in Regent’s Park. But these days I rose, went to the office, worked, and returned home in darkness, so it was hard to keep mark of the time. Sometimes my biological clock was completely confused by the perpetual night in the Metropolis.
Due to the infernal fog, I often left an extra scarf and gloves at the office, so I’d had an extra scarf to give to Penelope Potash that day. I placed my cape, scarf and hat on the oak coat tree in the hall and dropped my gloves on the table. It was then that I noticed the note from Aunt Susan leaning against the silver bird perched on the rim of the ornate calling
