A sudden, fearful death (62 page)

"Dora Parsons," the woman
replied grudgingly. "Used 'er 'alf the time, 'e did. An' yer right—it
weren't nothin' special. Just 'anding 'im knives an' towels an' such. Any fool
could've done it. Dunno why 'e picked Dora special. She didn't know nothin'. No
better than I am!"

"And no prettier either,"
Hester said with a smile.

The woman stared at her, then
suddenly burst into a loud, cackling laugh.

"Yer a caution, you are! Never
know what yer'll say next! Don't you never say that to ol' Cod Face, or she'll
'ave yer up before Lady Almighty for immorality. Although God knows if 'e
fancied Dora Parsons 'e'd not be safe wi' the pigs." And she laughed even
louder and longer, till the tears ran down her roughened cheeks. Hester emptied
the pail and left her still chuckling to herself.

Dora Parsons. That was what Hester
had wanted, although she wished it had been anyone else. So Sir Herbert had
still lied to Rathbone—he had used one nurse more than the others. Why? And why
Dora? For more complicated operations, or ones performed later in the
pregnancy, when it was more likely the nurse would know what the operation was?
More important patients—perhaps ladies of good family, or maybe women who were
terrified for their reputations? It looked as if he trusted Dora—and that
raised more questions.

The only way to answer them was to
find Dora herself.

That she accomplished after dark
when she was so weary all she longed for was to sit down and relieve the ache
in her back and her legs. She was carrying blood-soaked bandages down to the
stove to burn them (they were beyond any laundress to reclaim), and she met
Dora coming up the stairs, a pile of sheets on her arms. She carried the weight
of them as if they were merely handkerchiefs.

Hester could not afford to wait for
a better time or to get up her courage and prepare. She stopped in the middle
of the stairs, under the lamp, blocking Dora's way, trying to look as if she
had done it unintentionally.

"I have a friend who is
attending the trial," she said, not as casually as she had wished.

"Wot?"

"Sir Herbert," she
replied. "It's nearly over. They'll probably bring in the verdict in the
next day or two."

Dora's face was guarded. "Oh
yeah?"

"At the moment it looks as if
they'll find him not guilty." Hester watched her minutely.

She was rewarded. An expression of
relief lit Dora's eyes and something inside her relaxed. "Oh yeah?"
she said again.

"The trouble is," Hester
went on, still blocking the way. "Nobody knows who did kill Prudence. So
the case will still be open."

"So what if it is? It weren't
you an' it weren't me. An' looks as if it weren't Sir 'Erbert."

"Do you think it was?"

" 'Oo—me? No, I don't reckon
as't was." There was a fierceness in her voice, as if she had suddenly
forgotten to be so careful.

Hester frowned. "Not even if
she knew about the abortions? Which she did. She could have made things pretty
hard for him if she threatened to go to the law."

Dora was tense again, her huge body
balanced carefully as if to make some sudden move, if she could only decide
what. She stared at Hester, hovering between confidence in her and total
enmity.

A prickle of sharp physical fear
tightened Hester's body, making her gulp for breath. They were alone on the
steps, the only light the small oases of the gas lamps at top and bottom and
the one under which they stood. The dark well of the stairs yawned below and
the shadows of the landing above.

She plunged on.

"I don't know what proof she
had. I don't know if she was even there—"

"She weren't." Dora cut
across her with finality.

"Wasn't she?"

"No—'cos I know 'oo were. 'E
wouldn't be daft enough ter have 'er in. She knew too much." Her big face
puckered. "Damn near as good as a doctor 'erself, she were. Knew more
than any of them student doctors. She'd never 'ave believed they was operations
for tumors and the like."

"But you knew! Did the other
nurses?"

"No—wouldn't know stones from
a broken leg, most of 'em." There was contempt in her tone as well as a
mild tolerance.

Hester forced herself to smile,
although she felt it was a sickly gesture, more a baring of the teeth. She
tried to invest her voice with respect.

"Sir Herbert must have trusted
you very deeply."

Pride lit Dora's eyes.
"Yeah—'e does. An'e's right. I'd never betray 'im."

Hester stared at her. It was not
only pride in her eyes, it was a burning idealism, a devotion and a passionate
respect. It transformed her features from their habitual ugliness into
something that had its own kind of beauty.

"He must know how much you
respect him for it," Hester said chokingly. A flood of emotion shook her.
She had wept more tears than she could remember over dead women who had not the
strength left to fight disease and loss of blood because their bodies were
exhausted with bearing child after child. She had seen the hopelessness in
their eyes, the weariness, the fear for babies they knew they could not
cherish. And she had seen the tiny, starving creatures come into the world ill
before they started, sprung from an exhausted womb.

In the pool of light on the stairs
Dora Parsons was waiting, watching her.

And neither could Hester forget
Prudence Barrymore, her eagerness and her passion to heal, her burning
vitality.

"You're right," she said
aloud in the silence. "Some women need a far better help than the law lets
us give them. You have to admire a man who risks his honor, and his freedom, to
do something about it."

Dora relaxed, the ease washing
through her visibly. Slowly she smiled.

Hester clenched her fists in the
folds of her skirts.

"If only he did it for the
poor, instead of rich women who have simply lost their virtue and didn't want
to face the shame and ruin of an illegitimate child."

Dora's eyes were like black holes
in her head.

Hester felt the stab of fear again.
Had she gone too far?

" 'E didn't do that,"
Dora said slowly. " 'E did poor women, sick women . .. them as couldn't
take no more."

"He did rich women,"
Hester repeated gravely, in little more than a whisper, her hand on the stair
rail as if it were some kind of safety. "And he took a lot of money for
it." She did not know if that was true or not—but she had known Prudence.
Prudence would not have betrayed him for doing what Dora believed. And Sir
Herbert had killed her....

" 'E didn't." Dora's
voice was plaintive, her face beginning to crumple like a child's. " 'E
didn't take no money at all." But already the doubt was there.

"Yes he did," Hester
repeated. "That's why Prudence threatened him."

"Yer lyin'," Dora said
simply and with total conviction. "I knew her too, an' she'd never 'ave
forced 'im into marryin' 'er. That don't make no sense at all. She never loved
'im. She'd no time for men. She wanted to be a doctor, Gawd 'elp 'er! She'd no
chance—no woman 'as, 'owever good she is. If you'd really knew 'er, you'd never
'ave said anything so daft."

"I know she didn't want to
marry him," Hester agreed. "She wanted him to help her get admittance
to a medical school!"

Slowly a terrible understanding
filled Dora's face. The light, the element of beauty, left it and was replaced
by an agony of disillusion—and then hatred, burning, implacable, corroding
hatred.

" 'E used me," she said
with total comprehension.

Hester nodded. "And
Prudence," she added. "He used her too."

Dora's face puckered. "Yer
said 'e's goin' t' get orf?" she asked in a low, grating voice.

"Looks like it at the
moment."

"If 'e does, I'll kill 'im
meself!"

Looking into her eyes, Hester
believed her. The pain she felt would not let her forget. Her idealism had been
betrayed, the only thing that had made her precious, given her dignity and
belief, had been destroyed. He had mocked the very best in her. She was an ugly
woman, coarse and unloved, and she knew it. She had had one value in her own
eyes, and now it was gone. Perhaps to have robbed her of it was a sin like
murder too.

"You can do better than
that," Hester said without thinking, putting her hand on Dora's great
arm, and with a shock feeling the power of the rocklike muscle. She swallowed
her fear. "You can get him hanged," she urged. "That would be a
much more exquisite death—and he would know it was you who did it. If you kill
him, he will be a martyr. The world will think he was innocent, and you guilty.
And
you
might hang! My way you'll be a heroine— and he'll be
ruined!"

" 'Ow?" Dora said simply.

"Tell me all you know."

"They won't believe me. Not
against "im!" Again the rage suffused her face. "Yer dreamin'.
No—my way's better. It's sure. Yours ain't."

"It could be," Hester
insisted. "You must know something of value."

"Like what? They in't goin'
ter believe me. I'm nobody." There was a wealth of bitterness in her last
words, as if all the abyss of worthlessness had conquered her and she saw the
light fading out of her reach with utter certainty.

"What about all the
patients?" Hester said desperately. "How did they know to come to
him? It isn't something he would tell people."

" 'Course not! But I dunno 'oo
got 'em fer 'im."

"Are you sure? Think hard!
Maybe you saw something or heard something. How long has he been doing
it?"

"Oh, years! Ever since 'e did
it for Lady Ross Gilbert. She were the first." Her face lit with sudden,
harsh amusement, as if she had not even heard Hester's sudden, indrawn
breath. "What a thing that were. She were well on—five months or more, and
in such a state—beside herself she were. She'd just come back in a boat from
the Indies—that would be why she was so far gorn." She let out a low
rumble of laughter, her face twisted in a sneer of contempt. "Black, it
were—poor little sod! I saw it plain— like a real baby. Arms an' legs an' 'ead
an' all." Tears filled her eyes and her face was soft and sad with memory.
"Fan- made me sick to see it took away like that. But black as yer 'at
it'd 'ave been. No wonder she din't want it! 'Er 'usband'd 'ave turned her out,
and all London'd 'ave thrown up their 'ands in 'orror in public—and laughed
theirselves sick be'ind their doors arterwards."

Hester too was amazed and sick and
grieved for a helpless life, unwanted and disposed of before it began.

Without any explanation she knew
Dora's contempt was not that the child was black but that Berenice had got rid
of it for that reason, and it was mixed with her sense of loss for what was so
plainly a human being on the brink of form and life. Anger was the only way she
knew to defuse the horror and the pity. She had no children herself, and
probably never would have. What emotions must have racked her to see the
growing infant, so nearly complete, and dispose of it like a tumor into the
rubbish. For a few moments she and Dora shared a feeling as totally as if their
paths through life had been matched step for step.

"But I dunno 'oo sends women
to 'im," Dora said angrily, breaking the mood. "Maybe if you can
find some of them, they'll tell yer, but don't count on it! They in't goin' ter
say anything." Now she was twisted with anger again. "You put 'em in
court an' they'll lie their 'eads off before they'll admit they done such a
thing. Poor women might not—but the rich ones will. Poor women's afraid o'
'avin more kids they can't feed. Rich ones is afraid 'o the shame."

Hester did not bother arguing that
rich women could be just as physically exhausted by confinement after confinement.
Every woman gives birth in the same way—all the money on earth cannot alter the
work of the body, the pain or the dangers, the tearing, the bleeding, the risk
of fever or blood poisoning. That surely is the one place where all women are
equal. But this was not the time to say so.

"See what you can
remember," she argued. "I will reread all Prudence's notes again,
just in case there is anything else there."

"You won't get nowhere."
There were hopelessness back in Dora's voice and in her face. " 'E'll get
off—and I'll kill 'im, the same as 'e killed 'er. I might 'ang fer it—but I'll
go gladly if I'm sure 'e's in 'Ell too." And with that she pushed her way
past Hester, tears suddenly spilling over her eyes and coursing down her ugly
face.

* * * * *

Monk was elated when Hester brought
him her news. It was the solution. He knew precisely what to do. Without
hesitation he went to Berenice Ross Gilbert's home and commanded the reluctant
footman to let him in. He accepted no protests as to the hour, which was
approaching midnight. This was an emergency. It mattered not a jot that Lady
Ross Gilbert had retired for the night. She must be awakened. Perhaps it was
something in his bearing, an innate ruthlessness, but after only a moment's
hesitation the footman obeyed.