Anne Perry - A Sudden, Fearful Death

She was astounded, but his eagerness carried her along.

"Can you imagine Mrs. Flaherty if you tried drenching your patients with buckets of cold water?" She tried not to laugh but her voice was shaking, not so much with amusement as with nervousness. "I cannot even persuade her to open the windows in the sunlight let alone at night!"

"I know," he said quickly. “I know, but we are making new discoveries every year." He grasped the chair between them and turned it so it was convenient for her to sit, but she ignored it. "I've just been reading a paper by Carl Vierordt on counting human blood corpuscles." He moved closer to her in his keenness. "He has devised a way, can you imagine that?" He held up the paper as he said it, his eyes alight. "With this kind of precision, think what we might learn!" He offered her the paper as if he would share with her his pleasure.

She took it, smiling in spite of herself and meeting his gaze.

"Look," he commanded.

Obediently she looked down at the paper. It was in German. He saw her confusion, "Oh, I'm sorry." A faint pink flushed up his cheeks. "I find I speak with you so easily, I forget you do not read German. Shall I tell you what it says?" He so obviously wanted to that it was impossible to deny him, even had she thought of it.

"Please do," she encouraged. "It sounds a most desirable treatment."

He looked surprised. "Do you think so? I should hate to be drenched with buckets of cold water."

She smiled broadly. "Not from the patient's view perhaps. I was thinking of ours. Cold water is cheap and readily available almost everywhere, and requires no skill to administer, nor can the dosage be mistaken, A bucketful too much or too little will make no difference."

His face relaxed into sudden, delightful laughter. "Oh, of course. I fear you are far more practical than I. I find women often are." Then as quickly his expression became grim again, brows drawn down. "That is why I wish we could draw more intelligent and confident women into the treatment of the sick. We have one or two nurses here who are excellent, but there is little future for them unless beliefs change a great deal." He regarded her earnestly. "There is one in particular, a Miss Barrymore, who was with Miss Nightingale in the Crimea. She is remarkable in her perception, but I regret not everyone admires her as they might." He sighed, smiling at her with sudden total candor, an intimacy that sent a warmth racing through her. "I seem to have caught your zeal for reform."

He was saying it as if joking, but she knew he meant it with the utmost seriousness, and that he intended her to know it.

She was about to reply when there was a shout of anger in the passage outside, a woman's voice raised in furious temper. Instinctively both of them turned toward the door, listening.

Another angry shout followed a moment later, then a shriek as of pain and rage.

Kristian went to the door and opened it. Callandra followed and looked outside. There were no windows, and no gas lit during the day. A few yards along in the dim light two women were struggling together, the long hair of one of them hanging loose and untidy, and even as they watched, her opponent made another lunge to snatch at it and pull.

"Stop it!" Callandra shouted as she passed Kristian and advanced on the women. "What is it? What's the matter with you?"

They stopped for a moment, largely out of sheer surprise. One of them was in her late twenties, plain-faced, but not unappealing. The other was at least ten years older and already looking worn and aged by hard living and too many drunken nights.

"What is it?" Callandra demanded again. "What are you fighting about?"

"The laundry chute," the younger said sullenly. "She blocked it by putting the linen in it all in a bundle." She glared at the older woman. "Now nothing will go through and we'll all have to carry everything right down to the boilers ourselves. As if there weren't enough to do without going up and down them stairs every time there is a sheet to change."

For the first time, Callandra noticed the bundle of soiled sheets on the floor by the wall.

"I didn't," the older woman said defiantly. "I put one sheet down. How can you block it with one sheet?" Her voice rose in indignation. "You've got to be a real clever bitch to put down less than one at a time. What do you want? I should tear it in 'alf, then sew it back together when it's clean again?" She stared belligerently at her foe.

"Let us see," Kristian said behind Callandra. He excused himself between the nurses and looked down the open chute which took linen straight to the laundry and the huge copper boilers where it was washed. He peered down it for several seconds and they all waited in silence.

"I cannot see anything," he said finally, stepping back again. 'There must be something blocking the way or I would be able to see the baskets at the bottom, or at least a light. But we will argue later as to who put it there. In the meantime, the thing is to remove it" He looked around for something to accomplish the task, and saw nothing.

"A broom?" Callandra suggested. "Or a window pole. Anything with a long handle."

The nurses stood still.

"Go on," Callandra commanded impatiently. "Go and find one. There must be a window pole in the ward." She pointed at the nearest ward entrance along the corridor. "Don't stand around, fetch it!"

Grudgingly the younger woman started, hesitated, and glared back at her companion, then continued on her way.

Callandra peered down the chute. She could see nothing either. Obviously the obstruction blocked it entirely, but how far down it was, she could not judge. = The nurse came back with a long-handled window pole and gave it to Kristian, who poked it down the chute. But even when he leaned as far as he could, he met with no resistance. The obstruction, whatever it was, was beyond his reach.

"We'll have to go down and see if we can dislodge it from below," he said after another unsuccessful try.

"Er-" The younger nurse cleared her throat.

They all turned and looked at her.

"Dr. Beck, sir."

"Yes?"

"Lally, she's one of the skivvies what does in the operating theater and like. She's only thirteen and she's made like a nine-penny rabbit. She could slide down there easy, and there's laundry baskets at the bottom, so she wouldn't hurt herself."

Kristian hesitated only a moment.

"Good idea. Fetch her, will you?" He turned to Callandra. "We should go down to the laundry room to make sure there's a soft landing for her."

"Yes sir, I'll go for her," the younger nurse said, and she went quickly, breaking into a run as she turned the corner.

Callandra, Kristian, and the other nurse went the opposite way, to the stairs and down to the basement and the dark, gas-lit passages to the laundry room where the huge coppers belched steam and the pipes clanked and rattled and poured out boiling water. Women with rolled-up sleeves heaved wet linen on the end of wooden poles, muscles straining, faces flushed, hair dripping. One or two looked around at the unusual intrusion of a man, then immediately returned to their labor.

Kristian went over to the base of the laundry chute and peered up, then backed out again and glanced at Callandra. He shook his head.

She pushed one of the large wicker baskets closer under the bottom of the chute and picked up a couple of bundles of dirty sheets to soften the fall.

"It shouldn't have got stuck," Kristian said, frowning. "Sheets are soft enough to slide, even if too many are poked down at once. Maybe someone has been putting rubbish in as well."

"We'll soon know," she replied, standing beside him and looking up expectantly.

They had not long to wait. There was a muffled call from above, faint and completely indistinguishable, then a moment's silence, a shriek, a curious shuffling noise, another shriek. A woman landed in the laundry basket, her skirts awry, arms and legs awkward. Straight after came the small, thin form of the skivvy, who shrieked again and scrambled to her feet, clambering like a monkey to escape the basket and falling onto the floor, wailing loudly.