Anne Perry - The Shifting Tide

She looked down at the calm, dead face and wondered what she had been like before she became ill, when she was happy and believed she was loved, or at least wanted. Had she been kinder then, and warm, a gentler woman than she had been at the clinic? How many people could keep the best of themselves if they had been rejected as she had?

She reached forward to fold the hands in some kind of repose. It was a small act of decency, as if someone cared. It was only when she touched the fingers that she felt the torn nails, and she picked up the candle again to look more closely. Then she set it on the table and examined the other hand. Those nails were torn also. They were new tears, because the ragged pieces were still there; the other nails were perfect, those of a woman who cares for her hands.

Unease rippled through her, not quite fear yet. She looked at the face again. There was a slight trickle of blood on her lower lip, only the faintest smear, and a trace of mucus on her nose. With the fever and chest congestion she had had, that was hardly surprising. Could she have choked somehow?

She parted the lips slightly and saw the bitten flesh inside, as if it had been pressed close and hard on her teeth. Now the fear was real. It needed disproving. She seized the pillow and jerked it out from under Ruth’s head. Clean. She turned it over. There on the underside was blood and mucus.

Slowly she forced herself to open the eyelids one at a time and look. The tiny pinpoints of blood were there too, the little hemorrhages that turned her stomach sick with misery and fear. Ruth Clark had been suffocated, the pillow swift and tight over her face, with someone’s weight pressing down on it.

Who? And for heaven’s sake, why? There had been quarrels, but they were trivial, stupid! Why murder?

She backed away slowly and closed the door, leaning against it as if she needed it to hold her up. What should she do? Call the police?

If she did that they would almost certainly suspect Flo because Ruth had accused her of being a thief. But Mercy Louvain had quarreled with Ruth too, and so had Claudine Burroughs. That was no proof of anything except that Ruth was a very difficult and ungrateful woman.

Would they close the clinic? What would happen to the sick women then? It was exactly the sort of thing the authorities would use as an excuse to finish all their work here. But even if somehow she could persuade them not to, who would come here after this? A place where sick, helpless women were murdered in their beds. Word would spread like fire, vicious and frightening, destroying, causing panic.

If only Monk were not busy now with a case he had to solve, he could have come in, so discreetly that no one but Margaret need have known. But Margaret was not here right now. There was no use asking Bessie; she would have no idea what to do, and only be frightened to no purpose.

Hester could not trust Squeaky. He was helpful as long as it suited him, and he had no real alternative. But he might see this as the perfect opportunity to win his brothel back and catch her as neatly as she had caught him. Could he have killed Ruth for that? No-it was absurd. She was losing all sense.

Sutton was coming back. He would understand the problem. He might even have some way to help. First it would be a good thing if she were to find out all she could. There might be something here to tell her who was last in the room. People made beds in different ways, folded sheets or tidied things, even arranged a sick person’s clothes.

And she should prepare Ruth for burial. Should she inform Clement Louvain? Mercy could surely get a message to him. How would Mercy feel? Hester must be careful what she told the other women and how she worded it.

She straightened up and walked back to the bed again. Was there anything at all that observation could tell her? The bedding was rumpled, but then Ruth had done that herself most of the time when she was feverish. It meant nothing. She looked around the floor, and at the way the corners of the sheets were tucked in at the foot. It looked tight, folded left over right. Bessie’s work, probably. She examined everything else she could think of. The cup of water was on a small square of cardboard, the way Claudine left it, so as not to make a ring mark on the wood of the table. Flo would not have thought of that. It all told her nothing.

She should wash the body and prepare it for the undertaker. Perhaps she should tell Clement Louvain? Ruth’s family might wish to bury her, and he would know who they were. She went downstairs and fetched a bowl of water; it did not matter that it was barely warm. Ruth would not mind. It was just a case of cleaning and making her decent, a gesture of humanity.

She did it alone. There was no need to involve anyone else, and she had not yet decided what to say. Carefully she folded back the bedcovers and took off Ruth’s nightgown. It was an awkward job. Perhaps she should have asked someone to help after all. It would not have distressed Bessie; she had washed other dead women with pity and decency, but no fear.

Ruth had had a handsome body, a little shrunken in illness now, but it was easy enough to see how she had been. She was still firm and shapely, except for an odd, dark shadow under her right armpit, a little like a bruise. Funny that she had not complained of an injury. Perhaps it embarrassed her because of where it was.

There was another one, less pronounced, on the other side.

Hester’s heart lurched inside her and the room seemed to waver. She could hardly breathe. With her pulse knocking so loudly she was dizzy, she moved Ruth over a little, and saw what she dreaded with fear so overwhelming it made her almost sick. It was there, another dark swelling-what any medical book would have called a bubo . Ruth Clark had not had pneumonia-she’d had the bubonic plague, the disease that had killed a quarter of the known world in the middle of the fourteenth century and was known as the Black Death.

Hester plunged her hands into the water in the bowl, and then as quickly snatched them out again. Her whole body was shaking. Even her teeth were chattering! She must get control of herself! She had to make decisions, do whatever must be done. There was no one else to take over, no one to tell her what was right.

When had the swellings appeared? Who was the last person to wash her or change her gown? It had always been Mercy. Perhaps Ruth had refused to let her see, or Mercy had not known the swellings for what they were.

And what about all the other women with congestion of the chest? Did they have bronchitis, pneumonia-or were they in the earlier, pneumonic stage of the plague? And if they did not die of that, then would it turn into the true bubonic as well?

She had no answer. She had to assume that it would. So no one must leave! It would spread like fire in tinder. How many people had brought it into the country in 1348? One? A dozen? In weeks it could spread through half of London and into the countryside beyond! With modern travel, trains the length and breadth of the country, it could be in Scotland and Wales the day after.

And Margaret must not come back! Heaven knew she would miss Margaret’s help, her courage, her companionship. But no one must come in-or go out.

How would she stop that? She would have to have help. Lots of it. But who? What if she told the others who were here now, and they panicked and left? She had no power to hold them. What on earth was she to do? Was there even any point in trying to see that no one else became infected?

No. That was absurd. Everyone had already been in the room any number of times. It was hideously possible that they had caught it, and it was too late to help and save anything. At least she would prevent anyone else from seeing Ruth’s buboes and understanding what they meant. That would stop panic. There was one room with a door that locked. She must wrap the body tightly in a sheet and get Bessie to help her carry it there and lock her in.