Sarah Rayne - What Lies Beneath

The clock had reached half-past four when she began to scream.

Gillespie Martlet and Josiah Jex agreed later that it had been a narrow thing with Lady Cadence. A very unpleasant business indeed, although, as Mr Jex said, she had been most straitly warned of the risk she ran.

‘Certainly she was warned,’ said Dr Martlet, who was rather white around the lips and had discarded his starched high-necked collar halfway through their endeavours to revive their patient and stop the bleeding. Dear God, he had forgotten how much blood a damaged, aborted foetus could bring with it! That was what came of practising medicine from the dignified confines of a Wimpole Street consulting room, of course; you no longer dealt with the voidances and the exudations of the human body. Gillespie Martlet, who for the last two decades had been more accustomed to advising delicate ladies to take care of their fragile constitutions, and to exchanging bluff but deferential pleasantries with corpulent gentlemen about their fondness for rich food, had found the last two hours an appalling experience.

Lady Cadence – Serena, whom he had loved from afar in a perfectly respectful and entirely chaste fashion for more than fifteen years – had screamed like a trapped hare, and when they dragged open the mercury box’s door, she had been seated in a pool of blood and amniotic fluid, writhing and struggling. And the child, the poor half-formed, half-crushed foetus, half in and half out of her body…

Between them, Dr Martlet and Jex had carried her to the narrow bed in the corner of the room, sending the young assistant for hot water and cloths. He had taken so long that Jex had almost gone huffing down the stairs himself, but he had finally returned with a canister of water and towels, gasping his apologies, but explaining that there appeared to be no servants anywhere in the house.

‘No, of course there aren’t,’ said Martlet, remembering. ‘She sent them out for a half-day’s holiday. She didn’t want any of them knowing what was being done to her this afternoon.’

Jex, his hands busy about his patient, grunted that in his experience servants generally knew more about their masters and mistresses than anyone else, and added it was a pity there was not a sensible woman in the house to help them. But they would manage, he said, eyeing the prone figure on the bed.

They did manage, but it was, as they later admitted to one another, a very close-run thing indeed. It took their combined knowledge and Jex’s skill to remove the foetus without damaging Serena Cadence’s uterus. As the forceps, hastily snatched out of Jex’s bag, closed around it and he prepared to withdraw it, there was a nightmare moment when it seemed to squirm and resist.

‘Oh God,’ said Martlet again, recoiling, one hand over his mouth. ‘Jex, it can’t possibly be alive…’

‘Five months, didn’t you say?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘I’ve known them survive at five months,’ said Jex grimly. ‘But this little one hasn’t, and from the look of it, that’s God’s mercy.’

They piled pillows under Serena’s feet to stem the bleeding, but even so, the sheets and the mattress were soaked, and the stench of stale blood quickly filled up the small room. Martlet, feeling slightly sick, reflected that this was something else you lost touch with from a smart consulting room.

Much later, the servants returned, and the sensible maid, Dora, left to sit with her mistress, the three gentlemen sat in the downstairs drawing room.

‘And,’ said Dr Martlet, ‘I think Lady Cadence – and Sir Julius – would permit us a little of their brandy.’ He poured the brandy, his hands still shaking.

‘A very good brandy,’ observed Josiah Jex, swilling it round in its balloon glass to release the ethers. Without looking up, he said, ‘She understood what happened, didn’t she?’

‘That the child was lost? Yes, of course.’

Jex paused, then said, ‘Have you told her she was pregnant with twins and she only aborted one of them?’

‘Not yet,’ said Dr Martlet. ‘But undoubtedly it will be a great comfort to her.’

London, 1912

‘Trust madam to choose the most troublesome way of travelling,’ said Flagg crossly, dragging two large wicker hampers from the big larder into the kitchen. ‘No consideration for other folks, as per usual. And why are we jaunting off to the wilds of nowhere all of a sudden? That’s what I’d like to know.’

Hetty, who had been directed to help him, said most likely madam wanted to shut herself away at Cadence Manor until after the birth.

‘More like she’s shutting herself away because she contracted you-know-what from the master, the old rogue,’ said Flagg, straightening up from the hampers, one hand to the small of his back.

‘Flagg, I’ll thank you not to refer to such matters while I’m cooking madam’s lunch.’

‘I speak as I find,’ said Flagg. ‘We all know what ailed Sir Julius, and why Mr Crispian and Mr Jamie took him off to foreign parts before he could go completely mad and ruin the bank altogether.’

‘I don’t know about ruining the bank, I call it tragic what happened to him,’ said Mrs Flagg, stirring the caper sauce, which was to go with the halibut.

‘Tragic my foot. He sowed the wind and now he’s reaping the whirlwind,’ said Flagg, who had been making an inventory of the wine cellar and was always inclined to quote the Old Testament when he had taken a nip of Sir Julius’s port.

‘Well,’ said Mrs Flagg, who could not be doing with Flagg when he became biblical, ‘I don’t care for Cadence Manor, and I don’t mind who hears me say so. It’s the back of beyond, that place; no shops to hand and never a soul to exchange a bit of gossip with. I’d much rather madam stayed in London, with Dr Martlet scampering round every five minutes to make sure she hasn’t suffered a finger ache. Dora, if you’ve nothing else to do at the moment, you and Hetty had better see there’s plenty of greaseproof paper for packing the provisions. I’m taking as much as we can manage, for if Mr Colm’s kept the larders at the manor properly provisioned it’ll be the first time ever.’

Serena had not realized she wanted to leave London until she had actually said the words aloud to Dr Martlet. But as soon as they were out, she thought, yes, of course that’s the answer. Away from London, away from the annoying noises and people plying the door knocker, and Flagg and Hetty having to turn them away because she did not want to see anyone, not like this. And perhaps at Cadence she could find a way to think of this child, this lone little survivor of twins, as an ordinary baby.

Dr Martlet had at first been doubtful about her leaving London, but finally he agreed. ‘Perhaps after all it would be best. It will be quieter and I can make sure you’re looked after by a doctor in Bramley. If you’ve completely made up your mind?’

‘I have. My husband’s cousin, Colm Cadence, lives in one wing of the place. He looks after it for us.’

‘Yes, Gil’s mentioned him.’

‘He’s painfully shy, poor Colm. Very scholarly. He lives for his work and I wouldn’t want to disturb that, but I suppose some arrangement can be reached. Cadence has more than one wing.’ It pleased her to say this, to visualize the manor house behind its high walls. One of Julius’s ancestors had built it and the Italian influence was evident, even though it was slightly battered nowadays – in fact very nearly shabby.

Dr Martlet was of the opinion that her health was sufficient to withstand the journey, which Serena would make by car, since she could not face a train journey, even with a private railcar. ‘The child’s heartbeat is steady and good,’ he said, having listened to it during one of the rare examinations Serena permitted.