Shall we never more behold thee; Never hear thy winning voice again – When the Springtime comes, gentle Annie, When the wild flowers are scattered o’er the plain?
‘Gentle Annie’, by Stephen C. Foster
THERE WAS A LOT TO DO now that the city had its first human case of plague, but I decided to go for a walk. I needed composure.
I had expected Mrs Gard to still be at the hospital.
She was gone.
‘You let her go?’ I asked Bacot, who sneered and brushed past me. The nurse said no one had seen Mrs Gard leave. She hadn’t been officially admitted anyway. Her little girl was still alive, fighting her own demons, alone in her empty ward. The door had been locked during the night.
I went to the boarding house, but there’d been no sign of the woman.
When I returned to the Town Hall I was told Turner had gone to Three Mile Creek, so I went to my room and laid my head on my desk for a moment.
I woke much later and went to find Turner. He was standing in the middle of his office, looking at something on the floor. I followed his gaze and there between us was a black bat.
‘I’ll have someone throw it out,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Turner. ‘Leave it.’ He knelt and teased the dead creature on to the palm of his hand. He brought it suddenly up to my face and I flinched – but saw it was just another blasted moth! An enormous thing, its muddy wings wider than the spread of his hand.
‘Another Coscinocera,’ said Turner. ‘See the sheen on its wings? That’s from the tiny scales, the lepido, which give the name to the order Lepidoptera.’ He looked at me. ‘Moths and butterflies.’
‘I know.’
‘Are you all right?’
I nodded. Books and papers covered Turner’s desk, but he found a clear corner for the thing.
‘I’ve been thinking about the Cintra steward, the one who died, and his daughter,’ said Turner. ‘About the coincidence of their relationship, how they can both become infected from apparently different sources.’
I nodded wearily and sat, my head bowed. That indeed was the question. I should have told Turner earlier.
‘You struck up some sort of friendship with the steward, didn’t you?’
I nodded again. He knew. ‘I wouldn’t say friendship.’
‘You spoke with him, though. Several times.’
‘Yes, yes.’ I stared at the floor.
‘You knew him well enough to pay a visit to his wife. To break the news.’
Moylan had no doubt been asking questions of Turner, about me.
‘Someone had to,’ I said. ‘I was concerned. He mentioned his wife.’
‘It’s important we tell each other what we’re doing during this business.’
‘I thought it was a personal matter.’
‘Personal missions can complicate our job. We must remain objective and detached because our actions, however seemingly innocuous, have consequences.’
I nodded, knowing what he was about to say next.
‘She’s dead.’
My head snapped up. ‘Dead?’ It wasn’t what I’d expected. ‘She can’t be?’ I sat there, unable for a moment to understand what he meant. ‘You are talking about the girl?’
‘Her mother.’
‘What?’
‘Sergeant Moylan telephoned. They’ve just found her body at the wharves.’ He was watching me closely.
‘My God. It was only last night…’ That I’d examined Mrs Gard. ‘It was…’ After she’d learnt her daughter had plague.
Turner stood. He went to make coffee. The smell of it charged the room and made me feel sick.
‘What was her reaction,’ said Turner, ‘when you told her her husband was dead?’
‘I didn’t get a chance to tell her.’
‘The sergeant said you did.’
I shook my head. ‘I didn’t see her until last night. She was in shock. Her daughter.’
I was a living curse to that family.
There was a tinkle of metal on china. Images came to me: the canvas bag, the empty room, the face of Mrs Gard at the door, Gard in his grave. A little girl screaming. I needed to put them into an order that made sense, because at the moment none of it did.
Turner brought over the coffee, bitter and black.
‘How did she die?’ I said.
‘The sergeant didn’t say. He wants to see you.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
‘Now?’
‘Now-ish. At the sugar wharf. In my experience police like to inconvenience doctors whenever they can. We can keep him waiting, I think.’
I pushed my coffee aside and stood, a little dazed. ‘I’ll go now.’
‘I’ll come.’
But I shook my head.
It was dark by then. I found a cab and rode across the Victoria Bridge, past the hotels leaning on each other in Palmer-street, towards the wharves where Moylan was waiting. At some point the road ran out and slivers of steel flashed by in the lamplight as I bumped across the railway shunting yards.
There were lanterns ahead, moving about. I could see a blue light and part of the police wagon, a few dark figures against it.
I told the driver to stop and wait for me, and the man took out his pipe and settled back without complaining.
One of the lanterns came bobbing over and Sergeant Moylan, his face inscrutable in the light, led me to a patch of ground lit by the police-wagon lamps.
There was clothing piled carelessly on the tracks. He pointed, unnecessarily.
‘We haven’t moved her.’
I looked up and down the line. A locomotive was stopped a hundred yards away. I walked over the rough ground. There was an oily smell of industry. The wind ruffled the skirts and hair.
I bent over the body and put my finger to the strands of hair and gently moved them aside. Her frightened white face stared up at the stars. I saw an arm and a leg oddly placed amongst the material.
It was only then that the odours of violent death, the distinct combination of faeces and blood, hit me. I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and held it over my face as I reached for the clothing.
‘Wagon will be here soon to take her away,’ said Moylan.
I gently lifted the skirt. There seemed to be an immense amount of material about the woman. Even in the poor light I could see the lower torso had been twisted completely around. The steel wheels had severed her head without moving it more than a few inches. Black blood was spattered delicately across the pale rise above the bodice.
I stood.
‘Seen enough then?’ said Moylan.
Another vehicle clattered out of the night, the horses greeting each other with snorts.
I nodded.
‘Good-oh.’ The sergeant held a lantern up to my face. ‘It is Mrs Gard?’
‘Yes.’
He seemed to be weighing it up.
‘You see, we found a purse. Name was on an envelope. Mrs Walter Gard, it said. And you’d come to collect her old man’s things.’
I nodded.
‘Don’t go away,’ and he went off to talk with someone.
I felt tired to my bootlaces. I could have dropped to the ground there and slept. Well, not there exactly.
When Moylan came back, he asked me what was Mrs Gard’s reaction to the news her husband had died?
I said I never got the chance to tell her.
He rubbed his head hard at this.
‘Are you telling me you never told her her husband was dead?’
‘But you knew who she was. You just identified her.’
‘I saw her at the hospital last night,’ I said, explaining that her little girl was brought in sick.
‘Sick.’
I nodded. I said that I understood she’d been out of town.
‘But she must have known by today. It wasn’t exactly a secret. Someone must have told her. You can’t live in this town and have your husband die and no one tell you about it for days.’
I wasn’t going to argue that point. There was Mrs Glendinning and her lodgers, after all. He didn’t ask me about Gard’s belongings. I didn’t tell him I’d entered her room.
‘Right,’ he said, closing his notebook. ‘Suicide. Poor thing.’ We looked over to the locomotive.
Two men walked into the lights carrying a stretcher.
‘We’ll need a post-mortem examination,’ I said.
‘Post-mortem?’ He pointed at the body. ‘She lay down there and along comes that loco.’
‘Her sick daughter,’ I said. ‘She has the plague. Need to check.’
Moylan rubbed a hand over his face and nodded, as if I’d confirmed his fears that this case was never going to be as simple as it seemed.
‘I’ll have this one taken to Bacot then,’ he said.
‘And just one more thing. The envelope. Can I see that as well.’
I followed him to the police wagon. He thrust Mrs Gard’s purse at me. ‘It’s in there. You keep it safe, mind, and return it to me tomorrow.’
I escaped to the cab. Moylan called after me. ‘And even if you don’t find anything more, I’d appreciate you telling me.’
The driver tapped out his pipe and opened the door. God knows what he made of the scene. I eased into the cab’s seat made soft by thousands of weary bodies.
On the way back, I opened the purse in the dark and sensed her presence again. I felt around and found the stiff envelope, took it out and held it up so the light from the cab lamp fell across it. It was the same one – the name on the front – torn open now, and empty.
I put it back and snapped the purse shut.
I closed my eyes and it wasn’t Mrs Gard’s face that haunted me. It was my own daughter’s.
Lillian was lying before me on the operating table, her chest fluttering, a rasping noise coming from the tube that protruded grotesquely from her throat.
It had taken all night to reach Herston. My little girl was by that stage delirious, her neck swollen so much she was wheezing. I was frantic throughout the nightmarish journey up the Brisbane River, first by boat and then by carriage. I had to keep telling myself that the new anti-toxin would save her. We just had to get to the children’s hospital.
I was so relieved I was crying as I carried Lillian’s feverish little body into the diphtheria ward. The doctor on duty gave her the serum and we waited. He was kind and reassuring, but as the hours crept by I became more frightened. Her breathing laboured. When her lips turned lavender we could wait no more. The membrane had spread down her throat and was strangling her.
I held her hand on the operating table and spoke gently, sang the songs she liked, Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle, although I knew she was in another place by then, away from the pain. The cow jumped over the moon. Her little hand occasionally flexed and I had the impression she was squeezing my fingers, reassuring me. The little dog laughed.
The operation ended. Lillian breathed in liquid rasps.
Dr Turner put his hand to her forehead.
The look on his face told me.
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
Her heart failed that day. Sunlight and the drone of insects filtered through the boards. I was holding her hand when she died.
I went home to Dunwich sitting with her small coffin, thinking of her mother.
Maria woke me by shaking me by the shoulder. The sun was already up.
‘Blast.’
There was some hot water in a kettle in the wash room and I made a puddle in the sink, washing and then shaving.
I heard voices. Humphry was on the front verandah.
‘A fine view,’ called Humphry. ‘I could sit here all morning. In fact, I think we should.’
‘We’d better get going,’ I shouted.
‘I’m not going anywhere until we’ve had tea. Maria’s making it now.’
He had sunk into a wicker chair when I came out and sat on the day bed. The harbour twinkled and from this distance seemed quite benign.
Maria brought tea.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Humphry, ‘let’s stay here and drink Maria’s splendid tea all morning.’
‘You’d be very welcome, Ernie,’ she said.
Ernie? When had Humphry become Ernie?
‘What sort of wild evening did you have, Lin?’ said Humphry. ‘You look a little peaked and pale.’
‘I went to see a body at the wharves.’
Humphry sat up a little. ‘Anyone I know?’
Maria had gone back inside. I whispered, ‘Mrs Gard. The room we searched.’
‘Plague?’
‘No. Suicide. Apparently.’ I remembered the purse. It was in my coat. My coat was where? Hanging on the hallway peg. I wondered what Maria would think if she’d seen it.
Humphry sipped his tea and pulled a face.
‘Sounds like you have a story to tell me.’
‘Well, I have a story for you.’ He reached into his pocket and brought out a piece torn from The Northern Miner.
A sensation was caused in town yesterday when it was reported that a plague-stricken rat had been captured in the vicinity of the Queen’s Park Hotel, North Ward. The excitement was further intensified when the news was circulated that Mr Monteith, a well-known local British Association football player, had been bitten on the hand by the rat. It appears that a number of lads were chasing the rat, all eager to obtain the coveted sixpence, and several men also became engaged in the lark. Monteith seized the rat, when it turned and bit him on the knuckle of the forefinger of the right hand. He became alarmed, and went to Dr Bacot, at the Hospital, who cauterised the wound and allowed Monteith to leave. The rat was also sent to the Hospital to be analysed, and Dr Bacot made an examination of it and discovered as the result a quantity of plague bacillus. No steps have been taken for the isolation of Monteith.
‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake,’ I said.
‘I thought you’d be amused.’
‘I’m flabbergasted.’
‘Me, too.’
‘A plague rat. Why isn’t the man quarantined?’
‘Oh that? I’m just worried Monteith didn’t get his sixpence. He certainly earned it.’
Another case of plague would suit Humphry, I thought.
‘Blast Bacot,’ I said. ‘What’s he think he’s doing?’
‘I should think he’s going out of his way to annoy Turner. Don’t worry about him. That microscope of his is a hundred years old and I doubt he knows what plague looks like.’ The wicker creaked. Humphry coughed. ‘Turner seemed worried about you.’
‘Yes, it’s this damned tooth. I’ll have to get it pulled today.’
‘Good-oh.’ He leaned back. ‘And it’s not all bad news. A new shipment of vaccine’s come in. One hundred doses. Enough to inoculate all the medicos and nurses in town plus Monteith, if we can find him. And the city fathers.’
‘The Mayor?’
‘And any passing Members of Parliament.’
‘You’re not going near Dawson with a needle.’
‘Turner’s already told me he’d be vewy gwateful for my help.’
I never knew whether to believe Humphry or not. Maria came back out.
‘Why don’t you take the day off?’ said Humphry. ‘You’ve earned a day off.’
I knew then that the pair had been talking while I washed.
But things had just become much more complicated, and even if I wanted to, I couldn’t afford to take that day off.
I grabbed my coat, felt for the purse and found it with a sense of regret, and Humphry gave me a lift to the Town Hall. My tooth behaved. I actually felt a little better for having slept.
I asked Turner if he’d heard from Dr Bacot yet.
‘Bacot sent me the rat this morning. By messenger.’
Well, there was a turn up. Perhaps it was an act of contrition.
‘Have you taken a look?’
‘Not yet.’ He would say nothing more on the subject until he’d seen for himself whether the rat had plague or not.
Turner had sent the boxes of serum to the ice works. He’d kept a dozen doses aside and placed them in his own ice chest, where he’d also placed Bacot’s rat.
‘So,’ he said, ‘tell me about last night.’
I told him, and showed him the contents of Mrs Gard’s purse. A brush, coins, the envelope. An almost empty small blue bottle of Evening in Paris. The envelope…Where was the letter that had been inside?
‘No suicide note?’ he said.
‘No.’
Turner was watching me carefully. ‘Suicides usually leave a note, or at least some clue as to why they did what they did.’
‘The envelope?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Not much of a clue without the letter.’
Turner opened the blue bottle of Evening in Paris. The scent struck me. I recognised it from church, her room, and her body.
‘Ever been to Paris?’ he said.
I shook my head. Turner sealed the bottle and put the items back. He passed the purse to me and I took it to my office.
I thought about placing it in the cupboard with Gard’s canvas bag, but couldn’t face that reunion of Mr and Mrs Gard. Instead, I put it in my drawer.
‘Come to my office,’ said Bacot. He shut the door behind me. ‘Drink?’
‘No.’
‘Sent the damned rat to Turner, didn’t he tell you? Nothing I could do with Mr Monteith, if you want to know. It’s not up to me to diagnose the damned disease is it? No.’
He poured me a drink anyway and I cradled it.
‘Plague hospital’s ready. Routh’s nitpicking. Can’t stand the man. Weak. And Turner, I’d rather not have anything to do with him. He’s unreasonable. Sneaky.’
He stared out the window.
‘What about Mrs Gard?’ I said.
He turned around and looked at me as if I was mad. ‘She can’t damned well stay here.’
‘What? I meant the dead woman from the wharves last night. The post-mortem?’
‘Oh, that.’ He searched his desk. ‘Did that first thing. Before all this.’ He found a sheet of paper and held it up to read.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Death is most definitely consistent with the poor woman being run over by a train. I’d say that finished her off.’
‘Finished her off?’
He put the paper down.
‘Well, I thought this was why you had asked for the post-mortem. Do you want to hear it or not?’
‘Sorry. Keep going,’ I said.
My tooth had started to complain and I took a sip of what might have been undiluted gin and swirled it around my mouth.
Bacot was rustling the paper. ‘The walls of the stomach were corroded and the mucous membrane had been entirely eaten away.’
I swallowed. The drink had made my eyes water. ‘What caused that then?’ I said, trying to catch my breath.
‘Could have been acid. Or caustic soda. Not unheard of.’ He held up a finger. ‘But it wasn’t. Indeed not. I found grey powder on the walls of the stomach. Maybe a teaspoon.’
I waited, but he wanted me to ask so I ventured, ‘Poison?’
He made a small, scoffing laugh. ‘Of course poison. Rat poison. No doubt about it. I told you there was a craze. The Mayor’s been giving the stuff away.’
‘Rough on Rats.’ And I felt in my pocket and brought out the label of the poison packet I’d found in Mrs Gard’s room.
‘Yes, and never mind the blasted rats. Rough way to kill yourself. Which I suppose explains the injuries. Didn’t take enough of the poison, you’d look for something quicker too. Very uncomfortable.’
Dear God. I put the label back in my pocket.
‘A very persistent suicide.’
I had one more question. ‘Did you test for plague?’
‘Why?’
‘The woman had a room at the boarding house.’
‘Boarding house? What the devil are you talking about?’
‘The mother of the girl with plague. This is her. Mrs Gard. The suicide. She lived in the boarding house in Sturt-street.’
Bacot digested this for a moment. ‘Ridiculous. Only other things of note were unrelated,’ and he picked up the post-mortem report again. ‘Small kidneys. Some inflammation of the lungs. Syphilis.’
‘Syphilis? You must be mistaken. She was a married woman.’
He looked genuinely offended. ‘There’s no mistake.’ He passed me the sheet. ‘I see it quite often. Her husband, what’s he do?’
‘He was a ship’s steward.’
‘Well, then. He’s been playing up.’
I read the report through. It was thorough. ‘Well, there’s a chance…’ I began.
‘Yes, yes, all bloody right. It’ll have to be the kidney. The spleen’s pulp,’ and he stamped off. He returned with a specimen in a jar.
‘You test it. You’re the expert now. Nothing to do with me.’
I picked up the jar. ‘And the Gard girl?’ I’d been afraid to ask.
‘Gone. Last night.’
I felt a crushing weight on my soul. ‘Oh.’
‘Dr Routh’s problem now.’
The jar slipped and I just managed to catch it. ‘She’s alive?’ I put it back on the table with shaking hands.
He nodded curtly. ‘I wouldn’t be too hopeful, though. Anyway,’ he said, ‘your plague hospital appears to be open for business.’
I asked Humphry to step into my room. The lamps were lit. I closed the door.
I placed the Rough on Rats label between us on the table.
‘What’s that?’ he said.
‘It’s from Mrs Gard’s room. I’m wondering if it was in the envelope.’
‘What envelope?’
I pulled the purse from my drawer and put the envelope beside the label.
‘This is Mrs Gard’s purse.’
Humphry looked at me, frowning.
‘It’s all right. The police gave it to me. And this,’ I said, pointing at the envelope, ‘is the letter her husband asked me to give to her.’
He looked at the items and then looked at me as if I really had gone mad.
‘It’s simple.’ I picked up the label and plopped it in the envelope, and took it out again. ‘Her husband had sent her this label. That was his last letter to her. A poison label.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Humphry, clearly not seeing.
‘It’s a threat. Or a suggestion. He wanted her dead.’
‘The steward wanted to kill his wife,’ said Humphry, ‘so he sent her a letter with a label in it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes. That would certainly do me in.’ Humphry looked very closely at me.
‘Well, what would you do if you were quarantined on an island and wanted to kill your wife?’
Humphry reached forward and picked up the label and envelope. He seemed to be considering the question seriously. He held the items up to the light. ‘You say you delivered this letter to Mrs Gard.’
I nodded.
‘Presumably before the man was dead.’
‘Well, he gave it to me before he died, yes.’
‘And he didn’t know he was dying.’
‘Right.’
‘But he wanted his wife dead.’
‘Yes.’
‘And now she is.’
‘And their daughter has plague.’
‘That may have been a coincidence.’
‘I thought it may have been an Act of God.’ Humphry held the envelope up to the light again.
‘Not if Gard killed his wife. You see?’
‘It lets God off the hook? Is that what this is about?’ Humphry took the label and turned it blank side up. He then upended the envelope and tapped it.
‘What is it?’ I asked. He had his nose to the paper. He crooked a finger and pointed. I rubbed my eyes, but could see nothing.
‘Fleas,’ he said. He poked them with a finger. ‘Dead.’
I took a magnifying glass from my drawer. There were half a dozen black dots. Humphry might have then realised what that meant to me.
‘Ah, but it really doesn’t matter now though, does it?’ he said. ‘It’s probably just a coincidence.’
With Humphry almost anxious at my elbow, I went to Turner’s empty office and fetched some tweezers, collected a flea and cut it open with a scalpel on a glass plate. I slid it under the microscope. There were cells there, but they were so desiccated it was impossible to tell if any was plague bacterium.
How did the fleas get into the envelope? Did God, nature or Gard put them there? The fact remained that I’d delivered them.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ said Humphry, at my shoulder. ‘What matters now is stopping the disease spreading.’
But I squeezed my head between my hands and felt the vortex grip me and drag me further down towards its fluttering core.