“Mrs. De Sille, have you been drinking?” Dev asked sternly.
Her eyes were heavy lidded and reddened, and her gaze was so dull that she looked more like a daguerreotype than a live woman. “Drinking? Do you mean spirituous liquors?”
“Yes.”
“Why, no, Dr. Buchanan. I don’t drink alcohol except for an occasional glass of sherry. Why should you ask me such a thing?” she said with the petulance of a patient who feels very ill.
He stared hard at her. She dropped her eyes and picked at the lace border of her top sheet. “Never mind. It’s not important,” he finally answered. Leafing through her file, he said, “Mrs. de Sille, there is no mention in your file of a comprehensive respiratory examination today. Did Dr. Pettijohn examine you?”
“Of course.”
“Did he do a respiratory examination?”
Querulously she answered, “I don’t know what that means, Dr. Buchanan, but I can assure you that I trust Dr. Pettijohn implicitly.”
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. de Sille, but I was not implying that Dr. Pettijohn is untrustworthy. It’s just that I’m concerned about your condition, and I would like more information than what I see here in your file. So with your permission I’m going to examine you. I’d like you to sit up if you can, Mrs. de Sille,” Dev said firmly, slipping his arm around her. “I’ll help you.”
“Oh, very well,” she said but sounded vaguely pleased.
She sat up, and Dev began a thorough examination. He needed her to talk so he could listen to the underlying sounds in her voice, and also so he could feel the vibrations—called vocal fremitus—which are palpable on the chest wall. He asked courteously, “Please, Mrs. de Sille, describe exactly the symptoms you’re experiencing and how your medication is affecting you.”
Obediently she described in detail how she felt, describing almost to the letter the symptoms of influenza complicated by pneumonia. Dev could hear, as she spoke, the abnormal respiratory sounds called rhonchi in the bronchi due to mucus, along with the dull percussion note of consolidation, or decreased volume of air in the lungs. Then suddenly the words she was speaking burned themselves into his brain.
“—so upset when I heard that Dr. Duvall had been seen kissing a patient that I’m certain I went into a decline—”
“What?” Dev interrupted. “What did you say?”
Primly she repeated, “Dr. Duvall was seen kissing one of the patients. A romantic embrace.”
Dev stared at her with an expression that was so menacing that Mevrouw de Sille immediately became defensive. “It’s true, Dr. Buchanan. I know it’s true.”
“Did you see this alleged embrace?” Dev finally managed to ask.
“I did not. But I know it’s true.”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Dev said in his most forbidding manner, “but it seems to me that you would be the last person to listen to idle vicious gossip.”
A small spark lit in her fever-muddied eyes. “If you’re referring to the gossip about my husband, you’ve made an unfortunate choice in your defense of Dr. Duvall. For, you see, idle vicious gossip about Peter it may be, but it’s also true.”
Dev blinked, and then the anger in his expression faded. “You’re exactly right, Mrs. de Sille, and no matter what the truth of the situation is concerning Dr. Duvall, it was very rude of me to confront you so brazenly. I do most humbly beg your pardon, ma’am.”
Dev was an extremely charming man, all the more so because he was so plainly honest. Mevrouw de Sille’s self-righteous and bitter expression faded, and she managed a weak smile. “Pardon granted, sir,” she said graciously. “We shan’t speak of it again.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Now, shall we continue…”
Dev finished his assessment and made notes in her file. Now he was determined to find Cheney and confront her with Mrs. de Sille’s story. He scrubbed his hands carefully, then went to the nurses’ station to leave Mrs. de Sille’s file. Miss Nilsson and Mrs. Flagg were checking some files for prescriptive instructions when Dev came striding up. The look on his face sent both nurses scurrying off, Miss Nilsson to the women’s ward and Mrs. Flagg toward the dispensary. Dev, oblivious to this, left the file and went directly to Cornelius Melbourne’s room.
Officer Goodin was there speaking with Melbourne, so Dev just slipped into the cubicle and listened. Cheney was standing by the patient’s bed, and Cornelius Melbourne was hanging on to her hand as if it were a lifeline. Watching this, Dev realized that if there was any truth at all to Mevrouw de Sille’s charge, the patient involved must be Cornelius Melbourne.
“I managed to find out where she worked by the clothes she wore,” Officer Goodin said. “She was a dancer at the Beau Monde. Her boss said her name was Jeannie Gold. Is any of this coming back to you now, Mr. Melbourne?”
Melbourne’s face was paper-white already, and his lips were colorless. He seemed puzzled, but slowly a dull light came into his eyes, and he clutched at Cheney’s hand. Shutting his eyes, a tear squeezed out of one corner. In a choking voice he said, “Jeannie…Jeannie, I remember. I picked up my new phaeton at Columbia Coaches, and she worked at the Beau Monde right there on Suffolk Street, so I just stopped to show it to her. Jeannie…Jeannie’s dead? I-I…killed Jeannie?”
“No,” Cheney murmured under her breath.
Officer Goodin was more matter-of-fact. “No, sir, you didn’t kill anybody. Do you recall the accident now?”
“The accident? I know the phaeton…I crashed, didn’t I?”
Goodin and Cheney exchanged glances. Cornelius Melbourne had not regained any memory of the accident; and now it sounded as though he was simply imprinting what he’d learned about it so that it seemed to be his memory. Victims of traumatic accidents were prone to doing this. Sometimes they never remembered the truth.
Evidently understanding each other, Goodin nodded to Cheney and said evenly, “Yes, sir, your buggy is a loss, but you weren’t responsible. We have witnesses who say they clearly saw Miss Gold driving at the time the accident occurred. It was not your fault.”
“Not my fault?” he repeated, bewildered. “Not my fault?” He looked up at Cheney beseechingly. He was showing signs of agitation, and his breathing was beginning to be uneven and shallow. Quickly Cheney said, “Thank you, Officer Goodin. Mr. Melbourne needs to rest now.”
“Sure thing, Dr. Duvall. God bless you, Mr. Melbourne,” he added humbly, and left.
“Did I—did he mean I didn’t kill Jeannie? Is Jeannie dead?” Melbourne asked plaintively.
“Please don’t trouble yourself about it just now, Mr. Melbourne,” Cheney said soothingly. “Officer Goodin just needs to know all he can about Miss Gold, and that’s why he was questioning you. I’m going to give you something to help you rest now.”
“Don’t leave me,” he pleaded. “I’m not frightened…exactly…except I’m so confused.”
“I know,” Cheney said. She asked Dev, “Would you please find one of the nurses and have them bring Mr. Melbourne’s night preparation?”
“I’ll fetch it myself,” he said, picking up the man’s file and heading for the storage closet. The cart used for making rounds with all the patients’ prescriptives was there, but Dev searched in vain for laudanum. Muttering darkly to himself, he hurried downstairs. He didn’t know exactly where the carboys were stored, but he thought they must be easy to get to, as laudanum was the most-used remedy for pain. As he rounded the corner from the stairwell to go down the rows of the storage shelves, he thought he saw something—a shadow, moving—behind the first row of shelving. He stopped, narrowed his eyes, and looked again, but saw nothing. He could have sworn he heard a slight sound, perhaps of a furtive soft step.
“Is someone there?” he called, his voice grating in the hollowness of the room.
No answer. No movement. No sound.
A lamp was on the table by the stairwell, so Dev lit it and began searching for the carboys of laudanum. He found them, just as he had supposed he would, on the first shelf, middle row. He grabbed one by the neck and was surprised to feel that the neck of the bottle was wet. He put his hand to his nose and knew the sour smell of alcohol. He felt the other three bottles and found no moisture on them. Taking the one, he brought it back to the table and turned the lamp up high to look closely at it.
Laudanum was made from saffron and a tincture of opium. A tincture is made using an alcohol base, so there was nothing unusual in the smell; laudanum always had the distinctive alcohol fume. But Dev was concerned that the bottle might be chipped and was perhaps leaking. Certainly if any bits of glass were in the liquid, it should be filtered through cheesecloth before use. He could see no chips or cracks in the bottle, but the light was not the best. Impatiently he left the bottle on the table and got another one, reflecting that Melbourne’s state was such that he probably needed the sedative now instead of later. As he went back up the stairs, he thought again that he heard a noise down in the lab, and he stopped. But reminding himself of his urgent mission, he returned to Melbourne’s room.
Cornelius Melbourne was still agitated, but he was so weak and confused that he took the large laudanum dosage gratefully and sank back on the pillows to give himself up to sleep. Cheney and Dev stood silently by his bedside for a few minutes, just watching him breathe. Finally, nodding with understanding to each other, they tiptoed out. The ward was very quiet. It was now dark, and Timothy hadn’t yet lit the lamps. She started down the hall to the nurses’ station, but Dev gently took her arm to pull her aside, down a very small hallway that led to an emergency exit. With an economical usage of space, the small hallway had shelves on either side and was used to store linens and medical supplies.
“What is it?” Cheney asked warily.
Dev said in a low voice, “I have to ask you something, Cheney, and I hope that you won’t get upset with me.”
“This doesn’t sound good,” she muttered, “but go ahead.”
He hesitated for a moment, then decided to just keep it simple. “Mevrouw de Sille said that you were seen kissing a patient. Is this true?”
She stared at him, her eyes wide and dark in the shadowy hall. “Kissing…Oh, for goodness’ sake! So that’s why she fired me! He told her!”
“Now you’re the one who doesn’t sound so good,” Dev said darkly. “Who told her? The kissing patient?”
“No, no, Dev, that’s—there’s no kissing patient! I mean, there’s no patient I kissed. I mean—he kissed me, but he didn’t know he was doing it,” she said earnestly.
Dev crossed his arms and frowned. “Cheney, you’re not making sense. And I’m afraid that I do have to ask you for a full and sensible explanation. Not because I’m your brother—I would never intrude on your private affairs unless you asked me to—but because I am chief physician of the hospital and it’s my responsibility to deal with these things.”
Cheney flushed so crimson that Dev could even see the color in the dimness. “Your responsibility? Dev, how could you think that I would ever do such a thing? It’s just malicious, self-serving gossip! Dr. Pettijohn told Mevrouw de Sille so that she would fire me and retain him!”
“So Dr. Pettijohn just made this up?” Dev asked coolly.
Now Cheney, startled, blinked quickly. “No. No, he didn’t make it up. But it wasn’t like…like that. I wasn’t kissing a patient. A patient, under heavy sedation, in a half-asleep, half-dream state, sort of did kiss me,” Cheney finished lamely. “Accidentally.”
To Cheney’s surprise, Dev nodded. “People can do and say very strange things when they’re under the influence of powerful drugs. I assume you were close to him and it just happened?”
“Exactly!” Cheney said with immense relief. “I was leaning over him, and he turned, and it happened. I didn’t want to frighten him, so very slowly I moved away. I looked up, and Dr. Pettijohn was standing there.”
“Was it Mr. Melbourne?”
“Yes, it was.”
Dev looked very troubled. With some difficulty he asked, “Cheney, do you have feelings for this man?”
“No! Dev, don’t you believe me?”
“Yes, I believe your explanation, Cheney. But it seems to me that you have a special regard for him. And that, along with this accidental kiss could be important in a way that even you yourself don’t comprehend.”
“No, no! Dev, listen to me!” Cheney almost shouted. Then taking a deep breath, she went on more calmly, “You’re right, Dev, I suppose I do have a special concern for Mr. Melbourne, for two reasons. One is that while I was preparing him for his surgery, I witnessed to him, and he was saved. You know how that gives you a certain extra desire for the person to do well. And second, I…Dev, I don’t think Mr. Melbourne is doing well. It’s some instinct, some vague sense of foreboding, I think.”
Thoughtfully Dev said, “I think I know what you mean, Cheney. Sometimes a patient may look as if he’s doing very well. All the signs point to a full recovery, but somewhere deep inside your mind is a niggling little worry that all is not as well as it seems. This has happened to me twice with recovering patients.”
“It has?” Cheney exclaimed, astounded. “I didn’t know that, Dev. You never told me.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure that it ever happened to anyone else. You’re the first physician I’ve ever heard mention it.”
“So what happened? To your two patients, I mean?” she asked anxiously.
He reached out and took her hand. “They died.”
She was looking up at him with distress when Dr. White came rushing into the little hallway. “Here you are, Dr. Duvall! And Dr. Buchanan—here you are too! What a surprise! Of course, I mean, a pleasant surprise, but, I—”
Dev let Cheney’s hand go, stepped back, and smiled coolly at the flustered intern. “Yes, how can we help you, Dr. White?”
She took a deep breath, then answered quickly, “There’s an elderly gentleman in the dispensary with angina pectoris, and I’m unsure about medication for him.”
“All right, we’d better go see about him,” Dev said, motioning them ahead of him.
All three of them headed for the dispensary. Dr. White said in a low voice to Cheney, “And, Dr. Duvall, I would appreciate it if you would look at Mrs. Brownlee for me, to confirm my diagnosis. She’s the lady with the infant boy and the toddler. Anyway, she does have influenza, but I also think that she’s got a septic sore throat.”
“Oh no,” Cheney groaned. “I had truly hoped that that wouldn’t start spreading around. Did you know that Mr. Reese has it?”
“No, ma’am,” Dr. White groaned, echoing Cheney.
Cheney sighed. “It’s after eight o’clock. Do we still have dispensary patients?”
“Not now, except for Mrs. Brownlee and the elderly gentleman—I forgot his name,” Dr. White answered. “I just now got all of them attended to and their medications doled out. I kept the angina and Mrs. Brownlee to see if we should admit them.”
They were approaching the nurses’ station. Timothy Orr and Miss Nilsson were seated at the desk, checking the patients’ files for medication orders. At nine o’clock the night prescriptives were given. Dr. Gilder stood at the counter with a couple of patient files. One was opened, but he was talking to Timothy and Miss Nilsson. His back was to the hallway leading to the men’s ward, so he didn’t see the three doctors coming.
“—kissed her! Right on the mouth! In broad daylight, in his room, where anyone could have come in.”
Cheney and Dr. White were in front of Dev. When Cheney comprehended what Dr. Gilder was saying, she stopped, staring at his back, stunned. Dr. White slowed to a stop and looked around, trying to appear as if she didn’t know anything. Dev neatly stepped around them, grabbed Dr. Gilder’s shoulder, and spun him around. “Dr. Gilder, how many dispensary patients did you see today?”
“Dispensary—but, none, sir,” he said frantically. “I-I didn’t work in the dispensary today.”
“Why not?” Dev snapped.
“I-I don’t know,” he answered helplessly.
“You don’t know,” Dev repeated acidly. “You don’t know much of anything, Dr. Gilder. So you need to be quiet and listen instead of talking just to hear the sound of your own voice.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go get the carts ready for medication rounds. Then do them.”
“Do-do them?”
“Rounds,” Dev said. “Both wards.”
He marched into the dispensary, trailed by Cheney and Dr. White like wisps from a candle flame that’s too high.
They worked on—including Dr. Gilder, who was supposed to get off shift at six o’clock—without a break for any of the four doctors. They did, indeed, have to admit Mrs. Brownlee, along with her baby and four-year-old son, because her husband had deserted them and she had no one to take care of the children. They also admitted Mr. Riordan, with the angina pectoris, for overnight observation.
Cheney was very glad to see ten o’clock come, because she knew Cleve would come in to give them a break. She was terribly hungry, and besides she wanted to see Shannon and find out how she had fared at Roe’s all day long.
Cleve came in at ten-twenty. Cheney and Dev were giving Mrs. Brownlee and her two children exhaustive examinations when he appeared at the door of the cubicle. “Dr. Duvall, Dr. Buchanan, may I speak to you for a moment?”
Both of them looked up with alarm and then with comprehension. They went outside with Cleve, but before he could say a word, Dev said, “You’ve got influenza. Go home.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said contritely. “I tried to ignore it so that it would follow the rule that if you ignore it, it’ll go away.”
“It didn’t,” Cheney said. “I hate it when it ignores the rule.”
“Me too,” Cleve said hoarsely, then sneezed, honked into a handkerchief, and went on, “I’m going to go on home, gargle, medicate myself, sleep, and try to get better by tomorrow night. I feel bad about this, Dr. Buchanan, because I’ve got weekend duty.”
Dev shrugged. “It can’t be helped, and it’s not your fault. Just go on home, and for heaven’s sake don’t fret about it. You know that just aggravates a condition. We’ll take care of the on-call duties.”
“Okay,” he said tiredly. His normally red-cheeked, cheerful face was pale, and his eyes were fever-dulled. “I do feel rotten. Good night.”
Cheney said, “Dev, I know it’s impossible for you to stay here an entire weekend. I’ll just take the on-call, and Cleve and I can work out how to make it up.”
“The best way would be for Dr. Pettijohn to take one night and you the other,” Dev said thoughtfully. “In fact, since he took off early today he shouldn’t mind taking all day tomorrow and tomorrow night. Dr. Gilder and Dr. Varick could probably take Sunday morning, and you could take Sunday afternoon and night.”
“Sounds fine to me,” Cheney said. “I did promise to go to—Of course, you know. We’re all going to Fidelio tomorrow night, aren’t we?”
“Yes. Victoria invited her parents and our parents too,” Dev said.
“Oh, I didn’t know Mother and Father were coming,” Cheney said. “Good. I don’t get to see them nearly as much as I’d like. And I know you don’t either. We’d better get in touch with Dr. Pettijohn. Do you think we should send him a message tonight?”
Nurse Nilsson came up to them as they stood outside Mrs. Brownlee’s cubicle. “I’m sorry to interrupt you,” she said, “but there are two gentlemen and a lady in for emergency treatment. They had a brawl in a tavern, and they’re all three beat to pulp,” she said with relish. “Dr. Gilder thinks the lady’s hand may be broken.”
“No, Cheney, I’ll go,” Dev said as she started down the hall. “You see to the Brownlee children. Get all three of them settled down for the night. As soon as I can, I’ll get Pettijohn’s address from the office and send him a message to come in tomorrow morning.”
****
But in the morning Dr. Pettijohn did not come in for the simple reason that the messenger sent that night to 23 Morton Row found no one at home. Dev sent another messenger at five in the morning. No one answered the door and no lights were on in the house. The messenger said it looked deserted.
At six-thirty in the morning Dev finally had a few minutes to go downstairs with Carlie to bring some items up from storage to stock the much depleted supplies on the wards and in the emergency/dispensary clinic. He saw the laudanum carboy on the table. He had completely forgotten about it.
He thought it had been moved.
Cheney’s invisible mice, he told himself sarcastically. Now I’m not seeing them too.
“Let’s start here, Carlie,” he said wearily. “Take this carboy of laudanum and pour it into quart bottles. But filter it through cheesecloth, because I’m afraid there might be some glass in it.”
Carlie never questioned an order, so he nodded and went to fetch the bottles, funnel, and cheesecloth.
Dev looked at the bottle again. There was no moisture around the neck. He picked it up. It left no telltale ring on the varnished oak table.
Yep, he thought with unusual flipness, definitely the invisible mice…or…what was it Cheney said Carlie had told her…
Moon ghosts?