Cate Campbell (11 page)

When Margot left the operating theater and trudged out to the street, the Essex was still there. Blake got out, moving stiffly, and opened the rear door for her. Margot gave him a grateful nod, and collapsed on the backseat with a groan.

When Blake had maneuvered himself back into the driver’s seat, she said, “You need to stop driving for a few days. Give your back a rest.”

As he adjusted his cap, he met her eyes in the mirror. “You’re one to talk about rest, Dr. Margot.”

She gave a short laugh. “Maybe we should make a pact.”

“Are you all right?” he asked as he fired the engine.

“I am. My patient’s not.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Thank you. And thank you for coming to get us. I know it wasn’t pleasant.” She pulled off her hat and tossed it on the seat beside her, then laid her head back on the burgundy velvet. She remembered Thea, and Norman, but it was too late to go there now. It would have to wait. She didn’t close her eyes, because she didn’t want images of little Anna, broken and bleeding, floating up behind her eyelids. She watched the streetlights slide by instead, and the warm rectangles of light in the houses they passed. She should have asked Matron to speak to Sister Therese. If anyone needed prayers, it was Anna the crib girl.

She felt stickiness against her knees, and she knew her dress was ruined. She would have to slip it out to the burn barrel. Her mother would have a fit if she saw it. She had knelt on that bloody floor without thinking—not that there had been anything else she could have done. Anna’s crib was as bare as a barn—more so, perhaps. There had been nothing, no coverlet or towel or blanket, to kneel on. At least barns had straw in them.

She let herself in through the front door and dropped her bag on the mat. She kept her coat on, in case she encountered her mother, but she didn’t expect to. She had missed dinner by hours. She slipped off her shoes, and climbed the stairs in her stocking feet.

When she had shed the stained dress and ruined stockings, and bundled it all up to dispose of later, she pulled on her housecoat and went back downstairs in her bare feet. Hattie would have left something on the stove or in the oven. She felt almost too tired to eat, but she knew if she didn’t try, Hattie would make a fuss. She was grateful to find the kitchen empty, lit only by the glow of a single bulb over the range. She opened the oven, and found a plate covered with a clean dish towel.

She poured a glass of water, then settled herself at the table with the plate and a knife and fork. She was chewing a bite of rather gluey shepherd’s pie when Preston came in.

He raised his eyebrows at the sight of her. “Margot! Gosh. You’ve had a long day.”

She swallowed, and reached for her water glass. “I didn’t think it would ever end.” She put her fork in the shepherd’s pie again, but she didn’t raise it to her lips. Her throat went suddenly tight, and her eyes stung. She gripped the fork with her fingers, willing away the threatening tears of fatigue and fury. She was not, surely, going to cry. Not in front of Preston.

He bent over the table to see her face. “Oh, Margot. You’ve really had it, haven’t you? What you need is a drink.”

She took a shaky breath, and looked up at him. He grinned down at her. “Come on, old girl. Let your little brother doctor you for a change.”

“Preston,” she said in a tremulous voice. “A drink sounds wonderful.”

She sat taking deep breaths while he fetched the decanter and two tumblers. He poured two fingers of whisky and handed the glass to her, and she took a good mouthful. Now she did close her eyes, feeling the hot comfort of good blended whisky settle in her stomach. “Thank God,” she muttered.

Preston pulled his chair a little closer. “You want to talk about it?”

“You don’t want to hear it,” she said. She took another sip of Father’s whisky, and pushed the dinner plate away.

Preston laughed. “That shepherd’s pie wasn’t any good the first time,” he said. “I can imagine what it’s like now.”

Out of loyalty to Hattie, Margot said, “Oh, it’s fine. I’m just too tired to eat. And it really was an awful day.”

“You should tell me all about it,” he said. “I’m a newspaperman now, after all.”

She looked at him over the rim of her glass. “Really not your kind of story, Preston.”

He put his hand on his chest in mock hurt, and flashed his white smile. “They’re all my kind of story.” He held out the decanter, and she allowed him to refill her glass. “Come on, doc. You’ll feel better if you get it out.”

She took another sip, and set her glass down. It seemed he really was trying to help. The war had changed him, she could see that. It wasn’t just that he looked different—that was natural, of course, after more than four years—but he seemed more confident than he had as a boy. He seemed less—
desperate,
was the word that came to mind.

She drew a tremulous breath. “There’s a girl in the hospital,” she said, gazing at the caramel swirl of whisky in her glass. “Someone beat her so badly that I—” She broke off. The Sessions clock ticked loudly in the quiet, reminding her that she would soon have to be up again.

He prompted her. “A girl? Who is it?”

“One of the crib girls, from down past the depot. I don’t know her real name. Chinese. They bring them in, you know, by promising work. They don’t tell them what kind.”

Preston leaned back in his chair, and sipped his own drink. She glanced up, and found his blue eyes fixed on her intently. “Well,” he said. “Just a hooker, then.”

“She’s little more than a child.”

“You can’t tear yourself up about that sort of—about all your patients, Margot.”

She sighed again, and finished the whisky in her glass. “I know. It’s just that this was so vicious. The worst I’ve seen.” She stood up to carry her plate to the sink. “Maybe you can get someone to write about it, Preston. Get some attention.”

“No one will care, Margot. Not about a whore.” His voice had gone hard, and it made her turn to look at him. He waved a negligent hand. “Put it out of your mind, doc. I’m sure you did all you could.”

She felt her temper flicker, but it was a weak flame. She was just too tired. Others would react the same way as Preston, dismissing the young Chinese prostitute, refusing to waste police hours trying to find who had hurt her. “I’m going to bed. Thanks for the drink.”

Just as he stood and picked up the decanter, the candlestick telephone in the hall rang. Margot said, “Damn,” and hurried to the instrument before the ringing could disturb the rest of the house. She said, “Yes? Yes, this is Dr. Benedict.” As she listened to Matron Cardwell, the cold crept up from the floor into her bare legs. When she replaced the earpiece and set the telephone down, she found herself shivering from head to toe.

Preston was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. “You’re not going out again?”

“No,” Margot said. She pulled her dressing gown close around her and started for the stairs on her icy feet. “There’s no point in going back to the hospital. My patient expired.”

 

It seemed, as winter wore away, that Preston’s new job agreed with him. He was cheerful at breakfast and dinner. Ramona and Edith glowed in his presence. He called Margot “doc” most of the time, but refrained from making jokes about her struggling practice. He and Dick were cordial, and Dickson made a point of asking him, when they were all together at dinner, how the job was going. If he didn’t go so far as to actually read “Seattle Razz” himself, he reported comments he heard from his secretary, who was, it developed, a faithful reader.

“So, doc,” Preston said, grinning up at Margot as she came into the dining room one April morning. “You have your picture in the paper!”

Ramona and Dick were already seated, and Ramona was smiling at Preston as he folded back the page of the newspaper. Margot pulled out her chair. “What are you talking about?”

One of the twins poured her coffee as she unfolded her napkin. Preston held out the paper. “There you are! It pays to have a brother in the biz.”

Margot laid the folded newspaper beside her plate and gazed down at it. She hardly recognized herself in the picture at the head of Preston’s column. “My God, Preston. This is awful. Couldn’t you have stopped them running it?”

He snatched the paper back. “I thought you’d be glad to get some attention for doing good works, Margot! I pulled some strings to have that picture taken.” His handsome face reddened, and when Leona tried to take his plate away, he snarled at her, “Not yet, damn it. You can’t see I’m not finished?”

Margot said, “Preston, there’s nothing left on your plate.”

He snared another piece of toast from the rack and slapped it onto the empty plate as Leona shrank back from the table.

Margot said, “I suppose no one likes their newspaper photos.” Her voice sounded nearly as hard as Preston’s, but it wasn’t just the ugly photograph that was bothering her. She dreaded going to the office today. She and Thea were going to sit down with a pile of bills, and she didn’t know how she was going to pay them. “I’m sorry if I didn’t show proper gratitude, but don’t take it out on Loena.”

“Leona, doc,” her brother said. He took a huge bite of the toast she was sure he didn’t want, and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know why you can’t tell the poor girls apart. Loena is the one getting fat.”

“She is?”

“You haven’t noticed?” Preston laughed, and crammed the rest of the toast in his mouth. He jumped up, still chewing. Margot watched him warily. He swallowed, then pointed a mocking finger at her. “You should look around you, doc. See what’s happening in the world.”

“Speaking of photos,” Ramona said brightly, “did you see those pictures from England? From some village called Cottingley? These two little girls took pictures of fairies! Actual photographs! Everyone’s talking about it!”

“What nonsense,” Margot said snappishly, then immediately wished she had let it be.

Dick laughed. “Of course it’s nonsense. Ramona, fairies? Really.”

“They have
photos,
” Ramona insisted. “And all these spiritualists are traipsing all over that tiny town.”

Margot put her coffee cup to her lips to keep herself from saying anything else. Preston winked at Ramona, and said, “More things in heaven and earth, right?”

She nodded, though Margot doubted she got the reference.

Leona came back into the dining room with Margot’s eggs. Preston touched his forelock, good mood evidently restored as swiftly as it had dissipated, and tripped gaily out of the dining room. Margot picked up her fork with one hand, and with the other pulled the paper back across the table. The picture was really ghastly. She looked as tall as the Smith Tower, and that dress—the one her mother had ordered from Frederick’s—was a horror. She should have taken the time to go down and be fitted, but it had seemed such a bore. She wondered if Preston might have chosen the least flattering picture he could find, just to spite her.

Reluctantly, as she ate her breakfast, she read the opening paragraphs.

Margot groaned, and shoved the paper away. “Gravitas, indeed,” she muttered.

“Excuse me, Miss Margot?”

Margot glanced up. “Oh, Leona. Nothing. I was just talking to myself.”

The girl poured her more coffee, and Margot gave her a quizzical glance. “Where’s your sister this morning?”

Leona’s cheeks flamed, drowning her freckles in pink. “She—” she faltered. “She—Loena’s not feeling well.”

Margot set down her cup with a click. “Why didn’t someone call me?”

The flush of the girl’s cheeks subsided in a wave, leaving her pale face sprinkled with cinnamon freckles. “She don’t want to see anybody, miss,” Leona faltered.

“Nonsense.” Margot stood up, pushing back her chair. “Let’s go and see her right now.” She marched out of the dining room, with Leona skittering nervously behind her.

As they walked into the hall, Edith appeared on the stairs. “Where are you going, dear?”

“Loena’s ill, apparently,” Margot said. “But no one saw fit to let me know.”

Leona made a small noise, like a trapped mouse. Edith said, “Margot, please. It doesn’t help if the servants are frightened of you.”

Margot turned to Leona. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have things on my mind this morning. I didn’t mean to be—to be harsh.”

Leona dropped a curtsy, which only irritated Margot more, but she repressed the sniff she longed to make. “Come now. I really do have to get to the office, but I’ll see your sister first.”

She gave her mother a brief nod, and pressed on toward the back stairs. There she waited for Leona to precede her, and followed the girl up the staircase.