Jack the Ripper Victims Series: The Double Event (7 page)

On her way out with Police Constable Lindquist, Elizabeth saw Ada going to her room, and told her she was going to Kurhuset. Ada gave her a sad smile that did nothing to ease Elizabeth’s fears.

All the sick prostitutes went for treatment at Kurhuset. Four stories tall, the facility stood in Eastern Haga, a half mile away from Elizabeth’s room. As she walked with the constable, she suffered the worst her imagination had to offer. She’d seen a woman afflicted with Syphilis who had lost her nose and lips, and she knew of other sufferers whose legs and arms had become so ravaged by ulcers the limbs were amputated.

Halfway to Kurhuset, she felt unusually painful cramping. She thought perhaps her monthly flow had resumed, and had a small hope that she was not pregnant after all. By the time they arrived at Kurhuset, Elizabeth’s skirts were stained with blood. Although he clearly noticed the stains, Constable Lindquist had the courtesy to say nothing. She swallowed her pride, calmed her fears, and entered the building.

Inside, the chill air increased her fretful state, giving her gooseflesh and occasional shivers. Echoes off the hard walls and high ceilings startled Elizabeth. She found the efficient and businesslike behavior of the staff intimidating.

Steel yourself to endure their scorn,
Liza said.

Contrary to what her cynical voice suggested, Elizabeth was treated respectfully. In a small, unadorned office, a matron asked numerous questions and made notations of Elizabeth’s answers. Eventually, she was led by a red-headed female dressed in starched blue cotton to a small, clean room furnished with a table and cabinets along the walls.

“Fru Gustavsdotter,” the assistant said, glancing at the piece of paper in her hand, “I am Fru Finberg, assistant physician. Please take off your clothes, put them in the basket in the corner, and wear this.” She handed Elizabeth a light cotton robe. “Then lie back on the table with your knees bent.”

Elizabeth climbed onto the hard, wooden surface and tried to become comfortable, a difficult task as boney as she had become in recent months.

Fru Finberg stood at the end of the table and spread Elizabeth’s legs. “You have an unusual quantity of blood flow,” she said with a frown, “Are you experiencing the beginning of your menstrual cycle?”

“Yes, it always begins that way,” Elizabeth lied, feeling embarrassed. Again, she felt relieved to think she wasn’t pregnant.

Fru Finberg cleaned the blood away. “The chancre is small and soft. The evidence is insufficient to make a determination of syphilis, but treatment should have a good effect.”

A small hope peeked out from behind Elizabeth’s large fear. “I’m certain it’s an insect bite. There’s nothing else it could be.”

Fru Finberg looked for a moment as if she might contest the statement, then simply shook her head.

She will be able to cure your ills,
Bess advised.

If the cure doesn’t kill you first,
Liza warned.

The assistant physician applied an ointment to the chancre and the surrounding area, and gave Elizabeth a dose of a clear liquid to drink.

“You’ll be given a quantity of the ointment and quinine to take with you when you return home,” Fru Finberg said. “You’ll also be given instructions on how the use the medicine and when you must return for another examination. You are required to present a report to the police after each examination. Your clothes will be burned, and we will give you fresh clothing to wear home. Your clothes and bedding at home should be thoroughly washed or burned. Please, climb down and I’ll give you clothing.”

As Elizabeth slid off the edge of the table, she felt something slippery issue from between her legs. The texture was different from the ointment. She stood and turned to see a slimy substance, streaked with brown and red, clinging to the edge of the table. Abruptly, an amber liquid with an odd smell poured from her onto the floor.

“Back onto the table, please,” the startled assistant physician said. She helped Elizabeth back up and began another examination.

I’m coming apart!
Elizabeth took sharp, short breaths, a panic welling up, along with a severe abdominal pain.

“You are pregnant, Fru Gustavsdotter.”

“No, I couldn’t be,” Elizabeth said with no conviction.

“That’s often not for us to decide,” Fru Finberg said. “Are you experiencing pain?”

“Yes, but it’s subsiding.” Elizabeth lied to both the assistant physician and to herself. “I ate some bad fish. I’m sure that’s all it is.”

“I’ll return in a moment,” Fru Finberg said, and she left the room in a hurry.

Pain kept Elizabeth on the table, and the moment stretched to the unseen horizon of her life. What would she do with another mouth to feed? How could she do all that she must to protect and love a child when she could hardly take care of herself? As difficult as that seemed, she wondered if the child might be her way out of her situation with Klaudio. He would not want her to keep the child, but she didn’t think he’d want the trouble that would come from trying to separate her from it. She could always seek alms from the Church.

Fru Finberg returned ten minutes later with a pale, dark-haired woman.

“This is Fru Dahlgren,” she said. “She’s a midwife.”

“Good evening, Fru Gustavsdotter,” the woman said as she went to work.

Elizabeth didn’t respond because the idea of a greeting under such circumstances seemed foolish.

Fru Dahlgren positioned herself between Elizabeth’s legs at the end of the table and began an uncomfortable examination. The midwife moved to the side, placed a pinard horn on Elizabeth’s abdomen and listened, then changed the position of the device and listened again. Fru Dahlgren shook her head. “Labor has come early. You’re four months pregnant?”

“I’ve missed my monthly flow for five at least,” Elizabeth said.

“Labor has begun. I can’t find a heartbeat.”

Elizabeth had a sinking feeling in her gut.

“You must prepare yourself for a stillbirth,” the midwife said. “I’ll be here to help you deliver.”

She had lost her child before either of them had been given a chance. Was that nature’s way of protecting the innocent from a life of suffering or had the infant, in fact, rejected its own mother as unfit? No, Elizabeth would have cleaned herself up, got honest work and been a loving mother.

Fru Finberg held out a hand and Elizabeth took it and hung on until her labor was over.

When she saw the dead child, she felt a depth of loss she hadn’t expected. The assistant physician asked if she wanted the child’s name to be recorded in the Kurhuset records.

Elizabeth said without hesitation, “Beata Gustavsson.”

Elizabeth did not believe the expressions of sympathy Klaudio gave her upon hearing of her visit to Kurhuset and the loss of her infant. He’d brought to her room blood sausage and bread.

“You must become well before I can send more clients to you,” he said. He looked around her miserable chamber. “I’ll send Ada to help you clean. Within a few days you’ll be better.”

In the next week, she had two appointments for examinations. Elizabeth wanted the disease gone as quickly as possible, yet relished every day she didn’t have to satisfy clients. She’d never expected a desire to be ill or such striking ambivalence.

When Klaudio had gone, Ada appeared at her door. She’d cleaned herself up. “He will let me take two days off if you’ll allow me to help you. Please?”

“Of course,” Elizabeth said, gesturing for her to enter.

Ada helped Elizabeth haul water and wash her clothes and bedding. Unexpectedly, they got along well. Ada also came from a farming community in Torslanda. Her family had fallen on hard times and she’d come to the city for work. Learning that the woman was merely seven years her senior, Elizabeth thought she saw her own frightening future in Ada. Though not quite thirty years old, with her thinning hair, jaundiced skin, hooded eyes, and a decidedly bleak outlook on life, Ada looked to be middle-aged.

She had brought with her a poison cereal to kill the mice. “Poor little creatures,” she said as she sprinkled the lethal grains around the cabinet. “They’re just hungry.”

“Like us,” Elizabeth said sadly.

“Well, no,” Ada said, looking up with an expression of exaggerated sobriety. “They’ll eat anything. This is raw corn.
We
have sophisticated taste. To poison me, one would have to tempt me with warm buttered dumplings and blueberries.” Ada gave a large gap-toothed smile. “Now that I’ve lost most of my teeth, I can eat all the sweets I want.”

Elizabeth smiled, thinking of her favorite Christmas dinner. “For me, ham and lingonberry jam!”

The two women laughed together. Ada’s unexpected good humor gave Elizabeth a glimpse of what the woman might have been like under happier circumstances.

Elizabeth decided that she liked Ada.

If you let her, she will become a good friend,
Bess said.

~ ~ ~

In the following week Elizabeth kept her appointments at Kurhuset, after which she carried her examination reports to the police station. Since her condition didn’t improve, more appointments were required. Klaudio allowed her more time to recover.

Once Ada’s poison had killed the adult rodents, the squeals of baby mice inside Elizabeth’s mattress continued for a while. A short time later their cries ceased. Within a week her bed began to smell of rotting flesh.

At first, she believed the odor a product of her illness. As her condition worsened, the chancre on her vulva became hard, red, granular, and gave forth a pungent smell. Miserable with sore muscles and aching joints, she remained in bed most of the time.

When possible, Ada helped her to and from Kurhuset and the police station.

At best, the treatment for her chancre slowed the advance of the disease. By mid-August, the disease had taken a firm grip. Following an examination on August 13, the staff of Kurhuset placed her in third floor ward with other women suffering from syphilis.

Curtains kept Elizabeth from seeing the worst of the suffering. Even so, she could not escape the demoralizing sounds and smells. She found none of the other women in any condition to socialize. If she started a conversation, her partner invariably used the opportunity to express misery or anger. She decided that most of the patients had gone mad. The moans of those in agony kept her awake at night. She drifted through her days in an uncomfortable half-stupor from lack of sleep.

Elizabeth’s treatments continued, but with a new ointment, one made from cacao butter and mercury, applied four times a day, as well as daily oral doses of quinine. When she saw no apparent improvement after a week, the quinine was replaced with oral doses of mercury sublimate.

The doctors are trying to kill you,
Liza said.

The treatment is a drastic measure for a severe illness,
Bess said.
If you’re patient, they’ll make you well again.

Elizabeth’s limbs swelled and her skin had a painful itch. Her toes and fingertips became bright pink and sore to the touch. On occasion, her heart beat wildly in her chest, she’d sweat heavily, and salivate profusely. Eventually her skin began to shed in thin layers.

Elizabeth stopped looking at the evidence of the illness between her legs. The weeks passed. She drowsed as much as possible, yet found little satisfying deep sleep. Spots appeared on her skin, she had swollen, bleeding gums, severe aches in her joints, and bed sores. With time, she retreated into herself and no longer cared to understand the words of the patients, nurses, and physicians.

Elizabeth knew she would die. Indeed, she welcomed death. She hoped to go to heaven.

After what I did to the old woman, I am not worthy of such a reward, but perhaps God will not judge me too harshly.
Even as the thoughts formed, she could not determine in her delirium if she truly believed in God and Heaven. Elizabeth was resigned to whatever might befall her.

A long period of grayness ensued.

~ ~ ~

As the grayness began to lift, Elizabeth wasn’t certain she wanted to emerge from herself. In moments of wakefulness, she squinted fearfully at the ward through half-shut eyelids. The treatments ceased and her symptoms began to fall away, one by one. When she could understand the nurses again, she was told that her disease’s rapid advance had taken the doctors by surprise and that they had finally resorted to injections of liquid mercury to reverse the course of the illness.

Elizabeth was discharged in late-September. Although considered cured, she had continuing appointments and a responsibility to report the findings to the police.

When she returned home, her key fit the padlock on the door as before, but inside the room, she found someone else’s clothing in the cabinet. Banked coals in the stove kept the room warm.

Exhausted after her walk from Kurhuset, she lay on the bed. The mattress was covered with fresh, new linens, and had ceased to smell of rotting flesh.

Klaudio had no doubt had the room cleaned and given it to another of his prostitutes, yet he was too miserly to pay for a new padlock.

Sleep,
Bess said.
Whoever she is, she will understand your need for rest.