The Serpent's Shadow (24 page)

With great care, she unwrapped the layers of gauze, and winced at what she found. He caught the wince, and a brief flash of despair passed over his face, before disappearing into malaise. “Not very pretty, is it?” he asked dully.

“I have seen worse,” she replied truthfully. “There was a girl at the Fleet who'd had acid thrown in her face....” It wasn't as bad as it could have been; it definitely was the result of an attack by some sort of canine, probably of the mastiff or pit bull breeds. It had essentially seized the flesh of the forehead and ripped downward, leaving the facial tissue hanging in strips; then it had made a second attempt and torn up the scalp. The wounds had been neatly stitched up, and there was no sign of infection, which was a mercy. She thought she recognized the suturing; the “Irishman” was probably Doctor O‘Reilly, from Dublin, who tended to use blanket-sutures. She and the Irish physician shared a certain sympathy, since anyone from Ireland practicing in
this
hospital was considered no more than a short step above a female. “You've been well served,” she continued, placing a finger just under his chin, and turning his face to examine the sutures. “Quite well, actually. There
will
be scars, but you aren't going to resemble anything from Mary Shelley's book. I should think you'd look more piratical than monstrous.”

He didn't respond to her attempt at humor, but something flickered in the back of his eyes for a moment.

Some of his attitude must be due to pain,
she de
cided. if he's been left to suffer all day, his face and head must be in agony. That sort of pain would batter the bravest soul into a stupor.

Just then, Amelia returned with fresh dressings and, unasked-for, the morphine pills. Maya took great care in rebandaging the man, then allowed him to see the bottle placed just out of his reach. His dull eye brightened with hope for a moment, but he did not beg for the relief she held in her hand. Had he done so once today, only to be denied?

“I would like to leave some medication with you, so you can have some relief now and sleep through the night,” she said. “But I would also like to hear more than you've told me so far.”

Now she had his interest. “What would you like to hear?” he asked, showing renewed life and liveliness. “I swear to you, I have not made any of this up.”

She sat down on a chair at the side of his bed, and rested her elbow on the stand that held his washbasin and pitcher of water. Amelia took the chair on the other side of the bed, unasked, and Bill leaned over the better to hear. “Why don't you start at the beginning?” she suggested, pouring him a glass of water and handing him a pair of pills.

“My name is Paul Jenner,” he said, when relief from pain had smoothed his features and given his gaze just the slightest unfocused quality. “My father is a country vicar. Nothing very distinguished, I'm afraid, but he was an Oxford man also, and it was his dream that I should go to his own College. He saved all he could so that I could have that chance. My ambition was not for the Church, which I think disappointed him a little. My thought was to get myself tied to the coattails of some rising man in politics, and perhaps do some good that way.” He laughed a little. “I know that sounds very idealistic and naive, but I did think that I could work some good in the world, if I tried. Perhaps I should have followed in my father's footsteps after all.”

“Positions of that sort are few and far between,” Amelia noted, speaking up as if she could not help herself, and the bandage-shrouded face turned in her direction and nodded.

“So I found,” young Jenner admitted. “And I confess I didn't know quite what to do at that point. I didn't have the friends to get into the Foreign Service, and I didn't have the money to get into business. I was about to fling myself into the stormy waters and look for a job as some well-born dunce's tutor, which would at least allow me to remain at Oxford, when along came my savior—I thought!”

“That would be the gentleman we were just discussing?” Maya asked.

Jenner laughed, with a note of anger in his voice. “Better to say the devil than my savior, and—no gentleman ! But I didn't know that. All I knew was that Simon Parkening came looking for a secretary and found me. One thousand a year and all expenses, housed and fed at Parkening House! He said he wanted someone he knew and could trust, that some of what I would see and handle would be very confidential. It was princely, and how could I resist such an offer?”

“Obviously, you were not intended to,” Maya observed. “And it sounds very much as if Master Parkening simply wished to get himself a secretary who would have the double ties of gratitude and school binding him. That should not have made you uneasy in itself. I am sure that there are many men who have gotten their personal secretaries with the same idea and motives.”

“Nor did the work seem out of the ordinary—at first,” Jenner responded. “It was normal enough, given that I performed the bulk of what work he was supposed to be doing. And that, so I am told, is hardly unusual among his set. But it wasn't long before he started to show a cruel streak, a meanness of spirit. He took a great deal of pleasure in ordering me to do some very menial tasks, and displayed a deal of dissatisfaction when I failed to display any emotion, or act affronted, but simply performed as he bid me. It was then that he took to demanding that I accompany him when he went out of an evening....”

Difficult as it was to believe, the young man actually grew a shade paler, and he swallowed with great difficulty. “I will not burden you with the tale of his pleasures,” Jenner said at last. “Suffice it that it was not enough that they were evil; they were blasphemous as well.”

Amelia blushed, but Maya raised an eyebrow.
My word. Is this fellow a prude who has been bullied by his master, or is there something truly nasty going on here?
“Oh?” she replied. “Do have a care what you mean by that word. Not everyone would hold to the same definition of blasphemy as you.”

A faint flush rose to his cheek. “Doctor, I do,” he replied sturdily. “I mean by that his pleasures were uncleanly; the pagan and the priest alike would have been disgusted, even horrified. He consorted with that man Crowley, and if you know anything of his debaucheries, that name will tell you enough.”

Maya nodded. “I know something of his reputation,” she said, slowly becoming convinced that if this was a coincidence, it was not one engineered by her enemies. “There are things
I
have heard that have not appeared, or even been hinted at, in the papers.”

“I know too much of it for my comfort,” Amelia confessed in a small voice. “There was a girl I knew who somehow fell in with that set—” She shivered, and said nothing more.

And where was Amelia that she knows someone who managed to get entangled with Crowley's set?
Maya thought with astonishment. There had even been rumors in India about the man—and certainly his so-called “novels” were enough to sicken and warn anyone with any sense away from him.
She
had learned more from one of her patients; what she had heard had given
her
a nightmare or two.

“Two nights ago I had enough, when I heard from him that he had found yet another haven of evil to investigate. I told him that I would not go. That was when he set his mastiffs on me.” Jenner drew himself up and covered himself with the ragged remains of his dignity. “I will not pretend that I fought well. The dogs are hellishly strong and fierce. I will not pretend that I was not afraid, for I screamed for my very life. But that was my temporary salvation, for my cries attracted the servants, who pried the dogs off me and brought me here. I
think
he expected me to die, for I was left alone and tended properly until today. That was when Simon appeared here, claimed that I had attacked him, and let it be known that although he would—magnanimously!—not press charges against me, he would not be displeased if I died of my injuries.”

“That tallies!” Bill exclaimed. “When th' orderlies brung ‘im 'ere an' dumped ‘im i' that bed, tha's what they said. 'No wastin' med‘cins an' good care on a nutter, they said. An' that th' Big Man 'ad some machine or other ‘e was gonna try out on 'im, seein' as ‘e was crazy an' 'twouldn't matter.”

“Interesting.” Maya pondered the man and the story.
If it's a trap, it's one that's tangled beyond my unraveling. And if it's not, I cannot in good conscience leave this man here to be mauled and experimented upon.
“Amelia, I believe we should take a hand in this situation, don't you?”

“There's a bed at the Fleet gone empty,” Amelia said eagerly. “Shall I have him discharged into your care?”

“Yes—no!” Maya corrected. “No, we don't want his employer to know where he went. No, this is what we'll do. I'll get some working-man's clothing for him and have O‘Reilly come by and certify him as ready to leave. You wait here, and when O'Reilly signs him out of the ward, take him to a taxi and bring him to the Fleet. While you're taking him to the taxi, I'll get hold of his records and make them disappear.” She chuckled. “Doctor O‘Reilly and the head nurse won't go looking for him, because they signed him out, but when Mr. Parkening comes looking for him, he'll have vanished, and there will be no trace of him ever being here—except, perhaps, the clothing he was wearing when he was brought here.”

“An' I won't know nothin‘,” Bill Joad said, with a grin. “Not that the loiks of
they
are gonna ask the loiks of
me.”

“Why are you doing this for me?” Paul Jenner asked, bewildered, looking from Maya's determined face to Amelia's eager one, to Bill's crafty smile and back to Maya.

I wish I could answer that!
Maya thought—but at the same time, she
knew,
somehow, that this was the right, indeed the only, thing she could have done. “Because it is right,” she said firmly. “Now, Amelia, let's get about this, before Mr. Parkening takes it into his head to return.”

The clothing wasn't that difficult to obtain; she didn't even need to leave the hospital to get it. More poor men left this place dead than alive, and often in no need of the clothing they'd worn when they entered the hospital; if there were no relatives to claim the body, it was used for dissection and buried in potter's field. Generally, the clothing left behind was laundered, mended, and thriftily stored in case it was needed; after all, it cost the hospital nothing to store it. Most often, it went to clothe some poor fellow whose own garments had been cut off him during emergency treatment; dungarees and heavy canvas shirts were much alike, and it is doubtful that the few who received such largesse were aware they were wearing a dead man's clothing. Maya simply went to the storeroom, made certain there was no one about, then purloined a set of dungarees, a cap, and a rough shirt out of the piles waiting folded on a shelf.

She brought the clothing to Amelia and Paul, then she went in search of O‘Reilly. It wasn't hard to find him; his head and beard of fiery red curls were visible across the dimmest ward.

“You're up to some deviltry, woman,” the Irish doctor said, when she'd asked him to discharge Jenner with as scant an explanation as she thought she could get away with. “I know it; I see it in your eye.”

“Let's say I'm attempting to
prevent
deviltry, shall we?” she replied, staring him straight in the face. “And the less you know, the less you have to lie about later.”

O‘Reilly stroked his abundant mustache and beard thoughtfully. “I've never heard anything but good about you from the nurses ... and anything but
bad
about you from that worthless lot of puppies that trails about after Clayton-Smythe, hoping to snatch up his scraps....” His thoughtful expression lightened into one holding a touch of mischief. “Aye, I'll do it, girl, if only to put one in the eye of that worthless nevvie of his. Oh, aye, I heard Parkening raving about the poor lad this morning—and a bigger pack of lies I can't imagine. The boy's no more mad than I am. There's something wrong there, but I'll wager a month's pay that it's not on Jenner's side.”

“You won't be sorry,” she breathed, hoping that she wouldn't be proved wrong about that. He laughed and patted her head as if she were a child, then turned to go—but just as quickly, turned back before she could hurry away.

“You'd like the man's records, wouldn't you?” he said casually, but with a twinkle of complicity in his eyes. “Just to look over, of course. I could bring them to you later. You can study them, and
of course
you'll put them back.”

“That would be very—convenient,” she managed, trying not to grin. “I'll be in the Poor Childrens' ward.”

Not a quarter of an hour later, Doctor O‘Reilly joined Maya in the childrens' ward, checking on three patients of his own there. He didn't actually say anything, just nodded in greeting as they passed each other—and handed her a slim sheaf of papers, which she stuffed into her medical bag. As soon as she finished with the last of her young patients, she made her unhurried way out to the street. Following her usual habit, she hailed a cab and directed the driver to the Fleet. On the way there, the seat got a little extra padding as she stuffed Paul Jenner's records down between the cushions. It had been a wet spring so far;
if
anyone ever found the papers, they'd be an illegible mess from dripping mackintoshes by the time they were located.

She got down at the Fleet, paid the driver, and hurried inside to find Amelia. She had expected to see Paul Jenner lying flat on his back in one of the Fleet's narrow cots, well-sedated, and safe. She found Paul Jenner safe and comfortable, right enough, but he was far from being flat on his back and well-sedated. To the contrary, he was quite alert and sitting up—and pouring out his heart and soul to Amelia, much to the intent interest of the other two patients nearby. One of them, a middle-aged woman Maya had successfully treated for a compound fracture of the leg, caught Maya's eye and put her finger to her lips. From the washerwoman's expression, it was quite clear to Maya that the experienced eye of a long-time matchmaker had detected more between Amelia and Paul Jenner than the interest of a doctor in a patient.