Another voice added, “He was the one to find her. No one in the crew knew how to swim. Men who don’t know how to swim shouldn’t be sailors, in my opinion.”
In an aside to Kate, Mrs. Cardno said, “I’ve known the family for years, and they have never hinted that Alice and Gavin were more than friends. You have nothing to fear there, m’dear.”
Another lady—Mrs. Black?—joined the conversation. “I knew Alice slightly when I lived in London, before my husband died. Everyone said that she would come to grief sooner or later. She was a law unto herself and took the most appalling risks.”
Someone else added with a chuckle, “I think we’re exaggerating Alice’s hold on him. He hasn’t exactly avoided feminine company these last few years.”
Miss Hunter said coyly, “Oh, the stories I could tell you—”
At this point, Mrs. Cardno clutched her throat and said hoarsely, “I think I’ve swallowed a fish bone.”
By the time she had chewed on a piece of bread to dislodge the bone, Gavin was forgotten, and all the ladies were relating incidents where they, too, had choked on a morsel of food or knew someone who had. Miss Hunter brought an end to the chatter when she got up and indicated that it was time to withdraw to the parlor for the next installment of
Emma
.
Kate sat through the reading without hearing a word of it. Gavin’s high-handed methods to keep her safe were becoming much more comprehensible now that she knew about Alice. The image of him pulling the body of the girl he loved from her watery grave made her wince. No one should have to endure that. First Alice, then Will. She sympathized, truly sympathized, but he had to accept that people should be free to make their own choices, and choices often had unforeseen consequences.
A round of applause dragged her from her reveries. The reading was over.
“Tea and cake, then off to bed,” Miss Hunter announced in a ringing voice.
Kate looked at the clock. She couldn’t believe it. It was only nine o’clock. She wouldn’t sleep a wink for hours and hours. This was purgatory.
No, this was Gavin Hepburn’s doing. The more she thought about it, the more her resentment simmered. By the sound of it, Alice wouldn’t have accepted his strictures. She was a law unto herself. Then what was she? A mouse?
She sat there simmering, choking on the minuscule bites of cake she was chewing, dreaming of ways of getting out from under his thumb.
By the time bedtime rolled around the following day, Kate would gladly have strangled Gavin Hepburn. She was used to walking for miles, tramping the moors with the sun in her face. The scent of Deeside heather would perfume the air. The air in Aberdeen was, literally, fishy because of the fish market nearby. Not that the residents noticed it. Familiarity had obviously blunted their sense of smell. And all she could see when she looked out her window beyond the grounds was row upon row of depressing gray granite. So what if the houses were practically indestructible and lit by gas? She’d rather be at home in the ramshackle labyrinth of a house her great-grandfather had built, with its oil lamps and candles.
This was Saturday. She should have been out shopping in the fashionable shops of Union Street, but because she was supposed to be hiding from her parents, the most she was allowed was to walk in the small park by the house. And where she went, Mrs. Cardno was sure to follow.
Twenty-four hours had passed since she had last seen Gavin, and though he’d telephoned the house, he hadn’t spoken to her directly but had left a message with Miss Hunter to tell her that he had seen the solicitor and would drop by the clinic before coming on to see her. Kate didn’t know what annoyed her more—the brevity of his message or the fact that he hadn’t asked to speak to her. She had a million questions she wanted to ask him. Had his brother arrived from London? Had he found anything out of place or suspicious in the accidents that Dr. Rankin had mentioned? Who was in charge of the clinic now? Was it still Dr. Taggart? How had her parents reacted when Dalziel told them she wasn’t coming home? And where was Dalziel, anyway? He was supposed to be at the gatehouse, but she hadn’t seen him.
She hadn’t undressed for bed and sat on top of the covers thinking, thinking, thinking. She could not turn around but Mrs. Cardno was right by her side. And when she got too close to the great iron gates, Macduff herded her back to the house as though she were a stupid sheep. But that wasn’t the worst of it. She was supposed to go to bed when things at the clinic were just about to get hectic? That was where she should be, helping at the clinic, not sitting here feeling sorry for herself.
He had telephoned her. The thought revolved in her mind. Not too many people had telephones in their homes. She supposed that some of the big hotels would have installed them. Where would he be where a telephone was available?
It was possible that he was at the gatehouse. She didn’t want to speak to him; she just wanted to know where he was so that she could make her own plans.
There was also a telephone at the clinic. Perhaps Dr. Taggart or his substitute could tell her where Gavin was. Failing that, she would call the gatehouse and ask to speak to Dalziel.
On that thought, she opened the door and poked her head out. Nothing was stirring. All she could hear were a few muffled snores from behind closed doors. The telephone, for some odd reason, was on the dining room wall. She kept her voice low as she gave the number she wanted. She did not have long to wait.
“Madeline’s Hospice,” the voice said.
His
voice. She hung up at once. Her temper flared. He was at
her
clinic while she was incarcerated here? Intolerable!
It was only nine o’clock and although the sun had recently set, it still was not dark outside. She didn’t minimize the danger, but she didn’t exaggerate it, either. There were only two obstacles to overcome: Macduff and Dalziel.
She knew how to get around them.
Eleven
Madeline’s Hospice, or the clinic, as it was commonly known, was on two floors. The ground floor had two wards, one for men, the other for women, a surgery, and an office. Upstairs were Dr. Rankin’s private apartments and plenty of storage space. It was ten o’clock on a Saturday night, and Dr. Taggart and his nurse were run off their feet attending to knife wounds, broken bones, and a plethora of cuts and bruises. Dockworkers, sailors, and fishermen, Gavin had discovered, were a rough lot. Hard drinkers and hard fighters, every last one of them, and the women were no better.
He had hoped to put a few questions to Dr. Taggart before going on to see Kate but had found himself indispensable the moment he set foot inside the door. There weren’t enough hands to go around. So he’d taken off his coat, rolled up his sleeves and donned a voluminous bib apron of a sickly green color, and meekly obeyed whatever orders came his way. He’d been here for hours, and there was no shortage of patients.
“It’s not so bad during the week,” Dr. Taggart told him. He was as bald as a coot and, in spite of his advanced years, looked as though he could flatten an obstreperous patient with one punch from his massive fist. “They get paid on Saturday,” he amplified, “recover on Sunday, and Monday they go back to work. It’s not much of a life.”
Gavin nodded and clenched his teeth. Someone behind him was vomiting into a basin, and his own stomach was beginning to heave. Sweat beaded his brow as he tried to ignore the patient who was vomiting and concentrated on the man on the surgery table. It was his job to hold him down while Taggart stitched up his face.
Dr. Taggart didn’t notice Gavin’s distress. “You’ve never been here on a Saturday night, though, have you?”
Gavin did not dare unclench his teeth. The stench of urine, whiskey, and unwashed bodies was working on him, too. He swallowed hard and shook his head. His visits to the clinic had taken place during the day. The only smell he had associated with the clinic was the pungent odor of antiseptic. The clinic at Braemar was as different from this madhouse as heaven from hell. It was quiet and orderly, as were the patients who entered its doors. It was in Braemar that Will had done most of his research on the human mind and how it worked.
He swallowed again.
Mind over matter,
he told himself. He had the happy knack—one of the gifts he had inherited from his granny—of calming his mind and diminishing his discomfort by thinking positive thoughts. It was a technique he’d used on Kate when he’d found her on the moor. It seemed to work, and that had surprised him. Not only was he out of practice, but he was also a tad skeptical. It would have helped if he had managed to get through to his brother, but Alex was on assignment and, so his aide said, would get back to him as soon as possible.
He was dragged from his thoughts when the nurse, who was holding the basin for the vomiting patient, let out a shriek, dumped the basin on the floor, and went tearing to the door.
“Miss Kate,” she cried. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. Have you come to help?”
“What else?” Kate smiled at the nurse and gave Gavin a spare nod.
Nurse Proctor blinked, and big fat tears rolled down her plump cheeks. “Dr. Rankin,” she began, and shook her head. “I canna believe he has gone.” She sniffed back more tears.
“I know, I know,” Kate crooned. Tears were beginning to pool in her eyes, too.
“Nurse Proctor!” Dr. Taggart barked out. “Miss Cameron! The best testament you can offer to Dr. Rankin is to see to the patients. We’re swamped here.”
“This is no place for Miss Cameron,” Gavin interjected. “I’ll take her home.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Dr. Taggart snapped. “She’s needed here.” He snipped the catgut from the stitches he’d made, then examined his embroidery. “You almost lost an eye that time, Mac,” he said. “When will you learn?”
Mac was too much under the influence of raw whiskey to do more than mumble something incomprehensible.
To Gavin, the doctor said, “You think this is bad? In another hour it will be like Bedlam in here. Nurse Proctor and I need all the help we can get.”
Gavin’s spine was poker stiff. “I’ll stay,” he said, “but first, I’d like to have a word with Miss Cameron.”
Kate ignored him, turned on her heel, and crossed to a large closet in the entrance hall. Gavin followed her. “What do you think you are doing?” he demanded in an angry undertone.
He could see what she was doing. She removed her jacket and donned a bib apron that was the exact match to his. “You heard Dr. Taggart,” she said. “Oh, don’t look so . . . so shocked. I help out here whenever I come up to town.”
She pushed past him and walked into the surgery.
“If you can tidy up, Kate,” Taggart said, “it would free Nurse Proctor to help me set bones.”
She nodded and picked up the basin of vomit from the floor, then walked out the door. Once again, Gavin followed her. This did not sit right with him. Even without the stench, this was no place for an innocent like Kate. Naked bodies, putrid flesh, excrement, and the dregs of humanity making lewd suggestions—those of them who were still conscious—that made him want to tear their heads off. Most of all, though, he was stewing because she had obviously circumvented all his stratagems to keep her safe.
His fury seemed to register with Kate. She spoke to him quietly but forcibly. “Will you get a hold of yourself? I know what I’m doing. As I said, whenever I’m in Aberdeen, I come here to help out, and I’m not the only one. The doctors and medical students at Woolmanhill take turns to relieve Dr. Taggart and Dr. Rankin.” Her voice faded and she breathed deeply. “I’m needed here. I don’t want to spend hours shut in my room, wide-awake, with nothing to do.”
His temper was still simmering. “Where is my dog?” he abruptly demanded.
She’d filled a basin with warm water and was pulling up a stool beside the patient who had vomited so violently. A smile edged onto her lips. “Macduff is quite safe. I left him eating a pork pie in the kitchen. The doors are closed and, as you once pointed out, he can’t open and shut doors. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to clean up my patient.”
His jaw flexed. “And Dalziel? Did you shut him up, too?”
“No. I telephoned him and told him that your dog had run off. He was combing the grounds looking for Macduff when I slipped away.”
She appeared to be quite proud of herself, and that incensed him. The sharp words that gathered on his tongue died, however, when Taggart bellowed his name. “Hepburn, over here!”
Nurse Proctor gave up her place to him and moved to the other side of the surgery table where a young man was flapping like a fish out of water, fighting off the doctor who was trying to administer chloroform. There were jagged pieces of glass embedded in his torso. Blood was everywhere. It looked as though his leg was broken.
“He was knocked through a window,” Taggart explained cheerfully. “No more brawls, Billy,” he shouted into the patient’s ear, “or next time we report you to the police.”
This threat produced a spate of curse words from Billy.
“Hold him!” roared Taggart.
Gavin and the nurse tightened their hold, and the mask with chloroform finally did its work.