The Great Trouble (15 page)

“See these stitches?” Mum whispered. “I used to be able to make stitches this tiny, almost invisible. But now my eyes have gotten so weak that Mrs. Kingsbury says there are too many mistakes.”

After that Mum took to doing laundry for a while. It made her hands red and raw. She cried a lot. And then one day she brought Fisheye Bill Tyler home.

It was evening by the time Dr. Snow and I headed back to Sackville Street. He was frowning and silent as we made our way through the crowds on Regent Street. I thought he was probably worried about not having enough evidence for the committee. He wanted to convince them to take the pump handle off on Thursday. Waiting could mean more deaths.

“No one can predict how long the cholera poison will last,” said Dr. Snow. “It may already be disappearing from the water. Or there could be a new contamination any day. We just don’t know.”

That night, Dr. Snow and I compared notes. It was a
wonder to see how his mind worked. At first I was afraid all my interviews with families would be a jumble. But after looking at my notes and taking stock of his own, Dr. Snow leaned back and tapped his pen on his desk.

“You did well, Eel. I think there can be little doubt that the Broad Street pump is the culprit,” he began. “The list you copied at the General Register Office shows us that most of the people who died on Friday and Saturday lived just a short distance from the pump.

“There were only ten deaths in houses near pumps on other streets,” he went on. “But five of those families told us they didn’t drink water from the pump closest to their house. No, instead they preferred the Broad Street well, and so they always got their water from there.”

“What about the other five, sir?” Had we really found out so much?

“Ah, it seems that three were children who went to school near the pump on Broad Street. Their parents think they probably stopped to drink from it,” he said. “As for the others, well, they could have drunk the water without even knowing it.”

“How could that be?”

“Water from the Broad Street pump is used for mixing with spirits in the Newcastle upon Tyne and other public houses in the neighborhood. And then there’s the coffee shop. The woman who runs it told me she sometimes uses water from the pump. She has heard that at least nine of her customers are dead.”

That gave me another idea. “What about Italian ice?”

“Italian ice? What about it?”

“There are carts that sell a sweet drink made of a flavored powder and water, what we call Italian ice. I visited a family today who had lost a son,” I explained. “They didn’t know if he had drunk water from the pump. But I know who he was. I often saw him buying Italian ice. Maybe the water from Broad Street was used to make it.”

“Good point.” Dr. Snow made a note on his paper.

“Will this be enough for the meeting on Thursday?” I wanted to know.

He looked thoughtful. “I don’t think so. Not yet.”

Dr. Snow rose and began pacing, his hands clasped behind him. “Everyone in this neighborhood relies on the Broad Street pump. Taking the handle off won’t be a popular decision. The committee won’t want to do it.”

He stopped and shook his head. His shoulders slumped a little, and for a minute he looked beaten.

“Maybe there’s something else we can show the committee,” I suggested.

“It will have to be something decisive,” Dr. Snow replied. “Let me think more about it. Tomorrow we must keep looking.”

Wednesday, September 6

Dr. Snow wanted me to be up early. While he breakfasted and worked on his case notes, I cleaned the cages and fed the animals.

I liked working with the small creatures, who had their own tiny wants and troubles. I couldn’t help smiling as I watched them, and smiles had been rare since the Great Trouble had come upon us. And when two rabbits began a tug-o’-war over a piece of lettuce, I found myself laughing. I guess it’s hard for folks never to laugh, even in the midst of bad times.

Dr. Snow stopped at the shed on his way out. “I’m afraid I can’t come to Broad Street this morning. I’ve got several urgent cases to attend to, including a dentist who needs my
help. He has an elderly patient with the stumps of five teeth to extract.”

I shuddered. It sounded horrible. “Should I keep knocking on doors and asking questions, Dr. Snow? I haven’t finished Berwick Street.”

“Yes, lad. Just carry on.” Suddenly Dr. Snow slammed his hand on the side of a cage, making the four guinea pigs inside squeal. “I wish we had more time to find the evidence we need.”

“We’ve talked to lots of families who say the people who died drank water from the Broad Street pump,” I put in. “I think what we’ve found should be enough.”

“I agree, Eel. But as we discussed last night, changing people’s minds isn’t easy. This committee is made up of men who are set in their ways. They can see things one way, but not another. They only know the miasma theory,” he said.

I’d finished all the cages except for the ones with the guinea pigs. I filled a small bowl with clean water and placed it inside. “I wish I knew what it will take to convince them.”

Dr. Snow didn’t answer. He was staring intently into the guinea pigs’ cage. I followed his gaze. Three guinea pigs had crowded round the fresh water, while one sat in the corner, chewing on a piece of fruit, his little jaws working fast.

“The odd one out,” said the doctor softly.

He turned to stare at me, his eyebrows raised, as if I should have understood something from his words. As if they
meant
something.

I looked at the guinea pigs again. At first all I could come up with was that Dr. Snow was a bit daft. That would certainly fit with what Mrs. Weatherburn had told me about the doctor giving himself doses of gas. Maybe the chloroform had gone to his head?

But then I focused on the one guinea pig that was far away from the others. Was that it?
The odd one out
. Guinea pigs around a bowl of water. One in a corner. What was Dr. Snow thinking?

All at once a sound escaped me.

“Have you got it, then, Eel?”

“I … I think so.… If these here guinea pigs all lived by the pump and drank from it and it had the cholera poison in it, then they’d get sick,” I said, my words tumbling out quickly, though I was trying to put it in a scientific sort of way as best I could.

I paused to lick my lips, which were dry from the sun. “But there could be other reasons too—like living close to one another and catchin’ it that way, or maybe, like the reverend and other folks say, from the miasma, from bad air on one street.…”

“Go on.” Dr. Snow folded his arms and watched me.

“Since there could be so many different explanations, it’s hard to make a clear case that will convince folks. That’s where this other guinea pig comes in—the one over there, all by himself. Suppose he was nowhere near the water. Nowhere near it at all.” I spoke slowly, puzzling it out.

“Yet suppose this faraway guinea pig somehow got hold of the water and fell ill,” I said. “Maybe someone brought the water to him. But he never got close to the area. And he
never
breathed the same air as the rest of them that died.”

“I think you’ve got it,” Dr. Snow urged me on.

“So if we can prove that the
only
thing this here guinea pig has in common with the others that died is that he drank the exact same water, then, it’s …” I searched for a word. “It’s odd. It’s unexpected.”

“That’s precisely it,” exclaimed Dr. Snow. “Unexpected. What we need is an unexpected case of cholera.”

He pulled his watch out and glanced at the time. “That’s our task for tomorrow, when I am free. It could be the last piece of the puzzle.”

“Do you think we can find one?”

“Maybe.” Dr. Snow picked up his bag and turned to go. “Maybe not. But
if
it does exist and
if
we can find it, history may be made this week.”

After Dr. Snow left, I finished up my work and whistled for Dilly. “C’mon, girl. Let’s keep investigating. Dr. Snow needs us to find the
unexpected
.”

By noon, as I walked up and down the cobblestoned streets—first Broad, then Poland, then Dufours—knocking on doors and asking questions, I hadn’t come close to finding an unexpected case of the cholera.

“Maybe Florrie has an idea, Dilly,” I said finally. “We haven’t seen her since we made the map on Monday afternoon. I need to tell her everything that’s happened.”

Florrie’s older brother, Danny, opened the door to my knocking.

“I thought you was the coffin man,” he said in a strange, rough voice. “Mum’s gone. We’re just waitin’ for them to take ’er away.”

I stood, a shock of fear running through me. “I’m so sorry, Danny. But … what about Florrie? She’s all right, isn’t she?”

There was a long silence. Danny swallowed hard. “She took sick last night, Eel. We thought it was all over, this epidemic. But I guess not. Poor girl, she don’t even know that Mum didn’t make it. She nursed Mum all day yesterday and then …”

So that was why I hadn’t seen Florrie out on the streets yesterday.
I should have come sooner
, I thought.

“Can I see her?”

Danny shook his head. “She wouldn’t want it right now,” he said. “She’s off ’er ’ead part of the time, talking nonsense, slippin’ in and out. I heard ’er say your name, Eel.”

A sound came from inside.

“I got to go,” Danny said. Then he shut the door.

I don’t know how long I stood there. Not Florrie. Florrie couldn’t have the cholera. I thought of the bucket of water
in the corner when she was nursing Bernie. That water had come from the Broad Street pump.

I was still standing on Florrie’s doorstep when I saw Gus, the lad we’d met at the Broad Street pump last week. I’d suspected he was sweet on Florrie. I was sure of it now, for he carried a small bouquet of drooping violets.

“How is she, Eel?” Gus wanted to know. “I come by early this morning and Danny told me what happened.”

“Not good.”

“Do you think … it would be all right to knock?”

I shook my head and glanced down at the flowers in his hand. He followed my gaze.

“I know. Pretty sorry-looking,” he said ruefully. “I had to buy ’em off a flower seller. I could’ve picked them meself in Hampstead any day when I took the cart to the Widow Eley’s house. But that was before. I don’t guess I’ll be bringing jugs of water out there anymore. The widow died on Saturday.”

I was only half listening to his words at first. And then they hit me. “You mean, you’ve been taking water from the Broad Street pump out to Hampstead regular-like?”

Gus nodded. “Several times a week at least. Thursday was the last.

“Mrs. Eley’s sons at the factory are … well, they
were
 … that devoted to her,” Gus went on. “Wanted their mum to have the water she liked, from when she used to live on Broad Street. So that’s part of my job. Or it was, anyhow.”

I must have been staring at him with my mouth open, because he came close and peered into my face. “You all right, then, Eel?”

I nodded. “I have a question for you. Just where in Hampstead is the Widow Eley’s house?”

It was several miles to Hampstead. I’d never been so far from home, and I was glad to have Dilly’s company. At first I’d been torn about setting out—a part of me wanted to stay near Florrie. But I knew she’d want me to go.

It felt strange to leave the chimneys and coal-dusted buildings behind. Out here, the air had a sweet, earthy scent. It reminded me of wagons on their way to Covent Garden. Whenever they pass by, the stench of the city falls away and you’re surrounded by the fresh, fragrant smells of apples, pears, and vegetables.

Only now the smells weren’t just from a wagon but from everything around me: sweet, fresh hay in the fields and hedgerows dotted with wild roses. If the blue death was
caused by miasma, the way folks believed, I didn’t see how anyone in Hampstead could get it.

There were more trees too, with bright green leaves that sparkled in the sunlight. I passed meadows where, like Gus, I might’ve stopped to pick flowers for Florrie. For every ten steps I took, Dilly ran a hundred—circling back and forth, sniffing under every tree and rock, and now and again chasing a squirrel.

“Maybe you were born some place like this, Dilly,” I told her. “If you hadn’t gotten lost in Piccadilly Circus when you were a pup, you might be here still.”

It wasn’t hard to find the right house. I asked a farmer on his way back from bringing produce to town. He pointed it out, saying, “May she rest in peace, poor lady.”

Mrs. Susannah Eley had lived in a pretty white cottage, surrounded by a neat fence and a garden bursting with color. I recognized hollyhocks and daisies from seeing them at Covent Garden Market, but there were lots more besides. Bees buzzed everywhere.

I went around to the back and waited till I saw a young housemaid come out with a bucket. She headed to a pump in the backyard. I frowned. Why would Mrs. Eley get water from the Broad Street pump when she had this well? Then I remembered what Gus had said: she had liked the taste of the water from Broad Street best of all.