Corridors of the Night (13 page)

He went back to the police station at Wapping. It was almost deserted, only a few men keeping watch. He called in only to tell them of Orme’s death, to find out if the injured were all right, and to pick up Orme’s daughter’s address.

He was so tired his whole body ached, and he was longing to see Hester, but this must be done first. He must get a ferry to take him down river, wait for him, then bring him back. This was going to be the worst duty of the day, but it was inescapable, and it was his to do. He owed Orme that, and far more.

Hester had put in a long day nursing Radnor. He was not an easy patient and his illness was extremely serious. Her excitement at the possibility of a cure was deeply shadowed by Hamilton Rand’s means of treating him.

She was so tired her whole body ached, but she must confront him before she went home, and it must be done privately. It was not an issue that should be referred to at all in front of other staff, and least of all in front of Radnor himself, or his daughter.

She looked first in his office, not really expecting to find him there, and then went to the laboratory.

He was bent over a microscope, studying whatever it was on the glass slide. A look of annoyance at the interruption crossed his face, until he recognised her.

‘What is it, Mrs Monk? Has his condition changed?’

She closed the door behind her. She did not want even the slightest chance of being overheard.

‘Only for the better,’ she replied, walking past the jars and bottles, the burners and vials. She stopped close enough to him to see that it was a smear of blood he was examining.

‘Then why are you interrupting me?’ he asked.

‘The children are getting weaker,’ she said slowly and clearly. ‘You can’t go on taking blood from them at this rate. It’s too much.’

He straightened up slowly, staring at her as if she were a specimen he had just recognised. His eyes were both intimate and strange. ‘Exactly what are you proposing, Mrs Monk?’ he said softly.

She felt a chill, her mouth dry, but she had to speak.

‘That you delay the treatment, or find other donors as well.’

‘And if I refuse?’ he whispered.

She swallowed. ‘Then you risk their dying, and I will not let you do that.’

‘I see. You know, Mrs Monk, I believe you.’ He turned and walked a couple of yards towards a cupboard, opened it and took out a bottle and a cloth. He was between her and the door.

He looked up, smiling with a strange expression of regret. Then he moved swiftly. She felt her arms held. It was painful. There was a pungent smell, something over her nose and mouth. She tried to fight him, but the darkness closed over her and she plunged forward into nothingness.

When Monk got home there was no sign of Hester. He guessed that she had been kept at the hospital. Maybe the patient she had been nursing had reached a critical point and she could not leave him.

Scuff left a note, saying that he was working with Crow and had no idea when he would be back.

Monk went to bed alone, restless and unhappy. He had wanted intensely to tell Hester about the schooner, and all that had happened, the suspense and the pain, his fear for his men, and how they had shown such startling care for each other when the dangers were worst. He was proud of them, and he had wanted to tell her so, and see her pleasure. He realised with a touch of self-mockery how much he wanted to see her face, her eyes, when he told her. Out of all of it, the way in which they had survived was what mattered to him.

And, of course, there was the question of McNab, whose men had never shown up. Was that mischance, misunderstanding, carelessness – or deliberate betrayal as revenge for something Monk could not even recall?

He wanted more than anything else to tell her about Orme, and the grief he felt, how deep was his sense of loss. He wished to tell her about Laker, of all people, who had tried so desperately hard to save him. Laker had wept when he knew that Orme was dead. She would have understood.

Sharing all this with her mattered intensely to him. It would have eased his own pain and been the beginning of healing.

He woke in the morning stiff and still tired, but he got up straight away, shaved and dressed. He went downstairs and found Scuff in the kitchen.

‘She isn’t home yet,’ he said, looking Monk up and down. ‘Wot ’appened? You been in a fight?’ He did not give words to his anxiety, but it was clear in his face.

‘She must have been detained,’ Monk answered, going over to the stove, which had been carefully banked all night so it was still burning. Scuff had already opened it, cleaned out the old ash and put more coal on it. The kettle was hot. Everything was set for breakfast, it was only Hester that was absent. But for both of them, this left the room incomplete.

Scuff helped Monk make breakfast and they ate together in companionable silence. Scuff left for school and Monk went down to the ferry and across to Wapping.

But by that evening there was still no word from Hester, and Monk could take it no longer. He put on his coat again and went to find out where she was.

When he reached the hospital, he went immediately to the annexe wing where Hester worked for Dr Rand. He found that, in spite of his aching muscles, his step quickened at the thought of seeing her in moments, even if she could not return home with him. Just to see her, hear her voice would unravel the knots that were so painful inside him.

Inside, he enquired for Magnus Rand’s office and went along the corridor past all protest. At the door he knocked abruptly.

‘Come,’ a voice replied from inside.

Monk opened the door and went in. He closed it behind him and looked at the rather harassed man seated behind the desk littered with papers. He barely noticed the rest of the room, the bookshelves or mementoes.

‘Dr Rand?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir? Who are you, and what may I do for you?’ Magnus Rand asked.

‘I am William Monk, Commander of the Thames River Police,’ Monk replied. ‘I have come to see my wife, Hester Monk. I am concerned about her. She has not been home in two days. Where is she?’

The colour drained from Rand’s face. It was seconds before he found his voice to reply.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Monk is not here,’ he said a little huskily. ‘She left today, without giving me a reason. It was only a temporary post anyway. She was filling in for a friend who had to take leave.’

Monk was stunned.

HESTER WOKE up with a headache. She opened her eyes to sunlight so bright it blinded her, and she closed them again quickly. She had recognised nothing in the room. She was not at home. Was she still in the hospital? A room she did not know? Why?

She licked her lips and tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry. Her tongue tasted like a piece of old blanket. Her body ached as if she had been involved in a fight, and yet she could not remember anything like that. In fact, the last thing she could remember was standing in Hamilton Rand’s laboratory. He had said something. She had argued. She struggled to remember what it had been about, but it eluded her.

She moved slightly. She was lying on something soft. If she had not ached so much, it would have been comfortable.

She opened her eyes again, narrowly. It was less bright. She took a deep breath and made herself focus. She was lying on a bed with carved wooden bedposts at the foot. She was in a small room with dark, reddish-pink wallpaper. The ceiling was low. Bright sunlight came in through the small, latticed window, falling in a pool around her. It looked like a cottage bedroom.

She sat up slowly. Nothing impeded her, no ropes or ties. She had a sudden memory of the smell of ether. It had been over her face. That was what had happened to her! Rand had put ether over her nose and mouth. Now the sense of panic returned of a wild moment when she could not get her breath. She was choking, trying not to take in the fumes. Then darkness.

This was not good enough. Slowly she put her legs over the side of the bed and then stood up. She was still a little dizzy, her head hurt, and her stomach was queasy, but she was not injured. She walked with increasing firmness over to the window. It was low, a cottage window as if under the eaves. She peered out. She was right: the roof was thatched; she could see the ends of straw poking out at the upper edge of the window – old straw, dark and slowly pulling apart.

She looked down. She was one floor above the ground. There was an unkempt garden below her; the flowers gone wild, self-seeded all over the place. Beyond was what seemed to be an orchard of apple and pear trees heavy with fruit. Something disturbed a flight of birds, sending them soaring up into the air. A man was passing through the long grass. He was tall, long-legged, and he carried a shotgun casually over his shoulder.

Where on earth was she?

She racked her brain to remember what had happened before the ether was put on her face. She seemed unhurt, and she was still wearing her usual blue-grey nursing dress and white apron. She touched her hair. It was a mess, half-unravelled from its pins. Then she realised that her arms were tender. She rolled up her sleeves and saw the bruises beginning to show. She had struggled.

With whom? Magnus Rand? Surely not the man with the gun, who had now disappeared into the orchard.

She was fully dressed except for her shoes. There was nothing else in the room that belonged to her. She walked over to the door and touched the handle. It barely moved. It was stuck. She rattled it until common sense told her it was locked.

‘Where are you?’ she shouted. ‘Let me out of here!’

There was no answer. She strained her ears to hear if there were any movement below her, or beyond the door.

Perhaps it was stupid calling. If they wanted her to be free, they would not have locked the door. And the window – that was latched too.

Who was it? Where had she been before the ether? What was she doing? Helping Magnus with Bryson Radnor. Radnor had been very weak and tired but unable to sleep. Ill-tempered, but then he often was. He was frightened. She could not blame him for that. He had made no terms with death. It was not uncommon. He was not old, little over sixty.

Then what had happened? Was she kidnapped, or was she just moved out of the way? For ransom? Revenge? What?

‘Let me out of here!’ she shouted again, her voice louder, higher pitched. She could hear the rising panic in it.

The door opened almost immediately and a man stood on the other side. It was Hamilton Rand, his long, scholarly face showing only slight disapproval.

‘You are making an unnecessary noise, Mrs Monk,’ he said irritably. ‘Pull yourself together and get ready to do your job. You look somewhat disorderly. I shall provide you with a comb and a looking-glass. Tidiness gives a patient confidence in you.’

‘Really?’ she said sarcastically. ‘And being rendered unconscious by force, and brought here against one’s will and then locked in a strange room – is that intended to give confidence also?’

‘There is nothing strange about the room,’ he replied levelly. ‘It is quite pleasant and perfectly ordinary. It is clean, and you will keep it so. As for the unconscious part, you brought that upon yourself. Had you kept your duty in mind rather than your personal comfort, you would have come willingly. It is your duty not only to your patient, but to medicine itself. It disappoints me that it is necessary to remind you of this.’

She started to protest.

‘As for your confidence in me, Mrs Monk,’ he snapped, ‘that you apparently lack it is disappointing, but irrelevant. None of this is about you. It is about the survival of Bryson Radnor, and a discovery in medicine that will save tens of thousands of lives.’ His face was bleak. ‘Now please stop behaving like a child and prepare yourself to care for your patient.’

‘Who is caring for him now?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t even know where we are, or how long we have been here.’

‘Where you are is also irrelevant,’ he dismissed the subject. ‘We have been here a little over an hour. It is however, far longer than that since we left the hospital, and your skills are needed. Control your pettishness, tidy your appearance, and come to attend him. I shall wait for you.’

‘I shall come. You should not leave him alone,’ she replied. ‘If he is ill, he will have little care for my appearance.’

His eyes flared in a moment’s temper.

‘You will do as you are told, Mrs Monk. Let that be understood from the outset. I do not wish to treat you like a prisoner who must be bribed to behave well, and punished if you do not. But do not delude yourself that I won’t, should you make it necessary.’

‘Give me the comb. I can manage without the looking-glass,’ she responded. She could think of no arguments he might listen to at the moment.

He pulled a small comb out of his pocket and handed it to her. He also appeared to consider speaking, and then changed his mind.

She pulled the remaining pins out of her hair, ran the comb through it, then expertly recoiled it and replaced the pins. She handed him back the comb.

He took it without comment. ‘Miss Radnor is with him,’ he told her as he turned to lead the way across the landing and down a very narrow staircase to the ground floor. ‘She is adequate, and diligent, but she has neither your experience nor your skills. You are a very good nurse, Mrs Monk, far too good to indulge your own temperament at the expense of a patient. I will overlook it on this occasion. We have a great deal of work to do. This could be the greatest leap forward in medicine since Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood.’

Without thinking she answered immediately. ‘Since ether,’ she argued. ‘The ability to operate while a patient is unaware of it makes all kinds of things possible that were not before. The next thing we need is to stop infection.’

A look of surprise and indeed faint satisfaction crossed his face, as if he were pleased at her knowledge. ‘The infection is irrelevant when the patient has died from blood loss,’ he retorted. ‘And no operation is going to cure the white blood disease. But I am glad you are interested in such things.’ The anger was gone from his voice and the enthusiasm was there again. ‘You cannot help yourself, Mrs Monk. You are going to participate in one of the great moments in medicine, a discovery that will save lives when the soldiers and statesmen of the world are forgotten. Come!’ He waved his hand forward impatiently, urging her to keep up with him.