The homecoming, p.28
The Homecoming, page 28
‘And who are you?’ The woman looked at Danny.
‘I’m representing the chairman of the board of trustees. We like to make sure everything is running smoothly so we are looking into mortality rates at the hospital.’
Charlie didn’t think the woman entirely believed him.
She thanked the woman for her information, expressed her condolences again and the two returned to the cottage where Netty had managed to prepare a stew.
‘Young Johnny shot a ’roo for the hospital,’ Netty said. ‘The patients will be glad of a change from cabbage. What did you find out?’
Charlie swallowed. She was reluctant to voice the thoughts that had been churning in her mind.
‘There is a killer in the hospital,’ Danny said, voicing the conclusion she had reached.
‘Danny!’ Netty gasped.
‘We think there is a killer at the hospital.’ He modified his statement.
‘I don’t want to believe it,’ Charlie said, ‘but I think you’re right. I know of a case when I was working in London. A hospital wardsman. He was guilty of at least three deaths before he took his own life.’
‘How did they catch him?’ Danny asked.
‘A doctor walked in and came across him with a pillow over the patient’s face. He ran out and jumped from the roof of the hospital. It was all hushed up but word gets around.’
‘Why did he do it?’
‘Before he jumped he told the doctor he was ending their suffering but he didn’t live to say any more.’
Danny considered his reply. ‘Charlie, you need to check who was on duty the night of those deaths. I am betting it was Keegan and Becker.’
‘I’ve already checked,’ Charlie said, hating the thought that a nurse could kill. ‘One night it was Becker, the other it was Roberts, but both nights it was Keegan. If Janet Becker knew, or suspected, her colleague of involvement with the deaths, could she have tried a little blackmail and ended up dead herself?’
Everyone was silent for a long, long moment.
‘You think it’s Mary Keegan?’ Netty voiced the question nobody wanted to ask.
Charlie glanced at Danny, who shrugged.
‘What we think and what we can prove are two entirely different things,’ Danny said. ‘It could just as easily be Alf or Doctor Linacre or a complete stranger. We don’t know if it was a man or a woman. Whoever it is, we have only a few days to provide a plausible reason why it isn’t Joe. Ideally we might have to do something to draw them out. I just don’t know what.’
A frantic knocking at the door made them all start. Charlie answered the door to a lad of about fifteen.
‘They said at the hospital that the midwife would be here. We need help. Nico’s wife is having a baby and it is not going well. They sent for you.’
‘Nico?’ Charlie had to think. ‘Oh, Nico Alberti from the Italian settlement?’
The boy nodded and Charlie took a breath. In normal times the Italian settlement of Wildman’s Point was easily accessible but now …
‘How are we to get there? The bridges are out.’
‘There’s one bridge just downstream of the railway station. It’s damaged but if we’re careful we can get across,’ the boy said. ‘That’s how I came. The track is out in places but I know the way and I can guide you.’
‘Take one of my horses,’ Amos said. ‘The lad managed to rescue a few saddles and bridles.’
‘I’ll go with you,’ Danny said.
‘Why?’ Charlie said. ‘You’re not going to be any use to me.’
‘He’s being a gentleman, Charlie. Be gracious,’ Netty said.
‘I don’t need protection,’ Charlie mumbled. She reached for her coat. ‘But I’ve no time to argue. If you’re coming, I’m leaving now. I just have to collect my bag from the hospital. You can make yourself useful and organise the horses.’
At the hospital she found Lily Roberts in the kitchen making cocoa for one of the patients who was having trouble sleeping. Mary Keegan sat at the table writing up notes.
‘How’s Martha tonight?’ Charlie asked.
Keegan looked up. ‘Still with us.’
Something prickled at the back of Charlie’s neck as she looked into the woman’s eyes. Could Mary Keegan be behind the deaths? She glanced at the hooks beside the door but there was no long black coat, just the nurse’s rain slickers. Admittedly they were long and black but they made a noise when you moved in them. Martha had said nothing about noise.
‘Where are you off to?’ Mary asked.
‘Italian settlement,’ Charlie said. ‘Nico Alberti’s wife is in labour and having trouble.’
Keegan smiled, a nasty humourless smile. ‘That will disappoint Sister Campbell.’
Charlie didn’t have time to inquire as to why it would disappoint Margaret but she already had a suspicion that Margaret Campbell had something of a tendresse for the handsome young Italian.
Forty
With her bag properly stocked, Charlie pulled her heavy oilskin on and ran out into the dark where Danny and the boy from the Italian settlement, who gave his name as Alfredo, waited with a chestnut and the sturdy mare she had ridden up to Pretty Sally. The boy went ahead, holding up a lantern. It was tortuously slow going, as the horses struggled to find firm footing on the slippery, ruined tracks.
The bridge the boy had mentioned was little more than a few wooden planks with no guardrail. They had to dismount and slowly lead the horses across while the angry creek roiled below them. Even the little creeklets that ambled gently down the slopes into Maiden’s Creek had turned into raging torrents that had to be traversed.
Danny suggested they use the tramway that had been cut into the slope above them to facilitate the transport of wood into the mines. Alfredo shook his head.
‘We thought of that, but it’s been washed away in a few places. This is the safest path.’
It took nearly two hours to reach Wildman’s Point.
Alfredo let out a whoop as they approached the settlement. Nico Alberti ran out of his cottage to help Charlie from her mount. She shooed everyone from the house with instructions to Danny to keep Nico out of the way, and slammed the door on the world.
Maria was in considerable distress and exhausted. Her mother had done her best but Maria had still not fully dilated. The woman really needed a doctor’s skill but all she had was Charlie and Charlie had to do the best she could.
She shut her mind to all other concerns and applied herself to the problem presenting to her.
‘She is very bossy, that one,’ Nico said as he ushered Danny into a neighbouring cottage.
‘She is also very good at what she does,’ Danny said. ‘Your wife is in good hands. Your first?’
Nico nodded. ‘Is it always like this?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
Nico found a bottle and poured them both a tin cup of what smelled like some sort of distilled spirit. ‘You’re not married?’ he said, handing Danny the cup.
‘No.’
Nico grinned. ‘No nice girls in Melbourne?’
Danny took a mouthful of the drink and nearly choked. It burned the back of his throat.
‘My brother’s grappa. He sends me a crate every year.’
Danny coughed. ‘Strong stuff.’
Nico shrugged. ‘You get used to it.’
‘How long have you been married?’ Danny asked.
‘Maria and I were wed just after Christmas.’ A sly smile crept over Nico’s face. ‘It was something of an urgent matter. Her father was not best pleased with me but these things happen, do they not?’
Danny wondered if the wedding had involved an actual shotgun.
‘And are you happy?’
Nico shrugged. ‘She is a nice girl and a good housekeeper and she will be a good mother. I have no complaints.’
Evidently love didn’t enter the marriage equation.
Nico grinned. ‘The nurse who came with you. She is the matron of the hospital?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘She is too pretty to be a matron. Are you … and she …?’
Danny took a sizeable swig of the grappa to cover his embarrassment. ‘Ah … no … just a friend.’
‘Sure, sure,’ Nico said.
‘I recall you saying you were a patient at the hospital recently,’ Danny said, changing the subject.
‘Ah yes, at Easter. An accident with a saw. The doctor there sewed me up.’ He flexed his fingers. ‘I have days when the hand doesn’t work so well but I manage.’
‘Were you well looked after?’
‘Very well looked after.’ The leer in his smile prompted the heckles to rise on Danny’s neck.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It is a lonely life to be away from home,’ Nico said. ‘And one of the nurses was particularly kind to me.’
Danny swallowed another couple of mouthfuls of grappa. It improved on acquaintance.
‘Any nurse in particular?’ he asked, against his better judgment.
Nico shook his head. ‘I would not want to get anyone into trouble with your matron,’ he said, ‘but we enjoyed a kiss and a laugh, nothing more.’
‘You’re a married man with a pregnant wife,’ Danny said.
Nico shrugged. ‘It was all in good sport,’ he said. ‘I meant nothing by it.’
Just a kiss and a laugh? Danny wondered if the nurse had felt the same way.
He changed the subject. ‘Nico, did anyone die while you were at the hospital?’
Nico’s eyes widened. ‘My father used to say that you only went to hospital to die.’
‘So someone did?’
‘It was a young boy. Diphtheria, I heard them say.’ He crossed himself.
‘Do you remember the night he died?’
Nico shrugged. ‘Not really.’
‘No strange visitors to the ward? In the night.’
‘In the middle of the night? No. Why do you ask?’
Danny shook his head. ‘I’m doing a survey on causes of death at the hospital, that is all.’
‘The boy died. That is it.’
He stiffened as a thin wail cut through the silent night. A baby.
Nico jumped to his feet and ran out into the dark. Danny followed.
Charlie stood by the fire, jiggling a wrapped bundle in her arms. She looked up as Nico threw open the door to the cottage and in that brief unguarded moment, Danny saw the wonder in her face, bathed gold by the fire, as she looked down at the baby in her arms.
‘You have a son,’ she said, handing the bundle to the new father. ‘I must see to your wife.’ She paused. ‘Aren’t you going to ask how she is?’
Nico looked up from his infant. ‘My wife? Is she all right?’
‘She is a bit sore and sorry for herself. I had to use forceps to persuade your boy into the world. Does he have a name?’
‘Luigi, after my father,’ Nico said without hesitation.
‘I’ll see Mrs Alberti settled and then we should be on our way.’
‘It is late and it is not safe for you to go back,’ Nico said. ‘We can find beds for you both here and you can leave at daybreak.
Charlie and Danny exchanged glances. The ride from Maiden’s Creek earlier in the night had been difficult and it would be worse now that they were both tired. There was some sense to Nico’s suggestion.
‘As long as we’re away at first light,’ Charlie said. ‘The hospital is shorthanded enough without me going missing.’
‘Mary Keegan knew where you were going,’ Danny said. ‘She seems quite capable.’
‘You will stay with my grandmother tonight,’ Nico said, handing the baby to his wife’s mother.
Nico escorted them to a little cottage on the outskirts of the settlement occupied by an elderly lady who greeted them both like long-lost friends with hugs and kisses and effusive outpourings in Italian.
‘She says she owes you Maria’s life and her home is your home,’ Nico translated.
‘Very kind,’ Charlie said.
Danny thanked her in his basic Italian, which provoked a stream of colloquial conversation between the woman and Nico.
Signora Alberti plied them with food—the best meal either had eaten in days—and made up rough beds for them, Charlie in the curtained-off area that held the old lady’s bed and Danny beside the fire.
The old lady retired to her bed, but Danny and Charlie remained sitting by the fire, fortified by more of the grappa.
‘That’s strong,’ Charlie said after her first mouthful.
‘It grows on you,’ Danny said.
Charlie lapsed into silence, scowling into the fire as she sipped the grappa.
‘Tell,’ he said.
‘Tell what?’ She looked up at him.
‘Whatever it is that is bothering you. Are you worried about the baby?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Mother and baby are both fine.’
‘Then what?’
‘I have little time for wandering husbands,’ Charlie said.
‘Are we talking about Nico or someone else?’
‘What do you mean, someone else? Of course I mean Nico,’ she snapped. ‘His wife told me they only married because he got her pregnant and since then it has been a succession of girls, all through her pregnancy.’
‘Including one of the nurses at the hospital,’ Danny said.
‘I suspected as much. In fairness I don’t think she knew he was married and I doubt it went much beyond flirting.’
Danny eliminated Janet Becker and Mary Keegan from the flirtation. Lily Roberts or … ‘Margaret?’
Charlie jerked a shoulder. ‘It doesn’t matter. Nothing would have come of it anyway.’
He looked at her. ‘This is more than just Nico. It’s personal, isn’t it?’
‘What makes you think that?’ Charlie studied the grappa in her cup.
‘Fitzgerald?’
Charlie looked up and Danny knew he had hit a nerve.
She drained her cup and held it out for more.
‘He wasn’t married when we first … first …’ She trailed off. ‘I don’t want you thinking the worst of me, Danny.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘There was more to what happened between myself and William Fitzgerald than I have told you … or told anyone. I could say he seduced me, but that would be untrue. Blame my upbringing, my mad mother … whatever, but I fancied myself in love with the bastard. I stupidly thought he would marry me, and then one of the other nurses pointed out the engagement announcement in the paper. When I challenged him, he laughed and said it was a marriage of convenience, and there was no reason not to continue our relationship. I said I wanted nothing more to do with him and he turned nasty. He could have destroyed my reputation personally and professionally so I thought it might be judicious to leave Melbourne for a while. I didn’t expect him to want to just pick up when I returned but he found out I was back, and working at the Women’s Hospital, and I started receiving letters and gifts.’
A knot of anger and frustration boiled in Danny’s chest. He’d had the measure of Fitzgerald from the first time they had met at the Club. It came as no surprise that the man was a habitué of Madam Brussels … or Nell’s Tavern. Like Nico Alberti, he thought of marriage vows as merely an inconvenience.
‘You are a man,’ Charlie said. ‘I don’t expect you to understand, but all Fitzgerald has to do is start a rumour that I am in some way a loose woman and I lose everything.’ Her voice cracked.
Danny recalled the brief conversation he’d had with Fitzgerald and the tone he had taken when speaking of Charlie. Now it all made sense and the urge to smash a fist into the man’s smug face redoubled.
‘Charlie …’ he began but didn’t know what to say, how to make it right. ‘You’re right. He is a bastard.’
She had confided in him, perhaps now was the time to confide in her.
‘I told you about my father … my real father. He was like Fitzgerald.… He seduced my mother, left her pregnant, and disappeared.’
Charlie stared at him. ‘But your mother … Adelaide … Adelaide is a lady, not like me. I’m nothing … a nobody.’
Danny stared at her. ‘Don’t you dare say that about yourself! Yes, my mother came from wealth but the effect was still the same. She and Netty ran away … as far away as they could go. For all my young life, she told me my father was a gallant sea captain lost at sea. She lied to me. The reality was he was a wastrel who cared only for our fortune and nothing for either her or me.’
He had said it … the words that had been churning in his chest since he had arrived in Maiden’s Creek.
‘I’m sorry.’ Charlie reached for his hand, curling her fingers around his.
‘But for all of that, it is her lies I remember, not Richard Barnwell’s attempt to take me from her.’
‘That’s unfair,’ Charlie said, and she squeezed his hand so hard the bones grated. ‘In protecting herself she was protecting you. What life would either of you had if she hadn’t woven a story for you both?’
Danny had no response, except an acknowledgment that Charlie was right.
‘It is always the woman who gets blamed,’ Charlie said. ‘Your mother, the young girl at the hospital … Martha Mackie … like …’ She released his hand and pulled her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arms around them. ‘Like me,’ she said in a very small voice.
She had loosed her hair and secured it in a rough knot in the nape of her neck, but long locks of dark hair escaped in tendrils. The fire added a glow to her face and she looked like the beautiful young woman she was, not the stiff and proper matron in her starched uniform.
‘Charlie …’ Even to his own ears, his voice sounded husky. The grappa, he thought, and he coughed. ‘Charlie …’ he said, trying again.
She looked up at him. Her eyes were dark pools, her lips slightly parted, and he wondered what it would be like to kiss those lips, hold her slight body in his arms. Beneath the starched uniform and the walls she had built around herself, she was still a woman, and a desirable woman.
‘Danny?’
‘You deserve better than the William Fitzgeralds of the world.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t. Danny, our roads are set when we are born.’
