“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 newie 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.
Maya nodded, smiling a little, and withdrew quietly before either of the two could notice her. There was plenty of work for her to catch up on in the rest of the clinic The washerwoman’s evaluation was confirmed for her an hour later, when the head nurse of the Fleet brought her a much-needed cup of tea after a round of sick and injured children had passed through her hands. “Who is that young man Amelia brought in?” Sarah asked, eyes dancing with suppressed laughter. “He’s a bit above us, isn’t he?”
Maya sat down on the stool in the examination cubicle and cradled the mug in both hands. “Hmm—not in income, seeing as his employer tried to discharge him with a pack of dogs, then told everyone who would listen that he was mad,” Maya temporized. “Amelia and I thought we’d get him out of harm’s way—just in case. There’s no way to trace him here, so I don’t think you need to worry about him. We—and Doctor Reilly—made certain of that.”