Let the Dead Keep Their Secrets Read online

  CHAPTER 19

  Ethel Sorensen was still alive when Dr. Peter Worthington arrived twenty minutes after being located and told of her plight. The sun had been up for an hour, but the sky was overcast and the temperature wintry cold. He’d come only a short few blocks from the patient with whom he’d spent most of the night, but there hadn’t been time for bricks to be heated and put into his carriage. His fingers were icy and his feet numb.

  “I don’t know what happened, Doctor,” Aaron Sorensen told him. “I’ve been out of town on business, and when I came home yesterday, Ethel was fine. Tired, of course. She told me to dismiss her maid, so I helped her to bed myself. I sat beside her and we talked until she fell asleep. My room adjoins hers, but I’m sure she didn’t call out. I would have heard her.”

  “I’ll go right up. Is there someone with her now?” The husband looked distraught and smelled of brandy, not at all uncommon under the circumstances.

  “Our housekeeper, Mrs. Hopkins. I don’t think she’s left my wife’s side since her maid found her and ran for help.”

  “What time was that, Mr. Sorensen?”

  “Not more than an hour ago.”

  “Try to have some breakfast, especially coffee. I’ll send word down as soon as I’ve examined Mrs. Sorensen and can ascertain her condition.” Worthington glanced over his shoulder once as he climbed the stairs to the second floor. The foyer was empty.

  He knocked softly on the bedroom door, outside of which a basket of fresh linen sat waiting to be used. The woman who greeted him had the competent air of an experienced housekeeper, one who long ago learned to deal with all sorts of situations. She met him at the foot of the patient’s bed, introduced herself in a voice lowered to a whisper, and assured him that anything he asked for could be made available. Then she stood back, and he had his first unobstructed view of Ethel Sorensen.

  She lay motionless beneath coverlets, which hardly moved with the barely discernible rise and fall of her breathing. The smell of blood was strong in the room, though the stained linens had been removed and a candle lit to purify the air. Even before he touched her, Peter Worthington knew her skin would be cold from the shock of blood loss. A small blanket-wrapped body lay in its cradle beside the bed. The tiny face had been left exposed after the child had been washed. He wondered whether the mother had been conscious then, and if it was to spare her feelings that the swaddling was that of a live child. Covering the face sometimes brought on paroxysms of grief.

  “I found the child half delivered,” Mrs. Hopkins said. “He slid out very easily, but he was dead, of course. She was still bleeding heavily. We packed her as best we could with clean linens.” She twitched back the towel covering the basin she held out for the doctor’s inspection. The torn placenta had left Ethel’s body at almost the same moment as her dead child.

  “Was she ever conscious?”

  “Very briefly.” She pointed to the tonic bottle on the bedside table. “Mrs. Sorensen occasionally took a few drops in the evening to help her sleep. I fear that last night she may have awakened and taken more than she should have. Not realizing what she was doing.”

  “Will you uncover her, please?” He took off his coat and rolled up the sleeves of his spotless white shirt. “I’d like to examine her.”

  Mrs. Hopkins on one side of the bed, Dr. Worthington on the other, they rolled Ethel’s linens as gently off her body as they could. Thick pads of folded sheets had been placed under her hips and between her legs. The top layers were soaked through with bright red blood.

  “Leave them for the moment,” Dr. Worthington ordered. He lifted the patient’s eyelids, listened to her heart and lungs, counted her feeble pulse and palpated her abdomen.

  Mrs. Hopkins watched his every movement, white-faced and tight-lipped with the effort of staying strong while the young woman who had been such a good mistress lay dying before her. Nothing to be done. When a mother bled this much and still bled after the child left her body, it was next to certain that she wouldn’t leave her bed alive. The housekeeper took the small mirror from the dressing table and stood with it in her hands, waiting.

  “I’ll go downstairs and tell Mr. Sorensen that we fear the worst. You can change the saturated linens and replace the covers, but try not to disturb her too much.” Worthington refastened his cuffs and put on his coat. “There isn’t much time left. Her husband will want to sit beside her.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t the first time Bartholomew Monroe had been called in while a new mother lay dying, her deceased infant already washed and prepared for burial. When the child was not to be embalmed, a postmortem photographer had to move quickly. Fortunately, Mr. Sorensen had been pleased with the work done of his first wife and had had the foresight to contact the studio as his second wife’s accouchement approached. A woman’s first infant rarely came when expected. Early or late, but almost never on the date predicted.

  “The doctor has informed me that Mrs. Sorensen will not last the day. She has lapsed into a coma.” Aaron’s eyes were red with grief and unshed tears, his voice thickened with brandy.

  “My heartfelt condolences, sir. How tragic to lose two soul mates and not to have a living child by which to remember either of them. My sister and I will do our best to ensure that you will always have an image of their dear faces to console you.”

  “If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to them.”

  “The doctor is still here?”

  “I’ve persuaded him to rest for an hour in the library. My housekeeper is at my wife’s side. Her name is Mrs. Hopkins.”

  “I think we shall send Mrs. Hopkins down to the kitchen for a restorative cup of tea,” Monroe said. “My sister’s presence will preserve the proprieties, and if your dear lady should stir, we’ll alert you immediately. Perhaps your butler can send a footman out to the carriage for our cases. He can leave them in the hallway outside Mrs. Sorensen’s bedroom. We’ll bring in only what’s absolutely necessary.”

  * * *

  “Doctor Worthington thinks she won’t see another sunrise,” Mrs. Hopkins said as she stirred sugar into her tea, “but I think there’s a chance he might be wrong. Her breathing is stronger and steadier and the bleeding has stopped.”

  “How do you know that?” Cook spread newly churned butter on thick slices of this morning’s fresh loaves.

  “I looked, didn’t I?”

  “What did the doctor say to that?”

  “He wasn’t there. Mr. Sorensen insisted he go take a nap in the library. He’s been up all night, poor man.”

  “What could have happened to her to make everything go so wrong?”

  “Laudanum. I told the doctor that she sometimes took a few drops of that expectant mother’s tonic after dinner or when she went to bed. And that we think she must have waked up and dosed herself again, but being half asleep, she took too much.”

  “Have you ever heard of such a thing?” Cook filled the teapot with fresh leaves and more boiling water from the kettle. She brought her cup and saucer to the table and sat down heavily. Her feet seemed to be always hurting nowadays.

  “I’ve never touched a drop of the stuff myself,” Mrs. Hopkins said. “And I won’t, either. There’s too many has come to grief over it.”

  “How much would it take to make the babe get stuck half in and half out like that?” Cook asked. She liked to know the precise measurements for everything.

  “She might have taken a couple of spoonfuls instead of a few drops,” Mrs. Hopkins speculated. “There was a teaspoon in a glass by the bottle.”

  “And how much was left in the bottle?”

  “Mr. Sorensen took it away as soon as he came into the room. He put it in his pocket.”

  “I suppose he couldn’t bear the sight of it, knowing the damage that had been done.”

  “I can’t help but think that if that lady’s companion hadn’t left after only a few days, there might have been someone here to watch over poor Mrs. Sorensen and make sure an ac
cident like this couldn’t happen.”

  “Do we know how to get in touch with her? To let her know?”

  “Perhaps there’s an address in Mrs. Sorensen’s letter book, but I don’t think she wanted Mr. Sorensen to know she’d hired a companion. It might have seemed as though she were reproaching him for neglecting her.”

  “Have another cup of tea, Mrs. Hopkins,” Cook urged. “You’re going to need it before the day’s out.”

  * * *

  “She looks so peaceful,” Felicia Monroe said. “As though she’s already passed over into a better place.” She’d found that when death was this close, it sometimes helped the survivors to speak of it as though it had already happened.

  Aaron Sorensen held her hand mirror under his wife’s nostrils. The glass fogged, cleared, fogged again.

  Felicia thought she detected the slightest expression of annoyance flit across his face. She stored away her impression until she could mention it to Bartholomew.

  “If you would step outside for just a moment,” Sorensen said.

  “Of course,” Felicia answered. She motioned to Bartholomew, who was consulting the exposure chart he already knew by heart. Until they opened the curtain, the room would remain dim. She thought Mr. Sorensen wanted to be alone for a few moments with his dying wife and dead son, perhaps hold the infant in his arms with no one to witness the tears of a father’s heart.

  The door opened moments later and Sorensen brushed past them, head down, one hand in the pocket of his jacket. Clutching a handkerchief, Felicia thought.

  “Laudanum,” Bartholomew said when they were alone in the bedroom. “Can you smell it?”

  “I thought he smelled of brandy when we arrived.”

  “I don’t think he was the one who just swallowed a dose of laudanum.” Monroe gestured toward the figure on the bed; then he leaned over and inserted a forefinger between her lips. Held it to his nose and then to Felicia’s. “He’s helping her along.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” Felicia reminded him. “I was watching when he held the mirror to her face. He was impatient with the result. Disappointed, I thought.”

  “Lock the door.”

  They set up the camera and tripod where the exposure of the dead child lying in his cradle would have the best light. Even with the curtains open and the drapes drawn all the way back, there was not quite enough brightness to capture a good image without the use of a magnesium flash.

  “We’ll do the infant alone first,” Bartholomew decided.

  “I don’t think these clouds will dissipate,” Felicia said. “This is all the daylight we’re going to get.”

  “I’ll use the flash. We can put a drape between Mrs. Sorensen and the cradle.”

  “She’s unconscious, Bartholomew. She won’t wake up.”

  “How much is unconsciousness and how much is sleep induced by laudanum? There’s no telling how long he’s been dosing her or how much she’s been taking on her own. If she’s already susceptible to nightmares, the flash could cause her to have laudanum hallucinations.”

  “She’s too weak from loss of blood to be able to get out of bed.”

  “She can still thrash her arms and legs. I’ll use as little magnesium as possible. The drape should muffle the effect of the flash.”

  There was no arguing with him. Bartholomew Monroe was a law unto himself; his sister had learned long ago that it was best to do as he instructed.

  Felicia hung the black drape from a portable frame, then turned her attention to the motionless bundle in the cradle. The child was perfectly formed and only a little smaller than he would have been, had he been allowed to grow to term. The woman who washed him had meticulously removed every speck of birth blood and brushed his blond infant hair so it lay neatly across his scalp. The tiny hands and miniature fingers with their perfect blue-tinged nails lay curled at his sides.

  “There’s a christening gown laid out on the dresser,” Bartholomew said. “I think there’s a cap there also.”

  “I’ll dress him in those, then.”

  While Felicia eased the unnamed Sorensen boy into his christening robe and cap, Bartholomew arranged sprays of silk flowers around the cradle and spread a crocheted blanket over its sides. The child would look like he was lying in a cloud of soft wool surrounded by a grove of fragrant lilies. Such a perfect setting that in years to come the father could imagine his son to be sleeping, not dead.

  Ethel Sorensen did not stir when the magnesium flash went off. She didn’t move even when Bartholomew opened the window to allow some of the fumes to escape into the brisk March air.

  “Try the mirror,” he told his sister, standing at the foot of the bed.

  The surface of the glass clouded over.

  “Stay there,” Bartholomew commanded when Felicia took a step away from Ethel’s side. He moved the camera closer to the dying woman’s face, then disappeared under the black cloth that covered everything but the lens. Felicia heard him muttering exposure calculations. She knew what would come next.

  “Pinch her nostrils when I tell you to,” Bartholomew instructed his sister.

  Some spiritualists contended that the soul flew out of the mouth at the moment of death, and that if one believed enough and was present and engaged with the spirits at that precise instant, its passage would be visible. A cloudy substance, not unlike the ectoplasm of longer departed spirits, would take wing and sail into eternity. Perhaps not even entirely shapeless. There were those who claimed to have witnessed the phenomenon, but no one had as yet captured an authentic soul flight through the aegis of photography. It was Bartholomew Monroe’s ambition to be the first.

  Felicia told herself that what she was about to do was not really murder. Ethel Sorensen was already a dead woman; it was just a matter of when her body would surrender to the inevitable. Her breathing was shallow and erratic; she would feel nothing when it ceased altogether. She had done what Bartholomew requested before, though their opportunities had been far fewer than he had hoped. It wasn’t altogether unheard of for a supposedly dead individual to gasp his way back to life while lying in his coffin. Still.

  “Are you ready, Felicia?”

  Two or three times in the past, she hadn’t pinched hard or long enough, and Bartholomew had had to come out from under his black cloth and do the job properly. If a soul had been visible, they’d missed it, and Felicia was to blame. She was determined not to fail him this time.

  “I’m ready.”

  “On the count of three, then.” The black cloth settled over his head and shoulders. She could just make out his voice counting off the seconds left in Ethel’s earthly life. “One, two, three. Now.”

  Felicia squeezed as tightly and steadily as she could, watching Ethel’s upper torso so as not to have to see her face should it contort. The end seemed to come almost immediately. She breathed and then she did not. No gasping, no rattling, no sound like a door squeaking on rusty hinges.

  But nothing floated from between Ethel’s lips, no spectrally pale presence bade farewell to the body that had housed it. Seconds and then minutes ticked by on the clock the housekeeper had stopped when the child was taken from his mother’s body. Bartholomew had restarted it when they began their work.

  A disappointed sigh came from beneath the black cloth. The sound of the glass plate being extracted.

  “You don’t suppose the soul had already left?” Felicia asked timidly. Her fingers dropped to Ethel Sorensen’s wrist, to the blue vein that no longer pulsed.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” her brother grunted. “Life ends and the soul departs. In that order.” He opened the case where he stored and carried the glass plate negatives, inserted the plate he had just exposed. He would keep and look at it in the darkroom, just in case.

  “There’s no point leaving when we’ll have to come back again,” he said. “Go inform her husband that his wife seems to have passed away without our noticing it while we were photographing the child. I’m sure he’ll want
us to stay and photograph her as well. You might hint that we have other appointments to keep in the next few days.”

  * * *

  Aaron Sorensen agreed that it would be best to preserve his wife’s postmortem images at the same time as her child’s. He also decided that Dr. Worthington’s nap on the library sofa should not be interrupted. He could sign the death certificates when he woke up.

  A single coffin was ordered and delivered, Ethel’s washed body placed inside, the nameless infant boy cradled against her side.

  Bartholomew Monroe promised to have cartes de visite and cabinet photos delivered the next morning; the viewing would take place in the afternoon.

  Aaron left the choice of photograph to Monroe’s discretion; appropriate remembrances of the departed were what he was known for.

  * * *

  Dr. Peter Worthington woke up with a thundering headache and a mouth that tasted as though every horse-drawn hansom cab in New York City had rolled through it. He stood over Ethel Sorensen’s open coffin in bewilderment; it was the first time in all of his years practicing medicine that he hadn’t managed to stay awake at the bedside of a patient who needed him. How could he have slept away the morning and half the afternoon on the library couch and not responded to repeated attempts to rouse him? It had never happened before. Never. Yet he had no reason to doubt Aaron Sorensen’s account of his wife’s passing.

  Worthington signed Ethel Sorensen’s death certificate and attested to the stillbirth of her child. He stood beside the coffin that had been placed atop a cooling table in the large parlor and studied the new mother’s face. Calm, composed, pale beneath the paint the photographer had applied. Some heavy floral scent had been rubbed into her skin to disguise the hint of incipient decay, but there had been no embalming. The husband had adamantly refused even to consider injecting arsenic compounds into the bodies of his wife and child. They would go into the family crypt like all of their predecessors, as God intended.

  It wasn’t until Dr. Worthington was halfway home, hot bricks at his feet, wrapped in a wool blanket to ward off a chill, that he remembered that Prudence MacKenzie had come to his office to ask about the doctor and the midwife who attended the first Mrs. Sorensen. Who had also died in childbirth.