Chapter Fifteen 1902 #4
It had been seven years since she’d discovered Missy’s skull in the drawer of Ralph’s cupboard.
Seven years since she’d observed no sign of injury on the piece of bone her husband had cut away.
Then she’d fallen pregnant twice, with an empty year in between, and then Arthur had come along to change everything.
Soon after that Ralph had hit her for the first time, and since then she’d walked a daily tightrope between love and fear, joy and pain.
There’d been little room to think of anything else.
Her letters to Albert Mackie had concerned Arthur’s health and her own, and nothing more about medical consent or vivisection.
But she decided to write again now, and ask him to relay anything he heard regarding a complaint to the General Medical Council about her husband, concerning a patient named Miss Breton.
Arthur had Ralph’s blue eyes, and light-brown hair that turned almost coppery in the sun – Theo knew from one of the portraits at Hallewell that it had come from her own father.
From her he’d inherited skin that freckled over the nose.
I see little enough of myself in him, Ralph said once, drunk, and only half joking. Are you quite certain he’s mine?
He was small for his four years, but not abnormally so, and despite his slightness and pallor he seemed robust – Theo could count on the fingers of one hand the number of coughs and colds he’d caught.
He was quiet and biddable, and Theo wished he had a brother or sister to play with; an ally by his side should anything ever happen to her.
She dreaded for him the loneliness of her own childhood.
But every time she thought she might be carrying another child, it turned out she was not.
Arthur had a good friend in Percy Abbott, however.
Hermione’s youngest boy was a cheerful sort, with intensely carroty hair.
He and Arthur were the same age, and similar in temperament, and had become friends at the instant of their meeting, in the way very young children often do.
Whenever the Abbotts came to visit, or Theo took Arthur to visit them, the two little boys would disappear at once, and be found later in a den in the linen press, or under a bed, or up on the gallery of the library.
They liked beetles, and marbles, and Snakes and Ladders.
It filled Theo’s heart to bursting. For her, a visit to the Abbotts’ home was a welcome respite from Tout Hill House.
There, she could speak without fear of an unforeseen reaction. There, she could breathe.
Hermione knew about Ralph’s mistresses, but she knew nothing of his violence.
Nobody did. Theo wouldn’t have told her even if she hadn’t feared Ralph’s reaction to such indiscretion.
Their marriage was her own private hell, and she had no wish to drag the Abbotts into it.
To embarrass them, or have them pity her.
Hermione caught glimpses of Ralph and his lady friends around town.
She heard whispers. The cat-faced woman Theo had seen was called Evelyn Duchamp, whom Ralph had met in secret for several years.
Now she was gone, and it was Clare Fitzherbert who kept him out late.
Theo had seen her, too – willowy, pale, and golden-haired.
Younger than Theo. A lot like Theo, in fact – as she had been when they’d wed.
Ralph had treated Clare for melancholia, too.
Theo didn’t want to know anything else about her, though.
She was neither jealous, nor angry, nor curious. She was nothing.
‘I’m certain he loves you, in spite of it,’ Hermione said on one occasion, mistakenly thinking that what Theo wanted was to be loved by her husband. All she wanted, in fact, was to be left alone. ‘Some men are simply . . .’ She threw up her hands, at a loss.
Theo was standing by the brass cage in which a pair of African finches perched, cocking their heads, examining her with eyes like jet beads.
Ralph had bought the birds for her after breaking two of her ribs.
There was often a present to go with his apology – bottles of scent, a silk shawl, new stockings.
He’d soon changed his mind about the finches, though, offended by the smell of their cage.
Theo had gifted them to Beryl, the eldest Abbott girl.
‘Some men are what, Hermione?’ She turned with a sad smile for her friend, whose expression was dismayed. ‘And why should he love me? I do not love him.’
‘Theo!’
‘But it’s the truth. I never did, no matter how I tried. So I can hardly object if he seeks affection elsewhere.’
‘Would he object if you did?’ Hermione said.
Theo didn’t answer. What Ralph might do if he caught her in a betrayal – any betrayal – was too terrible to imagine. She felt sorry for Hermione, having to cast about for something encouraging to say.
‘I have Arthur,’ she said. ‘He is all I need.’
And all the while she was expected to entertain various Shaftesbury notables, and visiting surgeons, and neighbours, and the Fortescues; to smile and be polite and find things to say – just enough to be sociable; never enough to give herself away, or betray their fiction for what it was.
In company, Ralph was gentle and solicitous towards her; he was an affable and generous host, and put people at their ease, while Theo laboured beneath Fortescue’s cold, contemptuous stare.
The older doctor gave the impression that he knew everything, and detested her all the more for it.
Some weeks later, she had a letter from Dr Mackie. She put Arthur down for a nap before opening it, and checked from an upstairs window that there was no sign of Ralph returning.
My dear Mrs Anscombe,
Miss Breton’s brother has received short shrift from the General Medical Council – which, alas, I was not at all surprised to hear. He now plans to take his case to the police, and will endeavour to bring charges of manslaughter against your husband. I am certain he will fail in this, too.
If a surgeon deemed an operation necessary to the preservation of life, and in addition was granted permission by the patient to proceed, then there is little cause for any such complaint to progress – the police, sadly, can have no opinion as to whether or not the operation was appropriate.
I suppose the very fact of Mr Breton’s sister being able to give her consent supports his testimony that when he saw her the evening prior to her operation, she was not suffering from pain or confusion.
Dr Anscombe’s assertion that she’d been all but insensible by the morning, following a precipitous deterioration during the night, rings false.
However, at the time of the operation Dr Anscombe had no knowledge of the existence of any relatives.
Had she deteriorated badly – which, though unlikely, is not impossible – he would have given no thought to seeking further permission before proceeding.
The post-mortem examination found the cause of death to be a clot of blood upon the brain, though whether the cause of it was the original injury or the subsequent treatment, it is impossible to tell.
I am certain the police will not touch it, and I can think of no other way in which Mr Breton might proceed.
I understand why this case has upset you, Mrs Anscombe. The similarities are marked. More is the pity, then, that similarities between two cases do not prove a pattern of behaviour. In truth, I am not sure how such a pattern might ever be proved. I will write again if I hear more.
I remain, at your service,
Dr. Albert M. Mackie
Theo sat rigid. She re-read the letter then got up and paced, trying to think it through. Because it was not about herself, or about Miss Breton or her brother; really, it was not even about Ralph or Missy. It was about Kit.
Time passed and she couldn’t unpick it. She began a reply to Albert: You mentioned to me some time ago that an expert in bones might be able to tell from a skull whether a head wound had been lethal or not.
Are you acquainted with such an expert, Dr Mackie?
She broke off, fingers aching because she’d been clenching the pen too hard.
I do begin to see a pattern, most terribly perturbing.
We have touched upon this before. It is a pattern of people with nobody to speak for them – paupers and widows, those alone in the world – being persuaded or coerced into surgical operations that they do not truly need.
Operations mortally dangerous to them, that do more to advance the skill and reputation of the surgeon than their own well-being.
But surely the needs and rights of the individual must outweigh, in every case, the needs and demands of medicine itself?
As soon as she’d written it, Theo was struck by the certainty that there must have been others, down the years.
Not just Missy, not just Miss Breton, but other poor people, other elderly people, other people who would not be missed.
Mortuus Est. Something hardened inside her.
Yet she still didn’t know what to do. Ralph had saved lives, undoubtedly.
But what if those had been at the expense of others?
She couldn’t remain silent, but she couldn’t denounce her husband.
The very thought turned her blood to water.
It would be an unforgivable betrayal if her suspicions, let alone a campaign of any kind, were ever discovered; no matter that he had betrayed her first.
But she did not want Mr Breton brushed aside and silenced, the way she herself had been. She wanted to help him.
Audrey knocked at her door.
‘Miss? Are you resting? It’s almost time to wake Arthur – shall I? And Mrs Meredith wants to know whether you want raspberries or dried coconut on—’
Theo couldn’t keep it in any longer. ‘Oh, Audrey! I don’t know what to do!’
Audrey tried to sit her down. ‘Shh, now – do about what?’