Iron and Egg White
Chapter thirty-two
Violet
The egg whites came in five minutes. Violet lifted Henry’s head and pressed the glass to his lips. Most of it ran down his chin. She tried again, tilting his head further. It was crucial for her to line his stomach with egg white to induce vomiting and to neutralize the poison.
“Drink, Henry. You must drink.”
She did not know if he could hear her but gradually, he seemed to swallow better. After he drank a third, she laid him back on the pillow and grabbed the extra basin. She fed him again. After half, he began to vomit.
“Good, Henry. Good. This is good,” her voice broke.
When he was finished emptying his stomach, she held the glass to his lips again.
He waved his hand side to side ever so slightly.
“No, you must drink it all. There’s more poison that needs to come up.
” She lifted his head and fed him the rest. He vomited.
She held the basin and told him it was good, it was working, in a voice that was half sob and half relief.
At last, she settled him with extra pillows.
When warm water arrived, she removed his shirt and placed a clean towel over his chest. She wrung out a cloth and scrubbed his face, his jaw, his neck—every place the razor and lather had touched.
She scrubbed hard, rinsing the cloth in clean water and scrubbing again until the skin was raw and clean.
She then washed his torso, cleaning vomit off his chest. She refused assistance from Mrs Greer and other maids.
He was her husband, and she would take care of him.
Shortly after, Dr Bainbridge arrived with the Duchess of Cranbrook. He was a tall man with a sharp nose and an air of authority that entered the room before he did. He set his bag on the dressing table, took one look at Henry, and pressed two fingers to his wrist.
“Pulse is rapid. Fever is high. The mottling on the arms is consistent with a constitutional poison.” He opened Henry’s eyelids and examined his pupils. “Dilated. How long has he been like this?”
“Since this morning,” Violet said. “His valet found him at eleven. He was well last evening.”
“You are certain it is arsenic?”
“I heated his shaving soap over a flame. It smelled of garlic.”
Dr Bainbridge looked at her for a long moment. “That is not a test I would have expected from a duchess.”
“My mother is a botanist.”
“Ah.” He opened his bag and produced a lancet and a porcelain bleeding bowl. “I shall open a vein in his arm. The blood is contaminated and must be drawn off.”
“No.”
The word came out of her before she decided to say it. Dr Bainbridge paused with the lancet in his hand.
“Your Grace—”
“He is weakened. His pulse is already rapid. If you bleed him, you remove the blood his body needs to carry the poison to his kidneys for expulsion. You will make him weaker, and he will die faster.”
“With respect, Your Grace, the practice of phlebotomy is the standard treatment—”
“For fever, yes. And I disapprove of that too. This is poisoning. The fever is a symptom, not the disease. If you treat the symptom and ignore the cause, you will kill him.”
Dr Bainbridge set the lancet down. His mouth was a thin line. “I have been practising medicine for thirty years.”
“And my mother has been studying poisons for longer. She is on her way. If you would be so kind as to wait.”
The doctor regarded the Duchess of Cranbrook. A crease formed between her brows. “What are you looking at me for, Bainbridge? You heard what the duchess said. Go and wait.”
The silence in the room was brittle. Dr Bainbridge looked at Henry, at Violet, at the glass. He picked it up and examined the slimy liquid on the bottom of the glass. “You gave him albumen.”
“Yes. To bind the arsenic.”
“That,” he said slowly, “is sound.”
“Of course,” Cranbrook said, lifting her chin slightly. “She must be the cleverest duchess currently living. I am including myself in that comparison and that is no small matter.”
The tears came the moment her mother walked through the door. Lady Thornwick set down her bag, gripped Violet’s shoulders once, and said, “There is no time for that now, dear. Tell me. What have you done so far?”
Violet wiped her face with the back of her hand and told her mother what she had found.
“How long?” her mother asked.
“Overnight, at least.”
“The poison entered through the cuts the razor made. The skin is a door when it is broken, and he opened it every morning.” Her mother’s voice was clinical. “You did well with the egg whites which will help with whatever reached his stomach through saliva, but the bulk of the dose is in his blood.”
“I cleaned where the razor and shaving soap must have touched.”
“Good. All the way down his neck?”
“Yes.”
“Well done.” She turned to Dr Bainbridge. “Has he been bled?”
“He has not. Your daughter prevented it.”
Lady Thornwick glanced at Violet with pride before turning back to the doctor. “Good. Bleeding would be fatal.”
She opened her bag. Violet watched her mother’s confident hands. She had always made her feel safe when she was a child. Lady Thornwick produced a dark glass bottle and uncorked it. The smell of iron filled the room.
“Iron precipitated in water,” she said. “It fixes the arsenic in the blood and the gut and renders it inert. I have been preparing this for twenty years and have never had occasion to use it on a person.” Her mother proceeded to mix a tablespoon of it in water and fed it to Henry.
The Duchess of Cranbrook’s attention shifted to her physician. “Are you writing this down, Bainbridge? So many things that could be done instead of bleeding. I suggest you purchase vials of these and store them for me. I should not be surprised if anyone tried to poison me.”
Dr Bainbridge stood quietly, looking as though he’d sucked on a lemon. To his credit, he reached for the bottle and uncorked it, smelled it, held it to the light. “Interesting... If it works, it’s brilliant.”
“I discovered it in my garden. When the iron in my soil saved a bed of foxglove from arsenical runoff.” She took the bottle back and turned to Violet.
“Give one tablespoon mixed in water every quarter hour. Too much iron will damage his stomach. Too little and the arsenic will continue to spread.” She addressed the doctor.
“I would welcome your expertise on his pulse and respiration, Doctor. I know plants. You know bodies. Between us we may keep him alive.”
Dr Bainbridge nodded. “Indeed, my lady.” Then he rolled up his sleeves. “I will monitor his pulse between doses. If his heart rate exceeds one hundred and forty, we stop.”
“Agreed.”
They worked. Her mother measured the dose, and Violet fed the liquid and Dr Bainbridge checked his pulse and listened to his lungs. Lady Thornwick counted the seconds between doses on her own heartbeat, which she claimed was more reliable than any watch. The doctor did not argue.
Between doses, Violet sponged his face and neck with cold water.
Her mother mixed a poultice of charcoal and damp clay and spread it over his face and across his chest and stomach to draw the poison through the skin.
Dr Bainbridge watched this with scepticism but said nothing.
Henry’s pulse, which had been climbing, had steadied at one hundred and twenty after the third dose of iron.
“He is responding.” The scepticism had left the doctor’s voice entirely. “The iron is working.”
“Of course it is,” Cranbrook said.
“The body expels the poison through the kidneys, Doctor. It is the same principle that saved my roses,” said Lady Thornwick.
“Your roses,” he repeated.
“My roses are excellent.”
The knock came at half past one. Mrs Greer opened the door to Mrs Bickle and Letty, both women flushed from the carriage, both carrying parcels.
“I received your word,” Mrs Bickle said after she’d been presented to the Duchess of Cranbrook and Dr Bainbridge. “Mrs Brindle had it in her collection. She said it was given to her by a chemist in Edinburgh.”
She held out a small glass jar sealed with wax. Violet took it.
“Hydrated magnesia,” her mother said.
“The labels say it was prepared by Dr R. Christison of Edinburgh.”
Lady Thornwick took the jar from Violet’s hands, broke the seal, and smelled it. She looked at Dr Bainbridge. “This combined with the iron will address both the blood and the gut.”
The Duchess of Cranbrook had been fanning herself increasingly rapidly over the hours. Violet caught her glaring at the doctor on one occasion. The older duchess closed her fan with a crack. “Bainbridge, do—”
“Already noted, Your Grace. I shall stock it as soon as I am able."
“Good,” Cranbrook said, snapping her fan open.
They dissolved the magnesia in water and Violet held Henry’s head again while her mother poured it slowly past his lips.
He swallowed. His body convulsed once, a violent shudder that ran through his whole frame, and then he went still.
His breathing was still shallow but it had steadied.
The grey in his skin had shifted toward something warmer.
“Now we wait,” Lady Thornwick said. She pulled a chair to the bedside and sat down. She placed a hand on Henry’s forehead with the same maternal care she had used on her daughters.
Dr Bainbridge straightened from the washstand. “His pulse has steadied. I shall step out and write my notes while the treatment holds. Lady Thornwick, you will send for me if anything changes.”
“I shall.”
Cranbrook rose. “Mrs Bickle, come. You and I have matters to discuss, and the duchess does not need six people breathing her air.” She swept Mrs Bickle and her daughter out. The door closed behind them.
The room was quiet. Just the fire, and Henry’s breathing, and her mother’s hand on his forehead.
Violet pulled a chair beside her mother and sat. She reached for Henry’s hand and pressed her forehead to his knuckles. A prayer came out of her, barely a whisper. She kissed his hand and held it against her chest.
Her mother’s hand found her cheek and wiped the tears with her thumb.
“You love him,” she said gently.
“I do.” Her voice broke. “I want him to live, Mama.”
Her mother placed her hand over Violet’s clasping Henry’s. “We have done everything we can. I will send word if there are any changes. Now go and attend to other matters. Do you know who did this?”
“I think so.”
“Then go get justice for your husband. For all those women who paid with their lives. I will be right here to look after him.”
She kissed her mother’s cheek and thanked Dr Bainbridge at the door. She looked back once at Henry’s face, at her mother’s hand on his forehead, and made herself close the door.