Hall of Secrets (A Benedict Hall Novel) Read online

  Beneath Angela’s hands, she saw him grin. “Will you tell the wife that, doc?”

  Margot chuckled. “If I need to, absolutely.” She laid her palm on his trousered knee. “Now, be sure the bandage stays clean. Nurse Rossi will finish here and give you an appointment to have the stitches removed. I’ll see you then.”

  “Thanks, Doc Benedict. Thanks a lot.”

  “You’re quite welcome, Mr. McDonald.”

  Margot was already out of the examination room when she realized what he had called her. Doc. Arnie at the diner called her doc, too, and some of the other working people on Post Street. Preston, when he was alive, had called her doc. She paused for a moment, her hand on the latch of the reception room door, and searched for some feeling about it, some reaction to the memory of Preston. Surely she should feel something. Nostalgia, sadness, even anger.

  All she could find was relief. She gave her head a small, private shake and went out into the reception room.

  “Cousin Allison,” she said, glad to see the girl was still there. “Sorry to keep you waiting! It’s been quite a day.”

  Allison smiled, and Margot noticed how much better her color was, how smooth her skin looked. “Nurse Rossi told me,” Allison said. “You’re already busy, and not officially open yet.”

  Margot smiled back. “Surprising, isn’t it? In the past, sometimes we went entire days without seeing anyone. Now we’ll just see whether any of these people can actually pay their bill.”

  “Sometimes they don’t?” Allison said in wonder.

  Margot laughed. “Often they don’t!”

  “But you—you see them anyway?”

  “Oh, yes,” Margot said. “They need help.” She tipped her head to one side, looking into Allison’s face in her direct way. “It’s not that they don’t want to pay, you know. Too many of the patients I see only come here out of desperation. We’ll see if this spanking new clinic attracts a few patients who actually have something in their pocketbooks.”

  “Well,” Allison said. She held out her hands to indicate the reception room. “It’s very nice, Cousin Margot. I do think a table would be good, for the occasion, someplace to put the refreshments when people come to tour the clinic.”

  “It sounds fine, Allison. How about flowers?”

  “Oh, people will send those,” Allison said with confidence. “They always do, when they see the announcement. You just have to make sure it’s printed in the Times. And the other papers, too.”

  “You have experience, I see,” Margot said. “I leave it all in your hands, then. If you need anything, ask Ramona—she’s a wizard with everything social.”

  “And Hattie,” Allison said. “I thought I would ask Hattie to make cookies. At least, if Aunt Edith doesn’t mind. Hattie loves to bake, I believe.”

  “That she does. She’ll be delighted. Come now, I’ll show you the rest of the place.”

  They passed Mr. McDonald and Nurse Rossi in the hallway, which was wide enough now for more than one person to walk at a time. With pride, Margot opened the door to the second examination room, then showed Allison the storage room. It was spacious and orderly, packed with cartons and boxes and carefully shelved supplies. Frank’s hand was evident in every detail.

  They paused in Margot’s office, and Allison gazed up at her diplomas, replaced by the university since the fire, and displayed on the wall opposite the mahogany desk. Her gaze took in the shelf of medical books, the Materia Medica and her treasured Manual of Surgery. “You must have been in school a long time,” Allison said.

  “It certainly seemed like it! I had a lot to learn.”

  “I wish I could go to college,” Allison said. Her cheeks reddened all at once, then paled again. “Papa says there’s no point.”

  “Allison—sit down for a moment. We’ve had no chance to talk.”

  Allison turned obediently and settled into the armchair opposite Margot’s desk. She looked suddenly tense. Margot said carefully, “I hope I’m not taking advantage of you, asking you to manage this party.”

  “No,” Allison said. “Not at all. I’ve done it for Mother. We held one of the debutante teas in our house.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Margot said. “I wouldn’t have the first idea how to begin. I’m grateful to you.”

  “It’s fine,” Allison said.

  “Good. That’s good.”

  Allison’s eyes flicked away to the window that looked out over Elliott Bay, and her lips worked as if she were about to say something more, but changed her mind.

  “As I said a few nights ago, Allison,” Margot began, “I think at your age you should understand how pregnancies happen. It’s the sort of thing I would expect your mother to teach you, though I’m aware mothers often don’t.”

  “My mother doesn’t talk about things like that.” A pause. “Did yours?”

  Margot sighed. “Well, yes. She didn’t like doing it, though. She was embarrassed, and got through it as quickly as she could.” She smiled a little, remembering. “For women of their generation—your mother’s and mine—it’s a difficult thing to talk about. But we’re modern women, you and I.”

  Allison sat up a bit straighter. “You’re talking about sex, aren’t you, Cousin Margot?”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “And that Mrs. Sanger—is that what she’s teaching people about? Sex?”

  Margot nodded. The girl wasn’t completely ignorant, thank God. She had met pregnant girls who had no idea how they had gotten that way, and others who thought their babies were going to be born through their navels. “Did you understand much of our conversation last night? About Mrs. Sanger?”

  “Not really. I’m sorry.”

  “There’s no need for that,” Margot said with warmth. “I just wish it would be a normal part of girls’ education, so they know how to take care of themselves.” She leaned down to open a drawer in her beautiful new desk and pulled out a pamphlet. “This,” she told Allison, “I’m allowed to give you, because I’m a physician. No one else is, because it’s considered obscene, but—”

  “Obscene?” Allison said faintly.

  “Afraid so. I hope you’ll believe me when I say it’s not.”

  “My mother says having a baby is messy. And hurts worse than anything you can imagine.”

  “Yet women go on having them,” Margot said. “Just as they have for thousands of years.” She pushed the pamphlet across her desk, and Allison picked it up gingerly, as if it might stain her fingers. “Bodies,” Margot said with as much patience as she could muster, “tend to be messy, if you’re sensitive to such things. Childbirth has some pain associated with it, but you can trust me, Allison, I’ve seen things that hurt far worse. And most of the mothers I’ve attended are so thrilled to see their little ones safely born that they would do it all again in a heartbeat.”

  “Not my mother.” This was said flatly, without the slightest doubt.

  “Are you sure about that?” Margot asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Allison picked up the pamphlet and folded it in half. “Yes, I’m quite sure.”

  “I think often parents and children don’t understand each other. Uncle Henry was quite worried about you—”

  Allison interrupted. “No, he wasn’t, believe me. He was worried he wouldn’t be able to sell me.”

  “Sell—?” Margot said helplessly.

  Allison’s features, usually soft and vulnerable looking, hardened, and her little pointed chin seemed to grow sharper as her lips pulled down. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I’m on the market, you know. The marriage market.” She spread her arms wide, and her small body seemed to suddenly thrum with resentment. She reminded Margot of a teapot starting to whistle. Suddenly, she was talking, words pouring out of her like steam.

  “Oh, yes. The only thing Papa ever liked about me was my tennis game. I’ve always been Mother’s problem, in his view. It’s like a horse being groomed for auction, you know, the whole debutante thing. No young men are allowed at any of t
he events unless they have a pedigree, and all of us are paraded in front of them so they can make their choice. Everyone knows how much money you have, and what property is in your family, and—and they know your family history, too, which is why Mother and Papa were so worried I would make a mistake, because they’re not proud of theirs.”

  Her cheeks were flaming red now, and her blue eyes sparkled with temper. “Your family is different, because Uncle Dickson has been successful for such a long time, and you have Benedict Hall and Cousin Dick in the business, but Papa—” Her energy evaporated, all at once, and the stream of her words sputtered and died. Her hands fluttered down into her lap like exhausted birds.

  It took Margot a moment to think of how to go forward. The outburst both surprised her and, in some odd way, encouraged her. There was spirit in the girl, and that could only be a good thing. She said, choosing her words with care, “Allison, I don’t think I understand the concern about your family’s history. I believe your father is quite successful. Father has never intimated anything otherwise.” She remembered that Dickson had worried about Henry’s business not being diversified in the current economic climate, but this was not the time to mention it. “Are they really in a hurry for you to be married?”

  “Oh, yes. Papa wants me off his hands. The expense, and everything, you know.”

  “Surely your family doesn’t lack for money.”

  “It’s never enough,” Allison said. “That’s what Mother says, in any case.”

  “Hmm. I suppose I don’t know Aunt Adelaide very well.”

  Allison sat back in the armchair with a weary look on her young face. “You don’t want to, Cousin Margot. My mother’s a shark. She’ll eat you up if you’re not careful.”

  It had been, Margot thought, an odd visit. She walked Allison out to meet Blake, and stood watching, her hands in the pockets of her coat, as they drove off. The day was one of those cold, glittering ones, with icy sunshine glancing off the new bricks and paint of the clinic, and making a shining backdrop of the Sound and the snowy Olympic Mountains. Margot stood where she was for a short time to admire the view and savor the feeling of having created something fine.

  Frank was partial to native plants, and he and the gardener had decided on a barrier of Pacific wax myrtle to ensure privacy at the back of the building. The hedge was small still, and looked a bit dilapidated in the cold. Margot walked around the side of the clinic, past her office window, to take a closer look so she could describe it to him in her next letter.

  She touched the glossy, elongated leaves and pushed at the dirt of the bed with her foot. It seemed healthy to her, though she was no expert. They had planted six of them, and in years to come, the gardener and Frank assured her, the hedge would make a nice screen that would keep down some of the traffic noise. She crouched beside one of the plants and pulled one small, fragrant leaf from a low stem. It was a bit silly, perhaps, but she liked the idea of sending it to Frank. When he opened the envelope, it would slide out, a little bit of Seattle for him to hold in his palm.

  She dropped the leaf into the pocket of her coat and walked around to the other side of the clinic, where the smaller windows of the two examination rooms faced north. That side lay in shadow now, the low angle of the sun falling below the roofline. Margot trailed her fingers along the wall, remembering the day when she and Frank had stood here, surveying the newly poured concrete footings. The day had been hot and clear, the sun burning their shoulders, pouring generously over the wet concrete. Today the air smelled of salt and smoke. That day it had been filled with the scents of raw earth and newly sawn wood, smells that would always remind her of the day she knew Frank Parrish loved her.

  She had not, officially, accepted Frank’s proposal that day. They had walked together down to the Public Market, and he had bought her an embarrassingly large bouquet of flowers from the Chinese flower seller. Somehow, though, the actual proposal got lost in the excitement, in the thrill of his new prosthetic, in their plans for the clinic. It was her fault, of course. She hadn’t been all that sure she wanted to be a wife. Anyone’s wife.

  In fact, she still wasn’t sure of that, but it didn’t mean she didn’t love Frank with all her heart. She had asked him once why they needed to be married, and his answer had been clear and succinct. He wouldn’t ruin her reputation by not marrying her. He wouldn’t ruin his own by living with someone not his wife. He wanted, he said, what his parents had. What her parents had.

  A sudden shiver broke her revery. The shadows were too cold to linger in. She turned back toward the street and the front entrance, but at the corner she stopped.

  Another memory, that of crouching down beside the fresh, uncured concrete to push the sapphire—Preston’s sapphire—down into its gray, wet depths. She had watched the silver chain coil after it until it, too, sank and disappeared. Frank had said something about its value, but Margot had wanted only to get rid of it, to put it somewhere where no one would find it again.

  The creeping Jenny starts the gardener had planted to cover the foundation were slow to spread. They grew in little clumps, their leaves stiff with cold and generously threaded with brown stems, and there were large spaces between them. In one of those spaces Margot saw a bubble in the concrete. It wasn’t large, but it was definite, the only flaw in the otherwise smooth side of the foundation.

  The chill that had made her shiver crept deeper. It settled in her chest, a familiar sense of dread she thought she had banished more than a year before.

  She crouched down beside the flaw in the concrete, knelt in the exact spot she had on that sunny autumn day, before there had been walls or floors or windows in the building. She prodded the bubble with her fingers, but it was dry and hard and very cold. A sudden prickle on the back of her neck brought her to her feet. It had nothing to do with the cold and the shadows of the building. She had learned long ago, when she was still a small girl, to be aware of that prickling. She had learned the hard way that it was never wise to ignore it.

  Now, though there should be no more danger, and nothing further to worry about, she spun to see who was watching.

  There, was that a shadow, slipping between the shoemaker’s and the Italian grocer’s? The alley there was narrow, just a dirt lane where the businesses left their refuse and piled empty delivery cartons. Margot took a step, thinking if she hurried, she might reach the alley before whoever it was had disappeared.

  “Dr. Benedict?” It was Angela Rossi, standing on the little stoop. She had taken off her apron and wore her cape over her long woolen skirt. Her handbag sat at her feet as she pulled on her gloves.

  “Oh, Nurse Rossi. I kept you waiting. It turned out to be an interesting day, didn’t it?”

  Angela smiled cheerfully. “It was wonderful, Doctor! Real patients and all.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t mind. I didn’t expect to be working so much before we’re officially open.”

  “I’ve left the ledger open on the desk so you can check it. The money is in the lockbox, in the big drawer.”

  Margot, anxiety forgotten in delight at this development, exclaimed, “Money! I can hardly believe it. Just a year ago, I could see this many patients in a day and not see a penny in actual income.”

  Angela bent to pick up her handbag. “Times are better, I suppose.”

  “Perhaps that’s it.” Margot went up the walk and put her hand on the latch. “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

  “I’ll be here!”

  Margot watched the young nurse tripping energetically along Post Street toward the streetcar stop, her cape fluttering around her sturdy black-stockinged legs. Rossi was proving, at least so far, to be everything Alice Cardwell had promised. She was hardworking, eager to learn, direct but kind with the patients, and deft with bandages. She would work out very well. Margot couldn’t wait to tell Frank all about her.

  She went back into the clinic for her own coat and hat, but as she passed the desk she took a swift peek into the cash box.
She had put in some money, so the nurse could make change if need be. There had been five dollars in the box when she opened it that morning. Now, at a glance, she guessed there must be nine there, including two paper ones. She shook her head in wonderment at these riches as she shrugged into her coat and put on her hat.

  It wasn’t until she had gone around to put out the lights, and was locking the door, that she remembered that strange bubble on the side of the foundation. It was as if the sapphire, that object Preston had cared about so much, and which he had held as he died, was trying to emerge from its tomb.

  She turned the key and dropped her key ring into the pocket of her coat. As she pulled the collar up against the cold, she told herself not to behave like a superstitious child. She stamped down the brick walk, impatient with the strange thoughts and impressions that had confused the final hours of what had otherwise been a most satisfying day.

  She glanced up, and the smile returned to her face. Blake was there, just as he used to be. The Essex gleamed through the darkness, its headlamps lighting her way. Blake touched his cap as she walked toward him. “Good evening, Dr. Margot,” he said, and there wasn’t a trace of a Southern accent in his deep voice. “I trust you had a good day.”

  “Good evening, Blake,” she said. “It was a wonderful day.”

  “Very good,” he said calmly, as he held the door for her. “Very good.”

  CHAPTER 14

  The alley was wet, and his shoes were heavy with cold mud by the time he slunk away from Post Street and down to Elliott Avenue. It seemed impossible that just two years before he had walked these streets proudly. Girls, like the pretty cousin who had driven off with Blake, used to turn their heads when he passed. They blushed with pleasure when he tipped his hat to them, and he often felt their eyes on him as he strode away, his head up, his back straight, a man without a care in the world. He had welcomed the sunshine on his neck, had removed his hat to feel the wind in his hair. He had gone into any establishment he wished, always welcome for his name, his status, and in no small part for his good looks. That life was gone now, lost forever.