Benedict Hall Page 23

  Frank led the way down the steps. He stood beneath a streetlight, not wanting Carter to follow him to Mrs. Volger’s. He counted the money in his hand. “It won’t get you to England,” he said. “Maybe as far as New York.”

  Carter looked at the money, and his thick lips parted. Frank shoved the money back into his pocket, and Carter whined, “You ain’t going to give it to me?”

  “You have something to tell me first.” Frank nodded in the direction of King Street Station. “I’ll see you to the train, Sergeant. You can bare your soul on the way.”

  “Bare my—?”

  “Tell me what’s on your conscience.”

  They left Madison, and cut across on Fourth, heading toward the clock tower glowing above the city rooftops. Carter, with the air of one relieved to be divesting himself of a burden, told his story as they walked. He recited it with an impressive lack of compunction, nearly boasting as he spoke of planting rumors about Margot’s practice. “Easy, it was,” he said. “Just told all the whores if they needed fixing, Dr. Benedict would do it. Preston’s sister. Word spreads fast through the cribs, and the blokes carry it home to their wives and girlfriends.”

  Frank gave him a look of pure loathing, but Carter wasn’t watching him. “Wasn’t hard puttin’ the word out about you, either, Major, beggin’ yer pardon.” Voluble now, he chattered on as if none of his actions signified in the least, as if the ruining of careers was hardly worth mentioning. “Just chatted up a few blokes here and there, the docks, the factories, out in the alleys where the men stand around and smoke.”

  “But Preston’s column—”

  “Oh, yeah,” Carter said, with another phlegmy laugh. “That took care of Boeing. But Benedict wants you right out of Seattle. Whatcha do to him, Major? He don’t like you one bit.”

  Frank said, “Seems he doesn’t like you much, either, Sergeant.”

  “He used to do. Now I know too much.”

  “Why would you do those things for him? Why not just get an honest job?”

  They walked in through the glass doors to the brightly lit lobby of King Street Station. It bustled with activity despite the late hour, dozens of voices echoing under its great dome. Frank walked with Carter to a booth, and he himself paid for the ticket, then handed it over. “You’re going to get all the way to Grand Central in New York. Maybe you can get working passage on a steamer. Or go to the British Embassy.”

  Carter murmured something evasive. Frank gave it up. The man would probably steal what he needed, but there was nothing he could think of to forestall that. They sat on long wooden benches, waiting together in an uncomfortable silence, watching the people pass to and fro, wrangling their luggage and calling instructions to one another. Frank’s arm had begun to burn in earnest, making him shift again and again in his seat. The sleeve of his coat chafed maddeningly. He wanted a drink, but having decided to get Carter out of the way, he meant to see it through.

  When Carter’s train was announced, Frank stood. Carter rose, shouldered his duffel bag, and looked down at the ticket in his hand. “Look, Major,” he said. “You’re a decent chap. I’m sorry I—well, I been pretty rotten to you.”

  Frank made no answer. He had no doubt Carter would go somewhere else and be just as rotten to other people.

  Carter lifted his head as the conductor called the train a second time. “I just—look,” he said again, evidently struggling with something. “You should know something. Something else about Benedict.”

  “What?”

  Carter started shuffling toward the gate. Frank stayed beside him to see that the man boarded the train, and stayed aboard. “What else do I need to know, Carter?”

  Carter held out his ticket, and the conductor checked it, then pointed to a car down the tracks. Carter went through the turnstile, then turned to face Frank across the iron rail that separated passengers from the terminal. “There’s this jewel,” Carter said. “A big old sapphire. Benedict got it out in Jerusalem.”

  Frank frowned. “He bought it?”

  Carter barked an ugly laugh. “Hardly. Killed the bloke what owned it.”

  “You mean . . . murder.”

  “Bloody murder, yeah. Nasty scene, but that’s not the point. There’s something about that thing, Major. I can’t explain it, but you want to watch out. He wears it around his neck. And that thing means Benedict can pretty much do whatever he wants.”

  “Sounds like superstition to me, Sergeant.”

  “Maybe.” Carter’s small eyes flicked from right to left, and Frank supposed he was choosing fresh marks for his time on the train. He shifted his duffel, and half turned, ready to walk away. “Leastways I’ve warned you, Major. You oughtta get that stone off him. It means trouble.”

  Frank shook his head. “Fairy tales. Forget it.” He touched his hat brim with his fingers, and Carter took a last look at his face. Frank said quietly, firmly, “Have a good trip, Sergeant.”

  Breakfast at Benedict Hall was a chilly affair, despite the warmth of the July sun that brought out the gloss on the camellia leaves. Margot was still angry, and couldn’t bring herself to speak to Preston when he came into the dining room. Her mother was having a tray in her room, and her father was as silent as she, glowering over his paper. Ramona drank coffee in silence, and nibbled at a piece of toast. She avoided Margot’s eyes, but Dick grimaced at her across the table. “Rotten day for you, isn’t it,” he said.

  Dickson looked up. “Why? What’s rotten?”

  Margot said, “I have to go before the hospital board this morning.”

  Dickson shook his paper with an angry rattle of pages. “Bunch of damned lady aunts, all exercised about nothing. You should let me put a flea in Peretti’s ear, Margot!”

  “Thanks,” she said. “It’s tempting, Father. But I think I’ll have to manage this myself.”

  At the opposite end of the table, Preston worked his way through a plate of bacon and eggs without looking up. Margot made herself eat an egg and a piece of toast. Blake came in to refill the coffee cups. He gave her a speaking glance, and she managed to smile at him.

  “They can’t convict you with gossip,” Dick said stoutly. “Just stand up to them, Margot.”

  Margot gave him an affectionate glance. “I’ll do my best, Dick. Unfortunately, it’s not about a conviction so much as an impression.”

  “What can they really do to you? They can’t close your clinic.”

  “No. But they can deny me hospital privileges.”

  Silence fell again, broken only by the clink of flatware and the sounds of Blake and Hattie talking in the kitchen. Leona came in to collect empty plates. As she reached for Preston’s, he looked up. “Loena comes home today, doesn’t she?” he said. Leona nodded. “Good. That’s good news.”

  Margot looked down the table at her younger brother. He looked so well it was almost unnatural. His skin was ruddy, his eyes clear, his fair hair springing vigorously over his forehead. He met her gaze, and gave her a limpid smile. “Good luck today, doc. I mean it.”

  Margot felt everyone looking at her, waiting for her to accept Preston’s peace offering. She was aware of Blake standing guard in the doorway, and her father’s worried glance. Ramona touched her finger-waved hair with one hand as she raised her painted eyebrows.

  Margot couldn’t do it. Better to say nothing than to reignite the fiery exchanges of the night before. Only Dick—and Blake— could understand. Her father had made it clear long ago that he wanted no part of sibling struggles. And her mother, or Ramona—

  Blake saved her from answering. “Are you ready to go, Dr. Margot?”

  “Yes. I’ll put in an hour at the clinic before I go to the hospital.” She rose, pushing her chair back from the table. Just as she laid her napkin beside her plate, she saw the look of naked hatred that crossed Preston’s face. It was gone in a heartbeat, but there was no mistaking it. She had been seeing that look all her life. Blake’s expression, the swift lowering of his eyelids and the tightening of
his lips, told her he had also seen it. It wasn’t imagined, that look. They both knew what it meant.

  Margot took a straight chair opposite the long table where the directors of Seattle General Hospital sat. There were four of them, gray-haired men who had been at the hospital for years before she entered medical school. Their long white coats, their grave expressions, and the coldness of the gray walls oppressed her. She wondered, as she took off her gloves and hat and laid them on a second chair, if this was the way patients felt when they came to the hospital, as if every element was arrayed against them.

  She folded her hands in her lap, crossed her legs at the ankle, and waited.

  “Dr. Whitely has leveled a serious charge, Dr. Benedict,” said Dr. Peretti. He was the oldest of the physicians on the board, and he came from an old Seattle family. He laid his hand on the slender file in front of him. For a single faltering moment, looking into his cold gray eyes, Margot wished she had let her father put a flea in his ear after all.

  She straightened her already stiff spine. “I’m aware of it, Dr. Peretti,” she said. Her voice sounded thin in the spare conference room. “He told me—at a moment when I was dealing with a patient who was seriously ill—that he had heard a rumor I was performing abortions at my private clinic. There is no foundation whatsoever for such a charge. There is no truth in it.” She met the eyes of each of the men, ending with Whitely.

  Whitely gave her a tight smile. “This is not the only complaint against you, Doctor.” He had no folder, or papers of any kind. He had a fountain pen in his fingers, and he toyed with it, tapping it on the table. He glanced at the other doctors, then back at Margot. “You have displayed a pattern of disrespect.”

  “To whom?” Margot snapped. She knew she was glaring at him, but she couldn’t help it. Even now, the ruddiness of his nose and cheeks bore ample witness to his addiction.

  “To me, for one,” he snapped back. He leaned back, tucking the pen into the pocket of his coat, and giving her that cramped smile again. “Your job, as a younger and less-experienced physician, is to follow my lead and learn from me in the operating theater. It is not—” His voice rose. “It is not to tell me how to do my job!”

  “You’re speaking of Sister Therese?”

  He made a gesture with one hand. “I don’t remember the name. Appendectomy.”

  One of the other men said, addressing Margot, “Can you explain yourself, Doctor?”

  Margot found she was gripping her fingers so tightly her hands had begun to ache. Deliberately, she released them, and let her hands lie palm up in her lap. “Sister Therese presented with abdominal pain characteristic of appendicitis. It was quite late in the evening. As I am not yet allowed surgical privileges, the hospital called Dr. Whitely.”

  Whitely’s eyes were like shards of ice, and his reddened cheeks grew redder. She could tell he was gritting his teeth by the distortion of his fleshy jawline.

  Margot had thought this through before she arrived this morning. She had discussed it with Blake, and thought over what Alice Cardwell had said. There would be no better moment than this. And no worse one.

  “Dr. Whitely was intoxicated,” she said bluntly. There was a little indrawn breath, but she couldn’t tell whose it was.

  Peretti said, “I have to advise you to take care what you say, Dr. Benedict.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” Margot said. Her voice still sounded fragile to her, but it was steady. Without inflection, she said, “The attending nurse was very concerned, as was I. I watched carefully, but I did not intervene until Dr. Whitely nearly punctured the appendix. I recalled his attention to the patient, and the surgery went forward without further incident.”

  “Ridiculous,” Whitely grated. “If you thought that, you should have filed a complaint.”

  “I should have indeed,” said Margot. “That was my error.” She looked at Peretti as she added, “I was afraid of just such a situation as this one. My position at the hospital is tenuous.”

  Peretti said, “Why do you feel that, Doctor?”

  Margot considered carefully before she answered him. “The hospital has been slow to grant me surgical privileges.”

  One of the other doctors said, “Perhaps that’s just a question of caution.”

  Margot raised her eyebrows. “Caution? I had a successful residency, and my evaluations were all satisfactory. Male colleagues with similar resumes are already operating.”

  “Are you accusing us of prejudice?” Whitely demanded.

  Margot’s shoulders began to ache with the effort of controlling herself, and she knew she was hunching them. She tried to relax them as she addressed Peretti. “It wasn’t easy for me to get into medical school. Since the Flexner Report, as I’m sure you know, requirements for women are considerably more stringent than those for men.”

  “If it were up to me,” Whitely put in, “you wouldn’t have hospital privileges here at all. Only your father’s influence got you in to begin with.”

  Margot was shocked, for a moment, into wordlessness. When she could speak again, her voice shook. “That’s neither true nor fair, Dr. Whitely. I earned my position at Seattle General.”

  He bristled. “Incompetence is—”

  “You accuse me of incompetence, Doctor?” Her voice rose, echoing in the spare room.

  Whitely folded his arms, and nodded down the table to his colleagues. “You see? It’s a pattern. Insubordination, rudeness—and we still haven’t dealt with this issue of performing illegal abortions in that little clinic of hers.”

  “I’m not performing abortions in my clinic, or anywhere else,” Margot said.

  “You’ve never performed one?” Peretti asked.

  “In my residency, I did two therapeutic abortions, under supervision.”

  “So,” Whitely said nastily, “you admit you know how.”

  “I can read a surgical manual as well as anyone, Dr. Whitely. That’s why I knew you were about to kill Sister Therese.”

  Whitely leaped to his feet. His reddened cheeks darkened to an alarming purple, and he shrilled, “How dare you?”

  Margot fixed him with a steady gaze. It was over in any case, that was clear. She might as well get it off her chest. When she spoke this time, she thought she sounded like herself again, her voice deep and steady. “Come, gentlemen. We all know it’s true. You’re protected, Doctor, because of your status, and because you’ve been here a long time. Sister Therese is not the first patient you’ve endangered, and everyone in the hospital knows it.”

  She turned her head to Peretti. “Should I assume, Doctor, that this entire meeting is for show? Since you’ve asked no substantive questions, I gather the decision about my future with Seattle General was taken before I arrived.”

  Peretti regarded her for a moment, his chin on his hand, his mouth pulled down. Finally, he said, “We know you performed your maid’s abortion, Dr. Benedict.”

  “What do you mean, you know? How could you, since it’s not true?”

  “Evidently, it is true.” Peretti straightened, and leaned back in his chair with a weary air. “Dr. Benedict, your brother came here this morning. He told us what you did, and why. He thought, for the honor of your family, that we should know.”

  Margot’s lips parted, but she couldn’t catch enough breath to speak. Whitely gave her a triumphant glare as he sank back into his chair.

  “Your younger brother,” one of the other doctors said. He was a friend of the family, someone who had known her—and Dick and Preston—since they were children. “It was Preston.”

  Margot’s breath returned, but her composure was lost for good. She said shakily, “Of course. It would be.” On trembling legs, she stood up. She tried to put on her gloves, but she fumbled with them, unable to match them to her fingers. She gave up, and kept them in her hand as she put on her hat.

  “We can’t have physicians who perform illegal surgeries practicing at Seattle General,” Peretti said. “Your privileges here are terminated, Dr. Benedict.
I’m sorry.”

  Margot said, through trembling lips, “I want you to know, Dr. Peretti, that it isn’t true. My brother Preston was responsible for Loena’s pregnancy, and he arranged for her to have an abortion down in the Tenderloin.”

  “Now, why should we believe that?” Whitely said. “And why would your brother lie about his own sister?”

  Margot met his gaze with hers. “Why should you believe him?” she asked.

  None of the men answered.

  Margot walked slowly, carefully, fearful her knees would give way beneath her. Blake was waiting, and he held the car door for her without speaking. Not until she was inside did he turn in his seat to give her a look full of sympathy.

  “Yes,” she said in a whisper. “It was awful. As bad as I feared.”

  “Did they rule?”

  “They revoked my hospital privileges.”

  He clicked his tongue and said heavily, “What can you do?”

  “Not much. I can try another hospital—maybe that little children’s hospital on Queen Anne, but that won’t keep the clinic going. I need those emergency calls to pay my mortgage.”

  Blake turned forward to press the ignition. He adjusted his gloves and his hat, and put the car in gear.

  Margot said hollowly, “Preston went to see them this morning, Blake. He told them I performed Loena’s abortion. And they believed him.”

  Blake put out his arm to signal before he nosed the car into the street. “I saw him leave the house after I left you at your clinic,” he growled. “He told Mr. Dickson he was going to work. He never mentioned the hospital.”

  They rode in silence for a few moments. Margot watched the buildings pass, then turned her eyes toward the bay, where the Pacific waters shifted and churned beneath a lowering sky. Dully, wearily, she reflected that it would rain soon. It always did.

  Blake pulled up at the end of Post Street. He turned off the motor, but made no move to get out. “Dr. Margot, I have a little money put by.”