Benedict Hall Page 9

  Preston let himself into the office, and smiled at the receptionist in her fashionable drop-waist dress. “Hullo, Eleanor,” he said. “Is the old man in?”

  Eleanor gave him a cool upward glance, and pushed herself away from the Underwood typewriter. “I’ll see if he’s free,” she said, her voice and face glacial.

  Ah, Preston thought. A challenge.

  “I would appreciate it,” he said. “Lovely dress you’re wearing, by the way. You couldn’t have bought that in Seattle.”

  Her eyes flicked down over her dress as if she had forgotten what she was wearing. “I do all my shopping here, as it happens, Mr. Benedict. Frederick & Nelson has an excellent businesswoman’s department.”

  He opened his mouth to compliment her on her taste, but she was already gone, her heels clicking across the marble lobby. As the door shut behind her, he thought, Just wait, sweetheart. Wait until you have a chance to be mentioned in “Seattle Razz.” You’ll talk to me then.

  Eleanor was back a moment later. “Mr. Benedict can see you,” she said. “This way, please.” She turned and walked back toward his father’s office, and Preston followed. He could have found his own way across the lobby, of course, but it was nice walking behind her, admiring the sway of her hips in the thin wool crepe.

  The chill of his reception evaporated when he stepped into his father’s domain. Dickson rose and came around his desk, smiling, his hand out. “Preston, good to see you, son. How’s your first day?”

  “Good, good,” Preston said. He shook hands with his father, and sat down in the wide leather chair opposite him. Dickson took his chair behind the desk, and pushed a stack of papers to one side. Preston leaned forward, and placed one of his new cards in the cleared space. “Here’s what I’ll be doing, Father. A pulse-of-the-city column. News, gossip, society reports.”

  Dickson picked up the card and read it. “ ‘Seattle Razz’? I don’t think I know what that means, son.”

  “It’s slang,” Preston said, with a breezy wave. “You know, jazzy, up-to-date. That’s the sort of column it will be.” He tried to hold his smile as he watched his father’s brow furrow. He couldn’t help seeing that Dickson was slow to look up at him, that he laid the card down with a little snick of the corner, as if he didn’t mean to pick it up again.

  “Well, Preston,” Dickson said. He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “I’m sure C. B. knows what he’s doing. It just all seems a little—frivolous—doesn’t it?”

  A nasty sensation swept down Preston’s neck to settle in his belly, tightening the muscles. “Frivolous?”

  “I don’t mean—I think it’s wonderful you have the position, and that they want you to be a columnist. Most enterprising of you. I just thought it might be—” He cleared his throat, dropped his hands, shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I thought you might be writing news, you know.”

  “It is news, Father,” Preston said. His voice quivered slightly, and he leaned back, crossing his legs. The old, familiar tension intensified. “It’s society news.”

  “Oh, yes, I see,” Dickson said. His eyes wandered past Preston’s head to the rain beading the windows, dripping down the glass to pool in the bronze window frames. “You have to understand, son, to me, news is about—oh, money, politics, business. Things that matter.”

  The sensation swelled inside Preston’s skin, rising from his gut to kindle a flame deep in his chest. He swallowed, trying to control it, and he spoke with exaggerated evenness. “In my opinion, Father, society matters a great deal. What people wear, where they go, what entertainment they enjoy. It’s important.”

  Dickson brought his gaze back to his son’s face. He smoothed his tie with his hand. “I have no doubt your mother and your sister-in-law would agree.”

  Preston raised his brows. “But not my brother?” And with a tinge of bitterness he could not quite disguise, “Or my sister?”

  There was something distinctly unfatherly in Dickson’s expression. “Your sister is different, Preston. You know that.”

  Preston forced himself to laugh. “Not really a woman, you mean?”

  “I don’t mean that at all. She’s always been her own person, even when she was small.”

  “Believe me, Pater, Dick and I both know that!”

  “Dick seems to understand better than you do. Of course your mother laments Margot’s disinterest in the things you’re talking about, but I applaud it. She’s devoted to her calling.”

  Preston gave a light clap of his palms together, and stood. He needed to get out of his father’s presence before the fire in his chest burst into something ugly. “So nice chatting with you, Pater,” he said lightly. “I really must get back to the old grindstone. I just wanted to share my good news.”

  Dickson stood up, too, and put out his hand again. “Congratulations, son,” he said. A stiff smile curled his lips. “Your mother will be pleased. Tell C. B. he should come for dinner soon.”

  “I will. I’m sure Hattie would be delighted to spoil a salmon filet for him.”

  Dickson gave a halfhearted chuckle, and Preston saluted him with two fingers to the forehead, pretending jauntiness. He let himself out of the office, closing the door behind him rather more firmly than he had intended. As he walked past Eleanor’s desk, she looked up with a professional smile.

  “Good to see you again, Mr. Benedict,” she said.

  On an impulse, he pulled another card from his pocket. “I’ll just leave you my card, Eleanor.” He flashed his teeth. “You might hear some news I don’t.”

  He laid the card on her desk, and she picked it up with manicured fingers. “A column? How interesting.”

  “You know,” he said. “Cultural events, society news . . .” He looked her up and down, with deliberation. “Fashion. I can see, Eleanor, that you understand fashion.”

  She put a hand to her Peter Pan collar. “Why—why, thank you, Mr. Benedict. I do—take an interest—actually.”

  He nodded, and turned swiftly on the toe of his well-polished wingtip. The heat building inside him was threatening to explode, and he needed an outlet before it did. He pushed the call button for the elevator, then tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for it to arrive.

  He didn’t realize until he was back on the street that he had forgotten his umbrella. He pulled his fedora down over his forehead as he turned up Yesler, walking with a quick, irritable step through the rain, cursing steadily under his breath. It was much harder to find an outlet here. And now, with his new position, he had to be careful. His reputation mattered more than ever.

  But fury simmered behind his breastbone. Other people walked by, ordinary people who would never understand, any more than his father did. He had made a special effort to share his success with his parent, and had ended up—again—listening to a lecture about his unnatural sister. It had been going on all his life, and he was sick to death of it. His fists throbbed with the need to strike something.

  She must have felt this way often. Roxelana. Khourrem Sultan.

  For such a person to live as a slave, even for a few short years, must have been agony. Before she acquired her great sapphire—how she must have suffered under the yoke of authority! But she came into her power, in time. And he would, too. She had risen to her rightful place in the world because she had not shrunk from doing what was necessary. It was too bad, really, that there was no kingship for him to win, no throne to ascend in this pallid latter day. He had to make do with lesser achievements.

  Frustration made him grind his teeth until his jaw ached. He stopped abruptly, and another pedestrian nearly collided with him. Too angry even to apologize, Preston gave the man a hard look before he glanced around to see where he was.

  They called it the Tenderloin, a neighborhood bounded by Yesler and Jackson. It was hardly the right beat for “Seattle Razz”—but it was the perfect beat for Preston Benedict in the throes of temper. He spun to his right, and walked purposefully toward the brothels and saloons t
hat lined the muddy street. His hands trembled with the need to feel flesh beneath them. His stomach roiled with the craving for violence.

  Margot had seen two patients by midafternoon. One was a child with a boil to be lanced, whose mother paid Margot’s fee without demur. The second was a woman with a mild case of cystitis. Margot sent her off to the apothecary with a prescription for uva ursi and a referral to a urologist at Seattle General. She warned her of the dangers of using the herb too long, and made her promise to call back in a week. This patient, too, paid her bill before she left. Margot saw her to the door, and when it closed, she turned to Thea with a grin. “We made actual money today!”

  Thea looked up from her ledger. “Why so surprised, Doctor? I believe that’s the idea.”

  “That was the idea,” Margot said. She strolled back to her tiny office, tapping Thea’s ledger with her fingers as she passed. “But I can hardly remember the last time a private patient actually paid a fee!”

  Thea chuckled, a little palely. Margot stopped in the doorway and looked back. “Thea? Are you all right?”

  The nurse looked up. She tended to look tired all the time, but today her eyes were bloodshot, the lids swollen. Her skin was pale as milk, making the tiny moles on her forehead stand out like flyspecks. She said, with a breathy sigh, “No sleep. Norman had a bad night.”

  “The scopolamine isn’t helping?”

  Thea shook her head, and then, suddenly, pressed both hands to her mouth. Her eyes filled and overflowed, and she began, with an uncharacteristic loss of dignity, to sob.

  “Oh, Thea!” Margot strode to the desk to crouch beside the weeping woman. She put her arms around Thea’s shaking shoulders, and waited for the storm to subside.

  When Thea’s tears eased, she lifted her head, pressing her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Oh, blast, Margot. I’m sorry.”

  “There’s no need for that. Shall I send Norman to the hospital?”

  Thea sniffed one more time, and wiped her nose with a handkerchief. She drew a shaky breath. “Norman’s terrified of the hospital. He saw such awful things there, after France.”

  “Go home to him, then, Thea. It’s late anyway. See if you can both get some rest.”

  Thea hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Thank you. I think I will.” She reached beneath the desk for her pocketbook, and was on her way to the coatrack for her hat and coat when the front door of the office burst open. Margot, standing beside the desk, turned.

  A plump little woman stood in the doorway, hatless, wearing a battered cloth coat pulled around what looked like a nightgown. Her hair, the harsh yellow achieved only with peroxide, was wet with rain. She was crying, big tears making white rivulets in the thick layer of powder that covered her cheeks.

  A day for tears. Margot said, “I’m Dr. Benedict. What’s the trouble?”

  The woman sobbed, “Please come, Doctor. Come quickly! He’s hurt her awful bad.”

  Margot eyed her for only a moment, then said, “Yes, I’ll come. Thea, you’d better lock up.” She reached for her coat and hat, and picked up her bag. As she strode to the door, Thea thrust an umbrella into her hand.

  It was a walk of fifteen minutes. Margot tried to keep the other woman under the shelter of the umbrella, but it wasn’t big enough to cover both of them. The rain had intensified, and it dripped onto their shoulders, the drops gathering and swelling on the surface of the umbrella, then splashing off the ribs at odd angles so Margot felt her face and hair were as wet as if she had no umbrella at all. Her guide set a brutal pace, sobbing steadily as she walked. Margot was hard put to keep up, though her legs were much longer.

  As they hurried up Yesler, she said breathlessly, “What’s your name?”

  “Carola,” the woman said. She was puffing, too, but showed no sign of slackening her pace. “It’s my friend Anna’s been hurt. Beat up bad. I’m afraid she’s going to bleed to death.”

  “Where are we going?” Margot panted.

  Carola pointed at the spire of the depot on Third Avenue. “Just past that. Anna’s a crib girl, like me.” She gave Margot a sidelong glance. “But the other girls said you wouldn’t care.”

  “Nor do I.”

  “She’s Chinese,” Carola said. “You don’t mind about that, either?”

  “Of course not.”

  The cribs were houses broken into single rooms, mostly with little or no furniture, rented out by the owners for the sole purpose of prostitution. The city fathers had relegated all such business to Skid Road, also known as the Tenderloin. Parlor houses mixed with flophouses in the district that extended from Yesler and Fifth to Railroad Avenue. Margot had never actually walked into the area, but she had seen it from the safety of the Essex, with Blake at the wheel. And of course she, like the other interns at the hospital, had treated countless cases of syphilis among the soiled doves of Seattle. She had met crib girls before, and no few of their clients.

  She followed Carola up a short flight of rickety wooden steps. They went into the ramshackle house without knocking, and straight down a short dark hallway to a room at the back. Carola pushed through a splintered door. Margot steeled herself, and followed.

  Even before she walked into the tiny, low-ceilinged room, she smelled the blood. The walls were splashed with it, the floor was sticky with it, and the bed—little more than a cot—was soaked in it. The injured girl lay on the bare ticking of a thin mattress. More blood matted her long black hair. Her face was so swollen Margot couldn’t see her eyes, and her labored breathing filled the room.

  Carola stood to one side. Tears and rain had dissolved most of her face paint, and Margot saw that beneath the mask of cosmetics she was terribly young. She whispered, with a hiccup of a sob, “Can you help her, doc? Please?”

  Margot had learned that people coped better if they had something to do. She said in a low tone, “I’ll do all I can, Carola. I need you to go somewhere where there’s a telephone. I have a friend with an automobile.”

  “I could go down to the depot. If they’ll let me use it.”

  “Tell them I sent you. Call this number, and ask for Mr. Blake. Explain to him where we are, and that I need the motorcar.”

  Carola nodded, and was gone before she could see the doubtful look on Margot’s face as she bent over the girl on the cot.

  Whoever had beaten this girl had held nothing back. At a guess, he had used a bludgeon of some kind, probably to avoid injury to his hands. It was obvious the girl’s jaw was broken, and perhaps her cheekbone. From the shallowness of her breathing, Margot feared several ribs were also fractured. She worried that a lung might be punctured, or the spleen ruptured. The girl had defensive wounds on her hands and her arms, and her back was bruised, as if she had curled herself into a ball, trying to protect herself. It was terrible to see.

  Rage at the perpetrator made Margot’s heart pound, but there was no time for her own feelings at the moment. She would report it all to the police once the girl was stable, for all the good that would do. There weren’t many who cared what happened to crib girls.

  She started with a morphine tincture from her bag, slipping it under the girl’s tongue. Her patient was clammy with sweat, and when Margot managed to lift her swollen eyelids, her pupils were dilated. Margot brushed the girl’s distended abdomen with her fingers, and the girl—Anna, she remembered—protested in mumbled Chinese. Her lips were dusky, and her fingers, when Margot lifted them, were the same.

  There was little she could do until she reached the hospital. Margot set about making the girl as comfortable as she could, and waited for Blake to arrive.

  When Margot left the operating theater and trudged out to the street, the Essex was still there. Blake got out, moving stiffly, and opened the rear door for her. Margot gave him a grateful nod, and collapsed on the backseat with a groan.

  When Blake had maneuvered himself back into the driver’s seat, she said, “You need to stop driving for a few days. Give your back a rest.”

  As he
adjusted his cap, he met her eyes in the mirror. “You’re one to talk about rest, Dr. Margot.”

  She gave a short laugh. “Maybe we should make a pact.”

  “Are you all right?” he asked as he fired the engine.

  “I am. My patient’s not.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Thank you. And thank you for coming to get us. I know it wasn’t pleasant.” She pulled off her hat and tossed it on the seat beside her, then laid her head back on the burgundy velvet. She remembered Thea, and Norman, but it was too late to go there now. It would have to wait. She didn’t close her eyes, because she didn’t want images of little Anna, broken and bleeding, floating up behind her eyelids. She watched the streetlights slide by instead, and the warm rectangles of light in the houses they passed. She should have asked Matron to speak to Sister Therese. If anyone needed prayers, it was Anna the crib girl.

  She felt stickiness against her knees, and she knew her dress was ruined. She would have to slip it out to the burn barrel. Her mother would have a fit if she saw it. She had knelt on that bloody floor without thinking—not that there had been anything else she could have done. Anna’s crib was as bare as a barn—more so, perhaps. There had been nothing, no coverlet or towel or blanket, to kneel on. At least barns had straw in them.

  She let herself in through the front door and dropped her bag on the mat. She kept her coat on, in case she encountered her mother, but she didn’t expect to. She had missed dinner by hours. She slipped off her shoes, and climbed the stairs in her stocking feet.

  When she had shed the stained dress and ruined stockings, and bundled it all up to dispose of later, she pulled on her housecoat and went back downstairs in her bare feet. Hattie would have left something on the stove or in the oven. She felt almost too tired to eat, but she knew if she didn’t try, Hattie would make a fuss. She was grateful to find the kitchen empty, lit only by the glow of a single bulb over the range. She opened the oven, and found a plate covered with a clean dish towel.