Minor Corruption Read online

  “More macaroons, I’m afraid,” Marc said.

  “Spare me the details.” Robert looked up severely at Uncle Seamus. “You promised father you’d behave,” he said as if he were speaking to a mischievous child. “We do need your expertise in Clement’s office, you know. And your experience.”

  “Ah, don’t fret, Robbie. ‘Tis only the first day. I thought I’d introduce myself with a parlour trick or two. And you’ve got to admit, I pulled them off splendidly.”

  “I’d better be careful where I put my fingers,” Marc said, letting his amusement show.

  Uncle Seamus laughed, “I never repeat myself, lad.”

  “I want you to promise, Uncle, that there will be no repeats of any sort.”

  “I don’t make promises I can’t keep. But I did promise to shoulder my weight in here, and I shall.”

  “That’s all I can ask of you, then,” Robert said. Having removed the bowl from his fingertips, he was now holding his sticky digits aloft and brushing the air with them.

  “I’ll escort you down to meet Mr. Peachey,” Marc said. “You may need my protection.”

  “I heard you were once a dashing young soldier,” Uncle Seamus said, “so I’ll feel more than safe with you at my side.”

  “Off with you, then,” Robert said affectionately. “I’ve got to get ready for a trip to Brantford.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Marc sat at his desk and prepared to begin his own day’s work. He had engineered a successful meeting between Clement and Uncle Seamus, with the latter offering something that might have been interpreted as an apology, enough of one at any rate to effect a détente. Marc himself was careful not to rush blindly into any drawers or crevices, but he seemed to have been spared the pleasure of another parlour trick. Perhaps Uncle Seamus would settle down. As far as his family were concerned, this high-humoured impishness was preferable to the depression he had suffered after his retirement and brought with him to the New World. And indeed these high jinks might prove to be a necessary precursor to a healthier, more balanced outlook on life. Certainly he would be loved here by those around him, and children obviously adored him.

  Marc heard the housemaid who had brought towels and hot water to Robert five minutes ago now retreating down the hall towards the vestibule.

  “Ow!” A squeal and then a giggle.

  And then a guffaw.

  My word, Marc thought, what have I gotten myself into?

  ***

  When Cobb got home shortly after seven that evening, Dora had a hot supper waiting for him. She and the children had eaten theirs earlier. Delia was in the front room reading and Fabian was outdoors playing in the last of the autumn light. Which suited Cobb just fine. He was bubbling with excitement over the possibilities held out to him this morning by the Chief Constable, and although he took great pains to hide it, he was dying to report the good news. He had just finished his baked apple and was clearing his throat to speak when Dora said:

  “Hurry up and finish, Mister Cobb. I got somethin’ important to tell you.”

  “It can wait, can’t it?”

  “If it could, I wouldna said otherwise, now would I?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Well, you suppose correct.”

  Cobb sighed, and gave up. “What is it, then? I hope you ain’t gonna tell me no gory dee-tales about yer baby business! You know the rules!”

  Cobb and Dora had agreed not to discuss each other’s work unless it was absolutely necessary. Dora didn’t appreciate his descriptions of barroom brawls he had broken up, and he found any reference to the messier aspects of her midwifery revolting. But there were exceptions, and Cobb suspected he was about to hear one of them.

  “This could be police busy-ness,” Dora said cryptically. “So listen up.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  Dora glared at her husband as she invariably did when her radar detected the slightest hint of irony. “It’s about Mrs. Trigger,” she said.

  Cobb’s heavy brows shot up. “That old witch still at it, is she?”

  “You know very well she is. There’s a lot of folks north of Hospital Street who can’t afford anybody else. And at one time, Elsie knew what she was doin’.”

  Elsie Trigger had acted as midwife for the poorest families in the northwest section of the city where it had begun to sprawl indiscriminately. Dora did much of the older east end, while several newcomers had set up in the wealthier south-western part of town.

  “Maybe so,” Cobb said, “but since she moved her own carcase inta Irishtown she’s gone straight downhill, eh?”

  “Taken to the drink, she has.”

  “So what’s so new about the old bat that you gotta break our rules?”

  Dora sighed, a gesture that made her large bosom undulate alarmingly under the bib of her apron. “Two dead babes, that’s what.”

  Cobb tried to look sympathetic. “There’s dead babes all over the city.”

  “These two shouldn’t’ve died. I got called out this afternoon to a shack up on Brock Street. I told the fella who come fer me that I didn’t service the northwest, but he was desperate. He said Mrs. Trigger had been tendin’ his wife in her confinement, but when the babe started comin’ out crooked, she threw up her hands and skedadelled. He couldn’t afford a doctor, so he come lookin’ fer me.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He drove me to his shack. The poor girl, not twenty, was near death. The babe was big and comin’ out posterior. Elsie could’ve turned it easy, I figure, or pulled it out by hand, but she was too drunk to do anythin’ sensible.”

  “Jesus!”

  While Dora was the strongest and most stoic person Cobb knew, male or female, on rare occasions she let her feelings show. A single plump tear slid down her right cheek. “I couldn’t save the babe, but the mother survived. Barely.”

  Cobb patted a pocket in search of his tobacco. “You said there was two.”

  “That’s right. I didn’t tell you, but last week I went up near Irishtown and found a woman bleedin’ to death. Elsie’d been tendin’ her and fell asleep beside her. The husband threw her out and come fer me. The lass may’ve bled to death anyway, at least Dr. Smollett thought so when he come later.”

  “Both mother and babe died?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think Elsie might’ve been responsible?”

  Dora reached over and grasped Cobb’s hand. “Mister Cobb, that woman’s gotta be stopped.”

  “But how c’n I – ”

  “I want you to go inta Irishtown, find her, and warn her off. Tell her you’ll toss her inta jail if she don’t give up bein’ a midwife.”

  Cobb found his tobacco but couldn’t remember where he left his pipe. “All right, then, I’ll do it. But just fer you. I’ll haveta take Wilkie with me ‘cause it’s gettin’ too dangerous fer a patrolman to go into that rat’s nest alone. But I’ll find her and put the fear of the Lord into her.”

  Dora smiled through her tears. “Fear of Cobb will do,” she said.

  ***

  Cobb never got a chance to warn Elsie Trigger off. About eleven o’clock that night, both Cobb and Dora were awakened by a frantic pounding on the front door. Delia and Fabian were so used to this phenomenon that they seldom were disturbed. But Dora would waken instantly, as she used to when her own babies would call out to her in the dark. And Dora’s near three-hundred pounds rolling over in bed invariably woke up her husband. As soon as Cobb felt Dora abandon their warm cocoon, however, he would slump back into it and, seconds later, would be snoring anew. It was the only way he could cope with her unpredictable comings and goings, and not be perpetually sleep-deprived.

  He was just drifting back off this night when he felt her fingers poking him awake.

  “I gotta go off with the lad at the door,” she whispered.

  “Why are you tellin’ me, then?” Cobb complained.

  “’Cause it may be about Mrs. Trigger again.”

  Cobb sat
up, blinking in the moonlight. “What’s she done now?”

  “Maybe nothin’, but the lad lives next door to the girl in trouble and was sent here by her father to fetch me. It’s up north, past Brock Street. I told him I don’t go outta town, but the lad says they’re desperate fer a midwife.”

  “And that’s Elsie’s territory, ain’t it?”

  “Uh huh. The lad says it’s past Spadina. There’s a bunch of houses near the mill up there. Where the mill-hands live.”

  “I don’t want you goin’ on yer own away up there.”

  “I know, but the lad said he was sent specially to fetch me, not Mrs. Trigger. The father told him Mrs. Trigger was unavailable. Drunk, I reckon. So I’ll haveta go.”

  Cobb grunted his assent. “The lad’s got a buggy?” he said.

  “Borrowed from the mill. We’ll get there pretty quick. And I ain’t worried. Nobody’s ever bothered a midwife in this town. At least not yet.”

  “Did the lad say who the girl was?”

  “Daughter of a mill-hand, one Thomas Thurgood – name of Betsy.”

  THREE

  They drove at a brisk trot west along King Street, Dora and the twelve-year-old messenger. Fortunately a near full moon provided sufficient light for them to keep to the middle of the wide, rutted street. On either side the houses and shops rose up dark and inhospitable. It was October and there was a chill in the air, but Dora was accustomed to night travel. Her capacious wool shawl was gathered around her, and the lad kindly placed a buffalo-robe over her knees. He said nothing, however, and Dora refrained from probing him for any further information because she knew from experience that those involved in these emergency runs, however peripheral, were anxious and often confused. She would, as usual, wait for her arrival at the scene to assess the situation as she found it.

  They turned north up Yonge Street and passed the British-American coffee house, where the eerie moon-shadows now changed shape. At Newgate they swung west again. Dora could smell the stink from the tannery there, and farther along she could see the red glow from a foundry furnace. At Brock Street they turned north. The pony was panting now, exhaling huge skeins of visible breath. The boy brushed him with a whip, and he stepped up the pace once more. Where Brock Street ended at Queen (formerly Lot Street), they met the bush road that led northwest to Spadina. Here they entered the forest, and if it had not been for the moon, they would have had to have moved at a snail’s pace and, even then, have relied on the pony’s instincts to keep them on track.

  Soon they began to jounce and lurch as the roadbed roughened, but Dora, who often boasted of it, had been supplied by her Maker with a pair of comfortable rear-side cushions for the sole purpose of absorbing such shocks on missions of mercy in His name. Still, she was glad when, about a quarter-mile from Spadina, they veered to the right onto a washboard path just wide enough to accommodate the buggy. Several bumpy minutes later they rumbled across the log-bridge that spanned the stream used by the miller to power his machinery (Trout Creek the locals called it). They rattled past a distant, shadowy farmstead, then the tall, moonlit mill and the mill-race. Soon they were on open ground, where they had to move at a walk to avoid being upset. Fortunately a straggle of workers’ shanties was soon silhouetted against the northwest sky.

  “It’s the first house,” said the boy. “Mr. Thurgood’s.”

  “I’ll walk from here, laddie. Here’s a thrupenny piece fer yer good work. May the Lord bless you.”

  “Thank you, mum,” the boy said. Then he slumped forward and began sobbing. “Oh, poor, poor Betsy.”

  “I’ll see she’s all right,” Dora said, stepping down and reaching back for her bag. “You wait here, will ya? ‘Least fer a little while.”

  The boy nodded, wiping his cheek with his sleeve.

  She left him there and stepped towards the house, trying not to shudder at what she might be facing.

  ***

  “Oh, thank God you’ve come!” cried Auleen Thurgood as Dora pushed her way into the kitchen. “Betsy’s bad. Real bad.”

  “You took yer time, woman,” was Burton Thurgood’s opening remark.

  Before saying a word, Dora took a quick look at the Thurgoods. She liked to size up the home situation before she went to the patient, mainly to get a sense of whether they would be a help or a hindrance. Auleen would be of little use, Dora could see right away. She was a scrawny woman with big, frightened eyes who resembled nothing more than a mouse trying to shrivel itself into a corner where it might find a moment’s safety. Pale, almost sickly, she was wringing a pair of bony hands in her filthy apron. Thurgood himself was another matter. He was neither tall nor burly, but rather had the physique of many mill-hands: strong and wiry with outsized hands and bunched muscles – like a lynx preparing to spring. But where many a mill-hand effected the downcast expression of one destined to follow orders, Thurgood had bold, black eyes and a mass of curly, black hair that dared anyone, boss or toff, to knock the chip off his shoulder.

  “Where’ the lass?” Dora said to Auleen, brushing by the surprised husband with practised ease.

  “In there,” Thurgood snapped.

  “Get that fire stirred up, mister. We’re likely to need lots of hot water. And you, ma’am, can find me some clean cloths.”

  With that Dora entered the bedroom that Auleen had indicated.

  “We can’t pay ya much!” Thurgood shouted after her.

  The room was dark, its window being in the north and away from the moonlight. A single tallow-candle, set in a dish on an apple-box, offered the only illumination. Betsy was lying on a pallet on the floor, groaning and twisting about in a delirium of pain. And she was just a girl, Dora thought, as she knelt beside her. Beneath the sweat-smeared shift, her only covering, her breasts were little more than swollen nubs. She had kicked off a ragged quilt in her misery.

  “It’s gonna be all right, luv. Missus Cobb is here.”

  Betsy’s response was a groan and a clenching of her teeth. Dora placed a hand on the girl’s forehead. The fever was well advanced, yet her skin looked cold and clammy.

  “Let’s have a peek down below,” Dora said. She rolled Betsy gently over until she lay fully on her back, then pried the girl’s legs apart.

  Betsy shrieked.

  “What the hell are you doin’ to her?” Thurgood shouted from the doorway.

  “Go out to the well and bring in cold water,” Dora said sharply. “If I can get this bleedin’ stopped, we’ll have to wrap the lass in cold towels to bring the fever down. Hurry! She’s desperate ill.”

  Dora heard a muffled curse, but a moment later the front door opened and then shut with a bang. Auleen came in diffidently with a kettle of hot water and several pieces of cotton material.

  “We’ll use them later,” Dora said. “I generally start with my own cloths.” Which are certain to be clean, she did not need to add. “Meantime, you can hold that candle up close.” Tenderly but firmly she began to wipe the blood away from Betsy’s thighs and belly. The girl moaned but no longer thrashed and writhed.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Auleen whispered beside Dora, as if speaking too loudly might bring further harm down upon her daughter.

  “You don’t know?” Dora said, incredulous.

  “Well, I . . . we – ”

  Dora pointed to a black puddle on the pallet. “That would’ve been a babe if it had stayed in yer girl’s womb, missus.”

  “Oh, but we didn’t know, Missus Cobb!” Auleen cried. “I swear. She ain’t been livin’ here! She only come back to see me through the grippe three days ago. And we knew nothin’ of her bein’ with child until tonight when she – she confessed to us that she might be.”

  “And you thought Mrs. Trigger might be able to tell you one way or another?”

  Auleen was shaking, trying to hold back her tears. In her eyes Dora could see fear, resignation, and something close to despair. She was a woman on the edge. “But she’s a drunk,” she wailed. “I had to beg Burton to
send fer you.”

  “But it’s midnight,” Dora said, still swabbing at the dried blood and afterbirth.

  Betsy groaned and twisted, and flung her arms outward, in supplication or surrender.

  Dora stopped her swabbing, reached into her carpetbag and brought out a small vial. “Bring me a cup of water. We gotta do somethin’ about the pain before it kills her.”

  “Oh, my God! Oh, Christ!”

  “Go, woman!”

  Dora took Betty’s right hand in both of hers. “I’m gonna help ya sit up, dearie, and then I’m gonna give ya some medicine that’ll take the pain away. Think you can swallow it? Fer me?”

  Betsy opened her eyes, but her stare was glassy, other worldly. She seemed to be staring at some thing or some one over Dora’s shoulder.

  Auleen returned with a cup of cold water. Dora poured half of the water out, then put a tablespoon of laudanum into the cup. Both women then moved to raise Betsy to a sitting position. Dora pulled the girl’s jaw down gently, tipped the contents of the cup into her mouth, and closed it up tight. When Betsy swallowed involuntarily Dora levered her back to the pallet.

  “That’ll help the pain,” she said to Auleen. “But she’s still bleedin’. I think we should send fer a doctor. Mr. Smollett is the closest physician, I believe.”

  “We can’t afford no doctor!” Thurgood was back, filling the doorway.

  “I’ll pay fer him myself,” Dora said. “Do you want yer daughter to live?”

  “’Course I do, you stupid woman! But this is my house, and I say we ain’t callin’ in no doctor. It’s you we’re payin’ to save my little Betsy!”

  “Then make yerself useful. Soak some blankets in that cold water you brung in. We got to deal with this fever.”

  Thurgood clumped away, grumbling as he did so.

  “You ought not to get Burton riled up,” Auleen said softly. “He don’t take kindly to bein’ ordered about.”

  “Don’t you worry about me, missus. I been handlin’ men like him fer ten years. Now help me keep this cloth pressed up against her. I can’t figure out where this fresh blood is comin’ from.”