Charity's Burden Read online

He beamed. “It’s of my son, Sean. My wife drew it. She’s quite talented, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Indeed I would. How old is he now? He looks about seven in this picture.”

  “On the nose. Had his birthday last month. Now, what brings you here, Miss Rose?”

  “I’m hoping if you order an autopsy on one of my clients, we might better discern her means of death.” I outlined my suspicions about Charity’s death.

  “And because this lady was bleeding more than she should have been, you want me to investigate, I gather.” Kevin set his forearms on the desk and leaned forward. “Do you think it might be a homicide? Surely she could have had another ailment to cause such a hemorrhage?”

  I leaned forward, too. “Maybe, but I never detected one.”

  “Then who would want to kill a wife and mother like her?”

  “I didn’t say it was a homicide, although I think that’s a possibility.”

  “Where’s the motive? You have to give me more than this, Miss Rose. You’ve been involved in enough homicide investigations to know how it goes.”

  “Kevin, I think she was desperate not to have any more children. Her bleeding could have been from a botched abortion.” And she could have used Virtue’s money to pay for it. Perhaps that was the money she’d referred to before she died.

  “Sweet Mary and Jesus.” He sat up straight as if I’d slapped him. He crossed himself, like the good Irishman he was. “What a thing to say! That kind of act is against the law. Both our law and the good Lord’s, you know.”

  It was no use explaining even to this well-meaning man, just like it wasn’t with Douglass, the extent of some women’s desperation not to bear a child.

  “And a botched termination”—he shuddered at the word—“still would not qualify as murder, Miss Rose. Malpractice, yes.”

  “We need an autopsy, Kevin. If thee investigates the death as a suspicious one, the autopsy will at least show what she died of. It remains to be seen whether the death was purposeful or accidental. Will thee order it?”

  Kevin’s gaze wandered to the open door. His eyes widened and he leapt to his feet. “I’m just coming along, Chief Talbot.”

  A tall, stern-looking man wearing a well-cut suit filled the doorway. “Why is this lady in your office asking you to order an autopsy, Detective Donovan?”

  This had to be the new chief, whom I hadn’t yet met. He’d clearly been at the doorway long enough to hear the end of our conversation. I stood and extended my hand.

  “My name is Rose Carroll. I am midwife to a woman who died from hemorrhage this morning. I have reason to believe it wasn’t natural bleeding.”

  The chief narrowed his eyes and his mouth puckered like he’d tasted sour milk. I expected he thought such talk was unseemly in the presence of men. He shook my extended hand but didn’t return my smile.

  Kevin rushed to say, in a nervous burst, “Miss Rose, this is Police Chief Norman Talbot. Chief, Miss Carroll has provided us with information in several homicide investigations over the past year. She’s been quite cooperative.”

  “Is that so? We frown on civilian involvement in our work, Miss Carroll. It’s dangerous and not the purview of the man on the street. Definitely not of the woman on the street. Detective, I’ll thank you to show her out and come directly to my office. We have some talking to do.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kevin saluted, but it was to Norman’s back. He turned to me, whispering, “You have to go.”

  “I understand. I hope I didn’t cause you a problem with thy new supervisor.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I hope not, as well. But don’t come in here again, please. I can’t afford to lose my job.”

  nine

  While I was checking my client Lucy Majowski in my parlor an hour later, I tried to put Kevin’s warning out of my mind. I wasn’t very successful, despite this young primigravida—first-time pregnant—who deserved my attention. The new police chief had echoed Kevin’s own prior cautions to me. Of course I hadn’t gone looking for murder investigations with which to become involved. They had simply happened along. My knitting needle being used as a murder weapon, and one of my postnatal clients being brutally killed. An unmarried mill girl who had confided in me of her condition hours before her own death by a violent hand. And me being the one to discover the body of an outspoken woman suffrage activist during last fall’s presidential election week. I had been the target of more than one villain, but I had always been able to use my brains and a dose of luck both to survive and to overcome my attacker.

  Now I wouldn’t be able to pop into the station when I learned a piece of important information or had a caution for Kevin to hear. I valued his intelligent thoughts on the investigative process, and his intuition that came from long years of detection experience. Our face-to-face discussions had often proved fruitful. It wouldn’t be the same if we were reduced to formal communication via the mails. Kevin’s previous chief had turned a blind eye to my presence in the station. He didn’t condone it, but had never prohibited it, either.

  The new chief was just doing his job, I supposed, but it made my life more difficult. Or, I mused, perhaps it made it simpler. I knew my David worried when my private investigating had put me in harm’s way. And when we were ever able to marry and start our own family, I would need to take my personal safety and the use of my time much more into consideration. I didn’t intend to close my midwifery practice, however. I had David’s support in that regard.

  I gave my head a little shake. It was time to focus on my client rather than on my personal problems or the mystery at hand.

  “Thee is doing quite well, Lucy,” I said when I was finished with my examination. “The baby is of a good healthy size and its heartbeat is strong. Thee also seems in exceedingly good health. Does thee have any concerns or questions for me?”

  “Other than that he’s always kicking my ribs and it’s hard to sleep? Not really.” She pulled her green woolen dress back down over her belly. She swung her legs over the side of the chaise that doubled as my examination table, just as my parlor doubled as my bedroom, with a day bed tucked against the back wall.

  “The baby is getting thee ready for not sleeping after it comes.” I smiled gently. “I know that’s not much comfort, is it?”

  She batted away the suggestion. “It’ll be fine. And you’ll come to my house next week for your home visit, isn’t that right?” The blond young woman’s voice still held a hint of a Polish accent. She’d told me she’d come to this country with her parents when she was ten. Now, nine years later, she was married to Henryk, a young farmer and fellow Pole, and was expecting their first child.

  “That’s right. I think thee might give birth a little earlier than we’d first calculated, so I should come early in the week. I’ll even try to get along there at the end of this week if my schedule permits. Will thee be home?”

  “Of course. The cows don’t milk themselves, Rose!” Her laugh was a joyous peal. “This belly is too big to take anywhere besides here, anyway.”

  She had an irrepressible sunny outlook on life. I glimpsed movement through the front window and peered out. “It looks as if thy husband has come to fetch thee. And it’s snowing. Let me ascertain thy address before thee goes.” Henryk sat on the seat of a wagon in front of the house, white flakes powdering his dark brimmed hat. I checked her file on my desk. “It says here thy farm is a mile beyond Union cemetery. On Haverhill Road. Are there many farms nearby?”

  “Only a handful, but you’ll know ours by the white house and red barn. It’s funny, Rose. I have a neighbor my age. She lives across the road.” Lucy frowned. “We went to school together, but we’ve grown apart in the last few years. She’s quite proud of her employment as a secretary at Lowell’s Boat Shop.”

  “A Delia Davies? I met her just this morning.”

  “Yes.” Lucy went on, smoothing her dress over
her bulging figure with both hands. “As for me, I’m a farmer’s wife. I think she looks down on me a little. But I’m the one who’s happily married and about to become a mother. I wouldn’t swap my life with hers for a moment.”

  “Being content with one’s life bodes well for thy birth and thy baby.”

  “How is that?” She tilted her head, waiting for me to explain.

  “I have seen women unhappy with their husbands, or with becoming a mother, whose worries slowed the progress of their baby coming out.”

  Lucy nodded slowly. “That sounds likely.”

  “One client of mine with an overly long first labor confessed to me that she’d been beaten on the head as a child,” I said. “She worried that her child would be similarly hurt simply by the process of being born. Once I assured her that her birth passageway would expand, and the baby’s head would mold as it came through and not be truly harmed, those facts freed her to relax. Her little boy emerged within the hour.”

  “I don’t think I have any such fears,” Lucy said. “No one ever beat me, and Henryk is a good man. The silent type, but he loves me and looks forward to this child—boy or girl—as much as I do, perhaps even more.” Lucy pulled on a large wool coat and laughed. “My husband insisted I wear his new overcoat. It’s the only thing big enough to fit the both of us, the child and me.”

  ten

  At a few minutes before six, Faith and I were bustling about in the kitchen of the house I shared with Frederick Bailey, the husband of my late sister, Harriet, and their five children. Faith, the oldest at eighteen, had recently left her job in the Hamilton textile mill to write for our local newspaper. Betsy was the youngest of the family at eight years old, the twins Matthew and Mark were ten, and Luke had just turned fourteen. My lodging with them was a good arrangement for all of us, now two years after Harriet’s death. I could help Faith with the cooking and housework, the children had another adult in the house, and some of the burden of being a widower parent was lifted from Frederick’s shoulders. At times the chores were a burden on my and Faith’s shoulders, instead. At least we now employed a kitchen girl and sent the laundry out to be cleaned.

  The long farm table doubling as dining table was set for nine. I pulled a pan of buttermilk biscuits out of the oven, while Faith ladled a rich, thick beef stew into a serving bowl. Fat slices of golden carrots were mixed in with pale chunks of potatoes and tender shreds of meat. It was a perfect rib-warming dish for a snowy night. Our kitchen cat, the yellow and white long-haired Christabel, sat mewing expectantly. Faith had gotten her as a kitten last summer, and she’d turned into an excellent mouser. We now had a vermin-free home.

  “She smells the meat,” Faith said with a smile.

  I fished out a chunk of beef and one of potato, and mashed them together in a small bowl for the cat’s dinner, setting it on the floor for her after it cooled.

  “Matthew, Mark, Betsy,” I called into the adjoining sitting room. “Time to wash your hands and get ready to eat.” I set the dish of stew in the middle of the table and counted the plates. “Faith, don’t we only need eight places?” I counted again. Five children. Frederick, Zeb, and me. Eight. My brother-in-law Frederick had asked to use my parlor for a moment, and was sequestered in there with Zebulon Weed, Faith’s beau.

  “Father said to put on nine. So I did.”

  My heart lifted. Was my David surprising me with a visit in the middle of his meetings in Portsmouth? How I would love that.

  The three younger children ran in and shoved each other to be the one who controlled the pump in the wide black soapstone kitchen sink. Betsy lost out, of course. Matthew, who’d had a recent growth spurt, now stood with his black curls a few inches taller than his towheaded brother. He pumped water for all of them to wash up with.

  At that moment the front doorbell jangled. “I’ll see who it is,” Luke called in his newly gruff voice, which still cracked into a boy’s higher pitch at odd moments.

  “No, Luke. I will answer the door,” Frederick said from the front of the house.

  Odd. Usually Frederick ordered Luke around as if he was his personal servant instead of his teenaged son.

  Slender sweet Zeb joined us in the kitchen. Beaming, he bestowed a kiss on Faith’s forehead. He spied the basket I’d readied with a cloth for the biscuits and slid them into it, then brought it to the table. This Friend was not a man bound by the rigid tradition that says kitchen work is women’s work.

  A moment later Frederick escorted a short woman with a comfortable body into the kitchen. She entered hesitantly, almost shyly. So the guest wasn’t my David, after all. My disappointment was palpable and I tried to keep it off my face. On the other hand, who in the world was she? The room fell quiet as we all watched.

  “Family,” Frederick began, his own voice hesitant, “I’d like you to meet my friend, Winnie Hanson. Winnie, this is my family.” He placed his hand lightly on her back with one hand and gestured with the other.

  A hush fell over the room as the family took this in. His friend. She appeared to perhaps be more than a friend. Frederick had always been difficult and had grown more so since his wife’s death. I was glad if he had found joy in a companion. In truth, he had seemed somewhat less argumentative and disgruntled of late. But was Winnie also a Friend?

  Betsy, always the fearless one, stepped forward. “I’m pleased to meet thee, Winnie.” She extended her little hand. “I’m Betsy.”

  Winnie appeared to blink away a tear as she smiled down at Betsy and clasped Betsy’s hand in both of hers. “And I am pleased to meet thee, as well, Betsy.

  Apparently she was, in fact, a Quaker like us. In turn we each introduced ourselves, me hanging back until the immediate family was named and greeted.

  “And I am Rose Carroll, Winnie. I’m the children’s aunt. My late sister was their mother.”

  “Rose has been good enough to lodge with us,” Frederick added, “and help out around the house.”

  “She’s a midwife,” Betsy chimed in. “She helps babies get born.”

  Winnie, now appearing more at ease, smiled at me, her bright blue eyes a contrast to her nearly black hair. “I have heard of thee, Rose.”

  “Oh?” I asked.

  “Yes. I am a member of Newburyport Friends Meeting. They were most supportive when I was widowed. Benjamin Lehigh has lauded your skills both in the birthing chamber and as an amateur investigator. And I believe I have met your betrothed.”

  “David?” I was surprised, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been. Benjamin, the Quaker lawyer and also a widower, was a good friend of David’s parents.

  “Yes. I’m a nursing supervisor at Anna Jaques. David is one of our best physicians, and always respectful to the nurses.”

  “As well he might be, but I am not surprised to hear it. Welcome to our home, Winnie.” I glanced at Faith, who nodded. “Dinner is hot and ready. Shall we sit?”

  After we’d held hands for our silent prayer of gratitude and begun to eat, I asked the newcomer, “Does thee have children, Winnie?”

  Her smile was a sad one. “I had two babies, but their souls were released to God in that outbreak of influenza some years back. And my husband died not long after. It was then that I trained as a nurse.”

  So she and Frederick had in common that they’d both lost a spouse, but perhaps I shouldn’t have asked about such a painful topic. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t bother thy head about it, Rose,” Winnie said. “I work primarily with sick children at the hospital, so I am able to mother them to my heart’s content.”

  The conversation moved on to lighter topics, like the poem Betsy had memorized for school and Luke’s opinion on the Arthur Conan Doyle novel he’d just read. Twenty minutes later the serving dishes were empty and our stomachs were full. Mark stood and said, “Father, may we be excused?”

  “Not quite yet, son.”
r />   Zeb took Faith’s hand. Her eyes gleamed. “We have some news,” she said, gazing at her beau.

  “Yes,” Zeb said, looking at each of us in turn. “I have asked Faith to join me in holy matrimony. She agreed.”

  “And I have given them both my blessing.” Frederick beamed. He reached under the table for Winnie’s hand and didn’t try to hide the gesture.

  Betsy clapped her hands. She sprang up and ran around the table, climbing onto Faith’s lap. “Do I get to be the flower girl? My friend at school got to be the flower girl in her auntie’s wedding. And we’re sisters, so that’s even more important, isn’t it?”

  Faith stroked her little sister’s hair. “We’ll see, Betsy.”

  “Have you chosen a date?” I asked of both Faith and Zeb.

  “That’s the thing,” Zeb said. “We proceeded a little backwards and have already been cleared for marriage by Amesbury Friends. My father has to travel to Chicago on business next week.”

  “And Granny Dot is going to Washington for a woman suffrage meeting as soon as he gets back,” Faith added. “So we thought we would be married on First Day.”

  “This First Day?” I asked. I felt a pang of missing David amid these happy couples. How I wished he could have been here beside me at this moment. I was completely happy for Faith and Zeb, but this sharpened my unhappiness with my own as-yet unmarried situation. And it meant I would lose Faith’s companionship and help at home, too.

  “Yes, in the afternoon,” Faith continued. “Granny and Grandfather said they can come. Will thee help me, Rose? Alma Latting is making me a new dress, and the Women’s Business Meeting is arranging the food for afterward. But I do hope thee will—” Her mouth quavered and she gazed at me with full eyes. “I want thee to stand in for Mother, if thee will.”

  “Of course I will, dear Faith. Thee has my blessing.” I pushed away my own feelings as I rose and went around to kiss her cheek. “And thee as well, nephew Zeb.” I kissed his, too. My time would come. Theirs had simply come first.