“She might be comforted by prayer. If someone prayed with her for the soul of her child. Can a priest be called?”
“You don’t want to pray with her?”
Elise put a hand to her lower face and shook her head sharply.
“Then find someone who will,” Anna said. “We’re about to get started here.”
? ? ?
NOT A HALF hour after the conclusion to Mrs. Allen’s labor Anna was scrubbing in again, this time for a slack-faced young girl who refused to give a name. Her problem was easily diagnosed.
Elise said, “This seems to be a common . . . ailment.”
“Women who are desperate do desperate things,” Anna said. “You will see a lot of this, I’m sorry to say.”
“I thought I understood about poverty.”
“You still don’t. You won’t, until you start going out with the visiting nurses. That’s where many women give up medicine.”
“Not men?”
Anna looked at this young woman who showed so much promise, who learned so eagerly and quickly, and who still was completely unprepared for the trials to come.
“Primarily women. Few male doctors will visit patients in the worst of the tenements. I don’t know of any who treat the outdoor poor unless they come to a clinic. I personally think that all male medical students should be required to pay home visits to the poorest and most desperate for a month at least, but nobody asks my opinion.” She managed a small smile. “So let’s see to this girl. I think her case will take a happy ending.” She stopped herself.
“That’s entirely the wrong word. What I mean is, we will probably be able to save her life.”
? ? ?
ON THE WAY home she stopped to buy a variety of newspapers, and then sat on a bench in the small cemetery behind St. Mark’s to look through them. She found mention of Archer Campbell’s arrest in all of them, the articles prominently placed. There was no new information beyond the fact that he had been arrested when three stolen bearer bonds were found in his possession. The gossip rags were speculating on his role in the disappearance of his four sons. In that they were entirely wrong, and also absolutely correct.
The names of the detectives were familiar, for the simple reason that Jack had introduced her to both Michael Larkin and Hank Sainsbury the last time she had been to police headquarters. They had been both polite and terribly awkward, because, Jack told her later, they had no experience of respectable women in their squad room and feared the wrath of Maroney if they failed to meet his standards of proper behavior.
She thought of Archer Campbell sitting in the Tombs. With his visit to the New Amsterdam he had crossed a line of no return, in Jack’s view of the world. She asked herself if she should be objecting for moral or ethical reasons. Then she thought of Mabel Stone and four little boys, and decided she should not.
44
SHE SAID, “DON’T you have a full day planned?”
Jack’s arms tightened around her waist. “You owe me a rainy Saturday in bed.”
“I might debate that, if it were raining. But it’s not. Jack.”
“Heartless wretch.” Just a mutter, but she heard it and she knew without a doubt that he was already asleep again. It was a trick Anna knew too; she had learned it out of necessity during her training. Somehow that made it easier to rouse him again. She pressed a hand to his shoulder.
“Jack. Don’t you have to go in?”
His eyes opened. “I didn’t get in until three hours ago.”
“That late,” Anna said. “Did you make some progress on the case?”
He rubbed a hand over his jaw and the beard stubble made a sound like a scrubbing brush on brickwork.
“Three doctors named Graham so far, none of them fit the bill. We talked to maybe ten night porters. Later today we’ll go to the registry office and have a look through the books.” He yawned and stretched, opened one eye, and waggled both brows at her.
“Come here.”
“Oh, no.” She danced away, grabbing up her robe.
“You woke me not once, but twice. Now you must face the consequences.”
She slipped out the door and ran, and he came along after her, grumbling, struggling into his robe. In the dining room she said, “Why are you following me?”
“Now you’re fishing for compliments,” he said, and gave another great yawn.
? ? ?
AT THE TABLE he showed her the text of the advertisement they were going to run in the newspapers. Anna read it while she buttered her toast.
She said, “So the idea is that if you can’t stop him right away, you might be able to slow him down?”
“At this point we have to warn the public.”