In the first moment she had the odd but undeniable sense that she had opened someone else’s love letter. Then she reminded herself that Anna had given her leave to make full use of her medical library and so allowed herself to study the rosebuds, small and just partially open. Their scent lingered, faintly musky sweet.
The pages of the book itself were protected by tissue paper on one side, and on the other a large card of thick, cream-colored paper. Without disturbing anything she could make out some of the printing: an invitation to a masked ball.
A hundred questions presented themselves, when and where and mostly, why. Anna Savard didn’t seem to have any interest in high society, but she had attended this masked ball. Anna and Jack at a fancy ball was such an odd idea that she had to smile.
It felt like a love letter, Elise realized now, because it was a kind of wordless declaration. Anna Savard, who presented herself to the world as an educated woman with no need for or interest in frivolities, was also a young woman who pressed flowers for sentimental reasons. She could be both people, at once, and that very thought made Elise understand something she had been blind to.
As a little girl she had never seen people courting or falling in love, and in the convent she had been taught to think of such things as shallow and unnecessary in a purposeful life. But there was something here in these few pressed flowers that spoke very powerfully to the contrary, and in a way that surprised her.
She laughed at herself, falling in love with the idea of love, and still, she spent a long time studying the rosebuds before she remembered what she was about and turned to an illustration of the chambers of the human heart.
? ? ?
PATCHIN PLACE WAS a narrow lane that opened off Tenth Street, lined with cottages leaning together like crooked teeth. As soon as Anna turned into the lane, a plump little woman popped out of a doorway and gestured them closer.
“There you are,” she said. “Amelie’s cousin Anna, the doctor, is that right? I had a letter from her saying you were to drop by. And with two detective sergeants, as big as houses, both of you. Hope I’ve got enough food—”
“Mrs. Sparrow,” Anna said. “I’m very glad to meet you, but you really don’t need to feed us.”
Behind her Oscar cleared his throat.
“Nonsense,” said Kate Sparrow, ushering them in. “My Mary has got charge of the stall for a couple hours, so I had time to cook. I like to feed people. I was just tickled pink to get a letter from Amelie; the least I can do is feed you after all the good service she did me over the years.”
When she had arranged them around her table to her satisfaction Mrs. Sparrow set a huge pot on a trivet between them, added a basket of bread and a jug—ale, by the smell—and passed around thick crockery bowls and spoons.
“Now eat,” she said. “And I’ll talk. Just set me off in the right direction. Amelie said you wanted to know about old Dr. Cameron, is that right?”
Oscar seemed to be struck dumb by the scent from the stew pot, so Jack spoke up.
“That’s right. We’re just trying to track down background information, anything you can tell us.”
Anna said, “Amelie thought he had died some time ago.”
“And well he should be dead,” said Kate Sparrow. “Eighty-three, by my reckoning, and so frail a breeze could put him off his feet. Now, I’ll get to that, but first I want to hear about Amelie. She didn’t say much in her letter but that you would be coming to call.”
While Jack and Oscar concentrated on Kate Sparrow’s lamb stew, Anna talked about her cousin. The storyteller’s price must be paid.
“Amelie told me once she learned midwifery from her own mother, way up north in the mountains, when she was a girl.”
Anna said, “Her mother was my great-aunt Hannah. They both attended my mother when I was born. Mrs. Sparrow—”
“Kate. You must call me Kate.”
“Kate. Amelie said you could tell the detective sergeants about a Dr. Cameron.”
Kate’s expression sobered. “I can tell you about Cameron. If you really want to know.”
“We need to know,” Jack said.
She spread her hands flat on the table and studied them for a moment. “The word that comes to mind is severe. Old Testament severe. Quoted the Bible to women in travail, wanted to hear them pray out loud. Now, to be fair he knew was he was doing. Rarely lost a mother. But the man never smiles, not even after he’s put a healthy baby in its ma’s arms.”
“Did he ever strike out? Was he violent?” Oscar asked.
“You mean with fists? I don’t think so. The man has a temper, but it was all talk, fire and brimstone. A girl expecting a baby without a husband, you could hear him shouting down on the street if the windows were open.”
“He’s still in practice? Delivering babies?” Anna heard her tone and wished she were better at hiding what she was thinking, but Kate Sparrow didn’t seem to notice one way or the other.