He found the patient stretched out on a bed with an elaborate mahogany carved headboard. She’d thrown off most of the bedcovers and was thrashing around on the mattress, wild-eyed and clearly terrified. Her face, neck, and narrow arms were slick with sweat. Blood pooled on the white sheets.
“How long has this been going on?” Carlyle asked. He removed his suit coat, tossed it onto a chair, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and opened the satchel he kept packed by his front door.
“The labor pains started around two this afternoon,” the woman said, leaning down to stroke the younger woman’s hair. She crooned something inaudible, which seemed to calm the patient a little.
“And how far along is she?”
“Maybe seven months? It’s too early, I know. The bleeding won’t stop. I didn’t know there would be so much blood.”
“She should have been taken to a hospital hours ago,” Carlyle said, frowning down at the patient.
“I told you, that’s not possible.”
“No!” the patient cried. “No hospitals. My mother died in the hospital.” Her eyes widened again, and she cried out as another wave of contractions racked her body.
He sighed and reached into the satchel, bringing out a small clear vial and a hypodermic needle, which he set on the table beside the bed. He rummaged around again and brought out a brown paper packet of cotton balls. “Damn it,” he muttered. He reached for his jacket and extracted a half-empty pint of gin from the inside pocket.
Carlyle uncapped the gin and dribbled some on the cotton ball. He stuck the hypodermic in the vial of liquid, drew back the plunger and flicked the tube once, twice with a forefinger, to dispel any air bubbles.
He nodded at the woman. “I’ll need you to hold her down for a moment.”
“I’ll try,” she whispered, standing to lean across the bed.
“Noooo!” the patient cried.
“Just a small prick,” he said pleasantly. “Then you’ll have a nice sleep, and when you wake up, this will all be over.”
Her body tensed as another contraction began, and she writhed in pain.
“Hold her down!” he barked, and he jabbed the needle into her arm.
*
When he emerged from the bedroom, he carried a tiny, squalling infant wrapped in a pillowcase.
“It’s a boy,” Dr. Carlyle said, thrusting the baby into the woman’s arms.
“Healthy?” She looked down at the beet-red infant. “He’s so tiny.”
“Because he’s too early,” Carlyle said. His shirt was sweat-soaked and clung to his chest, his forearms were flecked with blood, and his white hair was plastered to his skull.
“Where’s the bathroom? I need to wash up.”
“Just there.” She pointed to the next door. “And how is she?” The woman gazed anxiously through the open doorway where the patient lay unconscious atop a mound of blood-soaked sheets and towels.
“She’ll live. But there won’t be any more surprise pregnancies, I’ll tell you that.”
“Just as well,” she murmured.
She heard water running. She looked down at the baby, no bigger than an undersized roasting hen. She didn’t particularly like babies, but she felt a strange pang of sympathy for this one. She touched a tentative finger to his fist, and he stopped crying, grabbed hold, and clung on with a surprising ferocity.
Carlyle was wiping his hands on a clean towel. “You’ll want to wash her properly when she wakes up, keep the incision clean, watch that she doesn’t run a fever, which is a sign of infection. If she does seem feverish, call me immediately before she becomes septic.”
“And what about the baby?”
“What about it?”
The woman looked down at the now sleeping infant and then pointed with her chin toward the bedroom. “She’s not married, you know. If anybody found out…”
He yawned, impatient to get home to his bed. “What are you trying to say?”
She bit her lip. “It would be better if she thought … well, if she thought the baby died.”
Carlyle bristled and feigned shock, though in his line of work this was a very old story.
“What if we could find somebody to take care of it?” the woman went on.
“What are you suggesting?”
“Surely there are orphanages?”
“This baby is not an orphan,” he said. “In any case, orphanages require paperwork. Questions would be asked.”
“Oh.”
He looked at her, waiting, expectant.
She sighed and went for her pocketbook. He took the money without comment.
The woman slumped with exhaustion. He considered her, considered his surroundings. He knew the owner of this house, had even socialized with him, in long-ago, happier times. Money would not be an issue for this family. If he could provide the answers to nosy questions, perhaps everybody’s problems would be solved.
“I know a couple,” he said slowly.
When he left, he took the sleeping infant with him, bundled in a wicker shopping basket. She went into the bedroom and began gathering up the soiled linens. Carlyle’s gin bottle stood on the nightstand, empty now.
39
Gabe Wynant was getting accustomed to the unexpected that day at Shellhaven. But nothing could have readied him for the story he was about to hear in the library-turned-bedroom so recently vacated by Josephine Bettendorf Warrick.
Brooke caught him as he took the last stair. He was dressed and ready to leave, his briefcase again tucked under his arm.
“What now?” he said, noting the grim expression on her face.
She glanced upward, toward the second floor. “Where are the others?”
“I heard lots of cursing coming from Lizzie’s bedroom. And the cat was yowling, so it’s a good guess they’re getting ready to leave. I think Felicia and Varina went out somewhere with Louette.”
“I think you’d better come with me,” she said.
*
C. D. had seated himself in the recliner and was idly leafing through a leather-bound book he’d picked at random from one of the bookcases.
“You remember C. D.,” she told Gabe.
“Yes?” Gabe said, leaning against the doorjamb.
“C. D., could you please tell my colleague what you just told me?”
“You mean the part where I tell him I’m Josephine’s son?” C. D. seemed pleased to have a story worth telling and retelling.
Gabe blinked and looked at Brooke for her reaction. She nodded. “Yes. And start from the beginning, please.”
“Which beginning? You mean how she dropped me off at the orphanage in Savannah when I was just a baby? Not even a month old? And bribed them nuns to keep me and not tell anybody she’d had a bastard? Or do you want me to begin when I got too old to stay with the little kiddies, so they packed me off to Good Shepherd Home for Boys?”
“Whoa. Whoa!” Gabe exclaimed. “She? You are referring to Josephine Warrick?”
“Who else?” C. D. asked.
“You’re telling me you are Josephine Warrick’s son?”
“And only living heir,” C. D. said. He picked up a pen and extended it toward the lawyer. “Write it all down if you want, ’cause it’s all true and I can prove it.”
40
C. D. folded his sunglasses and placed them in his breast pocket. His pale blue eyes flickered around the library, taking inventory, finally resting on the side-by-side oil portraits of Josephine and Preiss Warrick.
Preiss was posed casually in a tweed jacket, sitting on a tree stump, with a shotgun propped in the crook of his elbow. His left hand rested on the head of a black-and-white English setter who had a dead bird clenched between its jaws. Preiss had been a handsome man, with a narrow, bony face, deep-set eyes, and full lips. The painting’s backdrop was a romanticized version of Talisa with moss-draped oaks, blue sky, and puffy cotton-candy clouds.
Josephine appeared to have been costumed for a fancy dress party in her portrait, in a floor-length emerald-green satin dress, triple strands of pearls, and a full-length mink tossed artfully around her shoulders. The backdrop matched the portrait of her husband, right down to the tree stump and the trailing Spanish moss. But in Josephine’s portrait the setter was curled up, asleep at her feet.
C. D. drummed his fingertips on the leather-bound book cover.
“We’re waiting,” Gabe said, tiring of the dramatics.