“How bad?”
Michaels handed him the reins. “Bad.”
The big man dug his heels into the horse’s flanks and Crowther set off after him at a gallop, the hooves throwing dust and grass out behind them, their bodies held straight and low. He caught a glimpse of the women stranded on the grass behind him, pale and distant on the great lawn of Caveley.
Harriet turned to her sister and took her arm.
“What do you know?” she asked.
Rachel was flushed, her breathing still shallow.
“Very little. Michaels arrived only a moment ago. Cartwright has violent pains. Michaels met his girl on the street, crying her eyes out because she could not find the doctor, and so he has taken charge of the situation.”
Harriet felt her head crowd with violent fears, felt her own hand tremble on Rachel’s arm.
“Let us go in, and send David after Crowther. He may carry messages to and fro for us. And Rachel …” her sister looked up at her fearfully … “I do not wish any family of mine to make use of any gifts we receive from the Hall for a little while. Can you find a way to manage that? Discreetly if you can.”
Rachel went very white, but nodded and they turned toward the house.
Michaels led Crowther into the house and straight up the narrow stairway to Cartwright’s room. The smell of vomit and bile as the door opened was enough to make Crowther sway on his feet. Both men paused, then Michaels took a chair from the middle of the room and seated himself on it in a corner. He was silent, but had the look of a guard dog about him. Crowther moved toward the bed. It was wet with sweat, and a basin sat beside it, half-filled with a yellowish vomit. Cartwright moaned, and opening his eyes and seeing Crowther, tried to pull himself up.
“Mr. Crowther! Are you well? Mrs. Westerman …?”
Crowther sat on the bed and took the man’s wrist in his hand. The pulse was exhausted, thready and jumping.
“I am quite well, and I left Mrs. Westerman in perfect health.”
Cartwright fell back on his pillows and let his eyes flutter shut.
“Thank God. I feared …” His body convulsed; he pulled his knees to his chest with a low groan. Crowther removed his coat.
“Mr. Michaels-water and all the salt in the house, please. We must do what we can to drive this from him.”
He did not look around, but heard the man stand and leave the room with quick steps. Cartwright tried to open his eyes again, panting.
“I have been poisoned, have I not, Mr. Crowther?”
“I fear so.”
“And will it kill me?”
Crowther hesitated, then let himself meet the red glittering eyes of his patient.
“The violence of the attack suggests you have been subject to a heavy dose. But we will purge you, and recovery may be possible.”
Another cry, and Cartwright’s knuckles whitened as his hands and jaws clenched. As the spasm passed, his hands loosened again and Crowther saw the tears in his palm where his neat nails had dug at the flesh. The sick man breathed hard a moment, then looked up again.
“It came so sudden. A strange taste …”
“Like metal?”
“Yes.” Cartwright looked confused. “How did you know?”
“Arsenic. Then came a violent headache and the sickness?”
Cartwright nodded again, though this time he kept his eyes shut. His skin was clammy and yellow. Crowther smoothed the man’s hair away from his forehead.
“I have some things in my store so we can make you more comfortable.” He did not know if he was heard.
Michaels came up the stair again with Hannah on his heels. Crowther realized as he mixed the salt and water together and held it to Cartwright’s lips that this was his first ever living patient. He doubted the case would be a credit to him; the dose must have been very large, and other than purging his stomach, there was little he could do but keep vigil. The effect of the salts was almost immediate. Cartwright groaned and twisted in his bed to vomit again into the bowl. It lay in a patch of late-afternoon sunlight on the dark wooden flooring, lapped by the edges of Joshua’s bedlinen. They caught a little of the spatter of bile from his mouth. There was some blood. Crowther wondered if the stomach was already bleeding, but perhaps it was only that Joshua had bitten the lining of his mouth while caught in one of the spasms.
Taking the glass, he filled it with clean water and raised his patient a little from the bed with an arm around his shoulders, getting him to drink. Cartwright took greedy drafts of it, and fell back against Crowther’s shoulder. Some water dribbled down the side of his face. Crowther removed his handkerchief and gently cleaned it away. The man let him, panting again, the body waiting for the next attack. His eyes opened briefly, the cornea flushed scarlet with blood. It was like coming face to face with hell itself.
“Will it take long, Mr. Crowther?” he panted.
“Perhaps a day.”
Cartwright grunted and turned his face away. Crowther stood and noticed Hannah.
“Can you read, girl?” She nodded. “Then go to my house and bring me the jar from the cabinet in the study marked Valerian.”
She looked confused and Crowther sighed impatiently. Michaels opened a drawer under a little table against the dark wall at the back of the room, then pointed to the ink and paper it contained. Crowther thanked him and wrote the word on the paper.
“And here is the key. My servants will show you where the cupboard is. Hurry back.”
She flew out of the room and Crowther watched the door shut behind her without moving. Michaels spoke.
“Do you know what’s doing it, Mr. Crowther?”
“From the violence of the attack and the metal taste he noticed-arsenic, I should think.”
“Any hope?”
Crowther shook his head. “When Hannah gets back I’ll go down with her and stop up the bottles,” Michaels said.
“Check the food too, if he has eaten in the last hour.”
“Why did he ask after you and Mrs. Westerman?”
“We were here a little while ago, to ask if he saw Brook on his way into town,” Crowther replied. “He gave us lemonade.”
“Which did you no harm.”
“As you see.”
Michaels bit the side of his thumb and turned away a little.
“And did he see Brook?”
“Yes. And had Viscount Hardew’s address waved in his face. He could not remember it, though.”
Michaels clenched his fists. “You found that nurse from the Hall?”
“Yes.”
“Murdered too, I’m guessing. Though the village is trying to tell itself suicide.”
“Yes. Murdered.” Crowther did not elaborate, but picked up another chair and set it by his patient’s head. He then arranged his limbs as one prepared to wait a long time.
Michaels looked at him sideways. “What was it you sent for?”
“An opiate. It should lessen his pain at the end.”
Michaels sighed and took his own seat again in the shadows.
Rachel picked up her book and then put it down again, having stared at the same paragraph she had just read twice without understanding it. Harriet continued to walk up and down the room. There was a light knock at the door and Mrs. Heathcote came in with a paper folded once. Harriet snatched it from her and opened it, biting her lip.
“Harriet?”
She turned to her sister and put the note in her hand.
“Poisoned. There is nothing to be done.”
Mrs. Heathcote started. Then recovered herself.
“I’ll send David back again to wait for more news, ma’am-if there’s no message, of course.” Harriet nodded without looking up. “Do, please. There is no message.”
Crowther was not sure if Michaels had sent for the squire himself, or if the air had carried the news to him without need of human informer. Whatever way, Bridges had arrived, and having spoken to the maid now took his place in the growing dark alongside Crowther and Michaels. The air in the room was heavy and fetid, and though Crowther had flung up the window there was not enough breeze in the air to carry much relief. Cartwright was becoming delirious, calling on his wife and son, sometimes in tones of desperate loss, at others joyously as if he saw them just in front of him.