Peaceful Night Poisonings , livre ebook

Test of the Professionals II
The Peaceful Night Poisonings
Marcia Wilson




Published in the UK by
MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor
Royal Drive, London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 2017 Marcia Wilson
The right of Marcia Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious or used fictitiously. Except for certain historical personages, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MX Publishing or Andrews UK Limited.
SPIRIT LEVEL © is the artistic signature of the author Marcia Wilson. Her work is copyrighted and under copyright law.


Marcia Wilson
Marcia Wilson is an Americorps*VISTA veteran, cave-crawler, river rat, and an illustrator fascinated with black and white. She lives in the Pacific North West with a growing collection of native perennials, and a few patient humans. She’d rather build a bateau or join the dragon boat races. In the meantime, she’s hanging in there and proclaiming a great debt to S.F. Bennett, and David Marcum - two longstanding greats in the world of canonical pastichery. Read them if you get the chance.
Contact her at
m.a.wilson.resource@gmail.com
or at
gravelgirty.deviantart.com
Cover design and page marker by Stella Danelius
Stella Danelius is a graphic designer and illustrator who loves Sherlock Holmes and to design book covers. Sometimes the two coincide. See more of Stella’s work at hereafter.se
The Peaceful Night Poisonings opens with the ending of The Adventure of the Flying Blue Pidgeon : Clea Cheatham being delivered safely home in the same ambulance as a grimly wounded Mr. Lestrade.



Prelude
“Oh, no! It’s out again!”
“I’ll get it, Mees Cheatham...”
“Not at all, sir. I’ll do that right now.”
“Thank y’, Mr. Price.”
“There we go.”
A match scored against a thumbnail, and the sudden burst of light illuminated a young ambulance-man named Price.
Price had rusty hair, smallpox scars, and watery brown eyes. They watered now, caught on the torturer’s rack of bitter dry cold and bright light. A draughty ambulance was hospitable only for those who had no choice for transportation.
He squinted up as he re-lit the wick on the tiny lamp hanging in the ceiling. It was a terrible inconvenience to use pocket-lamps but their oil-lamps were always getting stolen. His five other companions, crushed together like fish in a seine, blinked and appreciated the struggle of his cold fingers to do the work.
The closest to Price was his riding-partner Mrs. Cissbury, a lawfully appointed nurse willing to work late hours for the pay - not to mention the advantage of experience.
London in 1883 was nothing but opportunity.
Price’s breath puffed white in the yellow light, and frost-crystals melted inside the candle’s glow. Cissbury shifted in her seat, uncomfortable with the addition of three others (two being wounded). They contributed to the animal heat of the air, but their hosts would be glad to take them to their rightful destination and move on to something more...medically interesting.
The man lying on the bottom canvas against the portside wall and nursing his arm in a sling was MacDonald, a blond scarecrow of a Yarder with a northern gob. His mate was still flat on the canvas stretcher above him - dripping wet under the layers of woollen blanket and some of the wet being his own blood at the arm - and the last occupant was a mite of a Lanky lass [1] crushed between himself and Mrs. Cissbury (it was a misguided attempt to keep her warm but at least she wasn’t freezing). She was half Price’s size and twice so in nerve, to judge the way her bullace eyes snapped little sparks when someone tried to make her more comfortable with tea-can or blanket.
They’d picked up MacDonald, sling and all, at a warehouse fire and had almost made it to edge of the hospital campus when an emergency flag sent them back down the road for an out-of-the-way trip to a posh estate that was also on fire. The other Yarder, a Guern-sounder named Lestrade, was dead on his feet even before they pulled him in, and he hadn’t added much to the conversation since they’d put him on the stretcher. Thank God he was a little fellow. Everyone’s knees were mashed up as it was, trying not to touch the ladies.
The lady must be a nurse or study-nurse (Price didn’t know other women could know medicine) and she had stopped the bleeding on the little fellow’s arm before they could “interfere.”
She wasn’t the sort to scream or faint. Price offered her another chance at the flask of hot tea they kept for the patients. She shook her head.
“No, thank tha.’”
These were her only words.
Price hoped Joseph had control of the reins up front. The way this night was going, it would be just their luck to run afoul of a frozen pond in the middle of the road. The ambulance wasn’t meant to hold so many at once; the joints moaned in the cold and the horses slowed, so the pits and holes in the road felt worse. The Scotchman was flinching enough with his bad arm as it was (the bottom stretcher got more bounce), and they were all trying not to jostle the tiny Miss Cheatham. In a space this tight, that was mostly impossible.
Just make the best of it, Price thought. A detour off the Main Street to get her home...how far away is Little Venice? But after that we can kick the horses to surgery. Lestrade shouldn’t be that pale...
Now the Scotchman was trying to talk with the woman. Brave man. [2]
“Is there anything we can do for y’, Mees Cheatham?”
The woman breathed through her nose at his question, trying to think or take seriously the solicitousness of a man on an ambulance canvas. She looked even tinier now that she was huddled under a mountain of coats and blankets. “No...thanktha’, Mr. MacDonald.” She answered. “We should be going straight to the doctor.”
“We’ll be fine, Mees. Lestrade and I conseeder it our priority to bring a young lady back home to her people...seein’ as how they’re besides themselves with t’worry of her well-being.”
As the horses sent them rocking across a cobblestone patch, she looked away from the sleeping Yarder to frown down at him, puzzled.
“That’s quite a lot of words coming from tha’, Mr. MacDonald. Would you be hoping to distract me with conversation?”
“Lestrade’ll be well enough, y’ll see. But ye have the look of heavy thoughts.”
“Heavy thoughts? That I do have.” She looked down to her hands - not, Price found interesting, to the man lying on the canvas just above her broach. “That I do have.”
Heavy thoughts and more, indeed. The student blessed his ignorance of the matter. That poor wretch lying down was the only one having an easy time of it...but that was sure to change as soon as he opened his eyes.
As far as ‘that poor wretch’ was concerned, riding on a canvas inside an ambulance on a cold night was a confusing experience that reeked of carbolic acid.
It was dark except for the tiny lantern over his head and the occasional glint of passing lamplight across the frozen window by his chin. When the wheels pitched on the road, the hanging lamp slid madlight across the confines.
Nauseated, Inspector G. Lestrade kept his eyes shut as much as possible. He was sickish and tired out. Even though he knew better, he kept falling into enough of a sleep that he imagined he was back in his rooms, asleep in his own bed.
It was dark inside...Not his bedroom... The chirrups of the sparrows against his window became the sounds of the iron-layered wooden wheels as they rolled down a road to...somewhere...
Gravel crunched beneath; ice frozen over a dry puddle shattered; he jerked in reflex. Ice.! No, the ice is gone. Quimper’s gone...
But ice and pond-water swamped his memory, overwhelmed him with blinks of Jethro Quimper pinning him under the drowning pond with his walking-stick as he smiled; the same stick that put the ache in his skull.
Quimper was gone, behind the bars of a Black Maria while he was in an ambulance to Bart’s.
The horses were slowing, slogging through something.
“Hoy, Lestrade.” MacDonald’s deep voice gently pulled his compatriot out of a semi-comfortable but very deep fugue. “You be wantin’ another blanket?”
“Hmn?” Lestrade wondered if he did.
“For the love of Heaven...” Clea sighed.
Clea sighed.
Lestrade’s eyes snapped open. The tiny light swung on its hook in the top of the ambulance; MacDonald was just below his arm peering up at him like a gaunt yellow scarecrow from the canvas below. Clea was sitting on the medic’s bench between two hospital employees, trying to get his attention. The two orderlies simply sat; bemused at the oddness of the three in their ambulance.
It was very crowded.
“Mr. Lestrade, hold still. He’s putting another blanket on tha’.” To MacDonald she lectured: “If a man doesn’t know, he’s not capable of knowing. He’s fallen out of a burning building into the Thames at tide-shift, and tha’ wretch