A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [137]
Butler was sitting across from him, clearly anxious to get back to his painting, and Mrs. Butler, held by curiosity, sat quietly knitting and watching from across the room. The girl was nowhere in sight.
Rutledge had to go back two years before he found the diary entry he was after. There was a date, April 27, and then the notation “Mrs. Parkinson went into labor at two o’clock in the afternoon. All proceeding normally. Three weeks short of full term.”
Was that the reference he’d been after? The housekeeper had distinctly told him there was a miscarriage. This child was nearly full term.
“Yon housekeeper wasna’ there. She left to wed a scoundrel.”
On the twenty-eighth there was a second entry. “Eleven in the morning. Boy survived only an hour. Gave Mrs. Parkinson a strong sedative and told the housekeeper, Mrs. Fortner, to sit by her through the night, until I can arrange for a nurse. Four o’clock same day, set Robert Dunning’s leg after he was kicked by a horse. Five o’clock, Peggy Henderson brought in with a splinter in hand. Six-thirty, looked in on Mrs. Parkinson again. Sleeping. Nurse Meadows with her now, replacing Mrs. Fortner. Just as well, not impressed with housekeeper’s skills. Had long talk with Parkinson, explaining situation. Question about who should see to burial. He left arrangements with me. I did what I could. Sad day for that family.”
There was nothing else about treating Mrs. Parkinson, except for the daily visit to be sure she was recovering from the birth.
Rutledge scanned ahead.
Two months later there was a final entry. “Mrs. Parkinson refuses to leave her room. Have advised husband to let her mourn in her own fashion. Would have been easier if she hadn’t heard the child cry and knew it lived. Better to have told her it was stillborn. But it was out of my hands.”
The only other mention of the Parkinsons that year was a notation that Parkinson had come to Dr. Butler in July with cuts on his hands after an accident in his laboratory. “Self-inflicted” had been added to the terse notation. But Dr. Butler hadn’t seen fit to elaborate.
The heartbreaking loss of a son recorded in a few dozen words written in a cramped but clear hand.
Rutledge went through the next year to be sure, but there was no other mention of the child or how the family had learned to cope. Whatever role Dr. Butler had played in Mrs. Parkinson’s recovery was not given. These were reminders to himself, not a medical record.
He jotted down the dates and events, then closed the diary and thanked the Butlers. They were glad to see the back of him, he thought. Another woman had arrived with an armload of freshly ironed bed hangings, and Mrs. Butler had taken her directly upstairs.
He could hear her voice drifting down after her. “Betsy, you’re a good friend to pitch in like this. I’d never have got them ready in time. There’s just one wall left to paint—”
Butler followed Rutledge to the door, as politeness dictated, saying, “I don’t suppose you found what you were looking for. Sorry.”
“It was worth my time to read what was there.” Rutledge thanked him and went out to his motorcar.
It was after midnight, in fact closer to two o’clock. He could feel the long day in his shoulders, and in the tension in Hamish’s voice as they drove back to Berkshire.
There had been a living child. So much harder to forget, so much more of a tie for the grieving mother who had heard him cry.
It had been a wild-goose chase, as Hamish was pointing out, but Martha Ingram had been right in her supposition that while she was occupied with her short-lived marriage, there had been another child, a boy after two daughters. And when she returned to serve the family, Mrs. Parkinson had never told her the whole story.
He recalled the comment, “Had long talk with Parkinson, explaining situation.”
And later, Gerald Parkinson had smashed something in his laboratory, cutting himself badly.
Things had gone wrong for him as well.
When he reached the inn, Rutledge went up to his bed and fell asleep almost at once. Hamish,