Nancy Herriman
Excerpt from Book 8 of A Mystery of Old San Francisco: No Mercy for the Innocent:
San Francisco June, 1868
“You can’t know how much it means to me that you and your cousin agreed to accompany us on our holiday, Mrs. Davies,” Mrs. Merrill said.
The woman stood just inside the doorway to Celia’s clinic room, crowding the opening with her voluminous indigo-floral cotton skirt and fluttering black lace shawl. She resisted stepping all the way into the room, her dark-eyed gaze darting about and never settling for long on any particular item. Instead, it skipped over Celia’s cabinet of medical supplies, her examining table, the stethoscope out of its box and laying atop Celia’s desk alongside a roll of bandaging. Elnora Merrill was either uncomfortable with the implements of a nursing practice or censorious of the woman who might make use of them. Or both.
“You were very persuasive, Mrs. Merrill,” Celia replied, folding her stethoscope back into its walnut box. “And I have been considering a visit to the mineral springs for a while. For Barbara’s sake.”
“For your cousin’s foot. Certainly,” she said. “That is why I came up with the idea to include you both.”
An invitation Celia would have declined if not for her friend Jane offering to cover the cost. But Barbara’s foot had been bothering her more than usual lately, and a visit to the hot springs might offer relief.
“I appreciate you thinking of us, Mrs. Merrill.”
“I trust, though, that my last-minute request didn’t prove to be a bother for you.”
“Not in the least,” Celia replied, smiling even though she’d had to rearrange appointments. “I only hope that my patients can tolerate my absence.”
“I expect they will be fine, Mrs. Davies.”
Celia wished she could be as certain. She glanced at her notes, carefully stacked atop her desk, each one written in crisp black ink, observations and treatment plans for each of the women she tended to. She’d never been away for more than a day or so previously. But Barbara’s health was important, too, and Celia would genuinely welcome a holiday.
“I should add, of course, that Cassandra is very grateful to have a companion,” Elnora Merrill said, fidgeting with the straps of her reticule, twined around her wrist. She’d been fidgeting with them for the past several minutes.
The woman's restlessness was infectious, adding to Celia’s uncomfortable hesitation. Leaving her with the strangest sense of foreboding.
Excerpt from Book 1 of the Bess Ellyott Mysteries: Searcher of the Dead
London, Michaelmas 1592
“Tell me his name.”
The crone had eyes as pale as chips of ice. So pale and clear that the irises nearly faded into the whites. Bess found she could not return the woman’s gaze but instead searched for aught else to stare at. The rush mats upon the tiles of the hall floor. The orange depths of the hearth fire. The herbs Bess had strung to dry, her mortar and pestle at the ready upon the oak table yet forgotten in her distress. The tapestry of a hunting scene, the fleeing stag that always seemed to move when candlelight flickered across the surface. The steps adjacent to the hearth that led to the upstairs chambers, where silence hung as heavy as her thoughts.
However, she looked but briefly at the body stretched upon the settle where he had taken his final repose. A cushion had tumbled to the floor, and his arm dangled as if to reach for it. The cushion embroidered with birds he had so favored. Because you stitched it, Bess, with those fine long fingers of yours . . .
“Martin,” she said, her voice breaking. But the crone would assume the break came of grief, which it did most certain, and not also of fear. “Martin Ellyott. My husband.”
The woman scratched his name—when had someone of her impoverished circumstance learned the art of writing?—upon a scrap of paper. She had no penknife with her, and the nib of her quill was dull, leaving the markings blunt and large. Her knotted fingers struggled to hold the writing instrument, and as Bess had yet to light a lamp, she squinted in the dimness to see what she wrote. Their surname was misspelled; Bess did not correct her.
With a groan, the old woman rose from the stool Bess’s servant had brought for her and went to the settle. Bess looked away as she examined him. Heard coals settle on the grate. She wanted to cry, but her eyes had ceased shedding tears and burned from dryness. More tears, she knew, would come later.
“No pustules upon him,” the woman muttered.
“It was not plague,” Bess replied. “He had pains in his stomach and nausea. Troubles of the bowels with great purging. Fever,” she added, a hasty afterthought in her attempt to be convincing. “No pustules.”
The crone nodded, and the edges of the kerchief she’d wrapped around her head slid across her furrowed cheeks. “The bloody flux, then.”
Bess’s pulse skipped. “Yes.”
The old woman returned to her paper. Next to Martin’s name she inscribed “bloody flux.” Thus it would be recorded on the bill of mortality forever and ever. Leaving Bess alone to suspect the true cause of his death. Leaving her to escape from the one who had brought death to her house and dread to her heart.
God help me.