Chapter Twenty-Two

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Friday, 20 August, 1869

Harriet stayed in the infirmary for three days. Rose, in the next bed, was discharged after two. During that time, Harriet asked anyone who would listen if they had seen Ellen. The answer was always ‘no’. She hadn’t seen a doctor or the Matron at all, but when Mrs. Trotter came in to her ward on the third morning, Harriet begged her to check Ellen wasn’t in the mortuary.

When the Assistant Matron returned saying the only death in the past day had been an old soldier who’d fallen down the stairs and broken his neck, she was at first relieved.

“That weasel Lynton Brown brought him in.” Mrs. Trotter’s round face shone with indignation. “Do you know, he wheeled Titus Sproat in on a barrow and tipped him out on the floor like a sack of potatoes? When I told Brown to have more respect for the dead, he said, ‘He’s beyond any pain now, ain’t he, Miss Fusspot,’ snickering in that foul way he has. The nerve of the man.”

Harriet swallowed. “You don