The kitchen was downstairs, a huge, utilitarian room full of ranges and instruments I couldn’t put a name to. A male cook and several kitchen boys were cleaning up after supper with the help of two orderlies, and in one corner a small table had been set with simple bowls and spoons. Matron, Martha, and Boney were all seated at it when I arrived. Nina came behind me; she had helped me clean up Captain Mabry with the aid of Winsoll’s, which had turned out to be a kind of disinfectant. I could still smell it in the back of my nose and behind my eyes. We’d also changed my bloodstained apron.
A kitchen boy put a pot of stew on the table, and at its savory scent my appetite returned. It seemed this was the nurses’ evening meal.
When we had all taken a bowl, Matron spoke. First she bowed her head and recited a prayer; we all bowed our heads in silence. Then she straightened and gave us her eagle stare again.
“Nurse Fellows,” she said. “Please begin.”
Boney lifted her chin, as if reciting in front of the class. “I ordered the linens you requested, Matron, and they should come with the next delivery. I also completed the inventory of the storage room in the west hallway.”
“Very well. I expect a written report on my desk by morning.”
“Yes, Matron.”
The stew was delicious. The shaken, horrified feeling I’d had in the dining room began to recede. This seemed to be a sort of nurses’ meeting. I ate and listened with half an ear, thinking about nosebleeds.
“Nurse Beachcombe?” said Matron.
“Patient Sixteen ate his supper,” said Martha. “Or I think he did, as the orderlies brought down an empty tray. He didn’t want me to stay in the room.”
“And how did he seem?”
I wondered whether that was a blush on Martha’s cheeks, or whether she was just overheated. “He was no worse than usual, Matron. He was sitting on that window seat he likes. He barely spoke to me.”
“But did he appear improved at all? Sociable?”
“No, Matron.”
For a moment Matron looked almost uncertain. “I had so hoped for improvement. Though of course I realize he’s—” She broke off. Martha and Nina exchanged a glance.
I put down my spoon. “He’s what?”
Matron regarded me for a moment. “Patient Sixteen is the least of your worries, Nurse Weekes,” she said. “Carry on, Nurse Beachcombe.”
“Yes, Matron. The coal was low in the fires today, so I spoke to one of the orderlies about it. He said there’s water leaking somewhere in the cellar, and none of them want to go down there to the scuttle, and they’re having to draw straws.”
“What do you mean, they don’t want to go down there?”
“Well.” Martha’s eyes went even wider in her heart-shaped face. “They say the water leaks constantly, they can’t make it stop, and the scuttle is placed far in the back. You have to cross the cellar to get to it. And sometimes, at the back, they hear sounds in the water behind them closer to the stairs, like—like splashing footsteps. And so they won’t go down.”
We all fell silent. Finally Matron spoke. “Are you telling me,” she said, her mannish voice slow with disbelief, “that the orderlies—grown men—are afraid of a few mice in the cellar?”
“Unacceptable,” said Boney.
Martha bit her lip. “But they say it’s true.”
“It sounds like poppycock to me,” said Nina, as she shoveled in another mouthful of stew. “Send me down there. I’ll go.”
“There will be no need, Nurse Shouldice,” said Matron. “I will speak to Paulus myself.”
Paulus, I gathered, was the huge orderly, the man with the South African accent. Nina shrugged. Martha worried her lip, her supper forgotten.
Matron turned to me. “And you, Nurse Weekes? What nonsense have you brought me? Or are you a girl with even a minimum of intelligence?”
There was a glint in her eye; she was waiting for something from me, something she expected. I lifted my chin. “What happened in the dining room today,” I said. “The nosebleed. I’d like an explanation.”
“Would you?” said Matron.
“From the way you spoke to him, there’s obviously a history. If I’m to care for him, I’d like to know what it is I’m to expect.”
She frowned. If there’d been a test, I wondered whether I had passed it. “Mr. Mabry has a particular psychoneurosis,” she said. “He often seems calm, but he is prone to fits. They can be violent, so you must take care if you’re in his presence when he’s struck with one. He has broken several items during his time at Portis House.”
I digested that. “And the nosebleed?”
“Is one of his recurring fits. The doctors believe it is of particular concern. They have been focusing their treatment on it, and before today he hadn’t had one in nearly three weeks.”
“Treatment?” I looked around the table. “Do you mean he somehow makes himself have nosebleeds?”
“You saw it yourself,” said Boney. “How else did he get it?”
I decided not to mention that I hadn’t been in the dining room at the time. “It’s just—I didn’t know a nosebleed could be caused by force of will.”
“He doesn’t will ’em,” said Martha. “He gets afraid. He thinks he sees something.”
“That’s bunk and you know it.” Boney turned on her, her lips tight, spots of red high on her cheeks. “He does no such thing!”
“Nurse Fellows is correct,” Matron broke in. “Mr. Mabry suffers from delusions, as do many of the men here. Mind over matter, Nurse Weekes. Mind over matter. It is what many of the men here still have to learn.” She pushed back her chair and stood. “And now, I expect you all to return to your posts for the evening. We have work to do.”