The Dead Cry Justice by Rosemary Simpson

Author:Rosemary Simpson [Simpson, Rosemary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

“Your girl’s name is Bella, short for Annabelle,” Dr. Sloan said. “Ottilie didn’t know the family name.”

“What made her decide to talk?” Prudence asked. She had stood in silence over Ottilie’s body until Geoffrey drew the sheet across the girl’s face and folded Prudence into his arms. She’d wept until there were no more tears to shed.

“I think she’d already made up her mind that she was going to end her life.” Charity Sloan studied the two sheets of paper she’d folded into a tight square and tucked into her apron pocket. “I went to check on her one last time before going to bed, and she was awake.”

“Despite the laudanum?” Prudence asked.

“She must have ingested substantial doses in the past, enough to build up a tolerance.” She gave Prudence a knowing look. “That does happen, you know. The patient needs increasingly larger doses to achieve the same effect. Eventually, the craving is pushed beyond the body’s limit to endure and he or she dies.”

“What else did she tell you?” Geoffrey asked. He’d seen Prudence tremble before when laudanum was discussed; her brief brush with addiction would haunt her for the rest of her life.

She shot him a grateful glance. He reached for her hand, held it lightly in his.

“I wrote down as much as I could,” Dr. Sloan said. She smoothed out the sheets of paper torn from the pad on which she usually wrote prescriptions. “Rebecca had gone to bed and I was afraid if I left Ottilie’s side for even a second, she’d lapse into silence again. The confidential moment can be a rare thing for someone who has suffered abuse. So when the story of what had happened to her began to pour out, I listened until she had no more to tell.

“Ottilie was taken from a park near her home, when her governess was distracted for a moment. I think the abduction was planned well in advance. She described the smell of the handkerchief that was held against her mouth and nose and the feeling of swooning into darkness.”

“Chloroform,” Geoffrey said.

“Yes. It has a very distinct odor and the effect is almost instantaneous. She woke up in a dark room, hands and feet bound, not knowing how much time had passed or where she was. After that, the tale grew more garbled and difficult to understand. There were periods of wakefulness and more applications of the chloroform. Laudanum, too. She described a sensation of detachment from her surroundings and what was being done to her. She remembered swimming back to consciousness once and thinking her skin was on fire.”

“That must have been when her eyebrows and lashes were being plucked.” Prudence shuddered. “I can’t imagine how agonizing it must have been.”

“Every hair on her body,” Charity Sloan reminded her.

“How did she gain her freedom?” Geoffrey asked. It was important to know if Ottilie’s escape was somehow tied to that of the girl they could now call Bella.

“She described what happened whenever she was summoned to serve the man she had to address as Master,” Dr.

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