“What is it?”
“A doctor’s bag, I think. But I can’t imagine why it would have been burned.” She shifted it in her grip and the contents rattled—metal and glass. She looked uneasy, holding it, and Jane held out her hands.
“I can take it,” Jane said. “I’ll get it cleaned up.”
“It’s no trouble, ma’am.”
“I have little else to do,” Jane said, and Mrs. Purl passed the bag to her. It was heavy and cold.
Mrs. Luthbright was not in the kitchen when she arrived, so she took the bag straight over to the basin sink. She eased it open, wiggling free the stubborn catch. Its structure held, revealing pockets filled with broken glass, several scalpels, and other tools she was not as familiar with.
Mrs. Purl was right. Why burn such a thing? The tools were of fine make, and aside from the fire damage she could see no other defect.
Jane fished out each shard of glass, piling them off to the side. The bag was likely unsalvageable, but it was an easy place to start. From there, she freed the larger tools, pieces of metal and horn she didn’t know the names for, and several clamps, delicate when compared with those used by carpenters but horrible when she thought of them applied to flesh. She washed them all under the tap with slivers of castile soap, then set them out to dry much as if they were silverware.
She’d learned a thing or two about instrument preparation from Mr. Lowell over the past week, most notably when she had assisted Augustine in what he’d called a pupillary incision surgery. She’d watched as he had taken a scalpel to an old woman’s eye, clouded over from an old injury and exposed by a metal spreader, and cut a slit that, he said, would become her new pupil, restoring some measure of sight.
The woman had thrashed when her eyelids had been opened, and had moaned from the ether, but when the surgery was done, she had thanked Augustine over and over again. The paradox of medicine: pain and relief, life and death.
She was cleaning the second scalpel when she slipped and cut the tip of her finger.
The metal clattered into the sink, and she hissed, closing her eyes against the pain. When she opened them again, crimson blood was spattered along the sides of the basin, tainting the water as it spiraled down the drain. Grimacing, she shoved her hand beneath the tap and squeezed at her finger until the blood finally slowed.
She eyed the rest of the implements warily. There were only a few left, and she made short but careful work of them, ever mindful of another prick.
CHAPTER TEN
BACK IN THE foyer, Jane gazed up at the staircases and the gallery walkway, considering resuming her explorations where she’d left off. Aside from Augustine’s room and study, she’d seen very little of the second floor. But to her left stretched another hallway, and even with her knowledge of the rest of the house, she couldn’t picture where it might lead. She followed it.
There were only a few rooms branching from that hall: servants’ quarters or storage closets, only one of which was in active use by Mrs. Purl. Jane almost turned back. But then she saw a glint of metal in the dim light at the far end of the hall. There were no windows, and the gaslights did not extend all the way to where a door stood, shut tight. And yet the light caught, glittering, and drew her closer.
The door was sealed with a line of three old keyholes, and one newer padlock; that was what had glinted in the dark. It was attached to the door and frame by brackets that looked much weaker than the lock itself, out of place and hastily applied.
Frowning, she tried each of the keys on her chatelaine. The keyhole locks gave way, but the padlock remained steadfast.
She ran her thumb across the metal. It was bitingly cold, and she pulled away with a wince and a flash of reflexive, alien dread. The chatelaine fell from her hand. It swung from where it was attached to her dress, rattling in the silence of the hall.
What could be so wrong with a room that it would be locked up so tightly?
That the servants could not access it?
She stared at the padlock for a long time, waiting for her mind to present a solution, waiting to laugh, to be ready to move on. But instead, she only imagined breaking the brackets, smashing the door open, and looking inside.
Air. She needed air, to clear her head of these strange thoughts. She forced herself away from the door and upstairs to Augustine’s room, where she determinedly switched out her house shoes for her mud-caked boots from the night before.
The grounds outside of Lindridge Hall were ill-kept, rambling hillocks of dead shrubberies, all of it overgrown with vines now bare from the season. The rains had held off so far this morning, but the soil was still damp and spongy, and the sky was gray from horizon to horizon. No birds sang, not even as she climbed a low, sloping hill to the house’s left, the top of which was covered in the outmost edges of a young forest.