the messenger found you from home.” He peered at me kindly. “You hoped for a last sight of him? I am afraid I must disappoint you there. He is gone.”
“Gone?”My throat constricted. “But I thought… you said that he passed the night…”
“LaForge was taken away with the rest of them this morning, at Sir Francis's orders.” The surgeon pursed his lips in a grimace of frustration. “I cannot like the decision, but in this, I am utterly powerless. Sir Francis is the Transport Board, and before him I must bow.”
“Then LaForge is not dead! Thank Heaven! Your purgatives and emetics did some good!”
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Hill thoughtfully, “and I should never have attempted them were it not for you. I suspected—I feared the matter was one of poison; but I could not believe the evidence of my eyes. As every physical scientist must, however, I credit the result of my own experiment.”
“You believe, then, that he was deliberately poisoned?”
“It was not a case of food gone bad,” he said, “nor yet of an arsenic intended for Wool House's rats, ingested in error. His food—and his food alone—was tainted by something I have yet to name. I am as certain of that, as I am that the poor man lives. And I confess it disturbs me greatly in my mind. This threat to his life can have been no accident. It came too swiftly upon the heels of his testimony in Captain Seagrave's court-martial.”
“You have questioned the Marines?”
Mr. Hill shrugged. “I have. They observed nothing untoward, and all stoutly maintain that no one but ourselves was permitted to enter Wool House. By ourselves, I would include, of course, your brother and Mrs. Braggen.”
“Then the Marines are in error,” I declared with heat. “Last evening, Sir Francis Farnham told me that he had visited the place the previous day. It was then he determined upon the removal of the prisoners to Greenwich.”
“Greenwich?” Mr. Hill stared at me strangely. “Our patients are not gone to Greenwich, Miss Austen. They have been removed to that hulk lying at anchor in Southampton Water you may see from the quay—a rotting, foetid, and unwholesome berth if ever I saw one. It has been commissioned as a prison hulk, under the command of Captain Smallwood. An excellent fellow, but an unenviable post”
“A prison hulk?” I gasped. “But that is madness! Sir Francis told me expressly last evening that all the prisoners were to be removed to the naval hospital at Greenwich!”
“Not while the gaol-fever hangs over them,” Mr. Hill grimly replied. “Greenwich would never tolerate the threat of infection to its good British sailors. Sir Francis claims that he had no choice but to isolate the sufferers; all of Southampton was alarmed at the possibility of epidemic. The French could not remain the longer in Wool House.”
“He lied to me,” I muttered furiously. “He made me look a fool, and himself a paragon, before the better part of my present acquaintance.”
I turned and stared out at the ghostly ship, dismasted and forlorn at its anchorage in the Solent “Etienne LaForge has been consigned to that misery? A man as ill as he?”
“I promised him I would row out to the hulk tomorrow, and see how he did,” the surgeon said. “He was quite broken at his removal; he commended his books and walking-stick to my care, and went into the longboat as though it were a tumbril of execution.”
“I should not give a farthing for his chances,” I said bitterly.
“And I should not take your wager, if you did,” replied Mr. Hill.
I FOUND FLY SITTING IN THE PARLOUR WITH HIS BOOTS off and his damp socks steaming gently before the fire. He was alone—Mrs. Foote, I was made to understand, had very kindly called for Mary and carried her off for a visit to Highfield House—and he held a scrap of paper in his hands. His forehead was furled in puzzlement or dismay. I judged him to be perusing his missive for a second time.
“What is it?” I enquired as I came to a halt in the doorway. Whatever headlong rush of accusation and argument I had intended was quelled. “A letter from Tom Seagrave? Has he repented of his harsh words?”
Fly shook his head. “The note is from Tom's wife— and I am afraid I cannot make it out at all. She writes remarkably ill, Jane—a most impenetrable fist If I judge correctly, she seems to think her boys have run away to sea! But that