These Honored Dead (A Lincoln and Speed Mystery #1) - Jonathan F. Putnam Page 0,31

a modern medical man, here in Springfield, and I’ve been proven correct.”

Martha speared a forkful of duck and asked, “Why’d you become a—”

“Martha!” I exclaimed. “You’re not letting the gentleman eat his own dinner.”

Martha glared at me while the doctor laughed. “I don’t mind, Speed,” he said. “In fact, I positively admire a young woman unafraid to speak her mind. It’s a story I don’t mind telling. Though it began in tragedy. My wife, Jane’s mother, passed on shortly after Jane’s birth. She didn’t receive the treatment her life depended on. The medical arts at the time were positively primitive.”

“She drowned herself,” said Jane. “In a tub.”

“What?” Martha gasped.

The doctor nodded. “It’s true. I later came to understand my wife suffered from puerperal insanity. But no one had recognized it at the time, least of all me. That’s when I resolved to begin medical training.”

I stared at Patterson in disbelief. I could not fathom his callousness in discussing the scandalous nature of his wife’s passing so openly in front of Jane. But as I looked over at Jane, I saw her visage was apparently untroubled. This was, I gathered, not the first time her mother’s death had become a topic of conversation.

Martha had her hand over her mouth. “How horrible, for both of you,” she said. “But what a beautiful tribute to your wife, for you to go into medicine in her memory. So you’ve raised Jane by yourself, all this time?”

Patterson paused for a moment and then nodded.

“Whenever you find a husband, Miss Patterson,” Martha said with sincerity, “he’ll have quite a job to live up to the kind attentions of your father, I am most sure.”

“Father will ensure I’m well taken care of,” said Jane calmly. “As you say, Miss Speed, he always has.” She gazed steadily at her father, and he at her, but as I scrutinized them, I thought Patterson’s look was somehow more complicated than a simple expression of parental love. I was still trying to decipher its true meaning when the man himself interrupted my thoughts.

“May I inquire, Speed, of your father’s position?” Patterson asked.

I quickly cast off my ruminations. “He’s a man of the law, but Judge Speed is a farmer, first and foremost,” I said. “Our Farmington produced twenty-one tons of hemp last year, enough that my father had to help manufacture the hemp into bags with his own hands.”

“Will the estate be yours one day?”

I shook my head and said, “My elder brother’s. I considered the law myself, but I settled upon the merchant’s life. I’ve found it a more vigorous, active profession. And I think there’s more profit in it, too, in the long run.”

“Are you familiar, Miss Patterson, with my brother’s store on the square?” asked Martha.

“Of course,” Jane said. “Everyone in town finds their way into A. Y. Ellis & Co. at some point or other.”

“And do you find it the best-run establishment of its kind in Springfield?” my sister continued. I shot her a warning glance.

“I’m sure I do,” Jane answered, her face reddening slightly and her gaze fixed determinedly on Martha.

“With the most pleasing and courteous—oh!” I had kicked Martha in the shin, and she bent over in pain.

“I wish you every good fortune in your endeavors, Speed,” said Patterson, heedless of my sister’s sudden silence. He chewed vigorously on a strand of duck for a few moments, then continued: “Not that the law doesn’t have its place. I’m tangled up just now in this spurious lawsuit.”

“I share a lodging with your lawyer, Lincoln,” I said. “There’s not a smarter attorney in the county. If there’s a basis for your position, I’m sure he’ll find it and argue it to the hilt.”

Patterson twirled the ends of his moustache. “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s something stiff about him.”

“He can be earnest in the courtroom, perhaps. But he’s very good.” I paused for a moment before adding, “Though my father always says nothing’s certain where a judge or jury’s involved.”

“What’s certain is my opponent in the case, this so-called Major Richmond, is a menace,” said Patterson. He waved his knife around. “You should have seen him in the courtroom the other day, yelling at us, unhinged. Mark my words—the man’s a certified lunatic.”

“Do you truly think him mad?” I asked. “Can one tell merely by observing from a distance?”

“If you know what to look for, you can,” the doctor said. “Anyway, I know this Richmond fellow well. There’s not a doubt in my mind. He has the