Page 3 of Beecham’s Infirmary for the Affluent Afflicted (My Darling Malady #1)

IN WHICH HEATSTROKE IS MISTAKEN FOR FLIRTATION, FLIRTATION FOR ESPIONAGE, AND I AM THREATENED WITH TAILORING SHEARS

T he bell sounds a second time as the door latches shut behind me, and I’m greeted with an overwhelming sense of midday London aristocracy.

It takes a moment for my vision to fully adjust from pale sunlight to the dim interior, but there are shapes.

Mirrors and mannequins at the back. Rows of silks and fabrics.

A perfect afternoon for the dawdling upper class.

Except, when it does—not one, nor two, but eight bonneted heads snap in my direction. The woman who’d entered before me glances up and sighs, muttering something about police work.

“Just a moment,” a disembodied voice calls from the room beyond the register to my right, and I crane my head, trying to place its flustered source.

I’m about to go to the counter, but an elderly man seemingly materializes out of nowhere, obscuring my view.

“Sir,” he mutters, tipping his tall hat and peering at me through his thick spectacles. “I understand you have a job to do, but the ladies wish to shop in peace. Also, there is a rule about the police working off-duty.” He glances me up and down. “Or lacking uniform.”

“While I wholeheartedly agree, I am not the police.” I watch his eyes widen—then narrow—at my accent. “I’m an investigator. There’s been a disappearance next door. Are you the owner?”

“No, I’m one of the tailors. Our shop owners are out today, but?—”

“You can leave him, Thomas. I’ll handle it.” The disembodied voice returns, and Thomas utters an apology before sauntering over to the customers, ushering their attention back to the mirrors.

As soon as he’s out of view, a pair of hands plop a towering, teetering stack of dyed silks ranging from cream to a deep crimson onto the counter. The person those hands belong to sprouts up from behind it like a weed.

“I’m in charge today,” she announces, with squared shoulders and the steeled smile of a shop owner—one assessing enough to make my heart skip—despite the several pins protruding from her smock sleeve and patch of soot upon her freckle-dusted nose.

“You’re not Lewis,” I observe. “Nor Allenby.”

“And you’re not English.”

Her tone is just short of cordial, but her large brown eyes study me unabashedly. Her dark hair is pulled back into a sleek bun, held with a silk ribbon, save for the pieces that brush her cheeks.

Maintaining a straight face is almost as difficult as refraining from replying, Neither are you.

“And how may I help you?” Her voice tightens.

I don’t realize I’m staring. I hastily dip into a bow. “My apologies. I was just passing through.”

The seamstress responds with a polite clear of the throat that is an evident ruse, because she beckons me threateningly forward with one finger.

Her skin, rich with the complexion of aged amber, is flushed deliciously pink.

I’d be a fool not to oblige; without question, I step to the counter.

In all the fuss of the afternoon, I’d almost forgotten my headache, but the pain rails relentlessly into my skull as I close the space between us.

The woman takes it a step further, leaning forward so that our faces are a breath apart, and I think for one ludicrous second she might kiss me.

She smells immediately of jasmine and anise.

I’m about to comment on it when her hand darts out.

She grips me by the lapel and tugs me to her, causing me to lose balance and my palms to slap the counter.

“You wanted to snoop,” she growls. “I don’t need you announcing the nature of your investigation to all of my customers. If this affects business, they won’t find what’s left of you in the Thames. You’re frightening the entire shop.”

My ears have grown atrociously hot; I can sense a multitude of eyes on us. “You’re the one frightening me .”

“Why? Is it because I am the head of the shop, and not the soft-spoken one in the tall hat?”

“That depends. Is accosting strangers a favorite pastime of yours?” I raise my hand slowly, gently toward hers, but she catches it and presses her fingers into the tendons at my wrist, rendering it slack before forcing it back onto the table.

She shouldn’t know how to disarm me, yet something in the precision of her movement tells me she’s trained to deal with men. “What about attacking investigators?”

“Only the ones who come sniffing where they shouldn’t.”

“What is your name?” I ask, determined not to break her glare.

“What are you going to do, arrest me?”

I won’t—I can’t make arrests—but my eyes linger upon her wrists. There’s a jade bracelet on one of them, adorned with a golden clasp. “I at least deserve to know the name of the woman throttling me.”

In truth, I don’t blame her for reacting this way. I’m a stranger. An unwelcome entity in her shop. Perhaps someone once made her feel the same, or the ones who came before her.

The gaslamp above us flares as if it can sense the tension between us.

I should pull away. I should say something clever.

But all I can think of is how close her mouth is to mine, the heady aroma wafting off of her skin in the brick-trapped heat, and how odd it is that fear and fascination rouse twin beasts within me.

Perhaps she senses it, too, because she roughly releases me and steps back across the counter, studying me distrustfully. “What is it that you want?”

“There’s been a disappearance at the infirmary next door. A young girl was reported dead four days ago, but her parents are suspicious, as they’ve not been permitted to see her.”

I glimpse something like recognition—but only for a moment. “And what do you want me to do about that? People die all the time at infirmaries. In their own beds. You cough one day and are gone the next.”

Now, I’m the one leaning in to whisper. “Have you noticed anything strange about the infirmary?”

“You’re not from here.” She takes my silence as confirmation. “Everything about it is strange. Beecham’s Infirmary is fairly new.”

A glance out the window tells me the streets are emptying. There are more carriages now than pedestrians. I spot the corner of the crumbling steps. If they haven’t been here long, no attempt at restoration has been made. “How new? ”

“A few weeks. A month, if that. Rumor has it, all the other hospitals—Royal, King’s, Bartholomew’s—are filled to the brim with the dead and dying. There’s no space left.”

Things were bad back home, but I don’t recall it being this dire. “Do people not recover?”

“These days, our hospitals aren’t places of healing so much as they are gateways to the end.

For every person who’s made the journey to recovery, they infect two to three people along the way.

Beecham came in with a promise to change that, catering to those requiring mild treatment or convalescent care. Those who can pay for it, that is.”

I scoff, disgusted. “Already swindling the public and they’ve been here a month? That’s quick.”

“There was nothing for them to build. The space was vacant, an old shop. All they had to do was knock some walls down. The pounding went on for days.” She peeks over my shoulder at her preoccupied customers. “They want Lewis & Allenby’s as well, but my bosses are holding firm.”

“What does he look like? This Beecham?”

“That’s the thing,” she says, leaning in to whisper. I’m glad she’s cooperating, albeit begrudgingly. “No one’s seen him, so far as I know. No one in our shop, anyway. He’s some sort of entrepreneur surgeon, with very little time to spare. He contacted us one time by letter, and that’s it.”

That was the ticket. It was commonplace for business owners to reside in their offices during the work week.

Some of them lived there. But, disappearing bodies—supposed donation?

Lack of presence? There was surely something sinister occurring within the brick walls behind her, and that’s what the Wharncliffe case would reveal.

While I couldn’t promise the recovery of poor Alma’s remains, especially if they’d already been sold or donated to researchers, I could at least shed light on their ill practices and hopefully prevent it from happening to anyone else.

“In your time here, have you ever seen folks enter? Visitors?”

Her brows furrow. “Families drop off their infected, I suppose.”

“Have you ever seen the ill leave? After their stay?”

The seamstress scowls, as if she’s realized she’s being questioned, scooping an armful of the fabric and turning her back to me to place them on the far counter. “People aren’t strolling in and out, if that’s what you’re asking. Casual visitors are prohibited. It is a sanatorium, after all.”

This made sense. London, as it seemed, received the brunt of most ailments these days. Still, harvesting corpses without consent was illegal.

“I need to get in.”

She snorts. “Good luck, detective.”

“Private investigator ,” I correct, with no intention of leaving. “Jacques. And I could use your help, Seamstress.”

She doesn’t give her name in return. She’s busied herself separating the silk by color, but the tips of her ears peeking out from her hair are pink. “I won’t get involved.”

I shove my hand in my pocket. “You know, as a plainclothes detective, I could use a new pair of trousers or two. Since you and your fellow tailor are running the shop today, I presume the owners are out?”

“Away on business, yes. And Thomas is doing no such thing. I’m in charge when they’re away.

” She slips a pair of large tailoring shears from her skirt pocket and begins to cut through a piece of fabric.

“My career is set here. And you’ll have to make an appointment for me to fit you into new trousers. ”

“Which is exactly why you should help me infiltrate. Yet another perfect opportunity for us to see each other again.”