Page 16 of Ghost in the Garden
“Where will I find these survivors?”
Fraser pointed at the ceiling. “Upstairs. First room on the left, or the one across the hall. Some of ’em ain’t well. Don’t go getting them in trouble with—” He broke off abruptly.
“With Mr. Lambert?” Solomon suggested.
“Don’t put words in my mouth. Who’d you say you were again?”
“I didn’t,” Solomon said, holding out the coins.
Fraser snatched them on his way to the door, which he blocked until footsteps had passed and the outside door closed. Then he stood aside without a word and Solomon left.
He had no real need to speak to the survivors upstairs. Neither pity nor charity would solve their problems in the short term. And yet he went.
He found them easily enough. A woman with four children whose husband lay dying of his injuries. A young girl who couldn’t move. Despair and grief and sheer hopelessness were everywhere.
“Has she seen a doctor?” Solomon asked the mother of the girl.
The woman looked at him as if he’d grown horns. Despite the nation’s outrage, no one had paid for medical attention. And no one, it seemed, had offered any, perhaps because they all assumed someone else was dealing with such an infamous case.
Solomon slid a handful of coins under the girl’s pillow. She didn’t stir.
“Thank you, sir,” her mother said tonelessly, mechanically. Money would not cure her daughter.
“I know a good doctor who gives his services free,” Solomon said. “I’ll send him to you. If you can find out everyone who needs his help, that will make his job quicker.”
A tiny spark lit her eye and faded. “Thank you,” she said again in the same mechanical voice. All her attention was on her daughter.
Solomon moved toward the door. A young man sitting on the floor, staring at nothing, caught his eye, even among the rest of the desperate cases. He did not appear to be injured, though his shoulders were hunched and pain dulled his lost eyes.
“Were you hurt in the accident?” Solomon asked. He had to repeat the question before the man looked up, regarding him without interest.
“No.”
“But you were there,” Solomon said.
The man shook his head. “Working.”
“His wife and babe were there,” a woman said aggressively, thrusting a mug of thin, unappetizing soup into the young man’s hand. “They died.”
“I’m sorry,” Solomon said, appalled by the sheer uselessness of the words. He could not even give money to this man. It would be an insult.
“Finally shut him up, didn’t it?” the woman said bitterly.
“What do you mean?” Solomon asked.
“You mean you don’t know?” she said in disbelief. “He’s Lenny Knox, what kicked up the fuss for your bosses, telling everyone what was going on, threatening to withhold rent till the building was fixed. And now he don’t care for nothing. He was doing it for them, wasn’t he? For Cath and little Kitty.”
Knox was staring unseeingly into his soup. The middle-aged woman, as angry as she should be—aseveryoneshould be—gently pushed the mug toward his mouth.
Solomon walked away. Everyone walked away. But he would not leave it.
*
Frank Fraser, thecaretaker, knew exactly when the stranger left the tenement. He’d opened his door a crack and was listening. The man made him uneasy, though he’d paid well enough for information anyone else could have told him.
Fraser did not believe he was a greedy man at heart, although he liked his ease as well as anyone else. But he had a decent room here and an expensive wife, and if he were to have any hope of keeping her and moving away from Gregg and Lambert, he needed all the money he could get.
Maybe he could tell the stranger a bit more, get more money, though that was a risk… Part of him wanted to land Lambert in the muck, be responsible for taking him down. The bastard deserved it, mostly for Iris, but also for the poor sods who’d died next door.
