Eliza tossed her book aside and ran from the library, her heart racing. Another scream cut through the echoing vestibule. It was a man, his pained cries coming from the south wing. Malcolm was no longer at his post in the doorway. Fear funneled through her. Was he hurt?
She burst into the south wing, the fragrance of freshly sawn wood all around her. Despite the repairs, the evidence of the fire was everywhere, from the smoke-streaked plasterwork to the singed curtains still hanging from the windows. Up ahead, the workers huddled together below a two-story section of scaffolding. She lifted her hem out of the sawdust and hurriedly made her way toward them.
It was Freddie. He lay crumpled at the foot of the scaffolding, his leg oozing blood. A thick shard of wood pierced his dungarees. Eliza pushed the workers out of the way and knelt at the young man’s side, taking his hand. His eyes rolled in his head as he groaned and arched his back. Eliza flinched at the fresh spurt of blood that came streaming from his thigh. “Freddie! Please do try to be still, darling. I’ll fetch Dr.Fawcett.”
“Your husband’s already gone for the doctor, mum,” the foreman said, a grizzled man named Hicks. He held his cap to his chest. “He was here when it happened.”
“What happened?”
Hicks looked down, his moustache twitching. “Freddie fell, m’lady. That’s all.”
“’Tain’t right to lie, Mr.Hicks! He were thrown!” The young man who’d just spoken was tall and as thin as a water reed, his eyes wide with fright. “And it weren’t no human what did it.”
Eliza gasped. “Where was he when he fell?”
He pointed with a knobby finger. “All the way up there, mum.”
Eliza followed his gaze to where the scaffolding butted up against the curved walls and newly framed ceiling. In what was once the attic, an empty section of lath stood out from the soot-stained wall. Below it lay a pile of ragged boards and chunks of plaster tinged with Freddie’s blood. If the shard of lath now lodged in his leg had pierced him somewhere vital, he’d surely be dead.
“He was up against that wall, scraping, and something grabbed hold of his shirt and yanked him over the edge. I saw it with mine own eyes!”
“He lost his balance and fell, Cecil!” Hicks roared. “That’s enough, I say.”
Freddie cried out again, and Eliza squeezed his hand. “Please, gentlemen. Try to stay calm. We’ll get to the bottom of things, but first we need to think of Freddie.”
Cecil knelt at her side, lowering his voice. “See, mum, my mate here’s sure-footed as a cat. He’s been climbing on roofs since he could walk. He were thrown. And your ghost was the one what did it.”
Clarence and Lydia came out of the surgery room, Lydia nearly unrecognizable in her starched pinafore and buckram cap. Clarence’s once-white apron now resembled a butcher’s bib. “The young man is stable,”he said, taking off his spectacles and wiping his face on his gartered sleeve. “Breathing steadily and sleeping.”
“Will he live?” Eliza asked, rising.
“So long as infection doesn’t set in, I’d say he has a fighting chance. He has a broken femur and that splinter nearly pierced his femoral artery. Had that happened, I’d now be dealing with a corpse.”
The door to the clinic swung open, and Malcolm strode in, his hat in his hands and a grim expression etched across his face. Lydia’s eyes narrowed at the sight of him. “It wasn’t an accident, Liza,” she whispered. “You know that.” She offered Malcolm a stiff curtsy and turned on her heel to go back into the ward.
“Ah, Lord Havenwood. I was just telling her ladyship the young man should recover,” Clarence said. “Lydia’s put him on a morphine cycle for sedation and pain. I’ve notified his family via telegram, but as they’re in Dublin, he’s not likely to receive visitors.”
“Well, we must make sure he has visitors while he’s confined,” Eliza said. “I’ll check in, and perhaps Sarah and Polly can drop by as a charity. It’s dreadfully sorry not to have the comfort of family while undergoing such a trial.”
“Very good, my lady. My lord.” Clarence gave a crisp nod to Malcolm and went back to his surgery.
“Don’t go to any trouble, darling,” Malcolm said. “I’ll see to it that he’s compensated for his troubles. It’s enough.”
“We should at least look into what happened. What if one of the other workers becomes injured? Perhaps there’s an instability in the scaffolding that needs to be addressed.”
“That won’t be necessary, Eliza,” he replied, his lips tightening over his teeth. “Thereareno other workers.”
“What?”
“After they’d loaded your carpenter onto the ambulance, the men packed up their tools and presented a bill for their final day of work. Itwasn’t the foreman’s wish, but he couldn’t keep his crew there against their will.”
Eliza’s shoulders slumped. “How unfortunate.”
“Indeed.”
“They said you were there when it happened. What did you see?”
“I saw a young man stumble and lose his balance.”
