The Wonder Read Free Page B

brought here in hopes that my association with a very great lady might cast a veneer of respectability over an outrageous fraud. I’ll have no part in it.
If she set off in the morning, she could be back at the hospital in two days.
    The prospect filled her with gloom. She imagined herself trying to explain that the Irish job had proved objectionable on moral grounds. How Matron would snort.
    So Lib suppressed her feelings, for now, and concentrated on the practicalities.
Simply to observe,
McBrearty had said. “If at any point our charge were to express the slightest wish, even in veiled terms, for something to eat—” she began.
    â€œThen bring it to her.” The doctor sounded shocked. “We’re not in the business of starving children.”
    She nodded. “We nurses are to report to you, then, in two weeks?”
    He shook his head. “As Anna’s physician—and having been dragged into this unpleasantness in the papers—I could be considered an interested party. So it’s to the assembled committee that you’re to testify on oath.”
    Lib looked forward to it.
    â€œYourself and Sister Michael separately,” he added, holding up one knobby finger, “without any conferring. We wish to hear to what view each of you comes, quite independently of the other.”
    â€œVery good. May I ask, why is this watch not being conducted in the local hospital?” Unless there was none in this all too
dead centre
of the island.
    â€œOh, the O’Donnells balked at the very idea of their little one being taken off to the county infirmary.”
    That clinched it for Lib; the squire and his lady wanted to keep their daughter at home so they could carry on slipping food to her. It wouldn’t take two weeks of supervision to catch them out.
    She chose her words tactfully because the doctor was clearly fond of the young faker. “If, before the fortnight’s up, I were to find evidence indicating that Anna has taken nourishment covertly—should I make my report to the committee straightaway?”
    His whiskery cheeks crumpled. “I suppose, in that case, it would be a waste of everyone’s time and money to carry on any longer.”
    Lib could be on the ship back to England in a matter of days, then, but with this eccentric episode closed to her satisfaction.
    What’s more, if newspapers across the kingdom were to give Nurse Elizabeth Wright the credit for exposing the hoax, the whole staff of the hospital would have to sit up and take notice. Who’d call her
uppish
then? Perhaps better things might come of it; a position more suited to Lib’s talents, more interesting. A less narrow life.
    Her hand shot up to cover a sudden yawn.
    â€œI’d better leave you now,” said McBrearty. “It must be almost ten.”
    Lib pulled the chain at her waist and turned her watch up. “I make it ten eighteen.”
    â€œAh, we’re twenty-five minutes behind here. You’re still on English time.”
    Lib slept well, considering.
    The sun came up just before six. By then she was in her uniform from the hospital: grey tweed dress, worsted jacket, white cap. (At least it fit. One of the many indignities of Scutari had been the standard-issue costume; short nurses had waded around in theirs, whereas Lib had looked like some pauper grown out of her sleeves.)
    She breakfasted alone in the room behind the grocery. The eggs were fresh, yolks sun yellow.
    Ryan’s girl—Mary? Meg?—wore the same stained apron as the evening before. When she came back to clear away, she said Mr. Thaddeus was waiting. She was out of the room again before Lib could tell her she knew no one by that name.
    Lib stepped into the shop. “You wished to speak to me?” she asked the man standing there. She wasn’t quite sure whether to add
sir.
    â€œGood morning, Mrs. Wright, I hope you slept well.” This Mr. Thaddeus was more