Audrey’s eyes darted nervously about the cottage. “I don’t like anyone knowing you’re—we’re looking into this.”
“Well, I’m not going to steal the ledger. I’ve no reason to. And just because Nurse Durrant knows I asked for it, so what? Dr. Beesley saw your list of names. What of it?”
“The fewer people who know, the better.”
Henry took her hands in his. “Audrey, there are too many odds and ends here to be dismissed. We must look into this. I see that now. We will review the ledger to match the names from the diary and see what exactly we are looking at. We will go from there. But I am here. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Audrey looked down at their entwined hands. “I think whatever is happening is larger than the two of us. I don’t think they can be stopped. And if we get in their way….” Her words trailed away.
He shook his head. “Nothing will happen to you. I promise,” he told her firmly.
She pulled the gas lamp closer to them so they could see the handwritten entries in the ledger. “There’s Marguerite.” She pointed out the name in the ledgers.
“Let’s go back a few weeks and look for these initials,” Henry said, pointing to the diary and the last initials Marguerite had noted.
Together, they looked down the long list, which listed the inmates’ names, gender, date of birth, date of death, occupation, cause of death, and doctor’s signature.
“There!” Audrey stopped her finger along the name that matched the one she had written next to the initials.
Henry read aloud the man’s name, the dates, and his cause of death. “That’s interesting,” he murmured.
“What is?” she asked.
“Black death is listed as the cause of death,” he pointed out.
She stared at him blankly. “What is so interesting about that?”
“It’s the plague,” he told her.
“I still don’t see what’s so interesting about it.”
“Well, there isn’t really anything interesting about it. If our king was Charles II and the year was 1665,” he told her.
“I’m not following you.” She shook her head.
Henry looked over the name and the entry of the inmate who had died with the death listed as black death. “The black death, the plague, just isn’t seen anymore. You know the black death was used by Homer in the Odyssey to describe the monstrous Scylla, and her mouths ‘full of black death.’ The bubonic plague first arrived in Europe in 1347. When it was finished, more than twenty million people in Europe were dead. It was devastating.”
Audrey listened quietly.
“Some thought the pandemic was a martyrdom and mercy from God, a believer’s place in paradise so to speak. For nonbelievers, it was a punishment. There was a second pandemic in the time I mentioned and a third twenty-five years ago that was not as bad for Europe and then nothing.”
“Nothing?” she asked.
“Not so far,” he mused. “But then sometimes these things lay dormant or around us and just don’t reappear.”
“So, you find it interesting because there is no plague in England now,” she asked him.
“Yes.”
“The death is odd.” She looked down at the name.
“The cause of death is odd,” he murmured. He came upon another name, and his finger followed all of the pertinent information until they came to the cause of death. “Black death” was again listed as the cause of death. Henry sat back in his chair and took up the cup and saucer.
“Coincidence?” she asked, though she knew better.
“Let’s keep going,” he suggested. “One is interesting. If they keep adding up, that’s not interesting. That’s impossible.”
The quiet of the night surrounded the couple as they looked through the large ledger and compared the names to those written down from the diary. An hour later, they had found several more names from the diary that matched those in the ledger. All had died by the black death.