Deadly by Julie Chibbaro Read Free Book Online Page B

especially when they don’t all join together for each meal, and the servants graze like cows, it seems. My lists are so complex, they’ll have to be cross-referenced and indexed like a book. I spent the week working on charts and graphs to order the types of foods together, with headings of Dairy and Meat and Vegetable and so on, but I’m not even halfway through.
    I cannot help but wonder what it would be like to have so much food to eat, whenever one wanted to eat it. With an icebox and a pantry, all sorts of things seem possible.
    I took notes of the household’s movements and developed charts of People Visited, Places Traveled, and Visitors to Home. I feel a little like a spy, writing down who this family goes to meet, and who comes to visit. I think of the social circles Mrs. Browning always had us aspire to—and wonder what she would think of me writing down the eating and visiting habits of the rich.
    Mr. Soper inspected the house and collected water from the well, and scrapings from the taps. We took samples of lamb, beef, chicken, and milk, and peaches, apples, bananas, and greens from the kitchen. Out in the backyard, he took a shovel and dug down deep until we reached the smell of sewage, which was the septic field for the house’s toilets. He shoveled up samples and bottled them, handing the odiferous tubes to me without worrying about offending my female senses. He put me in charge of labeling and stacking these bottled samples in their wooden holders, and I have to say, I felt a certain joy rolling up my sleeves and performing this dirty work alongside him. We brought the samples back to the laboratory to test for disease, and we now await the results.

    I found out that Mr. Thompson does not own this mansion—he only rents it from a rich merchant for the summer; he’s terribly nervous that the merchant is going to blame him for the disease, especially if we don’t find the cause. Worst of all, the family is trapped on Long Island and cannot return to their townhouse in the city, as their landlord will not take them if they carry the fever. The children cannot return to school until they are all completely well.
    I think the hardest hit by all this was little Amy Thompson, who just came out of Nassau Hospital. A shy child of seven, her long brown hair tied up in a bow, she is neat and polite, normal-seeming, until one looks at her face. It seems a fever rash had broken out over her neck and chin, and she could not let it alone. The itch plagued her, and she scratched and picked and left such awful sores that have not healed properly, patchy scars that will stay with her all her life. In a family portrait on the mantelpiece, I saw that Amy had been a beautiful girl with a bold smile.
    I fear the fever has taken her beauty and that easy personality away from her.

October 25, 1906
    M r. Soper and I went to the laboratory where the science fellows studied our samples through their microscopes, and again I felt that strange sensation of being aware of my face and body. It got worse when one of the boys leaned over and whispered as I passed, “Want to look through my microscope?” I felt as if all eyes in the room turned then, and were waiting for me to answer. I stood frozen while I searched my mind for a reply. Mr. Soper didn’t hear the boy’s words, but sensing his attention on me, snapped at the fellow, “Mind your work, Jonathan!” and the boy lowered his eyes. He had foppish hair and a patch of fur on his chin, looking rather like a he-goat, including the smile on his face. I’m not accustomed to such boldness.
    I don’t think I have ever known a girl like me who was so very awkward with boys. Even Anushka once had anouting with a feller—Jim McAvoy—though that turned bad when she tried to explain to him her father’s idea about the commune and living in nature. Poor Jim had never met a girl who understood such ideas, and never