The Heiress Effect

“Ah, no. But I have caused convulsions, and, ah…” He looked down at Emily, as if not quite sure he should speak on in her presence.

If he could deliver an electric shock to her, he could damned well tell her what he was doing. Jane made a gesture for him to continue.

“It’s a theory I have, you see. Galvanic current flows. It has a direction. If current can cause convulsion, flowing in one direction, then when someone is having a convulsion, one ought to be able to stop it by applying an equal and opposite current in the other direction. It’s a simple application of Newtonian laws. With sufficient experimentation, I am sure I can calibrate the precise amount to apply.”

“You are sure?” Jane asked dubiously. “Is sure the proper word to use to describe your theory?”

“I am…hopeful,” he amended. “Quite hopeful.”

Maybe a few years ago, she might have let him try. But Jane had heard a dozen men make equally grandiloquent, equally ridiculous claims about how their particular form of torture would cure her sister’s fits. None of their treatments had worked, and they’d all been painful. And there were Emily’s burns. She felt the corners of her mouth curl up in a snarl.

“So let me understand. You are proposing to deliver as many electric shocks as you like to my sister, for an indeterminate amount of time, on a theory for which you have no evidence other than a wild guess.”

“That hardly seems fair!” he squawked. “I haven’t even had a chance—”

“Oh, no,” Emily said, speaking up at last. “He’s demonstrated that he can cause a convulsion in me with his current. I told him that it wasn’t the same kind of fit that I have. It doesn’t feel the same at all. But it is, after all, only my body. What do I know?”

Jane couldn’t speak for the black rage that filled her. She’d wanted to protect Emily. Why did her uncle have to bring in these fools?

“Exactly,” the charlatan said. “I am the expert on galvanics. What would she know?”

Jane particularly remembered the man who had insisted that the convulsions were an invention of Emily’s mind. Since they were so, he’d insisted that he needed only offer her an incentive to stop. Those burns along her sister’s arm—matched by the ones on her thigh—had been his version of an incentive. What did Emily know, after all?

“Well.” Jane’s voice shook. “There’s only one way I can think of to find out what Emily knows.”

“Your pardon?” The doctor shook his head.

Jane tried not to snarl at him. “I propose to take the radical course of asking her. Emily, what do you think of this course of treatment?”

Only the tremble of Emily’s hands really answered that question. Jane swallowed her anger and waited for her sister’s reply.

“I would rather have the fits, thank you.”

Then Fake Doctor Fallon could go to hell, for all Jane cared. The only difficulty was how to send him there. She turned to him. “Thank you very much,” she said, “but your services are no longer needed.”

He looked shocked, glancing from his acrid-smelling jars to Emily, and then back to Jane. “You can’t discharge me,” he finally said. “This is my chance. I could write this up, make my name…”

There was a good reason why Jane always kept a few bills in an inner pocket. She found these now and unfolded them, holding them out. “I am not discharging you, Doctor Fallon. You may have these twenty pounds if you walk away right now. You only need tell my uncle that you have determined that your treatment is ill-suited to my sister’s condition. He will pay you. I will pay you. And we will all profit from it.”

He scratched his head. “But how can I know if my treatment is ill-suited without further experimentation?”

Sometimes Jane wished she were good at diplomatic speeches. She wished she’d mastered coquettish looks and innocent smiles. But she hadn’t. She was singularly bad at those forms of persuasion. She was good at handing out money and opinions.

“You won’t know,” she told him. “You will have to live in ignorance. That is what it means to accept a bribe. I give you money; you tell what lies you need to tell.”

His eyes had widened as she spoke. “But that would be dishonest!” he protested.

God. Her uncle had found an honest charlatan this time. The others had all been only too happy to be offered the money.

“Twenty-five pounds,” Jane tried. “Twenty for you, five more that you might donate to the parish as a sop to your conscience.”

He hesitated.

“Come,” Jane said, “do you want the parish poor to suffer simply because you hadn’t the bravery to walk away from this house?”

He reached forward, fingers outstretched toward the bills. But before he could take them from her, he snatched his hand away, shaking his head in outrage. “This,” he said, his voice shaking, “this is an ungodly household.”

Jane could have struck him. He wasn’t even a real doctor. He wanted to torture her sister. And she was the ungodly one? Maybe she should offer thirty pounds.

But Emily was the one who smiled and peered innocently up at him. “Oh,” she said, in a deceptively naive voice, “but it is. It is. We all tell lies, all the time. You wouldn’t want to stay around here. It might be catching.”

Ironically, Jane thought, that was the actual truth.

“You should accept our filthy lucre and be shut of our wretched lies,” Emily continued.

He looked between the two sisters.

“Here,” Jane said, adding a third bill to the ones she already held. “Have thirty pounds. Leave tonight. You can still catch the six o’clock train.”

He hesitated, unspeaking.

“Alice will pack your things for you. Won’t you, Alice?” The maid had been sitting at the window—presumably to function as a chaperone for Emily when she had been alone with the doctor. But, like all the servants in the Fairfield household, she recognized an opportunity to earn a little extra when it was presented. She jumped to her feet and came forward. Doctor Fallon made no motion to stop her from wrapping his jars in cotton.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “This doesn’t seem right.”

“Well, if you would like to stay,” Emily said, “you are more than welcome to.”

Jane sent her sister a surprised look.

Alice undid the wires attached to her sister and Emily stood. She took a swishing step toward the doctor. Jane would have admired her form, but the cotton strips trailing from her arm rather ruined the effect.