Free Starvation Heights by Gregg Olsen

which ambulance is she?” he asked, his voice still resonating with a crisp preciseness that was a legacy from his youth in England.
    “Miss Claire is in the second one. I’ve informed her that you were coming. She is quite lucid. Dora, I’m afraid, is another matter. Take care of the business, and we will be on our way to Olalla.”
    John Arthur disappeared into the back of the ambulance. He pulled out a sheet of paper and a fountain pen and handed it to Claire, who heaved for breath under the covers that pressed on her chest like a pile of stones. She could barely speak and needed help with her writing. At Mr. Arthur’s direction, the sickly woman wrote a letter to her longtime nurse and companion, Margaret Conway in Brunswick, Victoria, Australia. The attorney’s presence was more than that of a concerned observer. His signature at the bottom of the notice was absolutely necessary. It was not a letter at all. It was a codicil to Miss Claire’s will.
    The thirty-three-year-old woman’s penmanship, once clear and precise, was erratic and sloppy.
    Dear Margaret:
    In the event of my death, my books and jewels are hereby given to you for disposition by you according to your own judgement and discretion. This is intended as a bequest to you, as if contained in a formal will and to be treated as a codicil to my will already made. I also hereby give twenty-five pounds sterling per year to the Hazzard Institute of Natural Therapeutics in Olalla, Kitsap County, State of Washington, U.S.A.; to be also treated as a codicil to my said will. My remains are to be cremated under the charge and direction of Linda Burfield Hazzard of said Olalla. This letter is also intended as directions to my solicitors in London.
    —Claire Williamson
    Linda and Sam Hazzard stood outside, assuring onlookers that the patients were doing well.
    Finally, just as the launch arrived, John Arthur finished his business with Claire and exited the back of the ambulance.
    “I’ll have papers for you tomorrow afternoon,” he called over his shoulder as he headed for the electric car.
             
    Y EARS AFTER, Nels Christensen, manager of West Pass Transportation in 1911, recalled what happened on that day. He knew the fasting specialist and held her in high, irreproachable, esteem. She traveled on his boat whenever she went from her Seattle office to her Olalla country home and soon-to-be-built sanitarium.
    “I made a special trip the day the two girls were taken over to her [Hazzard’s] place for treatment,” he remembered. “And the two girls were brought down to my boat in two ambulances. I helped carry them aboard on two stretchers. I was very much surprised when I took one end of the stretchers; it seemed to me it was though the girls didn’t weigh more than fifty or sixty pounds at the most. They were so weak and so sick, neither one of them could stand up.”
             
    B Y THE spring of 1911, electricity still had not come to Olalla, the small, rain-soaked town that rimmed the shore of Puget Sound like the soggy, grey edge around a bowl of oatmeal.
    Rain sprayed the boardwalk and slickened the wood. Lacking the sumptuous trim of those worn by ladies in the city, frayed, plain hemlines functioned as mops as fabric dragged over the wet surface. And though they hadn’t actually nailed it into place, the women of Olalla laid claim to the construction of the boardwalk. First, they raised money for the lumber through basket socials at the schoolhouse, and with that accomplished, they hauled lunches and kegs of beer to their men as they hammered planks into place. The boardwalk, the women told each other, was proof that their saltwater-sprayed town was more than an outpost for the drunken and lost. It was a civilized community.
    The West Pass steamer, the sternwheeler
Virginia,
filled the air with a stream of black-and-white vapors. Three women had made the two-hour trip from Seattle to the shores of Kitsap County. Two of the