Free No Cure for Love by Jean Fullerton

buckets.’
    Robert spied a young woman in what looked like a dirty maid’s uniform sitting at the other end of the room. Her head had dropped onto her chest. He strode towards her, Trundle and his wife scurrying along behind him. As he reached the woman, Robert heard soft snoring. Leaning forward he smelt gin, and cleared his throat loudly. The young woman woke up and peered around her.
    ‘What’s the crack,’ she slurred, then hiccuped.
    Not trusting himself to speak, Robert spun on his heels and headed for Mr and Mrs Trundle’s private quarters. On reaching the warm parlour, crammed with furniture and garish china ornaments, he held out his hand.
    ‘Your accounts, if you please,’ he demanded sternly.
    Mrs Trundle glared at him. ‘You have no right to—’
    ‘Now, now, my dear,’ Mr Trundle interrupted with a deferential expression and placed a hand on his wife’s fuzzy forearm. ‘We have nothing to hide and Doctor Munroe is the appointed chairman of the Parish Emergency Committee.’
    His wife pressed her lips together and glared at Robert, reminding him of a kettle on the point of boiling.
    ‘Doctor Munroe,’ Mr Trundle said, handing over a greasy red ledger.
    Taking the ledger to the table, Robert opened it and began perusing its columns. He glanced up at the superintendent and his wife, who stood watching him like hungry dogs.
    ‘I’ll send for you once I have reviewed the entries,’ he told them. For a second or two Mr and Mrs Trundle hovered uncertainly, then the superintendent grabbed his wife’s elbow and all but dragged her from the room.
    As he flicked through the pages of the workhouse accounts, Robert’s face grew grim. After an hour of making notes he called the superintendent back. Mr Trundle returned, minus his stout wife.
    ‘I trust that everything is in order, Doctor Munroe?’ Mr Trundle asked.
    ‘It certainly is not.’ He tapped the page of the ledger. ‘From the extortionate prices you pay for the workhouse provisions, the inmates should be living like kings, not lying half-starved in urine-soaked beds.’
    ‘My wife is in charge of the purchase of food for the workhouse,’ the superintendent told him, twisting his hands together.
    ‘Where is your wife?’
    ‘She had to go on an errand. I am expecting her back shortly.’
    ‘Very well. Now about the wages for—’
    The door of the parlour burst open and a red-faced Mrs Trundle puffed into the room.
    ‘Oh! Doctor Munroe,’ she said in a friendly voice that had been absent so far from her conversation. ‘You’ll not credit it, but I just turned the corner into Angel Gardens when I happened on Mr Donovan, er, taking the air,’ she said, looking coyly at Danny Donovan, who stepped into the room. ‘I mentioned that you were paying us a visit and nothing could stop him coming to bid you good day.’
    The Trundles exchanged a quick look then stood back, letting Danny Donovan take centre stage. Robert regarded him coolly.
    He had seen Danny a couple of times as he made his way around the streets and alleyways that ran off Ratcliffe Highway. He had always been greeted by the ebullient Irishman as if he were a long lost brother, and pressed to take supper at the Angel again. Eventually taking up the invitation, Robert persuaded himself that he was not going there to see Ellen in particular, but found himself bitterly disappointed that she was not singing that night.
    Danny Donovan now swaggered towards him, snatched up his hand and subjected it to the usual abuse. ‘Now, here is a fortuitous coming together.’
    ‘How so?’ Robert said, noting another glance between the superintendent and his wife.
    Danny drew up a chair and sat down, the checked fabric of his trousers straining across his thick thighs.
    ‘Mrs Trundle tells me you are not familiar with the arrangement of the workhouse. Is there anything I can be helping you with, Doctor?’ He nodded at the open book in front of Robert.
    ‘There are some matters between Mr