Free The Plague Doctor by E. Joan Sims Page A

tea for me, Miss Cassandra. I’m going to bed. You know how we old people like our sleep. Good night, Paisley!”
    They stormed out side by side and almost got stuck in the doorway. I started laughing, and they turned in unison to glare at me in fury. I laughed even harder and woke up the puppy. She raised her head sleepily and glared at me too, then, dragging her furry little tail tiredly behind her, she followed her mistress to bed.
    And so I was left alone again to do the sleuthing. I wondered if Holmes ever had this much trouble with Watson and had just kept the knowledge of the domestic discord to himself.
    I sighed and slipped the second disc into the computer. Once again I saw the columns and columns of numbers and formulas. This time I looked more closely and suddenly realized that they were laboratory results. The long numbers at the top of each column probably represented a patient. Each one had a red cell count and a white cell count. I recognized kidney and liver function studies, but there were some others I could not understand. The library in town would probably have a book on how to interpret medical tests. I could send Cassie down tomorrow—that is, if she would speak to me.
    The third disc was more of the same, and so was the fourth, but the fifth held a little surprise. I found Ethan’s “lambs.”
    Dr. McHenry had apparently visited the medical library at the CDC before he left Atlanta. He had included excerpts from several toxicology manuals and journals in his notes. They were in a file entitled “possible causes.” It was not even written in caps. He obviously felt the information was of little significance.
    There were three entries from environmental journals with cases of abortions in hazardous work environments—two in paint factories and one in a plant that manufactured plastics. They contained words that I could not even guess the meanings of and more columns and figures similar to the ones on the other discs.
    It was not until then that I realized Ethan was planning to write a paper on the abortion cases here in Lakeland County. The laboratory results would make no sense to anyone but other professionals in his field.
    I got up immediately and put the discs with the lab data in an olivewood music box on the library shelf. They would be safe there. I would be horrified if anything—a vicious puppy with sharp little teeth, for instance—happened to all of Ethan’s hard work.
    The next article was from a dental journal. It addressed the suspicion that dental assistants had a higher rate of fetal loss than other health care workers, but there was no definite conclusion made. We only had two dentists in town, and both of them had several young women working in their offices. I imagined that Mother would know their names. I could find out if any of them had lost a baby recently.
    The most interesting entries were from a book on poisonous plants. Ethan had made several notes about crop plants with a high nitrate content, which was known to cause abortion in cattle and sheep. And there was a really gross entry on fescue seed used for lawns and gardens which contained “nematode galls.” I had no idea what they were, but I decided to tell Mother we should pour concrete on the backyard posthaste. Yuck, nematodes! Not to mention galls.
    Goldenrod was the culprit in an article about abortion in cattle in Virginia. I made a note of that because goldenrod was our state flower, although I personally thought of it as a weed.
    Another of Ethan’s entries was also close to home. I wondered if he realized that this part of the state was called the Pennyrile because of the abundant growth of the pennyroyal plant. That little jewel was noted to have been used by the American Indians as an abortifacient. The article added that it was a volatile oil, a colorless liquid that evaporated quickly at room temperature. Apparently enough to cause abortion would be