Free The Candle Man by Alex Scarrow

curses.
    ‘Doctor Hart said I may not need to remain in the hospital much longer. A few more days at most to make sure the swelling has gone down and to remove the stitches in my side.’
    ‘That’s . . .’ Mary smiled. ‘That’s wonderful news.’ Her stomach flipped. So distracted with her daily visits here, dodging the other girls in her lodging
house and their inevitable probing questions as to what the devil she’s been up to these last few days, and pretending to be someone she wasn’t, she’d given little thought as to
what happened next. She wasn’t even sure why she’d been coming to visit John this last week. Surely the prudent thing to do would be to run. Get out of London now, before this sham fell
apart. But she found herself coming here, dutifully, every morning. What was that? Guilt? Concern for this lost soul? Something else?
    ‘I can’t wait to come home,’ he said quietly. He tossed a conspiratorial nod at the old man in the next bed. ‘The chap over there keeps breaking wind during the
night.’ His face wrinkled. ‘Most awful bloody smell.’
    Mary smiled. But her mind was racing. Home. The moment he checked out of the hospital and they asked for a contact address, this little sham was all going to be over.
    John squeezed her hand. ‘Can’t wait to come home.’
    ‘Yes.’ She leant close to him, kissed him tenderly on the cheek. ‘I’m going to take good care of you, my love.’

CHAPTER 10

    22nd September 1888, Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital, London
    ‘P rovided there are no problems, no complications, I would say he could be discharged by the end of this week. But you must understand: Mr
Argyll suffered a severe blow to his head. Beneath the skull, a degree of haemorrhaging occurred which—’
    ‘Hemmer . . . ?’
    ‘Internal bleeding, Miss Kelly. The blood wasn’t able to find a way out and was thus causing a build up of pressure inside his cranium . . . his skull. It’s this pressure that
I believe has caused significant damage to his brain.’
    Dr Hart could see the poor young woman was hoping to hear a more positive prognosis than he was giving; an assurance that the man’s memories would all come flooding back fully-formed in
one moment of blinding epiphany. But the truth was there were absolutely no assurances he could make. He’d seen enough cracked and caved in skulls to know that the damaged brain behaved in no
predictable way. A man might receive a tap on the head and be reduced to a vegetative state for the rest of his life; another might be bludgeoned until his head looked like a misshapen potato and
yet still walk away proudly sporting stitches that would one day make a scar worth boasting about.
    ‘I’m sorry, my dear, there really is no knowing for sure how much of a recovery he will make. Or how soon. If, indeed, ever.’
    ‘But will he be able to walk properly again?’
    John could manage a stilted shuffle. His right leg seemed to operate perfectly normally, but his left appeared to exhibit signs of partial paralysis.
    Dr Hart pressed his lips together. ‘My hope is that it will get better as his mind knits the damage that has been done. From my experience, the harder he works to recover, the better the
chances are for him that he will make a full recovery, in time.’
    She sucked in a breath. ‘Then I’ll have to be a hard taskmaster,’ she said with a firm nod.
    Dr Hart smiled encouragement. ‘That’s the idea.’
    He looked out of the window of his consultation room at the ward across the passageway. He could see Mr Argyll playing chess with another patient. ‘So he’s an American? Is that
right? Is he visiting London? A business trip perhaps?’ The exotic twang of the former colonies was certainly somewhere there in the calm, deep drawl of his voice.
    ‘Uh . . . yes, that’s right. Yes, he is American.’
    ‘How did you both meet?’
    Mary Kelly’s cheeks prickled with crimson. She looked flustered. ‘I . . . well . . . it’s