Title: Gold, Frankincense, and Morphine
Series: Mary Grey Mysteries #5
Author: Winnie Frolik
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 12/02/2025
Heat Level: 1 – No Sex
Pairing: Female/Female
Length: 246
Genre: Historical Mystery, Genre/lit, historical, crime, seasonal cozy mystery, hospital, nurse, private detective, murder, Christmas
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Description
December 1938. Mary Grey is now working at St. Stephen’s hospital in Rosby. But when a patient dies unexpectedly following a routine operation, she suspects something far darker than unforeseen complications. Soon she and Shaefer are swamped with a rising tide of bodies as they investigate a most cunning and ruthless killer. Matters are complicated even further when Mary’s longtime paramour Harriet West impulsively takes in a child refugee who has arrived on the Kindertransport from war-torn Germany. Can the murderer be unmasked before all the joy is stolen from the Christmas season?
Excerpt
Gold, Frankincense, and Morphine
Winnie Frolik © 2025
All Rights Reserved
“Marley was dead, to begin with…dead as a door-nail.”
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
Night of December 7th, 1938
Hospitals are not places generally associated with Christmas festivity. Yet the staff of St. Stephen’s made an effort anyway. Not even the disapproving glances of the Matron, Nurse Bellemont, unofficially known among the wards as the Battleaxe, could dissuade them from trying to bring in a little Yuletide cheer. It started with the arrival and unveiling of a new advent calendar in the main reception room. The calendar in question had an elaborate picture of an unknown cathedral surrounded by carolers and clergymen. Each of the cathedral’s windows and doors revealed a hidden picture. The first such drawing to be revealed was a classic English plum pudding trimmed with holly. Other flourishes soon joined the calendar. A small, rather frail potted fir tree was produced and its sparse branches hung with tinsel and red balls. Dr. Henry Owens, that old rogue, found a convenient spot to hang some mistletoe.
Pharmacy dispenser Jill Rowlands put up a large nutcracker on the counter from where she dispersed the drugs that kept the whole hospital running. Some wag joked that she could use it in lieu of mortar and pestle when mixing up formulas.
“No,” Rowlands proclaimed primly after pretending to ponder the matter first. “It’s just so much harder to keep sterile. And you all know how I feel about cross-contamination!” It was true; Rowlands was famous for keeping all her equipment and workspace spotless. When not immediately occupied with dispensing, she could often be found endlessly scrubbing her counter space with lemon-scented disinfectant.
Meanwhile, Nurse Charters and Nurse Grey had both taken it upon themselves during the night shift to make homemade ringed paper garlands to adorn the halls.
“Already a real nip in the air, isn’t there?” Nurse Charters observed to Nurse Grey. “Likely or not we’ll get snow soon!”
“And with it a new flood of patients injuring themselves in slip and falls,” Nurse Grey opined grimly while Charters gave a rueful chuckle. Nurse Mary Grey was an attractive, dark-haired woman of some thirty or so years of age whose features bore a vague resemblance to ancient icons of the Holy Virgin. Christine Charters was a few years younger, generously endowed in both freckles and bosom. The two of them often excited much appreciation among male patients and staff alike at St. Stephens. With Mary, any such hopes were alas quite forlorn. Charters, however, was a single girl who frankly admitted to being on the lookout for a husband someday. She flirted freely with anyone who came her way.
It was Mary’s first Christmas with St. Stephen’s, having joined the hospital staff here only a few weeks prior. Before that, she’d been a private duty nurse, a district nurse, and even, for a brief period, assistant to the renowned private detective Franz Shaefer. But she’d been given a choice between remaining an investigator and staying at the side of Harriet West, the love of her life. For while Mary’s detective skills had helped free Harriet from false imprisonment in a French jail, the hazards of the job were too much for her nerves. As Harriet told Mary, “I’m sorry but I haven’t the courage to be a policewoman’s wife. I need to know you’ll be coming home safely to me at the end of the day. Besides, if you continue working with Shaefer, we’d have to move to London, and I quite like the place we already have. And our social circle here in Rosby.”
Rosby was a bustling industrial city where Harriet’s family had first made their fortune. It was a growing community with a great deal of new construction. Cheaper rents than could be found in London gave the place a thriving artistic community as well.
Mary had moved back into the comfortable flat she shared with Harriet and returned to nursing. Since there had not been any openings for a district nurse available in the area, she had at first taken on private duty nursing. But she’d found the work a little quiet for her liking. So, she applied to St. Stephen’s. Which was most definitely not quiet. Centrally located with about three hundred beds, St. Stephen’s was one of the busiest hospitals in Rosby. It had originally been built in 1889 as an extension to the Rosby Union Workhouse. The workhouse closed in 1930 and, despite neighborhood efforts to preserve the historic site, had been demolished to make way for a large commercial space. But the infirmary rechristened as St. Stephen’s had survived and was now Mary’s new second home.
Strictly speaking, she didn’t really need to work at all. Harriet had more than enough money for them both. But Mary preferred not to be a kept woman. Besides, she liked nursing and had been called to the profession at an early age. It was another reason why she’d left her position with Shaefer. Though she and the London-based German Jewish émigré kept in touch. He always had some exciting case to tell her about. In fact, business of late was going so well for him he’d taken on a secretary. Mary had felt a twinge of jealousy at the news. She had rebuked herself for the unworthy thought, but she’d felt it anyway. It wasn’t that she was unhappy working at St. Stephens. She quite liked her fellow staff—well, most of her fellow staff at any rate, except Matron Bellemont. She was doing meaningful work, and her patients sorely needed her. And she had Harriet and the two of them had made friends in town. They also had Ahab, a large orange tomcat who ruled their flat with an iron paw.
All in all, Mary knew she had a pretty good life. One far better than most women of her sexual appetites—or most women period—could ever hope for. And she tried to remember to be grateful. Even at times like this when she’d been unfortunate enough to draw night shift as a last-minute replacement for Nurse Robinson, who had been called to attend a sick aunt in Lincolnshire.
But detective work, while dangerous, had also been so exciting. There had been a thrill of the hunt and capture of criminals that nothing else could truly match. And even amid hanging garlands, Mary once more grew wistful. Fortunately, she was distracted by the needs of her job. It was time to check in on Mrs. Bisbee.
Rhoda Bisbee was a red-faced, stoutly built widow between the ages of forty and fifty who happened to be the proprietor of a local bakery known for its Madeira cake. When her stomach pains first began, she had originally ascribed them to overindulgence in her own pastries or perhaps simple indigestion. When matters worsened, her assistant, Flossie, had insisted on her visiting the hospital where the doctors quickly diagnosed her as having a severe case of appendicitis and ordered her into the operating room.
Fortunately, the appendectomy had been a perfect success with no complications whatsoever. Unfortunately, she’d been at St. Stephen’s now five days since the operation, and Rhoda had been bored sick since the second day. Her niece, Lizzie, to her credit, had come down on the first train from London, taking time off from the school she worked at to do so. Her visits were the only bits of stimulation Rhoda had. Otherwise, she’d nothing else to do but lie around all day listening to the radio and, with the sole exception of a swing band concert, found it intolerable. She couldn’t care less about sporting events, and the news was all too bloody depressing, especially everything from the continent. Between the Communists and the Nazis, what was the world coming to? She longed to leave her miserable sterile white prison and return to the warmth and comfort of her beloved bakery. And while Flossie was a nice, hardworking girl, Rhoda was not at all sure she was up to running the business all by herself yet. Especially around the holiday season no less when they were always swamped. Lizzie had told her firmly to put aside such concerns as all the doctors had stressed the need for her to rest, but Rhoda worried despite herself.
She worried about Lizzie as well. Her niece had been the first member of the family to attend school after the age of twelve. Her scholarship to a teachers’ training college had been a mark of great pride to all concerned, as was her graduating at the top of her class. She was immediately offered a place at a prestigious girls’ school in London. It was a good position, and Lizzie seemed quite happy there. What would they think of her taking such a lengthy leave of absence for the sake of an ill relative? Oh, Lizzie claimed, it was of little consequence since the school had been nearing the time for the Christmas holiday anyway, but Rhoda knew better. Employers never liked being left short-handed—she certainly didn’t! But Rhoda also knew there was no chance of Lizzie returning to work until she had at least left the hospital. Yet another reason why she was eager to be discharged.
All these things and more Rhoda shared with the polite Nurse Grey as she changed her bedpan and returned with a covered tray provided by the hospital kitchen.
“What’s that?” Rhoda asked suspiciously.
“Shepherd’s pie,” Mary replied, and Rhoda answered her with a sniff.
“The quality of the food here,” she grumbled. “Are you trying to poison people?”
“No one’s ever informed me about any such plans,” Mary quipped. “But I am the new girl.” Rhoda chuckled. “In all seriousness,” Mary continued, “poor Gladys and the rest of the kitchen staff do their best.”
Rhoda snorted. “They can barely manage beans on toast!” she proclaimed.
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Meet the Author
Born and raised in Pittsburgh, the Carnegie Library in Oakland was always my second home. I was diagnosed as being a high functioning autistic in college. I hold a useless double major in English literature and creative writing. I’ve worked at nonprofit agencies, in food service, and most recently as a dog-walker/petsitter but the siren song of writing keeps pulling me back into its dark grip. I have co-authored a book on women in the US Senate with Billy Herzig, self-published The Dog-Walking Diaries, and in 2020 my first novel Sarah Crow was published by One Idea Press. I live in my hometown Pittsburgh with my better half, Smoky the Cat. Visit Winnie on Facebook.
