Shadows of Madness

by Tracy L. Ward

  “Enter.”

  The clerk pushed open the door to reveal Samuel seated in a wooden chair surrounded completely by errant files and misshapen piles of paperwork. Samuel looked over the top rim of his gold spectacles. “What is it?” he asked, gruffly.

  “These arrived in the post,” the clerk said, plopping the pages down right in front of Samuel. “And there is a visitor for you.”

  Only when the clerk moved out of the way, stepping back into the hall, did Samuel recognize Ainsley. His face gave a flash of happiness before it faded and he looked about the room. He could not hide the embarrassment that washed over him. “Peter,” he breathed, “I do apologize.”

  Samuel was quick to his feet and scurried from the room, returning a moment later with another chair. There was so little floor space for such an addition that Ainsley was surprised when his friend managed to fit it in the room.

  “Please, come sit.” Samuel gestured for the chair and held the inside doorknob as Ainsley entered. He closed the door tightly before returning to his desk, sidestepping a heap of books and paperwork lumped on the floor.

  Ainsley stepped over a pile of his own, careful not to send anything into disorder, and took a seat in the cramped space. “My, my, Samuel, making partner hasn’t changed you at all.”

  Leaning into his desk, Samuel licked his lips. “Father never named me partner,” he said.

  “But the sign,” Ainsley said, raising a finger as if to point to the front of the building. “It says Humphry and Humphry.”

  Samuel sneered slightly. “It’s my uncle.”

  “Your uncle? But last time we spoke you were assured he intended to give you the partnership. A bigger stake, that’s what you said.”

  “Father only brought me on, reluctantly I might add, shortly after my wedding.” His eyes scanned the top of his desk. He was nervous and apologetic. “I have a mind to believe he never would have given me any position if it weren’t for my lovely wife and son.”

  “Son?” Ainsley laughed at his own disbelief. If Samuel knew of his own intentions to marry he’d no doubt have the same reaction.

  Ainsley’s friend searched amongst the wreckage of his desktop to find a small pewter picture frame with a photograph placed inside. He handed it to Ainsley. The photograph was of a very young woman, no more than sixteen or seventeen, holding a baby in a long, white christening gown.

  “Well then, wonders never cease.” Ainsley handed the photograph back over the desk.

  Samuel gazed at it and smiled. “She’s a lovely woman, Iris,” he said. “And James is a good sleeper, so we are told, though we have no other to compare him to.”

  “Your father gave you a position out of a sense of duty for your wife and child?” Ainsley asked.

  “Begrudgingly, I’m afraid. Were my first child a girl, I doubt he would have been so accommodating.” Samuel eyed him from across the desk, hesitant to reveal any more.

  Ainsley shook his head in disbelief. Samuel had been a brilliant student with top marks and a bright future. Everyone had been assured of his success in the legal field.

  Samuel placed the frame onto the highest stack of files on his desk. Ainsley had no doubt that in a week’s time it would find its way beneath the papers and folders once again.

  “What brings you to Edinburgh?”

  Ainsley’s cheerful demeanour changed. “Haven’t you read the papers?”

  Samuel shook his head and scanned his desk with an unsure look. “I’m much too occupied with work, behind even.”

  Ainsley reached into his inside breast pocket and pulled out the article about Jonas which he had ripped from the newspaper that morning. Samuel read it solemnly without facial expression or response until finally, when he had reached the end, he let the jagged edged paper fall from his hand. He leaned all the way back in his chair and raised a hand over his mouth.

  “Never could I have dreamed of such a day,” he said, at last.

  “We must help him.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. It’s just … well … Frobisher is a man of note in Edinburgh, has been for a few years now.”

  “How do you mean? Regarding his contributions to science?”

  “In part, yes, but it’s his wife’s family who we should be concerned with. Very influential. They will be able to sway the courts to a much higher degree.” Samuel pulled in a deep breath and moved about searching in the mess of papers in front of him. “Who is the procurator fiscal they’ve assigned? Do you know?”

  “I have yet to meet him. We know Inspector Hearst is the investigating officer.”

  Samuel stopped suddenly.

  “We became acquainted last evening at Calton.” Ainsley slid to the edge of his seat. “I believe the man was drunk or at least that he had been drinking heavily while in the company of the prison governor. Have we any recourse for that?”

  “Bertram is his own breed entirely. Untouchable in many respects.” Samuel licked his lips. “We should speak with my uncle,” he said at last. “He had Bertram charged once for assaulting a client of ours.”

  “Truly?”

  “Well … Nearly. Charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. But we were very close.”

  Chapter 6

  Margaret opened her eyes and knew instantly that Peter wasn’t in the building. The light that slipped past the edge of the drapes told her it was nearing midmorning and that she had slept the early hours away. The night before she hadn’t been sure she could sleep at all. After seeing Jonas in such a state, how could she retreat to such comfortable lodgings? She had spent a good hour crying and replaying her conversation with Jonas over in her head. Now her eyelids felt sore and her cheeks flush even after a few hours of sleep.

  She sniffled as she sat up in the hotel bed and brushed her wavy, brown hair from her face.

  The door opened and Elmira slipped through. “Oh, good morning, Lady Margaret,” she said, in her usual even tone. “Mister Marshall has arranged for our return to London. We leave in an hour—”

  “Leaving? We cannot leave.”

  Elmira started, pulling her hands back from the bedding she was trying to lay flat. “I only do what I am told, my lady.” She turned from the bed and began pulling back the drapes to let more light through. “I have already seen to your things and Mr. Cutter has asked the kitchen staff to prepare some food that we can eat on the train.”

  “You are mistaken, Elmira,” Margaret said sliding from the bed and crossing the room. “I am not leaving.”

  “But the tickets, ma’am, they have already been arranged,” she said.

  Angered, Margaret snatched her brush from the small bureau and began running it through her hair roughly. She couldn’t leave Edinburgh, even if Jonas had dismissed her concern. She couldn’t abandon him at such a time. Her strokes with the brush grew faster and faster, yanking and pulling at the ends.

  Seeing this, Elmira rushed over and quickly took the brush from Margaret’s hand. “Allow me, Lady Margaret.” Without being ordered to do so, she guided Margaret to a chair set in front of a toilette table and began brushing.

  “I want to speak to my brother,” Margaret said, looking at Elmira through the mirrored reflection.

  “Mister Marshall decided to visit a friend while you were sleeping,” Elmira explained without concern. “He said we are to meet him at the train station.”

  A few moments passed while Margaret stewed. She could feel her hair being pulled and pinned but cared little for it. Why on earth would Peter arrange for them to leave so soon, when Jonas had not been proven innocent? Surely he was just as convinced as she that Jonas wasn’t guilty. He may have been a gambler and a bit of a Casanova, but a murderer he was not.

  Margaret’s shoulders sank at the thought that he had grown bored of her, like he had of the other women he once wooed. Perhaps he had met someone new in the last months while they were apart and that is why he was so put off by her visit to the prison. Could he be so fickle? Talking of love and vowing marriage one
moment, then pledging indifference and resentment the next?

  Their courtship had been kept secret for the most part, mostly for the benefit of Margaret, who feared the wrath of her father should their connection be found out. Jonas was a surgeon, a tradesman who worked with the bodies of both the living and the dead. Peter had only been allowed to practice the trade if he took their mother’s maiden name and left the Marshall clan untarnished. A second son leading a double life as a surgeon was one thing, but an only daughter pledging her love to one was entirely unacceptable.

  So much had happened during their secret courtship but it all served to solidify their connection and did little to tear them apart. Margaret had promised to go to him, to be wed in secret shortly after he accepted his position with the Edinburgh Medical School and the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. To prove her commitment, and perhaps erase any doubt in her own mind, she invited him into her room and they shared one night, one very sweet night, before he went away. That night there was no doubt they would be wed and for a short time she was the happiest of women.

  But in the end she couldn’t leave Father, not after the attack that left him an invalid. Not when he had needed her most. She had feared Jonas wouldn’t understand. That her absence and subsequent silence had somehow signalled to him that she had second thoughts. Perhaps he had heard of Blair Thornton’s persistent suit of her. She had not meant to encourage him, but how could she deny visits with a man who had saved her life?

  She had to explain all this to Jonas, to get it out in the open so he could understand and perhaps not think so harshly of her. She had been so tired and overwrought the night before she was surprised she could say anything while seeing him behind bars and covered in blood.

  Margaret pressed on her stomach, which had suddenly started twisting and turning, and took a deep breath to steady her heartbeat. No, she told herself decidedly. She would not leave him. Not now. She must speak with Peter.

  ***

  The train station was even busier than it had been the night before. Margaret felt herself being swept along deeper into the crowd, by passing vendors selling their wares and porters manoeuvring mounded carts through the throng. The locomotive engine purred in the background as Margaret followed Elmira and Cutter to the platform.

  “I don’t see Peter,” Margaret said, lifting herself up on her toes so she could see above the crowd. In her mind she wasn’t getting on that train. She only needed to speak with her brother.

  “He said he would meet us here, Lady Margaret,” Elmira said, her voice signalling her exasperation with the heiress. “Cutter, see to the luggage,” she ordered before plucking Margaret’s valise from the top of their baggage cart.

  Cutter nodded and disappeared into the crowd, pushing the small cart with both Ainsley’s and Margaret’s trunks.

  Margaret turned about in place, ignoring the first whistle of the train. Above them on a hill, not too far from Waverly Station, she could see the sand-coloured ramparts of the prison, a Union Jack flapping majestically on the prison’s tallest tower. The building resembled a castle with its thick exterior walls and stone construction, easily mistaken for a symbolic relic of Scotland’s past rather than a modern place of sorrow and desperation.

  Margaret could not shake the image of what she had seen the night before—Jonas, bloodied and broken, behind those rusted iron bars. Had he been given anything to eat, or at least water to drink? Would the other prisoners take advantage of his kind nature? Would the governor see fit to discipline him? Surely the Scottish judicial system would bring to light his innocence. An innocent man could not be found guilty for crimes he didn’t commit, not in this enlightened age of police forces and forensic evidence. He would be free again, before long.

  Margaret winced at the memory of Detective Inspector Hearst’s hardened face. He was not a man easily swayed from his quarry. He would push for the death penalty, would he not? He’d see it as his duty if he believed Jonas guilty.

  “Lady Margaret, come.” Elmira had already climbed the steps of the rail car and was standing next to one of the uniformed rail workers who waited at the door. She waved her hand frantically, beckoning Margaret to come forward, while her other boney hand clutched the railing with an unsteady grasp.

  Margaret could hear the train’s engines building in anticipation and then she realized the platform had thinned to only a handful of souls who waved their farewells to loved ones already aboard. She had been so deep in thought she hadn’t heard the whistles.

  “What about Peter?” Margaret asked in desperation.

  “Perhaps he is already on board, my lady,” Elmira said. “Come quick or you shall be left in Edinburgh alone.”

  Margaret turned her face to smile at the lovely thought.

  “Come, miss.” The rail worker stepped past Elmira and stood with one foot on the platform and one foot on the steps. “You must board the train now.”

  With a shaky hand, Margaret accepted his help and climbed aboard. The train car vibrated beneath their feet as Margaret followed Elmira down the centre aisle to find a pair of empty seats.

  “Here you are,” Elmira said, her voice betraying her relief.

  Margaret spied the two empty seats, near identical to ones she and Peter had sat in on their journey north. Peter was nowhere to be seen.

  Before taking her seat, she glanced out to see if perhaps he was running across the station yard. There was no sign of him. She began to wonder if he was coming at all.

  “Sit, Lady Margaret, the train is about to leave.”

  All of a sudden, Margaret’s stomach began to churn, sending waves of nausea and dizziness in its wake. Even after all she had been through, after everything that proved herself capable, she felt weak and helpless. She could not let him die, not after all this. Even if he no longer cared for her and had changed his mind, she could not abandon him. She’d never forgive herself.

  “Forgive me, Elmira,” Margaret said suddenly, pulling her valise from the woman’s weak grasp. “There is something I must do before I return to London.”

  Without giving the maid a chance to reply, Margaret turned and retraced her steps down the length of the car. When she reached the back door the train worker was just latching it into place and the locomotive lurched into action.

  “Ma’am—”

  Margaret pushed by him and unlatched the door. “Excuse me.”

  “You can’t. We are in motion.”

  The rail worker followed her out the door and onto the iron steps of the car.

  Margaret dropped her valise onto the platform and watched as it began to slip away. The train was moving slow, pulling away from the station.

  “Lady Margaret! Come back! You’ll injure yourself.”

  Margaret could hear Elmira’s commands resonating in her ears even as she stepped off from the lowest step. It took a moment for her to get her balance but thankfully she did not fall.

  “Margaret!”

  The cries were closer now and when Margaret looked she saw Elmira, old and feeble as she was, clutching her hat and holding onto the iron rail of the first class car. As the train pulled further from the station, gaining speed as it went, Margaret felt an unbelievable rush of liberation. She was free from her lady’s maid, her brother Daniel’s spy, as Margaret called her. She was free from Marshall House and the call of London. She was free from everyone who conspired to tell her what to do and how to do it.

  With an air of triumph, Margaret turned, walked purposefully back to her valise, and plucked it from the platform. Perhaps Peter was on the train and had only been in another car. Perhaps the morning’s events had only been a plot of his devising to somehow get her out of Edinburgh. Perhaps she had made a grievous error and would find herself regretting it all by that same time the next day. Margaret chuckled to herself, and stole a glance down the now-empty track.

  None of it mattered. Jonas was here. In this city. And he needed her help.

  Chapter 7

  With his poc
ket watch in his hand, Ainsley glanced out the window. He could not hear the whistle of the ten o’clock train but he imagined it all the same. Jonas would be pleased to know that Margaret was safely out of the city. She’d be vexed with them both, he was sure, but he could handle a heated argument better than seeing her in harm’s way once again.

  He smiled as he slipped the watch back into his inside pocket.

  “Are you late for an appointment?” Samuel asked, as he approached him with a file tucked under his arm.

  “No,” Ainsley answered. “Just thinking of a friend.”

  Samuel cocked his head to the side, coaxing Ainsley to follow him down the hall. “My uncle will see us now,” he said, before turning and leading the way.

  Mr. Humphry’s office was strikingly bigger and better appointed when compared to Samuel’s overstuffed closet. The contrast was not lost on Samuel, who bowed his head slightly as Ainsley walked through the threshold. He exhaled and forced a smile. “Father is away in Glasgow at the moment,” he said.

  Ainsley nodded and then surveyed the room. Papered in a deep green, the walls stretched fifteen feet high with tall, curved windows to match the height. The expanse included two distinct areas, one for Thomas Humphry’s large desk, some shelving, and a small tea table set next to the window. The second area was set up near the door with four comfortable gold-upholstered chairs set about a circular table. A small vase of roses was placed on a red square cloth at the centre.

  Thomas was standing near the window overlooking an expansive view of Edinburgh with a teacup and saucer in his hand. The man was extraordinarily tall, with a receding hairline and long, bushy mutton chops. He seemed friendly enough when he eventually turned to Ainsley and his nephew, Samuel.