Kate’s eyes filled with tears, which even after all these long months since Eliot was killed were never far away whenever she thought of him, but this time she brushed them impatiently away, determined to be more positive. She had to try to stop weeping, must make every effort to fight against the desire to indulge herself in mournful thoughts which could so easily turn into self-pity and depression. She had to fight that at all costs, or she’d be back in the black pit all over again. Besides, she was here to enjoy herself and relax, an essential part of the healing process.
She found herself smiling now, remembering that if it hadn’t been for Millie nagging and shaming her into confessing how she really felt about him, how much she loved him, Kate might never have agreed to marry Eliot at all.
Oh, and wasn’t she glad that she had? Even if their time together hadn’t lasted as long as they’d both hoped, they’d been happy as larks. No one could take those precious memories away from her. They’d helped to make her what she was, and would enable her to go on, for Eliot’s sake.
Tired from her walk, Kate fell on to her bed and decided to take a short nap. She woke late, longing for a cuppa, having slept right through afternoon tea. Her tummy rumbled with hunger. The light was almost gone and Kate hurried to change and get ready. There was no time now to hunt along strange corridors for bathrooms, that treat would have to wait till morning, so she scrubbed herself quickly down with cold water from the small sink.
She felt excited, foolishly so. It was so long since she’d had the opportunity to dress up and meet new people. How silly of her to oversleep.
‘’T’was all that fresh air and sunshine after me long journey. And I’ve worked up quite an appetite too,’ she said to herself, giving a happy little chuckle.
She’d chosen an ankle-length gown for her first evening, in black of course but brightened by touches of purple silk at the neck, sleeves and hem of the organza over-dress. It was multi-layered and flowed quite beautifully, feeling soft and delicate against her legs.
Kate could see nothing of herself in the small mirror high up on the wall without first climbing up on to the rush-bottomed chair, which she now did. It offered her a glimpse of her middle part, around the waist, but little more, so she had no real idea of how she looked full-length. Nevertheless, she felt perfectly elegant in her new gown. Her shoes were of her own design with a pointed toe, a bow trim, and a beautifully shaped Louis heel. Perhaps she would be able to find the opportunity to display them to the other guests and talk about her new line of elegant footwear.
Kate looked at her watch again. Twenty minutes to seven. She got up and wandered about the small room, wondering what time it would be polite to go down. Too soon and she’d be kicking her heels in the Great Hall, too late and she’d be embarrassed.
She fussed with the hem of her dress, hung a row of jet beads about her neck, put a dab of powder on her nose, a daring touch of rouge to her lips, adjusted the jewelled clip that pinned up her wild red hair. Then she drew in a deep breath for courage, picked up her bag and evening gloves, and was ready to venture forth.
Except that something was wrong. For the life of her she couldn’t seem to open the door. It was locked fast.
Chapter Thirteen
Over the following weeks, Lucy didn’t give Kate another thought. She’d returned from the weekend in Scotland, giving a harrowing explanation of how poor dear Kate had tried to harm herself and that it had been decided she should stay on for a while longer, till she was more herself. There were questions, naturally, much agonising and concern, tears from Flora and anger from Callum.
As the cold of winter began to bite, snow clung to the Lakeland hills and ice formed on the River Kent. The entire household appeared to have sunk once more into gloomy mourning. Mrs Petty would frequently forget even to draw back the curtains of a morning and Lucy would have to remonstrate with the stupid woman.
‘Can I send Mammy a get well card?’ Flora asked.
‘Very well. Leave it on the hall table and I’ll see that it is posted.’
Callum said, ‘Let us have the address and we can post it ourselves. We aren’t helpless.’
‘Your mother is safely settled in a nursing home and not to be disturbed,’ Lucy tartly informed him. ‘Peace and seclusion are what she needs right now, not moans and groans from her children. You surely don’t want her harming herself again, perhaps more effectively next time? It was a miracle she was found in time and that there was a doctor present.’
When Flora had gone off to bed to write her card, Callum asked, ‘How did she harm herself?’
‘I really don’t think you need to know.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘She slashed her wrists. There, do you feel any better for knowing that?’
Lucy cast him a challenging glare and Callum glared right back. After a long moment it was Lucy who looked away. He really was a most difficult boy. Having settled the matter of Kate, to her own satisfaction at least, Lucy refused to answer any further questions and got on with enjoying her new freedom. She’d achieved her goal. She was now entirely in control, free to put the next part of her plan into action.
With Kate gone, she could award herself the status and rewards in life that she richly deserved, and override Toby’s obstructive attitude towards darling Jack.
True, there were still a few problems requiring her attention. Ned Swainson, for one. He seemed to see himself as a permanent fixture in her life. Not so, she told him.
‘Our relationship is over. You’ve done what I asked, now you can safely leave the rest to me.’
‘But you’d still like me to keep me mouth shut, I dare say,’ he calmly reminded her, smoothing one hand along her thigh as they sat in her new motor. She’d got rid of the Austin 20, in case the police came prowling round again, and replaced it with a Daimler. A much classier car, and far more appropriate for her new status in the town as a local employer.
Lucy slapped the hand away. ‘What good would it do you? No one would ever take your word against mine. They’d say you were simply being vindictive because you’d once been sacked by Tyson’s and never reinstated.’
‘I could tell them different, say how you deliberately ran down your own brother-in-law with yer fancy motor car, say what you and I have got up to since. How would that look plastered all over the pages of the Westmorland Gazette?’
Lucy let out a trill of amused laughter. ‘You could say nothing that anyone would believe. I’m a person of note in this town, I’ll have you know. You are a nobody.’
Ned Swainson’s face darkened, his mouth twisting, mean little eyes flickering this way and that as his rapid thought processes sought a way to beat her at her own game. ‘Then mebbe I should just go to the police. They’d listen. Oh, aye, the police would listen to me all right. They’d know the risk I took by talking to ‘em, so they’d be bound to take note.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! You wouldn’t dare. You could end up behind bars yourself.’
‘It might be worth the risk, if you were there alongside me. Anyroad, what’ve I done? Nowt by comparison. Mended yer car, left a rat or two lying about the place. You’re the one with blood on yer hands, and they’d almost certainly start asking some awkward questions about that accident, and about where Kate Tyson is now. They’d want to know why she’s incarcerated in that Scottish castle or wherever you’ve locked her up, when there’s not a damned thing wrong with her. They might well see how that might further your own greedy ambitions.’
Lucy ground her teeth in frustrated rage. ‘And the price of your silence would be?’
He chuckled, low and maliciously. ‘You know that as well as I do. Cash would be preferable, and plenty of it, but in the meantime I’ll make do with payment in kind.’
Yet again Lucy felt compelled to comply with his demands, resignedly lifting her skirt, turning her face away with a grimace as he grunted and heaved against her. Yet she found herself responding to his demands, her excitement mounting al
ong with his, gasping at the final thrust. Unsavoury he may be, but he rarely disappointed.
Later, washing the smell of him from her body in her lovely new bathroom, she resolved to find a different solution. Ridding herself of Swainson and his greedy, mucky little paws, was turning into a priority. But how much would it take to make him stay away permanently? And how to be sure he wouldn’t come back, asking for more? The last thing Lucy had expected was to be caught in a web of blackmail.
Perhaps the answer was that if she couldn’t afford to buy him off, then she must implicate him more fully in her scheme. His hands needed to be as bloody as her own.
Once more Lucy arranged to see him, and after handing over a fistful of notes, said, ‘See to Callum for me. Teach him a lesson for interfering in what doesn’t concern him.’
Swainson counted the money and pulled a face. ‘This is but the first instalment, I assume?’
‘Rid me of that boy and you can have whatever your heart desires. He is no fighter. My own son trounced him so he won’t put up much of a fight. Do with him as you will. He’s all yours.’
Not a day went by when Kate didn’t regret putting her trust in Lucy. Whatever had possessed her to imagine that her sister-in-law had invited her along for a weekend because she craved Kate’s company, or cared a jot about the state of her health? What utter nonsense! She’d had quite a different purpose in mind altogether.
The shock of realising where she’d really been taken still overwhelmed Kate at times as if a mist had cleared and she’d suddenly caught a glimpse of the nightmare reality. Then, realising the awfulness of her plight, she’d start to shake with fear all over again.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how she was feeling on any particular day, she was often quite incapable of too much thinking or contemplation of her lot, being too befuddled by the pills they gave her.
Sometimes, if she was clever, Kate managed to avoid taking these, by holding them under her tongue, or secreting them in the palm of her hand till she could dispose of them safely. But that only worked with the careless nurses, the ones who didn’t ensure that she’d swallowed them by checking her mouth afterwards.
At least they made her sleep. Deep sleep, the patients were frequently and constantly informed, was the answer to all their problems. It was somehow supposed to allow the mind time to recover.
Patients in the castle were given morphine, bromide or laudanum, sometimes as much as twenty drops. Despite every effort to stay alert, the longing for sleep became seductive. To Kate, as with many of the others it represented a welcome escape from the fear and monotony of the endless days. It seemed best not to think too deeply about where you were, or why you were here. Or worse, when or if you would ever get out.
There was little hope of escape. Some tried, but they didn’t get very far. The nurses, or warders, whatever they were, were vigilant in keeping the patients secure. Even on the days when Kate was still capable of rational thought, of viewing her life with some sort of cool detachment, where was the point? She was trapped as securely behind locked doors as she had been on that very first night.
How naïve she’d been, how foolishly trusting. All dressed up and ready to attend a lovely dinner party, yet unable to get out of her room. She’d hammered on that locked door until her knuckles were blood raw, and still no one had come.
She’d no recollection of getting a wink of sleep that night. It had all been so unbelievably awful that Kate hadn’t properly been able to take it in, quite certain there’d simply been a mistake, that the door had become jammed or locked by accident.
Not until morning, when breakfast arrived in the form of a dish of porridge and a mug of weak tea, did she learn the terrible truth. It was brought not by Winnie, the talkative little maid, but a grim-faced woman with whiskers on her chin and her mouth set in a thin, tight line.
Kate had challenged her at once. ‘Why have I been left all alone here, locked in this room and ignored all night? This is no way to treat your guests.’
‘A guest, is that what you are? Well, that’s one way of looking at it, I suppose.’ The woman had thought this so amusing that she’d laughed uproariously as she’d plonked down the tray, and then taken great pleasure in telling Kate the unvarnished truth.
She was not here for a pleasant weekend party at all. This was a private asylum run by the formidable Miss Elvira Crombie.
‘You’re here because the magistrates, or mebbe your own kith and kin, consider it necessary for your own safety, and theirs too probably. Violent, are you? Many of our inmates are.’
‘No, of course I’m not violent. Why do you call your guests inmates? What are you talking about?’
And so it had been explained to her, most carefully, how Lucy had made the arrangements, booking her in for as long as it might take to make her well again. And no matter how many times over the following weeks Kate might protest she was perfectly well, that there was really nothing at all wrong with her, that she wasn’t in the least mad, nobody took a blind bit of notice.
There were many at the castle who were indeed mentally ill and in need of special care, though whether this was the right place for them to receive it, Kate couldn’t say. She often heard shouts and blood-curdling screams, particularly at night. And obsessive banging as if someone were beating their head against a wall, or the endless rattling of a door as if some poor soul were attempting to escape. The noise that emanated from some of these closed doors was chilling, and there was a stink about the place: of urine, stale sweat and human excrement. Her new friend Peggy told her that many patients were left untended for hours on end and couldn’t hold on so they’d do it in any old corner of their cell, then paint the walls with the stuff in their frustration. It made Kate shudder to imagine their suffering.
But she soon discovered that many of her fellow ‘patients’ were no more mad than she was. Rather they’d endured misfortune or tragedy in their lives, such as Peggy whose babies had died and she’d been blamed, or men like Arthur in the men’s dormitory whose entire family had been wiped out in a fire, leaving him suffering from severe depression as a result.
On that first morning, the grim faced woman added one final warning. ‘You’ve had it easy thus far, but think on, breakfast in bed won’t happen every morning, so make the best of it. Soon the routine starts proper. Right from morning baths to evening prayers, you’ll have to jump to it and do as you’re told along with everyone else. You can look forward to joining the others in the dining room for your meals. Now that truly is Bedlam in there. What a treat you have in store.’
The sarcasm in her tone made Kate shiver with foreboding. But before she could ask any more questions, the woman handed her a couple of pills and a glass of water. ‘Take these. Sleep is the best way to restore equilibrium to the brain and resolve your mood disorders.’
‘I don’t have any mood disorders, thank you very much. What is it you’re trying to give me? I won’t take it.’
But she had taken it, there’d been no other choice. The medication had been forced down her throat, a second nurse being called to hold her down while the job was done. Then they’d both departed, still chuckling, as if it were all a huge joke. The key had turned in the lock with a hollow click, a sound that made Kate sick to her stomach on that day and every day since.
Kate had no recollection of how long she’d slept in that first week, but when she’d finally woken she was no longer in the tiny room up in the eaves of the castle but a long bleak dormitory with only a locker to call her own. All her personal clothes and belongings had been taken away, and she’d not even a curtain for privacy.
That was when she’d met Peggy, sitting on the next bed, her round, sympathetic face and mothering ways a blessed relief after being starved of both company and food for so long.
‘Eeh, at last, they’ve let you come round,’ were her first words. ‘I’m that glad to see you open yer eyes, chuck. Can you manage to sit up and tek a sip of this water? I’ll help, co
me on love, try.’
‘Where am I? I think I’ve wet the bed. I stink.’
‘Don’t you fret none about that. They’re supposed to come and put you on the chamber pot every few hours, even when you’re asleep, but they generally forget. Anyroad, it’s nearly dawn. We’ll be having our baths soon.’
‘Oh, bliss!’
Kate longed to soak herself clean in lovely hot water, and wash her tangled hair. But then that was before she’d encountered the dreaded Elvira in person, or experienced the bathroom routine.
Chapter Fourteen
Swainson had a plan which he set about with gusto. Kate Tyson’s lad was a regular at the Rifle Man’s so it was no problem at all to call in there one evening and challenge him to a game of skittles. Swainson let him win, several games in fact, saw how the lad started to swagger and look pleased with himself after a pint or two. Swainson, however, kept his own consumption of alcohol to a minimum.
He casually suggested that the game might gain a little more edge to it if they had a small wager. Callum eagerly agreed. Hadn’t this newcomer already proved how hopeless he was at the game? With youthful over-confidence, he believed his money to be perfectly safe.
Besides, he was desperately saving up. He still hadn’t heard from Bunty and it was driving him mad with worry. Not for a moment did Callum believe she no longer loved him. He was convinced that her mother was in some way responsible for keeping them apart, and the only way round it was for him to go to Switzerland to see her. Callum was desperately trying to raise sufficient money to buy himself a train ticket.
Again Swainson allowed him to win the next couple of matches, and each time as Callum won and Swainson lost, the wager went up. And then, as if by chance, Swainson won a game.
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