Dr Hawkins held up a hand. ‘I know what you are going to say, Jem, but there is nothing to be done about it. Edward Eden may well have discovered the body, his idiocy preventing him from alerting anyone to the situation – clearly the fellow was overcome with horror at what he had found – but everything points to Susan Chance’s guilt. And she was found with keys in her pocket – I can’t think where she got them, but the girl is most likely able to pick any pocket she fancies. All I could do to help her was to agree that she had lost her wits. You have seen her. It was not a difficult diagnosis to reach.’
‘But the criminal wards—’
‘Dr Christie is responsible for that place, now that Rutherford is gone. I must trust to his professional integrity.’
‘Can you not step in, sir? As superintendent—’
‘I have worked with the criminal element before, Jem. I tried to treat them with humanity but the results were – disappointing. I prefer to leave their care to others.’
‘You refer to Joshua Milner, sir?’
‘Milner? How did you know?’ He frowned. ‘Yes. I vowed after that to help those who were more deserving. I’ve long since left the care of the criminally insane to those whose expectations are more realistic than mine.’ He patted me on the shoulder. ‘At least Susan Chance is safe – safe from herself, and from the gallows. It is as good an outcome as she might hope for at the moment.’ He pulled out his watch. ‘I must attend to the ward rounds. We’re stretched more thinly than ever now that Golspie and Rutherford are—’
‘Sirs!’ A troupe of women had emerged from the committee room. Amongst them I recognised Mrs Hawkins, Mrs Mothersole and Miss Mothersole. At their head, and the owner of the voice, was Dr Mothersole. ‘Sirs!’ he cried again. He spread his arms wide as he came towards us. ‘How providential! Will you join us, Mr Quartermain, Mr Flockhart, Dr Hawkins? The Ladies’ Committee and I have new and interesting plans afoot. It’s not for everyone, of course, but I cannot but feel that art – music, painting, literature, drama – have much to offer our afflicted brothers and sisters.’ He was dressed in a costume of voluminous buff-coloured canvas smock and a pair of blue cotton drill pantaloons. His calves were sheathed in white stockings, and on his feet were a pair of soft leather slippers embroidered with gold flowers and studded with glass beads. They were pointed at the toes, and turned up, like the shoes of an elf. On his bald head he wore a large black beret. The ladies were dressed normally, though they wore aprons over their dresses. Dr Mothersole, as usual, was the only man in the group. He towered over his companions like some fantastic ogre from an outlandish fairy tale. ‘Today we will be engaged in creating works of art – paint, dried flowers, paper and card. It will be most calming.’
‘I have no doubt you mean well, Dr Mothersole.’ Dr Hawkins sighed. The rose in his lapel that day was red, its petals tight about a centre trembling with pale filaments, each topped with a powdery saffron-coloured blob. The stamens had scattered down the front of his coat in a trail of yellow fibres. He dusted them off absently and examined his fingers for pollen, as if anxious to avoid the other man’s gaze. ‘But there are many other matters to attend to at present. The recreational needs of the patients can surely wait.’
‘Oh but they cannot wait,’ said Dr Mothersole. He laid a fat hand on Dr Hawkins’s arm. ‘It is of the utmost importance. The patients are anxious. The tension is palpable – have you not perceived it? The murder of two of our most eminent doctors has not gone unnoticed.’
‘Let us hope you’re not next, Father,’ said Miss Mothersole.
‘Constance!’ cried Mrs Mothersole. She clung to her husband’s arm. ‘How can you even think such a thing?’
‘Ah,’ Dr Mothersole beamed. ‘It was merely a jest, my dear. Humour is the antidote to all manner of ills; it lifts the mind and the heart. Indeed, I have been thinking of trying my hand as a “laughing artiste”, to raise the spirits of the patients – especially those of a more melancholy disposition. Laughter is the best medicine. Write that down, Constance, my dear.’
Constance produced her notebook and pencil and scrawled across the page.
Dr Mothersole breathed deeply, as though filling his lungs with artistic inspiration. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you will find us in the hall if you care to join us.’ The group moved off, trailing into the large airy room where the dance had taken place on the evening of Dr Rutherford’s death. Through the open door I could see that attendants had set up trestle tables, upon which were paints and paintbrushes, pots of glue, pieces of card and bowls of dried flowers. The door that led through to the men’s wing opened and an attendant entered leading a group of the more biddable male lunatics. Amongst them I noticed Edward Eden. A stream of women patients was led towards the hall from the door opposite.
‘Are you a member of the Ladies’ Committee?’ I said to Mrs Hawkins, who had remained beside her husband.
‘It is a good way of getting to know more about my husband’s work,’ she replied.
‘I believe you went to see Susan Chance.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I felt so sorry for the girl. I couldn’t bear to think of her locked away like that. I wanted her to know that her friends are thinking about her. That she’ll be amongst them again very soon.’
‘There’s every chance that she’ll not be amongst us ever again,’ said Dr Hawkins. ‘You shouldn’t make such promises, my dear. The mad often take things literally – if they understand what you are saying at all.’
‘I think Mrs Hawkins didn’t actually see the girl,’ I said.
‘That’s right.’ Mrs Hawkins’s face was bloodless, the jet beads at her throat glinting as black as oil. ‘I couldn’t bear it. Those awful cackling women with their incessant jangling of keys and slamming of doors. They gave me a candle and sent me along the corridor; and bade me look through the hatch in the door. There were groans and sobs echoing from . . . I don’t know where. And the darkness. And the smell—’ She closed her eyes. ‘I came away without even seeing her.’
‘You have a generous nature, my dear.’ Dr Hawkins smiled. He unfastened the flower from his lapel and affixed it to his wife’s bodice. He kissed her fingers. ‘There are many who would not dream of doing such a thing. But in all honesty you are best advised to stay away. For the time being at least.’ Dr Hawkins watched Dr Mothersole setting up an easel. ‘The governors will be here at any moment. I suppose Mothersole’s demonstration will show them what a model madhouse we are, despite our recent troubles.’ He sighed. ‘I must admire the man’s optimism. If you will excuse me, Jem? My dear?’ And then he was gone.
Mrs Hawkins, Will and I wandered into the hall. We stood side by side in silence for a moment, looking out as the ladies set out paintbrushes and adjusted their aprons.
‘I suppose I should join in,’ said Mrs Hawkins.
‘Why did you go to see Susan Chance?’ I said. ‘The real reason, I mean.’
‘I’ve told you the reason, Mr Flockhart.’
‘Did you know Miss Chance before you met her here at Angel Meadow?’
‘That was hardly possible, Mr Flockhart. If you recall I am only recently arrived in London.’
‘But you are from here, I think?’
‘Yes. Like so many others.’
‘Oughtn’t you to be goin’ now, sir?’ Now that Dr Hawkins had disappeared, Pole reasserted himself.
‘We are not ready to leave yet, thank you, Pole,’ said Will.
‘Are you to assist us amongst the lunatics, Mr Quartermain? And you, Mr Flockhart?’ said Mrs Hawkins mildly. I saw Pole smirk. ‘We would be glad of your experience as well as your assistance.’
‘Still here, gentlemen?’ I had not heard Dr Christie enter the room, but there he was beside me. The smell of the criminal asylum – dirty straw, sour breath, and fear, still hung about him. Beside him, Mrs Lunge looked out at Dr Mothersole’s art lesson and pursed her lips. An attendant bustled past, muttering under her breath. Mrs Speedicut. I stepped forward an
d took her arm.
‘Good afternoon, madam, might I have a word?’ I steered her away from the others. I knew they were watching me – Dr Christie, Mrs Lunge, Pole; Mrs Hawkins and Dr Mothersole too – but I did not care. What made me so reckless? One of them was responsible for all that had happened, for the death of Dr Rutherford, and of Dr Golspie, for the false imprisonment of Susan Chance and Edward Eden. Was I hoping to provoke a response of some kind from one of them? It was a dangerous game to play – I knew it then, though how badly I was to underestimate my adversary was still unclear.
‘Mrs Speedicut,’ I said. I kept my voice low, for fear of being overheard, though given what happened later I might well have shouted it from the rooftop. ‘I need you to do something for me.’
‘Yes, yes,’ she muttered. ‘There’s always something someone’s wanting from me.’
‘There’s supper waiting for you at the apothecary if you can do it without complaining,’ I said.
‘What is it?’
‘I need you to go upstairs—’
‘What’s for supper,’ she growled. ‘That’s what I’m askin’.’
‘Pheasant pie,’ I said. ‘And a quart of Sorley’s best ale. You can go with Gabriel.’ I clicked my tongue. ‘Come along, woman. You’ll not get a better offer.’
‘My poor feet,’ she whined. ‘Why can’t you go – wherever it is?’
I did not want to go because, for a start, Pole was watching me and was sure to follow. Besides, I wanted to speak to Miss Mothersole. A crowded room was as good a place as any.
‘Go upstairs to Dr Rutherford’s rooms and bring back one of his phrenology ledgers. It’s important you pick the right one. The one that has “1842” on the spine. They are on the shelf beside the desk.’
‘What’s it look like?’
‘It’s like the prescription ledger we used to use at St Saviour’s – same colour, but a few inches shorter. Remember, it must be 1842. Bring it to me here.’ I slipped the key to Dr Rutherford’s rooms into her apron pocket. I hoped no one had seen me. ‘Hurry now.’
‘Hurry?’ she muttered. ‘On these feet?’
‘An ounce of best shag says you can be there and back in ten minutes.’ I pulled out my watch. ‘Turkish.’
‘Virginian,’ she snapped.
I shuddered. Virginian tobacco was truly vile. Her tastes were as repulsive as they were cheap. ‘As you wish,’ I said. ‘Just get on with it. We’ll wait for you here.’
I watched the Ladies’ Committee bustling about amongst the assembled lunatics. The scene before me had all the appearance of order and tranquillity. I recognised many of the faces I had seen at the dance on the night Dr Rutherford was murdered, though now they were seated on either side of long trestle tables, all of them wearing brown aprons over their clothes. In their hands they held brushes and bits of coloured paper. They painted and glued, not talking to one another but bent over their work, their mouths hanging open in concentration. One or two of them, presumably finding themselves unequal to the task, were staring vacantly at nothing, their hands plucking absently at their lips. Others rocked back and forth, smiling and shaking their heads and feebly dabbing their brushes against the paper. Dr Mothersole opened his arms wide. ‘I call it “art physic”,’ he cried. ‘Look, Christie, you see how contented they are?’
Dr Christie was standing in a patch of afternoon sunshine and his colourless hair and face dazzling white against the dark shoulders of his frock coat. ‘You have no more than two score of them here, Mothersole,’ he said. ‘What of the many who are absent? What treatment might we offer them?’
Dr Mothersole smiled sweetly and pulled out his pan pipes. He blew a hollow, quavering blast upon them. His wife stood at his side, looking up at him. There was a movement to my left. I turned to see their daughter. ‘Miss Mothersole, I must speak with you.’ I kept my voice low.
‘Oh?’
‘Your notebooks.’
‘Well, I do not have them here, sir.’
‘Constance,’ snapped Mrs Mothersole from the other side of the room.
‘Will you not join us amongst the patients, sir?’ Constance raised her voice, so that it might catch her mother’s ears. ‘There are many cards to choose from, as well as paints and flowers. My mother has provided the words.’ And she handed me a small card, no bigger than a carte de visite, upon which were printed the words ‘Trust in the Lord’. Beneath these were pasted three flowers in a row.
‘I must see them,’ I said. ‘Your notebooks, madam.’
‘I cannot give you something for nothing, sir,’ she said in a low voice. She raised an eyebrow and gave me a look I could not decipher. ‘I shall name my price soon enough.’
I opened my mouth to ask what she meant, but she was gone. I glanced up to see her mother staring at me crossly. I pursed my lips. How unwelcome the place had become – nothing but frowning faces and angry voices. At least the patients wished me no harm.
I saw Letty sitting still and silent, staring off into the distance as if absorbed by something that no one else could see. With one hand she held a knitted doll to her breast as if it were a baby, with the other she held a paintbrush, though she had not put it anywhere near her paper. She rocked gently from side to side. Opposite her, Edward Eden was gluing dried flowers onto a card in a painstaking, meticulous fashion. Every now and then, when he thought no one was looking, he slipped his hand into his pocket. At length, he pulled out a white mouse – how he had got it back from Dr Rutherford’s room I had no idea. He held it close to his face and stroked it gently, whispering into its tiny pink ear. Suddenly, the expression on his face resolved into a look of alarm. He crouched down, as if anxious to avoid being seen. I saw him whisper something to his mouse, and point across the room.
Mrs Lunge was standing against the wall, one hand plucking at the high collar of her dress, the other resting on her bunch of keys. She watched Pole sweeping up paper and dried flowers from the floor; she looked at Mrs Hawkins assisting a patient with the glue pot; she turned her gaze to glance at Dr Mothersole and his warbling wife. And then she looked at Edward Eden. Edward scrambled to his feet, spilling paint and water onto the floor and knocking over his chair with a sound like a pistol shot.
‘I would like to return to my room, please.’ His voice echoed through the muttering silence. Mrs Lunge fixed him with a cold stare. ‘Please,’ he whined. ‘I want to go.’
Mrs Lunge looked cross. ‘Mr Eden, you have only just arrived.’
Edward shook his head, his gaze averted. ‘Want to go.’
Mrs Lunge pursed her lips and nodded to an attendant. There came the familiar sound of keys and locks, and Edward was gone. Only Letty had not looked up. She was still nursing her doll, but dipped her paintbrush in the paint and drew it slowly down the page. She did it again, then again, until she had painted six crooked black lines, side by side across the paper like six burnt-out matchsticks.
At that moment the door burst open and Mrs Speedicut exploded into the hall in the manner of a bull bursting into a bullring. ‘Nine minutes,’ she bellowed, pointing at the clock above the mantel. ‘That’s a quarter of best Virginian!’ But her thunderous entrance was set to become still more spectacular, for as the woman bustled forward she stepped in the slippery mess that Edward had spilled upon the floor. She gave an ear-splitting shriek, grabbing at a table as she went down, dragging more paint, dried flowers and water with her in a blizzard of noise and chaos.
The patients lurched to their feet, laughing and clapping and grinning at the sight of Mrs Speedicut’s tubby legs sticking out from her stained petticoats. The phrenology ledger shot from her fingers and spun out across the floor, its pages splayed wide. In a moment that might have brought the house down in any supper room, Pole and Dr Mothersole leaped forward to snatch the ledger up, their heads knocking together like two coconuts, just as Will stepped in and neatly plucked the book from the floor. Not waiting to see what happened next (though at our backs we had heard the sound of D
r Christie’s whistle and the continuing hubbub of confused and excited patients) we vanished into the corridor and headed out through the main entrance.
Chapter Eighteen
How relieved I was to get away from the place. I was sure I could feel its cold shadow at my back, hear the faint echoing howls of the mad in the air. But this could only have been in my imagination, for once outside those walls we were in a different world entirely; a world so unlike the one we had just left that it was almost impossible to comprehend the nearness of the two. Inside, for all that the criminal wards resonated with the shouts and screams of lunatics, much of Angel Meadow was curiously hushed. Patients stood or wandered about, their gazes directed at nothing; their fingers plucking at lips or clothes, or twisted together and held against their faces as.if in search of comfort. Some sat listlessly on chairs or beds; whilst those employed outside in the gardens jabbed at the mean soil in silent indifference. Laughter was rare; when it came it had a curiously resonant and repetitive sound that was at once doltish and empty. And yet separated from that world by no more than a few feet of bricks and mortar was all the riot and turbulence of London. At the gates a girl hawked watercress from a wet basket, a whistling man carried a tray piled with pies to the chop house on the corner, and a pair of prattling women wheeled a tumbrel filled with dirty washing past a group of men idling outside an alehouse. A blast of singing and raucous laughter issued from its half-open doors to mix with the rattle of passing hansoms. Drays rumbled past laden with kegs of beer, with sacks of coal, and the pale carcasses of pigs. Lads destined for Smithfield drove their cattle bellowing by, as barefoot boys in ragged caps ran pell-mell past chattering wide-skirted women. No one looked up at the asylum. Silent and impassive in their midst it was seen but unseen, a great black rock against which the city foamed, and broke, like the sea.
The hair at the back of my neck prickled. I was in no doubt that eyes were watching us as we hurried away. Should I look back?
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