A Madness So Discreet

by Mindy McGinnis

  “Under your room?” a tall woman named Rebecca said. “That’d be the widow Jacobs.”

  Another shriek reached the group, trailing off into a series of racking sobs that made Grace’s throat ache.

  “That old loon?” Nell said. “Christ, she’s a case, sure enough. Best get used to it, lassies. We’ll be up the rest o’ the night.”

  “Nell,” Elizabeth chided. “That’s no way to speak.”

  “I can’t help me accent.”

  “You know what I mean,” Elizabeth bit back, more harshly than usual, her hand clamped firmly in the thin air beside her hair. “Something’s gone horribly wrong.”

  “Oh, really?” Nell asked. “And what does String know about it?”

  Elizabeth twisted her hand furtively, uncomfortable under the hungry stares of the others. “It’s not my place to say.”

  “You do know, then?” Rebecca asked, raising her oil lamp higher and peering at Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth’s eyes bounced from one face to another, and Grace felt a stab of pity. She tugged on Nell’s elbow just as the door at the end of the hallway opened. Janey’s hair was down and loose, her eyes still heavy with sleep.

  “All right, ladies, back to bed, back to bed,” she said, her voice still carrying authority even though she was wearing a nightgown. “Nothing to get upset about.”

  “Somebody who sleeps in the room under me own doesn’t think so,” Nell disagreed, arms crossed in front of her. “She was verra upset indeed.”

  “Is it Mrs. Jacobs?” Rebecca asked.

  Elizabeth only fretted at the air beside her ear, fingers entwined in something invisible.

  Janey looked at the circle of faces and sighed. “All right then, if it’ll get you back in your beds. Her daughter’s died, and the police have just been to tell her.”

  “And her just a wee lass,” Nell said, real sadness in her voice. “Tha’s a terrible thing to hear.”

  “She’s not,” Rebecca said. “Her daughter’s a full-grown woman, same as me. I’ve seen her when she comes to visit. Unless there’s more than the one?”

  “Mad or not, yer dense as can be,” Nell said. “’Ave ye not ’eard the woman speaking of ’er lass like she’s just a bairn? Goes on about ’ow she cries all the night till ’er mum brings ’er a drink.”

  “Ladies,” Janey said, her voice bringing a halt to the argument. “Mrs. Jacobs has just the one daughter, if I must say so to end this ridiculousness.”

  “She walks on ’er own two legs and still cries for ’er mum in the night?” Nell said incredulously. “Sounds like she’d be better off in ’ere with the likes of us.”

  “Except she’s dead,” Elizabeth reminded her. “And Mrs. Jacobs chooses to think of her as a child because it’s easier than recognizing the adult she’s become.”

  The group hushed, all faces turned to Elizabeth, who blanched under the attention.

  “How did you know that?” Janey asked.

  Elizabeth only shook her head, hands clenching tighter to the air near her hair.

  “Oy there, String,” Nell called, peeling apart Elizabeth’s hands. “Perhaps ye tell me where to find some buried treasure? Or the cure for the pox? Somethin’ useful for once, ye invisible bastard.”

  “You dare!” Elizabeth gasped, flashing her teeth at Nell, who backed off. “You keep a civil tongue in your head when addressing String, Nell O’Kelly, or I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”

  “You’ll what?” Rebecca asked.

  “I’ll spit in your tea,” Elizabeth said, stamping one tiny foot as she said it.

  The other girls burst into laughter, and Grace bit down on her tongue to keep from joining them. Janey tried hard to control her face but her lips were twitching. Even Elizabeth’s angry pout changed into a hesitant smile.

  “Aye, she’s a vicious one, our Lizzie,” Nell said. “Tell String I’m sorry and not to get ’imself in a tangle over it.”

  “String is neither male nor female,” Elizabeth said.

  “I don’t care one way or the other,” Rebecca said, looking sternly at Janey. “All I want to know is if String is right?”

  Janey looked from each face to the next, all eyes now latched on her in the orange glow from the lamps. “Fine then,” she said, tossing her hands in the air. “Yes, the widow Jacobs’s daughter is an adult, but Mrs. Jacobs has found it easier to pretend she was still a little one, rather than an adult who chose to . . . to . . .”

  “Are ye sayin’ she’s a whore?” Nell asked, drawing out the last word lasciviously.

  “Was a whore,” Elizabeth corrected yet again. “She’s dead.”

  Janey nodded. “Dead indeed. And the knowledge of that has sent the poor woman into a fit. Now you know, and I want all your legs moving back to your rooms. And don’t you be telling the other staff I said a word to you. They’d have my hide for sharing stories that aren’t my own.”

  Grace wandered back to her bed, listening to Elizabeth and Nell’s good-natured bickering as she went. She’d not known Mrs. Jacobs well, but the few times they had met she’d been reminded of Mrs. Clay. They shared a respectful bearing, a way of holding themselves that communicated a power restrained. Now Mrs. Jacobs was broken, for whether her daughter was child or whore, she was lost forever. Grace’s thoughts strayed to Boston and Mrs. Clay, Reed and Falsteed, the deplorable Nurse Croomes and Dr. Heedson, whose straying hand she’d so gladly impaled.

  Her consciousness trailed down into the darkness of sleep, where even that blackness could not compare with the hues of her past.

  “Is she going to be all right?” Grace asked, in an attempt to distract Thornhollow from the blackboard.

  “Who?” he asked, tearing his eyes away from his own handwriting reluctantly.

  “Mrs. Jacobs,” she reminded him. “I was asking how she’s handling her grief?”

  “Not well,” he said, slumping in the chair beside hers and tenting his hands over his eyes. “The ferocity of her emotions is tearing apart her mind. Sometimes I think we’d all be best suited by not caring for others at all.”

  “A bleak picture,” Grace said. “I dislike most people as much as you, but the few that I care for I hold very dear. If not for those who care for us, we’d never make it through the worst. I’d not have survived Boston without Falsteed and Mrs. Clay. Likewise I’ll do my best to steer my sister through mourning my own death, false though it may be.”

  A long silence greeted her words as Thornhollow slowly pulled his hands away from his face. “You have a sister?”

  “Yes,” Grace said hesitantly, realizing her blunder.

  “Older or younger?”

  “Younger. She’s ten years old.”

  “And she remains at home?”

  “Yes,” Grace answered, nerves making her voice thready. “Why do you ask?”

  “And how exactly are you offering comfort to her, if you are—as you say yourself—supposedly dead?”

  Grace stiffened in her chair, braced for the argument. “I wrote to Falsteed and enclosed a letter to her written by an imaginary friend. Reed placed it for me and retrieved her response, sending it to me here.”

  “You did what?” Each word was succinctly bitten off, each syllable a vibrant slash in the charged air between them. Thornhollow’s brow was dark, his eyes snapping in a way she’d never seen.

  “I wrote to Falsteed,” she repeated, matching him tone for tone. “He gave me an alias to use. Reed handles all our correspondence. I’m sure the hospital staff in Boston believes he has a lover named Madeleine Baxter, nothing more.”

  Thornhollow rose from the chair, pacing the room with an influx of energy and anger. “And this same Madeleine Baxter happens to enclose letters to the younger sister of a female inmate who supposedly died under my blade? What if a busybody decides to go through Reed’s letters, or his wife somehow gets wind that he receives missives from a female at his workplace? I didn’t deliver you from that pit only for you to allow sentiment to drive us both back int
o it!”

  “Sentiment, Doctor!” Grace exploded, rising up from her chair to meet him in her fury. “My little sister lives in a more refined pit, but a viper’s nest nonetheless. You truly think I would leave her abandoned to that horror simply to save my own skin?”

  “Your own skin?” he bellowed back, not cowed in the least by her display of temper. “What of mine? What of my career? How would it appear if it were discovered that I colluded in the disappearance of an attractive young woman and reappeared with her elsewhere as my dutiful assistant?”

  “Am I to be a kept woman, then?” Grace yelled, not caring that his office walls may not hold her voice. “Not for what’s between my legs but my ears? Here to hop to your beck and call when you need a plaything for your night’s adventures, no less of a doll for your own purposes than our killer’s victims are to him?”

  “Enough!” Thornhollow roared. “I’ll not be spoken to like this when I’ve risked everything on your behalf. Your father is a powerful man, Grace Mae. You don’t realize what could happen to me if he should uncover our ruse.”

  “No, Doctor,” Grace allowed, her tone suddenly cold. “But I know exactly what would happen to me.” She turned her back to him and left the office with all the disdain her mother’s training had instilled in her, head held high.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Their argument did not sit well with Grace. She searched for solitude under a willow by the lake, aware that her emotions were running high and might find vent through her tongue if she kept company with her friends. It would be a double betrayal of her pact with Thornhollow, wrecking not only the work they’d put in to covering their tracks in Boston but the lives they’d built in Ohio as well.

  It was a Sunday, and so the grounds were brimming with people. Though the mad themselves may be a nuisance, the beautiful ponds, rolling green hills, and fragrant orchards of the asylum grounds were open to the public, and they often came. Grace sat quietly in her shaded spot, aware that her plain homespun marked her as an inmate for those too far away to see her scars. The sane had the assurance of the staff that only the meek and mild were allowed free to roam among them, but they stayed to the paths nonetheless.

  “Can my Sally have some tea?” a high-pitched voice questioned, and Grace turned her head toward the noise.

  A young mother came around the bend, pushing a pram from which a low coo emanated. A small girl trotted beside her, gold curls bouncing, a doll in her hands. “Momma,” she said again, tugging on her mother’s skirts. “Sally is thirsty.”

  Grace’s heart plummeted, and her lungs ceased working for a moment as the sun lit up the little girl’s golden hair. Her fingers clenched on Alice’s letter, crushing a corner.

  “Sally will have to wait a moment, dear,” the mother said, bending over the pram to adjust the baby’s blanket. “We’ll head back home after this turn; Brother needs his nap.”

  “Brother always needs something,” the little girl said, pulling a face.

  “Babies are work, sweetheart,” the mother said, looking up from the pram. “Excuse me, I—”

  She broke off, her words lost at the sight of Grace kneeling next to the little girl, hands brimming with lake water.

  The girl looked at Grace suspiciously, then down at the water dripping from her hands. “For my Sally?”

  Grace nodded, her gaze devouring every detail of the child’s face and comparing it to Alice, measuring the bones of their cheeks and the curls of their hair in her mind. They were not twins by any means, nor could they be confused for sisters. But the spark in this little girl’s eyes matched the one in Alice’s, a testament to the spirit inside that had just begun to know itself. The girl dipped the doll’s porcelain mouth in Grace’s hands, unconcerned with the scrutiny.

  “Better,” the little girl declared, then peered at Grace closely. “You’ve got a chip in you,” she said, cool fingers reaching up to touch Grace’s scars. “You’re broken just like my Sally.”

  “Mary!” the mother chided, and her small hands dropped from Grace’s temples. “I’m sorry,” the mother said, pushing the pram off the path over to them. “I hope she’s not bothering you, and she didn’t mean any offense about your . . . about . . . that.”

  Grace waved off the apology and smiled at the mother, not missing the fact that this woman was only a few years older than herself. Her clothes were fine, the pram expensive, the spark in little Mary’s eyes evident in her own. She wore the trappings of what Grace’s life should have been, and Grace felt the hollow echo of disappointment for the first time since coming to the asylum.

  The mother looked back at Grace, taking her measure, gaze resting briefly on her scars. She glanced around furtively. “Am I allowed to talk to you?”

  Grace shrugged, unsure.

  “Why wouldn’t you be?” Mary asked, her little hand slipping into Grace’s and sending a streak of warmth through her heart. “She’s a nice lady. And she’s pretty except for being cracked.”

  The mother’s mouth fought against a laugh at Mary’s unintended joke, but it erupted when she saw that Grace was smiling. “Except for being cracked . . . ,” she repeated. “Oh, Mary, what am I going to do with you?”

  “Why should you do anything with me?” Mary asked, now swinging Grace’s arm with her own.

  The mother glanced around once more. “Would you . . . would you like to see my baby?” she asked. Grace nodded, leaning over the pram as the mother pushed the cover back.

  “Hello there,” the mother said to her baby. “Hello, my beautiful boy.”

  Grace watched his tiny hands come up against the rays of the sun, face squished in irritation. She shaded his eyes with her hand, eyes drinking in the sight of him.

  “He’s just six months,” the mother said. “Healthy as a horse. Watch his hands. If he gets ahold of you, your fingers will be in his mouth.”

  A tiny fist reached up, latching on to Grace’s pinkie with a strength she hadn’t expected, his skin as soft as velvet. A breath escaped her in a rush as he pulled her down to him, and Mary squeezed her other palm.

  “He’s not so great,” Mary assured her. “Smells something awful.”

  “Mary,” the mother chided her again.

  Grace disentangled herself from the baby, pulling the pram cover back and over to shut out the sun. Mary tugged on her hand and when Grace leaned down to her, she found the little girl bounding into her for a hug. The pressure of the little body against her own brought back a wave of memories, and she fought to keep her balance as Mary leaned into her.

  “We best be going, Mary,” her mother said, and Grace pushed herself to her feet, hastily wiping tears from her eyes.

  “’Bye, lady,” Mary said, waving to Grace as they walked away. “I hope I see you again.”

  “Me too,” Grace said once they were out of earshot. Her fingers played with a frayed corner of Alice’s letter, her eyes still on Mary’s golden crown of hair. “I’ll not stop writing.”

  “Grace? Grace?” Her name sailed over the green hills, calling her out of her reverie and resurrecting the blank eyes the asylum staff expected to see. Letter shoved safely in the folds of her dress, she stood and waved to gain Janey’s attention.

  The nurse spotted her and crossed the space between them, hair flying loose from the tightly coiled bun she usually wore. “There you are. Someone is wishing to speak with you.”

  Grace’s stomach rolled. She’d thought Thornhollow would give her more time to collect herself before tracking her down. Janey groaned in irritation as the ends of her hair whipped around her face. “The wind today,” she complained, beckoning Grace to come out from under the shelter of the willow branches. “It’ll pull my hair whichever way it pleases, comb and brush notwithstanding. And you with a gentleman come to see you and your own head a sight indeed.”

  Grace’s head jerked up at Janey’s words, confusion in her glance.

  “It’s a policeman, name of Davey,” Janey explained. “Said he wanted to speak with
Dr. Thornhollow but nobody could find him. So then he asked for you and wouldn’t leave until we produced you. I don’t know what it is you and the doctor are up to, but if it brings the like of him around here every now and then I don’t think I dislike it.”

  Grace smiled to herself, aware that Janey was madly trying to tame her hair for more reasons than one as they came around to the front of the asylum. Davey was waiting on the gravel path beside his mount, his hat in his hands so that it wouldn’t be blown from his head.

  “Here she is, Officer,” Janey said, voice brighter than usual.

  “Thank you, miss,” Davey said, hands turning the brim of his hat in a circle as he spoke, eyes everywhere except the women’s faces. “I appreciate you finding her for me.”

  “It’s no problem, no problem,” Janey said quickly, then looked back and forth between the two of them. “Well, I’ll just be out of your way, then, let you go about your business.”

  Davey waited until Janey had gone into the asylum. He approached Grace cautiously, hands still buried in his hat and his eyes never quite able to settle on her own.

  “Thank you for . . . for seeing me, I suppose,” he began slowly. “I have something to say to the doctor, but he don’t seem to be here and I got to say this thing before I lose the nerve to get it out.”

  Grace raised an eyebrow to invite him to continue, breaking the usual dead stare she reserved for strangers.

  “You see, when you’re a new man on the job you’re supposed to learn from the ones above you. But George . . . don’t get me wrong, he knows his trade. He can handle the drunks and the men going after their wives and the other way around better than any of ’em. But that girl, the other night, the one who . . . well, you’re well enough aware of what I’m saying, I suppose. Anyway, he’s got it in his head that she was just a drunkard, and he don’t want to hear nothing about what the doctor thinks, though I tell you right now if it was drink on her breath, it wasn’t no spirit I’ve ever smelled before, and I’ve had my nose in a few.” He chuckled, then glanced back at her. “Sorry, ma’am, if I shouldn’t be saying so.”