“I need to know if everyone will know…if my life will change.”
“Oh so that’s what this is about? I’d hate to see you destitute and for your busybody friends to dislike you, Petunia.”
“Did you murder her?” Petunia asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
Phillip’s rabid laugh startled Petunia.
“Did I…are you mad?” He said, running his hands through his salt and pepper hair out of frustration. “Me, murder Agatha? Huh. I was crazy about her, Petunia. I’m devastated that she’s gone missing. Now keep out of my business, you old nosey parker.”
Many years ago, this comment would have stung Petunia’s heart so deeply; she would have cried for days. Now, she told herself she felt nothing, and she did feel nothing, well, almost nothing.
She turned her back towards him so he would not see the single tear that escaped down her cheek. She decided to go downstairs to the drawing room and close the door until Phillip left the house. At least she knew he wouldn’t be back for the evening.
“Where are you going?” he asked her testily.
“Downstairs.”
“Stay right where you are. I’m not finished speaking,” he said as he fixed his tie once more, and put his suit jacket on top. “I need you to attend a party with me three weeks from today at the Loxley mansion. The Loxleys are one of my wealthiest clients, so don’t even think about declining this request. And don’t give me that face, Petunia; this is part of our bargain, the reason you still have this musty house and food to eat—we have an image to maintain.”
Petunia kept a downcast look as she gripped the sides of her long, silky purple dress. She and Phillip had not gone anywhere together in so long, she wondered if she could still keep up with the façade.
He stood close to her now.
“And you will not eat much until then. I need you fitting into your old dresses, not stuffing into those usual sacks you wear. This is an upscale event.”
“How dare you…”
“How dare I? Children are starving to death on the streets of London, and you look like you eat children.”
Petunia’s heartbeat quickened, adrenaline rushed throughout her body, and in a quick outburst of rage she slapped Phillip so hard across his face that he stumbled back. Instantly, she knew she had made a mistake. Petunia turned to run, and was just about through the bedroom door and into the sitting room when Phillip’s hand grabbed her bun and pulled her backward.
Petunia screamed as Phillip swung her around by her shoulders. She could see the sheer hatred in his gritted teeth, his squinted eyes, his heavy breathing.
“I’m sorry,” she screamed through sobbing cries as his hand smacked across her face. “Phillip, please don’t…”
He banged her shoulders continuously against the tall wardrobe near the bedroom door.
“Don’t you ever touch me!” he screamed as he threw her to the ground. “Ever! Do you hear me?”
Petunia could feel a trickle of blood escape her mouth as she lay half on the carpet, half on the wooden floor. She did as she usually did when Phillip hurt her: she escaped the pain with thoughts of her innocent son, and what life would have been if Peter were still alive.
Sometime later, Petunia still lay on the floor. Phillip was gone, and all she could hear was the tapping of the heavy rain against her windows. She slowly rose from the floor. There was blood on the carpet and sleeve of her dress. She hobbled slowly to the mirror to examine her bruises. Her lip was cut, and her cheek was a slight shade of green.
She wiped the blood from her mouth. Her bruises were noticeable this time. She decided she would have to cancel her usual Saturday evening with the ladies this week.
eleven THE ISOLATION WARD
Letter from Richard Baker to Paul Watson
“My dear friend, “May 15, 6 o’clock
I am glad to know you are safe and am eager to hear more about the asylum. I am almost finished with my manuscript, and a local production company has taken an interest in it. Also, thanks to Roger, I am now a member of the Chelsea Arts Club. Spending time with him brings back fun memories.
Something is wrong with Claire, and I need your help. Perhaps you can write to her and discover the cause of her peculiar behavior. Women always seem to bare their woes to you easily. Besides, I know she would love to hear from you. Stay well.
“Your faithful friend,
“Richard.”
Letter from Amy Rose To Paul Watson
“My dearest Paul, “May 10
I am so happy to hear from you again. I care so deeply for you as a friend, and I know you are a wonderful person despite all that you have experienced. You say your experiences have changed you, but perhaps you just need to be reminded of that innocent and imaginative boy I once knew.
I remember the first day we met; I watched you play in your Aunt Greta’s garden. You pretended to be a soldier. I often played in the field by your Aunt’s cottage, and I was surprised to see another child playing there. Too afraid to befriend you, I could only stare at you through those bushes. But you, so kind and friendly when you noticed me staring, sought me out. Though I ran from you, you did not give up on me.
Oh Paul, I meant so many times to write to you, truly I did. I thought of you and our friendship all the time, but I also dealt with many hardships. I could not bring myself to write to you until now, but I have never stopped caring about you. Never.
I want to spend time with you. I truly do, but I cannot at this moment. I must take care of a few personal affairs before I visit. Perhaps I will see you soon. Just hearing from you makes me happy. Please be safe at Kolney Hatch. You are right. Oddities are expected, but still, be careful. I look forward to your next letter.
“Your grateful friend,
“Amy”
Paul Watson’s Journal
20thof May, evening.— I spent most of the morning cramped in the pasty infirmary, so I skipped lunch to spend some time outdoors.
Outside in the fresh, slightly cool air, I inhaled the pure smell of nature around me. Oaks and pines were scattered about on the four acres behind Kolney Hatch. The gardeners were busy trimming the grass and removing weeds. One wiped the sweat from his brow under his white hat. I passed through a tall wooden arbor covered in ivy and found myself in an extravagant garden.
One of the gardeners was kneeling over a patch of red-velvet roses, a rose cupped delicately in his hands.
“You must be the new doctor,” he said in his fruity, inviting voice when he saw me.
“I am,” I answered. “Are you Mr. Newbury?”
“Call me Harold,” he greeted.
“I’m Paul Watson. I passed a few of the other gardeners on the way, but Heathcliff told me to find the one with the orange hair if I wanted my letters delivered.”
“That’s me,” he laughed. “Know anything about flowers?”
“Yes,” I nodded. “Some...My mother worked at the florist back in London.”
“I used to be a gardener for a wealthy family in Glasgow,” he said, wiping the dirt off his hands. “Worked there until Mr. Jones passed away. Then I moved up here with my wife, Laura. Does your mother still work at the florist?”
“She passed....six years ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s all right.”
“Did she teach you anything about flowers, Paul?”
“Let’s see,” I said, fumbling to remember something. “Well...I...I know that in some flowers...the petals are joined completely or partly...whereas, in others, like these lilies,” I said pointing at a patch of them, “the flower is radial symmetric.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” he laughed out of his brilliant blue eyes as he stood.
“How long have you tended to these gardens?”
“Just a few months now.”
“Seems a lot of us are new here.”
“Yeah,” he answered. “Doctor Reid dismissed a lot of the previous staff, including the head
gardener.”
“I wonder why.”
“Oh...well as I understand the story...” Harold said, “he just...disappeared one day. Never showed up. Heathcliff showed up at my door asking if I would be interested in the position. No one’s heard from the old gardener since.”
Harold paused for a moment as he looked around the garden.
“I’ll tell you though...he did an exceptional job on this garden.”
The garden was exceptional, filled with vibrant colored flowers and plants, including roses, heather, harebells and bluebells. Also there was a large section of wildflowers made up of mostly thistles and willowherbs. Stonewalls covered in generous ivy encased the garden.
“Anyway, I try to collect the letters in the morning. There’s a small basket in the front lobby. You can drop your letters there or give them to me. I’ll drop them in the post box when I leave for the day.”
“You don’t live on the grounds?”
“No, I don’t. I live just north of Whitemoor. It’s not too far away.”
“I see. Well I’ll be sure to give you my letters. I should get back to the infirmary.”
“Yes, of course.”
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Harold.”
“You too, Paul.”
On my way back from my visit to the garden, I observed the facility from a distance as I smoked a cigarette. It was brilliantly constructed with a mixture of extravagant brick and stone. The towers cast their massive shadows over the back grounds. Pine, oak, and birch trees towered over the stone walls. In the distance, tall, rugged mountains and green hills surrounded Kolney Hatch, adding to the beauty of the landscape.
As I pondered on how Kolney Hatch—such a baroque structure—could be so grim inside, I observed one of the young attendants, Lamont, who looked very similar to Richard when he was just nineteen, standing in the tall stone-archway by the bridge that connected the asylum to the back grounds. At first, I thought Lamont was staring at me until I noticed the small, gruff, and shabby looking man waddling along the grounds beside me. He was talking to himself loudly, and I surmised this man was “The Captain.”
Doctor Reid had cautioned me about him. The Captain was thirty-four, and first came to the asylum in 1918 after serving in Gallipoli and France. Passing through various war hospitals, he was admitted to Kolney Hatch after he began hallucinating and had uncontrollable fits of laughter. He called himself The Captain, though this was only one of his personalities, and he was convinced he was all-powerful.
Prone to excitable outbursts and occasionally dangerous and impulsive, The Captain had been hit with a bullet which was still lodged in his brain. That day I first noticed The Captain, I noticed he favored one leg, so he hobbled along with a walking stick, which Doctor Reid later told me The Captain sometimes used as a weapon. He often had to be sedated.
“It was on the floor, it was on the floor,” The Captain said to me nervously. I could see by the lines on his rough-looking face that he had been through much in his lifetime.
When Martha, the patient with vacant eyes whom I had met on my first day, passed by me, I watched as The Captain’s twitchy voice changed to a growl.
“Did you take it, Martha?”
Martha didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer. She had cut out her own tongue in a post-encephalitic psychosis. Doctor Reid had saved her life, but because of her inability to communicate, her morbid emotional reactions and her unstable temperament, Martha was safer in the institution.
“Martha didn’t take anything from you, Captain,” said Eleanor Bigsby, the English nurse.
Eleanor’s overly large teeth stuck out over from under her upper lip. She was an odd looking woman, too thin, her eyebrows too close together. Martha and Eleanor passed, and The Captain turned to face me.
“You took it, didn’t you?”
“No...I didn’t.”
“Who are you?”
“Doctor Watson.”
The Captain’s eyes were black as the night sky as he pointed his stick toward me.
“Did you take it, Doctor Watson?”
“Captain, that’s quite enough. Doctor Watson didn’t take whatever it is you’re searching for,” Lamont said and then muttered just loud enough for me to hear, “Probably nothing anyway.”
They followed me inside, and as we passed from the dining room into the main hallway, I heard a woman’s voice call me.
“Doctor Watson!”
I turned to see Nurse Hinkle with a frantic look on her ivory, freckled face.
“Quickly, please...I need your help in the isolation ward. She’s having a seizure, and I can’t find Doctor Reid.”
“Nurse Hinkle! Wait,” I called to her, but she was already through the doors of the lobby.
I hurried to the infirmary to grab phenobarbital to stop the seizure. Upstairs, I found Nurse Hinkle in the women’s section of the isolation ward, which was blocked off from the men’s by a long door that stretched across the center corridor.
“Please help her,” Nurse Hinkle said breathlessly. She had opened the bars to the room at the end of the hallway. Inside, a woman lay on the floor having an epileptic seizure.
Quickly, I administered the anticonvulsant, and soon the woman calmed. The sounds of the other women in the isolation ward, who banged on their bars and moaned madly, forced me to speak louder.
“Nurse Hinkle, get her file for me,” I ordered as I cradled the woman in my arms.
I looked at the woman’s pale face. She could not have been older than 30, but the creases in her forehead and at the corners of her mouth were deep.
I brushed her long, dark, and wispy hair out of her face and noticed she had a black and blue bruise above her swollen brown eyes.
Nurse Hinkle returned empty handed.
“I…I…couldn’t find the file, Doctor Watson.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s…not with the others.”
“All right,” I said coolly. “Tell Heathcliff to come up here then.”
“I can’t,” she said anxiously, “I can’t find him. I looked everywhere for him earlier. I was just thankful to find you when I did, Doctor Watson.”
“Another attendant then,” I said sternly. “I need help getting the patient into bed.”
“Alright,” she said, and she hurried off to find an attendant.
As I waited for the attendant, the woman opened her eyes. She fixed her glassy gaze on me for several seconds. I noticed her disoriented behavior and her creased brows. Did she have dementia, I wondered? A steady flow of tears cascaded from her eyes now. Suddenly, she spoke in a wheezy tone. I could barely hear her words over the sounds of the other restless women in the ward.
“Free me,” she said as her hand weakly gripped my shirt near my shoulder. “I beg you.”
“What is your name?” I asked her, hoping to spark some memory.
“Hannah,” she said, never once taking her eyes off mine.
“Hannah,” I said. “What a beautiful name. How do you feel now, Hannah?”
“I want to go home,” she said as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Please, let me go home.”
The last part of her words trailed off as her eyes closed, and she fell into a heavy sleep.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to her as an uneasy feeling crept over me. Lamont appeared then and helped me lift Hannah onto her bed.
I checked Hannah’s heart rate and pupils, and as Lamont and I left her room, he locked her door once more.
“Is that necessary…to lock her door? She doesn’t seem very violent, especially now.”
“She’s very dangerous, Doctor Watson, not only to us, but to herself. She’s attempted suicide five times in the three years that she’s been here.”
Lamont exited the ward then, and I followed him. The women clawed at their bars as I passed.
“Well aren’t you just scrumptious,” one young woman yelled. I looked her in the eyes, which were bloodshot red. Her hair had been all cut off. �
��Why don’t you come in here an play wi me,” was all she said, and I, ignoring the woman, passed through the doorway into the men’s ward.
Men stared at me through their bars, not saying a word, only eyeing me with complete hatred. When I was about to exit the men’s isolation ward, I heard a deep snicker come from one of the barred doors. I turned my head to the right to see a man standing with his hands clamped around the bars. Only wisps of hair were left on the sides of his head behind his ears, and most of his teeth were missing. His clothes were soiled; his amber-colored eyes glared at me with pure repugnance.
“How long will you live, good doctor?” The man asked me in a slow, eerie, gravelly voice. He never once took his golden eyes off mine.
“I suppose as long as any man,” I answered calmly.
“I’ll live for a thousand years. Do you know why?”
He gripped his hands more firmly on the bars. I could see the dirt crusted around his fingernails. He looked as though he hadn’t bathed in weeks. I walked closer to him.
“No man can live a thousand years,” I answered.
“It is God’s will that I will live for that long. You see I am a man of God, come here to do his work.”
“You’re the missionary, Ransford.”
“You’ve heard of me? How delightful. Then you should know I’ve been wrongfully accused of crimes I did not commit. My congregation loves me dearly and misses me. I should be giving Sunday sermons, not sitting here locked behind these bars.”
Ransford was not wrongfully accused of anything. He’d committed fraud by taking money from the good people of his congregation and using it for his own personal gambling habit—that and preaching that his wife would need to die because God told him she was evil. I decided not to say anything.
“You’re all sinners. And the time will come when I am free and able to carry out the Lord’s work as he intended. And you should hope that your soul is not stained when I do. Tell me doctor,” he continued with his sinister stare, “Have you any idea what you’ve gotten yourself into by coming to this place?”
The Secret of Kolney Hatch Page 7
