No Quiet among the Shadows

by Nancy Herriman

  “I’d be happy to buy you breakfast. As payment for giving me a lift.”

  “No need to pay me. I’ve got a delivery of tools to pick up, so I’d best be on my way.”

  Nick jumped down. As soon as his feet hit the ground, the other man snapped the reins across the gray’s haunches and hastily drove off.

  • • •

  The restaurant owner didn’t have much to add to the wagon driver’s information about the Browns, but he had been happy to provide directions to the asylum. Nick set out on foot. It wasn’t far, about a half mile. Maybe the walk would finally work out the kink in his back. Within a handful of blocks, he caught sight of the rambling expanse of the asylum grounds. The property had to be sixty, seventy acres or more. A flat expanse of dry grass dotted with newly built houses, outbuildings, and the large brick hospital itself. The windows were flung open to gather the last cool air of the morning before the afternoon’s heat took hold. Scaffolding covered the end of one wing, and workmen hammered on the roof. Attendants in white uniforms closely shepherded a handful of patients toward a fenced-in garden. Another set walked among a stand of newly planted trees, wilting in the hot sun.

  Gravel crunched beneath Nick’s boots as he headed up the drive toward the front doors. Where were all the other inmates? He’d heard the place was overcrowded, and that near to one hundred thousand dollars had been spent in the past several years to add wards and buildings to accommodate all the folks supposedly made insane by decadent California life.

  He paused and fetched out the carte de visite. He held it up, scanning the background until the image on the albumen paper lined up with the view ahead of him. Damn.

  The photograph had been taken—he scooted back a few feet—in this very spot. The hospital wasn’t visible in the image because the building hadn’t been as large then as it was now, construction expanding it into his view. But the spreading branches of the oak tree straight ahead of him were pretty much the same. As was the iron bench beneath it, where, at some point several years ago, a doctor had posed with a seated woman. Who, according to the wagon driver, was not Arvilla Stevenson. In spite of what Brown and his sister had said.

  Which made Nick speculate who the woman in that photograph truly was and why Brown didn’t want Nick to know her identity. In her telegram, Ellie had mentioned a possible scandal. Maybe that scandal had caused the Browns to pull up stakes and move to San Francisco. Maybe that scandal involved an unnamed woman in a carte de visite.

  An attendant spotted him. She pushed her charge—a scrawny young woman who shuffled listlessly across the grass—toward the other attendant accompanying them and rushed over.

  “Excuse me, sir, but visiting hours aren’t until ten,” she said, noticing the photograph in his hand.

  Nick returned it to his pocket and produced his badge. “I’m not a visitor.”

  The attendant’s gaze flicked from his face to his badge and back. She had eyes, a color between soft brown and mossy green, almost as fine as Celia Davies’s.

  “Where are you from?” she asked. “Not around here. San Francisco? I don’t think you have jurisdiction, Officer. I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait until ten when the visitors are admitted. Come back at that time.”

  She strode off.

  “Hold on. Please.” Nick trotted after her. “I’ve come all the way from San Francisco to find information on a woman in a photograph. It was taken on these grounds. Right here, in fact. I need to identify who she is. The answer is important to an investigation I’m conducting.”

  She chewed her lower lip and looked over at her patient and her fellow attendant, who gestured at the young woman to return to her duties.

  “You need to speak to the superintendent,” she said. “But he’s at his breakfast right now and then will be in a meeting with the physicians, reviewing patient cases. They usually take at least an hour. Sometimes two.”

  “Then maybe you can help me.”

  “I don’t have time.” She shot another glance at the patient she’d been with. “I’ve got to go now.”

  “If you’re worried that somebody’s going to report you to Matron for pausing your work to talk to me, I promise to be quick.” Her fellow attendant had disappeared around the corner of the hospital wing. “I don’t want you to get in trouble, but I can’t leave without learning who the woman in the photograph is. If anybody asks, I’ll tell them you’re assisting a police investigation.”

  “I don’t think telling Matron that will help me at all.”

  “Please.”

  She sighed. “Okay. But just a few questions.” She looked around. “We can sit over here. On this bench.”

  How ironic, Dr. Brown, he thought before joining her.

  “Here’s the photograph.” Nick handed her the carte de visite.

  “Why, it is this very bench, isn’t it?” she asked. “The woman is dressed like a patient, but I don’t recognize her, or the man with her.”

  “The man is a Dr. Arthur Brown. I’ve been told he was an attending physician here a few years ago, but left during the war.”

  “I don’t know him,” she said. “If he left during the war, I wasn’t working here yet.”

  Nick pocketed the photograph. “How long have you worked at the asylum?”

  “Almost two years now. Two years this coming November,” she said. “No one tends to stay long, the work is so . . . hard. Lots of folks head to San Francisco to find employment there. Is it as wonderful as they say?”

  “Life in the city isn’t all wonderful,” he replied. “It must be difficult, handling folks not in their right minds.”

  “Oh, they’re not all crazy, of course. Some are just down. Quite a few of the men are drunks, though, and can be pretty frightening when they’re desperate for liquor . . .”

  She looked over at the hospital building, the clang of the hammers echoing in the dry air. Another set of patients came through the front doors to wander across the lawn. No fence surrounded this section of the property; Nick wondered how many of the inmates made a break for it and escaped.

  “I’ve heard how awful it used to be here. How dreadfully the patients were treated, shackled and chained up, day and night. And the crowding, men and women on beds in the same halls, crying and screaming…” Her words trailed off. “With the new sections finished, it’s not like that anymore. Lots of the patients have their own cells. And the restraints are only cloth and leather these days, not iron manacles like I hear they used to be.”

  He made a noise that was supposed to signal admiration of the improvements, but he couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to make his sentiment sound sincere.

  “Not to say we don’t have trouble,” she added. “Patients don’t always cooperate with the doctors and the rest of us.”

  “What happens to the uncooperative ones?”

  “They get the restraints. Or medicine to calm them,” she replied. “Matron says it’s for the best. If they want to get released and return to normal life, they have to learn how to behave in regular society. How to follow orders.”

  How to be submissive, thought Nick.

  “What do you think of the doctors who work here? Do they treat the patients well?” Or are they the ones dictating who’s being uncooperative and who’s being submissive?

  She paused to fiddle with the small gold cross she wore on a chain about her neck. “It’s better. Honest it is.”

  Oh? “Were any of the doctors accused of abusing patients? Of harming them?”

  “Obviously, nobody likes to talk about what happened. Not openly. Matron gets furious if she hears us talking about the rumors,” the attendant said, her voice lowering to a whisper.

  “Patients were abused.”

  “Maybe. I can’t really say. But I have heard . . .” Voices approaching halted her, and she shot a glance over her shoulder. Two workmen chattering together tipped their hats and continued on. “I’m going to get in trouble.”

  “Tell me what you’ve heard. It
could be important.”

  “I’ve heard that patients died. I mean, we always have patients die, of course. Close to ninety just this past year,” she said. “But I’ve heard rumors that, in the past, not all of the deaths were natural. Or maybe I should say they were unexpected. Although a lot of our patients are awfully sick when they show up here, and we can’t help them.” She screwed up her eyes. “I’m speaking out of turn, Officer. Promise me you won’t let Matron know I told you this. She’ll see me fired, and then what’ll I do for work? At least here, I’ve got a secure place to live and three meals every day. Out there . . .”

  She gestured at the world beyond the lawn, the dusty streets leading to a dusty town, where opportunities for a young woman with hopes for a good life would be few.

  “And there were other things that happened,” she continued. “Not just unexpected deaths. Some of the women . . . it doesn’t bear thinking about.”

  “Were the doctors punished?” And had Brown been one of them?

  She lowered both hands to her lap and looked over at him again, the expression in her fine eyes sober. “If the doctors had been punished, nobody would be whispering about it, would they, Officer? Justice would’ve been served.”

  He couldn’t argue with her reasoning. “Are you sure you haven’t heard Dr. Brown’s name mentioned?”

  “It might’ve been.” Her gaze was pleading. “Don’t tell Matron I said so. Don’t tell anybody I said so. They’ll get rid of me for certain. I need this job.”

  “I won’t tell. I promise.”

  “The woman in that photograph . . . you think he might’ve hurt her?”

  “That’s what I need to understand,” said Nick. “Is there somebody here who might be able to tell me for certain if he was one of the doctors accused of harming their patients?”

  “Nobody will dare speak, Officer,” she replied. “It’s just not smart.”

  “What if I could see his records?”

  “Medical records are private,” she said. “We don’t even put names on the stone markers out in the cemetery. Just numbers. Put their coffins in the ground with only numbers to indicate somebody’s there.”

  “Who can help me?” he repeated. “You’d want me to bring him to justice, wouldn’t you? If the gossip about him is true and he’s guilty.”

  “Mr. Tinkham might help, if you talk nice to him. He’s the hospital clerk. He’s a good man.” She looked over at the hospital. “His office is the first door on the left, once you’re through the vestibule.”

  “It’s not visiting hours.”

  She perked her brows. “You’re not a visitor, right?” She got to her feet. “Good luck. I hope you find what you need.”

  • • •

  “Why has Mr. Greaves gone to Stockton?” Celia asked Mr. Taylor.

  “The note he left me didn’t explain. Sorry, ma’am.” He scowled at one of the officers. “Hey, Mullahey, don’t you got something else to do? Mrs. Davies doesn’t need you to be staring at her.”

  The station was busy that morning, which meant there were more policeman present to grin at her than just the booking sergeant. For whatever reason, the novelty of her visits to Nicholas Greaves’s office had yet to wear off.

  Another policeman, strolling through the station on his way out, laughed. “Yeah, Mullahey, don’t you got something else to do?”

  Officer Mullahey reddened. “I’ll be tellin’ you where to go soon, if you don’t shut your trap.”

  The other policeman muttered a curse and marched up the alleyway stairs, letting the door slam behind him.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” said Mr. Taylor. “You know what it’s like in here.”

  “Yes, I do, Mr. Taylor,” she replied, smiling to ease his discomfort. “I have an item to show Mr. Greaves. However, since he is away, I am certain you will be interested in what I have discovered.”

  She handed him Mrs. Loveland’s diary. He collected his cigar and puffed it as he thumbed through the notebook.

  “I attended a séance last evening with Mrs. Hutchinson and Miss Adler,” she said while he examined the book’s contents. “Miss Adler had concocted a false reason to return, and Jane and I both became suspicious of her true intentions.”

  “Which were what, ma’am?”

  “She wanted that notebook you now hold, Mr. Taylor,” she replied. “Unfortunately, during the disturbance Miss Adler caused last evening in her attempt to grab it, she took the wrong one.”

  “What’s so important about what’s inside this one, ma’am?”

  “The note beneath Miss Adler’s name may provide an explanation.” She pointed it out to him.

  “‘Owe money’?” he asked.

  “Not in Mrs. Loveland’s hand, you might observe, Mr. Taylor,” she said. “Perhaps written by a man who is a regular companion of hers, though.”

  Mr. Taylor released a lengthy whistle. “The Adlers are in thick with Mr. Griffin.” He held up the notebook. “Mr. Greaves will be mighty thankful you got ahold of this, ma’am. It answers a question or two.”

  “I am not certain the notebook actually answers them, Mr. Taylor,” she replied. “But it does point us in a possible direction.”

  “Can someone here help me?” called out a young woman dressed from top to toe in sober brown, her hands gripping a printed cotton purse at her waist. She’d come through the door leading to the building’s main staircase. “I need to report a thief.”

  “Mullahey, take care of that,” said Mr. Taylor. “I’m busy here.”

  “Just because your boss ain’t here, Taylor, doesn’t mean I’m your boyo.”

  “Take care of it, Mullahey,” he said. “I’ll take this notebook over to the Adlers’, Mrs. Davies, and see what they’ve got to say about that entry.”

  Officer Mullahey had strolled over to the young woman. “How can I help, Miss?”

  “I’d like to report a pawn office owner as a thief,” she said. “He has stolen property from my employers. The Adlers.”

  Celia looked over at her. “Did you say the Adlers?”

  “I did. Why?”

  Celia turned to Mr. Taylor. “What an interesting coincidence.”

  • • •

  “Who let you into my office?” asked the clerk, a whip-thin fellow who’d been perched on a stool in front of his tall desk and scribbling notes when Nick barged in.

  “A very kind nurse who believed my story that I was your long-lost brother come for a surprise reunion,” said Nick. “She was rather touched by my tale, I admit. Don’t think we look alike at all, though.”

  Tinkham glared at him over the top of the spectacles perched atop his nose. “Get out.”

  Nick closed the office door behind him, shutting out the tang of carbolic that pervaded the hallways beyond the room.

  “Listen, Mr. Tinkham. I need your help. I was told you were a good man who might be willing to bring somebody I’m investigating to justice.” He showed the clerk his badge. “My visit concerns Dr. Brown. Dr. Arthur Brown.”

  The clerk folded his arms. One of his cuffs had a smear of ink on it. “He was a physician here. That’s all I’m prepared to say.”

  “Was he one of the doctors implicated in the abuse of patients at this facility?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “A concerned individual. That’s all I’m prepared to say.” Nick nodded at the tall cabinets lining one wall, their cubbyholes filled with ledgers and folders. Spindle files, papers skewered upon the central spike, covered every available surface. “I’d like to see Brown’s file.”

  “I can’t show you the records.” The clerk stepped in front of the nearest cabinet and splayed his arms, shielding the piece of furniture from a potential assault by Nick. “You need a search warrant, and if you had one of those, you’d have already showed it to me.”

  “I’m not planning on taking your records with me to the nearest magistrate, which would be the only reason I’d have a warrant,” said Nick, trying to stay calm. Ta
lk nice? How was talking nice to this fellow, whose features were fixed with a scowl, going to help? “I just want a quick look. Because I believe, and you might also, that a terrible crime was committed.”

  The clerk drew up to his full height, which wasn’t very high at all. “I can’t do it.”

  “Maybe you can tell me who this woman is, then.” Nick produced the carte de visite.

  Tinkham sucked in a hasty breath. “Oh, yes. I do recall.” He brushed the surface of the photograph with one fingertip. “She was a sad little thing. Cried all the time. Lots of the women do, but she was really pitiful.”

  “Who was she? What’s her name?”

  “We called her Lucy. I don’t remember her last name.” He looked up at Nick. “Does it matter? All these years later? You can’t help her now. She’s beyond the pain she suffered, and rests in the earth now.”

  “Yes, it matters. All these years later,” said Nick. “What happened to her matters to me. How did she die?”

  “From trauma. She’d been committed because of disappointment in love. That’s what I’d had to record,” he replied, rubbing his hands together as if the ink from the words he’d written still marred his fingers.

  “Trauma? From an accident or a suicide? Or brought on by someone else?”

  “I said she was a sad little thing.”

  “Mr. Tinkham, a man in San Francisco might have been murdered because of what he’d learned about Dr. Brown. I can’t let that crime go unpunished.”

  The clerk considered Nick. The pendulum of the regulator clock hung on the wall ticked the seconds. C’mon. C’mon, help me out here.

  “I’m going for a short stroll. Five minutes at the longest,” announced Tinkham. He retrieved a set of keys from a desk drawer and unlocked a cabinet against the wall, revealing more folders and ledgers stuffed into cubbyholes. “Of course, I’ll have to lock my office door. We don’t want folks wandering in here to poke around. But you’d better be gone by the time I come back.”

  “I won’t be able to lock the door behind me, Mr. Tinkham.”

  “I’ll be watching for your departure. Don’t worry,” he said. “The year you want is 1863. You’ll find Dr. Brown’s patient records in his own ledger.”