It was something of an irony that I needed to collect myself before I could plot my descent into madness.
As I remembered, Nellie Bly’s journalistic exposé of the American asylum began with her practicing bizarre expressions before a mirror, then taking lodging in a boarding house while lacking the means to pay. The act had begun when the police were called to evict her: by pretending to amnesia and continually bemoaning her nonexistent lost trunks, she gave them little choice but to deliver her to the madhouse.
I suspected Bedlam might require more than that.
I also suspected Bedlam might not be easy to walk out of. Nellie Bly’s editor had promised to retrieve her, which seemed awfully trusting. (But then, for a daring woman, Miss Bly could be remarkably naïve: she thought “white slavery” meant going to a box factory and being paid a pittance, rather than being locked in chains and sold to the highest bidder.) Holmes agreed to come retrieve me in three days, if I hadn’t got out on my own by then—but unlike Nellie Bly, and even though it was Holmes, and even though I’d pored over the floor plans of the place, I thought a back-up source of rescue would be wise.
“Holmes, you might want to tell Mycroft where I shall be. That way, if you’re hit by a bus crossing Oxford Street, I won’t have to miss your funeral. And I did give you my notes and that photograph of Vivian’s necklace, didn’t I?”
“You did, although I may not be able to do much with either. I intend to be at the British Library all day.”
“I would not wish to interrupt your research into polyphonic motets.”
“What are you talking about, Russell? All motets are by definition poly—”
“Never mind, Holmes, just come rescue me if I get stuck.”
“Have I not showed you the trick to strait-jackets? One needs to expand—”
I left before he went looking for one, that he might demonstrate how Houdini did it.
Miss Bly’s articles often described the difficulties she had in convincing people to believe her: too mature for one rôle, too good an accent for another, hands too clean or soft. But then, Miss Bly had not learned the arts of disguise from Sherlock Holmes.
In his days as a London detective, Holmes had painstakingly assembled a number of secret refuges throughout the great city, filling them with emergency provisions, reading matter, odd bits of weaponry, and all the necessary elements of disguise. Over the years, two of these bolt-holes had been swallowed up by the city: one to a Zeppelin’s bomb, the other through renovations, when the building changed hands and the plans called for demolition of a wall behind which his narrow hideaway had been inserted.
Still, that left him—and me—with a number of options across the city, one of which I let myself into that afternoon. It was not one designed for long-term habitation, being every bit as cramped and insalubrious as I remembered, but at least there was a draught of air from some crack or other to keep one from asphyxiation. And the dingy walls pressing down on me could only help stimulate my appearance of madness.
The thought interrupted my rummage through cupboards that had been stocked before I was born, and I looked around me with new eyes. The madwoman’s rooms in Surrey had been all soft edges and muted shades, which I supposed was restful if one’s taste leaned in that direction. Holmes, on the other hand, surrounded himself with sharp edges and definite colours, preferring clear delineation over any degree of uncertainty. Would such a setting prove healing to a disturbed mind? I glanced down at the tangle of half-used tubes and makeup brushes, hair ribbons and cigarette holders.
Perhaps not.
An application of oil and talc turned my hair to straw. An irritant turned the eyes bloodshot, light grease-paint gave a patina of dirt to my pores, and a pot of lamp-black made my nails look like I had been mining coal. The final touch came from an innocuous-looking flask on the shelf, one mouthful of which, if one could manage to swill the vomitous mixture about the teeth and gums for long enough, would leave the mouth looking mildly diseased for three days.
A once-nice dress, good shoes in need of a shine, and mis-matched stockings. For a note of the eccentric (as well as warmth) I pulled on a pair of trousers under the frock. Then I removed one lens from my spectacles.
That in itself made me look somewhat mad, even without the red eyes and my rather pop-eyed stare as I squinted at a half-focussed world.
I looked like a lunatic from the middle-classes: not poor enough to be booted back onto the street, not wealthy enough to be coddled. Strictly speaking, I should have gone a few days without bathing, but I decided my outward appearance, my Oxford accent, and an air of genial confusion would be sufficient.
Holmes had also recommended that, if pressed, I ought to deliver a warning lecture on oysters.
I thought I had mis-heard him. “Oysters?”
“Correct. Clams are too symmetrical and mussels can be mistaken for their homonym—although come to think of it, that could add to the confusion. But oysters seem particularly symptomatic of mania. They certainly fooled Watson.”
“Ah yes, I remember. And poor Mrs Hudson—the two of them were convinced you were dying.”
“She was indeed rather cross. She increased our rent, as I recall. Mine, at any rate.”
“She should have evicted you.”
However, with his recommendation fresh in my mind, I did pause before leaving the bolt-hole to glance through the 1827 Britannica’s article on oysters, committing a few pungent phrases to memory.
I then settled my squashed hat onto my distressed scalp, and went off to prove myself crazed.
Chapter Eleven
IT TOOK ME A REMARKABLY long time to find a humourless and unforgiving constable, and I located the one I did only by noting his sore feet. He was not amused when I slipped up behind him and tipped his helmet forward onto his nose, then skipped away out of reach, giggling at his curses. I was faster than he and, as mentioned, he was hampered by sore feet, so not until I feigned to stumble did he manage to seize my arm.
I began instantly to weep, lest his meaty hands bruise me too badly, and indeed, he was every bit as disconcerted as I might hope. He did not let me go—but neither did he manhandle me too badly as he propelled me along the pavement to his station. I, meanwhile, alternated snuffling moans with chipper queries as to whether he was taking me home for tea, and if so I found his approach quite forward—but had he seen my Gladstone bag anywhere? (Miss Bly, as I recalled, had used “trunks” as a device on which to fix her attentions, but I changed it for fear of coming across a literate copper.)
I was past exhaustion and well on my way to actual insanity by the time the police finally delivered me to Bedlam. I’d been wondering if I was going to have to bodily assault one of them, but close to midnight they grew tired of listening to my endless drivel and washed their hands of me.
Miss Bly had assumed an act of insomnia on her initial night of madness. Fortunately, the attendants who received me were sleepy themselves, and merely stripped and checked me, handed me a coarsely woven gown, and locked me inside a dim, narrow room. The door had no handle. The walls were grubby. The bed was a mat on the floor.
I examined the mattress and bedding as best I could, but they showed no signs of infestation, and when I lowered my face, the rough blankets smelt distantly of soap. I sat, considering the blank surface of the door. The sight made me uneasy, not only because I was trapped, but also because having no lock to pick was going to make it difficult to do what I had come here for. I took a slow breath, then another, then lay down and pulled the thin covers to my neck.
I can’t say I actually slept, but I was startled when the door banged open to reveal a nurse in starched cap, apron, and a belt from which hung a chatelaine of keys, whistle, pen-light, and scissors. She remained in the doorway, which I thought quite sensible for a woman facing the unknown tendencies of a patient arrived by night.
; “So, Miss, do you know who you are today?”
I sat up instantly, planting my back against the wall. “I’m…I, yes—I have no problems. Who are you? Where am I? I’ve lost my spectacles—and, Sister, what have you done with my Gladstone bag?”
“Never you fear, Miss, I’m sure Doctor will help you find it again. Now, are you going to get yourself up and dressed, or are you going to give us trouble?”
Since giving her trouble would clearly extend my time in this room without a door-handle—and risk the use of bonds or a strait-jacket—befuddled cooperation was clearly my best option. Perhaps I could convince them that I’d had a head injury and might come out of it soon.
“My head hurts,” I whined. “I need my glasses.”
“First a bath. Then you can have a word with Doctor.”
I climbed into the shapeless, buttoned dressing-gown she handed me and let her propel me from the cell into a long, chilly stone hallway populated with trim-looking nurses and women in the same drab dressing-gowns as mine. Some of the latter were wild-eyed and twitching, shuffling along the passageway with a nurse’s hand firmly around one arm. Others looked stunned, like the denizens of an opium den, while a few were as unkempt as if they’d spent the night under a bridge.
I allowed my nurse to direct me towards the end of a queue of beltless dressing-gowns. All the nurses wore chatelaines of keys—on all of which, I noticed, one would be more brightly polished and hanging more readily to reach. Master keys, I thought, to ensure fast access in an emergency.
The more wild-eyed patients had nurses keeping firm hold of their arms, ready for trouble. Placid women were merely nudged into place and left to move obediently towards the bathing room. My own nurse deposited me in this queue, but then stood back to judge how I might react to this degree of freedom. I was grateful that she had said I was headed for a bath: from the sounds echoing down the hallway, I’d have anticipated a torture chamber.
Cold, disorientated, near-blind, and not having eaten for the better part of a day, it was not difficult to put on an act of fearfulness. Try as I might to convince myself that this was just like the Turkish baths, my shrinking skin insisted that I was about to be held under water until I confessed to some awful crime.
In the end, the greatest pain was the jerk of a comb through my tangled hair—and even that was as brief as the hair itself. When it was done, this assembly-line of bathing spat me out the far end, very clean, aggressively combed, and thoroughly humiliated.
This whole time, I had felt Sister’s eyes watching me for any sign of rebellion, or even protest. I gave her none. With a nod of satisfaction, she gripped my arm again and propelled me back down the passageway.
I took great care to give no sign of the dread that filled me—though when we continued past the cell where I’d spent the night, it was difficult not to sag with relief. But her hand noticed neither, merely directed me onwards to a flight of stairs.
In Bedlam, up was good. I knew before I came that the basement level was for the hard cases and the violent, while the top floor was for the gentle and obedient mad. A rise in altitude could only be a good thing.
We came out on the main level, at the far end of a long, bright gallery that ran the full length of the women’s wing. The nurse’s hand turned me towards the central hall, but I caught a glimpse of a room across the way with comfortable chairs and writing desks. Then we were marching down a long passage with deeply-set windows to the right and a series of identical doors to the left, all with sturdy locks. The floor had worn carpeting down the centre. The walls were regimented with paintings and plants on the window side, paintings and busts on high sconces between the doors. Shoved up against both sides, as if some energetic adolescents had decided to create a bowling-alley, were chairs both wooden and upholstered, side tables and etagères displaying vases and figurines, glass display cases containing stuffed birds or silk flowers, decorative (though empty) birdcages, potted palms that leaned towards the light, and—yes—aspidistras. The overall effect was slightly nightmarish, as if walking down an endlessly elongated sitting room belonging to an aged Victorian aunt—an aunt confined to an abnormally wide bath-chair. Disconcerting, but everything looked clean, and the predominant odour was one of polish.
We passed another set of stairs and a joining hallway briefer than the one we had come down, then entered the area I had seen with Ronnie—the public and office areas that were the literal centre of the hospital, dividing the women’s wing from that of the men. The room used as a chapel, beneath Bedlam’s oddly tall dome, stood just to our right, explaining the faint scent of beeswax candles.
Here was the room where we’d met Lady Vivian. Right after it was a door with a small plate saying PHYSICIAN’S ROOM.
The nurse knocked, waited for the “Come in,” and pulled it open, gently urging me through ahead of her.
Inside, there were many locked file cabinets, shelves with dozens of file-boxes, two desks, several chairs, and the promised physician, a slim young man in a white coat. Even without my glasses, I could see instantly that the doctor was very bright indeed. The nurse sat me in a chair across the desk from him and took a chair behind me. He introduced himself as Dr Rawlins, and began a review of my physical health, noting my excellent reactions, clear skin, lack of recent injuries, and rather unusual scarring. But when he went on to his diagnostic questions, so as to help determine my particular corner of Lunacy’s map, my variation in response seemed to puzzle him. Some of my reactions appeared to be in line with what was expected of insanity, but others clearly did not ring quite true. My only advantage was his assumption that anyone trying to sneak into Bedlam must surely be mad enough to qualify for admission in the first place.
I apologised for not being certain as to who I was, and told him I had a head-ache. He gently circled back to the question of my identity. The third time he did so, I decided my name was Mary. No, I couldn’t remember my surname, perhaps he could find it in my Gladstone bag? “It was taken from me. By someone. A man, I think? A large man with shiny buttons.”
“The police constable?”
“He had a big black beard.”
“Probably not, then. What was in this Gladstone?”
“My name.”
“On a label, you mean?”
“Maybe.”
“What else would it have been on, if not a label?”
“A case.”
“There was a case inside the Gladstone?”
“There must have been, if it had my name on it.”
“And what was in the case?”
Oh, the hell with it. “Oysters.”
He blinked. “Oysters?”
“Pearls. A jewellery case must have had pearls, mustn’t it?”
“Not oysters?”
“Why would it have had oysters? I don’t even like oysters. Slippery, horrid things. Even the name is disgusting.”
“Oyster?”
“Mollusc. Mollusc—one can’t even pronounce it without grimacing. They eat by pulling in tiny creatures through their gills. The gills have mucous—there’s another disgusting word. Mucous, mollusc.” I gave a delicate shudder. “The female expels her eggs by the million, did you know that? Million upon million of immature bivalve molluscs, coating the bottom of the sea. And they turn from male to female, did you know that? Shocking lack of continuity, eating the plankton and drinking the sea and lacking the energy to remain constant in their most basic of identities, and all so that they might be fetched from the bottom of the sea and set on plates for hands to seize—”
“Nurse,” he interrupted, “has this patient been given anything to eat?”
Good Lord. I stared at him in amazement. The last thing I’d expected of Bedlam was a doctor with basic common sense.
Chapter Twelve
BREAKFAST WAS IN PROGRESS, SERVED on tin plates in a room with lo
ng, bare wooden tables. I poked gingerly at the porridge, but it was in fact vaguely warm and neither burnt nor dotted with foreign objects—thus considerably better than some of my own culinary attempts. I did not count on it being of a quality that Mrs Hudson wouldn’t have instantly fed to the chickens, but together with the coffee (lamentably weak, but most English coffee was) it would keep body wedded to soul.
However, my interest in the meal was less nutritional than informational, for here I could make contact with my fellow inmates. I chose quickly as I crossed the room, and aimed for a seat amidst a group of women with marginally more tidy clothing, and marginally less of the posture of wild things snarling over their meals.
Of the four women, three looked up as I sat. The woman directly across the table—a girl, really—was an elfin creature with shiny brown hair and a dusting of freckles across her charming little nose. She gave me a shy smile and said, “Pretty day, isn’t it?”
This rather took me aback, since I had seen rain streaming down the windows of the long gallery as we passed through, but never mind, some people enjoy the wet. “I’m sure it will clear,” I told her, and watched her good cheer fade into confusion.
But before I could reassure her, the woman to my right laid a hand on my arm and demanded, “Do you like shoes?”
Perhaps the best policy here was stout agreement? “Absolutely.”
“I hate shoes. Shoes are terrible things. Footwear of all kinds that keep us from contact with Mother Earth, whether they’re boots or brogues or Cuban heels or sandals or Wellingtons or espadrilles or Dutch clogs or riding boots or plimsolls or ballet slippers—”
(“Pretty dancers, aren’t they?” murmured the girl.)
I did not know what was more impressive, the woman’s thesaurus of footwear or her lung capacity, but I thought it might be a kindness to cut her off before she ran short of either words or oxygen. “I once picked up a horrible splinter from Mother Earth. Limped for days.”