The Asylum

“By this stage, Gadd was in a state of uncontrollable excitement, clutching the bars with his face pressed against them. Then a man in a warder’s uniform, with a pistol stuffed into his belt, came up and stationed himself right outside Gadd’s cage, as it effectively was.

“Gadd’s eyes fell on that pistol, and he grew very still; you could see his mind racing. Very slowly, he let his hands fall to his sides and edged along until he was just to the left of the guard, who was standing rigidly to attention, looking straight ahead of him. There was a tramping of feet; two more warders marched past, and then Gladstone appeared. My heart was thumping wildly; in that electric atmosphere, anyone would have sworn he was the Prime Minister.

“It went off like clockwork. Gladstone paused in front of the cell; Gadd reached through the bars, seized the pistol, and shot him through the heart. Even though I knew it was a trick, I cried out in horror when Gladstone clapped a hand to his chest and it came away drenched in what looked like blood. Gladstone sank to the ground and gave a most convincing death-rattle; Gadd dropped the pistol at the warder’s feet and cried in a loud voice, ‘Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word.’

“Dr. Straker had hoped that Gadd would be overwhelmed by horror at his bloody deed and shocked back into sanity by the realisation that his delusion had made a murderer of him. Gadd would be left to steep in his own remorse (under covert watch to make sure he didn’t attempt suicide) until Dr. Straker judged the time was right to tell him that Gladstone had survived the attack. That, with luck, would prompt an equal and opposite reaction of relief—‘I am not a murderer after all’—and then, if Gadd showed no sign of a relapse, another visit from ‘Gladstone’ would be arranged to test him. Last of all, Gadd would be told that the whole thing had been staged for his benefit, and if all went well, he would be discharged as cured.

“But when Dr. Straker went into his cell that evening, and taxed him with murdering the Prime Minister and bringing disgrace upon the asylum, Gadd replied that he was very sorry for Mr. Gladstone’s family, and for all the trouble he had caused, but the Lord had commanded, and he had obeyed, and he would go to the gallows with a clear conscience, knowing that his reward awaited him in heaven. Dr. Straker left him to stew in solitude for a few days but found him quite unchanged. When Gadd was told that Gladstone had survived the bullet, he replied calmly, ‘It seems my task is not complete; I must await another opportunity.’ He’s still here, in one of the closed wards; spends a lot of his time painting. His watercolours—they’re mostly of flowers—are very fine. I suppose if Gladstone dies before him, he may be released one day.”

“Dr. Straker must have been very disappointed,” I said.

“Well no, not at all; he wrote an account of it for a learned journal. He often says that negative results can be just as useful as positive.”

“Has he tried such an experiment again?”

“Not that I know of; he doesn’t always tell me what he is working on. He has a private workroom in the old chapel, which he calls the temple of science: no one else is allowed there. His interests are extraordinarily diverse; he has made studies of everything from grafting fruit trees—not only to improve the fruit, but to see how many different varieties will thrive on a single tree—to the mathematics of gambling. At present, he is engaged in electrical research, though I have no idea where it is leading. A couple of years ago he visited Cragside—Lord Armstrong’s estate in Northumberland—to see the hydraulic dynamo there, and he immediately commissioned one for us. It is powered by the stream that runs down from Siblyback Water; he says that one day the whole estate will be lit by electric lamps.

“And yet with all this, and a vast establishment to run, he still has time for individual patients—like the man who was terrified of snakes—even the hopeless cases. There was one, only last year . . . but I ought not say more . . .”

“Do his family live here as well?” I asked.

“He has no family, Miss Ferrars; he is a bachelor, like my uncle, and lives only for his work.”

At the mention of his uncle, a shadow crossed his face. Outside, the rain was still falling. He rose, added more coals to the fire, and made a show of consulting his watch.

“I am sorry, Miss Ferrars, but I have duties to attend to. Might I join you again for luncheon, in an hour or so?”

“I should like that very much.”

“Then I shall return as soon as I can.” He smiled, but his eyes were still troubled, and I feared I had driven him away.

He seemed, however, entirely recovered when he returned an hour later. “I have said quite enough about myself,” he insisted, “and I want to hear more about you, and your childhood at Niton.” My childhood seemed so commonplace and uneventful compared to his, but I sensed that our quiet domestic life was for him a vision of paradise. I told him about the mirror, and my fascination with Rosina, and its aftermath on the cliff, which led somehow to religion, and how Aunt Vida and Mr. Allardyce used to argue. My aunt was a declared agnostic, but I felt that they were essentially on the same side. Mr. Allardyce used to say that faith couldn’t be commanded; so long as you acted as if you believed, all would be well. They were both contemptuous of spiritualism: when I expressed curiosity about it, my aunt suggested with a perfectly straight face that we try a method of spelling out messages with a glass and a circle of cut-out letters, and the glass spelled out “Spiritualism is bunkum.”

Frederic laughed at this, but his face was shadowed.

“Rationally speaking,” he said, “I agree with your aunt, but in this house it is all too easy to believe that the dead live on amongst us. All those centuries of violent emotion, permeating the furniture, the hangings, the timbers, even the stones . . . The old house was always cold and damp, even in summer; the walls are so thick, and the windows so small, and there are strange pockets of icy air—you could be walking along a corridor and feel as if you had been plunged into freezing water . . .”

“Have you ever seen a ghost?”

“Not seen, exactly, but I think I may have heard one.”

It had begun last April, he said, on a mild, sunlit afternoon. He had lately emerged from a bout of melancholia and decided to take a stroll in the grounds, with no particular destination in mind. His feet carried him to a long-abandoned stable, overgrown and collapsing, some thirty or forty yards beyond the old house, surrounded now by woodland. He was standing nearby, gazing idly at the ancient, uneven brickwork and enjoying the unaccustomed warmth of sunlight on his skin, when he heard a pickaxe striking upon stone. It sounded like someone chipping at a piece of masonry in an exploratory fashion, and it seemed to come from inside. He looked in through the doorway—the lintel had collapsed, leaving only a narrow, triangular opening—but there was nobody within. Then he heard the noise again—tap-tap, tap-tap—perfectly clear, with a distinct ringing echo to it—only this time it came from the outside, around the corner to the left of where he was standing. Again the sound ceased as he approached. He walked right around the building; the long grass had been trampled in places by something—badgers, perhaps—but there were no bootmarks, and again no one to be seen. He stood and waited for some time, but the sound was not repeated, and he assumed that it had been caused by some rusted piece of metal, a broken hinge or the like, expanding in the sunshine.

A week or so later, he was passing the stables when he heard the sound again, a little louder, coming from around the corner to his right this time. Once again it ceased just before he turned the corner; once again there was nobody to be seen. Then it started up again, from around the back of the ruin. He found himself imagining a man in a convict’s uniform and leg irons, tapping away with a pick. His mouth was suddenly dry; he had to force himself to circle the building, and then retreated with his heart beating rapidly.

Over the next few weeks, he was drawn back almost against his will. Sometimes he would stand for minutes at a stretch and hear nothing but the distant lowing of cattle. It seemed to him that whenever he was intent upon listening for the sound—always metal upon stone—it did not come, but as soon as his attention wandered, it would start up again. And though there was no consistent pattern from day to day, he felt that the sound was becoming stronger, the rhythm of the pick faster—though you could not call it a rhythm because it was always irregular. It frightened and fascinated him in equal measure; he had come to believe that the place was haunted by the sound of a murderer burying his victim.

Even more disturbing was the suspicion that he had somehow awakened the sound; that it was aware of him, playing upon his curiosity and leading him on. He imagined himself digging and exposing a shattered skull—but what would follow if he did? He brought old Trethewey, the head gardener, over to the stables, and kept him talking by the entrance for some time. But Trethewey knew of no ancient crime, and the sound did not come, and when Frederic said tentatively that he had heard some odd noises of late, Trethewey gave him a pitying look and all but tapped his forehead, as if to say, “Another mad Mordaunt.” The following day he tried again, asking one of the undergardeners to inspect the brickwork with him; again the sound did not come, and he felt that this man, too, was regarding him strangely. But the very next time he approached the stables alone, he was greeted by a fierce volley of sounds from within—hard, and menacing, and too fast, surely, for human hands wielding a pick—and he could not summon the courage to enter.

“And what happened after that?” I asked, when he did not immediately continue.

“I knew what I ought to do: confide in Dr. Straker and ask him to investigate. But I feared it might be a symptom of—something worse than melancholia, and if it turned out that I could hear the noise, but he could not . . . So I have simply avoided the place ever since, hoping that whatever I disturbed, whether it was in the stables, or in my head—or, as I sometimes suspect, in both, will stay quiet as long as I keep away.”

“It cannot be good for you,” I said, “living here, in the shadow of so much anguish. Do you not think you might be happier—and healthier—away from this place?” I remembered asking him this the day before, but I could not recall his reply.

He hesitated for a long time before he spoke, keeping his eyes fixed upon the flames.

“I think of it all the time, Miss Ferrars. But as I may have said yesterday, my uncle and I are the last of our line. Uncle Edmund has never married, because he believes that the only way to eradicate the dark strain in the Mordaunt blood is to let it die out. And he expects me to follow his example.”

He took a long, uneven breath, as if to say, There; I have said it.

“And—does Dr. Straker agree with your uncle?”

“Yes, he does. He says that hereditary madness cannot be cured, only bred out—as we do with defects in every other species.”

“But is it absolutely certain,” I said, “that if you were to marry a woman who was—perfectly well, your children would be afflicted?”

“No, it isn’t, and there’s the rub. They might—especially if they were girls; it comes out mostly on the male side—they might be quite untouched. But the dark strain would still be there, and it might reappear in the next generation, or the one after that, in all its old virulence.”

“But that is like saying that it would be better if you had never existed. I have only known you a day, Frederic, and I do not think the world would be better without you—”

He took another long, shuddering breath and rose from his chair, still not looking at me. I thought he was about to walk out of the room; instead, he walked over to the window and stood with his back to me and his shoulders shaking. I rose, stiffly after all the hours of sitting, went over, and stood beside him. Racked by harsh, choking sobs, his face wet with tears, he struggled to regain his self-control. I placed my hand on his cold fingers and stroked them gently. No one, I thought, in his entire lonely existence, has ever said that they were glad he had been born. The uncle sounded like a cold fish; to Dr. Straker he was a useful part of the machinery of the asylum, and therefore to be encouraged and got out of bed in the mornings so that he could keep up the paperwork. But no one had ever told Frederic that they loved him.

Strangely, I had quite lost my self-consciousness. I was not, I realised, actually shocked at my boldness at calling him Frederic; nor did I repent of it; nor did I fear that he would think me immodest. Nor, strangest of all, did I think that I was falling in love with him. I did not think of myself at all: my heart had opened itself to him, whether I would or no. If I had a brother, I thought, a brother in terrible distress and anguish of mind, this is how I would feel.

Gradually his breathing steadied, and he turned to me with a wan smile.

“Thank you,” he said, “thank you. No one has ever—”

“No,” I said, still stroking his cold fingers. Our breath misted the glass. “Your uncle is wrong; I know he is, and I think you know it, too, in your heart. Yours is a loving spirit, and it should not die with you. Surely your melancholia would not return if you were away from here.”

“And when you are back in London,” he said, gazing at me as if memorising every detail of my appearance, “will you want to see me again?” The implication was unmistakable.

“Until I know what has happened to me, I cannot think beyond the present. But I know that I want to be your friend, and to see you again, and yes, I will write to you as soon as I am back in London. And now I think you should go, before Bella returns and—leaps to conclusions.”

“But you will wait for Dr. Straker, I trust?” he said, mopping his face with his handkerchief, “rather than taking the first train back?”

“Yes,” I said, suppressing another small, cold pang of unease. He had given me his word, and he was, after all, the heir: what was there to fear?

“Then I shall certainly join you for breakfast, and perhaps if the weather is fine, we might take a turn in the grounds.”

He left reluctantly, walking more or less backward until he bumped into the door-frame. Outside, the rain was still falling steadily, and the light was fading.

I lay awake for a long time that night, and when at last I did sleep, it was only to be wakened an instant later, as it seemed, by light footsteps in the passage outside my door. For a wild moment I wondered if it might be Frederic, also wakeful; then I thought it must be Bella; but would Bella not have come in? I went to the door and peeped out. Oil lamps flickered along the empty corridor; all the doors I could make out were closed. Where, I wondered, did Bella sleep? In one of the rooms nearby? I thought of the ghost in the old stable, and heard Frederic saying, “A house as old as this is never entirely still, even in the dead of night.” Chill air stirred around my ankles; I retreated hastily to bed, and lay awake for some time, listening uneasily. But the footsteps did not return.

The next time I woke, it was full daylight. I got out of bed at once, with a feeling of having overslept. Perhaps Frederic was already pacing up and down the sitting room, not wanting Bella to disturb me in case I was still asleep. Rather than wait for her, I got dressed on my own and hastened along the corridor. But the room was empty, and the fire had not been lit; perhaps it was earlier than I thought. I tugged at the bell-rope and went over to the window. The rain had ceased, but the garden below still dripped with moisture, and the paths were saturated.

I stood there for a while, watching the clouds bulge and crumple like grotesque faces floating just above the treetops. Surely Bella had never taken as long as this? I rang again and waited several minutes more, but still she did not come.

Perhaps the bell was not working. I went out into the dim, empty corridor. In the wall to my left, the direction from which Bella and Frederic had always appeared, were two more doors. I tried them as I went along; both were locked. The passage ended at another, heavier door; it, too, was locked.

If you choose to leave, no one will hinder you.

Of course, the door might be locked for my own protection; this was, after all, a lunatic asylum.

I went back along the passage, giving the bell-rope another tug as I passed the sitting room. The wall now on my left was blank except for an opening about halfway along, the entrance to a much shorter passage, ending at another locked door. Apart from a bathroom near the room in which I slept, every door was locked, including the door at the far end, which led, I assumed, to the closed wards in the newest part of the building.

The oil lamp near my room was still burning. Except for the dim shaft of light falling from the open door of the sitting room, the only source of illumination was a pane of opaque glass—a skylight of some kind?—in the ceiling halfway along. I remembered the footsteps in the night.

You are safe here, on my word of honour.

I retraced my steps, trying not to run, to the door at the other end, and rattled and tugged at the handle, then beat upon the oak in a panic, bruising my knuckles until the pain forced me to stop.

As the echoes died away, a floorboard creaked behind me. The hair on the back of my neck bristled.

“Can I ’elp you, miss? You can’t go through there, you know.”

I spun round. In the light from the sitting-room door, a woman was standing—not Bella, but a heavily built woman twice her age, with forearms like hams and a flat, porcine face, in which small eyes glittered.

“Who are you? Where is Bella?”

“Hodges is the name, miss.” A London accent, I thought, with an insinuating edge that seemed to imply, I know all about you. She wore a starched uniform like Bella’s, but hers was dark blue. As she approached, I caught a whiff of rank breath.

“Where is Bella?” I repeated.

“Bella’s got other duties. I’ll be looking after you today.”

“Then would you kindly fetch Mr. Mordaunt? He will be joining me for breakfast.”

“Is that so, miss? Would that be young Mr. Mordaunt, then?”

“Yes, it would, and you will kindly fetch him without further delay.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, miss.”

“And why not?”

“Doctor’s orders, miss.”

“You are mistaken. I am a voluntary patient here, and if you do not fetch Mr. Mordaunt at once”—I could hear my voice beginning to tremble—“he will be most displeased.”

“Really, miss?” She sneered, in the tone of one humouring, or rather baiting, a madwoman. “Well, I takes my orders from Dr. Straker.”

“Dr. Straker is in London, attending to business of mine—”

“Well, fancy that. We are goin’ it this morning, aren’t we? Now I could swear Dr. Straker give me my orders just ten minutes ago, and them orders was that Miss Ashton was to stay in bed until he—”

“What did you call me?”

“Miss Ashton, miss. That’s your name, according to Dr. Straker, and he ought to know.”

“My name is not Ashton. I am Miss Ferrars; I am a voluntary patient”—my voice was now shaking wildly—“and I wish to leave this place at once. Now fetch Mr. Mordaunt!”

“Come along now, miss; no point getting hysterical, now is there?”

“If you do not unlock that door and let me out this instant, I will—I will have you arrested and charged with false imprisonment!” The last words came out as a shriek.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, miss. You can go back to your bed, nice and quiet, and wait there in the warm till Dr. Straker comes to see you, or I can ’elp you undress and put you to bed myself. Now which will it be?”

I thought of trying to dodge past her, but she stood squarely in the middle of the passage, with her great hands resting on her hips and her elbows almost touching the walls. If I resisted her, I might find myself in a straitjacket.

“I will go quietly,” I said, “if you will promise to tell Mr. Mordaunt I wish to see him urgently.”

“Now that’s more like it, miss. You come along quietly to bed, and I’ll tell Dr. Straker that you asked particular to see Mr. Mordaunt, and we’ll see what happens, won’t we?”

She moved aside to let me pass and followed me closely back to my room.

“That’s right, miss. You get into bed, and I’ll be back with your breakfast before you know it.”

A massive hand urged me on. As the door closed behind me, I heard a jingle of metal, followed by the scrape and snap of the lock.

Hodges returned half an hour later with breakfast, which I could not eat, and then insisted that I should bathe, locking me in the bathroom while she made up the bed. “Dr. Straker will be along presently,” was all she would say. As the minutes crawled by, my hope of rescue shrank to nothing. Either Frederic had deceived me all along—hard as it was to believe, remembering those deep, wrenching sobs—or he was so in thrall to Dr. Straker that he had not the backbone to defy him. The more I brooded, the more my suspicions increased. Tregannon Asylum, according to Frederic, was a benign, compassionate, enlightened place, but there was nothing benign about Hodges; she was exactly what I had always imagined a madhouse attendant would be. And if Frederic had lied about that, what else had he lied about? How long had Dr. Straker been back from London? Had he even been to London? I tried to look out through the observation slot in the door, but it would not open.

An eternity later, as it seemed, the lock turned over again, and Dr. Straker appeared in the doorway. He looked so grave that my protests died on my lips; my first thought was that something had happened to Frederic, and I watched him fearfully as he settled himself beside the bed.

“I am sorry to have to tell you, Miss Ashton, that my instinct has been confirmed. I have been to Gresham’s Yard, and I met Georgina Ferrars and Josiah Radford, her uncle. The mystery of how you know so much about them is a mystery no longer. The only riddle we have yet to solve is the riddle of your own identity.”

He paused, awaiting my reaction, but I could not utter a sound.

“Believe me, Miss Ashton, I understand how distressing this must be, even though I have tried to prepare you. It will be best, I think, if I begin by telling you what transpired. Gresham’s Yard is just as you described it, and until the maid said she would fetch Miss Ferrars, I was preparing to eat my hat. But at my first glimpse of Georgina Ferrars, a great deal became clear: the resemblance between you is quite remarkable. Miss Ferrars was profoundly shaken, but not wholly surprised, to learn that I had a patient who not only looked like her and appeared to know everything about her, but was claiming to be her. ‘It is Lucia!’ she exclaimed, ‘Lucia Ardent; it can only be Lucia!’ The initials, you will agree, can hardly be a coincidence. But I see the name means nothing to you.

“Three weeks ago, around the tenth of October—Miss Ferrars could not recall the precise date—she was alone in the bookshop when a young woman came in. Miss Ferrars felt sure she had seen her somewhere before, but she did not immediately associate the face before her with the one she saw every day in the mirror—did you wish to say something, Miss Ashton?”

Numb with shock, I could only stare at him.

“The young woman introduced herself as Lucia Ardent. They fell into conversation, and an intimacy sprang up. It was Lucia—if you will forgive the familiarity for the sake of concision—who first remarked upon the likeness between them. Within a couple of days, Lucia was living at Gresham’s Yard.

“Lucia, or so she claimed, was the daughter of a Frenchman named Jules Ardent, and an Englishwoman, Madeleine Ardent—who, according to Lucia, had refused ever to speak of her past. All she would say was that her childhood had been most unhappy and that she did not wish to recall it, or ever revisit England; she never revealed her maiden name. Jules Ardent died when Lucia was an infant—all this, you understand, rests upon Lucia Ardent’s unsupported word—leaving them an income of about two hundred a year. Lucia and her mother lived an itinerant life, moving about the Continent, staying in pensions and hotels until Madeleine Ardent died about a year ago. Lucia Ardent had always wanted to see England, and so, drawn by the mystery of her birth, she came to London, took lodgings in Bloomsbury, and by sheer chance wandered into Josiah Radford’s bookshop.

“All this, you understand, is what she told Georgina Ferrars, who had no reason to disbelieve her. As a child, Georgina told me, she had often wished she had a sister, and now it seemed that she had found one. Lucia was, from the beginning, insatiably curious about every aspect of Georgina’s past, and it was only later that Georgina realised how little she had learnt in return. As the days went by, Georgina became more and more conscious of the resemblance between them, and they had many long conversations about its possible bearing on the mystery of Lucia’s origins. Lucia had brought only a small travelling-case”—Dr. Straker glanced meaningfully at the valise Bella had unpacked—“and as they were much the same size, Georgina was happy to share her own clothes with her newfound friend. Josiah Radford, who is exceptionally shortsighted, was soon unable to tell them apart.

“Within a fortnight they were, Miss Ferrars told me, as close as if they really had been sisters. It was already settled, with Josiah Radford’s blessing, that Lucia should make her home there, but first—or so she said—she must return briefly to Paris to settle her affairs. Miss Ferrars would very much have liked to accompany her but felt that she could not leave her uncle.

“And so, last Monday—just two days, Miss Ashton, before you arrived here—Lucia Ardent packed her valise and departed in a cab, promising to return within a fortnight. It was only after she had left that doubts began to creep in. Miss Ferrars noticed, first of all, that Lucia had taken every single thing she had arrived with. And then she discovered that her two most cherished possessions were missing: a blue leather writing case given to her by her aunt, and a valuable ruby and diamond brooch in the shape of a dragonfly, which had belonged to her mother.”

It is a nightmare, I told myself. You must wake up now. But his face refused to dissolve.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I wish I could make this easier for you, but we must face facts. You will be wondering—since you are, beyond question, the woman who left Gresham’s Yard two days ago—why I do not address you as Miss Ardent. That is because Lucia Ardent is an alias: the account she gave of herself is an obvious fabrication, since it contains not a single verifiable fact. Lucia Ardent is your own invention, and since you came here as Miss Ashton, I propose that we continue to call you by that name, until we discover who you really are.”

“I am Georgina Ferrars,” I said hopelessly, finding my voice at last. With the words came the thought, He is lying; he must be lying. “If—if this woman really exists, then she has taken my place—”

“There is no doubt of her existence, Miss Ashton; I am speaking to her at this moment. Just as there can be no doubt that the young woman I met in London is the real Georgina Ferrars; an imposter might possibly deceive Josiah Radford, who is exceedingly shortsighted, but not the maidservant.”

“What was her name—the maid’s?” I asked, clutching at straws.

“I have no idea, but I am sure there is nothing wrong with her eyesight.”

“It is clear,” he continued, when I did not respond, “that when you arrived here as Lucy Ashton, you were well aware that you had trained yourself to impersonate Georgina Ferrars. Why you did so remains a mystery. But I would say, without question, that you had become aware that the balance of your mind was disturbed: why else would you have sought out a leading specialist in disorders of the personality, and presented yourself to him under the name of a madwoman?”

I remembered Frederic—not once, but twice—saying exactly that.

“You adopted an alias because you were not yet ready to confess—no doubt for fear of the consequences—but the alias you chose was itself a kind of confession. And then, sadly, your mental turmoil led to a seizure, which seems to have obliterated everything but the personality you were so determined to assume.”

“No!” I cried. “I swear on my dear mother’s grave, it is my life I remember!”

“Miss Ashton, Miss Ashton; I am not questioning your sincerity. But the past you think you remember is a dream, woven by your troubled imagination out of the material of Georgina Ferrars’ life. You cannot see this, because it is all you can see. But rest assured: we will not abandon you; as I said before, you will be cared for here, without charge, no matter how long it takes us to discover your true identity.”

I dug my nails into the palms of my hands, fighting down terror.

“If you will only take me to London,” I said in a small, strangled voice, “and let me speak to my uncle; and to Cora, the maid; and Mrs. Eddowes, the housekeeper; and Mr. Onslow, the haberdasher in the square, they will tell you that I am the real Georgina Ferrars, and not this imposter—”

“I am sorry, Miss Ashton, but that is out of the question. I explained to Miss Ferrars that you were not responsible for your actions, and that bringing you face to face with her might help you recover your memory, but she does not wish to see you again. She feels, understandably, betrayed. ‘Let her return my writing case and brooch,’ she said, ‘and apologise for the distress she has caused us, and then perhaps I will consider your request.’”

“She is lying—” I began, but the futility of it was plain. I took a deep breath and summoned the last of my courage.

“Then since you will not help me, sir, I wish to leave this place immediately. I am a voluntary patient—”

“I am sorry, Miss Ashton, but I cannot allow it. I should be derelict in my duty if I allowed a young woman in the grip of a dangerous delusion to wander away unattended. If you were to appear at Gresham’s Yard in your present frame of mind, you would probably be arrested for disturbing the peace. You were a voluntary patient; I now have no choice but to issue a certificate of insanity.”

I saw, too late, that I had made a fatal mistake.

“Sir, I beg your pardon,” I stammered, hearing the note of terror all too clearly. “I spoke in haste; perhaps I am not myself. I promise to stay here quietly until—until I am better; there is no need for a certificate . . .”

He regarded me silently for some time, a faint ironic twist at the corner of his mouth.

“Almost convincing, Miss Ashton; but not quite. Unless I am much mistaken, you would make a dash for the gate the moment our backs were turned. No; I’m afraid my duty is plain. You may be a danger to others; you are certainly a danger to yourself. And now if you will excuse me, I must summon Dr. Mayhew; I advised him of these developments this morning, but he will need to examine you in person.”

“I am not mad!” I cried as he rose to leave. “Ask Fr—Mr. Mordaunt; he believes me.”

“He did believe you, Miss Ashton. Mr. Mordaunt is—easily led; he has learnt a salutary lesson.”

Dr. Mayhew’s “examination” consisted of his grunting several times, peering at my tongue, and muttering, “Hmph, mmph—highly agitated—danger to herself and others—no doubt about it,” after which he took the pen and the document that Dr. Straker was holding out to him, added his signature, and departed.

“Well, there we are, Miss Ashton,” said Dr. Straker. “We shall keep you here in the infirmary for a couple more days, just to be sure, and then transfer you to one of the women’s wards. I know it is hard, but try not to think too much. Hodges will bring you a sedative, and in the morning I shall look in to see how you are getting on.”

At the sound of the door closing behind him, I buried my face in the pillow and wept as I had never wept before.

I was roused from my misery by a clatter of keys and the heavy tread of Hodges.

“Come along now, Miss Ashton; this won’t do. I’ve brought you a pot of tea and some bread and butter, and a nice sleeping draught.”

It was still broad daylight, but I assumed it must be late in the afternoon.

“What is the time?” I asked hopelessly.

“One o’clock. Now you sit up and ’ave your tea, and then you can ’ave a nice sleep.”

Rather than have her touch me, I sat up as instructed; she arranged the invalid tray across my knees, and departed.

Even the sight of food turned my stomach; I reached instead for the glass of cloudy liquid standing beside the teacup. Eight hours of blessed oblivion . . . and then? I paused with the glass halfway to my lips. Through the fog of anguish and horror, a single thought loomed: Once they move you, you will never escape.

And if I did not eat, I would be too weak to escape. I set down the glass and began chewing the bread in small, nauseating mouthfuls, washing it down with sips of tea, and trying to concentrate what remained of my mind. Why this had happened to me was beyond my comprehension; all that mattered was to escape (though that was surely impossible) within the next two days, find my way to Gresham’s Yard (but how? I had no money), and confront the woman (though I did not believe she existed) who had stolen my life away.

The tale of Lucia Ardent was more than bizarre; it was grotesquely improbable. No; Dr. Straker had invented the story for his own purposes—purposes I dared not begin to imagine—which made it even more imperative that I should escape.

But he knew about the writing case and brooch.

I could not remember whether I had mentioned the writing case to him, but I felt sure I had not described the brooch in any detail, either to him or to Bella.

But I had described it to Frederic.

Which meant—that I must not allow myself to think about what it meant.

Escape. I could empty the sleeping draught into the chamber pot, and pretend to be asleep—or drowsy—when Hodges returned for the tray. That ought to give me several uninterrupted hours. And I had better do that at once, before she came back and caught me.

Half a minute later I was back in bed, forcing down the last of the bread and listening for footsteps.

Escape. I already knew that the grille protecting the window felt very solid, but if I could find some sort of instrument, perhaps I could loosen it.

Or there was the door. You could pick a lock with a bent hatpin, or so I had read, but I had never tried it, and beyond this lock would be another, and another . . .

When Hodges brought the tray in, she had left the door open and the key in the lock; I was sure of it.

If I hid behind the door, and padded the bed with rolled-up clothes to make it look as if I were asleep, perhaps I could slip past her, slam the door, turn the key and run. But the door opened flat against the side wall; she would feel that I was behind it. And even if she came right up to the bed without seeing me, there would be very little room to squeeze past her. No; she would certainly catch me.

Could I hit her over the head with something and knock her unconscious? I might be able to break a leg off the upright chair, but would that be heavy enough? How hard would I have to hit her? And what if I killed her by mistake?

Heavy footsteps approached. I leant back against the pillows, turned my head toward the door, and half closed my eyes. The lock turned—a hard, effortful grating sound; the door swung against the wall as Hodges entered, and there was the bunch of keys, swinging from the lock.

“Well, that’s better, isn’t it? You ’ave a nice long sleep now. I’ll look in later, and this evening I’ll bring you some supper and another drop o’ chloral.”

I did my best to look drowsy and vacant as she turned away, stepping out into the passage to set down the tray before she closed the door. Dodging past her looked even more impossible than I had imagined. And from the sound of the lock, it would take far more than a hatpin to open it, even if I knew the trick.

Which left the window. As soon as her footsteps had died away, I went over and examined the grille, which seemed to be set into the stonework itself. I could not move it in the slightest, no matter how hard I tugged. Perhaps if I picked up the chair and ran at the grille, I might be able to dislodge it; most likely I would break the chair, and be punished accordingly.

The jug and basin on the washstand were made of enamel, too light to do any damage. I turned to the closet. The empty valise stood to one side, on end, with the hatbox on top of it.

I had glanced into the hatbox on that first afternoon. This time I took out the bonnet—a pale blue one, trimmed in cream—but found not a single hatpin. I was about to replace it when I noticed a pocket in the lining near the bottom of the hatbox. A small, squarish shape was pressing against the silk.

With suddenly trembling fingers I drew from the pocket a familiar red plush box. I pressed the catch, and there was my dragonfly brooch, unharmed.

And there was something else in the pocket—something that clinked softly as I touched it: a small drawstring purse in brown velvet, with five gold sovereigns inside.

I do not know how long I crouched, staring blankly at my brooch and clutching the purse as if it might take wing and fly away, before it occurred to me that my writing case might be here, too. But there was nothing else in the hatbox. I dragged out the valise and felt all around the lining, but again I found nothing except traces of lint.

I let out a great sob of frustration and self-reproach. If only, if only I had thought to look sooner, instead of now, when it was too late.

“Let her return my writing case and brooch” . . . If Dr. Straker found out, he would take it from me.

I slipped the purse into the pocket of my travelling-dress, put away the valise and hatbox, and got back into bed for warmth, still holding my brooch in its open box. The rubies glowed like drops of blood.

The gold pin, though sharp, was barely two inches long. Hodges would swat it away with one meaty hand and lift me off my feet with the other.

I pictured those small, knowing, covetous eyes leering down at me, and a plan began to form.

The worst that can happen, I thought, is that she turns out to be honest, and hands the brooch straight to Dr. Straker.

I sat motionless for a very long time, thinking it out. Then I got up again and put on my travelling-dress, feeling that I would have a better chance with Hodges if I faced her fully dressed. I laid the travelling-cloak and bonnet at the foot of the bed, took two of the five sovereigns out of the purse, and left them loose in the pocket of my cloak. After that there was nothing to do but pace about the room to keep warm, and pray that Hodges would look in on me before darkness fell.

At last I heard a distant thud, and then the approaching footsteps. I moved over to the window and stood with my back to it, facing the door as the observation slide opened. I heard a sharp intake of breath and a rattle of keys; the door crashed against the wall and Hodges strode into the room.

“What’s this then? Why aren’t you asleep in bed?”

My heart was pounding so violently that I could scarcely speak.

“Because—because I have something to show you.”

“And what might that be?” she asked suspiciously, moving closer.

“This.” I took the jewel box from my pocket, pressed the catch, and held it out for her to see, angling the box so that the rubies caught the light. Her little eyes flickered between the brooch and my face.

“It is the most precious thing I have in the world,” I said. “My mother left it to me; it is worth a hundred pounds.”

“And what’s that to me?”

“It is yours,” I said, “if you will help me escape.”

She smiled derisively. The little eyes bored into mine.

“And what’s to stop me taking it right now?”

“Nothing,” I said breathlessly, willing my voice not to shake. “But then I would tell Dr. Straker, and if you were caught, you would be sent to prison.”

The eyes flickered over the brooch.

“Or I could give it to Dr. Straker,” she said, “and ’e might give me a nice reward.”

“He might,” I said, “but not two hundred pounds.”

“You just said it was worth one hundred.”

“Yes, if you were to sell it. But to me it is worth all the money I have in the world, which is two hundred pounds, in trust with my solicitor. As soon as I am safely home in London, I will buy it back from you for two hundred pounds.”

“’Ow do I know it’s not paste?”

I had not thought of this, and I racked my brain for an answer, keeping my eyes fixed on hers as if she were a huge, savage dog, bracing itself to spring. Meaty breath wafted over me, prompting a spasm of nausea.

“You don’t,” I said at last. “But do you think I would have risked bringing it here, of all places, if I could have borne to part with it?”

She was silent again; I could see the eyes calculating.

“And supposing—just supposing, mind—I was to ’elp you escape, I should lose my place.”

“Not necessarily,” I replied. “You could say that I hid behind the door, dodged around you when you came in with the tray, and locked you in.”

She nodded very slightly. There was a hint of complicity in her glance.

“What are your wages here?” I asked.

“Thirty pound and my keep.”

“Two hundred pounds is nearly seven years’ wages.”

“Maybe, but why should I trust you? S’posing you do get back to London, why wouldn’t you tell the police I stole your brooch?”

“Because I have given you my word, and . . . because the police might bring me back here, before I can prove that—I am who I say I am.”

There was another calculating silence.

“And what if you get caught before you get out of ’ere? You’ll say I stole it, and then where am I?”

I had not anticipated this, either.

“If I am caught escaping, you will still be locked in here, and—if you will not trust me—you can put the brooch back before they find you.”

“Then I get nothing, ’cept a bad mark on my character.”

I thought desperately, but no answer occurred to me. I felt in my pocket with my other hand and held out the two sovereigns.

“Here,” I said as the gold caught the light, “they are yours to keep if you will only help me, whether I am caught or not.”

The glittering coins seemed to fascinate her even more than the rubies. Her little eyes fastened on them, then on the brooch, then on me, back and forth, back and forth, for a small eternity before she reached out and took first the coins, and then the jewel box.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

The floor swayed beneath my feet; I realised I had stopped breathing, and took a long breath, just in time to save myself from fainting.

“When?” I gasped.

“First thing in the morning. I’ll tell you what to do when I bring your supper.”

“But Dr. Straker is coming to see me in the morning—”

“Not till after breakfast. You’ll ’ave two hours’ start of ’im.”

“But he will wire to London; the police will be waiting for me.”

“I can’t ’elp that, can I? An’ I’m not spending the night locked in ’ere.”

“Then . . . if you want your two hundred pounds, you will have to find me another cloak to put over mine; otherwise I will certainly be caught. Anything—it does not matter how old.”

“Then I’d be ’ad for stealin’ a cloak as well. Now do you want to chance it, or not?”

“Yes,” I said, “I will chance it.”

At dawn the next morning, I was sitting on the side of the bed, shivering in my cloak and bonnet. During the worst and longest night of my life, I had vomited up everything I had eaten the day before, and I could see nothing ahead of me but an eternity of such nights. When the lock rasped and snapped, I did not even believe it would be Hodges until the door opened.

“You look like death warmed up,” she remarked, setting down the tray, “and not much of the warmth about it, neither.”

“No,” I said, “but if I should manage to escape, how shall I let you know?”

“Write to Margaret Hodges at the Railway Arms in Liskeard, to be left till called for. They’ll see I get it.”

“Thank you. Now tell me again what to do.”

“Left out the door, turn right halfway along. Unlock that door—the big key in the middle there—and leave the keys in it; you won’t need them after that. Go to the end of the passage, turn right, and keep going till you come to a landing. Go down four flights and you’re on the ground floor. There’ll be a long corridor on your left, a shorter one straight ahead. Go straight ahead—it’s the voluntary patients, so walk like you belong—and the door’s at the end on your right. It won’t be locked; the time’s gone seven. Turn right, follow the gravel path, and keep going in the same direction till you come to the gate. Anyone stops you—well, you’ll ’ave to think for yourself. Through the gate and Liskeard’s four mile to your right, but you might get a lift with a carter if you’re lucky.”

We had been through this the evening before, but it seemed impossible; I would never remember. I arranged my bonnet to hide as much of my face as possible.

“Thank you,” I said again.

“Good luck, then. Least I got me tea.”

She sat down on the bed, which creaked dangerously, took the lid off the teapot, and began to stir the leaves. When I glanced back as I drew the door shut, she did not even look up. I took out the keys and set off down the empty corridor with my footsteps echoing around me.

The next door opened inward, revealing another dark, panelled corridor, with a dim oblong of light at the far end. Hodges had said to leave the keys here, but if someone tried the door and found it unlocked, the pursuit would begin at once. I locked the door behind me, flinching at the noise, and set off with the keys still clutched in my hand, hidden beneath my cloak.

Now my footsteps sounded as loud as gunshots, no matter how carefully I walked. There were doors on both sides of me; I dared not look at them but fixed my eyes on the floorboards ahead of me. I had got perhaps two-thirds of the way along when a female figure appeared, silhouetted against the light, and began to walk briskly toward me. I kept walking, trying to keep my pace steady and my gaze low while holding myself as upright as I could.

“Morning?” said a puzzled, questioning voice as we passed each other.

“Good morning,” I murmured without raising my head.

Her footsteps slowed and stopped. I fought the impulse to run as the end of the passage approached. Five paces to go—was it left, or right? Left, left—no, right. Still no sound from behind me. I turned right, into a wider corridor, and saw another woman, in a white uniform, approaching, and beyond her, a staircase. Again I strove to keep my pace steady and my gaze low, like someone lost in thought.

There was no greeting this time, but again the footsteps faltered and stopped behind me. My heart was pounding so violently that I could not tell whether they resumed or not. I reached the head of the stairs—the treads, to my relief, were carpeted—and began to descend, sliding one hand down the banister for support with the keys still clasped in the other.

I glanced over my shoulder when I reached the half-landing. No one was following, but as I came to the floor below, I heard several sets of footsteps approaching from my right. I quickened my pace and went on down.

One more half-landing, and I could see a passage, flagged in stone this time, leading straight ahead. I stumbled down the last flight, hearing voices descending from above. There was the longer passage Hodges had mentioned, leading away to my left. And a man, a tall man in dark clothes, a dozen paces ahead of me, pausing with his hand on a doorknob, and staring in my direction.

If I took the passage on my left and waited a moment, he might go on into the room; then I could double back. But then the people on the stairs would cut me off. There was no help for it: I kept walking toward the man, feigning oblivion.

It’s the voluntary patients, so walk like you belong.

Ten paces, five, and still he did not move; I had come within three feet of him when he faced me directly and spoke.

“May I be of assistance?” A sombre, questioning voice, challenging my presence and compelling me to glance up at him. He was older than I had thought at first glimpse, tall and stooped and gaunt, with a long, haggard face, sunken eyes, and scanty grey hair swept back from his forehead. There was something vaguely familiar about him.

“Thank you, no,” I murmured, and slipped past him without breaking my stride. I heard something, a cough or an exclamation, I could not tell, and felt his gaze fixed on the back of my neck. But now the end of the passage was in sight. I could see the door, and the glow of stained glass in the fanlight above it. My legs were shaking; the flagstones swayed beneath my feet; distant voices echoed behind me, but still no one cried, “Stop her!” The handle turned in my grasp, the heavy door swung inward, and a moment later I was through, breathing damp, icy air and squinting against the light of day.

A gravel path ran along the side of the house in both directions, bordering a lawn about twenty yards wide, and beyond that, coppices of trees, their autumn colours fading above mounds of dead leaves. Through the branches to my left I caught a glimpse of ivy-covered brickwork. I set off along the path to my right, almost running now, listening for the view halloo and the crunch of pursuing footsteps, but still it did not come. Grey stone gave way to new brick; still the door behind me was in clear view, and still no one emerged. I passed beneath the branches of a copper beech, around the corner and onto a broad gravel forecourt, and there, fifty yards ahead of me, was the gatehouse, with two massive oaken gates standing open, and a wagon drawn by a pair of horses rumbling toward me.

I slowed my pace a little, feeling the great bulk of the asylum at my back and the pressure of a hundred eyes peering down at me. Now, I thought, now someone is bound to catch me. I still had the keys clutched in my left hand, but there was nowhere to drop them. The driver of the wagon, a stout, rubicund man, tipped his hat to me as he passed; I waved timidly in reply.

Twenty yards; ten; still no one in sight. From the gatehouse on my right, I caught the smell of bacon frying, and I felt a mingled pang of hunger and nausea. The wall loomed above me; I passed beneath the arch and onto a rough, stoney road. There was no other dwelling in sight, only bleak, rolling moorland, rising until it vanished into the mist. A fine rain was falling, gathering in tiny beads on the fabric of my cloak.

Liskeard’s four mile to your right. I did not see how I could possibly walk four miles. I was shaking with fear and fatigue, but I set off anyway, throwing the keys into a muddy pool. For hundreds of yards, it seemed, the road ran straight alongside the wall; every time I looked back, I could still see the gate. On the Isle of Wight, I could have covered four miles in an hour; at this plodding pace, assuming I did not collapse, it would take me nearer two. Hodges would be found long before I could reach Liskeard, and then Dr. Straker would wire—but of course he could not wire from the asylum; he would send people on horseback, perhaps even dogs, to recapture me.

At last the road began to veer away from the wall, and then to slope downward, until the top of the wall had sunk below the skyline. How far had I come? Half a mile, surely. I was beginning to believe that I might actually escape, when I heard the sound of hooves and wheels coming up over the hill behind me. There was nowhere to hide; nothing but low, tussocky grass and boggy ground; a rabbit could scarcely have concealed itself.

I glanced back fearfully, just as a pair of horses, hitched to a wagon, appeared on the skyline and began to descend toward me. It was the wagon I had seen on the forecourt; I recognised the red-faced driver. Yet he seemed in no particular hurry, and as he drew closer, I could hear him whistling.

“Mornin’ miss,” he said cheerfully as he came up beside me. “Come from the asylum, haven’t you? Not much of a day for walkin’.” He had a pleasant country accent, not unlike Bella’s. Curls of grey hair protruded from beneath a greasy billycock hat; his nose was even redder than the rest of his face.

“No,” I replied, thinking frantically, “I was expecting to be met, but the gentleman has been delayed, and I must get to Liskeard station.”

“Well, you’re in luck, miss; I’m goin’ that way myself. Jump up now; there’s a step by your foot there.”

He leant down, grasped my wrist, and lifted me onto the bench beside him. A flick of the reins and we were off, only at a walk, but at least double my previous pace. I was wondering how to account for myself when it struck me that there must be a constant flow of voluntary patients to and from the asylum; it might be best to stay close to the truth.

“Do you live in Liskeard?” I asked my rescuer.

“Bless you no, miss. George Baker is my name, and I live in Dobwalls, over that way,” he said, gesturing to his right.

“And . . . do you have children?”

“Yes, miss, three boys—fine, strapping lads they are—and two girls, both in service now, and a credit to their mother.” And with that he was safely launched, needing only occasional prompting. The air seemed even icier now that I was no longer walking. I huddled into my cloak and tried to subdue my shivering.

We had driven for perhaps twenty minutes when I heard the sound of galloping hooves coming up very fast behind us. George looked over his shoulder; I dared not lift my head but shrank lower on the seat. Seconds later, a big bay horse shot past us, with the rider, heavily cloaked and muffled, bent low over the horse’s neck; he did not even glance in our direction.

“He’s in a hurry,” was all my companion said before returning to the story of young Bart and the escaped piglets while I weighed my own chances of escape. Was the horseman on his way to the telegraph office? Or to the police, to have me arrested at the station? Would I be better to try and secure a lift to some other town, and catch a train from there? Perhaps I could change my cloak if there was a ladies’ outfitter in the town. But that would mean delay . . . and most likely the horseman had nothing to do with the asylum, or he would have stopped to make sure of me.

I was still wondering what to do when we crested a rise and a sizeable town came into view, less than a mile away.

“Not far now,” said George. “Come up, there!” He flicked the reins, and the horses broke into a trot.

A few minutes later we were rattling through the streets of Liskeard, with George pointing out various landmarks while I watched covertly for policemen. There were none to be seen, but several people greeted George as we passed, and looked curiously at me. I felt sick with apprehension, but it was a strangely fatalistic kind of fear: I would escape, or I would not, and there was nothing more I could do about it.

When at last we drew up beside a small, whitewashed booking office, still with no policeman in sight, I remembered I had only the three golden guineas.

“Thank you so much for your kindness,” I said. “I should like to give you something for your trouble, and if you will just wait until I have bought my ticket—”

“Bless you, miss; there’s no need for that. It’s a pleasure to have someone to talk to. You have a pleasant journey, now, and I’ll be on my way.”

I thanked him again and clambered stiffly down. My knees wobbled as I set foot on the pavement, which seemed to sway with the same motion as the wagon.

“Sure you’re all right, miss?”

“Yes, thank you, just a little tired.”

It struck me, as I waved goodbye to George and made my way unsteadily into the booking office, that he had not asked me a single question about myself.

The clock above the counter said twelve minutes to nine. There were two people ahead of me, and a moment later I felt someone at my back. It took all of my resolution not to glance over my shoulder. My hands were shaking so badly that I feared they would give me away. If the horseman was a coincidence, I told myself, and if the people I passed on my way had not raised the alarm—and surely I would never have passed the gate if they had—then it was quite possible that Hodges was still locked in the infirmary; she might not be found for another hour. I clasped my hands and breathed as deeply as I could.

The clock had moved on to eight minutes to nine before I came up to the counter.

“When is the next train to London?”

“Well, miss,” said the elderly official, “there’s the stopping train at six minutes past nine, or the express at eleven, but the express’ll get you there sooner. Or you can change at Plymouth, and take the London express from there.”

“When does the stopping train reach London?”

“At ten past five, miss.”

I was about to buy a first-class ticket when I remembered asking Frederic about the first-class fare; if they searched the train, that was where they would look for me. Just as they would expect me to catch the express.

“I should like a second-class ticket for the stopping train to London.”

“Thank you, miss. One pound three and six, if you please.”

He directed me to the second-class ladies’ waiting room, where I meant to stay until the last possible moment. The platform was in a deep cutting, reached by a ramp that passed directly beneath the cloakroom window. There were no policemen visible, and no one I recognised from the asylum, but if they were waiting for me, they would be standing out of sight, in the shadow of the embankment. A wave of dizziness rolled over me. I felt my knees giving way, and grasped the sill for support, just as a whistle shrilled in the distance.

“Are you all right, my dear?” said a kindly voice.

A stout, grey-haired woman was peering anxiously at me.

“I am feeling faint, but I must catch my train; I think I hear it now.”

“Come along with me, then.”

Drawing my arm through hers, she picked up a large basket and led me down the ramp and onto the platform just as the train pulled in. Through the sheltering clouds of steam, we must have looked like mother and daughter; I could not, I thought hazily, have hoped for a better disguise.

Three minutes later I was seated beside her on a hard wooden bench, watching the platform slide away behind us.

Seen through the grimy windows of a cab, London by night looked truly infernal. Gaslight flared over wet cobbles; blackened figures moved amidst the glow and smoke of braziers, sending grotesque shadows capering across the walls behind them. I had passed beyond exhaustion into a strange, febrile, hallucinatory state in which the prospect of food, bath, and bed receded endlessly before me. I had never been so cold for so long, not even on the night of the landslide, and yet every few minutes I would sink into a waking dream in which I was simultaneously basking in the warmth of a blazing fire, and jolting through the streets of Marylebone, until the lolling of my head jerked me awake again. I did not know where exactly in Marylebone I was, but in a few more minutes I would be home and safe.

Mrs. Tetworth, the second of my rescuers, had kept me company as far as Plymouth, and even fed me with pastries from her basket. After that, it had been an endless procession of stations and fitful dreams, and the grinding discomfort of the uncushioned seat. My fear of capture had diminished as the hours crawled by; I had thought of getting out at Acton and taking a cab from there, but instead I had managed to attach myself to a middle-aged couple, who saw me through the barrier at Paddington—again without a policeman in sight—and into a hansom.

And now we were turning in to Tottenham Court Road, where the press of vehicles grew even heavier, and the gaslight fell upon crowds of pedestrians hurrying through the thin rain—to me an utterly incongruous spectacle, for it felt like three o’clock in the morning—and then in to Great Russell Street, past the looming bulk of the British Museum, and at last in to Duke Street, halting by the black mouth of Gresham’s Yard.

I clambered down stiffly, paid the cabman, and waited for a moment in the shadows opposite. Lights were burning behind the curtains on the first and second floors of my uncle’s house; the time, I thought, must be approaching seven o’clock, his dinner hour. Today was Monday—no, Tuesday—so it would be curried mutton, the dish I liked least of Mrs. Eddowes’ seven, but my mouth watered at the thought of it. Two men in greatcoats went by, glancing curiously at me; I could not remain here long. A woman, muffled against the cold, came briskly up the other side of the street and turned into Gresham’s Yard, and I followed her upon instinct.

The yard was lit by a single gas lamp on the wall opposite the entrance. The woman disappeared into a narrow passage beneath the lamp: a blind alley, leading to a house whose occupants I did not know. There were lighted windows all around, but I could see no one else in the yard. Ten feet away to my left, the area below the entrance to my uncle’s house was in deep shadow.

I stumbled the last few paces, climbed the steps, and hammered on the door. As I waited, I thought something stirred in the darkness of the area below. But then came the welcome sound of hurrying footsteps and the familiar rattle of the bolt. The door swung back. Light dazzled my eyes; my mouth was already opening in greeting when I saw that the person standing there was not my uncle, or Cora, or any other maidservant.

She was myself.

For one stupefied moment, I thought that someone must have left a dressmaker’s mirror in the hall. But this was not the haggard and travel-stained reflection I ought to have seen. This was myself as I had been before those missing weeks, before the asylum, with my hair pinned up as I had pinned it a thousand times in my own mirror, wearing my favourite pale blue gown. Glittering upon her breast I saw, as a hand fell upon my shoulder and a sound like rushing water filled my ears, my dragonfly brooch, its ruby eyes glowing like tiny drops of blood.

I woke in the infirmary at Tregannon Asylum, after an interminable nightmare in which I was either freezing cold or unbearably hot, only to realise that the nightmare was, in truth, beginning again, even to the appearance of Dr. Straker in the same rumpled tweeds and dark blue tie.

“Good afternoon, Miss Ashton. I am glad to see you looking a little better; we have been quite worried about you.”

I did not attempt to reply.

“You do remember, do you not, your escape—very resourceful it was, too—and your visit to Miss Ferrars?”

I nodded slightly; there seemed no point in denying it.

“I am glad to hear it. I knew, as soon as I found Hodges locked in here, that you must have bribed her. I gave her the choice of confessing at once, or risking a long prison sentence: she gave up the brooch, and I dismissed her on the spot. Of course, you were well on your way by then, but we came up by the express—I had only to imagine what I would have done in your place to anticipate your every movement—which gave me just enough time to return Miss Ferrars’ brooch and persuade her to cooperate. She is still, I am afraid, very angry about the theft of her writing case, but she agreed to open the door to you when I told her it might be essential to your recovery.”

He paused, studying my face.

“Do you remember anything more, of those weeks before you arrived here?”

I shook my head faintly.

“And before that? Are your memories—as they appear to you—any different? Any less distinct? No? I feared as much. But at least you have seen with your own eyes, Miss Ashton, that you are not, and cannot be, Georgina Ferrars. Our task now is to persuade your mind to accept that. Sooner or later, the past you think you recall will begin to fade, and then to disintegrate, and your actual memories will return. By then I hope to have retraced the steps that led you to Gresham’s Yard in the first place. Once we know where you came from, we will be able to reunite you with the past—and the people—you have lost. So do not despair, Miss Ashton; we shall not fail you.”

He motioned me to be silent, and left without a backward glance.

The fever returned that night, and for days, perhaps weeks—I lost all track of time—I burned, or shivered, or lay in a drugged stupor, through which an endless procession of faces came and went. Some no doubt were real; others, like Aunt Vida’s—or Hodges’—could only be hallucinations, but all seemed equally phantasmal. I would wake from dreams so terrible that it was a relief to find myself back in the infirmary, until I remembered why I was there, and then the waking nightmare would begin again. And yet a small part of my mind—my last and only refuge—went on insisting that it was all a dream: that if I could only endure for long enough, I was bound to wake in my bed at Gresham’s Yard, and find that no such place as Tregannon Asylum had ever existed.

I clung to this thread until the day that Dr. Straker pronounced me well enough to be moved to the women’s ward. Two sturdy female attendants half led, half carried me along a series of gloomy, windowless passages, panelled with worm-eaten oak and smelling of damp fabric, ancient timber, and stale tobacco smoke. All was quiet, except for the steady tramp of the attendant’s feet.

We stopped at last in front of a massive wooden door, which they proceeded to unlock, and passed through onto a bare wooden landing, with another female attendant seated at the entrance to a long, empty corridor. On my right was a staircase, with a narrow window running the full height of the wall; the sky beyond was already darkening. A tall, emaciated woman, dressed in mourning, was slowly ascending the stairs. I thought at first glimpse that she must be very old, but as she dragged herself a step higher, I saw that she was still quite youthful. As the lock snapped home behind me, I realised that she was one of the inmates.

We continued on past a series of closed doors, each with the inmate’s name, made up of gold-painted letters on dark wooden squares, arranged in a slot above the observation panel: MISS PARTRIDGE, MRS. WARE, MISS LEWES, MRS. HAWKSLEY, MISS TRAHERNE, and last of all, MISS ASHTON. When I saw those words, the last of my courage failed me, and if the attendants had not taken me by the arms, I should have fallen to my knees. They propelled me, not unkindly, through the door and into a room very like the one I had occupied in the infirmary. I sank down upon the bed, dimly aware that my belongings—or rather Lucy Ashton’s belongings—had arrived before me.

An indefinite time later, I felt a hand upon my shoulder. A large, grey-haired woman in a dark blue dress loomed over me. Her face, the colour and texture of risen dough, was jowled like a man’s. Eyes of the same steely shade as her hair regarded me sternly.

“Now then, Miss Ashton, you must pull yourself together. Dinner is at six thirty, and you will want to make yourself presentable.”

She spoke like a grand lady admonishing a recalcitrant child. I sat up, dabbing at my swollen eyes, and stared at her in disbelief.

“I am Mrs. Pearce, matron of Women’s Ward B. We must begin as we mean to go on.”

“Then . . . I am not to be confined to this room?”

“Certainly not, Miss Ashton. As I am sure Dr. Straker has explained to you, Tregannon House is run on the system of moral therapy: you will find no manacles on my ward. Here, Miss Ashton, you will be given every encouragement to participate in your own cure. In your case, you are suffering from a delusion regarding your identity. But you will learn, with our assistance, to overcome it. So long as you obey the doctors, keep yourself occupied, and join in the society of your fellow patients, your cure can only be a matter of time.”

“And if I do not?” The words slipped out before I could stop them.

“Then your cure will take longer; that is all. There are some unfortunate souls in our care, who must be closely confined for their own safety, but I am sure you do not wish to be one of them. Especially not when Dr. Straker has taken a personal interest in your case; so much so that you are here, he informs me, as our guest.

“And now I must leave you. When you hear the gong for dinner, make your way along the corridor and down the staircase: the attendant will direct you. In the meantime, I shall send someone to help you dress.”

I wanted to shout, I have been robbed of everything, even my name, but I saw in that calm, implacable face the utter futility of protest.

On Women’s Ward B, there was no shrieking, no rattling of chains, no caged lunatics gnashing their teeth and rolling in their own filth, and no brutality: none, at least, that I saw. The attendants were mostly kind, and at worst indifferent; Hodges, or so I came to believe, must have been summoned from some darker realm. Yet it was, in every sense, a place of torment. I could not pass along our corridor without hearing the sound of muffled weeping from behind at least one door, and sometimes a dull, regular thud, thud, thud, as of a woman banging her head endlessly against a wall.

My window, again secured by vertical metal bars, overlooked a flagged courtyard, flanked on two sides by outbuildings. I could watch carts and carriages come and go, until the spectacle became too painful. Besides a metal bedstead, it was furnished with a soft chair, a small desk, an upright chair, a washstand, chest and closet. Heating was by way of a device I had never seen before, made of coiled metal tubing and fed with hot water from a boiler somewhere in the depths of the building. It took away the worst of the chill, but I was always cold. At night the gurgling of the water accompanied my anguished thoughts. We were not allowed matches, or any sort of naked flame: the light, as in the infirmary, came from oil lamps enclosed in stout metal grilles. You could extinguish your light by turning a little brass wheel, but only an attendant could light it again. All lights were extinguished at ten, and were not lit again until seven thirty the next morning.

Dr. Straker came to see me once or twice a week, always to ask if I had remembered anything more, and to assure me that it could only be a matter of time before he discovered my true identity. Whether I wept or raged or pleaded, or remained sullenly mute, his manner was always calm, courteous, unruffled; even the seemingly careless fashion in which he knotted his tie scarcely varied. I knew dimly that my only hope of escape would lie in accepting whatever character he chose to confer upon me—but what would I be escaping to?

The idea that I had seen Georgina Ferrars at Gresham’s Yard was at once inescapable—Dr. Straker had met and talked to her—and utterly beyond my comprehension. No matter how I racked my brains, there seemed to be only two possibilities. Either I was mad, as Dr. Straker believed, or the woman in London, whoever she might be, had stolen my name, my uncle, my brooch—and presumably, by now, the two hundred pounds my mother had left me. Perhaps she intended to push Uncle Josiah down the stairs, and flee with the proceeds as soon as his will was proven. It seemed an extraordinary risk to run for the sake of a few hundred pounds, but as an act of vengeance, for some crime I had never heard of, it might have been diabolically appropriate.

And according to Dr. Straker, she had been at Gresham’s Yard for three of those missing weeks. Was that why I could not remember anything? Again and again I tried to pick up the thread, to move forward, step by step, from those last monotonous days in my uncle’s shop, but it was like stepping into a fog-bank, expecting every time to meet my double, only for the fog to lift an instant later in the infirmary at Tregannon Asylum.

If Dr. Straker was right, it could only be a matter of time before my mind—or what I believed to be my mind—began to disintegrate. Imagining that, I would be seized by a trembling that I could not control, sometimes for hours on end. I had read, often enough, of the tortures of the damned, and had tried to imagine them continuing forever, just as I had tried and failed to imagine the joys of heaven. In the darkness of those interminable nights, it was all too easy to believe that I had died without knowing it; died, and been condemned to a hell in which even my present torment would seem like a paradise compared to what awaited me. Yet much of the day was occupied by the routine of the asylum, which I absorbed, little by little, through a fog of misery and dread.

Between seven thirty and six, the door to the landing stood open, and we could descend to the ground floor, on which were a library, a women’s sitting room, a men’s sitting room, a dining room and a chapel. The men’s ward must have been a mirror image of ours; the men descended by a corresponding staircase at the other end of the wing. Patients were not allowed in one another’s rooms; if you wished to converse with anyone, you had to do so downstairs. Just beyond the foot of the women’s staircase was an outer door leading to an enclosed garden, the one I had seen from the infirmary window, where we were exhorted to walk whenever the weather allowed.

As the days grew even shorter and colder, many of the inmates preferred to remain indoors, and had to be chivvied by the attendants into taking a turn in the garden—if so desolate a place deserved the name—whereas I found some relief in movement, and would put on my cloak and tramp round and round for an hour or more unless it was pouring with rain. Sometimes I would look up at the row of barred windows on the second floor; mine, I thought, had been the third from the right, and four windows farther along—though I tried not to think of it—was the sitting room where I had foolishly put my trust in Frederic Mordaunt. The ground-floor windows were barred as well, but those on the first floor were not, and I would often see faces looking down from them; I wondered if this was where the doctors, or the attendants, had their quarters.

The brick walls that made up the other three sides looked even higher from below. Though they were kept clear of ivy, the mortar had crumbled a little, and it seemed to me that a strong and athletic person, not encumbered by skirts or petticoats, might be able to scramble up where the walls met at a right angle. But the alarm would be raised long before they could reach the top; and even if they got over, they would be instantly pursued. There was a massive wooden door at the far corner of the outer wall, but it was so overgrown that it had obviously not been opened for years. Apart from a scattering of white flowers, the only plants that seemed to be thriving were all of the darkest and most dismal shades of green.

Idleness was strongly discouraged. Those who were agitated were exhorted to knit or embroider: there was basket-weaving or raffia work for those who could not be trusted with a needle. When I could not walk in the garden, I read, or pretended to read, so as to avoid being pressed to play cards or backgammon. In summer, or so I was told, patients who had made good progress were allowed, under strict supervision, to walk around other parts of the estate. All of this, according to Mrs. Pearce, was part of the system of moral therapy. To me it resembled a form of religious persuasion in which, though all the talk was of salvation, the prospect of hell was far more immediate, in realms far more confined, housing dozens or hundreds more inmates whom I never saw.

We were required, too, to take all our meals in the dining room downstairs unless the doctors considered us too ill to attend. Male and female patients dined together. There were several tables of various sizes; Mrs. Pearce and at least one of the doctors (who all seemed to be bachelors, living on the premises) would preside at luncheon or dinner. At one of the tables, the faces changed from day to day; later I learnt that these were patients from the more restricted wards, brought in to show them the freedom to which they might aspire if they progressed. Conversation was encouraged, but meals were sombre affairs at best. If it had not been for the company, you might have imagined yourself in some genteel boarding-house.

Dr. Straker assigned me to a place at the middle table, between a Mr. Wingrave, who talked continuously, and a Miss Traherne, who never spoke. Miss Traherne, a tall, emaciated woman with a corpse-white face and lank, mousey hair, would sit, radiating misery, staring at the uneaten contents of her plate until one of the attendants reminded her to take a mouthful. Even the seating formed part of the system of moral therapy: Mr. Wingrave was an example of a man possessed by a delusion he refused to relinquish, and therefore condemned to live out his days at Tregannon Asylum; Miss Traherne was a terrible warning of the fate awaiting those who succumbed to despair.

In Mr. Wingrave, I thought at first that I had found an ally, for he looked and sounded entirely sane, and seemed to know exactly what was wrong with our fellow diners. But then he confided to me that society was controlled by a race of invisible beings called the Overseers; he knew this because he alone could hear their voices. He appeared to be resigned to his fate; the Overseers, he said, had compelled Dr. Straker to certify him, so as to ensure that no one outside Tregannon Asylum would ever discover their existence. You could tell when an Overseer had taken command of someone’s mind because of the look in their eyes, a distinctive glassy stare that he had learnt to recognise. After everything that had befallen me, it sounded all too plausible, except that Dr. Straker was surely the god of our underworld; the attendants, his familiar spirits.

Others at the middle table included a Miss Partridge, small, elderly, very gracious in manner, and possessed by the unshakable conviction that she was the Queen’s younger sister. She had been confined by her own children, to spare them embarrassment, I could only suppose, since she seemed entirely harmless. There was Mrs. Hawksley, wild-eyed, very tense and jerky in her movements, glaring at anyone who approached her. There was Miss Smythe, a small birdlike lady in middle age, who shook her head unceasingly, even when she was eating; sometimes slowly, sometimes in a seeming frenzy of denial. There was the Reverend Mr. Carfax, distinguished-looking, immaculately turned out, who would arrange his cutlery with mathematical precision and then sit brushing invisible specks of dust from the sleeve of his coat; and Mr. Stanton, gaunt, grey-headed, with haunted eyes and a permanent expression of dread. There was Miss Lewes, a stout woman in the grip of religious mania, listening to inaudible voices and arguing sotto voce with them; and others whose names I never learnt, like the immensely tall and thin man who moved like some strange wading bird, pausing before each step with his foot poised above the ground, his face set in a look of utter desolation.

Some weeks after my arrival in the women’s ward, I was standing by the library window, which, like that of my room above, looked out upon the stable yard. It had rained earlier that morning, and water was still dripping from the eaves of the stable building opposite. A wagon drawn by a pair of horses rumbled into view, and I saw that the driver was George Baker. He pulled up on the gravel nearby, and was warmly greeted by two stable hands who came out to help him unload. If only, I thought, I had gone anywhere but Gresham’s Yard that night; I could have got out at Plymouth and begged shelter from the woman who had helped me at the station. Tears sprang to my eyes; I bit my lip and pressed my face against the bars to prevent anyone from noticing.

“Miss Ashton.” Frederic Mordaunt’s voice, low and hesitant, spoke almost at my ear. I had time to register, as I turned to face him, that he looked flushed, and ill, and wretchedly unhappy.

Then I heard myself say, with cold, bitter contempt, “You broke your word. You betrayed my trust. You should be ashamed to call yourself a gentleman.”

Every vestige of colour drained from his face. I heard a gasp from somewhere in the room. His lips parted, but my feet had carried me past him before he could utter a sound. Watching from the doorway, with his habitual air of ironic detachment, was Dr. Straker. A moment later, he slipped away, and by the time I emerged into the corridor, trembling from the reaction, he was nowhere to be seen.

As the winter closed in, I felt myself sinking further and further into a dull, listless apathy. At times I still raged against my confinement, but I could no longer sustain the pitch of emotion that had helped me to endure those first terrible weeks. I had often rejected sedatives; now I was taking every draught that was offered and dozing even during the few short hours of daylight. Christmas came and went in a ghastly pretence of celebration, and after that the weather was too cold and wet—or so I listlessly told myself—to walk in the garden. Separated from anyone who cared for me, from anyone who could even recognise me, I came to realise that my life, which had seemed so unshakably real, consisted only of memories, which, according to Dr. Straker, did not even belong to me. There were times when I actually strove to remember something of Lucy Ashton’s past, but nothing would come. Even more fearful than the prospect that I might wake up one morning as Lucy Ashton, a stranger in my own body, was the feeling that I was becoming no one at all: not even a stranger, but a ghost in a body that no longer belonged to anyone.

On a still, clear afternoon, late in March, I set foot in the garden for the first time in months, wrapped in my cloak and moving much more slowly than before. Within the shadow of the building, the air was chill and damp, but sunlight was falling upon a bench in the far corner, and after a couple of turns around the path I sat down to rest. The warmth of the sun on my face seemed to release something within me, and I began to weep, not hysterically, as I had so often, but quietly, naturally, the salt tears welling up and overflowing through my fingers, until I became aware of someone hovering nearby. I looked up and saw that it was Frederic Mordaunt, looking even thinner and more wretched than when I had seen him last, and regarding me with evident distress.

“Please allow me to speak,” he said. “I do not seek—or deserve—your forgiveness, but I have something to say to you.”

He stood before me like a prisoner awaiting sentence, twisting his hat in his hands.

“If you insist on speaking, sir, I cannot prevent you.”

He flinched at “sir,” but stood his ground.

“I ask only that you hear me out.”

If he had called me Miss Ashton, I would have turned my back on him.

“Very well, sir; I will listen. You may as well sit down,” I added, moving to one end of the bench and indicating the other. I did not want him standing over me.

“Thank you. When Dr. Straker returned that Sunday night, after we . . . well, when he told me that he had met Georgina Ferrars in London, I did not at first believe him. But when I learnt that the maidservant, as well as Josiah Ferrars, had been present, and still more when I heard the story of Lucia Ardent, and how she had left Gresham’s Yard two days before you arrived here, I had no choice but to believe him. And yet my heart rebelled; it simply did not square with—with everything I knew of you. I could not see how you could be—so deluded, and yet seem so entirely sane.

“He replied—I’m sure he has said this to you—that the reason you are so certain you are Georgina Ferrars is because the personality you have assumed is all that you experience, so that you are utterly sincere in your belief. But I was still deeply troubled; I even put it to him that the woman he had met in London was Lucia Ardent, and that she had somehow tricked you into coming here.”

“And what did he say to that?”

“He looked at me pityingly and said that it was the first thing that had occurred to him. And that he had spoken privately to the maid, who had assured him that Miss Ferrars had been at Gresham’s Yard throughout the time that—that you and I were conversing here. And—that I had allowed my emotions to get the better of my judgement.”

He was speaking with his eyes fixed on the gravel at his feet, his hands clasped so tightly that the knuckles had turned white.

“I told him,” he continued, “that I had assured you, on my word of honour, that you could leave whenever you chose, and that I was bound to see you the following morning, as I had promised.

“At that, he grew angry. He said I had allowed myself to succumb to a foolish infatuation for a woman who was dangerously ill, and imperilled your sanity by encouraging your delusion that you were Georgina Ferrars; and that your eventual recovery, perhaps even your life, depended upon my not seeing you.

“It ended with his ordering me to keep away from you. I felt I had to obey; your health was at stake, and—I doubted my own motives.”

“And why are you telling me this now, after all these months?” I asked bitterly. “Has your conscience been troubling you?”

“I tried to speak to you before, in the library, but you did not want to . . . and Dr. Straker rebuked me for distressing you; and after that I was ill, though that is of no consequence. The thing is—the reason I am here . . .”

I had not wanted to show him any emotion beyond contempt, but his hangdog air provoked me beyond endurance.

“And why should you imagine, sir, that your feelings are of the slightest interest to me? You deceived me; you betrayed me; it is because of your treachery that I am a prisoner here, and will probably die here; and you think I should care for your excuses? You say you are heir to this place; if you are not lying about that as well, it is your duty as a gentleman to order Dr. Straker to release me at once, as you promised he would.”

His reaction was not what I expected. He took a deep breath, lifted his head, and met my gaze for the first time.

“Believe me, Miss Ashton—you disown the name, but I must call you something—if I did not know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are not Georgina Ferrars, you would have been released long before this. But I would rather see you here than in the county asylum, or in prison, and they are the only alternatives. If we released you now, you would go straight to Gresham’s Yard—would you not?—and Miss Ferrars would have you arrested.”

“And suppose your master is—” I wanted to say lying, but my nerve failed me. “Suppose he is mistaken, and she is the imposter?”

“I fear that is impossible. Dr. Straker would never have certified you if he had the slightest shadow of a doubt: he would be risking his reputation, even his livelihood. And if I were to order him, as you put it, to lift the certificate, he would ignore me. He is the superintendent, and his word, in every sense, is law.”

“If his word is law, sir,” I said, clinging to my anger, “and he has forbidden you to speak to me, are you not afraid of another rebuke?”

“Well, no,” he said uncomfortably, “he seems to have changed his mind. He said to me the other day that since you seem disinclined to trust him, it might help you to see that I agree that you cannot be Miss Ferrars. I said I would only attempt to speak to you if I could be the bearer of good tidings as well as . . . Well, at any rate, he agreed.”

“Do you mean—to release me after all?”

“No, I’m afraid not—not yet, that is. But when Dr. Straker discovers your true identity, it may turn out that you have no money of your own, and—I wanted to assure you that when you are released, you will be provided for.”

“By whom?” I asked.

“Well . . . by me,” he murmured, addressing the gravel at his feet.

“And why, sir, would you wish to provide for a lunatic who does not even know her own name?”

“Because I gave you my word, and because . . . I care about what becomes of you, regardless of your name,” he added, in a voice so low that the words were barely audible.

Again I saw myself standing beside him at the sitting-room window above, looking down upon the bench where we now sat, and saying, “Yours is a loving spirit; it should not die with you.” Was it possible that he was in love with me, a haggard and desperate madwoman, as he must see me—as perhaps I was? The thought was swept aside by another wave of indignation.

“Your word, sir, is worthless; I am here because you broke it, and I would sooner starve than accept a farthing of your money.”

“I feared as much,” he said, rising to his feet. “I meant what I said: I do not hope for your forgiveness. I will trouble you no more, but I will not see you starve, however much you despise me.”

He made me a miserable sketch of a bow, and walked away without looking back.

I remained on the bench, shaking with emotion and realising, as my anger subsided, how foolishly I had behaved. Extraordinary as it seemed, he evidently felt something for me, and I ought to have kept my temper and played upon that feeling, instead of driving him away. I rose, shivering, and was walking toward the building when I became aware of a face peering down at me from the end window on the first floor: a large, flat, porcine face that contorted in alarm as our eyes met, and turned quickly away.

If it had not been for her reaction, I would have assumed it was simply a woman who looked remarkably like Hodges. But the flash of recognition had been unmistakable.

I remained staring up at the window until it struck me that there might be an advantage in pretending that I had not recognised her. I lowered my gaze, shook my head as if in disbelief, and set off at a slow, mechanical pace, keeping my eyes fixed on the path, continuing on up the stairs in the same abstracted fashion, and along the corridor to my room, where I closed the observation slide and sank down upon the bed, struggling to comprehend what I had seen.

If she really had taken a bribe, and helped a patient to escape, Hodges could not possibly have been reinstated. I remembered the attendants I had passed on my way out, all turning to look at me, but none of them raising the alarm; the asylum gate standing conveniently open, with the gatekeeper nowhere to be seen; George Baker appearing so fortuitously on the road; and Dr. Straker waiting for me in Gresham’s Yard.

They had meant me to escape, or rather, to believe I was escaping. I had been led, every step of the way. Everyone—Hodges, the attendants, George Baker, perhaps even the motherly woman with the basket in Liskeard station, and, unwittingly, I myself—had played the parts assigned to them. In a play designed to convince me that I had met the real Georgina Ferrars in Gresham’s Yard. Just as Gadd, the monomaniac, had been brought face to face with the man he believed to be Gladstone.

I remembered Frederic saying that if they hadn’t found an attendant to impersonate Gladstone, Dr. Straker would have engaged an actor.

The woman in Gresham’s Yard had been an actress. She could have spent hours studying me through the observation slot in the infirmary.

A faint sound from the passage had me glancing fearfully at the slide. Had it moved a fraction? I dared not go close enough to check. Instead, I walked over to the window, where at least no one could see my face, and stood looking down into the darkening yard where the stable hands had greeted George Baker with such familiarity.

Had George Baker brought me here in the first place? I had woken from the seizure on a Thursday, so I must have arrived on a Wednesday . . .

But that was no more likely to be true than the story of Lucia Ardent.

I had been told so often, and by so many people, that I had arrived here as Lucy Ashton, voluntary patient from Plymouth, that I had come to picture it scene by scene: being admitted by Frederic; wandering restlessly about the grounds in the afternoon; being found, unconscious, early the following morning.

Dr. Straker had said that Lucy Ashton was “a disturbing choice of alias for a troubled young woman presenting herself for treatment at a private asylum.” Perhaps it was meant to be disturbing; perhaps he had chosen it himself.

Just as he had chosen to tell me that I had suffered a seizure. I might have been lying in a drugged stupor for weeks, not days, before I woke in the infirmary.

The more I thought about it, the more certain I felt that it was all Dr. Straker’s invention.

In which case Frederic had deceived me—about everything. That shy, earnest, sensitive demeanor; those heartfelt tears; perhaps it had all been an act. Perhaps he already had a wife, or a mistress, or both. He had even told me the story of Isaiah Gadd, confident that I was far too naïve to see the application to myself. Remembering how easily he had won my heart, I blushed with shame and mortification.

And if Bella, who had seemed so childlike and innocent—if she, too, had been deceiving me on Dr. Straker’s orders, then I could trust nothing beyond the evidence of my own eyes. And perhaps not even that.

I found that I was gripping the windowsill as tightly as I had clutched at the gorse on the cliff-face, staring into the abyss.

Everything they had done had been aimed at driving me out of my mind, in the most literal sense, by confronting me with irrefutable proof that I was not myself.

But why? Dr. Straker, at least, was risking disgrace and imprisonment. Supposing I had gone to Liskeard police station, instead of straight to Gresham’s Yard, and the police had believed me? Supposing my uncle had appeared at the wrong moment? Dr. Straker knew that I had very little money, and no expectations. Why choose a perfectly sane young woman when he had a whole asylum full of lunatics at his disposal? There was nothing at all unusual or interesting about me.

Only that, except for a half-blind uncle, no one would care, or even know, if I vanished from the world.

I remembered Frederic saying—again, supremely confident that I would miss the implication—that one of Dr. Straker’s interests was grafting fruit trees.

They had chosen me for an experiment.

Which was why I had received no treatment. Dr. Straker was waiting patiently for my mind to disintegrate, while he combed the records of missing persons for another young, friendless woman who had vanished from the world—a woman whose lost soul he intended to resurrect in my body.

And after that? He could not afford to release me—assuming he intended to let me go at all—until he was absolutely certain that every last trace of Georgina Ferrars had been expunged from my consciousness. For a man of his powers, it would be easy to arrange apparent proof that the real Georgina Ferrars was already dead: a mangled corpse fished out of the Thames, dressed in my clothes and wearing my brooch.

The experiment might end with my being hanged for murdering myself.

Each morning after breakfast, Mrs. Pearce would read out the names of patients whom the doctors wished to see, and tell them to return to their rooms and wait. I had not seen Dr. Straker for several days, but when my name was called the following morning, I felt as if the blood had drained from my body. It was all I could do to climb the stairs without fainting.

The wait, I knew, might be anything from five minutes to an hour or more. Telling myself that I must not show fear only made my trembling worse; I knew, too, that I would not be able to look at him without horror and loathing. Even if Hodges had not confessed, he would sense that something was wrong; and then he would press and press until he found out.

I could pretend to be ill, but when he found that I had no fever, he would know that I was pretending, and that would make me fear him even more. No; I would have to admit that I was afraid—as I had been, often enough, before—but somehow conceal that I was now mortally afraid of him. I sat down on the upright chair, with my back to the window, trying to decide what I should say.

When I heard his footsteps approaching, I buried my face in my hands and began to sob, which was easy enough to do in earnest, and when the door opened, I did not even look up.

“Good morning, Miss Ashton. I am sorry to see you distressed.”

I drew a long, sobbing breath and slowly raised my head. His tone, as ever, was calm and courteous, but the gleam in his eyes, which I had once taken for amusement, now seemed as cold as ice.

“It should not surprise you, sir,” I said. “I am a prisoner here; I will die here; there is no hope for me.”

“Come now, Miss Ashton; any day now, we are bound to discover your identity.”

“You have been saying that for months, sir—an eternity of torment—and nothing has changed.”

“Believe me, Miss Ashton; I understand how hard it must be. Allow me to take your pulse.”

I could not repress a shudder as his fingers touched my wrist.

“I beg your pardon; it is a cold morning, and my hand is doubtless cold as well.”

His solicitude was like that of a slaughterman, scratching a lamb’s head affectionately as he prepares to cut its throat. He was going to tear my soul out of my body, but in as humane and enlightened a fashion as the demands of his experiment allowed, sincerely regretting any distress I might suffer in the process. I wished I could stop my hand from trembling.

“Hmm . . . a little fast, but then you are agitated this morning. Tell me, is there any reason—any specific reason, I mean—for your agitation? Have you remembered anything of those weeks before you arrived here?”

“No, sir, I have not.” The fear in my voice was all too genuine.

“A pity. I had a note from Miss Ferrars only the other day, asking whether we had found her writing case. She is still threatening to press charges against you. Of course, you are perfectly safe so long as you are with us, but if you could only remember where you hid it, that would be one less obstacle in the way of your release.”

“I do not understand you, sir,” I said dully, dabbing at my eyes to conceal my face.

“Well, Miss Ashton, it would be unfortunate if we discharged you as cured, only to see you arrested at the gate.”

“How can I ever be discharged, sir, when I have no home, no money, and no name?”

“But you will have a name . . . Are you saying that you no longer believe you are Georgina Ferrars?”

My sob of terror was quite involuntary; I clutched my handkerchief and prayed he would take it for distress.

“I do not know what I believe, sir. My reason says I cannot be, but my memory says . . . that if I am not Georgina Ferrars, I am no one.”

“Interesting,” he said. “And encouraging, though I know you cannot see it. Try to have faith, Miss Ashton; it will not be long now.”

The words echoed like a warning bell as the door closed behind him.

It rained all of that day, but the following afternoon I was back in the garden, walking slowly around the perimeter until weariness overtook me, and I sat down on the bench to rest in the pale sunlight.

What had Dr. Straker said about my writing case? “If you could remember where you hid it . . .” It was surely not in his interest that I should recall anything of that time; yet he kept on pressing me to remember what I had done with it. What if it was not in his possession? Might there be something in it that he wanted—or feared?

Of course: the journal I had presumably kept throughout those missing weeks. I had told Frederic all about Aunt Vida’s gift, and how she had encouraged me to keep a record of every day’s events, no matter how trivial.

If I had brought my brooch here—assuming I had not been kidnapped—I would have brought my writing case as well.

But the key had not been round my neck when I woke in the infirmary.

A dark figure emerged from the shadows at the far end of the garden and began to walk toward me. I saw with a jolt of alarm that it was Frederic Mordaunt, looking as woebegone as ever. Which was all the more reason to fear him, especially as Dr. Straker was doubtless watching from one of the windows above.

“Miss Ashton, I know I promised not to trouble you again, but I have come to tell you that I have persuaded Dr. Straker to move you back to the voluntary wing.”

I stared at him for several seconds, mute with astonishment. It could only be a trap, but what sort of a trap?

“You had better sit down,” I said, indicating the place on my right, so that I would be facing away from the windows.

“Thank you. I’m afraid there are conditions. He refuses to lift the certificate; and you must take all your meals in the closed ward, as at present. But you will have your old room back—the room you were in before the seizure, I mean—and be free, during the day, to walk anywhere in the grounds, so long as you do not try to escape again, which I beg you not to attempt, for your own sake. You will be closely watched; he insists upon it; and if you so much as pass the gate, he will wash his hands of you, and have you transferred to the county asylum as incurably insane.”

I had no need to feign bewilderment. Why would they move me to a room I had probably never occupied, and give me the freedom of the grounds? Did they want me to try to escape again?

“Why has Dr. Straker agreed to this?” I said at last.

“Because I insisted upon it. I took to heart what you said to me—about my being the heir, and my duty as a gentleman. I have never crossed him before—I have never had occasion to—but after I saw you the other day . . . Well, I reminded him of his own guiding principle, which is never to cause a patient unnecessary pain. I put it to him that after several months’ confinement, we had inflicted nothing but torment upon you, and were no closer to solving the mystery of your identity. And that the best chance of restoring your memory was to enlist Miss Ferrars’ cooperation by any means necessary, and bring you face to face—so that you could speak to each other, I mean. He said that she would never agree to this unless we could recover her writing case; I said that her best chance of recovering it was to meet you, in as tranquil a setting as we could provide, and that if that failed, I would compensate her for the loss.

“He replied that on the contrary, seeing Miss Ferrars again would cause you such agitation that you might well suffer another seizure—a fatal one this time. He is a physician; I am not: I could not argue with that. But I insisted we do something for you. It ended with his agreeing, most reluctantly, to move you back to the voluntary wing, on the conditions I have described. He says that if any harm comes to you because of this, it will be upon my head.”

He spoke with what I would have sworn was heartfelt emotion.

“But why did he not mention this himself, when he saw me yesterday?”

“I did not speak to him until this morning, and then—he agreed that I might tell you.”

“If you had kept your promise, sir, I would not be here now. But I thank you for what you have done. When may I expect to be moved?”

“As soon as you wish. In fact, if you are willing to accompany me, I can escort you there now.”

I rose, a little unsteadily. He offered me his arm, and blushed when I did not take it. Could he really make himself blush on cue? Was he Dr. Straker’s accomplice or his dupe? In either case, I could not afford to trust him.

“If you will lead the way, sir, I will follow,” I said.

He bowed with every appearance of mortification and set off toward the house. I could not help glancing up at the windows; there was a pale blur behind one of them which might have been a face.

He led me back to the entrance, and across the hall to a door through which I had seen Mrs. Pearce come and go. An attendant unlocked it as he approached, and we passed along a dim, echoing corridor, emerging beside a staircase I recognised: this was where, during my escape, I had seen the tall, grey-haired man who had reminded me of someone—of Frederic, in fact. Edmund Mordaunt had been watching me.

“Miss Ashton?”

He was indicating the stairs; I wondered, as I followed him upward, whether I had misunderstood him, and they were moving me back to the infirmary. But from the first-floor landing he led me along another passage, very like that in the women’s ward, except that there were no names on the doors, until we came to one with MISS ASHTON spelt out in the familiar gilt letters.

“I will leave you here,” he said reluctantly, with a look—or so, again, I would have sworn—of hopeless yearning. “If you simply retrace your steps at mealtimes, the attendant will let you through.”

He opened the door for me, bowed, and departed, and there was Bella, calmly putting away the last of my things.

“Very pleased to see you again, Miss Ashton, I’m sure. Will there be anything else?”

Her smooth, childish face now seemed a mask of deceit.

“No, thank you, Bella.”

She bobbed her head and withdrew, leaving me to my new surroundings.

The room, papered in a blue floral print, which, though faded, was distinctly more cheerful, was furnished in much the same fashion as the one in the infirmary, with a small oak chest beside the wardrobe and a writing table by the window. The paved courtyard below was enclosed by the other three sides of the building, with row after row of windows overlooking mine; I was glad to see that there were curtains. Four metal bars were set into the stonework, but outside the glass, making it seem less like a prison cell. The door had no observation slot; there was even a flimsy bolt for privacy, but no key in the lock.

I had not removed my cloak, and since there was still plenty of daylight left, I decided to test my newly acquired freedom at once to see if I really would be allowed out into the grounds. Two fashionably dressed women—visitors? voluntary patients? spies?—were conversing at the foot of the staircase; they glanced at me curiously but did not speak. My heart beat faster as I approached the door, but no one leapt from the shadows to seize me, and a moment later I was standing on the gravel path.

To my left was dense woodland, extending westward to the boundary wall, which looked at least a hundred yards off. A pale sun was sinking toward the treetops. Ahead and to my right, men were working in a patchwork of fields. Cattle grazed beneath the wall, which ran in a great curve round to the north and east, in the direction of the entrance. But for the great bulk of the asylum at my back, I might have been standing in the fields near Brighstone Forest, where my aunt and I had sometimes walked.

I turned right, as I had done before, and followed the path toward the gate. Freedom seemed tantalizingly close; my heart was thumping and my mouth was very dry as I passed beneath the branches of the copper beech, now coming into bud, and onto the forecourt.

The gates were closed. Further proof, if any was needed, that my escape had been contrived. I should have realised that no lunatic asylum would ever leave its main entrance open and unguarded.

You will be closely watched. Imagining Dr. Straker’s cool, sardonic gaze fixed upon me from above, I fought down a wave of panic and kept on walking around to the right, across the entrance to the stable yard, and round behind the stable buildings, out of sight of the house.

On this side of the estate, the ground sloped up toward the outer wall, which looked even farther away. To the east were open fields and meadows; to the south, more woodland. I came around the back of the stables into a large kitchen garden, bounded on my right by a very high brick wall. An hour earlier, I had been sitting on the other side of it. Two kitchenmaids were pulling up carrots from a bed nearby; they glanced at me curiously, but without any sign of alarm.

I went on through the opening at the far end. Red brick gave way to the grey stone of the middle wing; ahead of me loomed a squat, rectangular tower, built of much older stone, so dark and pitted it was almost black. The windows on the upper levels were no more than vertical slots; the ones on the ground level had been bricked up altogether, along with the doorway.

As I came closer, I saw that the tower was part of a long, rambling building made of the same blackened stone, plainly the original house. It stood about twenty paces from the main building; the two were connected by a flagged path, roofed in stone like a cloister. No smoke rose from any of the chimneys; the flagstones were strewn with rotting leaves, and weeds had grown up through the surrounding gravel.

The walls of the two buildings, the grey and the black, seemed to lean toward each other, forming a lopsided chasm. If I walked to the far end, and turned right, I should be back where I started. High above me, the uppermost windows caught the rays of the sinking sun, but the ground where I stood was already in shadow. You were found unconscious on the path . . . Was this where I had suffered the seizure? What had I been doing here, in the middle of the night? And what had caused it? Something I had seen? Or heard?

My feet began to move of their own accord, faster and faster until I was running over the gravel, around the last corner to the door from which I had set out, along the hall—which seemed to have grown much darker in my absence—and up the stairs, pursued by my frantically echoing footsteps all the way to my room, where I closed and bolted the door behind me and leant against it, shaking from head to foot.

Whether Frederic was simply in thrall to his master, or in league with him, Dr. Straker would never have agreed to move me unless it served his purpose. Was he tempting me to escape again? I could think of no other reason. If so, he would surely expect me to make for Gresham’s Yard.

Where something even more terrifying might be waiting for me. Or, at the very least, my arrest as an escaped lunatic claiming to be Miss Ferrars.

Without money, I could go no farther than Liskeard. So if he meant to lure me back to Gresham’s Yard, there ought to be another purse conveniently hidden somewhere in this room. And then, when the trap had been baited, I would find the gates open again.

So my one hope of escape was to find the money—if there was any to find—and flee, not to Gresham’s Yard, but . . . to Mr. Wetherell, the solicitor in Plymouth. I did not think—no, I felt sure—I had not mentioned him either to Frederic or Dr. Straker. I had never met him myself, but that might be just as well; my signature, at least, would match.

The last rays of the sun were fading from the roof opposite, but there was still enough daylight left. Might they be watching me at this very moment? I glanced around the walls and ceiling, looking for spy-holes. Impossible to tell; I remembered my aunt showing me that you could see a whole coastline through a hole no bigger than the point of a pencil. If they were watching, they would be expecting—indeed hoping—that I would search the room.

The hatbox and valise were placed exactly as they had been in the infirmary. I went through them both very carefully, and felt all around the linings, without success. There was no money concealed amongst my clothes, or underneath the mattress, or in the oak chest: the bottom drawer opened an inch and stuck fast, but when I removed the other two I saw that it was empty, and there was nothing attached to the inside of the cabinet except dust and grimy remnants of cobweb. I examined every piece of furniture in the room, even removing the drawer from the writing desk to look into the cavity, without finding a single farthing.

Defeated, I knelt down beside the oak chest, intending to replace the drawers, but instead began to fiddle with the one that had stuck, rocking it diagonally back and forth until it began to emerge in tiny increments. I braced one hand against the cabinet for leverage. As I did so, I had a sudden vision of a serpent coiled in the darkness beneath, waiting to strike.

I shuddered violently, and the drawer shot out, colliding painfully with my shin. Something gleamed faintly in the dusty recess: not a serpent, but a gold clasp—the two gold clasps of my writing case. Kneeling closer, I saw that it was covered in a fine layer of dust, floating up around me as I lifted it out with unbelieving hands. The impression left in the dust was plainly visible.