“Good idea.” His voice seemed unexpectedly close, and I looked down to discover that at some point he had tucked my arm firmly through his, and our weaving progress had become a touch more linear. “I shall go to Bedlam, and interview the superintendent about Nurse Trevisan. I shall also ask to see Lady Vivian’s records, although that may take official intervention, from—”
I stopped so abruptly his arm pulled away from mine. “But what if the Marquess has been paying Bedlam to keep her there?” To me, the Victorian scandals of imprisoned heiresses was a thing I had heard about. For Holmes, the 1890 Lunacy Act had been the morning news.
“Russell, did you not tell me that her commitment was voluntary?”
I’m safe here. “True, but…”
“It would be easier to break into the headquarters of the Household Cavalry than into Bedlam. I could find someone to do it, given a few days. It might be simpler to have Mycroft issue a command that we be permitted a look at her records. Or Lestrade.”
“Or I could break in.”
He drew my arm through his again, to guide me down the pavement. “It would help to know where the records are kept,” he continued as if I had not spoken. “We would not wish to give the superintendent sufficient warning to edit her file into the flames.”
“I mean it, Holmes. I could break in. Not physically, over the parapets and through the bars. Do they have parapets in Bedlam? Walls, I suppose. No, I mean simply be brought in the front door. Nellie Bly did it, why can’t I? Do they take new patients through the front door? There’s probably a back entrance that the police wagons use.”
“You wish me to commit you to Bedlam?”
I pushed away the faint stir of horror at the phrase, and looked up into his eyes. “Oh, admit it, Holmes: you’ve often been tempted.”
Chapter Ten
IT WAS NOT A SIMPLE matter, plotting entry into Bethlem Royal Hospital. Nor was it a simple matter to prise specific dates and information from Ronnie the next day—particularly as young Simon was in an obstreperous mood, or growing a tooth, or something, which reacted badly against the pulse of morning-after pain that resided just behind my eyes.
However, I managed to extricate the necessary dates and details without causing alarm, by planting various suggestions that I would be going to each of the places her aunt had visited over the years. In any event, even friends are easily impressed with the solemn taking of notes, and willing to believe that it was all part of the investigatory routine.
The small centre of pain behind my eyes had grown considerably under the stress of our conversation, which mostly consisted of my question—“So, when was she sent to the Rawlins House private asylum?”—followed by Ronnie’s “Well, it was either 1918 or 1919—no, it must have been the spring after the War ended because I came home from Oxford and Mother was trying to convince me that I could do a Season even though I was already twenty and London was in shambles—Simon, dear, don’t pull the wheel off—oh dear, yes, sweetheart, it’s broken now, don’t cry, Mummy will fix it, see, all better—that I should do a Season, which honestly, even she had to admit was not exactly a patriotic use of resources, remember we were still rationing some things—petrol was it, or butter? Certainly we’d have had to re-make her old gowns since you couldn’t get silk for ages, so I said I wouldn’t and—oh yes, it would have been just before Easter because she was pleased she’d been able to buy a new hat for the first time in years, and I remember wishing Auntie Viv was there to back me up.”
“So: Easter 1919, she was in Rawlins House. And how long was she gone that time?” Which launched us off on another rolling barrage of retrieved memories and exhortations to the offspring, punctuated by full-throated protests from Himself.
Shattered, I crept away with my notes and a profound respect for the mental tenacity of mothers everywhere.
It was something of an irony that I needed to collect myself before I could plot my descent into madness.
As I remembered, Nellie Bly’s journalistic exposé of the American asylum began with her practicing bizarre expressions before a mirror, then taking lodging in a boarding house while lacking the means to pay. The act had begun when the police were called to evict her: by pretending to amnesia and continually bemoaning her nonexistent lost trunks, she gave them little choice but to deliver her to the madhouse.
I suspected Bedlam might require more than that.
I also suspected Bedlam might not be easy to walk out of. Nellie Bly’s editor had promised to retrieve her, which seemed awfully trusting. (But then, for a daring woman, Miss Bly could be remarkably na?ve: she thought “white slavery” meant going to a box factory and being paid a pittance, rather than being locked in chains and sold to the highest bidder.) Holmes agreed to come retrieve me in three days, if I hadn’t got out on my own by then—but unlike Nellie Bly, and even though it was Holmes, and even though I’d pored over the floor plans of the place, I thought a back-up source of rescue would be wise.
“Holmes, you might want to tell Mycroft where I shall be. That way, if you’re hit by a bus crossing Oxford Street, I won’t have to miss your funeral. And I did give you my notes and that photograph of Vivian’s necklace, didn’t I?”
“You did, although I may not be able to do much with either. I intend to be at the British Library all day.”
“I would not wish to interrupt your research into polyphonic motets.”
“What are you talking about, Russell? All motets are by definition poly—”
“Never mind, Holmes, just come rescue me if I get stuck.”
“Have I not showed you the trick to strait-jackets? One needs to expand—”
I left before he went looking for one, that he might demonstrate how Houdini did it.
Miss Bly’s articles often described the difficulties she had in convincing people to believe her: too mature for one r?le, too good an accent for another, hands too clean or soft. But then, Miss Bly had not learned the arts of disguise from Sherlock Holmes.
In his days as a London detective, Holmes had painstakingly assembled a number of secret refuges throughout the great city, filling them with emergency provisions, reading matter, odd bits of weaponry, and all the necessary elements of disguise. Over the years, two of these bolt-holes had been swallowed up by the city: one to a Zeppelin’s bomb, the other through renovations, when the building changed hands and the plans called for demolition of a wall behind which his narrow hideaway had been inserted.
Still, that left him—and me—with a number of options across the city, one of which I let myself into that afternoon. It was not one designed for long-term habitation, being every bit as cramped and insalubrious as I remembered, but at least there was a draught of air from some crack or other to keep one from asphyxiation. And the dingy walls pressing down on me could only help stimulate my appearance of madness.
The thought interrupted my rummage through cupboards that had been stocked before I was born, and I looked around me with new eyes. The madwoman’s rooms in Surrey had been all soft edges and muted shades, which I supposed was restful if one’s taste leaned in that direction. Holmes, on the other hand, surrounded himself with sharp edges and definite colours, preferring clear delineation over any degree of uncertainty. Would such a setting prove healing to a disturbed mind? I glanced down at the tangle of half-used tubes and makeup brushes, hair ribbons and cigarette holders.
Perhaps not.
An application of oil and talc turned my hair to straw. An irritant turned the eyes bloodshot, light grease-paint gave a patina of dirt to my pores, and a pot of lamp-black made my nails look like I had been mining coal. The final touch came from an innocuous-looking flask on the shelf, one mouthful of which, if one could manage to swill the vomitous mixture about the teeth and gums for long enough, would leave the mouth looking mildly diseased for three days.