A once-nice dress, good shoes in need of a shine, and mis-matched stockings. For a note of the eccentric (as well as warmth) I pulled on a pair of trousers under the frock. Then I removed one lens from my spectacles.
That in itself made me look somewhat mad, even without the red eyes and my rather pop-eyed stare as I squinted at a half-focussed world.
I looked like a lunatic from the middle-classes: not poor enough to be booted back onto the street, not wealthy enough to be coddled. Strictly speaking, I should have gone a few days without bathing, but I decided my outward appearance, my Oxford accent, and an air of genial confusion would be sufficient.
Holmes had also recommended that, if pressed, I ought to deliver a warning lecture on oysters.
I thought I had mis-heard him. “Oysters?”
“Correct. Clams are too symmetrical and mussels can be mistaken for their homonym—although come to think of it, that could add to the confusion. But oysters seem particularly symptomatic of mania. They certainly fooled Watson.”
“Ah yes, I remember. And poor Mrs Hudson—the two of them were convinced you were dying.”
“She was indeed rather cross. She increased our rent, as I recall. Mine, at any rate.”
“She should have evicted you.”
However, with his recommendation fresh in my mind, I did pause before leaving the bolt-hole to glance through the 1827 Britannica’s article on oysters, committing a few pungent phrases to memory.
I then settled my squashed hat onto my distressed scalp, and went off to prove myself crazed.
Chapter Eleven
IT TOOK ME A REMARKABLY long time to find a humourless and unforgiving constable, and I located the one I did only by noting his sore feet. He was not amused when I slipped up behind him and tipped his helmet forward onto his nose, then skipped away out of reach, giggling at his curses. I was faster than he and, as mentioned, he was hampered by sore feet, so not until I feigned to stumble did he manage to seize my arm.
I began instantly to weep, lest his meaty hands bruise me too badly, and indeed, he was every bit as disconcerted as I might hope. He did not let me go—but neither did he manhandle me too badly as he propelled me along the pavement to his station. I, meanwhile, alternated snuffling moans with chipper queries as to whether he was taking me home for tea, and if so I found his approach quite forward—but had he seen my Gladstone bag anywhere? (Miss Bly, as I recalled, had used “trunks” as a device on which to fix her attentions, but I changed it for fear of coming across a literate copper.)
I was past exhaustion and well on my way to actual insanity by the time the police finally delivered me to Bedlam. I’d been wondering if I was going to have to bodily assault one of them, but close to midnight they grew tired of listening to my endless drivel and washed their hands of me.
Miss Bly had assumed an act of insomnia on her initial night of madness. Fortunately, the attendants who received me were sleepy themselves, and merely stripped and checked me, handed me a coarsely woven gown, and locked me inside a dim, narrow room. The door had no handle. The walls were grubby. The bed was a mat on the floor.
I examined the mattress and bedding as best I could, but they showed no signs of infestation, and when I lowered my face, the rough blankets smelt distantly of soap. I sat, considering the blank surface of the door. The sight made me uneasy, not only because I was trapped, but also because having no lock to pick was going to make it difficult to do what I had come here for. I took a slow breath, then another, then lay down and pulled the thin covers to my neck.
I can’t say I actually slept, but I was startled when the door banged open to reveal a nurse in starched cap, apron, and a belt from which hung a chatelaine of keys, whistle, pen-light, and scissors. She remained in the doorway, which I thought quite sensible for a woman facing the unknown tendencies of a patient arrived by night.
“So, Miss, do you know who you are today?”
I sat up instantly, planting my back against the wall. “I’m…I, yes—I have no problems. Who are you? Where am I? I’ve lost my spectacles—and, Sister, what have you done with my Gladstone bag?”
“Never you fear, Miss, I’m sure Doctor will help you find it again. Now, are you going to get yourself up and dressed, or are you going to give us trouble?”
Since giving her trouble would clearly extend my time in this room without a door-handle—and risk the use of bonds or a strait-jacket—befuddled cooperation was clearly my best option. Perhaps I could convince them that I’d had a head injury and might come out of it soon.
“My head hurts,” I whined. “I need my glasses.”
“First a bath. Then you can have a word with Doctor.”
I climbed into the shapeless, buttoned dressing-gown she handed me and let her propel me from the cell into a long, chilly stone hallway populated with trim-looking nurses and women in the same drab dressing-gowns as mine. Some of the latter were wild-eyed and twitching, shuffling along the passageway with a nurse’s hand firmly around one arm. Others looked stunned, like the denizens of an opium den, while a few were as unkempt as if they’d spent the night under a bridge.
I allowed my nurse to direct me towards the end of a queue of beltless dressing-gowns. All the nurses wore chatelaines of keys—on all of which, I noticed, one would be more brightly polished and hanging more readily to reach. Master keys, I thought, to ensure fast access in an emergency.
The more wild-eyed patients had nurses keeping firm hold of their arms, ready for trouble. Placid women were merely nudged into place and left to move obediently towards the bathing room. My own nurse deposited me in this queue, but then stood back to judge how I might react to this degree of freedom. I was grateful that she had said I was headed for a bath: from the sounds echoing down the hallway, I’d have anticipated a torture chamber.
Cold, disorientated, near-blind, and not having eaten for the better part of a day, it was not difficult to put on an act of fearfulness. Try as I might to convince myself that this was just like the Turkish baths, my shrinking skin insisted that I was about to be held under water until I confessed to some awful crime.
In the end, the greatest pain was the jerk of a comb through my tangled hair—and even that was as brief as the hair itself. When it was done, this assembly-line of bathing spat me out the far end, very clean, aggressively combed, and thoroughly humiliated.
This whole time, I had felt Sister’s eyes watching me for any sign of rebellion, or even protest. I gave her none. With a nod of satisfaction, she gripped my arm again and propelled me back down the passageway.
I took great care to give no sign of the dread that filled me—though when we continued past the cell where I’d spent the night, it was difficult not to sag with relief. But her hand noticed neither, merely directed me onwards to a flight of stairs.