By this time Nell was too dazed to argue; her eyelids were already closing, and within minutes she was asleep. There was no time to be lost. Her sewing basket was in the desk where it always was, and Maud took the pinking shears from it. Working quickly, she sheared off the long light-coloured hair so that it resembled her own ragged crop. She was careful to sweep up the hair and put it all in the kitchen range. What else? Ought she to dress the girl in one of her own gowns? Yes, of course she ought. She did so, disliking the flaccid feel of the thin body, but doggedly pulling Nell Kendal’s own worn garments off, and putting them in the kitchen range along with the sheared hair. There should be time later to light the range and burn everything.
Everything was working exactly to plan. The only thing she had not been able to plan for was whether the people who came for her would be people who knew her. Apart from Matron, she had only ever seen two nurses while she was in Latchkill–Higgins and the hatchet-faced one whose name she had never heard. Matron was unlikely to come and Higgins would probably be nursing her sore head after Maud had knocked her out. But hatchet-face might come, and Byrony Sullivan might come. Even Dr Glass. If that happened, the plan would fail.
But it was a very small risk, and every risk she had taken so far had worked. This would work now. When people came to Toft House–as they certainly would–they would be expecting to find Maud Lincoln, and they would find a creature they would assume was Maud–a creature who was bewildered to the point of being beyond speech.
They would find other things in Toft House, as well. Two dead bodies. They would assume Maud had killed them and they would know she was helplessly mad. By the time the truth was discovered, the real Maud would have slipped out of Amberwood and be miles away. Safe and free.
Bryony had not expected to be summoned to the Prout’s office halfway through her ordinary spell of night duty on Latchkill’s main ward, but Dora Scullion had breathlessly delivered the message shortly after ten o’clock. Please to report to Matron’s office at once, Scullion had said.
It was unusual to be summoned to Prout’s sanctum at any time of the day, and it was usually to receive a reprimand for some trifling misdemeanour. But ten o’clock at night was not generally one of Prout’s times for dealing with miscreants, nor was it customary for Dr Glass to be present on those occasions. But he was there, standing by the window. He gave Bryony a quick smile and then looked impatiently at Prout.
‘Well, Matron? What’s this all about?’
‘There has been,’ said Freda firmly, ‘an unfortunate incident.’
‘Incident?’ said Dr Glass sharply.
‘A patient has–somehow managed to get out,’ said Freda, and Bryony saw Daniel’s black brows snap down in a frown.
‘Someone from Reaper Wing?’ he said.
‘No, it is not someone from Reaper Wing,’ said Freda. She spoke sharply, but her eyes shifted. ‘It’s a patient from one of the private rooms. We have her listed as Miss Smith.’
Chancery lunatic, thought Bryony, remembering what her father had once said. Or at the very least, something a bit underhand.
Daniel Glass appeared to be thinking on the same lines, because he said, ‘Ah. An anonymous lady. From the sound of things, another of the poor creatures who get shuffled into an asylum under cover of darkness, surrounded by so much secrecy you’d think it was a crowned head. Not that the royal families of Europe are strangers to the odd whiff of madness. Well, Matron? Who and what is Miss Smith?’
Prout hesitated for longer this time, but just as Bryony thought she had decided not to reply, she said, ‘It’s Maud Lincoln.’
Bryony and Daniel both stared at her. Bryony said, ‘But–what was Maud Lincoln doing in Latchkill?’
‘And,’ said Daniel, ‘more to the point, when did she escape, and where is she likely to be now?’
‘What she was doing here is not a matter for your concern, Nurse Sullivan. But I can say that Miss Lincoln had become a little disturbed of late, and so her father thought…a private room, of course, and I promised that the child’s identity would remain secret.’