For the setting of this second novel in the Lady Darby Mysteries I used several interesting locations that actually exist in Scotland. For Dalmay House I utilized many elements of the Dalmeny House and Estate, located along the Firth of Forth, northwest of Edinburgh, much the way I described it. Details have been altered to suit the story’s purposes, but several items of interest, such as the Goya tapestries Kiera admired and the magnificent entrance hall, are very true to life.
The former ancestral residence, Barnbougle Castle, also stands nearby on the estate and was the basis for my Banbogle Castle. The castle became somewhat dilapidated after the family moved to the newly built Dalmeny House in 1817, and suffered damage when some of the explosives stored there accidentally detonated, but it was restored in 1881 by the fifth Earl of Rosebery, who became prime minister in 1894. There is indeed a legend about Sir Roger Mowbray (although I changed his name to Dalmay) and his faithful hound, whose howls supposedly presaged his death and each subsequent laird’s as well. There are several versions of this tale, and even a ballad written about it, but they all center on Sir Roger’s dog and either his howls or his ghostly appearance being a harbinger of death.
The village of Cramond and Cramond Island exist much as I have described them. As does Inchkeith Island, though no lunatic asylum was ever located there. It was utilized for military purposes, and historically it was used at least once for quarantine, as well as for James IV’s bizarre linguistic experiment to discover the original language in 1493.
The artist Francisco Goya figured prominently in the creation of this book. I borrowed several of his pieces of artwork and attributed them to William Dalmay. First and foremost are his series of prints called The Disasters of War. These disturbing images were crafted from Goya’s experiences during the Peninsular War in Spain. They seemed to be exactly the type of scenes that a soldier like Will would have witnessed and have difficulty forgetting. I also utilized some of the themes from Goya’s paintings Yard with Lunatics and The Madhouse to help create the images Will brought back with him from Larkspur Retreat.
Like any war, the Peninsular War was riddled with atrocities perpetuated by friend and foe alike. It was bloody and horrific, sparing no one, even women and children. It’s no wonder that soldiers returned home with battle fatigue, or what today we would more commonly call PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. However, this troubling and sometimes debilitating disorder was not acknowledged as the medical condition it was, and soldiers were made to suffer in silence or risk being branded a coward or a lunatic.
After his stay in the lunatic asylum, William Dalmay also suffered from sensory deprivation syndrome, due to the primitive conditions of his cell and his time spent in “the pit.” Being deprived of our normal senses, particularly light, can be severely disorienting and often causes sufferers to experience unpleasant hallucinations to make up for the absence of stimuli. In 1830 this was also an unknown medical condition, as most mental disorders were at that time. Even the falling sickness Lady Margaret suffered from, the more common name used in that time period for epilepsy, was looked on with superstition, though at least strides were being made in the understanding of that disorder.
Lunatic asylums in the early nineteenth century were much as I described them. Fortunately, men like William and Samuel Tuke, Jean-Baptiste Pussin, and Philippe Pinel had begun a movement years before toward instituting more moral treatment methods. However, changes in the general public’s thinking took time to take effect, and so many lunatic asylums remained as primitive as ever.
In Scotland, the gift of second sight was, and in some areas still is, widely believed to exist. The expression comes from the Gaelic term for the ability, an da shealladh, which means “two sights.”
Several of the details about Sir Anthony Darby’s life were borrowed from the real life of English surgeon and anatomist Sir Astley Paston Cooper. In 1820 Sir Astley performed surgery on King George IV, removing an infected sebaceous cyst from his head. He received a baronetcy for his efforts and was appointed sergeant surgeon to the king.