‘Don’t look like she can speak to me,’ an attendant said.
The man eyed her. His grin turned into a leer. ‘Well, at any rate, she can scream.’
The padded room again. It must be. She could smell straw beneath the filthy canvas on the walls. Straw, body odour and fear: a pungent scent not easily forgotten.
Oilskin lined the floor and squeaked as her bare feet paced, back and forth, back and forth. She could hear it; could feel the buckles of the strait waistcoat grinding against her torso. Did they grind against Rupert’s mother, too? No, no, no. All she wanted was to go back to the time when the world was still and safe. Why did she start to write in the first place?
Somewhere inside the hospital, a bell rang. Too loud, too real, even through the straw.
She needed to see Dr Shepherd. If he had woken her up, then perhaps he could send her back to sleep. Then she would not have these horrible nightmares about Sarah, or be forced to endure the next steps of the proceedings. An inquest? A trial? He was going to stand up on a platform and talk about her like she was a rare species of plant, exposing all she had hidden beneath the soil. Men like that potential factory investor Mr Greenleaf – fat, privileged and bristling with facial hair – would sit listening to him and decide her fate between them.
And what fate was that? Dr Shepherd said the best she could hope for was Broadmoor: fortress for the criminally insane. She had a notion it would make St Joseph’s look like Claridge’s hotel.
Maybe if the medicine was strong enough, like it was before, she could bear it. But to survive as she was now – alert, remembering? Impossible.
A lock clunked. Dr Shepherd flew into the room.
Something had happened to him. He wore no jacket or waistcoat, only shirtsleeves with a pair of beige braces on display. His hair was uncombed. She noticed a thumbprint on the lens of his spectacles and smears of ink on his fingertips.
‘Mrs Bainbridge, forgive me. I should have come much earlier when I heard about your little outburst, but events have rather overtaken me.’ He looked her up and down, truly seeing her for the first time. ‘The strait waistcoat? I did not realise they had done that. My apologies, Mrs Bainbridge, I will get them to remove it and put you back in a proper room. Why would they think all this necessary? As I understood it, you only had a bad dream?’
He looked at her. She stared back.
‘Oh, of course, you cannot write – your arms. I beg your pardon. I am not thinking coherently.’
Almost as an afterthought, he closed the door behind him. His eyes were bloodshot: it did not appear he had slept. But then, she could not be sure of the time in this windowless cell. It could still be the middle of the night.
‘I was writing my report,’ Dr Shepherd told her. Noticing his ink-stained fingers, he distractedly wiped them against the walls. ‘You see the marks of that! I was putting forwards the theory we discussed about your parents and Miss Bainbridge when – Well, I will need to redo it. Or not write it at all, I can hardly say. This is most, most irregular.’
Never had she missed her voice so much. Last night she screamed, but it seemed that was all she could do. She remembered Anne’s diary, the demon holding Hetta’s tongue. That was how it felt: a strait waistcoat on her tongue with no one to loosen the ties.
Dr Shepherd plucked off his spectacles and polished them on his shirt. ‘I must say, it is quite a blow to my pride. I thought I had it figured out, and the report read very well indeed. But in these cases one is glad to be proven wrong. You stare. But of course, I have not even begun to explain.’ He jammed his glasses back on – they were still smeared. ‘I would ask you to sit down, yet it seems my thoughtless colleagues have not provided a chair. No matter. I will just have to ask you, Mrs Bainbridge, to prepare yourself for something wonderfully strange.’
Was he in earnest? Wonderfully strange? Had he read her story?
‘Late last night – or rather, early this morning – I received a telegram. It was in relation to the advert I placed enquiring for information about Sarah Bainbridge.’
The room seemed to dilate. She held her breath.
‘You would not credit it, after all this time, but it was from Sarah. She exists, she is alive.’
Alive. So many possibilities in one word – it was a door opening from her cell, opening from the crypt.
She must have gone pale, for he grasped her shoulder tightly. ‘Yes, I can see what you are feeling. It is miraculous. I am so, so pleased for you, Mrs Bainbridge. Congratulations.’
Sarah would swear that Jolyon’s death was an accident. And although she was not there to see Mrs Holt hanged, she could testify to her state of mind at the time, the anger and dismay she had shown following the loss of her only child.
No one could call Elsie criminally insane after that. She was not a murderess. Or at least, not in that respect. Would Dr Shepherd reveal her strange narrative and the confession about the death of her parents? She did not think so. He was smiling from ear to ear, looking for all the world as if he had personally saved her from the noose.
‘Communication by telegram is naturally rather stunted. I could not ask Sarah too many questions, but I can do that in person. She is coming, the day after tomorrow. The hospital have granted her an interview with us both. I understand that she intends to make herself known to the police, but she wanted to see you first.’
Sarah. No longer just a character in her story but a flesh and blood person who cared for her. The thought choked her with joy.
What had she said before she set out for Torbury St Jude? Something about rebuilding their lives together. Yes, they really could. With Sarah’s evidence, Elsie might be set free. There would be someone to look after her, someone to live for. She would not treat Sarah as Mrs Crabbly had, a mere paid companion. They would start again as equals.
‘Now,’ said Dr Shepherd, ‘I had better make myself presentable before I start my rounds. Sit tight, Mrs Bainbridge, and I will have someone come to untie you. The staff have no excuse now, no excuse at all, to treat you like a criminal.’
She did not mind when he closed the door, plunging her back into gloom. She did not even mind the strait waistcoat restricting the blood flow to her arms. She could endure anything now. This was only temporary.