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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Mary Russell & Sherlock Holmes
- Sprache: Englisch
June, 1925. Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are enjoying a well-needed relaxing summer evening in their home on the Sussex Downs. However, Russell soon receives a desperate telephone call from an old friend. Veronica's aunt, Lady Vivian Beaconsfield, has disappeared following a supervised outing from Bethlem Royal Hospital. With Russell herself feeling less than balanced, the last thing she wants to deal with is the mad### however, she agrees to investigate. Having spent most of her adult life in and out of one asylum after another, Lady Beaconsfield at last seemed to be adjusting to her confinement at Bethlem. So why did she disappear? And why is there no trace of the nurse who accompanied her? In their search for the missing women, Russell and Holmes follow the trail from the cold, harsh wards of the hospital through to the ethereal beauty of Venice. Caught up in decadent soirees, the rising tide of fascism and the myth of a haunted madhouse, the pair will discover that there are secrets hidden in the lagoon and nothing is quite as it seems.
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Seitenzahl: 466
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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ISLAND OF THE MAD
LAURIE R. KING
To Mary Alice Kier, fellow devotee of La Serenissima
The world is but a great Bedlam,
where those that are more mad lock up those that are less.
– Thomas Tryon, 1689
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND I stood shoulder to shoulder, gazing down sadly at the tiny charred corpse.
‘She should never have left us alone,’ I told him.
‘She had no great choice in the matter.’
‘There’s always a choice.’
‘Strictly speaking, perhaps. But it’s best that she disappear, at least for a time. Even putting aside the death penalty, I cannot see her thriving in prison.’
I had to agree. ‘She is probably better off in Monte Carlo.’ And so saying, I snatched up the smouldering pan and tipped my attempt at a chicken dinner into the rubbish bin. Our long-time housekeeper, Mrs Hudson, had recently abandoned us, selfishly choosing freedom over being tried for murder – and thereby risking our lives to my poisonous culinary skills. ‘Cheese sandwiches, then? Or shall we walk up to the Tiger?’
He glanced at the kitchen clock. ‘Do you suppose Tillie might have a table, up at the Monk’s Tun?’
Three hours later, we were making our leisurely way towards the gate in the stone wall encircling our house. I had pocketed a torch as we left, but the midsummer sky held enough lingering brightness that we did not need it as we returned across the Sussex Downs. Tillie had outdone herself, with a perfection of cool dishes on a warm afternoon: subtle lettuces, an iced soup, cold meats, hot rolls, and a strawberry tart the likes of none in the land.
The one drawback was the Monk’s Tun had begun to collect a reputation. Not that I begrudged Tillie her success – although I might wish we had not chosen to stop in the same night as a carload of Young Things on their way up from Dover.
Not that they were drunk, merely festive; nor were they loud, exactly, merely difficult to ignore. They were my age – in fact, two of them I dimly recognised: a young man with dark Byronic curls who had been the year before me at Oxford, and a girl whose face appeared in the illustrated society pages of the newspapers. My eyes kept going to them: two sleek girls in Paris frocks, two clean, tanned lads in casually worn suits that would have cost Tillie’s barman a year of his salary.
The second time Holmes had needed to repeat something, he craned around to look at the table of merrymakers on the other side of the old room.
‘Friends of yours?’
‘Good heavens, no.’
‘Then why are you watching them so closely?’
‘I wasn’t. Not really. Just – they seem like an alien race, down here in Sussex. Don’t you think?’
His grey eyes fixed on me, but before he could speak, Tillie came up to greet us, the next course arrived, and the moment was lost.
However, Holmes never forgot anything. When he pushed open the gate an hour later, he said, ‘Russell, do you regret the choices you made?’
There was little point in pretending I didn’t understand. ‘Regret? Never. I might occasionally wonder what life would have been, had things been different, but it’s mere speculation. Like … like trying on a dress I’d never actually wear, just to see what it feels like.’
He closed the gate and worked the latch. We picked our way through the grassy orchard, hearing the faint texture of sound from the hives – drones cooling their homes from the day’s heat. Near the house, the sweet odour from the old-fashioned climbing rose drew us forward. Mrs Hudson had planted the flower, long before I knew her. Mrs Hudson, now gone away, to … But before yearning could overcome me, the night was broken by the jangle of the telephone bell.
Neither of us hurried to catch it.
And neither of us suggested, when the machine ceased its clamour before we were halfway through the kitchen, that we ask the exchange to restore the connection.
Instead, Holmes pulled a corkscrew from the drawer and a bottle of chilled honey wine from the cooler. I fetched a pair of glasses from the cupboard. We left the door open, to chase away the aroma of cremated chicken, and settled into our garden chairs. The night smelt of blossoms and honey. The low pulse of waves against the Sussex cliffs obscured the sound from the hives. The wine was cool, but faintly sad as its summer freshness had faded, giving a hint of the bitterness to come.
And the telephone rang again. At this time of night, the sound was ominous.
With a sigh, I put my half-empty glass onto the stones and went through the terrace doors.
I spoke our number by way of greeting, to be answered by a voice from the local exchange. ‘Evening, Mrs Holmes, sorry to ring so late, but the lady said it was an emergency, so I told her I’d keep trying you. And the girl at the Monk’s Tun said you’d left there. Do you want me to connect you again?’
Life in a rural area is rich in many things, but privacy is not one of them. ‘Hold on a moment, I’ll get Holmes.’ The word ‘emergency’ generally summoned Sherlock Holmes.
But to my surprise, she said the woman had asked for me.
‘Did she leave a name?’
‘She said to tell you it was Veronica Fitzwarren.’ Ronnie. Oh dear.
I pulled up the chair we kept near the telephone and sat. ‘Yes, you’d better put me through.’
Ronnie Fitzwarren – she’d been the Lady Veronica Anne Beaconsfield when we met in 1917 – was my oldest friend on this side of the Atlantic. My very first morning at Oxford University, she stepped into my rooms and took charge of my life, turning what might have been three years of solitary academic pursuit into a time of exploration, community and, occasionally, fun.
On the surface, we had little in common: Ronnie was short, round, vivacious, an English aristocrat down to her Norman bones, not greatly interested in her books, and dedicated to a series of Good Works. I, on the other hand, was tall, thin, aloof, of mongrel blood, and far more interested in the academic elements of human beings than the personal.
Ronnie taught me the meaning of friendship; once she’d laid claim to me, we were bound together. After university, however, our lives had drifted apart until, on the eve of my twenty-first birthday, we happened to meet. At the time, I had just begun to realise how torn I was between a life of independence and a life with Sherlock Holmes. The conundrum was brought into greater focus in the time that followed by Ronnie’s interest in a woman religious leader with some dubious connections – and, by Ronnie’s attachment to a troubled, young, demobbed officer with a weakness for hard drugs.
I’d dragged Holmes into the case, a mutual involvement that brought us together in unforeseen ways, revealing a surprisingly generous side to the man who had been my informal tutor since I met him at the age of fifteen.1
Holmes coaxed, cajoled, and bullied Miles Fitzwarren into sobriety, turning him from a man so befuddled he’d mistaken Ronnie’s dead father for her sciatic uncle to a man serving His Majesty’s government with honour and distinction.
Ronnie married Miles in 1921. Their son was born the following year. Two years after that, an Irish sniper’s bullet left her a young widow with a small child and a complicated financial situation – and yet, far from my stepping up to be a faithful friend in her time of need, the past year had found me mostly absent from England, and from her life.
Letters, quick visits, and presents to the child did not assuage my guilt: she’d rescued me; I’d abandoned her.
The word ‘emergency’ in Ronnie’s situation could mean nothing good.
But my friend seemed in no hurry to tell me about it. Instead, the familiar voice launched into cheery exclamations over how long it had been and was it as warm in Sussex as in London. Then she asked, rather pointedly, if I thought the exchange had left the line. Following the giveaway clicks, Ronnie’s voice became more sober.
‘Mary, I actually phoned you a couple of hours ago – I didn’t know the woman would continue to try you. It could wait till morning …’
‘I’m glad to hear it’s not drop-everything urgent, but since you’ve reached me, why don’t you go ahead and tell me about it? Is it Simon?’ The child was occasionally sickly, but in summer?
‘Simon? No, he’s great, why? Oh, I mean, I know why, but no, he’s doing marvellously. I’m sorry you missed his birthday party last month. Mother hired a pony ride – she found this funny little man with ponies down in Brighton and Simon climbed right up, never a hesitation, you should have seen it …’
I waited through a proud mother’s recitation of genius, studying the room, wondering if Holmes might rid it of Mrs Hudson’s homely touches, wondering if Ronnie would notice if I gently laid down the earpiece to go and fetch my wine glass – which was no doubt serving as a swimming pool for midges. When Ronnie paused for a breath, I hastened to interrupt. ‘That all sounds perfectly fine. So, if not Simon, what’s the trouble?’
‘Do you remember my Aunt Vivian?’
‘The one who is—’ I stopped to reach around for a diplomatic word, but Ronnie wasn’t bothered.
‘In the loony bin, yes.’
‘I only met her the once, but it was …’
‘Terrifying?’
‘Memorable.’
My old friend laughed sadly at the understatement. ‘I know. Well, she’s vanished, into thin air.’
A full twenty minutes later, I removed the telephone receiver from my numb ear. Five more minutes passed before I stood and went back through the terrace doors.
As I approached, Holmes stretched out an arm and removed his clean handkerchief from the top of my wine glass: no drowned midges.
‘That was Ronnie Beaconsfield—Fitzwarren, rather,’ I told him. ‘Her aunt has disappeared.’
‘The mad one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wasn’t she in Bedlam? Escape from there is not an easy matter.’
I glanced over at him, but his face was in shadow. ‘Holmes, that sounds oddly like the voice of experience speaking.’ He did not reply, which meant that here was yet another episode in his life he had neglected to mention – probably because there was something embarrassing about it. ‘No, in fact, she’d been given a week’s home leave, with a nurse in charge, in order to celebrate her brother’s – her half-brother’s – fiftieth birthday. The Marquess of Selwick? Lady Vivian and the nurse were headed back to the asylum on Friday, but they never arrived.’
‘And your friend wishes you …?’
‘To look into it, yes. She has a young child, so her movements are somewhat restricted.’
‘The child hasn’t a governess?’
‘Only a few days a week. The widow’s pension Ronnie gets doesn’t leave her with many luxuries.’
‘Lady Veronica Beaconsfield is living on an army pension?’
‘Ridiculous, I know. But I suspect that her uncle, the Marquess, made some bad investments, since he’s never moved back to the London house since the War – ironic, considering that Ronnie’s father was something of a financial genius – and the other uncle, on the mother’s side, married an American who’s rather tighter with her dollars than he anticipated. Neither are keen on providing Ronnie with an allowance to live in her own place in London. I’m sure it’ll be sorted out in the end, but until then …’
He grunted. I took another sip from the too-warm wine.
Peace returned. As did the midges. Holmes gathered the near-empty bottle and the glasses and took them into the house, leaving me to listen to the sea and think about beehives, carefree Young Things, and Ronnie’s mad aunt.
As I remembered it, Lady Vivian Beaconsfield had always demonstrated a particular antipathy for her half-brother Edward, Lord Selwick. I was pretty sure that most of her overt violence had been aimed at him. Perhaps her willingness to celebrate the anniversary of the Marquess’s birth had been a sign of healing.
Or had it been something else?
1 The Beaconsfield case is described in A Monstrous Regiment of Women; the meeting and apprenticeship of Russell and Holmes are found in The Beekeeper’s Apprentice and Mary Russell’s War.
CHAPTER TWO
THE LADY VIVIAN BEACONSFIELD was the third and youngest living child of William Reginald George Beaconsfield, Seventh Marquess of Selwick. The Marquess had married twice, with sons Lord Edward and Lord Thomas by his first wife, then Lady Vivian with his second. Edward, the heir, was sixteen when his little sister came along, thus nearly entirely fledged from his native Surrey nest. His brother, Thomas, was only fourteen, and though both had been at boarding school when Vivian was born, Thomas was the one who returned home during the long holidays, the one who was actually interested in running the estate. As I remembered, from various things Ronnie had said over the years, Lord Selwick – her Uncle Edward – had no interest in the countryside until he had been forced to return during the War, preferring the bright lights and the halls of power to bucolic Surrey.
Vivian’s mother died of a fever in the winter of 1912, when her daughter was twenty-one. The following year, the aged Seventh Marquess faded away as well, and Edward inherited the title and lands. The new Marquess was happy at Selwick Hall in London and the family chateau in the south of France, leaving his brother to oversee things in Surrey. Thomas Beaconsfield – now with a lesser title of his own, Earl of Pewsley, a reward for steering some very important men away from some very costly financial mistakes – came to be known by the jocular nickname of ‘Lord Waterloo’ for his idiosyncratic habit of commuting up and down between London and Surrey. He was often joined on these journeys by his wife, who was active in various arts ventures, and Ronnie, who came to town for tutoring. But they went home each night to Selwick, and to Vivian, his fragile younger sister.
Then came the War. Despite his title, his age, and his responsibilities, Thomas Beaconsfield enlisted, and volunteered for the Front. There he died, barely twelve months later. His wife and sixteen-year-old Ronnie were bereft. His twenty-four-year-old sister was devastated.
Vivian had always been eccentric, and vulnerable – even physically so, being delicate of bone, pale of hair and skin. Her coming-out in 1910, at the alarmingly late age of nineteen, had been a trial for all concerned, and she fled London even before the season was at an end, with no sign of a ring or even an agreement. She spent some weeks in Europe before returning to her refuge in the country, there to remain.
Selwick having no master and London being under attack, Edward had little choice but to return home. Ronnie and her mother spent much of their time away, burying their grief in war work and grim preparations for university exams. The Marquess had moved their things into the east wing that he might take up residence in the main house. His sister, Vivian, was moved to the women’s side as well.
That disruption, added to the deaths of both parents and brother, and the long absences of sister-in-law and niece, seemed to push Vivian’s eccentricities into something darker. The servants’ reports of her behaviour grew more and more alarming – her habitual country walks would extend long after sunset; her shyness grew into a pathological avoidance of former friends. There were occasional outbursts of temper that would be followed by unnatural, almost cringing withdrawal. She grew ever thinner, would pick at her fingernails until they bled, bit at the corner of her mouth, nervously pulled locks of hair. Ronnie and her mother, coming back from London in June to help with harvest chores, found a quivering and nervous woman. One day, the maid discovered a sharp little kitchen knife in Vivian’s pocket. The next afternoon, Ronnie came upon her weeping uncontrollably in the morning room. A few days after that, one year to the week after Thomas’s death, Vivian tried to murder the Marquess with a fireplace poker.
Her first committal to a private institution was voluntary, lasting three months. Vivian returned home, rested and eating, seemingly restored to sanity. Within a few weeks, the darkness began to return.
It became a pattern: irritability, silence, the first signs of chewing at the edges of her body, then an outburst – invariably against Edward, which even he agreed was something of a blessing, since he was the one most able to defend himself. Committal would follow, as she acknowledged that she was in need of a ‘rest’. This went on for three and a half years. Then came the fifth such cycle, in 1920. Instead of attacking her half-brother, Vivian went after herself, using another purloined knife. A chambermaid found her. The next committal was not voluntary.
By this time, Lady Vivian Beaconsfield had exhausted the patience of private hospitals. For some ungodly reason – a mix-up? Her brother’s pique? – she was taken to Bedlam, London’s home for the mad since the fourteenth century. Her sister-in-law was appalled, her brother refused to speak her name – but strangely enough, Bedlam, of all places, saved her life.
One’s first reaction to the name – which in fact was Bethlem Royal Hospital – was a queasy horror: Bedlam was a charnel-pit of cries, filth, brutality, the chaining of inmates, and visitors in Regency silks paying to be amused by the inmates’ antics. However, even by Dickens’ time, the humane treatment of the insane had made enormous progress. Now, Bedlam housed the educated mad, from schoolmasters to seamstresses, with a handful of talented artists for whom the outside world was too much. Nonetheless, the hospital’s image was softened neither by its location in a rough district south of the river, nor by its hulking grey appearance. I admit, despite my intellectual knowledge of improvements, my thoughts of the place tended towards Hogarth’s image of writhing and half-naked lunatics.
Still, Ronnie felt that her aunt was happy there – that yes, the blood in Lady Vivian’s veins might run a shade bluer than that of the other inmates, but she seemed to have found her peers.
Ronnie took me once to visit her aunt. It was a wintry October afternoon in 1922, and not an ideal time to be crossing London with an infant in arms. Still, my old university friend was determined to introduce her young son to his great-aunt and asked me to accompany her – why, I was not sure, other than my being one of her few friends who might not be shaken to the core by a trip to Bedlam. But as we motored through the rough streets of the South Bank, I noticed how closely Ronnie held the child, and how warily she eyed the windows. Perhaps I was more of a bodyguard – certainly more so than the white-haired driver.
Bedlam was tucked behind high stone walls, the better to keep the wandering mad on one side and any tormenting onlookers on the other. The hinges screeched as the iron gates were pulled open by the guard, an aged fellow who looked barely adequate to corral young Simon, much less several hundred of London’s mad.
Inside the walls, the dark and dirty stones of Southwark gave way, unexpectedly, to a garden: trees, lawn, a flower bed neatly mulched over for winter. Over to our left, some well-bundled women walked along a pathway, giving no indication that they were even aware of the gates, much less eager to flee through them.
Had it been a sunny morning, the stone facade might have given off an air of dignity, even welcome, but as we circled around to park, it simply … loomed. Four storeys high, with sixty or more windows on each floor, centred around a portico with columns resembling massive bars and a high dome that looked like a stone tea cosy. The portico, ten steps above the drive, faced north, putting the entranceway in shadows. Even young Simon protested, although that could have been a reaction to the slowing of the motor. Ronnie wrapped the blankets around him as the driver came back to open the door. Bitter air rushed in – along with a high, drawn-out wail from the building itself that raised the hairs on the back of the neck. Ronnie gathered her soft armful and dashed up the steps, with me hastening to follow her through the columns to the hospital doors.
Inside, visitors were greeted by two immense stone carvings of male nudes: one cringing but hopeful, the other stretched in agony and bound by chains (named, I later found, Raving Madness and his brother, Melancholy). But the air was warm, as were the greetings of the staff, and smelt less of the expected despair and cabbage than it did of coffee and furniture polish.
The porter, a nurse, and soon the hospital superintendent himself appeared, greeting Ronnie as an old friend and making much of the tiny creature, yawning and stretching in her arms. Our coats were taken, our hats (and their pins) laid aside, and we were ushered across a hallway to what looked like a Victorian sitting room, with solid furniture, marble statues, potted palms, ancestral portraits, and comfortable chairs dotted with crisp white antimacassars. A radiator ticked on one side and a fire crackled on the other; the curtains were drawn back from high windows that looked out on a neatly tended garden. Despite the cold, three women strolled the paths, one of whom appeared to be carrying on a learned debate with an invisible friend.
The nurse who had brought us in lingered to coo over the lad, clearly tempted to prise him bodily from his mother’s grasp. Before open battle could break out, an older woman in a grey dress stepped through the doorway, her authority sending the attendant scurrying back to work.
This woman Ronnie had no hesitation about, freely plunking the armload of blankets into the experienced hands, then turning to introduce me. It was the hospital matron, competent, iron-willed, and with an unexpected trace of humour at the back of her eyes. The sort of person no young mother would hesitate to entrust with her progeny – or her beloved aunt.
‘How is she?’ Ronnie asked once the initial fuss over the five-month-old was over.
‘A bit sad,’ Matron replied without hesitation. ‘Her favourite nurse has just left to be married, and a patient she was friends with was moved to a private hospital nearer her family. But she’ll be much cheered to see you.’
‘I’m so sorry. I should have come sooner, but—’
‘Child, that’s not what I was saying. Indeed, you’d have worried her by coming here in a … vulnerable state. Your letters have been quite pleasure enough.’
Ronnie looked at the child in Matron’s strong arms. ‘She will be fine with him, won’t she? I needn’t …’
‘Worry about the little mite?’ Matron gazed at the pink face with affection, then transferred him easily back to Ronnie’s care. ‘She’ll be perfectly fine with him. She’s in a good phase at present. Even when she’s not, the only person she tries to hurt any more is herself.’
With this sorry pronouncement, Matron left us alone with our thoughts and the child.
After a few minutes, the door opened, and in came two women. One was a tall, black-haired sister in a dark blue uniform with stiff white collar, cuffs, and belt. Her right hand grasped the other woman’s arm – which might have brought to mind control, straitjackets, and shackles, except that there was a degree of what almost seemed like affection in the gesture. I did not know if she showed that respect to all her patients – Vivian had to be one of the most high-ranking patients she would ever treat – but to my eye it looked more like helping a myopic friend across an uneven floor than it did controlling a certified lunatic.
Once inside, the sister let go, allowing Lady Vivian Beaconsfield to continue across the room towards her niece.
At first glance, my eyes interpreted the figure as Ronnie’s ancient grandmother: tiny with age, white-haired, kept upright by the nurse’s assistance.
Certainly she was small – and she did look older than the early thirties I knew her to be – with thin, somewhat greasy pale blonde hair scraped back against her head. She wore normal day clothes, somewhat out of date and with the dullness of coarse laundry soap, which also lacked the belt its side-loops intended. However, the woman herself seemed neither worn nor particularly dull. Vivian greeted Ronnie with warmth, acknowledged my introduction with a hand-clasp, then bent over the infant with all the proper exclamations. She looked less mad than tired, like a woman recovering from a long and dreary fever.
Aunt and niece settled on chairs before the fire to examine young Master Fitzwarren in all his splendour, and were soon oblivious to the world. The nurse remained near the door, which might have been a hospital requirement, although she did not appear impatient or eager to get away. I moved over to her side. She was nearly as tall as I and only a few years older, with short, neat dark hair – short hair perhaps being an advantage to those working with the aggressively insane. She wore no more make-up than I did, not even to lessen the prominent mole along her jawline. I nodded towards the Beaconsfields. ‘I don’t imagine your patients get to see many children.’
‘You’d be right there.’ Her accent was London, although I’d have said to the north of the river and some miles west. ‘A sweet world it would be if the mad could be put in charge of the nursery.’
I smiled at the image and held out a hand. ‘Mary Russell. I’ve known Ronnie since university.’
‘Rose Trevisan. I’ve known Miss Beaconsfield since she arrived.’ ‘Miss Beaconsfield’, I noted, rather than ‘Lady Vivian’. Socialist doctrine, hospital policy – or simple ignorance of titles? Her own name sounded Cornish, but her black hair and olive skin suggested that her people were of a more recent immigration.
‘I hope she’s doing all right here, Sister?’
‘You knew her before?’
‘I met her once, five or six years ago. That was before …’
‘Before her troubles descended,’ Nurse Trevisan provided.
‘Yes.’
‘She’s doing well. Finding peace.’
‘I’m glad to hear that. Bedlam – sorry, Bethlem – has a rather dubious reputation, but Ronnie says her aunt is happy here.’
The nurse smiled. ‘An evil reputation can be a protective wall. Those who imagine a vicious dog behind a fence don’t climb over and discover the spaniel.’
It was a startling thought. The wail that had greeted our arrival was far from contented – but before I could say anything stupid, ‘Miss Beaconsfield’ looked up from her great-nephew and called her attendant over to admire him.
We took tea, an oddly normal ritual undermined in part by the pre-buttered scones (rendering knives unnecessary) and institutionally sturdy tea service (which, if broken, would have nothing resembling a sharp edge). The conversation flowed nicely when it ran through the safe territory of books and babies: Ronnie kept her aunt well supplied with reading material, and Vivian’s memories of an infant Ronnie were fond. When those streams ran dry, it was up to Ronnie to supply news, there being little point in asking what her aunt had been doing. Politics was too complicated, mutual friends too few – although when Ronnie happened upon the topic of a formal wedding she’d attended a few weeks before, Vivian’s face came alive, and she wanted to know every detail of dress and music and the foods served.
Eventually, Ronnie’s grasp of the details grew thin, and Vivian sat back with a tiny sigh. The garden outside was fading in the dusk, and Nurse Trevisan – who had remained in the room, reading a book in the corner – took out her watch. As she stood, we heard raised voices from the hallway outside, building in fury to a scream and a scuffle, then silence.
Ronnie bit her lip, not looking at her aunt, but the older woman reached out to take her hand. ‘Dear child, a disrupted mind is not a pretty thing. I thank you for not coming in recent months. The memory of my dishevelled hair would for ever lie between us.’
Ronnie gave out a noise that was halfway between a sob and a laugh, and gripped her aunt’s hand. ‘Oh, Auntie Viv, I’ve missed you so. I wish I … I could do something for you!’
‘Nonsense! Your letters have been lifesavers. I treasure the photographs you have sent. Those are the world to me.’
‘But, isn’t there anything you need? Would you come and live with Simon and me? Oh, anything at all, Auntie, just ask.’
‘Ronnie, dear, I need to stay at Bethlem for a time. I’m safe here. Although if you’d like to send me a present, I’d adore a pot of your mother’s damson preserves, when she makes some. If you posted it to Nurse Trevisan, she could dole it out to me.’ She glanced across the room at the nurse, who smiled back at her. ‘Oh – and I nearly forgot!’ She patted at her garments until she heard a crinkle, and pulled out a folded drawing. ‘This is for the young man. Not terribly colourful, but all I have is a regular pencil. Ah – perhaps if you send me some pastels, I might do a better one for his nursery wall.’
When Ronnie unfolded the paper, her face went soft with delight. She held it up for me to look at: a black-and-white Pierrot with ruffled collar and rounded hat. His expression was bashful yet mischievous, perfect for a child’s room; my hand wanted to smooth away the fold lines across his face.
Ronnie let me hold it as she prepared to depart, bundling the boy, embracing her aunt, taking her leave of Nurse Trevisan. It was near-dark outside, the motor a rumbling oasis on the forecourt, and I laid the drawing on the seat to help Ronnie climb in with her arms full of child and blankets.
As we drove through the gates of Bedlam, back into the streets of London as if we were crossing over from a calm island, young Simon began to raise protests that sounded eerily like the voice of madness. I folded the drawing and tucked it away in Ronnie’s handbag. When she’d got the boy settled, she remarked, ‘Aunt Vivian used to do the most beautiful watercolours. We have some at home – that one of the cottage that I have in my sitting room?’
‘Yes, I remember. I wonder if she’s started again. I imagine it would do her good.’
‘I hope so. Mummy says Auntie Viv closed her sketchbooks the day Daddy died, and hasn’t touched them since. She’ll be so happy to know that Auntie Viv’s drawing again.’
Drawing, yes – although I had to think that Pierrot was a rather mixed image for a child’s room: a too-trusting, isolated figure of derision, rejected by his love and mocked by his betters, the most poignant of the commedia dell’arte characters.
And what on earth had the woman meant by ‘I’m safe here’?
CHAPTER THREE
‘LADY VIVIAN SOUNDS LESS of a lunatic than many of those freely walking the streets of London,’ Holmes remarked. His pipe had gone cold, and he fished around for the ceramic bowl to knock out its burnt remains.
‘She came very near to killing herself,’ I noted. ‘And she’s been known to attack her brother with a steel poker.’
‘I have been tempted to do the same to mine,’ he murmured.
‘She ended up in Bedlam, Holmes. That says a lot.’
‘Although you say she’s not there now?’
‘She’s been doing so well the past few months, Ronnie says, that there’s been discussion about moving her to Bedlam’s other facility down in Witley, which is a sort of halfway-house where patients are sent to test if they are ready to be decertified. So when Vivian got news of her brother’s celebration and asked if she might attend – taking an attendant in case of distress – the doctors agreed to issue her a pass. The party was on Saturday. Vivian and the nurse went the Monday before. All seemed fine until Thursday, when she told Ronnie’s mother she was feeling overly tired and thought she should return to London. She and the nurse left the next morning, and the birthday celebration went on without her. But the following Monday, the hospital sent a wire to say that Miss Beaconsfield – which seems to be what they call her there – would require hospital permission if she wished to prolong her stay.’
‘She planned her escape.’
‘Someone did.’
He looked up from his half-filled pipe, one eyebrow going up.
‘When she arrived last Monday, Vivian told Ronnie’s mother that she wanted to wear her diamonds for the celebration. These aren’t the Beaconsfield family jewels – which, since Edward isn’t married, Ronnie’s mother planned to wear – but a set left to Vivian by her mother. A heavy, old-fashioned necklace, tiara, bracelet, and earrings. So when Lady Dorothy got the Beaconsfield necklace out of the bank vault before the party, she brought Vivian’s as well.’
‘And the mad aunt took those with her.’
‘Those, and an assortment of other small valuables. The house being in such turmoil with the party, no one noticed – or rather, Lady Dorothy noticed on Friday night that the jewellery was missing, but she wasn’t about to bring it to the Marquess’s attention, since it would have caused a fury. She planned to go down to Bedlam on Tuesday and quietly retrieve them. Except that Monday night, she learnt that her sister-in-law was not there.’
‘And the attendant?’
‘No one has seen her, either.’
The words fell into the night, turning the June air cool. After a time, Holmes stirred and struck a match to hold to his pipe bowl. Our surroundings danced for a moment in the brightness, then darkness fell again as he shook out the flame.
‘Three possibilities?’ he suggested.
‘I agree. One, Vivian planned her escape from Bedlam, and the nurse is in on it. Two, the nurse fell to temptation, and has either abducted Vivian or done away with her. Or three, someone else has set it up to look as if the madwoman has struck.’
‘Why not: four, that Vivian Beaconsfield planned her escape, and has done away with the nurse?’
‘I can’t see that,’ I said. ‘True, the woman’s hold on reality appears slippery. But nothing in her attitude or her background speaks to cold-blooded murder.’
‘Fireplace pokers?’ he murmured.
Well, there was that.
‘In any event, I told Ronnie I’d see what I could do. I’ll go up to town tomorrow and talk with her, then probably take the train down to Selwick to have a word with the family.’
‘And the servants,’ he added.
‘And the estate manager, who will know about insurance and the condition of the Beaconsfield finances.’
‘Shall I begin enquiries about the principals? The Marquess, Vivian herself, the nurse?’
‘Don’t bother with Ronnie’s mother. Lady Dorothy hasn’t the imagination for crime. The others, yes. If you can keep it very quiet.’
Sherlock Holmes did not dignify my caveat with an answer.
CHAPTER FOUR
HOLMES CAME UP TO town with me the next morning, both to set his enquiries under way and (of greater concern) to do some work at the British Library. We went our separate ways at the Victoria station, he to his books and me to my family in turmoil. As we parted, I told him not to expect me back in Sussex for a day or two. His hand came up in a half-wave of acknowledgement.
Ronnie lived along the southern edges of the Maida Vale area. As I walked over from the Edgware Road stop, I thought my preoccupation with her Aunt Vivian had begun to invade my hearing as well as my mind: uncanny wails seemed to echo through the streets as I neared, eerie ululations that grew ever louder as I approached her door. It took some pounding to draw her attention, but she eventually came, looking harried and unkempt and not far from tears herself.
Behind her, young Master Simon broke off his full-throated protests to eye the cause of this outrageous interruption.
‘Mary, sorry! Hope you haven’t been here long – come in, I’ll put on the kettle. I don’t know if Simon is teething, though it seems unlikely at his age, or if he’s coming down with something. He may simply be constipated – Nurse is determined to introduce him to the pot and he’s equally deter—’
Fortunately for my delicate sensibilities, the young man decided we’d had long enough on our own and opened his mouth again.
I’d never realised how difficult it could be to carry on intelligent conversation over an unhappy child. Or even carry out intelligent thought: I could well see why the lad’s nurse had taken to her bed with a headache. After five minutes of trying to speak over the roar, I told Ronnie I wouldn’t take tea, thanks, but thought I’d set off for Selwick right away and see her on my way back through town.
I could only hope that, by the time I returned, the nurse would either be recovered, or replaced.
Standing in the flat’s doorway while the three-year-old scion of the Beaconsfield clan expressed his utter fury from around her knees, Ronnie handed me a photograph of her aunt, and managed to convey the information that her mother would be home and expecting me. I made my hasty escape, thanking all the domestic gods that I had not been chosen to reproduce. I took a nice, peaceable, solitary luncheon while a photographer’s studio made some copies of the photo. I also stopped by a telegraphist’s to confirm my arrival at Selwick, leaving the arrival time vague so Ronnie’s mother would not feel obliged to provide a car.
I’d been to Selwick Hall two or three times: brief visits that tended to be a flurry of social activities rather than leisurely days pottering about the countryside. Which was unfortunate, in a way, since the countryside was classically English downland, with gently rolling hills and ancient patches of woodland. On a June afternoon, with no cloud in the sky, it would be no hardship to walk the two miles to the Hall.
The hedgerows were white with blossom, the fields scattered with newly cropped sheep. Twice I had to press into the hawthorn so as not to be run down by speeding motorcars, and twice laboriously peel my garments out of the thorns. My heart nearly stopped when a trio of partridges exploded up from the silent road, and once I spent an awkward couple of minutes trying to engage a sullen child in conversation before leaving him to his swinging gate.
I eventually turned down the drive from the lane, and made my way towards Selwick Hall.
The house was neither grand nor particularly large by Surrey standards, a red-brick, three-storey building with pseudo-Elizabethan chimneys and a slightly off-centre portico that emphasised the lopsided nature of the two wings, only one of which was deep enough for a series of rooms. It was the kind of house that called for a large and boisterous family, instead of individuals left behind by death.
Ronnie had grown up in the main house but, after her father died, his widow, child, and sister had moved into the side wing to make room for the Marquess. Ronnie had used the grand ballroom and formal dining room to celebrate her wedding to Miles Fitzwarren but, other than that, I gathered the Marquess kept to his side of the baize doors, and his sister-in-law to hers.
The reason for this long-standing and awkward arrangement had never been fully explained to me – few things are a more sensitive topic to an English person than finances – but I thought that, despite his younger brother’s financial acumen, the Marquess was fairly hopeless when it came to sensible investments. I suspected that nothing but the caution of previous generations had preserved the estate itself in Beaconsfield hands – although one might have wished that their practicality had extended to giving the women of the family a say in things, so that Ronnie was not faced with a choice of abandoning her home or pinching every housekeeping penny. So far, she had managed to remain in the London flat she and Miles had called home, but as the boy’s costs grew, she might be forced to reconsider.
And so I left the main drive to follow the path to the east wing, and reached out to pull the bell beside what looked like a tradesman’s entrance. In a moment, I found myself looking at Ronnie’s mother.
Tears seemed to be a theme for the day. Like her grandson, the Lady Dorothy had been weeping, although perhaps with less vigour and commotion than the lad, and more of a desire to conceal it.
She’d never been beautiful, no more than Ronnie was – they shared their short, verging-on-stout form and unfortunate pug nose, and neither had ever been able to do much with their mousy hair. I imagined looking at her mother would cause Ronnie some degree of despair, at what she would look like when she was in her middle forties. In fact, my friend’s lack of conventional beauty had always been outweighed (at least, until motherhood took over) by her big heart and her eagerness to change the world; her mother’s dowdy simplicity of spirit had only been cramped by a Victorian upbringing in what a woman did and did not do.
(Ironic, that, considering the entire age took its name from a queen – who, come to think of it, might have been the physical model for the two Beaconsfield women, minus the black dresses, lace mantillas, and scowl.)
The countess had done her best to hide the redness of her eyes and nose, so I pretended not to notice, merely greeting her as the old acquaintance I was. Lady Dorothy led me to a stifling sitting room, told the maid to bring tea, and embarked on a cheery conversation about the heat and the garden. The moment the maid shut the door, she sagged a bit – too well bred to slump in her chair and blow a puff of air over her face, but that was the effect. She smiled, her first genuine expression since I’d arrived.
‘It’s very good of you to come, Mrs, er …’ People who knew me before I married Holmes had difficulties with my choice of names – although my problem was nothing compared to this woman’s, with her family links not only to inherited peerages and courtesy titles, but a granted position as well. It was the sort of tangle that only those whose male relatives sat in the House of Lords would be able to keep straight.
‘Oh heavens, it’s still Mary.’
‘Mary, then. Ronnie said you wanted to talk about Vivian’s disappearance, although I’m not sure what she thinks you can do. We’ve searched all over for her – all the paths and trails, the corners of the house, up in the stables. She did not board a train, no one saw a strange motorcar. Edward even … even had the lake dragged.’
‘There’s probably nothing I can do that you haven’t, but I promised Ronnie, she being a bit tied down. I hope you don’t mind if I speak to the servants?’
‘Of course not, if it can help. Not that it will take you long,’ she added. ‘There’s only Lily, the cook, and a part-time gardener.’
‘Really? I’d have thought this sort of place would take a platoon of polishers.’
‘The main house has its own staff, of course. Although, even it doesn’t have as many as it should.’
‘I suppose, these days, country girls prefer work in a factory over life in service.’
‘Hmm.’
My ears pricked at the sound; there was no agreement there, only her unwillingness to disagree – or, to admit to reduced circumstances.
‘You must have brought in a lot of caterers and what-have-you to help with your brother-in-law’s birthday last week. I understand it was quite a bash.’
‘That’s not unusual. Edward hosts a lot of weekend parties. His political friends, for the most part. But it’s true, this was busier than usual. Which is why we did not think much about Vivian’s absence – we hadn’t the time. Frankly, it was a relief to have her out of the way. She tried to be helpful, but even the silver she polished needed to be redone after.’
‘I’m surprised the Marquess didn’t bring in all the village women to help!’
Her gaze fell to her hands. ‘Yes, well, Edward’s had some unfortunate investments of late.’
‘I see. Well, tell me about your sister-in-law. How was she, up to the point she left?’
Lady Dorothy looked relieved at my change of subject – easier to talk about the family lunatic than the family money. ‘I thought she looked marvellous! She’d had her hair bobbed – very fashionable. She’d put on a little weight, which was good since sometimes she looks positively skeletal. She mostly paid attention to the conversation, even held up her part of it. But that nurse – I don’t know. At first, I’d have said Vivian enjoyed her company, but looking back, I wonder if the woman wasn’t … controlling her somehow. It couldn’t be difficult to do, considering Vivian’s state of mind.’
‘Controlling her, how?’
‘Oh, offering up things to talk about, asking pointed questions, getting in the way of family affairs – the woman claimed that the asylum required her to stay in the room with Vivian every minute, which meant that she had to come to dinner with us. Can you imagine? Once or twice, I caught Vivian shooting these little glances over, almost as if she was afraid of her.’
‘Afraid?’ I said sharply. ‘Physically afraid? Or as if the nurse might give a negative report on her?’
‘I don’t really know. Certainly when the two of them were alone – in the garden, walking by the pond – they seemed perfectly comfortable. But, as I say, when we dined in the main house, Vivian scarcely said a word, barely touched her plate, sat and looked down at her hands. I wondered, afterwards, whether the nurse might have been so uncomfortable, dining outside of her class like that, that Vivian was afraid she’d have to pay for it later. You hear such dreadful tales about … those places.’
It was a vivid and startling picture, the madwoman cowering in anticipation of her nurse’s revenge over a petty scorning. ‘You are very fond of your sister-in-law, I think.’
‘I love Vivian dearly – I did, at any rate. Oh, Mary, you should have seen her before the War! So delicate and charming – the prettiest girl of her season. And she seemed to adore it – the parties, the dancing, the spectacle and dressing up. It was only afterwards, when the talk turned sober, that she would fade and cower. The young men did not know what to do. She left early – it was barely July – and went off to Paris all by herself. Oh, with a maid, of course, she wasn’t that bohemian. She knew no one, but that seemed to be what she was after. So odd. At any rate, she never married, and now she’s become such a sad and fragile person, wrapped up in the most dreadful ideas and fantasies. The mind is a terrible thing when it loses control.’ Ronnie’s mother looked up, tears welling. ‘Please find her, Miss Russell. Help me keep her as safe as she’ll allow.’
‘Do you think she may have …’ I hesitated to finish the sentence, but she did not.
‘Harmed herself? I think she could – I know she could. I lie awake at night and imagine her, putting on those heavy old jewels and dancing into the sea somewhere. But then, I can also imagine that awful nurse, looking at the weight of them and at the fragility of Vivian … She was Italian, after all.’
I blinked at the non sequitur. ‘Who? The nurse?’
‘Yes! Those dark eyes, that skin, the black hair. Crime runs in their veins, doesn’t it?’
‘No more than it does in the veins of Englishmen, Scandinavians, or … Faroe Islanders.’
‘I hope you’re right.’ But it was mere politeness.
However, the description tugged at my memory. ‘What was this nurse’s name?’
‘Trevisan.’
‘I met her when Ronnie and I went to Bedlam – sorry, Bethlem – three years ago. Isn’t she Cornish?’
‘Is she? Odd, I could have sworn she was Italian.’
The villainy of Mediterraneans knew no bounds.
I set down my cup of weak, half-drunk tea and patted her hand, one of those meaningless gestures that seem to comfort some women. ‘Could I see your sister-in-law’s rooms?’
‘They’ve been tidied,’ Lady Dorothy said.
Well, I could only hope the overworked maid had taken a few shortcuts.
CHAPTER FIVE
I’M NOT SURE WHAT I expected of a madwoman’s flat. Chaos, certainly. Clear signs of disintegration and terror. But either the maid had been particularly aggressive here, or I did not understand the impulses of lunacy.
Why had I never seen these rooms before? Had my brief visits coincided with times when Vivian was locked away? I’d always assumed that Ronnie’s disinclination to invite her Oxford friends home was rooted in a faint embarrassment over her living situation and her mother’s lack of intellectual gifts – but it could not have helped to know that a visitor might encounter an alarmingly erratic aunt.
Vivian’s small private sitting room, in the upper reaches of the wing, was light and airy, remarkably free of clutter compared to the stodgy, dim quarters below. Books were neatly confined to a set of shelves, the bottom two given over to a series of leather-bound sketchbooks. A simple, flat-topped desk stood beneath one window, with cups holding drawing pencils and ink pens. Two chairs and a settee were arranged before the fireplace with a small table at their centre. They were upholstered in a soft green-blue cloth that reminded me of the ocean, and could not have been more than eight or ten years old. The wallpaper, similarly new, had a design so subtle as to appear merely texture. Its colour was a sort of faded terracotta, with stronger touches of the same near-orange in the room’s carpet and chair-cushions. Two carpets interrupted the polished wood of the floor, a small one under the desk, and a larger one connecting the group of pieces in front of the fire – both of them thick, modern, and expensive.
The overall effect was somehow Mediterranean, reminiscent of clear skies, tile roofs, warm nights.
‘Such a bare room,’ Ronnie’s mother commented. ‘This happened after one of her first … fits. One afternoon, she just started throwing things out of the windows, lamps and pictures crashing to the ground, and insisted that we have the stable boys up to carry out all the furniture. Every scrap of it, down to the walls and floorboards. She slept on the bare floor that night, and the next morning came down with her gloves on and set off for town. I was so concerned that I made her take one of the maids to “help her carry things”. When she came back that night, she began turning the rooms into … this.’
Lady Dorothy’s helpless gesture was a clear indication that, to her mind, these alien surroundings were proof positive of Vivian’s loss of reason.
‘When would that have been?’
‘During the War – can you imagine? It was difficult enough to repair what one had, much less purchase things this … unusual.’
‘So this was after your husband died?’
‘Not long after. Before the War, we lived in the central portion of the house, with Vivian. After … after he was gone, we moved over to this side so that Edward could return, just before Christmas in 1915. Vivian’s fit would have been a few months later. Weeks, perhaps? At any rate, we’d scarcely settled in when – poof! Out of the window things went, and in came this. Heaven knows what she paid for it all. But she had her own money – still does, for that matter, although Edward is of course the trustee.’
Of course.
I walked over to a cluster of seven nicely framed watercolours, all of flowers, all by the same artist. ‘Are these hers?’
‘She was so talented. Before the War, she used to take her paints out into the countryside. She’d be gone hours and hours – she’d wear boys’ trousers and put her hair under a cap. Still does sometimes, when she’s home, though it makes Edward furious. I always thought it a sensible idea for a girl out alone like that, but never mind. She’d just walk, mostly, looking dreamily at the trees and hills, then stop for a while and do a sketch, sometimes a painting. She did an entire series of Selwick Hall itself – in the morning, at evening, in the winter. She had them framed on her bedroom wall, and they were the first things to be thrown out that day. I’ll never forget the sound as they hit the stones.’ She shuddered, as if the shattering glass were also Vivian’s mind going to pieces. ‘I rescued what I could of them. I have them in a cupboard downstairs. Perhaps I should have them framed again, if …’ If Vivian is not coming home.
