Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection (55 page)

Inspector Abel's eyes widened and he spread his hands. "They're... mad!"

"Enough." The undersecretary's words were quiet, but they carried with them an official finality. "There is a person of interest to the crown in treatment at Bedford, and I've been instructed to avoid placing him in undue danger if it's at all possible."

"A person of interest? Who might that be?" Bartleby asked.

"That's not for me to reveal, or I would simply instruct you to remove him, and send Scotland Yard in after. No, this is a circumstance requiring the utmost discretion."

"Even from us?"

"Especially from you, Mr. Bartleby."

"With all due respect, sir," Abel said, "public safety mandates--"

"With all due respect, Inspector, I represent the Home Office, and I will tell you what is in the interest of public safety. Mr. Bartleby, you have ten hours to get the patients to stand down, after which I will loose Inspector Abel to take the hospital by force. Do you understand?"

Sweat beaded on Bartleby's forehead from the effort of forcing back whatever rebuttal he had been forming. "Yes, sir. Very good, sir."

"Excellent. Inspector, send one of your officers to escort Doctor Teague home."

"Do you mind if my partner and I escort you?" Bartleby stepped to the door. "I've some questions about the hospital, its patients, and its staff."

"Not at all," the doctor responded, wrapping the blanket around herself more snugly, linking her arm with his as they stepped out into the rain.

I checked my pocket-watch and moved to follow. As soon as I'd stepped out of the tent proper and under its awning, Aldora slipped with grace to my side.

"James, a moment, if you please."

I regarded her with dull disinterest.

"Have I offended you in some way?" she asked.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean," I said.

"You're a frank man, Mr. Wainwright, so I shall speak to you frankly." She glanced past me, but we were out of earshot. "You seem to hold some sort of resentment against me, and I'm not entirely sure why."

"I'm sure you're imagining things," I said.

She cocked her head. "No. I don't think so. We've had our tensions before, but since the wedding--"

"It's nothing I care to discuss," I said.

"Another time, then," she said, as if the matter was of no import.

The very fact that she had broached the subject belied her concern. I cannot recall having exchanged more than a few words with her at once in all our years of acquaintance. "Perhaps."

I moved to go and she stopped me again, this time with a single gloved hand in my path. "There is another matter I would care to broach."

"Quickly, if you please." Bartleby and Doctor Teague had almost reached the carriage.

"It would not be proper of me to accompany Alton inside the Hospital," she said, "but he faces a grave danger that he may not be consciously aware of."

"Oh?" I asked, suppressing a sneer. "His father, do you suppose? Bartleby seemed to handle his old man well enough."

"It's not a simple issue," she insisted. "I'm asking you for your help, James."

The rarefied Aldora Fiske deigning to not only rub shoulders with the working-class Mr. James Wainwright, but to beg a favour? This was interesting. I bade her continue with a curt nod.

"Do you know how it came to pass that Alton had his father declared unfit?"

"Just that he had." Bartleby, for all his prattle, touched ever only lightly on the subject of his past, and I never saw fit to pry.

"It's not my tale to tell. You must ask him some time, but for now, let it suffice that he's ample reason to resent the man."

That wasn't unexpected. "Many men resent their fathers."

"Perhaps so. I won't pry, James, but I will ask you to consider how you might react to your own father, if you once more found yourself beholden."

The smirk left my face at the thought.

"Please. Just watch him where I cannot." Aldora stepped back into the tent, leaving me with my thoughts, and a new concern for my partner. I hastened to join him.

20 September, 1911 - 11:20 am

Doctor Teague lived in a well-appointed two-story semi-detached home not terribly far from the asylum. Her serving boy cleaned the mud from our boots in the foyer while her housemaid assisted her change of clothing in her chambers.

"I thought psychiatric doctors made a good wage," I said.

"Hmm?" Bartleby asked, watching the houseboy's work for scuffs.

I craned my neck to look past the foyer into the parlour. "Doctor Teague's home is more sparsely decorated than I would have anticipated."

"Did you see the shoe tree when we entered?" Bartleby tapped it with his walking stick, his eyes never leaving his shoes. "Mahogany. As with the bookcase next to the mantle in the parlour. The basin in the washroom off of the hall there is marble. None of it decorated, but quality and utilitarian."

"Functional rather than aesthetic," I said.

"I thought you'd appreciate that."

Our boots clean, we availed ourselves of Doctor Teague's parlour while we waited.

"It's not entirely devoid of decor," Bartleby said, nodding towards clay vases sitting on a shelf. They were painted with some sort of geometric abstract imagery in brown and red. Near them, a blue and red patterned rug hung as a tapestry on the wall.

"African?" I asked.

"Perhaps?" Bartleby said. "American Indian? Australian Aboriginal? I never took you for much interest in art, James."

"Always broadening my understanding of the world, Bartleby."

He smiled sideways at me. "I see."

Doctor Teague's voice called down from above. "If you gentlemen are hungry, I can have Karen fix you something in the kitchen?"

"Thank you, but we're fine," Bartleby said. "The madmen--"

"Patients."

"Patients. Didn't treat you too roughly, did they?"

"It was dreadful," came the response. "They didn't take liberties with me, but they took no pains to be gentle. I quite honestly feared for my life, and now, hearing about poor Director Paddock..."

"I can imagine," I said. "You weren't injured, were you?"

I cringed as the words left my mouth. Of course, not. Johnson had asked the very question just prior. She would think me a muddle-headed fool.

"Just a few bumps and scratches. Nothing serious."

Bartleby clapped me on the shoulder. "If it isn't too traumatic for you, Doctor, would you mind recounting for us the events of your capture?"

There was a moment of silence before Teague appeared at the top of the stairs. She'd dressed in a pigeon-breasted blouse, high collared, and below it a simple black pleated skirt. It wasn't very flattering, and much like her home, was utilitarian, the clothing worn by washerwomen and seamstresses.

More to the pity, her hair, stunning when loose, had been pulled back into a simple knot. Her delicate features were obscured by the pale-green lenses of pince-nez spectacles clamped onto the bridge of her nose. She looked like a far different woman from the one we'd rescued only moments before.

And Bartleby questioned my sense of aesthetics.

"I was in the hospital study when they came for me." She strapped a broad-brimmed hat atop her head as she descended towards us, further hiding the brilliant gold of her hair. "I have difficulty sleeping some evenings, and spend late hours in research. Their arrival was the first sign indicating that anything was amiss. They held me fast, shrieking and gibbering as they hauled me down the corridors to the cells. I could see that some of the other doctors and staff had already been taken, but after they shoved me inside and locked the door I was left alone until you arrived."

Bartleby seemed to consider. "Did you notice what the other patients were about while they were bringing you to your cell?"

"I was a bit pre-occupied, as I'm sure you can understand."

"Anything you noticed might be pertinent," I said.

Doctor Teague slowed as she reached for her coat, her lip jutting out. "Only a few of the patients were focused on the task of locking us up. Several were wandering the grounds, seemingly as disoriented as I was. I did get a quick glimpse of one – I'm not sure whom – with what may have been a knife of some sort."

"How many patients does Bedford treat?" Bartleby asked.

"It varies. Far fewer than it did when it was a state asylum. Where before it housed hundreds, now we treat dozens."

"That's a significant decline." I said. Well put, Mister Speaker of Things Obvious.

Doctor Teague wrapped the coat around herself. "Decline is not the word I would choose. It's simply a different focus in treatment of the mentally ill. Bedford used to treat only the worst of the criminally insane, in conditions that would be horrible for the sane. For the mad... it was a nightmare that never ended. Less than a decade ago, asylums were simply places to store the undesirable, with physical treatments designed to soothe the public into thinking that something was being done. Attitudes were just beginning to change while I was at Girton – I was fortunate in that one of our lecturers was on the forefront of moral therapy."

"Moral therapy?" I asked. Psychiatry was not an area I had studied to any great degree. "Are they saying that madness is an ethical lapse?"

"The implication is not that the sufferers are themselves immoral, Mr. Wainwright," Doctor Teague said. "In the past century it was believed that the mad were as wild beasts who had lost their reason. While not held responsible for their conditions, they were treated with scorn and ridicule, subjected to the most horrendous of treatments."

"As Locke said, there is a little madness in all people," Bartleby said, whatever that meant.

"It is the treatment itself that is or is not moral. At Bedford we staff live, work, and dine with the patients, rather than locking them away in restraints. The entire facility was remodelled, larger windows installed to allow more natural light, the grounds sculpted for a more peaceful aesthetic, the restraints done away with."

"But you keep them in cells," I said. "And there's the barbed wire fences, guard towers..."

"The towers are unmanned, and the cells are simply to keep the patients from wandering about after dark. The focus of moral treatment is on discipline and community. Patients are given chores to facilitate a feeling of responsibility and belonging, to help them be part of something, in addition to their therapies."

"I noticed the Royal Academy of Artificers and Engineers Guild sigil on your shingle," I said, switching tracks. "Do you use Guild-developed technologies in your therapies?"

"All of our techniques are experimental," Doctor Teague said. "But only Director Paddock was guilded... he built some sort of device to assist with his dream-therapy. Are you a member yourself?"

"James graduated with honours," Bartleby said, nudging me.

The doctor's gaze returned to me. I shifted, suddenly uncomfortable with her scrutiny, hands toying with my bowler. "Yes, well. My focus has been on forensic technologies of late."

"Several of your designs are even in use by Scotland Yard, aren't they?" Bartleby said.

I felt my face flush. "It's nothing that Doctor Teague would find interesting."

"On the contrary!" Behind her pale-green lenses her eyes flashed. "Engineering has always fascinated me. I would love to hear about your work, Mr. Wainwright."

I had no idea how to respond.

"I'm sure you'll have plenty of opportunity to discuss science and technology once we've completed our investigation," Bartleby said.

"I'm sure," Doctor Teague said. "Let's be off, then?"

"Are you planning on returning to the cordon?"

"I'm going to accompany you back into the hospital."

"I'll not hear of it," Bartleby said. "It's far too perilous."

"Less so with my company, Mr. Bartleby." Doctor Teague's pouty lips frowned slightly. "As I am the only one available with a working knowledge of the hospital and its ways."

"I cannot in good conscience--"

"You need my assistance, Mr. Bartleby."

He turned to me. "James?"

"I don't see why not," I said. "I've no expertise with the mad or their ways, and I doubt your father would deign to release another hostage to us as guide."

My partner's eyes narrowed. "Very well, James. Doctor Teague. I cannot guarantee your safety."

"I require no such."

He frowned, arms folded, clearly irritated. "Let's be off then."

20 September, 1911 - 11:45 am

"Take off your clothes, put them inna box. Put uvver stuff inna box. Put on the outfit." The wild-haired madman pushed the aforementioned box into Bartleby's hands.

"I shall do no such thing!" He handed the box back.

"Take off your clothes, put them inna box. Put uvver stuff inna box. Put on the outfit." The madman repeated, pushing the box back.