SV - 03 - Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments (25 page)

When they were alone together, Samson spoke again.

'Funny. I never thought the place'd seem so empty and quiet. There ain't sight nor sound of a poor lunatic anywhere.'

Presently the drawing-room door opened and a heavily-built woman of thirty or so came in. She was dressed in grey with white cuffs and collar, adorned with an insignia designed to suggest a nursing order.

'You are friends of Mr Jervis, I understand?' she said at once,

'We're police officers, ma'am,' said Verity sternly, 'and we come 'ere to ask certain questions of Mr Richard Jervis, relating to the death of the late Lord Henry.'

'That will be quite impossible,' said the woman.

Verity drew a sheet of paper from his pocket.

"ave the goodness to summon the proprietor of this place,' he said firmly.

'The proprietor,' said Sister Liddell, 'does not live here. He owns several houses of this kind, miles apart. He cannot live at all of them and therefore chooses not to live at any.'

'Then I must see the doctor that has charge,' said Verity irritably.

'The doctor called this morning,' said Sister Liddell. 'He comes three times a week from Acton and will not be here again for two days.'

'Then who has charge?'

'The head keeper, Mr Repington. But he is away just at present and I must deputize for him.'

'Ah,' said Verity, 'then you must likewise conduct me to Mr Richard Jervis and see to it that my questions are put to him.'

The woman planted her feet slightly apart, almost as if to bar the way.

'Quite impossible.'

'Then I gotta order here, signed by two justices and commissioners in lunacy, what makes it possible.' Sister Liddell shook her head.

'You may come with an order signed by the Lord Chancellor himself, and it shall do no good. Mr Jervis will never understand a word put to him, poor gentleman.'

Verity glowered at her.

'You see 'ere,' he said softly. 'I spoke with Mr Richard Jervis not a fortnight since. Sick he may 'ave been, but he was rational enough to understand question and answer. And if he ain't so now, then someone shall account for it!'

Sister Liddell shrugged and turned away. She walked towards a large wall-mirror at one side of the room and spread her hand against it. To Verity's surprise the mirror swung back, revealing itself as a glass-covered door which led to the 'secure rooms' of the private asylum. He and Samson followed her.

By contrast with the comfortably-furnished drawing-room, the long plain apartment behind the mirror was drab and cold, its walls unpapered and hung with cobwebs. Verity observed that the attendant had a slender silver chain about her neck, from which hung an ivory whistle.

'The patients are all sent here for their own good by those to whom they are dear,' she said, with an air of having recited the same apology many times before. 'They come not as prisoners but as invalids to be cured and restored to the society of their anxious and affectionate friends.'

Verity said nothing. Now that they had passed the soundproof door, there was a general, though distant, hubbub of voices, talking, sighing, groaning, sharply interrupted by the occasional cries or shrill laughter of the speakers. Though the windows were partly bricked up, there was space enough for him to see that the rooms allotted to the inmates overlooked a cobbled inner courtyard, from which cries and the sound of a struggle reached him. A dirty and bedraggled girl of indeterminate age was running barefoot round the yard, dressed only in a cotton shift. Two men and several women in uniforms similar to Sister Liddell were moving to pen her into a corner. Suddenly the girl looked up and shrieked.

'All you sane men and women who are imprisoned here! Come, fight for your lives! Rescue! Rescue!'

Ignoring Sister Liddell, Verity watched the sequel as open windows round the yard filled with pale faces, some grinning, some distorted by excitement, others exulting in the challenge, and all convinced of their own sanity. The uproar of voices was beyond belief. But the girl had given her pursuers a final advantage by pausing. They seized and carried her, struggling convulsively, to a large tank of cold water, some ten feet square and set partly into the ground. Four of them held her over it, horizontally and face down, while the others stood positioned to ensure that each time she was lowered her head and body were forced under for the full period of the immersion. Verity watched in horror as the victim was pressed right under and held there while the seconds ticked away. There was no way in which he could reach the yard and no means of intervening. When she was raised, choking and howling for breath, the attendants waited for the first scream of protest as a sign of recovery and then forced her under the cold water again. The process was repeated five times before the girl, struggling weakly and with her wet shift clinging to her, was led away.

Sister Liddell met Verity's indignation in her most philosophic manner.

"That's what they call "tanking",' she remarked. 'There's not a mad-house in the country where they don't tank from time to time. It keeps the poor wretches washed clean and helps to shock them out of their silliness a bit. Quiet as lambs they are after that.'

'She could a-bin drowned!' said Verity furiously.

'Not her,' said the woman. 'The art of it is to stop short of drowning by a bit.'

She opened a door.

'This is the day-room for the first-class patients,' she said.

Verity knew that asylums divided their patients into classes, like railway travellers, and treated them accordingly. Yet he looked with dismay at the first-class inmates, their trousers and petticoats absurdly short, their woollen gloves worn in holes, collars fitted high enough to cut their ears, their coats too short in the waist and too long in the sleeves. These grotesque costumes made them look even madder than they were and he wondered cynically what had become of the more expensive and elegant clothes in which many of them must have arrived. Two keepers, one a short stout man with red whiskers, the other tall and grey-haired, strolled up and down the length of the day-room, keeping order. Many of the patients had had their heads shaved which made it impossible to tell the difference between the sex of some of them except by the clothes they wore. To one side of Verity, a young man with manacles on his wrists was sitting on a plain bench being fed gruel on a wooden spoon by a lunatic with the muscular frame of a bargee. From where it came, Verity could not see, but a twisted scrap of paper landed at his feet. Ignoring Sister Liddell's outstretched hand, he unravelled it and read, 'Drink nothing but water at dinner'.

Presently, the woman left Verity and Samson under the gaze of the two keepers and went, as she said, to see if Richard Jervis was awake. While they were standing there, the young man with manacles on his wrists rose and shuffled towards Verity. He stood before him and said in a calm, level voice,

'Sir, I implore your assistance. I am the victim of a conspiracy. They pretend I am mad. They are keeping me by force in a mad-house, a living tomb.'

"e don't sound mad,' said Samson softly to Verity.

The red-whiskered keeper approached.

'Take no notice, gentlemen,' he said, 'there's orders of committal and medical certificates enough and to spare for every patient in this house.'

'Don't be deceived, sir,' said the young man to Verity,
almost on the verge of tears. ‘I
am put here that my uncle and cousins may enjoy my inheritance. The papers were signed by men who were bribed to sign them. For God's sake, put me to the test. Test my memory, my judgment, by any que
stion you choose,’

'There now,' said the keeper, 'poor young gentleman. Don't agitate yourself so. It's all for the best, all for your own good.' He looked at Verity and Samson, shook his head, and added, 'Very painful, very painful.'

The young man shuffled off, twisting his wrists in the manacles, seeming uncertain how to proceed. Before he could renew his appeal, the two sergeants were beckoned by Sister Liddell. As the young man saw them leave, he shouted after them with sudden urgency,

'Help! Murder! If you are Englishmen, if you are Christians, for God's sake help me!'

Verity turned to the woman.

'Who might that poor lunatic be, ma'am?'

'Wilson Rust,' she said. 'Mad as a March hare.'

They followed her to a row of small inner rooms, which reminded Verity of his visit to question Ned Roper in the refractory cells at Newgate. Each door at Friern House had a small grill, through which the room with its truckle-bed could be observed. However, the first room was unoccupied, its bed piled with chains, iron belts, wrist-locks, muffles and screw-locked hobbles.

'You don't need to notice such contrivances as them, gentlemen,' Sister Liddell whispered self-consciously. 'That's only what was left by the last proprietor. None of it used since. Why, I dare say it's all rusted now so that it couldn't be used anyway!'

Verity said nothing. It was the next cell which was prepared for their visit. The gas was lit, glaring on whitewashed brick. Two cockroaches had been prudently squashed by the keeper's boot, close by the bed where they had been exploring the warm, helpless body of the occupant.

'Now,' said Sister Liddell, 'you shan't touch nor distress him. But if you think Mr Richard Jervis might be got to answer, put what questions you like.'

She withdrew beyond the door and Verity peered at the figure on the bed. His legs were hobbled and strapped to the bed's foot. His hands were laced into a leather muffler across his chest. The fact that he wore no strait-waistcoat was not a tribute to the tenderness of Friern House but the consequence of several patients having strangled themselves with the device after their keepers had left them for the night. Verity looked at the face and head, shaved of beard and hair, which seemed featureless and nondescript.

'Here!' said Samson.

"ave the goodness to leave this to me, Mr Samson. Mr Richard Jervis! Mr Jervis, sir! Can you hear me? Can you understand me?'

There was a moment's silence. Then the figure on the bed emitted an infantile burble,
followed
by a toneless laugh. Verity took a step closer. There was a menacing but frustrated roar, followed by another deranged laugh as the sergeant hastily drew back.

'It ain't. . . .'

'Not a word, Mr Samson!'

Then Verity called Sister Liddell.

'I fear, ma'am, we must own you in the right. Poor Mr Richard is so far gone that he'll never understand what's said to 'im, let alone make an answer.'

'So long as it puts the matter to rest,' she said with a smile that was almost too prompt.

'Well, ma'am, it don't go so far as that. I got one more instruction, which is to speak with Mr Wilson Rust, a First-class patient.'

She looked surprised and displeased.

'Why?'

'A-cos ma'am, I got a signed warrant here that empowers me to examine what persons and papers I choose. A keeper that stands between me and Mr Rust now is going to have a sharp taste of them manacles and leg-irons what the last proprietor left."

It was said in the tone of a jest, but Sister Liddell gathered her skirts about her and swept back to the day-room.

'Stand back the far end of the room,' said Verity to the keepers and the woman when Wilson Rust stood, shaven-headed, before the two sergeants. Then he turned to the young man. 'Very well, sir. You wanted questions to put you to the test and questions you shall have. Not a few days since, one Richard Jervis, a first-class prisoner, was brought here under the escort of Captain John Ransome. It's all entered in the papers and regular, so you needn't fear talking of it. Might you have seen them?'

'Sir, there was not a man in Friern House day-room who did not. They watch every new arrival as he crosses the yard.'

'And Captain Ransome was with him?'

'Yes. He was spoken to b
y the doctor here as "Ransome".

'Mr Richard was under restraint?'

'His wrists locked, but not leg-irons.'

'He walked?'

'Limped,' said Rust thoughtfully. 'But he had no sticks? Wasn't held at all?' 'Guarded round about but not held. They wouldn't trust him with sticks. Quite a tall fellow with power in his arms.' Verity breathed out hard and said, "ow might Captain Ransome look?'

'A quiet young man. No taller than you. Hair the colour of straw.'

'Right,' said Verity, 'if you told the truth I'll return the favour by letting it be known outside where the world may 'ear it.'

'Wait!
' said the young man, and Verity nerved himself against another pathetic plea. 'You must hurry. Richard Jervis is raving and can't speak for himself. The keepers swear he's to be made a Chancery lunatic.'