The Asylum (16 page)

If she really had taken a bribe, and helped a patient to escape, Hodges could not possibly have been reinstated. I remembered the attendants I had passed on my way out, all turning to look at me, but none of them raising the alarm; the asylum gate standing conveniently open, with the gatekeeper nowhere to be seen; George Baker appearing so fortuitously on the road; and Dr. Straker waiting for me in Gresham’s Yard.

They had
meant
me to escape, or rather, to believe I was escaping. I had been led, every step of the way. Everyone—Hodges, the attendants, George Baker, perhaps even the motherly woman with the basket in Liskeard station, and, unwittingly, I myself—had played the parts assigned to them. In a play designed to convince me that I had met the real Georgina Ferrars in Gresham’s Yard. Just as Gadd, the monomaniac, had been brought face to face with the man he believed to be Gladstone.

I remembered Frederic saying that if they hadn’t found an attendant to impersonate Gladstone, Dr. Straker would have engaged an actor.

The woman in Gresham’s Yard had been an actress. She could have spent hours studying me through the observation slot in the infirmary.

A faint sound from the passage had me glancing fearfully at the slide. Had it moved a fraction? I dared not go close enough to check. Instead, I walked over to the window, where at least no one could see my face, and stood looking down into the darkening yard where the stable hands had greeted George Baker with such familiarity.

Had George Baker brought me here in the first place? I had woken from the seizure on a Thursday, so I must have arrived on a Wednesday . . .

But that was no more likely to be true than the story of Lucia Ardent.

I had been told so often, and by so many people, that I had arrived here as Lucy Ashton, voluntary patient from Plymouth, that I had come to picture it scene by scene: being admitted by Frederic; wandering restlessly about the grounds in the afternoon; being found, unconscious, early the following morning.

Dr. Straker had said that Lucy Ashton was “a disturbing choice of alias for a troubled young woman presenting herself for treatment at a private asylum.” Perhaps it was meant to be disturbing; perhaps he had chosen it himself.

Just as he had chosen to tell me that I had suffered a seizure. I might have been lying in a drugged stupor for weeks, not days, before I woke in the infirmary.

The more I thought about it, the more certain I felt that it was all Dr. Straker’s invention.

In which case Frederic had deceived me—about
everything.
That shy, earnest, sensitive demeanor; those heartfelt tears; perhaps it had all been an act. Perhaps he already had a wife, or a mistress, or both. He had even told me the story of Isaiah Gadd, confident that I was far too naïve to see the application to myself. Remembering how easily he had won my heart, I blushed with shame and mortification.

And if Bella, who had seemed so childlike and innocent—if she, too, had been deceiving me on Dr. Straker’s orders, then I could trust nothing beyond the evidence of my own eyes. And perhaps not even that.

I found that I was gripping the windowsill as tightly as I had clutched at the gorse on the cliff-face, staring into the abyss.

Everything they had done had been aimed at driving me out of my mind, in the most literal sense, by confronting me with irrefutable proof that I was not myself.

But
why?
Dr. Straker, at least, was risking disgrace and imprisonment. Supposing I had gone to Liskeard police station, instead of straight to Gresham’s Yard, and the police had believed me? Supposing my uncle had appeared at the wrong moment? Dr. Straker knew that I had very little money, and no expectations. Why choose a perfectly sane young woman when he had a whole asylum full of lunatics at his disposal? There was nothing at all unusual or interesting about me.

Only that, except for a half-blind uncle, no one would care, or even know, if I vanished from the world.

I remembered Frederic saying—again, supremely confident that I would miss the implication—that one of Dr. Straker’s interests was grafting fruit trees.

They had chosen me for an experiment.

Which was why I had received no treatment. Dr. Straker was waiting patiently for my mind to disintegrate, while he combed the records of missing persons for another young, friendless woman who had vanished from the world—a woman whose lost soul he intended to resurrect in my body.

And after that? He could not afford to release me—assuming he intended to let me go at all—until he was absolutely certain that every last trace of Georgina Ferrars had been expunged from my consciousness. For a man of his powers, it would be easy to arrange apparent proof that the real Georgina Ferrars was already dead: a mangled corpse fished out of the Thames, dressed in my clothes and wearing my brooch.

The experiment might end with my being hanged for murdering myself.

Each morning after breakfast, Mrs. Pearce would read out the names of patients whom the doctors wished to see, and tell them to return to their rooms and wait. I had not seen Dr. Straker for several days, but when my name was called the following morning, I felt as if the blood had drained from my body. It was all I could do to climb the stairs without fainting.

The wait, I knew, might be anything from five minutes to an hour or more. Telling myself that I must not show fear only made my trembling worse; I knew, too, that I would not be able to look at him without horror and loathing. Even if Hodges had not confessed, he would sense that something was wrong; and then he would press and press until he found out.

I could pretend to be ill, but when he found that I had no fever, he would know that I was pretending, and that would make me fear him even more. No; I would have to admit that I was afraid—as I had been, often enough, before—but somehow conceal that I was now mortally afraid of
him.
I sat down on the upright chair, with my back to the window, trying to decide what I should say.

When I heard his footsteps approaching, I buried my face in my hands and began to sob, which was easy enough to do in earnest, and when the door opened, I did not even look up.

“Good morning, Miss Ashton. I am sorry to see you distressed.”

I drew a long, sobbing breath and slowly raised my head. His tone, as ever, was calm and courteous, but the gleam in his eyes, which I had once taken for amusement, now seemed as cold as ice.

“It should not surprise you, sir,” I said. “I am a prisoner here; I will die here; there is no hope for me.”

“Come now, Miss Ashton; any day now, we are bound to discover your identity.”

“You have been saying that for months, sir—an eternity of torment—and nothing has changed.”

“Believe me, Miss Ashton; I understand how hard it must be. Allow me to take your pulse.”

I could not repress a shudder as his fingers touched my wrist.

“I beg your pardon; it is a cold morning, and my hand is doubtless cold as well.”

His solicitude was like that of a slaughterman, scratching a lamb’s head affectionately as he prepares to cut its throat. He was going to tear my soul out of my body, but in as humane and enlightened a fashion as the demands of his experiment allowed, sincerely regretting any distress I might suffer in the process. I wished I could stop my hand from trembling.

“Hmm . . . a little fast, but then you are agitated this morning. Tell me, is there any reason—any specific reason, I mean—for your agitation? Have you remembered anything of those weeks before you arrived here?”

“No, sir, I have not.” The fear in my voice was all too genuine.

“A pity. I had a note from Miss Ferrars only the other day, asking whether we had found her writing case. She is still threatening to press charges against you. Of course, you are perfectly safe so long as you are with us, but if you could only remember where you hid it, that would be one less obstacle in the way of your release.”

“I do not understand you, sir,” I said dully, dabbing at my eyes to conceal my face.

“Well, Miss Ashton, it would be unfortunate if we discharged you as cured, only to see you arrested at the gate.”

“How can I ever be discharged, sir, when I have no home, no money, and no name?”

“But you
will
have a name . . . Are you saying that you no longer believe you are Georgina Ferrars?”

My sob of terror was quite involuntary; I clutched my handkerchief and prayed he would take it for distress.

“I do not know what I believe, sir. My reason says I cannot be, but my memory says . . . that if I am not Georgina Ferrars, I am no one.”

“Interesting,” he said. “And encouraging, though I know you cannot see it. Try to have faith, Miss Ashton; it will not be long now.”

The words echoed like a warning bell as the door closed behind him.

It rained all of that day, but the following afternoon I was back in the garden, walking slowly around the perimeter until weariness overtook me, and I sat down on the bench to rest in the pale sunlight.

What had Dr. Straker said about my writing case? “If you could remember where you hid it . . .” It was surely not in his interest that I should recall anything of that time; yet he kept on pressing me to remember what I had done with it. What if it was
not
in his possession? Might there be something in it that he wanted—or feared?

Of course: the journal I had presumably kept throughout those missing weeks. I had told Frederic all about Aunt Vida’s gift, and how she had encouraged me to keep a record of every day’s events, no matter how trivial.

If I had brought my brooch here—assuming I had not been kidnapped—I would have brought my writing case as well.

But the key had not been round my neck when I woke in the infirmary.

A dark figure emerged from the shadows at the far end of the garden and began to walk toward me. I saw with a jolt of alarm that it was Frederic Mordaunt, looking as woebegone as ever. Which was all the more reason to fear him, especially as Dr. Straker was doubtless watching from one of the windows above.

“Miss Ashton, I know I promised not to trouble you again, but I have come to tell you that I have persuaded Dr. Straker to move you back to the voluntary wing.”

I stared at him for several seconds, mute with astonishment. It could only be a trap, but what sort of a trap?

“You had better sit down,” I said, indicating the place on my right, so that I would be facing away from the windows.

“Thank you. I’m afraid there are conditions. He refuses to lift the certificate; and you must take all your meals in the closed ward, as at present. But you will have your old room back—the room you were in before the seizure, I mean—and be free, during the day, to walk anywhere in the grounds, so long as you do not try to escape again, which I beg you not to attempt, for your own sake. You will be closely watched; he insists upon it; and if you so much as pass the gate, he will wash his hands of you, and have you transferred to the county asylum as incurably insane.”

I had no need to feign bewilderment. Why would they move me to a room I had probably never occupied, and give me the freedom of the grounds? Did they
want
me to try to escape again?

“Why has Dr. Straker agreed to this?” I said at last.

“Because I insisted upon it. I took to heart what you said to me—about my being the heir, and my duty as a gentleman. I have never crossed him before—I have never had occasion to—but after I saw you the other day . . . Well, I reminded him of his own guiding principle, which is never to cause a patient unnecessary pain. I put it to him that after several months’ confinement, we had inflicted nothing but torment upon you, and were no closer to solving the mystery of your identity. And that the best chance of restoring your memory was to enlist Miss Ferrars’ cooperation by any means necessary, and bring you face to face—so that you could speak to each other, I mean. He said that she would never agree to this unless we could recover her writing case; I said that her best chance of recovering it was to meet you, in as tranquil a setting as we could provide, and that if that failed, I would compensate her for the loss.

“He replied that on the contrary, seeing Miss Ferrars again would cause you such agitation that you might well suffer another seizure—a fatal one this time. He is a physician; I am not: I could not argue with that. But I insisted we do
something
for you. It ended with his agreeing, most reluctantly, to move you back to the voluntary wing, on the conditions I have described. He says that if any harm comes to you because of this, it will be upon my head.”

He spoke with what I would have sworn was heartfelt emotion.

“But why did he not mention this himself, when he saw me yesterday?”

“I did not speak to him until this morning, and then—he agreed that I might tell you.”

“If you had kept your promise, sir, I would not be here now. But I thank you for what you have done. When may I expect to be moved?”

“As soon as you wish. In fact, if you are willing to accompany me, I can escort you there now.”

I rose, a little unsteadily. He offered me his arm, and blushed when I did not take it. Could he really make himself blush on cue? Was he Dr. Straker’s accomplice or his dupe? In either case, I could not afford to trust him.

“If you will lead the way, sir, I will follow,” I said.

He bowed with every appearance of mortification and set off toward the house. I could not help glancing up at the windows; there was a pale blur behind one of them which might have been a face.

He led me back to the entrance, and across the hall to a door through which I had seen Mrs. Pearce come and go. An attendant unlocked it as he approached, and we passed along a dim, echoing corridor, emerging beside a staircase I recognised: this was where, during my escape, I had seen the tall, grey-haired man who had reminded me of someone—of Frederic, in fact. Edmund Mordaunt had been watching me.

“Miss Ashton?”

He was indicating the stairs; I wondered, as I followed him upward, whether I had misunderstood him, and they were moving me back to the infirmary. But from the first-floor landing he led me along another passage, very like that in the women’s ward, except that there were no names on the doors, until we came to one with
MISS ASHTON
spelt out in the familiar gilt letters.