Laura Rowland - Bedlam - The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte

Constable Ryan hesitated, torn between his duty and his fear that George could put him in bad odor with his superior. He opened the door and stood aside.

“I’ll see what’s happened,” George told me. “You stay here.”

“No! I’m going with you!”

I spoke with such determination that his will gave way to mine. Together we entered the criminal lunatics’ wing. The stench and the inmates’ howls greeted us.

“Good Lord,” George muttered.

Blind instinct guided my steps through the dungeon. As I broke into a run, I chastised myself for allowing Dr. Forbes to rush me away from Bedlam yesterday, and for my doubt that the lunatic was Slade. Was he dead? Might I have saved him? Winded and panting, I arrived at the cell in which I’d seen Slade. Voices issued from the open door. Inside, two police constables were milling around, examining the table with the straps, the weird apparatus. Two more, and a man who wore a black raincoat, stood gazing down at something at their feet. I perceived an odor at once sweet and salty, metallic and raw.

The odor of blood.

It seemed to leap through my nostrils and claw at some deep, vulnerable place in me. The blood was wet and fresh and shockingly red, pooled on the floor, smeared where feet had skidded in it. A frantic cry burst from me: “Slade! No!”

The men turned. As they stared at me, they shifted position, and I saw what they’d been looking at. Two men lay on the floor. They were dressed in plain cotton trousers and smocks. One was crumpled on his side. A gory halo of blood surrounded his head. The other man sprawled on his back, arms flung out. From his left eye protruded a slim glass cylinder equipped with a plunger, such as the one I’d seen used by the foreigner yesterday. Its needle had penetrated deep into the man’s brain.

I experienced an onslaught of relief, confusion, and astonishment.

Neither dead man was Slade.

I fell into the arms of George Smith. He beheld the scene inside the room and said, “Good Lord!” He turned me so that my face was against his chest and I could see no more.

I managed not to faint; my adventures of 1848 had given me a reserve of stamina. But I was so breathless that I couldn’t walk. George carried me out of the lunatics’ wing, shouting for help. I was put in a wheelchair and conveyed to a chamber used for conferences. A doctor administered smelling salts. A matron fetched me a cup of hot tea. I drank the tea and revived somewhat. George sat at the table with me; he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.

“That was the most awful sight I’ve ever seen. I’m just glad it wasn’t your friend who was murdered.” He paused, then said, “Who exactly is this John Slade?”

I hadn’t told him that Slade was a spy for the Crown. None but a few privileged persons were supposed to know. “He’s a clergyman from Canterbury.” That was a false identity Slade had once used. It would have to do.

“How did you come to know him?”

I’d been sworn to secrecy about the circumstances under which I’d known Slade. “We had a mutual acquaintance.” It was Isabel White, the woman whose murder had launched me on my adventure of 1848.

George stroked his chin; he seemed to debate with himself on the wisdom of pursuing the subject. “May I ask exactly how well you know Mr. Slade?”

He didn’t want to hear that Slade had been my suitor, I could tell. He most certainly didn’t want his company’s famous authoress to have romantic connections with a mental patient. What an ado the newspapers would make about that! And I couldn’t tell him anything of what had passed between Slade and me.

“Mr. Slade is a good friend, but no more,” I settled for saying.

George scrutinized me closely, and I averted my eyes from the suspicion in his. Fortunately, we were interrupted by the arrival of the man in the black raincoat and a middle-aged woman dressed in a gray frock, a white apron, and a white cap. She had a prim mouth, sharp eyes and nose, and cheeks as rosy, mottled, and hard as crabapples.

“I’m Henrietta Hunter, matron of Bethlem Hospital,” she said. “Are you feeling better?”

I said I was. The black-coated man said, “Good, because I want a few words with you.” His high, stooped shoulders, black garments, and long face gave him the look of a vulture. His greenish eyes flicked over me as if I were a carcass he was wondering whether to eat. “I’m Detective Inspector Hart, from the Metropolitan Police.”

George rose and demanded, “What is going on here? Who were those men that were killed? Who killed them, and how did it happen?”

“Mr. Smith, is it?” D. I. Hart said with a humorless smile. “You bullied my constable into letting you into the crime scene. You hadn’t ought to have done that. He’s in trouble, and so will you be, unless you sit down and keep quiet.”

George reluctantly obeyed.

“That’s better.” D. I. Hart pulled up a chair next to mine, turned it to face me, and sat. Matron Hunter remained standing near me, like a jailer. He asked my name, and after I gave it, said, “What do you know about this, Miss Bronte?”

My status as a famous authoress gave me the confidence to stand up to him instead of meekly surrendering. “I refuse to say until you answer Mr. Smith’s questions.”

D. I. Hart looked surprised and vexed. I folded my arms. He put on a condescending expression and said, “The murder victims were nurses. It was an inmate who killed them.”

I had been so relieved to discover that Slade wasn’t the victim, but now I felt a cold, ominous touch of dread.

“As far as I can deduce, they were removing him from the treatment table,” D. I. Hart said. “They thought he was unconscious, but he was faking. When they undid the straps, he attacked them. He hit one nurse on the head with a truncheon. He fought with the other, grabbed a hypodermic syringe, and stabbed him through the eye.”

George Smith shook his head in disapproving wonder. I could hardly bear to ask whether Slade was the murderer, but I had to know. “Was the inmate a tall, thin man with shaggy black hair and gray eyes, about forty years old?”

Interest kindled in D. I. Hart’s gaze. He looked even more carnivorous than before. “So I’m told. How did you know?”

It was as I’d feared: the police thought Slade was the murderer.

“A nurse reported that a lady visitor had wandered into the criminal lunatics’ wing yesterday.” Matron Hunter bent a speculative stare on me. “Was that you, Miss Bronte? Did you see the inmate then?”

“It was, and I did,” I said. “But he didn’t kill those men!”

“What makes you so sure?” D. I. Hart said. “Do you know him?”

“Yes,” I said with passionate conviction, “and I know that John Slade is innocent.”

“It appears you don’t know the man at all,” D. I. Hart said with a smug, unpleasant smile. “His name isn’t John Slade. It’s Josef Typinski. And it’s highly unlikely that you’ve ever met him. He’s a refugee from Poland.”

At first I was shocked by this news, and jarred out of my certainty that the man I’d seen was Slade.

“It’s just as I suggested,” George said gently. “You made a mistake.”

Then I recalled that his work often required Slade to use aliases. Adept at foreign accents and languages, he could easily have styled himself as a Polish refugee. But I couldn’t tell the detective inspector any of this, for I was sworn to secrecy.

“I want to see him,” I said. “Where is he?”

“I’d like to see him, too, but that’s not possible at the moment,” D. I. Hart said. “He’s escaped.”

Relief vied with fresh horror in me. Slade wasn’t under arrest, but he was a wanted man, a fugitive.