Laura Martin - Secrets Behind Locked Doors

Robert followed the dowdy woman up three flights of stairs. All around him screams and moans were muffled by thick wooden doors. He wondered how anyone got any rest. He wasn’t surprised they didn’t hope to cure anyone at Lewisham Asylum; he rather suspected it would turn a sane person mad within a month.

‘She’s in here, sir.’

The female warden slotted a key into the lock in front of her and opened the door.

Robert steeled himself, then stepped inside. He turned to see the door closing behind him as the warden locked him in.

He waited a minute for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. There was a tiny window, high up in the wall, covered almost entirely with bars. It let in a sliver of sunlight, but nowhere near enough to illuminate the room. In one corner was a metal bed and in another a small pot. The walls were whitewashed and the floor beneath his feet bare floorboards.

At first glance Robert thought they’d brought him to the wrong room, an empty room. For a few seconds he didn’t see the slender young woman crouching by the side of the bed, her wrist encircled by a manacle and a chain securing her to the wall. She was sitting completely still, regarding him with wide brown eyes.

‘Miss Turnhill?’ he asked.

She shied away from him as he took a step towards her.

‘Louisa?’ he tried again.

In his least threatening manner Robert ambled across the room and took a seat on the bed. It was hard, little more than a metal frame with an inch-thick straw mattress.

‘My name is Robert, I’m here to help you.’

The young woman cocked her head to the side and scrutinised him. For an instant Robert wondered if she was dumb, or if she’d forgotten how to speak in her year of captivity.

‘No one’s here to help me,’ she said eventually, her voice a little croaky as if underused.

‘I would really like to learn a little more about you,’ he said softly.

She chuckled and Robert wondered if she was about to become hysterical.

‘No, you wouldn’t.’

‘How are you feeling today?’ He tried a different tack.

She paused, regarding him seriously. ‘Not too mad today, thank you very much.’

Robert felt as though he’d been transported to another world. He had no idea how to talk to this young woman. She didn’t seem mad, at least not at first glance, but he wasn’t exactly an expert.

‘Are you going to hurt me?’ she asked as if enquiring about the weather.

Robert looked at her carefully. Underneath her uninterested demeanour he realised she was scared. Petrified, even.

‘I promise I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said sincerely.

She relaxed a little. ‘Have you brought any food?’ she asked.

Robert wondered how she’d gone from violence to food so quickly. His confusion must have shown on his face.

‘When people come in it’s either to hurt me or bring me food,’ she said calmly.

Robert Fleetwood, hardened soldier and celebrated war hero, felt his heart go out to this scared young woman. In that instant he vowed silently to help her. Even if she wasn’t the Louisa Turnhill he was looking for, he would make sure she was properly looked after, somewhere a long way from Lewisham Asylum.

‘Will you tell me how you came to be here, Louisa?’ Robert asked.

She stood, the chain attached to her wrist jangling as she moved. He saw she was thin—a year of asylum food didn’t seem to provide much nourishment. Her hair was long and straggly, falling most of the way down her back. There were bruises on the pale skin of her arms and dark circles under her eyes. She was in a poor state, but despite all of this Robert saw the spirit burning in her eyes as she watched him look over her. In her time at the asylum they hadn’t broken her.

She came and sat on the bed next to him, making sure there was as much distance as possible between them.

‘There’s no point,’ she said, turning her face towards him, ‘you wouldn’t believe me anyway.’

It was said with such certainty that Robert knew he had to hear her story. He wondered if she was deluded, whether she would tell him a different tale if he came back tomorrow.

‘I might,’ he said simply.

‘If you stay here overnight, there’s lots of screaming,’ Louisa said. ‘And moaning and shouting. Do you know the most common thing people shout?’

He shook his head.

‘They shout “I’m not mad”—’ she paused ‘—or “I shouldn’t be here”, which is much the same thing.’

Robert couldn’t imagine spending a single night in this hellish place, let alone over four hundred as she must have done.

‘Everyone says it,’ she said with a small smile on her face. ‘But I actually mean it.’

‘You shouldn’t be here?’

‘I’m not mad,’ she said, ‘or at least I wasn’t when they put me in here.’

He didn’t know how to respond. He’d expected howling and writhing, he’d been prepared for that—this cool, detached statement of sanity he didn’t know how to react to.

‘I probably am a little bit mad now. Anyone would be after a few months in this place.’

She looked at him and Robert got the sensation she was assessing him, weighing up whether he was worth revealing more to.

‘I said you wouldn’t believe me.’

‘What happened?’ Robert asked simply, not trusting himself to say more. He got the feeling this strange young woman was very astute—she’d know if he lied to her.

‘You actually want to know?’

‘I want to know.’

‘I had an evil guardian,’ she said, then giggled. ‘Your face is a picture.’

Robert hadn’t realised he’d moved a muscle.

‘My evil guardian locked me up here after I refused to marry him. Lecherous old sod.’

Sometimes she sounded so normal, so sane, but Robert knew there were some lunatics like that. So caught up in their fantasy world they could make others believe it was true.

‘He wanted the money my parents had left to me. When I wouldn’t give it to him through marriage, he bribed a doctor to certify I was insane and dumped me here. I should imagine he’s worked his way through most of the money by now. Not that it’s any use to me in here.’

Robert knew he shouldn’t believe her. He knew he was probably being manipulated, conned into believing her fantasy, but the disbelief in his mind was giving away to horrified realisation.

He’d received a letter eight weeks ago, a confession of sorts. It had been sent the day before his great-uncle had died. In the letter his great-uncle confessed to committing a grave sin and asked Robert to put it right. The only other information the old man had supplied was Louisa’s name.

Surely this wasn’t the sin his great-uncle had talked of. Robbing a young woman of her fortune was one thing, but to rob her of her freedom and label her as insane was worse than murder.

He cursed the man again for not providing more details of his crime.

‘And who was your guardian?’ he asked, trying to make his tone casual even though he was holding his breath in anticipation of her answer.

‘Thomas Craven,’ she said. ‘The name I curse last thing every night and first thing every morning.’

Robert felt the foundations of his world rock. This young woman must have been the ward of his great-uncle, Thomas Craven, otherwise there was no way she could have given him the right name.

When Yates had tracked Louisa down to the asylum, Robert hadn’t known what to expect. He’d wondered if his great-uncle had somehow played a part in this young woman’s descent into madness, maybe by robbing her of her innocence, an event she hadn’t been able to recover from, and for which his great-uncle had rightly blamed himself. No part of him had been prepared for the possibility she’d been wrongly imprisoned for over a year.