John Harwood - The Asylum

“It went off like clockwork. Gladstone paused in front of the cell; Gadd reached through the bars, seized the pistol, and shot him through the heart. Even though I knew it was a trick, I cried out in horror when Gladstone clapped a hand to his chest and it came away drenched in what looked like blood. Gladstone sank to the ground and gave a most convincing death-rattle; Gadd dropped the pistol at the warder’s feet and cried in a loud voice, ‘Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word.’

“Dr. Straker had hoped that Gadd would be overwhelmed by horror at his bloody deed and shocked back into sanity by the realisation that his delusion had made a murderer of him. Gadd would be left to steep in his own remorse (under covert watch to make sure he didn’t attempt suicide) until Dr. Straker judged the time was right to tell him that Gladstone had survived the attack. That, with luck, would prompt an equal and opposite reaction of relief—‘I am not a murderer after all’—and then, if Gadd showed no sign of a relapse, another visit from ‘Gladstone’ would be arranged to test him. Last of all, Gadd would be told that the whole thing had been staged for his benefit, and if all went well, he would be discharged as cured.

“But when Dr. Straker went into his cell that evening, and taxed him with murdering the Prime Minister and bringing disgrace upon the asylum, Gadd replied that he was very sorry for Mr. Gladstone’s family, and for all the trouble he had caused, but the Lord had commanded, and he had obeyed, and he would go to the gallows with a clear conscience, knowing that his reward awaited him in heaven. Dr. Straker left him to stew in solitude for a few days but found him quite unchanged. When Gadd was told that Gladstone had survived the bullet, he replied calmly, ‘It seems my task is not complete; I must await another opportunity.’ He’s still here, in one of the closed wards; spends a lot of his time painting. His watercolours—they’re mostly of flowers—are very fine. I suppose if Gladstone dies before him, he may be released one day.”

“Dr. Straker must have been very disappointed,” I said.

“Well no, not at all; he wrote an account of it for a learned journal. He often says that negative results can be just as useful as positive.”

“Has he tried such an experiment again?”

“Not that I know of; he doesn’t always tell me what he is working on. He has a private workroom in the old chapel, which he calls the temple of science: no one else is allowed there. His interests are extraordinarily diverse; he has made studies of everything from grafting fruit trees—not only to improve the fruit, but to see how many different varieties will thrive on a single tree—to the mathematics of gambling. At present, he is engaged in electrical research, though I have no idea where it is leading. A couple of years ago he visited Cragside—Lord Armstrong’s estate in Northumberland—to see the hydraulic dynamo there, and he immediately commissioned one for us. It is powered by the stream that runs down from Siblyback Water; he says that one day the whole estate will be lit by electric lamps.

“And yet with all this, and a vast establishment to run, he still has time for individual patients—like the man who was terrified of snakes—even the hopeless cases. There was one, only last year . . . but I ought not say more . . .”

“Do his family live here as well?” I asked.

“He has no family, Miss Ferrars; he is a bachelor, like my uncle, and lives only for his work.”

At the mention of his uncle, a shadow crossed his face. Outside, the rain was still falling. He rose, added more coals to the fire, and made a show of consulting his watch.

“I am sorry, Miss Ferrars, but I have duties to attend to. Might I join you again for luncheon, in an hour or so?”

“I should like that very much.”

“Then I shall return as soon as I can.” He smiled, but his eyes were still troubled, and I feared I had driven him away.

He seemed, however, entirely recovered when he returned an hour later. “I have said quite enough about myself,” he insisted, “and I want to hear more about you, and your childhood at Niton.” My childhood seemed so commonplace and uneventful compared to his, but I sensed that our quiet domestic life was for him a vision of paradise. I told him about the mirror, and my fascination with Rosina, and its aftermath on the cliff, which led somehow to religion, and how Aunt Vida and Mr. Allardyce used to argue. My aunt was a declared agnostic, but I felt that they were essentially on the same side. Mr. Allardyce used to say that faith couldn’t be commanded; so long as you acted as if you believed, all would be well. They were both contemptuous of spiritualism: when I expressed curiosity about it, my aunt suggested with a perfectly straight face that we try a method of spelling out messages with a glass and a circle of cut-out letters, and the glass spelled out “Spiritualism is bunkum.”

Frederic laughed at this, but his face was shadowed.

“Rationally speaking,” he said, “I agree with your aunt, but in this house it is all too easy to believe that the dead live on amongst us. All those centuries of violent emotion, permeating the furniture, the hangings, the timbers, even the stones . . . The old house was always cold and damp, even in summer; the walls are so thick, and the windows so small, and there are strange pockets of icy air—you could be walking along a corridor and feel as if you had been plunged into freezing water . . .”

“Have you ever seen a ghost?”

“Not seen, exactly, but I think I may have heard one.”

It had begun last April, he said, on a mild, sunlit afternoon. He had lately emerged from a bout of melancholia and decided to take a stroll in the grounds, with no particular destination in mind. His feet carried him to a long-abandoned stable, overgrown and collapsing, some thirty or forty yards beyond the old house, surrounded now by woodland. He was standing nearby, gazing idly at the ancient, uneven brickwork and enjoying the unaccustomed warmth of sunlight on his skin, when he heard a pickaxe striking upon stone. It sounded like someone chipping at a piece of masonry in an exploratory fashion, and it seemed to come from inside. He looked in through the doorway—the lintel had collapsed, leaving only a narrow, triangular opening—but there was nobody within. Then he heard the noise again—tap-tap, tap-tap—perfectly clear, with a distinct ringing echo to it—only this time it came from the outside, around the corner to the left of where he was standing. Again the sound ceased as he approached. He walked right around the building; the long grass had been trampled in places by something—badgers, perhaps—but there were no bootmarks, and again no one to be seen. He stood and waited for some time, but the sound was not repeated, and he assumed that it had been caused by some rusted piece of metal, a broken hinge or the like, expanding in the sunshine.

A week or so later, he was passing the stables when he heard the sound again, a little louder, coming from around the corner to his right this time. Once again it ceased just before he turned the corner; once again there was nobody to be seen. Then it started up again, from around the back of the ruin. He found himself imagining a man in a convict’s uniform and leg irons, tapping away with a pick. His mouth was suddenly dry; he had to force himself to circle the building, and then retreated with his heart beating rapidly.

Over the next few weeks, he was drawn back almost against his will. Sometimes he would stand for minutes at a stretch and hear nothing but the distant lowing of cattle. It seemed to him that whenever he was intent upon listening for the sound—always metal upon stone—it did not come, but as soon as his attention wandered, it would start up again. And though there was no consistent pattern from day to day, he felt that the sound was becoming stronger, the rhythm of the pick faster—though you could not call it a rhythm because it was always irregular. It frightened and fascinated him in equal measure; he had come to believe that the place was haunted by the sound of a murderer burying his victim.