John Harwood - The Asylum

Of course, the door might be locked for my own protection; this was, after all, a lunatic asylum.

I went back along the passage, giving the bell-rope another tug as I passed the sitting room. The wall now on my left was blank except for an opening about halfway along, the entrance to a much shorter passage, ending at another locked door. Apart from a bathroom near the room in which I slept, every door was locked, including the door at the far end, which led, I assumed, to the closed wards in the newest part of the building.

The oil lamp near my room was still burning. Except for the dim shaft of light falling from the open door of the sitting room, the only source of illumination was a pane of opaque glass—a skylight of some kind?—in the ceiling halfway along. I remembered the footsteps in the night.

You are safe here, on my word of honour.

I retraced my steps, trying not to run, to the door at the other end, and rattled and tugged at the handle, then beat upon the oak in a panic, bruising my knuckles until the pain forced me to stop.

As the echoes died away, a floorboard creaked behind me. The hair on the back of my neck bristled.

“Can I ’elp you, miss? You can’t go through there, you know.”

I spun round. In the light from the sitting-room door, a woman was standing—not Bella, but a heavily built woman twice her age, with forearms like hams and a flat, porcine face, in which small eyes glittered.

“Who are you? Where is Bella?”

“Hodges is the name, miss.” A London accent, I thought, with an insinuating edge that seemed to imply, I know all about you . She wore a starched uniform like Bella’s, but hers was dark blue. As she approached, I caught a whiff of rank breath.

“Where is Bella?” I repeated.

“Bella’s got other duties. I’ll be looking after you today.”

“Then would you kindly fetch Mr. Mordaunt? He will be joining me for breakfast.”

“Is that so, miss? Would that be young Mr. Mordaunt, then?”

“Yes, it would, and you will kindly fetch him without further delay.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, miss.”

“And why not?”

“Doctor’s orders, miss.”

“You are mistaken. I am a voluntary patient here, and if you do not fetch Mr. Mordaunt at once”—I could hear my voice beginning to tremble—“he will be most displeased.”

“Really, miss?” She sneered, in the tone of one humouring, or rather baiting, a madwoman. “Well, I takes my orders from Dr. Straker.”

“Dr. Straker is in London, attending to business of mine—”

“Well, fancy that. We are goin’ it this morning, aren’t we? Now I could swear Dr. Straker give me my orders just ten minutes ago, and them orders was that Miss Ashton was to stay in bed until he—”

“What did you call me?”

“Miss Ashton, miss. That’s your name, according to Dr. Straker, and he ought to know.”

“My name is not Ashton. I am Miss Ferrars; I am a voluntary patient”—my voice was now shaking wildly—“and I wish to leave this place at once. Now fetch Mr. Mordaunt!”

“Come along now, miss; no point getting hysterical, now is there?”

“If you do not unlock that door and let me out this instant, I will—I will have you arrested and charged with false imprisonment!” The last words came out as a shriek.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, miss. You can go back to your bed, nice and quiet, and wait there in the warm till Dr. Straker comes to see you, or I can ’elp you undress and put you to bed myself. Now which will it be?”

I thought of trying to dodge past her, but she stood squarely in the middle of the passage, with her great hands resting on her hips and her elbows almost touching the walls. If I resisted her, I might find myself in a straitjacket.

“I will go quietly,” I said, “if you will promise to tell Mr. Mordaunt I wish to see him urgently.”

“Now that’s more like it, miss. You come along quietly to bed, and I’ll tell Dr. Straker that you asked particular to see Mr. Mordaunt, and we’ll see what happens, won’t we?”

She moved aside to let me pass and followed me closely back to my room.

“That’s right, miss. You get into bed, and I’ll be back with your breakfast before you know it.”

A massive hand urged me on. As the door closed behind me, I heard a jingle of metal, followed by the scrape and snap of the lock.

Hodges returned half an hour later with breakfast, which I could not eat, and then insisted that I should bathe, locking me in the bathroom while she made up the bed. “Dr. Straker will be along presently,” was all she would say. As the minutes crawled by, my hope of rescue shrank to nothing. Either Frederic had deceived me all along—hard as it was to believe, remembering those deep, wrenching sobs—or he was so in thrall to Dr. Straker that he had not the backbone to defy him. The more I brooded, the more my suspicions increased. Tregannon Asylum, according to Frederic, was a benign, compassionate, enlightened place, but there was nothing benign about Hodges; she was exactly what I had always imagined a madhouse attendant would be. And if Frederic had lied about that, what else had he lied about? How long had Dr. Straker been back from London? Had he even been to London? I tried to look out through the observation slot in the door, but it would not open.

An eternity later, as it seemed, the lock turned over again, and Dr. Straker appeared in the doorway. He looked so grave that my protests died on my lips; my first thought was that something had happened to Frederic, and I watched him fearfully as he settled himself beside the bed.

“I am sorry to have to tell you, Miss Ashton, that my instinct has been confirmed. I have been to Gresham’s Yard, and I met Georgina Ferrars and Josiah Radford, her uncle. The mystery of how you know so much about them is a mystery no longer. The only riddle we have yet to solve is the riddle of your own identity.”

He paused, awaiting my reaction, but I could not utter a sound.

“Believe me, Miss Ashton, I understand how distressing this must be, even though I have tried to prepare you. It will be best, I think, if I begin by telling you what transpired. Gresham’s Yard is just as you described it, and until the maid said she would fetch Miss Ferrars, I was preparing to eat my hat. But at my first glimpse of Georgina Ferrars, a great deal became clear: the resemblance between you is quite remarkable. Miss Ferrars was profoundly shaken, but not wholly surprised, to learn that I had a patient who not only looked like her and appeared to know everything about her, but was claiming to be her. ‘It is Lucia!’ she exclaimed, ‘Lucia Ardent; it can only be Lucia!’ The initials, you will agree, can hardly be a coincidence. But I see the name means nothing to you.

“Three weeks ago, around the tenth of October—Miss Ferrars could not recall the precise date—she was alone in the bookshop when a young woman came in. Miss Ferrars felt sure she had seen her somewhere before, but she did not immediately associate the face before her with the one she saw every day in the mirror—did you wish to say something, Miss Ashton?”

Numb with shock, I could only stare at him.

“The young woman introduced herself as Lucia Ardent. They fell into conversation, and an intimacy sprang up. It was Lucia—if you will forgive the familiarity for the sake of concision—who first remarked upon the likeness between them. Within a couple of days, Lucia was living at Gresham’s Yard.

“Lucia, or so she claimed, was the daughter of a Frenchman named Jules Ardent, and an Englishwoman, Madeleine Ardent—who, according to Lucia, had refused ever to speak of her past. All she would say was that her childhood had been most unhappy and that she did not wish to recall it, or ever revisit England; she never revealed her maiden name. Jules Ardent died when Lucia was an infant—all this, you understand, rests upon Lucia Ardent’s unsupported word—leaving them an income of about two hundred a year. Lucia and her mother lived an itinerant life, moving about the Continent, staying in pensions and hotels until Madeleine Ardent died about a year ago. Lucia Ardent had always wanted to see England, and so, drawn by the mystery of her birth, she came to London, took lodgings in Bloomsbury, and by sheer chance wandered into Josiah Radford’s bookshop.