Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche Page 9

  By then it was nearly evening, too late in the day for us to start. Also, by then, because of lack of sleep the night before, I was yawning until my jaw ached. Tish and I shook hands on the pavement outside Watson’s office, agreeing to meet the morning of the next day, Saturday.

  “On Saturdays I take a half holiday in any event,” she remarked.

  “You work at an office, then?”

  “Only part-time, nowadays. I prefer to take in typing to do at home. It was a great thing for me when I had saved up enough to purchase my own typewriter.”

  “And make your own unique and very attractive calling cards.”

  Thus I left her smiling.

  * * *

  In the morning I dressed in a simple blouse, skirt, and jacket, like Tish, although I had neither ascot nor waistcoat to complete the similarity. Nor did I have a bowler hat, so I made do with a plain straw boater. When Tish met me for breakfast, as we had arranged, she took in my costume, smiled only very slightly, and tactfully said nothing.

  We were both rather silent and sober that morning, for our day’s undertaking promised to be a grim one. After we had eaten and drunk our tea, we proceeded to Our Lady of Bethlehem, a venerable institution better known as Bedlam, because there, Dr. Watson had told us, on days other than Sunday we could hire a guide and take a tour, looking at the inmates as if they were animals in a zoo.

  Our cab stopped at a massive stone-and-brick main building that looked rather like a cross between a factory and a fortress. With its ranked windows, gables, towers, all in strictest symmetry, Bedlam seemed built to negate externally the disordered minds kept within. At the imposing gateposts in the tall wall that surrounded the whole, a guard halted us until we explained our purpose and produced money. He then summoned for us a guide, a buxom woman in a powder-blue nurse’s uniform nearly covered with quite a plain and sturdy white apron. Her cap, however, a frilly affair with tails, seemed to indicate a rank near the top of the hierarchy of attendants, as did her complacent smile.

  “Our interest is confined to the female wards,” I told her. “You do separate the asylum populace by gender, do you not?”

  “Yes, indeed.” She took us in through the massive front doors, turned left, and after that I do not recall our visit sequentially, but only in snippets, as one might remember a bad dream. Women, so many women, blankly staring, not conversing with one another, yet making noise—moans, cries, whimpers, singsong droning sounds. Some who drooled, some with green crusts below their noses. Most of them wearing torn dresses that failed to cover them properly, and all of them barefoot.

  “They cannot have shoes, poor things, because they are dangerous when thrown. Most of the time they seem to have very little life in them, yet they do fight, especially when one tries to clean them.”

  Whether young or not, they all seemed old because of their harrowed faces—that and their thin, frazzled hair hanging loose and unkempt. Some of the women in their torn and patched dresses stood like statues looking at nothing, some sat on benches that seemed no more wooden than they, and some lay in the middle of the bare floor, curled up as if for warmth, with no pillows for their heads except their own arms. Whether standing, seated, or lying, many of the women had their hands encased in large, thumbless mittens of padded leather.

  “Some of them tear clothes so dreadfully, their own clothes and those of others, that we have to put them in mitts. But we try never to be unkind. There was a time when they would have been kept in chains. You’ll not find that anymore.”

  We saw wards ranked with narrow beds, and similar beds lining the hallways.

  “Our seemingly quite adequate space is sorely overwhelmed by the staggering numbers of hapless souls who come our way.”

  Some women huddled underneath the beds, hiding. One of them, sagging and wrinkled—so shocking, I had to look away quickly—was stark naked.

  “Oh, dear.” Our guide rang a bell to summon someone to the ward, then hastened to move us onwards. It may have been then that Tish and I began to hold hands.

  We saw women separated from one another behind bars, wearing oddly shapeless, heavy dresses made out of quilted canvas. One declared, “I killed my baby! I killed my baby!” over and over again. Others hissed, or yowled, or shouted insults at Tish and me, whilst some screeched the most dreadful profanities.

  “These ones are in a bad way, poor dears. They must be in cells to prevent them from hurting anyone, and wear the strong dresses to keep them from shredding their clothing and hurting themselves. The strong dresses are kinder than straitjackets. And in cells instead of in chains, at least they can move about.”

  Certainly they were moving about, some of them leaping against their bars, trying to attack us, like wild animals, and yelling in frenzy. With their hair shorn almost to the skull and their eyes dilated, they seemed scarcely human.

  “Their hair is cut short because otherwise they get lice. In order to calm them enough for bathing, we must drug them. But those in the other wards are bathed weekly.”

  In no particular order that I can remember, we saw a laundry where some of the more trusty inmates worked, and an exercise yard where some wore bloomers and were being instructed to do jumping jacks, and a kitchen full of workers, some of them inmates also.

  “The poor souls in this asylum eat better than most of the factory workers in London.”

  We were shown a hydrotherapy room full of variously equipped bathtubs. And another therapy room bristling with electrogalvanic devices. And a chapel.

  “We must keep their Sunday clothes under lock and key so they do not destroy them.”

  And, I would rather forget, in one ward a number of inmates sitting or lying stock still in restraints. Head restraints, torso restraints, limb restraints.

  “For hysterics.”

  “Hysterics?” Tish murmured.

  “When they grow excited, laughing or singing unhealthily or trying to tear their hair or injure themselves, they must be restrained.”

  “Are there none who are recovering,” I begged, “and who might go home again?”

  “Yes, indeed. Those who are brought here for puerperal insanity often recover within three months to a year. Those afflicted with moral insanity sometimes rally when encouraged to read the Bible. And those driven out of their minds by overwork, unrequited love, unsympathetic husbands, or such misfortunes can often be helped by merest kindness. I have saved the most pleasant ward for last. This way.” She ushered us into a room neither as bare nor as crowded as the others. About a dozen women who appeared normally dressed, albeit plainly so, occupied shabby armchairs or sat at tables. Some were sewing patches onto clothing, some were knitting or crocheting, and a few were reading. They looked up and smiled when we came in. Our guide introduced them to us by name, and they replied courteously to a few words of conversation.

  Tish let go of my hand, pulled a photograph of Flossie out of her reticule and showed it to them. “Have any of you seen my sister?”

  They shook their heads most sympathetically, and one Irishwoman offered, “If it’s to a place like this she’s gone, miss, it’s greatly changed you’ll find her.”

  “I could have told you at once that she is not here,” complained our guide.

  I refrained from retorting that she could have been paid to misinform us, and Tish said simply, “I had to look for her myself. Have we seen all of the women who reside here?”

  “Heavens, no. I can’t take you to the barn where they milk the cows, or to the infirmary building full of fever, or to the ward for those who won’t keep their clothes on, now, can I?”

  I took one quick glance at Tish’s face and said, “I believe we are finished here, then.”

  Our guide showed us out of Bedlam in heavily starched silence.

  Chapter the Thirteenth

  As soon as we achieved the privacy of a closed cab, Tish broke down and wept, curling up like a wilted flower to hide her face in her hands. I sat beside her and gave her a handkerchief, th
en put my arm around her shoulders, drew her into a hug, and patted her, trying to comfort her although a clotted sensation in my throat prevented me from saying anything helpful. After a short while, she sat up straight, applied the handkerchief to her face, and tried to say, although her voice would not quite obey her, that she was sorry for her weakness.

  “Not at all.” My own voice sounded as choked as hers. “I quite feel like weeping myself.”

  “To imagine Flossie … in such a … dreadful place…” Sobs shook her again.

  “Shhh.” I recommenced my soothing gestures. “We will talk about it when we get home.”

  By this I meant the Professional Women’s Club where I lodged, and I took Tish straight upstairs so that she need not suffer the embarrassment of being seen with red eyes in the sitting room. Once we were safely secluded in my rather Spartan room, I showed her to the washstand so that she could apply cool water to her face, rang for tea, then seated her in my one and only armchair. I myself perched on the wooden chair at my desk, reaching for paper and a pencil.

  “One of your lists?” Tish asked, her voice so warm, friendly, almost teasing, that I smiled.

  “Yes, one of my lists.” I wrote:

  TO FIND FLOSSIE

  Visit more asylums? Great pain for small gain. No guarantee we shall see her, as staff probably bribed to conceal her. And it would take us months to visit them all.

  Send photograph around, inquire at all asylums? Unhelpful. Again, Caddie would have bribed staff to conceal her.

  Would we even recognize her if we found her? How would being in such a place change her?

  At this point I dropped the pencil and seized my head in both hands, for a most unruly jumble of new thoughts was rushing in, jostling my brain. “Stars and garters, things I should have asked in the first place!” I exclaimed. “Tish, what ward would Flossie be in?”

  “My sister does not belong in any ward of—”

  “I mean, what sort of excuse would Caddie most likely use to have her committed? Was her behaviour eccentric in any way?”

  “Enola, of course not! My sister was—is—an angel!”

  I realized I was asking questions of the wrong person, but wrote anyway:

  Hysteria? Any sort of excitement; catch-all.

  Moral insanity? Euphemism for adulterous thoughts or tendencies? Another catch-all for jealous husbands.

  Erotomania if she loved him?

  Frigidity if she did not?

  Hypothesizing that Caddie did the same with his first wife, Myzella, ask her relations whether they know what he committed her for—and where.

  Eureka.

  I asked Tish, “Are we agreed not to visit any more asylums just yet?”

  “Agreed. Anyway, tomorrow is Sunday.”

  True. Public institutions, such as registrars, libraries, courthouses, and insane asylums, would not be open to the public. But there was no reason why I should not go calling on the Haskells.

  * * *

  The next morning, outfitted in my exceedingly genteel teal-coloured traveling costume, I stopped at Baker Street to talk with Sherlock. But he was not there, and had not been since Friday, I was told, so I left word—Gone to call on the Haskells in St. John’s, with the date—and then caught a train to Surrey. Luckily I was able to bypass Dorking (and its livery stable, and Jezebel), getting off at the next stop, where I had luncheon, then rented a horse, driver, and light carriage for the day. As the driver hitched up, I explained to him that I needed to go calling upon some Haskells in order to complete my family tree. “I hope I can still find some Haskells living in the St. John’s area?”

  “Yes, indeedy, miss!” A well-upholstered and genial man, he all but split his broad, florid face with his smile. “The Haskells got deep roots in St. John’s and ain’t no more likely to take up and leave than if they was a coppice of trees. Which one you want to see first?”

  I had thought this out. Because I could not ask for Myzella’s mother without starting gossip, and because male family members generally inhibit frank conversation, I replied, “I would prefer a single or widowed woman, if possible, perhaps an older one.”

  “Why, then, I’ll take you straight to Dame Haskell herself.”

  I agreed, and he took me for a pleasant drive across the pretty Surrey countryside—much more pleasant than my jaunt with Jezzie! Peering out of the carriage windows, I saw St. John’s to be a picturesque village and my destination—as I was conveyed off of the main road and up a drive—a large, comfortable-looking plaster-and-whitewash farmhouse. “Dame” Haskell’s title was honourific, then, and I would not be dealing with people of rank.

  With all due courtesy my driver left me at the front door—opening the carriage for me and assisting me out as if I were porcelain and might break—then abandoned me for the sake of chums in the barn or stable. But there was no need for me to stand knocking at the door; it opened, and a smiling gingham-clad housemaid beckoned me in.

  “I am so glad you are not a butler,” I told her.

  Unabashed, she laughed. “No, I’m just Sally, miss. Why don’t you walk right on through. You’ll find Missus Haskell in the garden.” There was no need for her to guide me, for in this forthright old house one followed a straight path from the front door to the back. The scrubbed, country feeling of the kitchen I passed through reminded me of Mrs. Lane’s domain in Ferndell Hall, my childhood home, and Dame Haskell, when I found her gathering windfall pears and medlars and apples into a great basket, reminded me a bit of Mrs. Lane herself. Instead of the shriveling invalid I had half expected, I found a robust woman with the wind in her white hair, wearing neither hat nor gloves, her hands stained by juice oozing from the bruised fruit. Greedy for sweets, wasps and honeybees clung to her hands as well as to the fruit. “You’ll be stung!” I exclaimed.

  “I already was. Some would say it’s what I deserve for working on the Sabbath. But I can’t believe God will mind, being as these will make such good cider.” Setting her basket down, she straightened to have a long and frankly appraising look at me, studying me from my fashionable hat to my polished boots. Rather than embarrass the condition of her hands by offering a card, I smiled and let her look.

  She spoke abruptly. “You came all the way out here from the city.” This sounded like a statement rather than a question.

  “Quite.”

  “Whatever for? Who are you?”

  “My name is Enola Holmes, and I would like to ask you some questions.”

  “You’re not The Right Honourable Miss Enola Holmes?” A gentle gibe at my gentrified appearance.

  “No, I’m just plain Enola.”

  “And why are you asking questions, Just Plain Enola?”

  I wished I could answer this doughty countrywoman as directly as she questioned me, but Myzella Haskell’s fate was far too delicate a matter to broach straight on. I said, “I am representing the family of Felicity Glover Rudcliff, second wife of the Earl of Dunhench. He has informed them by letter that she recently passed away and was cremated. Her loved ones suspect otherwise, and thus beg to know what truly happened not only to her, but to his first wife.”

  Dame Haskell took a long breath, let it out slowly, then without a word she marched to a nearby pump, where she washed her hands and dried them on her apron. Beckoning me to follow, she led the way to a secluded stonework bench at the far end of the garden. Here she sat and, again at her wordless invitation, I sat beside her. But I did not venture to speak; I waited.

  Finally Dame Haskell said, “Myzella was my treasure, my pride, my granddaughter. My heart burns for her sake every day of my overlong life.”

  Her words sounded hard and old, like stones. Undoubtedly she had good reason to be bitter for her granddaughter’s sake. I waited; I kept silence; I scarcely ventured to breathe.

  She went on in the same stony tone, “We fools, we simple country folk, her mother and father and brothers and cousins and I, we suspected nothing. We did not learn the truth about what had happen
ed to her until it was far … too … late.”

  With each word she seemed to be finding it harder to speak. I nodded, leaned forward to gaze into her face, and implored her with my hands to go on.

  Eventually she got some words out. “How did this lady—What was her name?”

  “Felicity.”

  “That is quite an ironic name for any woman married to Rudcliff.” Dame Haskell sounded bitter but in control now. “How does Felicity’s family suspect something wrong when we were so blind?”

  “She left a cipher. May I tell you what it said?”

  “Yes.”

  “Two words: insane asylum.”

  “Dear heavens above. How did she know?” Dame Haskell abandoned all dignity and distance; she turned to me earnestly. “Poor woman, she must have heard whispers of Myzella. Old Dr. Simmons confessed on his deathbed, or we would never have learned.”

  “Dr. Simmons?”

  “Our family doctor here in St. John’s. Until he spoke, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to us that Myzella—her heart, always so frail and tender—that she should follow her little Angelica into the grave—although for Myzella there was no grave, just that devilish cremation. Still, clod-witted farmers that we are, we suspected nothing, but Dr. Simmons knew all, and for nearly a decade it had weighed heavy on his conscience that he had let Lord Cadogan bribe and bully him until he signed the paper to have our sweet girl committed on account of nervous excitement.”

  Another term for hysteria.

  “Committed where?” I spoke more vehemently than I should have; this could be the key to finding Flossie!

  But old Mrs. Haskell smiled ruefully, understanding my eagerness as well as if I had spoken my thought aloud. “A wretched, unhealthy place along the Thames, Miss Enola. We arrived to find Myzella in the throes of mortal illness, only just in time to comfort her as she perished, God rest her sweet, so sorely wronged soul. And then—there was nothing we could do about the Earl of Dunhench, but we could and did set about having this so-called asylum condemned. It has been torn down and demolished; it no longer exists.”