VIII. Beware: the World Has Gone Mad

Mary was the center of attention at the publisher’s Tuesday dinner. For once Blake, Priestley, Barlow, Coleridge, and Christie abandoned their boiled cod, beef, and rice pudding. They even abandoned talk of the Revolution—just to gawk at her battered self. Both men and women clucked and tsk’d—where had she got those scratches and bruises, that bump on the forehead? That cut on the cheek?

She had fallen, she told them. She did not say “pushed,” but she did mention the bare miss of the rushing coach.

Had she seen a surgeon? Should she have a bleeding? Leeches on her arms and cheeks, someone asked? “Leeches are worse than the cut itself,” Joel Barlow said, and some agreed.

“Mary, Mary, you must move in here with me!” Joseph cried. “Mrs Murphy will take care of you.” (Mrs Murphy: the wrinkled, stoop-shouldered, scatter-brained non-servant who could scarcely lift a stool without help.)

“I have a child,” Mary said. “How can I?”

That brought the clucking and tsking to a halt.

“But Mary,” said Joseph, looking her up and down from her new black boots to her old blue hat, “there was no talk of a child last week. Where did this child come from?”

“You’ve been holding out on us,” said Tom Christie with a wink. (Tom Christie, who had got a Frenchwoman with child, then left her to marry a wealthy English girl!)

Indignant, she explained that she was on her way this hour to fetch the child from the Foundling Hospital, and they leaned forward in their chairs. Barlow, who was childless, looked worried; children only “complicated one’s creative life.” Dr Priestley stroked her arm. Blake, ridiculous in a red wig to identify with the Revolution, stared at Mary as though he had seen a vision of Armageddon. Everyone knew he advocated free love, had even ogled Mary on occasion (she laughed him off).

For ten minutes they talked all at once, a regular cacophony; then went on with conversations that had begun before she arrived. “Those self-righteous Methodists—” Christie began, and they all joined in to malign the “Bible-toting moralists.”

They had done for now with Mary and that was a relief; she rose to go.

“Bring the child here with you, Mary, it’s all right,” said Joseph, coming up behind, placing both hands on her shoulders. “Don’t go. Stay, stay—at least for cheese and grapes.” But she couldn’t stay, she explained, she had only wanted to tell what happened. It was almost five o’clock: they were expecting her at the Foundling Hospital.

He was not listening. “Mrs Murphy will see to the child, so you can write. Is she a talkative child?”

“I understand she’s a quiet child, and she reads. So I’ll fill her up with books. If I write some juvenile fiction, will you publish it?”

The publisher massaged her shoulders. “Perhaps,” he said. Her Original Stories about a governess and her young pupils had sold well, but mainly, she had to admit, because of Blake’s inventive drawings. “Perhaps I shall,” he repeated. He would do anything for Mary, and she knew it. She was his surrogate child. She leaned against him.

Dr Priestley came over to interrupt her ear: “Be careful now, Mary. I heard about that note—about the bluestockings. I know you’ve no salon—that frivolous sort of thing. But there are dangerous men out there in the world. It would have been a madman who killed Mrs Frothingham. We can’t change the way we live to avoid them, but we must act with caution.” He spoke with that sweet reason of his. He was a preacher, a liberal Unitarian. And a good father, like Joseph Johnson.

How lucky she was to have two surrogate fathers! Her biological one, had he known of the accident, would say: “Serves you right. Women should stay home, not go tramping about town, night and day, viewing corpuses and wicked paintings.” Then, done with paternal advice, he would turn away and belch. Oh yes, and a postscript: “Give us a guinea before you leave?”

“Move back in with me, why not?” said Johnson.

Why so? She was an independent woman. St Paul’s Churchyard had served nicely for a time while she served her apprenticeship, and earned money on her own. For now she would remain in her home—one day she would repay her publisher. “But thank you,” she said and kissed his creased cheek.

“Mind you, walk in company at night. It’s a mad world out there.” Johnson and Priestley were on either side of her now, seeing her out: the publisher laying her blue cloak about her shoulders; the preacher holding out her muff. Mrs Murphy thrust a sack of potatoes into her hand and straightened her neckerchief. It was half sleeting outdoors—spring was resisting. She had felt foolish wearing the muff her sister Everina had sent her, but today she was glad of it.

She promised not to go out alone, though knowing full well she would not be able to keep the promise. Why would anyone want to turn her into a nightmare? Many disapproved of her new book, she admitted, but wouldn’t resort to violence—would they? The note about bluestockings, she conjectured, was simply to warn people off finding the killer. The note made her desire all the more to bring the rogue to justice.

Outside, the sedan chair was no longer there—chairmen made no money, waiting. Now she would have to break her promise and walk.

“Miss Wollstonecraft? Allô, allô!” She turned to see Alfred de Charpentier hailing her from the window of a “borrowed carriage,” he told her. He would be pleased to take her wherever she was going; he did not want to see her get wet—“Such a pretty hat,” he said, and she recalled she had stuck a spray of artificial roses on the brim, thinking Henry Fuseli might be at the publisher’s. When the Frenchman stepped out, she saw that his hair was combed forward under his hat—to cover up a cut? The man who had entered through Isobel Frothingham’s broken window would surely have facial wounds.

She declined his offer.

As he turned away, looking dejected—his habitual look, it would seem—she called him back. After all, the girl, Annie, was ready to leave—the hospital governor had sent a note. She was not familiar with this neighbourhood. It was indeed sleeting and she had come out without her pattens. The wind lifted his hair and she saw that his forehead was perfectly smooth. Ah. “Perhaps I shall after all. I’m going to the Foundling Hospital. No, no, wait. I must go home first, if you don’t mind taking me there. I’ve an outgrown cloak to bring to the orphanage. I live on Store Street. Number twenty-nine.”

Now she was worried. She had given the man her home address. The count would see where she lived, perhaps examine her windows, her basement door. Such a fool she was.

He gave a deep bow, left leg thrust back in his emerald green breeches, right hand sweeping his hat so that it touched the wet cobbles. She had to admire the French for their elegance, although his stockings looked threadbare, the red heels of his shoes worn down. Had the bluestocking been robbed? No one had said. Yet, judging from the manner of death, the motive was not money.

“It is not safe to walk alone in the streets—a lady alone, madame—that thief’s escape—that ’orr-rible murder.”

“I know,” she murmured, “I went there. I saw.”

“Oh, madame, you should not have—it was not a sight for a lady, mais non! La belle Isobel...” Monsieur handed her into the carriage and she immediately regretted it. But too late: the horses were surging forward. The count was telling the coachman to hurry on.

Then he turned his hot face to hers.

She would be leaving soon, the woman in the next room whispered to Roger through a jagged hole in the wall. Her voice was hoarse. They had been conversing now and then—whenever someone approached in the hallway the woman would shout nonsense as if talking to herself. She was forty-eight years old; she had been put in this madhouse by a cruel husband. It was his right by law, she said with a sigh, but after a while he would relent. There was no one home to cook for him, or warm his bed. It had happened twice before: each time he would come after a month or so to fetch her. This month was almost up—she had been marking the days on the wall with a spoon.

“Sometimes,” she told Roger, “I think I’m just exchanging one madhouse for another.” She burst into hoarse sobs. “One day he’ll come and I’ll refuse to leave.”

He put his little finger through the hole and she touched it with her damp one. He told her his story, too—it helped to keep him sane. Without human touch he would truly go mad. Even now he wanted to cry out and punch the walls, flail his breast with a chain.

“I could help you,” she said, and he held his breath. Waited. “When Rupert comes again,” she continued, but still she gave no explanation. Again he waited. He had no voice at all now. His throat was parched: they hadn’t brought water for hours. When they did bring it, it would be foul-tasting, as if it had come out of a trough. He coughed to show he was still listening.

“I can’t leave my own house for long, but I could send something to your sweetheart. When I can get away, that is, I never know.” Her voice broke; there was no sweetheart for her, she indicated thus; there were only the beatings and the bitter knowledge that her man would put her back here again. Roger’s heart ached to hear her story.

“Can you write?” he said, summoning all his breath to speak the words. Home, she could write Lillian a note; tell her where he was. Lilly would find a way to rescue him.

“No,” she said. “But Rupert can write. Though he would never—you know. ’Twould have to be something you sent. That your sweetheart would recognize. I would try to get it to her.”

What could he send? They had taken everything from him, even the clothing St Pierre gave him at the hour of escape. If he only had a token his Lilly would recognize... Like the branch of cherries he picked when they first met and she bit into one and he kissed her—he didn’t know which was cherry and which her sweet lips. Or the self-portrait he gave her when she wanted his likeness for her dressing table, and he portrayed them looking into one another’s faces. She had held it to her bosom and wept. Wept! From the joy of it. And he, too, was momentarily blinded by tears.

But how could he find cherries—they gave him nothing so exotic here to eat. There was no ink or paper to make a sketch. There were only two links of rusted chain he had found under the bed, and the goosefeather quill an attendant had given him that he had no use for. He had hidden it anyway, inside the straw of his mattress. He could only scratch with it on the grated window. He could pretend he was drawing the chestnut tree outside: if he squinted he could see the bare outline of branches. There were still chestnuts hanging on, but he couldn’t get at them. And what would a chestnut mean to Lillian?

He could think of nothing. And if this woman could actually break away and go to Lillian, and tell her who had sent her, and where he was, would his fiancée trust her? An unknown woman who herself had been locked into a madhouse? He pictured the woman’s disheveled hair, the haunted eyes, the bruises on her flesh. His Lilly was shy with strangers, a little afraid of life after the betrayal she’d had from that villain, Fuseli.

Fuseli! If he got out of here alive he would go after the blackguard. He would stuff the man’s gullet with his own foul brushes. He would knock him over the head with his satanic paintings! It was Fuseli keeping him here, he was certain of it. The highwayman who had halted them was Fuseli’s man—had to be.

He dragged his chain to the window and beat his hands against the bars. Out, he wanted out! He beat and beat until his hands were cracked and numbed, and like a Lear, howled his grief. The matron’s husband burst into his room and grabbed him from behind, threw him down on the bed, and strapped him to it.

Bound hand and foot, he was as helpless as his father had been the year before when a tree fell on him and it took three of them to heave it off his broken body. At least his father had his wife to comfort him as he lay dying. Roger had only the woman in the next room—fettered, no doubt, like himself.

He rolled toward the wall. He put his mouth to the hole. “I can’t go on, I can’t,” he groaned.

“Count to a thousand with me,” she whispered back. “That’s how we’ll keep sane. One two three...”

“Ten eleven twelve,” he rasped, “...twenty-two twenty-three twenty-four...”

They had not ridden two streets filled with the count’s false compliments, when the count lurched, giggling, at Mary, and grabbed at her neckerchief. He yanked her toward him, and began to kiss her throat and neck. “Leave me!” she cried. The devil was squatting on her breast; he was pulling back a layer of clothing, burning her skin.

“Get off—off!” she screeched. She swatted him with Mrs Murphy’s sack of potatoes. He fell back into a corner of the seat; regained his equilibrium and scowled—and then grinned. With his big white teeth he reminded her of the leering horse in The Nightmare.

“Mademoiselle,” he said. “Do not tell me you do not want this. I do not believe it, mais non! Une belle femme comme toi!” He lunged at her again, and pinned her into a corner. She balled her fist and hit him, hard, in the groin.

When he bellowed and clutched himself, she seized the opportunity. The carriage was slowing in the mêlée of horses and coaches; she yanked on the door handle and leapt out. She fell to her knees on the muddy street and banged her head on a stone. The vehicle halted; she heard him curse in French. “Ces femmes anglaises—they are all prudes!”

She stumbled up and ran. She raced around a corner and into an alley and out again: left, then right, then left into a square where smartly dressed shoppers were milling about, and into a fabric store. The shopkeeper glanced up, astonished at her disarray.

“I have been assaulted,” Mary said, gasping out the words. And then held up a hand when the woman stared. “Barely escaped. Should never have accepted the ride. He was an acquaintance, you see, or I would not have...” She pulled up a breath and went on: “Tell me, pray, where I am. I live in Store Street. I must go there.”

“Store Street,” the shopkeeper cried. “Why, that’s far, far, my dear, from here. This is Prince’s Square. You’ll never walk it in your condition. Let me get you a chair.”

“I left my purse in his carriage. I’ve only a ring for barter. My friend Fanny gave it to me. She died, you see, in childbirth—my dearest friend. But here. Hold it, you have an honest face. I’ll return the fee. I’ll send my maidservant.”

The woman shook her head. Her husband owned the shop. She would pay for the chair and Mary could return the money another time.

Mary would embrace her but her hands were grimy from the muck she had fallen in. “I promise you’ll be repaid. I’ll want a yard of that lace.” She pointed to a heap of intricate Belgian lace—which she couldn’t really afford, the kind she never wore but that Henry liked; she had seen his wife in a petticoat of such fine lace.

The woman was happy to be of help—and to sell the lace. “Take it now, take it,” she said, letting the lace trail through her fingers, snipping it with her shears. “’Tis thirteen shillings the yard—a bargain. You can send it with the chair fee.”

Mary thanked the woman and went out. The Frenchman was nowhere in sight—though who was that stout fellow in blue breeches lurking in a shop entrance across the street? Or the bald man peering out the window of an aged hackney? Everyone now was suspect. She ducked into the sedan chair the shopkeeper had hailed, and leaned back against the soft cushions. She just wanted to go home, but she had promised Annie. She would have to go to the orphanage without the cloak—surely the girl had something warm to wear.

“The Foundling Hospital,” she called out. “And hurry!”

The girl had been here two days, and already Dulcie was at her wits’ end. What was she anyway? A ward, a guest, or a servant? A guest, it would seem, from the way she arose well after ten o’clock each morning and plunked herself down at the kitchen table, waiting to be fed. Then after she slurped a hot chocolate, heaping in the sugar, and buttered three hunks of the best white bread, she skipped upstairs and lay flat out on the sofa with a book.

A book! Dulcie had never read an entire book in all her nineteen years, nor had time for such indulgence. There were no books in her old charity school except the Bible, and she only pretended to read that. Though she had to admit that under Miss Mary’s tutelage she was beginning to feel the pleasure of knowing her letters. For one thing, it made her privy to her mistress’s thoughts. And someone needed to know what Miss Mary was up to, with all this Nightmare business. Dulcie still worried about Miss Mary coming in all bedraggled from an accident that Dulcie suspected was no accident.

BLUESTOCKINGS BEWARE the killer’s note said, and Dulcie believed it, even as the mistress belittled it and went on with Part Two of her Vindication like it was all she had to think about in the world. Though the book seemed to shrink even as it grew. Just yesterday she had ripped up a dozen pages and flung them into the waste bucket.

Annie, the girl’s name was. Annie, who hummed or sang loudly while she read, and then, while Dulcie was trying to revive a dying fire and concentrate on the next task—there was always work to do, always—the girl would ask a hundred annoying questions: “What did you put in that pie that made it taste so good (or bad—the girl didn’t hesitate to criticize)? Who do you think killed Miss Isobel? Where did Miss Mary get that black eye? Do you think someone’s trying to kill her? Will he try to murder us all?”

That was what came of children learning to read. This morning Dulcie had found the girl rummaging through Dulcie’s hatbox, where Dulcie kept the papers she’d picked up at Mrs Frothingham’s. It was luck she got there in time because there was information about Annie’s birth and other documents the child shouldn’t see. One of them was in a foreign language (Latin or Spanish, or Chinese). So when the girl left the room, looking sulky, Dulcie stuffed the papers under her straw mattress and locked her door. Let that teach the little snoop a lesson.

Now she faced the sofa. “Up, missy, help sweep the room. It’s your duty.”

“Who said?” the girl asked, peering over the top of her book. A grown-up book, too, from the cover—Dulcie was embarrassed to even look. Tom Jones? It looked naughty.

“Miss Mary said. You heard her. We all help around here.”

“You’re supposed to do it. You’re the maid.”

Dulcie put her hands on her hips and glared down at the girl. “I beg your pardon! I am the bookseller’s relation. I’m just helping out. I can leave any time I wish. And what are you, missy? What do they teach you to be in that orphanage? A domestic servant, right? That’s all an orphan can hope for. I know that for gospel. I once lived in a place like that.”

“They teach us to find our own way in the world. And my way is not sweeping or scrubbing.” The girl stuck up her snub nose. Come to think of it, Dulcie thought, she does look like her mother. Except for the pockmarks. Mrs Frothingham’s complexion had been flawless. With help from a dozen vials and jars, of course.

“What’s your way then?”

“To be a writer. Like my mother.”

Mother? The word stopped Dulcie. Had the child been snooping very long before Dulcie found her?

“Miss Mary told me. This morning just. Before she went out. My real mother was a writer. She left me this poem.” She patted her locket. “Miss Mary has my mother’s novel, and I intend to read it.”

“Oh.” So the girl didn’t yet know that Mrs Frothingham, in particular, was her mother. “Well then. You can try to be a writer if that’s what you want to be. But writers are poor. Look at Miss Mary. You think she can afford to pay me? Uh-uh. It’s Mr Johnson what pays me. ’Cause writers don’t make money and that’s a fact. Writers have to clean their own houses. Most of ’em anyway. Not that Mrs Frothingham, though.”

Now she’d said it! But the girl didn’t change expression. “She’s dead. That Mrs Frothingham is dead. She was going to adopt me and now she’s dead.”

“Don’t I know that? Didn’t I find her?” Though Dulcie hadn’t known that the bluestocking was actually going to adopt the girl. That was sad. “Be careful,” Dulcie warned. “Miss Mary’s not planning to adopt you. She just took pity on you, that’s all.” Dulcie wanted the girl to know this. It was for her benefit. Dulcie did not want to have to speak like this; she was kind at heart. But this saucy girl made her speak out. She was too forward a child. Pushy, one might say.

Someone rapped on the door. “Don’t answer,” Annie said.

Dulcie had not been planning to. She had the fires to build up. But the girl’s response made her say, “Why not? It could be Mr Johnson. It could be Miss Mary, forgetting her key. It could be a neighbour, needing sugar for a cake.”

“It could be that murderer,” said the girl, “thinking Miss Mary is here. Coming to kill us. He hates people who read books. And write them.”

“Ridiculous,” said Dulcie, though her heart was banging inside her chest.

The knock came again. Louder. The girl curled her thin body into the sofa and held the book inches from her nose. Dulcie worked furiously on the fire. She would hold on to the bellows—in case.

“Open up!” a voice boomed. “Do you want me to leave this manuscript on the doorstep? There’s a nasty cold wind out here.”

Dulcie recognized the Yorkshire accent. “Go and open the door. It’s just the printer,” she told the girl. “Miss Mary will be angry. It’ll be something she wrote, and she’ll want the proofs.” But the girl remained seated. Now it was a matter of Dulcie’s pride: the girl must obey. “Go, I said.” She stood over the little minx and pumped the bellows.

A spark fell in the girl’s hair; Annie slapped at it and jumped up. “You trying to burn me?”

“No, but Miss Mary will if she discovers you lounging about and won’t do as you’re told.” The knock came again, insistent, and finally Annie got up and ambled to the door.

It was indeed Cyrus Hunt, the sour-faced printer. He was always polite, though, minding his own business. He never stayed and usually (not always) wiped his feet before he stepped over the threshold—Dulcie liked that. He took a side glance at the girl, wondering, Dulcie supposed, why there would be a child in this house. He held out a pile of scribbled pages. “Your mistress left these. She’ll be wanting them to carry on from.”

Dulcie took the pages from the girl, who didn’t seem to know what to do with them. It was Miss Mary’s handwriting all right, but worse than usual: the letters raced backward and forward, like her mind was travelling in two directions at once and couldn’t find the right one. Seeing the printer look again at the girl, she said, “That’s Annie from the Foundling Hospital. Miss Mary brought her here to help with chores.”

“She did not!” Annie cried. “She brought me ’cause Miss Isobel was going to adopt me and then she got killed and Miss Mary felt sorry for me and brought me here. I’m not a servant. I’ll never be a servant!” The girl’s face was hot: there were moist beads dancing on her forehead; she was shaking with indignation. The printer’s mouth hung open; he took a step back.

“All the same to me,” he said. He backed out, slowly, in the direction of the door; bumped into a hat rack and pushed it aside; then, annoyed, he turned and said, “See that your mistress gets those. She’ll be wanting them, I said.”

The door slammed behind him. Dulcie threw a log on the fire and waved away the smoke. Now the girl was alienating the mistress’s visitors; Dulcie was close to tears. Miss Mary would have to make a decision: the girl went or Dulcie did. She could not take these outbursts from a thirteen-year-old. Dulcie had nerves, too. She had feelings. The girl was back on the sofa, feet up on the shabby arm.

Pumping the bellows, Dulcie sent smoke in her direction, and she didn’t even blink.

The young girl attendant came to the madhouse once a week. Roger didn’t know which day because, though they had unchained him and he tried to mark off the days by the weather outside his window, he had become confused, and lost track. But he had to try, to keep himself sane. He must never go wholly mad like some of the inmates he could hear down the hall, shouting, moaning, and scratching the walls. Just yesterday (or was it the day before?) he had heard one cry, “I be Jesus of Nazareth—sum’mun driving nails in me two hands—will no one he-elp me?”

That night Roger dreamed he, too, was on a cross: his body naked, the nails splitting his flesh. His own groans and outcries woke him; he was drenched with sweat. “It’s all right, calm down, keep your head, sir.” It was the woman next door, whispering through the wall. But the nightmare persisted, even as he heaved his body up off the stiff mattress.

On the whole, one bland day was like the next. Rain, partial sun, mud; the chestnut tree leaves coming into bud so it might be late March or even early April. One sunny afternoon he heard children’s voices outside his window, and that was a blessing—but then the matron went out with a stick, and they ran.

His neighbour’s husband was late coming. “He never took this long to be sorry,” she hissed through the crack. “He’ll be ill. Winters, his cough sends him to bed and he can’t work the cows. We never had children—no sons to help. He blames me for that.”

Roger had no children either, he told her. He was twenty-six. “But Lillian has a boy; we get on well. And when we’re married—” He paused: if we marry, he thought.

“Twenty-six,” the woman said: “you’re just a babe. If she made one child, she’ll make more. My Rupert wants a new wife but can’t find one. His face so marked from the pox, front teeth gone—only me’d have him. I pitied him, you see. But it’s the pox made him angry at life—I didn’t count on that.”

Footsteps came to the door and Roger gave two quick knocks, the signal to stop talking. It was the young aide; Roger was glad. He hadn’t seen her for a while. She smiled at him. She knew he was not insane, she’d said, but what could she do? She brought porridge and “an apple. Ma don’t know I stole it. Here.”

It was withered, like an old woman’s face, but he took it greedily. The juice was sweet and cold from storage. He even ate the core: it was soft from wintering over; it spilled down his throat. Afterward he asked, “Can you get me a cherry?”

She looked at him like he was crazed. “A cherry? Where on earth’d I get a cherry?”

He couldn’t tell her. He only recalled he had painted cherries in Lillian’s hair in the month of May. He gave a half laugh. “I can’t say—someone somewhere must preserve them. I only know if you can find me one, I’ll reward you when I get out of here.”

With what could he reward her? A painting maybe. He would paint her holding a bough of cherries. “You’re a pretty lass,” he told her. “I’ll do your portrait. You can sell the painting or you can keep it. I have a bit of a reputation, you know.”

Well, he did have a reputation, but it was not for his art. It was for stealing a frame, when he was a desperate youth. And now a famous painting—or so Fuseli said. Though, true, he’d had two small exhibitions of his work: he had built up something of a following. And he would keep on. He had ambitions. Lillian believed in him; so did a handful of others. Even the renowned William Blake had looked thoughtfully at a watercolour Roger had given the bookseller and said, “Keep on.” No praise, but no discouragement either. Just “keep on.” And he intended to do that.

If he could get out of here before he lost his mind.

“If your mother kept apples, someone kept cherries. A farmer’s wife, a squire’s cook. Please can you find me a cherry?”

She was staring at him. She didn’t ask him what he wanted it for and he was grateful.

She was a good girl, but they might make her talk. They probably pumped her for what he said, what he did when she was in the room. It wouldn’t do to say too much. Though if she told them he wanted a cherry, they would think he was going mad, and probably that was what they wanted. Someone was keeping him here, for some malevolent reason.

Fuseli, he thought again: Henry Fuseli is keeping me here. Though once again that didn’t make sense. If Fuseli had put him in Newgate, why would he take him to a madhouse? He would have gone mad enough, awaiting trial in that prison. He couldn’t think why or why not, his mind was too disoriented. He could only think, Fuseli, Fuseli, I hate Fuseli. I will avenge myself on him if I get out of here.

“I’ll try to find a cherry for you, but I can’t promise,” the girl said, and smiled. She liked the idea of having her portrait painted, he saw that. It was a small hope that she would find a cherry, but what had he now but small hopes? And even if she brought the cherry, how would he get it to Lillian? Could he pass a cherry through the rough whispering-hole without destroying it? No, he would have to ask the aide to give it to the woman. But the woman’s husband had a cough, she said, he could be dying. Then no one would come to release her—she had no children. She would die in this madhouse.

As would he.