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After a busy day, the hands on the clock crawled through the last hours of Charlie’s shift. Finally, he and Bevan signed off as the night attendant took over, all the patients having been sent to bed well before dark. Charlie wasn’t far behind them.
He awoke to the sound of footsteps outside his room. A few minutes later, the footsteps returned in the other direction. A routine patrol by the night attendant no doubt, although there was little chance of the patients sneaking out from the locked dormitory, especially as they had to pass by the attendants’ rooms to get to the stairs.
When Charlie heard the squeak of the dormitory door closing, he eased his own door open. The plan was simple – break into the cloakroom to see if he could steal a master key from the key cabinet, to save him the inconvenience of picking locks in the dark. His own set of keys would get him around the patients’ areas, but not into any of the offices, where he hoped to find the patient register and financial files.
A pity he couldn’t find an excuse to enter the female dormitories and check every face for Amelia’s likeness. He’d have to leave that to Grace. A male attendant in the women’s dormitory would be the quickest way to find himself ejected into the night with a boot in the rear end. He’d had quite enough of boots on his body for the foreseeable future. Although he wasn’t about to admit it to anyone else, dragging his aching body out of the bed tonight had been a darn sight harder than he'd have liked.
Now, as he crept down the stairs to the cloakroom in the lobby, the rush of excitement at being where he shouldn’t be damped down any lingering aches. To his relief, there was no guard posted at the main door. Hardly surprising, as the patients were locked upstairs and any escapees wouldn’t get past the high walls and gates. Grace would be going crazy, being locked within her dormitory with no way out to snoop about. At least she couldn’t come to any harm there.
He paused in the alcove behind the cloakroom, hard against the wall, as someone with a light tread came down the stairs on the women’s side. A door opened and closed.
Charlie took the opportunity to slip into the cloakroom, in case the person came back again. Silence descended. He was just about to open the key cabinet, when the scape of metal on metal alerted him to a person at the cloakroom door. With his heart pounding fit to burst, he slipped behind a rack of long winter coats and tried not to breathe.
Across the dining hall, another door slammed and footsteps began to cross the expanse of parquet. The scrape of metal became more frantic, then the cloakroom door opened and closed.
The thin filter of light through the glass panel was just enough for Charlie to make out a slim figure, with a deliciously familiar scent. He reached out and grabbed her, pulling her hard against him behind the coats, with his hand clamped over her mouth.
To his surprise, Grace didn’t scream or thrash, but instead sank back into him with a soft expiration of breath through his fingers. Apparently she had recognised him in the dark as easily as he had recognised her, even while under stress. He smiled at the thought and felt her smiling back, even though there was no way she could see his expression.
The clip-clop of footsteps stopped outside the cloakroom. After an agonising few seconds, they resumed, heading for the women’s stairs. At a guess, Matron had finished in her office for the night.
When silence returned, Grace loosened his fingers from her mouth. “I’m not sure that the Ladies’ Book of Etiquette would consider our current position entirely proper, DC Pyke.”
Charlie considered the point. His arm was clutched firmly around her chest, where it had no right to be. Furthermore, she appeared to be clad only in delightfully soft garments that left him in no doubt as to her contours. A nightdress and robe, he guessed. Reluctantly, he dropped his arm to a more decorous position around her waist, where the end of her long plait of hair tickled his hand.
“My apologies, Miss Penrose. I don’t believe the police training manual addressed the correct way to restrain a unwed pregnant woman in the cloakroom of a lunatic asylum.”
“Charlie Pyke, I do believe that consorting with criminals as an undercover detective has turned you into a rogue.”
“Not at all, Grace. It’s just that if I didn’t hold you tightly, you might have blundered into the umbrella stand right beside me, which would have caused an awful clatter. May I inquire why are you wandering the corridors so late in your night attire?”
“I thought if I was caught, I could claim to be a sleepwalker.”
“But how did you get past the attendant and out of a locked dormitory?”
“You are not the only one who can do magic tricks, Charlie. I palmed a bottle of sedative from the medical station and added a few drops to the attendant’s cocoa. Her key got me out of the dormitory, but I had to use my lock picks to get into the cloakroom.”
Charlie was momentarily taken aback by the way she talked of sedatives and lock picks, as casually as most women would say tea and crochet hooks. But then Grace hadn’t acted like most women from the instant he had first clapped eyes on her. “Am I going to regret asking where you learned to pick locks?”
“Do you remember Johnny Todd and Tiny Tim?”
“Your pair of devilishly clever street urchins. How could I forget?”
“It turns out they have many useful skills, one of which is opening locked doors.”
“I dread to think what else they have taught you.”
Grace swivelled in his arms so that she was facing him. He felt her arms go around him, but he didn’t have more than a moment to enjoy the sensation. She pulled away again and pressed a hard round object into his palm. He held it up in the faint light. His “magic” shilling.
“Your coin, I believe. You ought to be more careful around pickpockets. Tiny Tim also showed me how to disable a bigger and stronger attacker, which was jolly useful on Flaming Flo earlier today.”
“I shall bear that in mind. I see that my absence hasn’t turned you into a simpering little miss goody two shoes. What a surprise. Grace, are you shivering?”
“My sleepwalking plan does have a flaw. They certainly don’t waste money on heating the corridors here, despite the hefty fees they charge.”
Charlie took a thick woollen cloak off the rack and draped it around her shoulders. Tempting as it was having her so close, they were here for a reason and any moment might bring discovery. He leaned towards her ear. “Are you all right? Not gone stark raving loony yet?”
“I’m teetering on the brink of madness, but I haven’t fallen into the abyss yet. I’m dying to know if the golden-haired Ophelia is Amelia.”
“Unfortunately not. Gave me quite a shock when I first saw her hair though. I’ve had a look at all the women in the secure cells and everyone in the dining hall. I’m sure none of them are Amelia, with a couple of possible exceptions whose faces I couldn’t see. None of the maids or the cook are her either, at least the ones I met today. I had a good look at the logbook for the secure cells and nothing there either. What have you found out?”
“There is a woman called Charlotte, but I haven’t interrogated her yet. And a timid woman with gold highlights in pale hair, known as Mouse, whose real name is Alice. She keeps her head down and rarely speaks. I’ll try to talk to them both tomorrow. It would be a whole lot easier if they didn’t call each other by nicknames.”
“Remember that Amelia might look completely different. Drug addiction and fear do have a habit of changing a person for the worse. I have seen that any number of times in police work. But I still think the most likely possibility is that Isabelle was told a story from the past. If there was ever an Amelia here, she may be long gone.”
“I agree, but we have to look. Anyway, we still need to find out more about what happened to Isabelle and why she was so desperate to escape Stillwaters.”
Charlie was still leaning towards the view that Isabelle’s distress was the result of her own mental condition. “If Doctor Wilson did throw her from the train, he must have had an extremely compelling motive.”
“I might have a lead on that. I have grave concerns over the treatments here, both religious and medical. I believe they are conducting illegal terminations, under the cover of their spiritual healing programme. Doctor Wilson was not much liked, but I haven’t any hard evidence against him yet. That’s why I came here to find a key to the medical room.”
“I was looking for a master key to the offices, to have a look at the patient admission files and financial statements.”
“Excellent. Alistair and I agree that the fees here are high for the service they provide. But we suspect that it is the optional extra fees where they make their real money, for treatments and care of newborns. I find it hard to believe that a religious charity would be so greedy.” She shrugged off the cloak, placing it in his arms. “Would you like me to open the key cabinet, or would you care to do the honours?”
“By all means, Grace. Far be it for me to obstruct your latent criminal tendencies.”
“That’s what I adore about you, Charlie. You’re always so supportive of my career choices.”
“Wait a moment.” Charlie covered the glass panel in the door with the cloak. His fingers searched for the candle and matches in his pocket, finding instead that his lucky silver shilling had been replaced in that pocket.
Grace held up the candle and matches. “Looking for these?”
He leaned forward to whisper sternly in her ear. “Did you know that theft of police equipment is an offence punishable by imprisonment, Miss Penrose?”
“I expect I could get off the charge by pleading insanity, as I’m already imprisoned in a lunatic asylum. Kindly hold the candle, so I can get on with the larceny. I don’t know about you, but I would like to get some sleep tonight.”
Grace made quick work of picking the lock with the help of the candlelight. Inside the cabinet was a rack of labelled keys. She helped herself to a key for the women’s dormitories and one to the medical room. Charlie reached over her shoulder for the spare office keys.
“Take care, Grace. I’d be happier if you left the medical room until tomorrow night. If I get all I need from the offices, you might not need to risk it.”
“I’d prefer to do it tonight in case I don’t get the chance tomorrow. The sooner we can get out of this place, the happier I will be. Shall we meet again tomorrow night? Or earlier, if there is something urgent to discuss.”
“If we can. There is a room off the lobby upstairs, opposite the stairs, where visitors can meet with patients. It would be a safer place to meet as no one will go there at night. Let’s try for around midnight, if we haven’t found a way to talk before then.”
Grace touched her hand to his chest, over his heart, then to his lips, before vanishing like a wraith into the dark. He touched his lips, sure that he would feel a scorch mark, but the heat he felt wasn’t on the outside.