I looked along the corridor, one way and then the other. It was clear. In the distance I could hear the buzz of conversation from the room set aside for the patients’ visitors. Caroline Adams would have come over on the boat that brought them. I hurried along to the staff sitting room and knocked on the door. A faint feminine voice answered, ‘Come in,’ and I opened the door, slipped inside and closed it smartly after me.
‘Oh!’ The woman standing before me took a step back, surprised. She was tall, attractive, with auburn hair that was set off by the green of her coat and a pert little nose that somehow suggested to me that there was no nonsense about her. I saw at once that her clothes were elegant and tasteful but also not new. The nap of her coat had hints of shine about the cuffs. It was evidently not her money that Shepherd had been interested in. She had a battered fur stole about her shoulders that looked as if it had been taken from some moulting animal. She shrugged it back, as the room was warm, revealing, I was intrigued to see, a white ribbon around her neck, which was itself as smooth and pale as alabaster. I imagined it would feel cold as marble to the touch of my fingers.
‘Good afternoon,’ I said. ‘Miss Adams, I presume. I understand you’re expecting Dr Shepherd?’
‘That’s right, although he will not be expecting me.’
‘Evidently not, I’m afraid. He’s fully occupied with patients all day. Perhaps I can help. I’m Dr Gargery.’ It was the first name that jumped into my head, straight out of Jane Dove’s reading of Great Expectations. I felt a stab in my stomach at the thought of how I’d abandoned poor Jane to endure her trial with Morgan alone. For all I knew, without me to help, she might already have been consigned back to the living death of the day room. Then I thought that it didn’t matter, not if I couldn’t find some way out of the fix I was in. Unless I could wriggle free from it, there would be no one to conduct experiments in Moral Treatment upon poor Jane. The very idea of it would be discredited along with me.
I pushed the thought away and concentrated on playing the new role I had assumed and immediately felt a frisson of excitement. I would have relished this switch of characters, from a dead doctor to one who had never lived, were it not for the constant fear that someone – Morgan, perhaps, O’Reilly, maybe, or any other of the staff – might come into the room at any moment and call me Shepherd.
I saw she was staring at me. ‘I beg your pardon, but what did you say your name was?’
My mind was suddenly blank. What name had I told her? I couldn’t think. Calm down, I said to myself. Think. All that came to mind was Jane Dove reading to Morgan. Why had I thought of that? Then I remembered, Great Expectations. ‘Gargery,’ I said.
She looked at me hard. I felt myself wilting under her scrutiny. I was hot under my collar and put a finger around the inside of it to loosen it.
‘Is there something wrong?’ I asked at last.
‘I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that you seem so familiar. It feels as if I have met you before somewhere. Were you ever in Ohio?’
‘No, never, but people are always telling me I look like someone else. I have that kind of face.’ There was a pause. She seemed satisfied by my explanation. I cleared my throat. ‘As I was saying, I’m afraid Dr Shepherd is terribly busy all day and will not be free until long after the boat takes you back.’
At this amplification of the bad news, Caroline Adams was silent and stood chewing her bottom lip.
‘Perhaps I can help?’ I said. ‘Forgive me for intruding but Dr Shepherd – John – and I have become great friends and he’s confided in me about, well, your situation.’
‘Oh!’ Red spots blossomed on her cheeks.
‘Pray forgive me. Perhaps I should not have said anything.’
She burst into tears. ‘Oh, no, no, not at all.’ She let out a half-strangled sob. Then she fiddled in the little reticule whose handle she had looped over her wrist and pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. I waited while she composed herself. She faced me bravely. ‘I should not go on so, I know. But I have no family, no one else in all the world but John. I suppose you think I am a foolish girl, chasing after him like this.’
I made a feeble gesture with my hands, which neither dismissed the idea nor endorsed it, and she went on, ‘It is just that his last letter to me was so strange.’ She pulled an envelope from the reticule and I thought she was going to show it to me, but instead she waved it at me. I could see my scrawl on it. ‘It wasn’t at all like him. I don’t recognise him in it, not one bit.’
I put on a grave expression. ‘Well, of course he has some difficulty writing, still, on account of the injury to his hand.’
‘It’s not the handwriting; I understand about that. It’s – it’s – well, the complete lack of feeling. The coldness.’ She glanced out the window at the falling snow and shivered. Her voice trembled. ‘It was not a letter I ever expected to receive from the man I loved.’
A tear rolled down her cheek and she shook her head, unable to go on. I walked over to her and laid a hand upon her arm. ‘Please,’ I said, ‘don’t distress yourself.’
She took out the handkerchief again and gathered herself once more. ‘I am making an idiot of myself. What must you think of me?’
‘I assure you I do not think anything ill of you, Miss Adams, quite the reverse, in fact. I – I have – but no, I mustn’t say anything. It’s not my place at all. Although what was said to me was not specified as being in confidence, it was perhaps so de facto, in that it was never imagined that this meeting here today, between you and me, would ever take place.’
Her head perked up and she looked me in the eye. ‘What exactly has John told you?’
She seemed at once both anxious to know and fearful of finding out.
I was only half a line ahead of her in the script, only there wasn’t a script of course. I had to make it up as I went along, always tailoring my answers to the questions she fired at me. I opened my mouth but nothing came out. I was trying to think where to go next. Just then I heard footsteps approaching in the corridor outside. I forgot about saying anything. Indeed, I could not have spoken; it was impossible even to get my breath. Those were a woman’s footsteps and I thought if it’s O’Reilly and she comes in then I may as well string myself up here and now and save the state the trouble. Caroline Adams and I stared at each other, the tension near unbearable for her, I realised, at the prospect of the ending of our tête-à-tête just when she was on the verge of making some discovery, the explanation for Shepherd’s behaviour she had come for.
The footsteps reached the door and went on by without pausing. We both waited as their echo died away in the distance. I still hadn’t thought of anything to say.
‘Listen,’ I managed finally, taking the break in the conversation caused by the footsteps as my cue, ‘we cannot talk frankly here because the room is in constant use and we are bound to be interrupted.’
‘Is there somewhere else we can go to be more private?’
I made a show of thinking hard, wrinkling my brow, a ham performance, but then what was this if not some ghastly melodrama? ‘Not really …’ I began, then gave a tentative nod toward the window, ‘except outside, and it doesn’t look too welcoming out there.’
She tossed her head. ‘Oh, I don’t mind a bit of snow. The cold doesn’t bother me in the least. Can we find a quiet spot outside?’
‘Oh yes, the grounds are quite extensive and everyone else will be inside on a day like this. There’s a gazebo around the back where we can shelter a little.’
‘Very well, then, if you’re agreeable and kind enough to spare me a little more of your time, let’s go there.’
I quite admired her at that moment for her bravery and determination. She would endure anything to get her man. I walked over to the door, with her behind me, opened it and peeped out. The coast was clear.
‘You seem rather cautious,’ she said. ‘Is there some problem?’
‘Well, it’s best I’m not seen with you. I wouldn’t want it to get back to Shepherd. John, I mean.’
‘Oh. Well, perhaps I should go along on my own and meet you somewhere outside.’
‘Capital idea! Here’s what you must do: follow this corridor to the main door, the one you will have come in by. Go outside and turn left around the outside of the building and keep walking until you’re at the back. I’ll go out by the back door and meet you there.’
‘All right.’
I stood aside to let her pass and she began walking along the corridor. After ten yards or so she suddenly stopped and looked back and said, ‘Dr Gargery?’
Instinctively I looked over my shoulder, thinking she must be addressing someone behind me, forgetting that Gargery was me. Luckily I remembered in time before it registered with her. Although, why should she notice? Why on earth would this woman think I was anyone other than who I said I was? I smiled. ‘Yes?’
‘Thank you.’ She mouthed the words almost without uttering them, obeying the need for secrecy, and then she turned and went off along the corridor. I stepped back into the staff sitting room, shut the door behind me and stood with my back against it. My whole body was quivering. I shuddered out a sigh. So far so good. I’d gotten her into a place where it was unlikely we would be seen together. Or if we were, only from a distance, and to any observer we would simply be Dr Shepherd and his young lady visitor. Everything could yet be all right so long as she didn’t speak to anyone, because then the game would certainly be up. This meant that somehow I would have to spin out the couple of hours before the boat left, taking the visitors back to the city. It would not be easy. I could hardly expect her to wander around in the freezing weather for so long, especially now the snow was coming down thick and fast. Yet letting her back indoors would put me in peril again.
Then I realised that even if I brought it off, kept her occupied and away from others all that time, it wouldn’t solve the problem. This was a determined woman and no matter what cock-and-bull story about Shepherd’s motives I offered her, she would not be satisfied until she had had a showdown with the man himself, and that, of course, was impossible – well, at least in this world. And then sooner or later the truth would come out and I would be exposed. Even if I avoided discovery this time – and that was still looking far from certain – I probably couldn’t survive another such episode. I had to find a permanent solution, or, if that couldn’t be managed, at least one that was longer-lasting than merely until her next visit. All this was going through my head as I opened the door, checked that everything was clear, ducked out and made quickly for the back door. If anyone happened to be looking out a window somewhere, they wouldn’t see me following in the footsteps of Miss Adams.
The sky was a lowering threat and the snow continued to fall. I found her under a tree, like some ghost in the dim light, for the afternoon wore on and the sun was losing strength. I summoned a feeble smile.
‘But you haven’t a coat,’ she said. ‘You’ll catch your death.’
‘I don’t feel the cold,’ I lied, wondering how I would keep my teeth from chattering. Great white flakes fell upon us, settling on our heads and shoulders, threatening to turn us into snowmen. ‘Let’s walk away from the building. It will lessen any chance of bumping into someone and will help keep us warm into the bargain.’
The grounds were naturally deserted, as I’d hoped, but at the same time the complete absence of anyone else pointed up the madness of our enterprise. Even the lunatics were not crazy enough to be abroad in such conditions. I began to trudge in the direction of a small area of woodland. It was three or four hundred yards away. I was thinking about taking her all the way to the edge of this side of the island, to the black water there, but I saw almost at once that would be no good; it would only lead to more questions.
‘Can we not talk as we walk?’ she said.
Our feet were crunching through snow several inches deep now as the path we were on petered out. No one normally walked in this part of the grounds. They weren’t cultivated at all, there weren’t enough gardeners, and this area was left more or less to nature.
‘I thought you mentioned a gazebo?’ she said. ‘I don’t see any sign of one.’ She was puzzled rather than worried.
I pressed on ahead of her, leaving her no option but to trail along in my wake. ‘Yes, I’m not too familiar with this part of the grounds but I think it’s over here somewhere.’
‘But Dr Gargery, must we go on? The snow is getting so deep.’
‘Let’s get into the wood, at least. We can’t talk here; we might still be visible from the building. We can be private under the trees and they’ll shelter us from the snow.’ I went on and a moment later heard the crunch of her feet behind me.
After another five minutes we were battling through snow a foot deep. I ploughed on, willing her to follow, determined not to stop now.
‘Dr Gargery, Dr Gargery,’ came her voice from behind, ‘are you sure this is wise? The snow is getting deeper. My skirts are getting soaked.’
‘Only a little way now.’ I could hear the fake cheeriness in my voice. ‘The ground will be clear once we’re in the woods; you’ll see.’
I carried on as fast as I could and she had no choice but to follow. Eventually I was in amongst the trees. She staggered in after me, panting, water dripping from her hat. The ground here was only lightly dusted with snow, protected by the trees all about us. I turned to face her.
She stood brushing the snow off her coat. I stared at her. It was deathly silent, that special kind of silence when it snows, every sound muffled. At last she must have felt my eyes upon her, because her hand stopped mid-movement and she looked up at me.
‘Dr Gargery, what is it? You look so strange.’
I didn’t say anything. I was thinking how tantalising was the small hint of flesh that I could just make out above the collar of her coat. I was remembering how white and smooth was the skin hidden beneath that collar. I was relishing the thought of that silky white ribbon.
‘Dr Gargery,’ she said again. ‘What’s the matter? Why are you looking at me in that way?’
I said nothing. I took a step toward her. Her face was all alarmed now.
‘Dr Gargery, why don’t you speak? You look so very peculiar. What are you doing? I don’t like it. Please, sir, take me back to the hospital now; you’re frightening me.’
There were only a few feet between us. I took another step. She began backing off, taking a step back every time I took another forward, until, although she didn’t know it, she was almost touching a tree behind her. Of a sudden I took three swift paces and she retreated and came up against the tree. I reached out my hands and seized her by the lapels of her coat, ripping them apart, scattering buttons around us like shrapnel.
‘No!’
She opened her mouth to scream, which of course I could not allow. I let go the coat and seized her by the throat to keep her quiet. She was too shocked to say anything anyway. Her lips moved soundlessly, mouthing what she thought was my name. I got my thumbs into her throat and squeezed with all my might. Her eyes began to pop out the way their eyes always do. She sank to her knees. I applied more pressure and she somehow managed to release a half-strangled squawk and I whispered, not unkindly, ‘Keep calm, my dear, for I have to tell you everything is all right. Very soon now, in less than a minute, less than half a minute in fact, you will be with your beloved John Shepherd for ever.’
A great shudder went through her body, and then it became limp. I was shaking myself, as you do in these situations. I must have drifted off somewhere and came to with the awareness of her dead weight pulling on my wrists. My hands were still clasped around her neck. I let go and she fell forward against my legs. I took a step back and she collapsed onto the thin carpet of snow. I felt hot and sweaty and took out my handkerchief and wiped my brow.
She had fallen with her head on one side. Her face was purple and contorted. I hate that and avoided looking at it. I bent down and felt around the back of her neck, where the white ribbon was tied. I calmed myself with deep breaths until my hands had stopped trembling and I was able to undo the knot. I slipped off the ribbon and put it in my pocket. It was just a piece of ribbon, nothing to connect it with her. I wanted to have something of her, to remind me of that moment when I held her fragile life in the whim of my fingers.
More myself now, I began to think what I must do. I looked all around. Everything was quiet, and I was reassured that no one had witnessed what I’d done. I walked back to the edge of the wood and peered out between the trees. It would soon be dark. I needed to hurry. I returned to what had been Caroline Adams and was now a piece of dead meat. I could not leave her here where she would be in plain sight if anyone came into the wood. I bent down and took up the reticule, whose strings were still looped around her wrist. I rifled through the contents. There was my letter. I slipped it in my pocket. I helped myself to the small wad of dollar bills; she had no need of them now. There were a few coins, which I did not bother with, and a little notebook that I thought might contain information that would identify her, so I took that as well. It was too dark now to be able to read it here. After making sure there were no other papers in the reticule, I closed it and left it tied to her wrist.
Squatting on my haunches, I got my arms beneath her, lifted her and staggered to my feet. She was a tall woman, heavier than most, but I had that almost superhuman strength that always comes at such times. I carried her to the far side of the copse and out of it, staggering as my feet sank into the snow. I trudged on for forty or fifty yards and then the snow grew deeper still. I realised there was some sort of dip in the ground here. I let her drop and then fell to my knees and began scooping out snow, working furiously until I’d made the hollow some couple of feet deep. I rolled the body into it and then began heaping snow back over her. With the help of the snow falling from the sky she was soon completely covered. Thanks to the depression I had made, there was no telltale mound; the surface was smooth and level.
I backed away. I took off my jacket and, walking backwards, drew it from side to side across the trail of my footprints, more or less erasing them. It was probably an unnecessary precaution, because falling snow was covering them fast anyway, but it meant that even should my footprints from the building to the little wood remain, no one would be able to track them further. Once I cleared the other side of the wood, I put my jacket back on and made my way as fast as I could toward the building.
By now it was near enough dark and, with the sky full of snow, there was neither moon nor stars. I had just reached the back of the hospital when I heard voices, coming from the direction of the front door. I made my way along the side of the building and peeped around the corner. The visitors were leaving and were walking up the drive toward the river to get the boat. I had a sudden moment of panic at the thought of the boat. Would Caroline Adams be missed when she did not return with the rest of the passengers? Then I relaxed. There was no one who would be making the journey back on the boat but those who came on it. The trip itself was so short it was unlikely Miss Adams would have had time on the way out to strike up an acquaintance with another visitor who might notice her absence going back. She had told me herself she had no family to miss her. I was pretty sure I was safe.
I looked out across the grounds at the way I had come, the few feet nearest the house now illuminated from the lights within. Snow continued to fall. Caroline Adams would rest concealed within her icy cocoon until the spring melt. And by that time I intended to be well away from here, several hundred miles out west.
I hadn’t time now to stand here ruminating on all this. Jane Dove! I hadn’t thought about her for a single moment in the past hour. My heart sank and even the triumph of having the interfering Miss Adams out of the way was deflated at the thought that Jane might have been found out, our deception discovered, and that in all likelihood I was about to be summarily dismissed and sent on my way into who knew what danger. I hurried inside.
My clothes were a mess, of course; I was pretty soaked through. I went up to my room where there was a fire lit ready for my evening there. I took off my jacket and pants and draped them over chairs as close to the fire as I dared, to dry them. I put on Shepherd’s spare pair of pants. I took my letter to Caroline Adams from the jacket pocket, read it through with a grim satisfaction and then consigned it to the flames.
Then I had a look in the notebook. There were a few addresses, mostly female names, which I thought most likely to be those of old school friends. There were several drafts of letters to Shepherd, all violently crossed out and unfinished. I would have liked to read them, but there was no time now. The following pages were blank and I was in the act of throwing the book into the fire when a couple of pieces of paper fell out. I picked them up. A used rail ticket from Columbus bearing yesterday’s date. She had evidently travelled overnight. There was a ticket for the left-luggage office at the city railroad depot, which brought a smile to my face. It almost certainly meant she had only arrived this morning, checked her baggage and come straight out to the island. She had not booked into a lodging house or hotel, where she might have confided her plans to someone, or where she would be missed when she didn’t return that evening.
The other item was a small square of folded paper which, when I opened it out, proved to be the front page of a newspaper. The headline read: ‘CONVICTED KILLER AMONG DEAD IN RAIL DISASTER’. Underneath, the subheading said: ‘Accident Saves State Executioner A Job’. And below that there was the police photograph of me, taken soon after my arrest, with my hair sticking up wildly and my eyes staring madly out at the camera. I understood now why Caroline Adams had thought she’d seen me before. The photograph was simply not a good enough likeness for her to remember why. There was also a picture of me as Othello, in blackface, so no possibility of recognition there. As well as the lurid headline and opening story about me, the article contained details of the possible causes of the accident and a list of those identified as dead or injured. It was dated a few days after the accident. It struck me that the late Miss Adams had been more interested in this list than in the sensational headlines and, having reassured herself that Shepherd was not among the dead, had probably not looked at it again since, hence her failure to work out why I seemed familiar. Besides, why would she connect me with a dead man? It wasn’t something you would naturally do.
I ripped the notebook to pieces and threw them into the fire. The left-luggage ticket I kept. When I finally left the island and made my run for it, I might find something of use to me there. If I were ever in a position where it might incriminate me by connecting me with the murdered woman, I could swallow it in a moment. I was about to throw the newspaper cutting into the flames too, but something stayed my hand, some unaccustomed foolish sentimentality, if you will; I realised it was all I had of the old me, that picture as the Moor and that horrid police photograph. Of course I had a new identity now, as John Shepherd, and soon, before the winter was over and the snow had melted and revealed my latest misdeed to the world, I would have to have another still. But for now, I discovered I wasn’t quite ready to relinquish my past completely; I could not bring myself to say goodbye to my former self just yet.
Even as I did so, I told myself I was being a fool. This little piece of paper could have me hanged. I knew I should listen to this voice, but I didn’t. I folded the clipping and looked about for somewhere to hide it. I didn’t dare risk a drawer or the pocket of my spare pants. I had a fear of someone poking about in my room and when I now asked myself why, the answer that came was O’Reilly. She and I had become enemies over the matter of Jane Dove and I would not have put it past her to search through my things. Casting about, my eye lighted upon Moral Treatment lying on my bedside table. I slipped the cutting between its pages. I liked the idea of its being in there, with the book right out in the open. It was the last place anyone would look.
I looked out the window. It was dark now, but in the light spilling out from the building I could see the snow still fell, the air almost solid with it. The paths that had been cleared earlier were already covered by a fresh layer I reckoned must be several inches deep. The branches of the trees hung heavy with snow. I was reassured that Caroline Adams would sleep soundly in her bed until spring.
I turned to the fire and was watching the final pieces of paper blacken and crumble into ash when the bell for dinner went. My jacket was almost dry now. I put it on and hurried downstairs to the staff dining room, where I found Morgan already seated and sipping a glass of red wine.
‘Ah, Shepherd, there you are,’ he said with a smile. ‘Let me get you a glass of wine.’ He poured it and handed it to me as I sat down.
I hardly dared ask about Jane Dove. I knew Morgan well enough by now to understand that his good humour did not mean that I was safe. It would be just like him to play cat and mouse with me before delivering the killer blow.
When he said nothing, I began to convince myself that this was in fact the case and that he was just teasing me, keeping me in suspense to prolong the torture. In the end I could stand it no longer. I cleared my throat nervously. ‘How did it go, the, um, the reading with Jane Dove?’
‘Oh that,’ he said, as he picked up his knife and fork and began sawing at a piece of meat on his plate. ‘I have to hand it to you. She reads extremely well.’ He paused in his dissection of the meat and looked up at me. ‘I enjoyed it immensely. Especially the pieces from Hamlet.’
My hand shook so violently wine spilled from my glass and dripped onto the white tablecloth. I had never taught Jane Dove anything from Hamlet; it was not something she had learned.