Everything was as quiet as death when I slipped from my room that evening. I had that wonderful feeling that surges through the blood sometimes, the sense that I was all-powerful and that nothing and no one would be able to withstand me. O’Reilly was out of the way, exiled across the water, and Morgan weighed down by all the paperwork I had visited upon him. Everything was on my side. Not once did I put my foot upon a creaky floorboard, not once did I collide with a piece of furniture or trip or stumble in the shadows. I had only a candle to light my way, and its flickering flame threw dancing shadows upon the walls, but neither these nor anything else unnerved me.
I went downstairs, and paused outside Morgan’s office with my ear to the door. The satisfying scratch of pen upon paper told me he was hard at work. I made my way to the back staircase and stood at the foot of it for a good minute, listening. I did not want to run into someone coming down it on my way up; it would be tricky trying to explain what business I had to be there.
There was no noise, only the soft sound of my own breath and, from somewhere outside, the lonely cry of an owl, that ghostly predator of the night. Funny, though, how it made me shiver. I had a sudden vision of poor Caroline Adams, lying out there in her icy shroud. I shuddered at the thought of it and made a silent wish that she sleep soundly. I swore, as I had when luck freed me from the train, that I would bury the part of my nature that drove me to do such things. I reassured myself that I had not broken that vow. The removal of Miss Adams had been an absolute necessity for my safety, and not the result of any evil impulse. Satisfied now that no one was about, I climbed the stairs to the third floor.
I found myself in a long corridor with doors either side. In the distance I could hear muttered voices and I followed the sound. I came to a door that was slightly ajar. I was bold as brass now and not ready to retreat. I put my eye to the crack between door and doorjamb and saw inside two attendants sitting in chairs either side of a table. The table was against the wall, which both were leaning against, looking relaxed. There was a bottle of whiskey on the table between them and each had a glass. They were conversing quietly. I retreated, soft as a rat, and tried the doors in the corridor and found them locked. Listening at them, I could hear the sounds of breathing, snoring and people tossing and turning in bed, and the occasional woman muttering in her sleep. These then were the rooms where the difficult patients slept, many of them in isolation because of their unpredictable and possibly violent natures. There was no way of knowing if my madwoman was in one of these rooms, or any way of getting into it if she was. I crept back along the corridor toward the stairs, about to descend, my mission a dismal failure and the mystery of the missing woman still unsolved, when I heard the creak of a floorboard above my head. Looking carefully to the other side of the staircase, I realised another flight continued up, rather more steeply, and it dawned upon me that it must lead to an attic above.
I was standing there contemplating whether to climb up and investigate further, or get out of there fast while my luck still held, when there came the most hellish sound I had ever heard, a manic laughter, twisted from the merriment and jocularity we associate with that sound into something so awful, so redolent of perversion and murderous intent, that I nearly dropped the candle. Behind me the murmurs of the attendants’ voices ceased. I heard a chair being pushed back and a voice say, ‘It sounds as if she’s getting restless up there. It gets on my nerves, so it does. I’ve a good mind to go up there and give her what for, and indeed I would, but I don’t have the key.’
‘Yes, and if you did, that would be you out of a job and no mistake if O’Reilly was to catch you,’ came the reply of the other woman. ‘We’re not even supposed to know there’s anyone up there at all.’
‘O’Reilly’s on shore for the night,’ said the first woman.
‘No matter if she is, it’s the same difference,’ said the other. ‘See no evil, touch no evil and just put up with having to hear a bit of evil, that’s what I say,’ and she let out a guffaw at her own good humour.
‘Well, that’s true enough,’ said the first. ‘I ain’t never seen her and I ain’t never touched her, but I damned well heard her sure enough.’
‘Perhaps another glass will help block out the noise,’ said the other.
There was the sound of glasses clinking and then their quiet muttering resumed. I ducked up the narrow flight of stairs to the attic, not an easy climb, for there was a turn in them that took them under the sloping eaves of the building and meant I had to bend low to mount them, difficult for someone of my height, especially when carrying a candle. I reached the top, where there was a single central corridor with doors either side. Opening the first, I found a large room piled with lumber, folded wooden chairs, boxes, the disassembled frame of a bed and the like. Everything was layered deep with dust. My nose began to tickle and I had the devil of a job to prevent myself sneezing and giving myself away. I closed the door and explored the other rooms on this side of the corridor; all were unlocked and were either empty or contained the same sort of unwanted lumber as the first. I made my way back along the corridor, switching my attention to the rooms on the other side, which again were unlocked and put to the same purpose as before. But when I reached the last door, the one nearest the staircase, and turned the handle, the door refused to yield. I pushed my shoulder against it in case it was merely stuck, but it didn’t budge; it was definitely locked. I put my ear to it and held my breath to listen. There was perfect quiet and then, before I could move, a sudden rush of footsteps on the other side and the door almost exploded into me, crashing against my ear, as something – someone – cannoned into it on the other side. I fell back in shock and my candle went out.
‘Let me out, you devil, let me out!’ It was a woman’s voice, although you could only just tell, for it sounded like no human I had ever heard, a banshee straight out of Hell. My blood ran cold. Everything was dark and I could almost feel the madwoman’s fingers reaching out and taking hold of my throat. She began wailing and sobbing, and banging on the door. I was by no means safe here. It seemed entirely possible to me that the monster on the other side of this flimsy piece of wood – who I was sure was the madwoman I’d come in search of – might smash her way through it.
In my shock at the prisoner’s frenzy, I had all but forgotten the precariousness of my situation, that she was not the only thing I had to worry about, when the darkness began to recede. There was a glow of a light from the staircase, growing brighter by the second. Someone was coming up it.
I was in a desperate plight. In a moment the person on the stairs would reach the top, light would flood the corridor and reveal me where I had no right to be. I fumbled around in the dark, seeking the handle of the door opposite the prisoner’s, but met only the wall. Just then the person ascending the stairs must have reached the turn, because the intensity of the light doubled. It was bright enough for me to see the door handle. I grabbed it, opened the door and ducked inside, closing it as quietly as I could, although the little noise it made would have been inaudible over the racket the fiend opposite was creating.
I put my ear to the door and listened. Footsteps stopped at the door across the way. And then, the most surprising thing of all, the thing I least would have guessed would happen, a voice, speaking quietly and patiently, evidently through the door to the woman inside. It was a voice I knew only too well.
‘There, there, my dear, calm yourself,’ whispered Morgan. ‘Come on, quiet down. If you’re a very good girl, I have a present for you, something very nice indeed.’
He paused and the rattling of the door opposite ceased. The woman’s fierce cries subsided into a kind of moan. ‘That’s better,’ said Morgan. ‘Now, my dear, you must get back into bed. I’m not coming in unless you do. And if I don’t come in, I can’t give you any chocolate, can I?’
There was a long silence and then I heard the sound of a key in a lock, the opening of the door and its closing and the sound of the key being turned once more. I held my breath, thinking what to do. Had Morgan gone inside the room, or was he still waiting in the corridor? Perhaps he had just opened the door a fraction, tossed the chocolate through the gap and then closed and locked it again. He might be in the corridor still. I bent down and looked through the keyhole of my door and everything outside was black, from which I deduced Morgan, with his candle, was inside the woman’s room. I opened my door and was out in a trice. I stepped softly across the passage, put my ear to the door and listened.
I heard the strangest sound: Morgan’s voice, there was no doubt about that, but humming. It was an old tune, one of those popular songs you get in vaudeville shows, although I could not place it, a ballad of some sort. Beneath it I could hear a low accompaniment, a sort of murmuring which put me in mind for some reason of the purring of a cat. It suggested the wild woman within was humming along while nibbling contentedly upon the chocolate.
Here was strangeness indeed! Morgan, the brusque little martinet, the man who happily half drowned helpless women, or chained them to chairs for hour after hour, sitting and lullabying this mad monster.
I longed to stay and listen more, in case Morgan said something that might give me a clue about what was going on, but the risk was too great. He might emerge at any time and I would be caught out – redhanded – with no excuse. I had to get away fast while it was still possible. I didn’t dare light my candle. There was a faint sliver of light seeping out from under the woman’s door, barely anything, but just enough to show me the way to the top of the stairs. I crept to them and began to inch my way carefully down, terrified that all the noise might have drawn the attendants below from their room. I had no idea what I would say if confronted by them. I just prayed it wouldn’t happen.
At last, after what seemed an age, I came to the bottom of the stairs and peeped around the corner. The passage was empty and there was enough light from the attendants’ open door for me to start my way down the next flight of stairs. Once I reached the turn I paused, took out my matches and lit my candle. It took a moment for my eyes to get used to the sudden brightness but once they had, I hurried the rest of the way down and a couple of minutes later reached the part of the hospital where it was legitimate for me to be. If I was caught now, I could always plead a trip to the library as my excuse for being abroad.
In the security of my room I tried to make sense of all that had passed. It was clear the attendants knew of the woman’s existence – how could they not with the noise she made, which seemed to be a regular occurrence – but also evident that they were expected to turn a blind eye and had scarcely any more knowledge about her than I did. I had at least seen her – and touched her, or rather felt her hands touching me. The woman was O’Reilly’s special charge. It was she who took her her meals, as I had seen. And what I’d witnessed suggested that, on the rare occasions when she was away, Morgan took over. But a different Morgan from the one I knew in our daily work together. He had calmed this special patient by talking to her softly and soothingly, not by threatening her or tying her up. Why, when I thought about it, his behaviour toward this woman was like nothing so much as Moral Treatment. Morgan, in this particular case it seemed, practised what I preached.
But why? What was so special about this woman that she merited a different regime from all the other patients? Why was she kept such a secret? Why had both Morgan and O’Reilly lied to me, pretending that the person who attacked me in his office was just one of the women from the third floor?
I went to sleep feeling that I had got almost nowhere in solving the puzzle. I had confirmed the existence of the woman, but for the mystery surrounding her, I had no explanation.