The Cunning House

by Richard Marggraf Turley

  He gazed out through the glass sliders at leaves parched by the drought into early duns and coppers.

  The way wound between two fields, Hampstead Heath visible away to the east, before funnelling into a compact curve. Soon, the turreted silhouette of a large house appeared above the hedgerows. Wyre and Miss Crawford pushed against the sides of the bone-shaker as the driver turned a tight circle in front of the asylum’s enormous wrought-iron gates. The horses strained at their leathers, centre pole creaking loudly. A judder of whip springs. Wood’s Close.

  The neat gravel drive to the house was flanked on one side by topiary clipped into intricate bestial shapes. Wyre offered Miss Crawford his arm. They moved easily together; with Rose, he always had to perform a little hop and skip to compensate for the difference in stride. As they passed an elegant chaise-and-pair parked at the top of the drive, a tall figure in a long black coat appeared in the porch. High collar, white satin tie – the epitome of a professional man. Miss Crawford’s fingers tightened around the Wyre’s sleeve.

  “Welcome to the Retreat,” the dark-suited man said, with a hint of Yankee twang. “A pleasure, Miss Crawford, even under the circumstances.” He bowed stiffly at Wyre. “Professor Ashcroft, Director of this institution.” His moustache reminded Wyre of an alluvial fan at a river mouth.

  Miss Crawford lifted her chin. “Mr Wyre is acting as my legal representative.”

  “Indeed . . .” Ashcroft’s smile dimmed. “This way, if you please.” The professor extended an arm into the hallway. “Dr Ellesmere is waiting in the drawing room. He was Dr Aspinall’s mentor,” Ashcroft said to Wyre as he conducted the couple into a severe rectangle of a room. Beneath a double-height sash window, a clean-shaven man sat in refined congruities of dark cloth, face almost obliterated by sunlight. One leg was crossed to reveal a long black shoe, buffed to a high sheen. He looked up as they entered, and laid aside the book he was reading. Something on fruits by someone called Hooker.

  “Believe me,” Ashcroft spoke as the other man rose, “the decision to relieve your fiancé of the burden of his duties was not taken lightly. He was an outstanding theorist of psychic disorder, whose oneirograph on dreams showed marks of true genius. But you must appreciate, Miss Crawford, allowing him to remain in this house, dispensing moral guidance . . .” The sentence became a meaningful dip of the head. “Quite out of the question.”

  “You misunderstand me, Professor Ashcroft.” Miss Crawford’s voice acquired a steelier inflection. “I’m not here to discuss my fiancé’s position.”

  A horizontal fold appeared at the bridge of the asylum director’s nose, perplexing an otherwise smooth, egg-like countenance. “Then I’m guilty of a presumption.” He made a slight bow.

  She regarded him evenly. “I wish to know the cast of Robert’s mind when he left Wood’s Close. I wrote two days ago to that effect.”

  Ashcroft exchanged a glance with his colleague. “Forgive me, I assure you no such letter arrived in my hands. I assumed Dr Aspinall had returned to town.”

  “He did not.”

  Ellesmere coughed tactfully. “Miss Crawford, when your betrothed arrived to collect his belongings, he was visibly moved by the sight of these familiar prospects.” The stylish physician brought his hands together. “I believe he was acutely sensible of what he’d thrown away. After that, he said very little, retrieving a few items from his office, which he packed into a leather trunk, before leaving. He couldn’t have been here above half an hour. I accompanied him to the gates, and we parted with a handshake. He left in the same hackney coach he arrived in.”

  “Could you describe that coach?” Wyre said.

  “Alas, I’d have to say it looked much like any other. As for his destination, he took the London road south. Of that I’m certain.” He paused. “Perhaps I flatter myself, but it was my distinct impression your fiancé held no grudge against Wood’s Close. He appeared resigned to the fact his position had become untenable. I’d say that was his cast of mind.”

  Wyre frowned. “You’d have us believe Robert Aspinall left the institution he loved with no more than a friendly handshake.”

  “As I believe I just said, Mr Wyre, he seemed reconciled to the circumstances. Beneath the surface, who can say? Who can ever claim to understand the inchoate forces that lead to our actions?” He turned to Miss Crawford. “There are enough reasons to suspect that which the self thinks it knows about itself, without venturing to account for the motives of others.” He opened his palms in the manner of a reverend at his pulpit.

  “I don’t see – ”

  “My point, Mr Wyre? We have patients in our care with whom you might play cards for hours and not notice anything. Yet touch their favourite string and the relapse would be sudden, accompanied by shocking displays.” He brought his hands back together in a conciliatory gesture. “Miss Crawford, would you care to accompany me through our grounds? I have some candid thoughts to share about how best to help your fiancé when he returns, as I have no doubt he will.”

  Ellesmere’s voice seemed to be that of reason itself. Between them, Wyre realized, these two mental physicians had cut through his interrogating style as if they were King’s Counsels and he a mere legal tyro.

  The professor excused himself, leaving Ellesmere’s dark-sleeved arm to gather them into the long hallway, which led through to a large, iron-studded door. This opened onto a garden vista that sent Miss Crawford’s hand to her mouth. Tiered rockeries, a rose garden, allées of hornbeam, velvet lawns, clever shrubberies . . . all lay spread out before and below, a mass of gorgeous colouring easily the match of Vauxhall.

  “We encourage our guests to take regular air-baths,” said Ellesmere, as they followed him out. “There isn’t the slightest danger to the public.” The physician halted at a well-tended bed; pointing out a plant that appeared to have turned a somersault, he said, “This specimen lives entirely on atmospheric moisture.” He smiled, running his fingers through the plant’s wispy roots, which stuck up preposterously in the air. “The little fellow arrived last summer by crate from China. We also keep carnivorous vegetables.” He pointed at something hard and waxy rearing from the peaty soil. “They bait their prickles with sticky. Insects can never resist. Flies and bees know there’s richest juice in poisonous flowers, little suspecting they might end up themselves as . . . juice.” He turned to Miss Crawford and smiled. “Our other plants are fed on nothing more sinister than soda and bone-dust. Take this beauty, now – ” He stooped to stroke the pulpy petals of a starkly coloured plant with bulbous protrusions. “Fruit good-sized, a little oblong, perhaps. Flesh very white, though nice and red next to the stone.”

  Setting off again, they entered a trellised walkway, to emerge onto lawns edged by balls of waxy flowers and thrusting broach spire. A ha-ha broke the boundary of the visible and formal.

  “Where does madness come from?” Miss Crawford asked in a quiet voice.

  “Oh,” Ellesmere replied airily, “there are many causes. Anything from ulcers in the legs to worms. The majority of cases can be marked down to disappointment, but the most distressing occurrences can’t be followed to any cause.”

  “Can the sickness be passed down from sire to son? From father to daughter?” She looked away.

  “Certain hereditary insanities, yes,” he answered. “Those are particularly difficult to mend.”

  “What kind of lunacies do you treat at Wood’s Close?” Wyre asked.

  “All of the thousand mortal shocks flesh is heir to . . . disappointment, jealousy, inherited disorders, madnesses arising from injury.” He broke off, clearing his throat. “But let us not apply the chains of definition too tightly.”

  Beyond the ha-ha, a family of geese took fright at something unseen, one after the other scrabbling into the air, broad wings clapping furiously.

  “What about Robert’s . . .” She trailed off.

  “His sexual insanity? I assure you, Miss Crawford, our methods are forward-looking.”

  They
entered a grove of fine espaliers with whitewashed trunks. At the foot of each tree was a chafing-dish of burning sulphur for strangling caterpillars.

  Ellesmere held a branch out of Miss Crawford’s way. “Your fiancé’s illness is entirely a way of thinking. Most men in the early stages of his sickness can be taught restraint. Those, however, for whom sodomitical pleasures become habitual . . . Well, let us say it is for their own good we call them what they are. Madmen. Only then can they be given the treatment they deserve.”

  At the other end of the orchard, ravers sitting in a horseshoe were spooning coloured powders from metal buckets into cylindrical cases. Sky-rockets, it dawned on Wyre. One of the women, long hair hanging wildly down, skirts bustled up around her waist, was tearing out great fists of grass, which she appeared to be stuffing into herself.

  He touched Miss Crawford’s arm. “We should go. The coachman won’t wait much longer.”

  “Before you leave,” Ellesmere said quickly, “let me repeat, there’s much we can do for your fiancé.”

  “Do for him?” Wyre said incredulously. “Ladling powdered serpents into rocket heads for the rest of his days?”

  The physician gave him a pitying look. “I should have thought you, Mr Wyre, of all people, would welcome our efforts. We’ve cured the most shameful criminals. Men whom repeated sojourns in your cells have only hardened.”

  “The law exists to punish,” Wyre answered. “As for madness, perhaps God is of sound mind, but I’ve never met a man who was.”

  Miss Crawford straightened. “I’ve heard a good deal of cold theory. What I wish to know is whether Robert will ever come back to himself.”

  The physician wet his lips. “Some of my colleagues teach that the foundations of wrong desires are laid down in childhood. Only poets and philosophers would deny the complex legacies of our early days . . . yet I’m not one of those who say our destinies may not be changed. I once heard of a goat that lost its front legs: within a year it had learned to hop about on its hind legs. After it died, an anatomist discovered it had developed an S-shaped spine like a human, as well as other correlates of bipedal locomotion.”

  The dark woman looked at him. “How long might such an accommodation be expected to take in a case like Robert’s?”

  The doctor spread his arms, letting a professional smile answer for him.

  “I see you don’t like direct questions,” Wyre said.

  “There’s no such thing as a direct question. By the time it completes its passage from brain to tongue, it has ricocheted along so many obtuse angles its journey resembles that of an ivory ball around a billiard table.” Ellesmere turned to Miss Crawford again. “The Persians have a saying: with time and patience the leaf of the mulberry tree becomes satin. This house will be kind to your betrothed. You have my word.”

  She bowed her head. “I’ll consider your offer.”

  The physician regarded her for a moment. “It’s often said the fault of the soft sex is to shy from uncomfortable decisions. But be under no illusion. The alternative to treatment is to grant your fiancé the freedom to make a mockery of himself in theatres and fun cafés, a continual embarrassment to yourself, like a monkey that masturbates in public.”

  Wyre stared in disbelief. Leighton’s response would have been a straight punch to the nose. The moment passed.

  They journeyed back to town in virtual silence. Miss Crawford’s hand lay on the quarto of Donne the entire way. The jarvis let them out on the still bustling Strand, where they parted with a stiff handshake.

  37. Lines of Inquiry

  Wyre rose late. No time to eat the steaming eggs Mrs Mason had left for him on a tray at the foot of his bed. Washing quickly, he threw on his legal-blue jacket and scurried out.

  A queue had formed at the St Thomas’s Row news booth. The vendor’s hands shuttled back and forth like a weaving machine. Wyre took a wild stab – spiralling bread prices in Taunton? Fresh insurrections in Norwich? Perhaps Princess Amelia had finally succumbed to her mystery illness. He craned over the shoulders of the man in front of him, half-expecting to see black borders.

  To the side of the queue, a man in a rancid raincoat was raising his pulpit, shaking a copy of The Dispatch, raving about lakes of fire. A Southcottian – Wyre shook his head slowly – afraid of steam-engines, telegraphs and all the age’s improvements. A prime candidate for Wood’s Close.

  Wyre paid tuppence for The Chronicle. His face changed as he absorbed the news.

  A most extraordinary attempt was made late last night to assassinate the Duke of Cumberland. His Royal Highness dined on Wednesday at Greenwich, returned to Town in the evening, and went to an Opera Concert for the benefit of the Royal Society of Musicians. He returned home at about half past ten, and went to bed about eleven. Some time around twelve, lying in bed, he received two violent blows and cuts on his head. His first impression was that a bat had got into the room, and was beating about his head. He leapt up, when he received more blows. From the light glimmering, and the motion of the instrument of destruction reflected from a dull lamp in the fire-place, they were like flashes of lightning.

  He tried to escape, but the assassin followed him, cutting him across his thighs. His Royal Highness, the Duke, not being able to find his alarm-bell, which there is no doubt was cut, called several times for Neale, his valet, who came to his assistance and sounded the alarm. The Duke told Neale not to leave him, fearing there were assassins in the room. Shortly afterwards, he proceeded to the porter’s room, while Neale went to awaken Salis, another of the Duke’s valets. The door of Salis’s room was locked, and Neale called out, saying: “The Duke of Cumberland is murdered.” No answer being given, the door was broke open, and Salis was found dead in his bed, his throat cut from ear to ear.

  A razor was discovered in his room. It is supposed that Salis, conscious of his own guilt (for there appears no doubt he was the would-be assassin), imagined they were about to take him into custody. Fearing torture he cut his own throat. A pair of his silk slippers with his name in them, along with an extinguished dark lantern, were found in the closet adjoining the Duke’s chamber, where Salis had concealed himself until his Royal Highness fell asleep. The sword – found discarded at the door of the Duke’s bedroom – was a large military sabre, which the Duke lately had sharpened. The whole edge appeared hacked and blunted with the force of the blows.

  Salis had five different rooms to pass through from the Duke’s bedroom to his own. Traces of blood deposited on the left sides of two of the doors were found. When Salis’s coat was examined, the left sleeve was discovered to be thick with blood.

  We understand his Royal Highness received six distinct wounds. Mr Jackson, the surgeon, who was immediately sent for, arrived at one and pronounced none of them mortal. The Duke of York, who also resides in the Palace, visited his Royal brother first thing in the morning. A Coroner’s Inquest will be held on the body of Salis, led by Mr Read, Chief Magistrate at Bow Street. The inquest jury’s report is expected by the end of the week.

  The motives that drove Salis to make this atrocious attempt on his master’s life are almost impossible to develop. The Duke is recovering slowly.

  An attack on a royal, in the Palace itself – unthinkable! And the perpetrator, Salis . . . The occult name from Crispin Street had been Sellis, but he wouldn’t quibble. ‘Hold fast’, that phrase in Thomas’s sympathetic ink, rang like a baroque fugue. The mollying bastard hadn’t been consoling Sellis, he’d been egging on a co-conspirator who’d lost his nerve. A man who, if The Chronicle’s account could be trusted, appeared to have found it again, before ending himself with a razor. And what was this? Leighton’s Bow Street superior, the ‘old bird’ himself, had been appointed to head the inquiry into Sellis’s death. That was one in the eye for the Court of the Royal Verge. Wyre supposed unbiased scrutiny was paramount; the conspiracy mongers would have a field day, otherwise. All the same, it was quick work to have organized an inquiry already. Absurdly quick, some might
say. As for allotting the jury a single week to reach a verdict on violent death . . .

  Wyre turned into the lime avenue leading to the Courthouse. The trees cast dense, intricate shadows. A Duke attacked in his nightgown – that was treason, which went a long way to explaining why Sellis had slashed his own throat. He pictured the valet in his chamber, razor pressed to his neck, weighing windlasses in the public square against the blade’s sting. The choice, dreadful as it was, seemed clear enough. The executioner would start by cutting away Sellis’s yard and stones, burning them in a brazier before his eyes. After that, he’d drag things out, keeping his man conscious long after work with the jointing knife began.

  He’d take a razor to the jugular every time.

  The clerk stopped him in the foyer.

  “Quite an evening, Mr Wyre?”

  Wyre nodded curtly. He had no intention of swapping theories about Sellis.

  “Palace ain’t the only place of excitement, tho’. What, you ain’t heard?” He raised the stump of his arm. “Someone took a pot-shot at one of our backgammon men. Landlord o’ the White Swan, ol’ Cooky.”

  Wyre stared at him. James Cooke had been returned to the Courthouse cells, stupefied from a brickbat to the temple. Safe custody it was called, though evidently not safe enough. “Who shot at him? From the beginning, man!”

  “After you wen’ home last night, sir, Cooky started performing. Give Mr Kean ’imself a run fer his money. Suter sent two lads in t’ calm ’im down, but he kept ravin’ about a conspiracy. Insisted the King ’imself was in danger, that he’d speak to no-one but th’ Secretary o’ bleeding State. Didn’t trust none o’ the Courthouse fuckers. Beg pardon, sir, his words, not mine. Mr Brockton went down to talk to him, together with Mr Cavendish.”