Walls of Silence: a stunning historical thriller you won't be able to put down

by Ruth Wade

  ‘Nearly there now, Miss Potter. Soon have you in the warm and you can tuck yourself up in bed once more. You’ll feel right as rain once it’s worn off in the morning. I wouldn’t go trying to dig over your rose beds though; I reckon your tummy might be complaining a mite if you do. Take my advice and have yourself a pot or two of sweet tea before you go doing anything more than getting washed and dressed.’

  They were standing on the path outside her cottage at last. She raised a ghostly white finger and wagged it at him.

  ‘No kisses goodnight. Father will be watching at the window and won’t like it. He’s very much against me having man-friends. He wouldn’t have been so beastly to Edward if he wasn’t. And if he doesn’t consider someone with breeding and education good enough for me then he certainly wouldn’t approve of a common little public servant with his brains up his arse.’

  In the time it took Edith Potter to turn away from him and push open the gate, Paul no longer saw a confused and disorientated villager needing his care and protection but only a spiteful and crazy woman who drank too much and cared too little.

  For her part, as she stepped over the threshold and felt the pain receding into the hollows of her body where it had rested for so long, Edith Potter became more convinced than ever that she drank too little and cared too much.

  In the end, it was only a matter of temperament.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Old Sophie accompanied Paul down through the village. He’d made it his business to be knocking on her caravan door at sun-up to ask if she had a potion for overindulgence ready made up. It being the Christian charitable thing to do, especially on a Sunday. He’d not thought it kind to be seeking out Ern Treadwell at such an hour and asking for the loan of a tin of liver salts and having the reason for the urgency gossiped around the village – particularly if it was thought to be on account of Mrs Billings’ plum duff. The Gypsy had heard him out then insisted on tramping into the copse to pick herbs she said would help beyond the first shock of getting reacquainted with the world. Privately, Paul thought it would take more greenery than there was in an undertaker’s wreath to be getting anywhere near curing what was at the root of Edith Potter’s ills; if she was drinking far too much than was good for her then she had a deeper reason for it than wanting to loosen her grip on the present. But the Gypsy had been drawing up every September since he’d been in Fletching – and nigh on twenty years before that – and was said to be able to work miracles; he could name dozens of others he wouldn’t be trusting as much.

  They were halfway down Church End when he heard it. Squawks accompanied by splashing and flapping and a series of reverberating cries that didn’t sound like anything he could put a name to. Old Sophie started her flesh wobbling in a run at the exact moment Paul set his boots pounding on the chalk. Even as he whipped off his helmet to give his head room to breathe he thought what an odd sight the two of them must be making to those twitching their curtains to see what it was curdling their breakfast milk. He reached the green just as his lungs were telling him he needed to be getting his weight down if he was to be attempting the hundred yards’ dash any more often.

  Beside the Moat Pond two mallards were lying on their backs with their necks severed, their blood turning the grass a slippery magenta; another was hobbling in anguished circles, one wing clearly broken and the other a tangled pile of matted feathers floating on the water. From over by the church, skin-tingling sounds of agony came nearer and nearer until one of Wilf Drayton’s geese bolted out of the bushes honking in one long cry of distress, a slash of red from beak to breast. Close behind was Edith Potter swinging a woodcutter’s axe and howling like a dog with its leg caught in a gin-trap.

  Old Sophie grabbed the wounded duck and moved her practised hands to wring its neck as Paul threw himself at the goose and tried to prevent it from flapping its way towards the houses. All the while, Edith Potter ran in circles, her lust for mayhem seemingly not yet having had its fill.

  The axe was high above her head and beginning its descent when Old Sophie stepped into her path. The chapter headings of the police manual flashed through Paul’s brain: there wasn’t one came anywhere near close covering this eventuality. All he knew was he had to keep calm and not make matters worse; Old Sophie had long years horse-breaking and would do whatever it was came naturally.

  ‘You have no need of that now. Give it to me. The work is done.’

  Paul prepared himself to see the edge of the blade disappear into the Gypsy’s ample flesh. But it didn’t happen. Something in what was left of Edith Potter’s senses seemed to become aware it wasn’t poultry standing in front of her and her body gave the sort of shudder you see when a to-be-slaughtered beast is stunned, then she dropped to her knees. The yowling she was making turned into the squealing of a hound-cornered leveret.

  PC Billings walked over and gently released her grip on the axe as Old Sophie knelt beside the frightened woman, gathered her into her arms, and hugged her close.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The warm water in the tin bath swirled around her and the sensation was so pleasant that Edith didn’t even object to having strange hands lathering her hair with soap. It was cosy in the bedroom with the fire lit and the curtains drawn, and it reminded her of being ill and having to stay in bed with soup and maybe a boiled egg and toast soldiers. Then, if she was lucky her father would come up and read to her ... but of course that was stupid. The great Dr Gerald Potter would never have done that, she must have imagined it.

  The water from her wet hair dribbled down her back and made her spine feel tingly. She hadn’t liked it the way the gyppo had made her drink that vile-tasting stuff. She’d said she didn’t want any more but she’d been made to finish the lot – she’d had her nose held – and then she was so sick that she thought her stomach would come up as well. But she didn’t mind so much. She could feel that the filthy-dressed creature meant well, and anyway, Edith felt sorry for her.

  That was enough now, she wanted to come out.

  Give me the towel.

  Why didn’t the fat cow do as she was asked? It’s very rude to ignore someone.

  I’m cold and I want to get out; pass me the towel please.

  There, she’d been polite this time; maybe that was it, maybe like Granny she was going to pretend she hadn’t heard until she’d said the magic word. Funny how she should think of that after all this time. She’d never liked Granny. She’d a face that sunk in on itself and one leg too short made her walk with a stick. And she smelt. What was it she sometimes used to call her? Not Edith, she used another name that always sounded strange when it came out of her squashed face. She always felt like she was someone else with Granny.

  Edith shivered. There were other things dripping from her memory like the water off her skin. Granny would tuck her in every night and rap her over the knuckles with her cane if she put her hands under the bedclothes. Said it was unhygienic. But her hands got cold in the winter and sometimes she wouldn’t even know they’d snuggled under the blankets and were nestling in the clammy warmth. But Granny would always know and she’d come in and make her get up and walk around the bed – even if Edith was so tired she was still sleeping – and shout things at her. Sometimes she would have to keep it up until her legs crumpled, and the witch would make her get up and back into bed and tell her that if she transgressed again she would die in the night but without the love of Jesus. She hadn’t cared about that, you could keep love, it wasn’t anything very special anyway; what she’d wanted was sleep.

  ‘Have you not had enough yet? You are shivering and it is not good for you to get cold after what I gave you.’

  Are you completely stupid? I asked to come out ages ago.

  ‘I put a towel to warm in front of the stove in the kitchen; I will only be a moment.’

  Get a move on then or I’ll be frozen.

  ‘Stay in the water until I get back. I will be quick. It will not help you to feel your blood has turned to ice.�
��

  She can’t hear me, that’s the problem. Deaf as well as daft. But she can hear the man downstairs. I heard her talking to him. Granny never spoke to Father. I know because I was outside the door when she was ill and he was telling the doctor. He said that she had never forgiven him for what he did and that I’d grow up to hate him too.

  What was it that dirty gyppo gave me? It’s like I am dreaming stories I knew before ... or maybe it’s the water flushing them out. If she doesn’t come back soon then I’m getting out anyway, I don’t care if I catch pneumonia.

  ‘There you are. Just stand up now and I will wrap it around you.’

  Edith did as she was asked and was swaddled up tight.

  ‘Can’t you speak, or have you no reason to? Silence can in itself be healing but only if it is from choice. But I’ll make no demands on you to satisfy my need to know. I will keep talking and you can nod if you want something or shake your head if you don’t. There’s no need to tire yourself; I will see the smallest movement.’

  Edith started to cry.

  *

  The parlour was crowded with the three of them in there. PC Billings had stoked up the fire until it was in danger of setting off a chimney blaze.

  He sat and watched as the Gypsy handed Edith a cup of tea. The poor woman clutched the edge of the saucer as if she didn’t know what it was for but didn’t want to be dropping it anyway. She looked all shrivelled inside her clothes and he reckoned that Old Sophie had been a mite thoughtless to be dressing her in dark wool; it made her look even more like she should be inside a coffin than she had before. Happen she had caught a sight of herself reflected and it was that which was distressing her so. He put his own cup on the floor beside him and gripped his hands between his knees.

  ‘You’ve ... been ... ill.’

  ‘She is choosing not to speak, she can hear well enough and will not do so any better just because you shout. Her mind is not her own at present; talk to her slowly as you would to a child in a fever and she will come back to us in time.’

  ‘I’m away to be fetching the doctor but first I have to know if you were doing anything else with that axe before we found you.’

  Old Sophie reached out, took Edith’s cup and saucer away, and then began to rub her hands in hers.

  Paul could hear sandpaper rasping. ‘I’m not saying as you’ve done anything wrong – I don’t blame you going after them geese after what they’ve put you through, what with the sleepless nights and the state of your garden – but I have to be ready if someone comes knocking on the Police House door full of tales of chopped down trees or broken windows. I’ll be knowing right enough which of them will be trying to lay the blame elsewhere for things they done themselves but a policeman has to have the full facts of the matter before he goes accusing.’

  Edith Potter’s eyes remained focused on the far wall and her breathing continued shallow and fast.

  Old Sophie turned her head to him. ‘Such questions will keep for a later time. For now, I need to understand what it was that happened in the moment before she felt driven to put her anger outside herself. When the doctor comes he will give her something to make it impossible for her to remember and, if I am to help her, I must do it now.’

  She continued rubbing Edith’s hands while the fire spat and a yellowy spout of smoke curled out from one of the lumps of burning coal. Then she slid off her chair and knelt on the floor. Paul shivered with embarrassment at the thought that she might start praying.

  ‘Tell me what it is that caused you to hurt so deeply. You must give it a voice or it will destroy you.’

  Paul heard the chair legs scrape a blink before he saw Edith Potter pitch forward and fall onto the Gypsy’s lap. Then Edith’s whole body started twitching as if a bolt of lightning had shot through her. Her lips stretched back over her teeth and her mouth spewed foam. He leapt up and helped Old Sophie lay the stricken woman flat and loosen the neck of her dress. Her heels were thrumming on the floorboards.

  ‘There’s a telephone at the vicarage. I’ll be telling the doctor it’s an emergency.’

  ‘He could fly here on wings and he would be able to do no good for her now. She has faced her truth and wants no more of it. Her moment of pain is over. She will feel no more.’

  Paul wasn’t so sure. With the conviction that every second wasted would be one too many, he ran out of the cottage faster than if it’d been his own life at stake.

  PART II

  LEWES

  JANUARY 1927

  [The psychologist] is concerned with the experiences which make up the life-history of the individual mind.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Lewes County Lunatic Asylum was visible for miles around with its high walls enclosing a thicket of evergreen trees like a hilltop cemetery; the only building with greater prominence in the Ouse Valley being the prison straddling the chalk escarpment: the town planners had known precisely what they were doing.

  Dr Stephen Maynard tossed his briefcase from one hand to the other and stretched out his blood-starved fingers. His breath huffed out in dragon puffs and he hunched down further into his scarf to keep the gobs of icy rain from chilling his neck. Winter had come heavily and viciously this year.

  When he reached the large iron gate he tugged on the chain above the grimy plaque that had visitors engraved on it. There was the creak of rust breaking its hold as the bell began to swing stiffly and clang out into the quiet morning.

  These sorts of days always made him despondent. When the sun was shining it was so much easier to face the thought of spending an hour or two locked away from the world because there would always be something life-affirming to come out to – birdsong; the smell of the soil baking in the heat; roadside verges laced with cow parsley; the bright confusion of poppy-studded cornfields. The institutions he visited were usually surrounded by the most calming scenery imaginable and he considered it such a shame those deemed to be too mad to let loose in society were denied the simple and soothing hand of nature.

  He curled his frozen toes inside his shoes. The long trudge from the station had set his muscles tingling and produced enough of a light sweat to stick his shirt to his back but his internal warmth was evaporating rapidly in the biting wind. Although he undoubtedly looked like a drowned rat, he was sure he would create the impression he desired – professional, authoritative, gifted. Four years ago, on the back of his work with the shell-shocked, he had secured a position at London’s Maudsley Hospital in the clinic for the treatment and study of insanity; however, with his fortieth birthday rapidly approaching time was running out for him to achieve his ambition of being the youngest in his field to be awarded a professorship. His trip to this godforsaken place was part of his attempt to speed the process a little: he was intent on finding a cure for the rare but intensely disabling condition of catatonia.

  Someone was coming at last. The man was so bundled up in coats and scarves and a blanket over his shoulders that it was impossible to tell whether he was an attendant or inmate. No matter. Stephen was prepared to be escorted through the grounds by an axe murderer if it got him into the warm and dry. Despite the weather and the dull ache in his feet, the journey through the grounds was not unpleasant; a double row of cypresses beside the path, lawns and flowerbeds, and a small formal garden with sundial and birdbath. Even in the driving rain it held a promise of better days. It cheered him up a bit.

  But once in the entrance hall of the main building, his optimism vanished. It was much more depressingly bleak than he had imagined. Paint and plaster were peeling off everywhere and no effort had been made to make the place any less repressively institutional than the Bedlam he’d learned about in the early days of his studies. He was only grateful that his first visit was likely to be a short one. His clinic having been notified by the asylum trustees that they had a case of catatonia, all he had to do was ascertain that the patient was still in their care and that she was suitable for his study.

  He was relieved of his s
odden outer garments and shown into a small and untidy office just down the corridor from the entrance hall. The nameplate on the door read Dr Victor Johns. Stephen sat on the grubby and battered armchair beside the enormous radiator and watched his turn-ups begin to steam.

  After a few minutes, a man in a white coat with a grey moustache and a vacant air stumbled into the room. Stephen introduced himself before embarking on his customary introductory speech.

  ‘... and your co-operation would help us greatly with our knowledge of this condition.’

  A thought flicked across Stephen’s mind that he hadn’t checked that this man was, in fact, the Institute Director at all. He could do without discovering he was explaining all this to one of the patients. But of course he had to be; only someone with the weight of this place firmly on his shoulders could look so haggard.

  ‘And what exactly is it you want with her?’ Dr Johns rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. ‘This is a lunatic asylum, not a teaching hospital.’

  Stephen smiled with a mixture of sympathy and understanding. He’d met many doctors like the one in front of him, some more dedicated than others but all overworked and unappreciated. He wouldn’t wish his job on anyone.

  ‘My requirements are simply to spend some time with her; to sit and observe and maybe undertake a few routine clinical tests.’

  Dr Johns was still looking as though it would all be more trouble than it was worth. But Stephen couldn’t do anything without his permission.

  ‘Why should you? What’s she to you?’

  ‘In, and of, herself nothing. But deeply catatonic patients don’t come along very often and it would make all the difference to my work if you would give me the opportunity to study her ...’ he slid the asylum director a sideways glance ‘... and there might be something in it for you as well.’