by Baird Wells
At Hannah’s door, he barely paused to knock and slipped in.
She lay as he had left her, limp on the bed in the tangled black halo of her hair. “Any luck?”
“Margaret knows that I know. I’ve warned her off the laudanum. If she decides to make use of what I dropped…” It was nothing more sinister than a few teaspoons of Mrs. Fitzgerald’s baking soda. James wondered how long it would take Margaret to discover it wasn’t working.
Hannah nodded. “No effect. And if Margaret does out you to Simon, I think there’s more than one way to turn it to our advantage. All of this will buy us a little time until arrangements can be made.”
“I’ll spend the day out tomorrow, settling things and booking passage. I think the safest thing for you is to do just what you’re doing now. At best, hopefully no one will think much of you at all. If they do, your seeming an invalid might convince them there’s no need to act with haste.”
“By them you mean Simon?”
James raised his hands, helpless. “Margaret is already desperate. We’ve done what we can there. But yes, Simon. He may be more apt to set his traps slowly, if he thinks you can’t run.”
Hannah closed her eyes and let out a slow breath. “Two days. Just two more days.”
“At most.” A door thudded somewhere below and he realized he’d tarried too long. He crossed the room and pecked a kiss to her temple. “Tomorrow night; look for me then and we’ll fit the last pieces together.”
“I love you, whatever happens.”
“We escape this together; that’s what happens.” He gave her a last, long look from the doorway. “And I love you, too.”
.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
He was summoned the next evening by a note on the hall table, incarcerated at the last minute by an invitation to Simon’s that delayed his errands and his promise to see Hannah that night. James took his time dressing. There was a time when he would have rushed, sure of being free of Simon the sooner he arrived, but now he knew better. Simon finished when he finished, a hound who toyed with the hare as it pleased him before striking the killing blow.
He had the whole next day, James reminded himself, splashing off his hands in the basin, and not a great deal left to do. Traffic had agreed with his itinerary that afternoon, so that the ticket office, Lofton & Dooney’s, and a bank wire had fit together in an easy two hours. Tad had been at home, dressed to go out but held up by a missing purse that James silently counted as a good fortune. If anyone knew Simon well enough to help them dodge, to stall while remaining trustworthy, it was Tad. He’d expected his following meeting with Mister Hilton to be prolonged, filled by polite and nervous conversation that was the awkward cement of business arrangements. To his delight, Hilton was plain spoken and liked to get work out of the way to have more time for amusements. A note of collateral for a loan on the Meadowcroft house was still wet, and their tea still hot, when Hilton dealt their hand of cards.
The rest of his obligations could hold until the morning. Whatever Simon wanted or wanted to know, James was eager to give it to him; anything to keep the man playing along. He sent an excuse around to Hannah in bland language that would survive Margaret’s prying and half-lingered for a reply. When none came, he gave up and started for Simon’s.
By his watch, he still arrived early, and so was surprised to find more than one carriage already out front, waiting to move from the curb and into traffic. He didn’t have the patience for a dinner party; he was already constructing his excuse as he climbed down into the frosted evening air.
He passed off his hat to the Websters’ usually flat butler, who tonight was nearly concave in demeanor, barely reaching for James's gloves with timid hands. James took it as an omen, girded himself, and prepared for battle.
A shade hovered outside the drawing room door, unidentifiable in the dark hallway until he was nearly on top of it. Simon stood statue-like with one long hand on the knob, face a pond on a still day, and swung the door open for James without a word.
James appreciated now, when it was too late, that he should have withdrawn. Simon never waited in the hallway, had never done something out of the ordinary if it hurried their meeting or convenienced James. Every step forward felt like a mistake, but they were too far into the final act to turn back now. He squared his shoulders and went in.
He felt it in the room, before his eyes had communicated a single real fear to his mind. It was a tension, the same over-still, crackling pressure one felt minutes before a storm broke.
When his eyes found Hannah, it broke at last.
She slumped in the sofa’s middle, eyes red-rimmed when she glanced up at him, rumpled as though she’d been dragged from bed. Bruises, red and angry, on her jaw and arms made it plain that was exactly what had happened, and by someone much bigger than Margaret, who sat braced in a chair beside her, stiff with genuine-looking terror. Lord and Lady Lennox stood before the fireplace dressed all in black like onyx statues, arms crossed in a silent message that they came as enemies and offered no quarter. He felt the slip, the first skittering grains as his world began to crumble.
“Imagine my surprise, Doctor Grimshaw,” Simon drawled behind him, “when my relations the Lennoxes came into town last evening, and were very much acquainted with your name when it was mentioned at dinner.” Simon slapped his hands together as he passed by, startling Margaret. He took up a post opposite Hannah, and his face collapsed into a vicious scowl. “Imagine their surprise, at your having failed to mention it.” He cranked around slowly on one heel. “Yours and Lady Hannah’s.”
Hannah stared up at him, tears quick over her cheeks, eyes pleading, but for what he had no idea; to speak or to keep silent? James swallowed and stretched his head forward against a neck grown too short with tension.
“I knew you were an absolute devil, Grimshaw,” shot Lord Charlton, while Lady Harriette dabbed both eyes in turn with a lace hankie.
“You didn’t know shite!” James retorted, already weary of what was happening here, weary from all the years before it. Charlton stiffened and Harriette gasped. “You had not a damn thing to say crossways about me, until Emily asked me to marry.”
Charlton sputtered. “You! You put that notion in her head!”
“Oh, bollocks. You asked me there to reason her out of it! Don’t disrespect her memory by pretending now that Emily had no mind or sense of her own.”
Charlton lunged but Harriette gripped at his arms. James held his ground. “Is that why you’ve brought me here? Brought Hannah here? To torment us over Emily? Because neither of us owes any of you an explanation about why we kept our acquaintance private. It’s not exactly a happy one, if you bother to look closely.” He crossed his arms, rejecting all of them. “Punish me, if you must, but leave Hannah alone.”
“Her dead sister’s husband,” moaned Harriette, face pinched into disgusted lines. “It isn’t natural.”
“Isn’t natural to what? Be her physician?”
“It all makes perfect sense now. The hefty payments, all the visits and special attention?” Simon leaned in, menacing. “Please, doctor. Don’t insult us.”
“You will stay away from Hannah,” boomed Charlton, lunging forward a few strides at last and eclipsing a sniffling Harriette.
James matched him step for step. “The hell I will. We’re both free people who’ll do as we please.”
“No, you are not. You’re dismissed, Doctor Grimshaw,” said Simon. “Hannah has a new physician; the Webster family no longer has need of your services.”
James watched Hannah, who stared at her lap now. “Excellent. But Hannah and I have a relationship beyond the one you pay me for. Another doctor be damned.”
“Hannah is not well,” clucked Simon. “She murdered her husband, disregards her family, and has taken up with the husband of her dead sister. She disturbs the peace, acts without propriety, and keeps company with women who have fed her deviant tendencies. Hannah has become dangerous, impulsive, and hardly
to be trusted.”
“And not your concern.” James held out his hand. “Come Hannah, let’s go.”
“Murder?” Lady Harriette cried out and then tottered as though she’d born all she could and might crumple to the rug. She patted at her slight frame, and settled a wild gaze on her husband, answering James’s question regarding how they saw Simon’s treatment of Hannah.
Charlton swelled and turned on Simon, jowls flushed. “We paid outrageous sums to have that business done away with; in the papers, in society! You swore it wouldn’t be repeated.”
“I didn’t repeat it.” Simon was the personification of arrogance, so far above them that James absently wondered they could still hear him way down in the commons.
“If it’s any comfort,” James interjected, “Sir Simon has doled out as much or more tailing Hannah, spying on Hannah at all hours and in every place she goes; virtually imprisoning her in her home.”
Harriette moaned again, and anchored herself to the mantle with a trembling arm, until Charlton had the presence of mind to guide her to a chair. “She needs help, damn you Grimshaw!”
“Forgive me if I don’t leap to your aid. I’m preoccupied wondering if Hannah could have been so abused, had her family seen to her welfare. Your shock and fragility now was purchased with two years of neglect. There’s no medical treatment can aid you.” He reached for Hannah, folded deeper into the cushions. “We’re leaving.”
Lord Charlton’s meaty hand crushed down on Hannah’s shoulder. “Hannah is not free to go anywhere. She’s to be evaluated for the asylum by the Commissioners on Lunacy –” He spared an enraged glance at Simon, “However she got this way. She will agree to attend church regularly and reside at Bethlehem Hospital. Indefinitely.”
Bedlam: that’s what the hospital was commonly called, a single word which told a terrifying tale. Asylums were dirty and plagued, inhabitants sedated and restrained when meager staff became too overwhelmed to manage them. He had treated his fair share of patients inside the lunatic hospitals, though the facilities never referred to them as such. They were burdens and property all at once, a source of income that produced no motivation to find a cure and left the resident no rights with the courts unless the very body who’d put them there agreed to allow it. Simon would see his victory if Hannah were committed, but thankfully the process wasn’t an instant one. “You can’t simply take her there and dump her off,” said James, feeling a thin victory. It wasn’t so easy as returning a book to the lending library.
Simon raised his chin a fraction, determined to do most of the talking. “Hannah will remain confined to her house, under the constant attention of Miss Maddox, for however long the intake process requires.”
Margaret puckered at the information, but kept silent, while James despaired. There was only one conclusion with Margaret and Hannah locked in the same house together.
He looked to Hannah, who still slumped and now looked asleep. Not a word had passed her lips, and now by her eyes he guessed not a thought crossed her mind. He watched her list to one side, pitch forward and startle, and then close her eyes again. She was drugged; he should have known from the start. Not by Margaret’s hand, but someone much larger, judging by the broadness of fingerprint bruises on Hannah’s face and neck. If they left together now, he’d be carrying her, guaranteeing that they wouldn’t make the front hall before Simon, Charlton, or Simon’s thugs dragged them back.
Simon brushed his fingers toward the door. “You may go, Doctor Grimshaw. I’ve finished with you, and I believe the Lennoxes have, too.”
James didn’t miss the double-meaning stitched with condescension to Simon’s dismissal. “I’ll be back,” he vowed. He and Hannah had already planned to run; they would just have to make it sooner rather than later. He would be back, when she was alone with just Margaret, or when they took her from the house. He grabbed the doorknob and strangled it. He would be back.
“Oh, Doctor Grimshaw?” Simon’s cool drawl turned him back, and the man smiled with a wolf’s teeth. “I wouldn’t make a scene; I’ve asked an acquaintance from the Metropolitan Police to aid us in this matter. He will be on hand should Miss Maddox…require assistance.”
James opened and slammed the door like a guillotine, striding for the front hall while the nervous butler tried to press hat and gloves and coat onto him. He stomped out onto the step and panted into the night, getting his bearings. She was being punished, and so was he. Simon had uncovered at least part of their deception, and feeling cheated, without any of the proof he’d sought, he was making an example of each of them to the other. His first thought was to go home, somewhere quiet to make a plan, and then he considered Tad. He hesitated to trust Tad fully in the moment, and hesitated more at putting the man in a bad position with Simon, but James, sobered by Simon’s coup, realized he needed all the help he could muster.
It occurred, as he stalked back along Brook, that Hannah lived close. A flash of greater inspiration struck when he was forced to wait at the intersection to cross. Anyone who posed a real threat to his entering her house had just been left behind; Simon, Margaret, even the Lennoxes. He’d slipped into her house once before, and he was confident of being able to do it again.
He turned at an alley, made his way back up to the next crossing, and then ducked between the buildings to Upper Brooke. He reached the edge of the walk, curled his toes in his shoes and readied to dart across the narrow lane. Before he moved forward, something caught his eye; a line of silver eyes winked at him under the gaslight, at the foot of Hannah’s steps: a row of buttons. Squinting, he made out the dome of a bobby’s blue felt helmet. He drew a breath and held it, and crossed to the other side at a careless pace, veering left back down the road and away from the house and policeman.
Bastard. Simon had moved ahead and kinged him, but just for now. He would think of something. James threw glances down the street off his shoulder to be certain he hadn’t raised suspicion, and when he reached the next block, he ran in earnest for home.
* * *
Hannah groaned and rolled onto her back with the effort of all her limbs. She felt she’d slept for days, and yet wasn’t rested in the slightest. Her muscles trembled and her mind was agitated, though not over any one thing, not until she sat up and saw the barren landscape of her room. Fireplace tools and perfume bottles had been removed. Her wardrobe hung open, clothing removed. She remembered Mrs. Delford’s shouts at the door, the men’s voices on the stairs. Their hands had held her like manacles, and they’d pinched her nose until she swallowed gulp after choking gulp of some liquid. James loomed somewhere in her recollection, like a comforting shadow, but then he was gone. After that, there was only a long stretch of black space.
She managed from the bed by small twitches until her legs hung down and their inertia pulled her to the rug. She considered the door and then, deciding it was too obvious, tottered her way to the window. Her curtains hung in lacy swags, like always, but she pulled them back to reveal a dreadful truth: nails. Some of them bent and some with broad heads nicked and shiny, driven deep into the white wood, splintering it with their violent penetration. Both her windows were soundly nailed shut. A rectangular window high on the water closet wall gave the same answer, denying her the ability even to send a note out into the street or beg for help.
Her bedroom door closing sent a nervous tremor up her back, and though she was doing nothing more than looking at the wall, she felt certain whoever it was could read her thoughts. She pulled the toilet’s long chain in excuse, opening the door as if he were just finishing. She braced in the doorway and stared at Margaret, who gazed back calmly with a tea tray balanced in her hands. There were two cups and two saucers. Hannah took it as portentous sign, Margaret being at all domestic in that moment.
“You should sit down.” Margaret tipped her chin at the bed, and then settled herself, followed by her tray on the mattress’s edge. “We should talk.” Margaret reached into the deep pocket of her fine poplin house apron, p
roduced a small glass medicine bottle, and set it like a period atop the tray.
Hannah swallowed and grasped the doorframe at her back. She was too weak to fight and had nowhere to run.
.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
His last clear memory was clinging to the edge of the chair in his room and going over his scheme once more, certain of not sleeping. He’d been too nervous, too agitated with worry over Hannah.
Despite this, a pounding at his door snapped him awake before a rumpled and nervous Mrs. Fitzgerald appeared in his study. He squinted at her, and then toward the still-dark window.
“Two men at the door, and nearly midnight!” she muttered, grasping her shawl for protection. “Coarse types, but they’ve come with Sir Simon Webster’s card, doctor.”
Her news brought him from his chair and to the doorway in three strides. “I’ll see them; you go back upstairs. I won’t need your assistance.” He didn’t think they’d be the sort to step inside for tea.
Mrs. Fitzgerald had been spot on in her use of the term ‘coarse types’. One short and one tall, they both loitered on the step with hands stuffed in their dusty canvas trousers. They were layered in tweed jackets, waistcoats, and shirts that were worn but concerning by their perfect stiffness. Men like them were the authors of some of his most brutalized patients, the sort of men referred to as ‘hired muscle’. More worrisome than their sharp creases and bulging arms was that tonight, they had been hired for him. And for Hannah, he decided, looking at the build of the men and recalling her bruises.
“Gentlemen,” he offered, glancing between them while they both removed their hats with anything but respect, “are you looking for a doctor?”
“Just the one,” drawled the shorter man, rocking up onto his toes. “A Grimshaw, to be exact.”