After Alice Fell: A Novel

by Kim Taylor Blakemore

  Della starts crying; the other two women return to the pans. They are afraid of Miss Clough. I feel it in the shiver of air, the split second of hesitation before they pick up their rags.

  The woman who’s accosted me—Della, number 4587—blinks and snaps her fingers against her thigh. Her cheeks blotch with red, and the freckles darken.

  Miss Clough reaches out and grips the woman’s hand. “Don’t bring attention, Della. Never bring attention.” She squeezes tight until the snapping stops, and then lets go and smiles. She watches me, aims her voice to them.

  “This is Alice’s sister. She wants to know about Alice. You’ll all stay quiet for me, won’t you?”

  Her skirts make a sharp shirring noise as she turns to the doorway. “We have very little time. Follow.”

  We hurry through a worker’s hallway of whitewashed brick and high-set windows. The sweet smell of baked bread and the acrid smell of the vinegar used on the floors mix and bite.

  The hallway widens, trolley carts line the walls. Wide fabric straps and braces hang from hooks. We step into a room of white tile and black grout.

  Like the room where Alice lay on her bed of ice.

  But it’s not that room. It’s large and square with bathtubs and spigots and rolled hoses that clamp to the walls. Seeping lines of rust stain the tiles below the spigots. Four wheeled bins stand in a row, a flat shovel leaning to each.

  It is so white. Tile. Tubs. Floor. Ceiling. The globes encasing the gaslight. Towels rolled and stacked to painted shelves. Cotton gowns along pegs, as if their owners had just shrugged them off, just stepped to a bath. All of it save the spigots piercing through the wall. Save the smooth-handled shovels leaning against a wheeled cart. Save that corroding rust. The common bath, I think, except it is knife-edge cold; most baths retain the steam, the cloy of warm water and soap and scrubbed bodies. There is none of that here.

  I reach for a strap, roll it to my wrist, flinch at the bruise it would make if pulled tight.

  “They bring the women in from there.” Miss Clough points to the thick metal door. The paint has been scraped where the long handle arcs, exposing the black iron beneath. “Then it’s a wash and an ice.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s necessary, sometimes.” Miss Clough’s starched apron scrapes against her skirts as she passes me, stops at the metal, leans her ear to it. She glances back at me. “I don’t believe in it, not as much as the doctors use it.”

  She blows out a breath before listening again at the door. “Bring in a harridan and she’ll leave a saint. At least temporarily. Sometimes for good. I’ve seen it work, bring some ease.”

  “My sister?”

  “Yes.” She pushes open the door and waves me to follow. “Sometimes.”

  “Beatrice Beecham?”

  She chucks her head and clicks her tongue. “Yes.”

  Her apron saws and shifts, echoing in the narrow hall as we sprint to a stairwell at the far end. She lifts her skirts with one hand, the fingers of her other running along the twisted iron banister. We climb two flights. She stops only long enough at the next floor’s landing to peer over the railing before proceeding up the next flight of stairs. At the top, the only light comes from a bare pipe and a single blue-white flame.

  “There’s only two ways in here. Up these stairs or through from the main landing. And only one way to the roof.” I follow her gesture. “One flight up.”

  My heart thuds and then jitters and knocks.

  Miss Clough fingers the keys on her waist, frowns, and stares at each. She opens her mouth, then closes it and gives a shake of her head. “I was surprised she was transferred here. It doesn’t happen often. Most never leave this floor.”

  She makes quick work of lighting an oil lamp stored in an inset on the wall. She takes it up by the handle. Her eyes flick back and forth as she stares at me. Then with a shrug, she turns away to slide a key to the lock. Three keys to three locks.

  Miss Clough looks at me over her shoulder, puts her finger to her lips, then pushes the door open.

  Here there are no benches. No long window at the end of the way. No women sewing. Closed doors, each with a narrow hatch to deliver food or a glance. Paper cards slipped in brass holders just below the hatch’s shelf.

  Caroline Merritt 3768

  Dorothea Ott 3624

  Elizabeth Atkins 4669

  Another name. Another number. They are behind the doors. They listen. There’s a tapping sound to my right. A chatter of teeth and whimper from the left. We pass two rooms, empty but for green glazed walls and single cots. The window is painted white. There is no ceiling lamp nor bedside table. The meager hall light casts most of the room in shadow.

  Miss Clough touches my elbow. She tips her head toward another open door and holds the lamp up.

  “Her room?” I whisper.

  She nods and keeps the lantern high. Her hand shakes. The flame quivers and flares.

  I am afraid of her. Miss Clough with her starched skirt holds the lantern to the last doorway they will pass through.

  If I take a step under the lintel, will the door slam on me too? I laugh, try to dislodge the thought, but my mouth fills with bile.

  She seems to know. Waits with that shuddering lamp. And perhaps out of kindness—or clever in the way one lures a cat—she walks in first.

  This is Alice’s final room. A floor of oak and walls that stink of bleach and new paint. A metal cot, leather straps neatly buckled across the striped mattress. A pillow bare of covering, discolored along the bottom edge from drool and saliva. The detritus of fevers and deep dreams. The pipe for the gaslight, now idle, caged in a tight weave of iron. An iron plate over the lock on the door. Impossible to pick.

  “You see?” She touches the plate, then arcs her lamp, and the glaze of umber light catches on the armrests of the room’s singular chair. Here, too, are leather straps. And here, too, are footrests and bindings. And at head level, a box swung open now on its hinges. A round hole for the neck. A cabinet lock and bolt at the temple. Just like the drawing.

  I stumble back. “What is this?”

  “It reduces the mania.”

  “She’s afraid of the dark.” I round on her. “This is what you do?” My voice is pebbles and spit. I grab for her, but she flinches away. Her mouth opens and shuts like a fish.

  She waves her hand to quiet me. Because I’m moaning, loud and low, and she wants it to stop. I press my palms flat to my face, push hard against my cheekbones. My knees buckle. “How could you do this? The dark—”

  “I gave her a lamp.” She stands beside me, setting the lamp to the small side table, so it lights the cot’s frame. White paint scratched down to the rust and metal. “I care for these women. I listen to these women.”

  “But she’s still dead.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “So you didn’t listen to her.”

  “She was much troubled. She said—”

  “She never spoke.”

  “But she did. In her way.”

  “No. Not since . . .” My stomach twists as I look at the woman. “I don’t believe you.”

  “She sang sometimes. Nothing that made any sense—but it was sweet. And it was how she signaled to Kitty.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “To say it was safe. They were close. Sometimes it was a warning.”

  “Where are the complaints she made? About her treatment? About the other woman?” I dig my fingers into my palm. “There are records.”

  “They’ll be long gone. Or changed. Dr. Mayhew will have seen to that.”

  “But you could make a statement. To the police.”

  “You signed the death certificate,” she says. “An accident. That clears him and this facility of all liability. Everything else will have been dropped down the incinerator.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “I have no reason to lie.” She grabs my arm. “Kitty has notebooks. She used to keep them fo
r Alice, smuggled them in and out. Before she was transferred up here, Alice made her promise to give them to you. That you’d know what to do.”

  “There are other notebooks?”

  “We have little time.” She steps close to me. “The night she died, there was a situation on the second floor. I went down, as we are to do when needed. I locked the ward door. I never forget to lock that door.”

  “Are you the only one with the keys?”

  She shakes her head. “The night watch. The doctors. Even Kitty has a set to borrow when she needs them.” Her eyes are glass marbles in the sallow light.

  “You don’t think Kitty—”

  “When I came up again—and it couldn’t be more than a few minutes, whatever had happened had passed by the time I got there—when I came up, her door was open.” She jerks a finger. “And the entrance. And the access to the roof.”

  I stare down the hall. The door is shut. There’s nothing to see.

  “But by the time I’d made it to the roof, it was too late. She’d gone over the edge.”

  “Or someone pushed her.”

  “What did she know that she shouldn’t?” She peers out, then takes my arm and moves us away from the door.

  “Besides Beatrice? Besides the horror of that box?”

  “Dr. Mayhew believes in his treatments. His writings on them are well regarded.”

  “But they don’t work.”

  “Many times they do.”

  My teeth rattle; I am cold everywhere, my fingers numbing as if held to snow. “My God, I don’t know.”

  “Shh.” Miss Clough puts her hand to my mouth. There’s a clang and clink of entry locks ricocheting like loose shot. It’s answered by a muted pound from the inside of one of the cells. “The night watch—”

  Out the door. Down the hall. Ignore the sighs and chitters that seep from the cells. Miss Clough turns down the lamp flame and sets it back to its spot on the landing. She takes the keys to the locks, checks them again.

  We leave through the same back passage. There’s a thump of a door closing directly below us. She stops, snatching my wrist to keep me from descending, and then leans over the railing to peer in the shaft.

  “Harriet?” A woman’s voice carries up to us, sliding along the railing.

  “Mrs. Brighton.”

  The second-floor matron. I push myself farther against the wall and hold my breath.

  “You’re here late.”

  “As are you,” Miss Clough answers.

  “One last pass. Check the locks.”

  “We think the same.”

  “Mm.” Mrs. Brighton follows with that little cough. “Shall we go down together?”

  Miss Clough hasn’t moved. She remains a statue bent over the railing, knuckles whiter and whiter as she grips the wood. “I’m just heading up.”

  “But I thought—”

  “Good night, Mrs. Brighton.”

  “Don’t miss psalms.”

  “I would never.”

  “All right.”

  “Yes, all right.” She shifts a heel. Leans farther.

  Mrs. Brighton’s footsteps echo as she takes the stairs down. There’s a waft of air from another door opening, then closing. Then our own breaths released.

  Harriet Clough’s words run in circles. They hang in the air and chase around me as we return to the kitchens and the sweet smell of bread. Stoakes waits by the tunnel door. Kitty jumps from her perch on the long table.

  “Where are the other notebooks?” I ask her.

  Kitty’s face blanches. She stares at Miss Clough, then at me. “I don’t have them.”

  “What did you do with them?”

  “They were taken.”

  “Who took them? Kitty, who took them?”

  Her hand trembles as she reaches to touch her throat. Her breath comes fast and ragged.

  “Mrs. Abbott,” Stoakes says. “We need to go.” He pulls me to the tunnel. I reach for his arm to slow him.

  “Wait.” I look back to Miss Clough. Her form is flat like a shadow puppet, lit from behind by the kitchen light. “We need the police.”

  “No.” Her voice is sharp like nails. “Dr. Mayhew is too . . . You haven’t been here, Mrs. Abbott. I hope you have another story for your night.”

  Something catches her attention; she turns away, leaving Kitty alone in the room.

  “Kitty. Please. Who took them?”

  Her wheeze echoes along the tunnel. “Mr. Snow.” She slams the door shut.

  I can’t move. Mr. Stoakes’s voice rumbles from the tunnel walk, and he drags me the rest of the way.

  Mr. Snow. My brother.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Hargreaveses’ Morgan horse is jittery, not sure of me, second-guessing his own steps down the road. Even with the two lamps Stoakes has lit and hooked to the buggy, I can’t see farther than the gelding’s ears.

  Fireflies peek and skim amongst the trees. Silent and bright, then snuffed out in darkness. The horse blows a breath, shakes his head. His skin quivers from withers to flank. The crickets and cicadas make him leery, make him fold his ears to his head and push through the night.

  Lionel took the notebooks. He lied. How many times had he told me Alice refused to see him? A lie. Are they locked in his cabinet drawers with the one he missed? Now he has the set.

  He has her complaints, kindly returned by the constable who has ignored mine.

  He didn’t want her released. She knew something. And she knew I’d believe her.

  It’s there, the answer; I can feel it tapping at the back of my head.

  The buggy lifts and drops hard in a rut. I loosen the reins, let the horse take his head. He stumbles, then catches himself up on his haunches, pulling the buggy forward in a rush. I plant my feet to the boards.

  “Shh. There’s nothing there.”

  But he tears a rein from my hand, the leather slicing through my thin glove. He’s got the bit now and yanks the other rein free. I lean forward to grapple for them before they get tangled in the traces and around his legs.

  Something spooks him; he jumps, and the force of movement throws me back to the seat. A lamp swings out and cracks against the beam. The candlelight snuffs out. It’s all I can do to hold on, my grip to the reins no good against the wild sway, the wheels in the air, then slamming to the roadway. A spit of foam from the horse’s mouth splatters on my cheek. Tree limbs brush the buggy top, scratch across the soft roof.

  There’s a keening crack of wood. Something slamming my back. I’m like a doll, tossed to the road, my skirts caught in the churn of the wheel, and I can’t pull free. Dirt and stone fly and cut and I twist around, legs splayed behind and shoulder digging a trough in the earth.

  I hear myself shout; hear the screech of the carriage as it drags. Hear the hard beat of the gelding’s hooves. Then a burst of silver light and pain in my skull. And nothing.

  Heavy breath. Warm and hay sweet. A tickle on my cheek. I turn my head. Wince at the movement, at the dizziness and the whirl of the moon and the trees and the horse. His chest heaves. He paws by my ribcage. Presses his muzzle to my arm and I gasp and almost pass out at the pain. I clamp my teeth against it, suck in air and force it out. I try to move my fingers. It’s enough. I roll my head to look at the abnormal bend to my forearm, the broken bones pushing and stretching the skin and bulging from the ripped fabric of the sleeve.

  My breathing shallows. I stare at the horse, match my heaves with his.

  Think.

  The fireflies are impossibly bright. Thousands of them. I squeeze my eyes against their glare.

  Another touch to my shoulder, gentle.

  “I’ve crashed the buggy,” I say, then look up at green eyes and red hair always in need of a cut. Alice nods and touches my cheek.

  “I’ve broken my arm.” I twist then and vomit. Spit and vomit again. I roll back slowly, cradling my forearm with my good hand. “You wouldn’t have any chloroform, would you?”

  She kneels down an
d runs her hands along my limbs. Every place she touches warms and then ices. I want to ask her . . . something. Tell her to check the horse. Ask her . . . something.

  Wood-planked room, like a stall. Straw pallet. Up above, thick oak beams. Spider webs swing in lazy circles. Another pair of hands, these heavy on my shoulders, a calloused stroke on my neck.

  “Mr. Stoakes.”

  “Mrs. Abbott.”

  There’s another man to my left in a loose linen coat. His hair is very black and his mustache is too short on the left side. He scratches his arm and then bends down to me. His fingernails are cut to the quick, and the skin red, raw moons. “I’m going to set your arm.”

  “No. No.”

  Mr. Stoakes looks at him and nods once. He rummages on the floor, then brings a rag to my nose and mouth. “Breathe in.”

  It’s all gray now, no edges. Someone’s voice is insistent, a bark and babble. A woman in calico behind the man in linen. The words are blue and slide past me. Fall like glass to the floor. Scatter like beads and beetles.

  Then a horrible grating pain.

  Mr. Stoakes sets a brandy on a table beside my bed. A bed now, not a cot. A white plastered room and not a stall. It’s my second drink, and the voices coming from the other room are rounded and soft like butter. Stoakes tamps his pipe and lights it. He sits forward and helps me take a sip of the drink.

  I shouldn’t be here, wherever here is. It’s not proper to sit alone in a bedroom with a man I don’t know. To drink a second brandy and let him wipe the dribble from my chin. I’ve been undressed, down to my chemise, some other woman’s robe slung over my shoulders for modesty. My skirt is still intact, though ripped to shreds where it caught in the wheel.

  My arm is in a sling, tied with wood splints; my fingers are purple and remind me of early spring eggplants. The whole of it throbs and aches.

  “The bandages need loosening. If they’re too tight, then gangrene will set in.” I blink and wait for him to answer, but perhaps the words never left my lips, because he’s puffing his pipe and glancing at the outer door.

  I lick my lips. Wince as my tongue catches on a stitch, pulls the skin.

  “Where—” My voice is like crushed stone. I swallow and swallow. “Where am I?” But I think I’ve asked this before, because his eyebrows lift before he answers.