The Silent Companions

by Laura Purcell

  Dr Shepherd coughed – not a real cough, but a modest clearing of the throat. A harbinger. It was coming now: his theory.

  ‘One thing is clear to me from your writing, Mrs Bainbridge. You have a tendency to repress unpleasant emotions. It is your defence, your strategy to cope. The – incidents – with your father, for instance. Then episodes missing from the story. Elsie – that is to say, the Elsie on these pages – passes out on several occasions. I cannot help but feel each one represents a chunk of the past you refuse to remember.’

  Down the corridor, a bell rang.

  ‘Let us consider, for a moment, that you are actively submerging your harmful memories. Your anger at your parents, the guilt you feel for their deaths – whether qualified or not, I cannot say at this stage. All those dark emotions must go somewhere. I have read of them turning upon the patient’s body and making them unwell. But there are also cases where they splinter off, so to speak, into what we can only call a double consciousness.

  ‘Would you consider a possibility for me, Mrs Bainbridge? No doubt it will prove alarming, but I want you to open yourself up to the possibility that Sarah Bainbridge did not exist at all. That she was, in fact, an aspect of yourself.’

  She grabbed the pencil, tried to keep her hand steady. People saw her. They spoke to her.

  ‘So you believe.’ His voice was soft, but not kind. Insinuating, tickling inside her ears. ‘But we cannot verify it. The cast of your story are gone. The only people who could attest to the existence of Sarah Bainbridge now lie dead and buried.’

  Mr Underwood.

  ‘Ah.’ He crossed his legs. ‘I am sorry to say Mr Underwood also perished.’

  Her fingers moved but all she felt were the vibrations of the pencil. How?

  ‘By fire. It seems that when the rescue party arrived from Fayford, Mr Underwood sent some villagers to Torbury St Jude for help. But he did not wait for their return. Witnesses say he spoke of other people, trapped inside the building. That does tally with your story – he would not know about the deaths of Mr Livingstone or Mrs Holt, he would imagine them still inside. He ran into The Bridge to try and rescue them, but alas . . . Poor man.’

  Jasper?

  A relieved smile broke on his face. ‘At least there, I have some good news. The little fellow did not leave you with your injuries. He fairly guarded you. By daybreak, our people had arrived in response to Mr Livingstone’s telegram. Given your condition, the police were willing to let us take you to our infirmary, and the little cat tried to follow you. One of the orderlies took pity on him, brought him back here. He has been living with our chief superintendent ever since. I’ve seen him. Very fat, he looks, and very happy too.’

  Nine, she wrote.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  Nine lives.

  ‘Ah! Yes, quite.’ Dr Shepherd uncrossed his legs and leant forward to rest his hands on the desk. He had short, even nails. Blond hairs grew on his knuckles. Beside him, her own burnt hand looked like a monster’s paw. ‘Fortunately, we do not have nine lives to account for. Only two. Mr Livingstone and Mrs Holt.’

  At last, his eyes tangled with hers.

  ‘Mrs Bainbridge, I do not believe that you killed them. I never did. And while I cannot believe all aspects of your story either, I do believe your love for Mr Livingstone. You would not hurt him. It seems to me the fire was an accident, as so many fires are. It consumed the lives of two, and it nearly consumed you, until Providence helped you escape. But you must comprehend, my belief is immaterial. A jury will look at this and see a woman whose father died in suspicious circumstances, whose husband died within a quarter of their marriage, to her considerable advantage. Two servants killed in mysterious accidents. Then, the very day a telegram is despatched to an asylum to say you are unmanageable and in need of restraint . . . You see how it looks.’

  Murderess. The name did not match the Elsie in the story, but she had the face for it now: the pink, shining flesh; cropped hair; eyes that looked like they had been screwed into the sockets. A monster, gifted to the crowds. How they would gobble her up, write about her, delight in little affected shrieks as she shambled to and from the dock.

  ‘I have very few options, Mrs Bainbridge. I must make my report, and soon.’ His fingers twitched. They would write the next words, the words that decided her fate. She regarded them, wary. Could such slim, tapered fingers hold her life safe?

  ‘As far as I can see, there are only two ways for me to keep you from gaol. The first is that you submit to my theory. Accept you are a disturbed individual, damaged by a pair of cruel and unfeeling parents. You allow me to say that Sarah is a separate part of your subconscious, that you may have killed but you cannot accept what you have done, so you have invented these phantoms, these companions, to take the guilt for you. The verdict will undoubtedly be guilty, but at least we have a chance of pleading criminal insanity. That means Broadmoor rather than Newgate.’

  Let everyone believe she murdered Jolyon? Have her name go down on the record as the destroyer of his life? She shook her head, vehement.

  ‘You must dwell upon it, Mrs Bainbridge. Promise me you will. It may not be the whole truth but . . . It is our best hope.’

  The pencil slipped in her sweating hand. Other option?

  His mouth twisted. ‘Well, there is one, but I fear it is not likely.’

  Yes.

  ‘My dear Mrs Bainbridge, your only other option is to pray that Sarah Bainbridge walks through that door, ready to swear to your innocence.’

  She dreamt of Sarah that night. Lavender dress, grey cape, swishing in the rain. Branches writhed above her head, reaching out to her with a mute appeal. Her boots scuttled around the puddles that bubbled on the ground.

  The landscape stretched ahead of her; ditches, black hillocks and the unruly mass of hedgerows. Behind lay the village of Fayford in shades of silver and grey, a daguerreotype of the place Elsie had known. There was no light.

  Sarah stumbled. Mud clagged the hem of her skirt. Her ankles were soaked and her gown was wet, sticking to her legs. She looked utterly lost, utterly alone. Drowning.

  A creak; long and low, like a moan of pain in the dark. Two heavy beats – thump, thump. Then the creak again.

  Elsie’s eyelids flickered. Was the sound from her dream? Or was it in the room? She could still see Sarah, cowed by the silver needles raining down upon her, but she could not smell damp turf, or the metallic tang of rain; a sweeter, heavier scent filled her nose. Roses.

  She jerked awake. Instinctively, she twitched her arms. They were pinioned at her sides, weighed down by the tucked sheets. She tried to look around but saw only black.

  The floorboards whined. Elsie heard it up and down her spine. Little pats, like the footfalls of an animal.

  Jasper?

  But no; Jasper was not here. She was not at The Bridge. She released her breath, relieved by that one fact: she was not there.

  Bang, bang. She jumped. Someone at the door.

  She would not answer it, she thought wildly, they could not make her. She tried to hide beneath the covers but they were tight, so tight. The knock came again.

  Who could it be? Nurses, attendants, doctors – none of them knocked for admission.

  The floorboards by her feet moaned. The sound was coming from within the room.

  Fear squeezed her throat. She could not call out, she could not scream; she could only scuffle her legs at the end of the bed as the creak came closer and closer. Still the sheets refused to give way and it was hot; scorching like a breath from hell.

  She felt sick. She wanted to cry. Made strong by desperation, she wrenched her arms loose from the sheets and groped under her pillow. Please be there, please be there. But no, that was the past. They did not let her keep matches in here.

  Something touched her foot.

  It burnt like a brand. Red-hot arrows pierced her skin, travelling up her veins. They sliced through Elsie’s blocked throat and released her scream.

 
Footsteps pounded outside. Voices, real people, coming to help. She kept her eyes shut and screamed louder. They could not come fast enough.

  She heard them jangling the chain, shooting bolts from their cradles. Why did it take so long?

  Another brand on her leg. Up to the shin, now.

  Bang. The door hit the wall. Gas lamps were on in the corridor; their light bounced into the room.

  It was only a glimpse, caught in the snapping shadows, but Elsie saw it: Sarah. Wooden, painted.

  She screamed again.

  ‘Watch yourselves.’ The low voice of an attendant.

  Something hissed, then a gash of light tore across her vision. She shut her eyes, blinded. It was the lamp in her room – they had turned it on. Slowly, slowly she managed to open her scrunched eyes. Sarah was gone. In her place stood two burly attendants and a man wearing paper cuffs.

  ‘Now!’

  They pounced, seizing the tender flesh of her wrists. Two more attendants took her ankles. The bedsheets fell away easily now, no longer taut and suffocating.

  She kicked and thrashed, but their hold did not give. They were insensible to her blows, deaf to her screams. She tried to bite. An acrid, dry taste filled her mouth as they stuffed it with a rag. Gagging, she tried to spit it out, but something covered her face, edging past her eyes; something coarse and stiff and reeking of terror.

  Pressure squeezed around her ribs. Her clawing hands were plunged into sleeves without end. For a moment she was a ghoulish figure with long, dragging arms and no hands. Then the sleeves were crossed over her chest and secured tight behind her back. A corpse: she was tied in the position of a corpse.

  The man with paper cuffs gave her a horrible grin. His teeth were rotten. ‘Better fetch the doctor. Tell him it’s a bleedin’ miracle. The murderess can speak.’

  She tried. The words were all there, queued up in her throat, clamouring for release: run; Sarah; companions; coming. But her dry, swollen tongue refused to move.

  She made a wheezing sound and that was all. A pathetic echo of the companions’ hiss.

  ‘Don’t look like she can speak to me,’ an attendant said.

  The man eyed her. His grin turned into a leer. ‘Well, at any rate, she can scream.’

  The padded room again. It must be. She could smell straw beneath the filthy canvas on the walls. Straw, body odour and fear: a pungent scent not easily forgotten.

  Oilskin lined the floor and squeaked as her bare feet paced, back and forth, back and forth. She could hear it; could feel the buckles of the strait waistcoat grinding against her torso. Did they grind against Rupert’s mother, too? No, no, no. All she wanted was to go back to the time when the world was still and safe. Why did she start to write in the first place?

  Somewhere inside the hospital, a bell rang. Too loud, too real, even through the straw.

  She needed to see Dr Shepherd. If he had woken her up, then perhaps he could send her back to sleep. Then she would not have these horrible nightmares about Sarah, or be forced to endure the next steps of the proceedings. An inquest? A trial? He was going to stand up on a platform and talk about her like she was a rare species of plant, exposing all she had hidden beneath the soil. Men like that potential factory investor Mr Greenleaf – fat, privileged and bristling with facial hair – would sit listening to him and decide her fate between them.

  And what fate was that? Dr Shepherd said the best she could hope for was Broadmoor: fortress for the criminally insane. She had a notion it would make St Joseph’s look like Claridge’s hotel.

  Maybe if the medicine was strong enough, like it was before, she could bear it. But to survive as she was now – alert, remembering? Impossible.

  A lock clunked. Dr Shepherd flew into the room.

  Something had happened to him. He wore no jacket or waistcoat, only shirtsleeves with a pair of beige braces on display. His hair was uncombed. She noticed a thumbprint on the lens of his spectacles and smears of ink on his fingertips.

  ‘Mrs Bainbridge, forgive me. I should have come much earlier when I heard about your little outburst, but events have rather overtaken me.’ He looked her up and down, truly seeing her for the first time. ‘The strait waistcoat? I did not realise they had done that. My apologies, Mrs Bainbridge, I will get them to remove it and put you back in a proper room. Why would they think all this necessary? As I understood it, you only had a bad dream?’

  He looked at her. She stared back.

  ‘Oh, of course, you cannot write – your arms. I beg your pardon. I am not thinking coherently.’

  Almost as an afterthought, he closed the door behind him. His eyes were bloodshot: it did not appear he had slept. But then, she could not be sure of the time in this windowless cell. It could still be the middle of the night.

  ‘I was writing my report,’ Dr Shepherd told her. Noticing his ink-stained fingers, he distractedly wiped them against the walls. ‘You see the marks of that! I was putting forwards the theory we discussed about your parents and Miss Bainbridge when – Well, I will need to redo it. Or not write it at all, I can hardly say. This is most, most irregular.’

  Never had she missed her voice so much. Last night she screamed, but it seemed that was all she could do. She remembered Anne’s diary, the demon holding Hetta’s tongue. That was how it felt: a strait waistcoat on her tongue with no one to loosen the ties.

  Dr Shepherd plucked off his spectacles and polished them on his shirt. ‘I must say, it is quite a blow to my pride. I thought I had it figured out, and the report read very well indeed. But in these cases one is glad to be proven wrong. You stare. But of course, I have not even begun to explain.’ He jammed his glasses back on – they were still smeared. ‘I would ask you to sit down, yet it seems my thoughtless colleagues have not provided a chair. No matter. I will just have to ask you, Mrs Bainbridge, to prepare yourself for something wonderfully strange.’

  Was he in earnest? Wonderfully strange? Had he read her story?

  ‘Late last night – or rather, early this morning – I received a telegram. It was in relation to the advert I placed enquiring for information about Sarah Bainbridge.’

  The room seemed to dilate. She held her breath.

  ‘You would not credit it, after all this time, but it was from Sarah. She exists, she is alive.’

  Alive. So many possibilities in one word – it was a door opening from her cell, opening from the crypt.

  She must have gone pale, for he grasped her shoulder tightly. ‘Yes, I can see what you are feeling. It is miraculous. I am so, so pleased for you, Mrs Bainbridge. Congratulations.’

  Sarah would swear that Jolyon’s death was an accident. And although she was not there to see Mrs Holt hanged, she could testify to her state of mind at the time, the anger and dismay she had shown following the loss of her only child.

  No one could call Elsie criminally insane after that. She was not a murderess. Or at least, not in that respect. Would Dr Shepherd reveal her strange narrative and the confession about the death of her parents? She did not think so. He was smiling from ear to ear, looking for all the world as if he had personally saved her from the noose.

  ‘Communication by telegram is naturally rather stunted. I could not ask Sarah too many questions, but I can do that in person. She is coming, the day after tomorrow. The hospital have granted her an interview with us both. I understand that she intends to make herself known to the police, but she wanted to see you first.’

  Sarah. No longer just a character in her story but a flesh and blood person who cared for her. The thought choked her with joy.

  What had she said before she set out for Torbury St Jude? Something about rebuilding their lives together. Yes, they really could. With Sarah’s evidence, Elsie might be set free. There would be someone to look after her, someone to live for. She would not treat Sarah as Mrs Crabbly had, a mere paid companion. They would start again as equals.

  ‘Now,’ said Dr Shepherd, ‘I had better make myself presentable before I start my
rounds. Sit tight, Mrs Bainbridge, and I will have someone come to untie you. The staff have no excuse now, no excuse at all, to treat you like a criminal.’

  She did not mind when he closed the door, plunging her back into gloom. She did not even mind the strait waistcoat restricting the blood flow to her arms. She could endure anything now. This was only temporary.

  They had bathed her. Dr Shepherd even persuaded the nurses to change her hospital dress for a newer one, not yet faded by the laundry. A blue kerchief was tied around her neck – respectable-looking, as lunatics went. But Elsie could not contain her cramping anxiety. How would Sarah react when she finally arrived?With its tile floor and aqueous light, the long room reminded Elsie of a mortuary. A metal table had been set in the centre. She and Dr Shepherd sat on one side; a chair stood ready for Sarah on the other. Elsie had a view of the door in the left corner of the room and, opposite it, a round mirror hanging just below the ceiling. It was angled so that a doctor or attendant entering could see the far corners – could see, in short, if a lunatic were about to pounce on them.

  The mirror didn’t show a distinct view of Elsie’s face. It only reflected the colour of the skin, like sausage meat. She looked diminished, a wreck of the woman Sarah had known. A white cap covered her head, hiding the frazzled tufts of her hair.

  Had they prepared Sarah for the shock of seeing her?

  Dr Shepherd laid a hand on hers. ‘Courage, Mrs Bainbridge. She will be here in a moment.’

  Her stomach churned with nerves. She half feared Sarah would take one look at her and scream. But this was Sarah, who cared for old women, who even pitied Hetta. She was kind. She would see past the disfigurement. Once the initial upset was over, they would go on as before – only this time, they would be free of fear.

  What had Sarah said, once? Fire makes them more powerful. It hadn’t. The Bridge was burnt and gone, and the evil along with it. No companions were found in the debris, Dr Shepherd confirmed that. Only bones and ashes.

  The door joints whined. Dr Shepherd jolted to his feet. Elsie could not trust her legs to stand – she simply gripped the edge of the table.