CHAPTER TENThursday, 22 April, 1869Mary finished the last of her eel pie. She wiped her lips and took another mouthful of ale. The London & North Western Railway service she’d taken from King’s Cross to St. Albans arrived well before noon in good time for lunch. Bill had met her at the station as instructed and they were now seated in the White Hart Inn partaking of a light repast.She smirked at her future brother-in-law. The blank mask of his expression gave nothing away. Well, neither would she. He didn’t intimidate her. She had plans for Bill, just as she had plans for Jack—and Ellen, of course. Her half-sister had been at Belle Vue over two months now. She seemed to spend much of her time composing letters asking her to visit and complaining it wasn’t what she expected. No doubt, Lady Muck would expect her to listen to her endless whining. She was curious to see the asylum after all this time, though.She sat back in her chair and raised her arm to pat her vibrant coiffu

CHAPTER TWELVESaturday, 11 October, 1862When Mary discovered what the role of scullion in the Duc de Montalt’s London house entailed, she was not greatly impressed. Shocked would be a better description. To think Mam—as she’d called Catherine then—and Father Patrick had put her forward for such a lowly position. Nothing but grinding drudgery in the kitchens from first thing in the morning to gone midnight. It was the only vacancy, they’d said, but for all their poverty, she thought Mam had been preparing her for better work than this. She even slept in a box bed that folded out of a cupboard in the scullery corridor, for God’s sake. No privacy at all. Mam had responded by saying if she used her brain and worked hard, she could rise one day to become a cook or housekeeper. Mary noted she hadn’t said Lady’s Maid, as Catherine had been when her family fell on hard times. As though Mary wasn’t cut out for that exalted position. No doubt, the precious Ellen, safe and cosseted by Mam at

CHAPTER FOURTEENWednesday, 30 June, 1869Fanned by the breeze, the warm rays of the afternoon sun caressed Johnson Nottidge’s face. He relaxed and indulged himself in a recollection of his numerous sexual encounters over the past month or so. Eyes closed, his memories flitted from his conquests in London to those closer to home. As his mind wandered to his current location—the grounds of Belle Vue—thoughts of Samuel and Adelaide Fishburn turned up like bad pennies to blight his enjoyment.Dreadful man, with a dreadful wife. Fishburn was nothing but a stooge for his ‘lean and hungry’ spouse. She was about as trustworthy as Cassius, too. Given the choice though, he still preferred the Matron. Greed, lust, wrath, and vanity were all emotions he understood. He remembered how surprised he’d been when he’d peered through the front window of Bill Callahan’s cottage last week and saw her fellating the Head Attendant like some third-rate whore. He had not made a sound and they hadn’t notice

CHAPTER SIXTEENSaturday, 24 July, 1869“Who could have done such a terrible thing?” The Reverend Theodore Croft’s nose quivered with righteous indignation.Bill Callahan stifled a yawn. Normally, he and Croft saw eye-to-eye since the vicar took it as one of his functions to strengthen the arm of authority in the asylum. He did this by persuading inmates to accept confinement in this world on the promise of freedom in the next. On this occasion, however, he was on his high horse about a bit of damage in the chapel where they now stood. And, he told Callahan, holding him as Head Attendant responsible.Croft picked up one of the blood-spattered Bibles. “Such mindless desecration. It only proves my argument that moral turpitude causes insanity.” The Chaplain’s voice rose. “But how did they get in? I locked the door after evening prayers last night, and I unfastened the padlock this morning.”“Is there another entrance, Vicar?” Bill asked, making no effort to keep the mockery out of h

CHAPTER EIGHTEENThursday, 12 August, 1869Of the high temperatures endured during the past few weeks, today seemed to be the hottest yet. Ellen, bored and slightly nauseous, lay on her cot. Her skin, a mass of red marks from her rough shift and continual itching, caused her intense discomfort.Harriet, on the other bed, lay curled toward the window. A couple of the small panes in each window of the asylum could be opened but by only a few inches. As an unfortunate consequence, the cramped dormitories and rooms were stifling and smellier than rotting fish at Billingsgate.Hardly any staff had shown up this morning, so straw plaiting had been cancelled for the day. Mrs. Craven, cranky to the extreme, had told them to stay in their room.Their door was open in the vain hope of some circulating air, but the stench from the crowded halls far from any windows, almost overpowered the instinctive impulse to draw breath. Ellen stared at the ceiling. For what must have been the hundredth t