“You used his birthday celebration to get your hands on the diamonds, then took advantage of the confusion not only to slip away, but to take out the money in your bank account.” She nodded. “You took a chance with the safe.”
She said nothing.
“You wanted a couple of things it held.”
“They belonged to my mother’s family, not to Selwick.”
“Where are the diamonds?”
“They’re too valuable to leave around. I had Rose put them in a bank vault in town.”
“I’d have thought the egg would go there, too.”
“You’re right, I should put it there, but my mother loved it so, I wanted to have it for a little while.”
“And then, there was this.”
I took from my pocket the third thing I had found in the table: a shot in the dark, but I could see it hit home.
She looked at the unsealed envelope without reaching for it. “Did you read it?”
“I merely glanced at the opening lines.”
Vivian sighed. “Go ahead.”
So I did. I read it with care, looking back at portions and holding it up to the light. I returned it to the envelope. I laid the envelope on the table before her.
“When a person is the subject of a commitment order,” she said, “elements of her…legal status change. When I went into Bedlam, five years ago, my brother Edward was appointed my guardian. That gave him the right to handle my affairs, particularly any financial matters. The most recent order of commitment was revoked two years ago, but when I went to get my mother’s Fabergé egg from the safe in his office, I found that.”
“It wouldn’t take precedence over your official last will and testament.”
“No.” She raised her gaze at last, and gave me a sad smile. “Not if I was alive.”
The document amounted to a new will for The Lady Vivian Beaconsfield, giving the bulk of her possessions to the Marquess of Selwick, “in recompense for the considerable expenses incurred by the Selwick estate over the lengthy illness of The Lady Vivian.” That its beneficiary was also its signator, as her named guardian at the time, might be the basis for a legal challenge—if Ronnie and her mother wanted to take the Marquess to court over it.
“When you said you were safe in Bedlam, that day when Ronnie and I came to visit, was this what you meant?”
“No. I was not aware this existed until I saw it two weeks ago. My fears were…not about that.”
“But once the commitment order was cleared, why didn’t you simply leave Bedlam? I’ve been there—it’s not the most comfortable place in the world, and you have both family and money. Were you afraid he…afraid that something might happen to you, on the outside?”
Her eyes closed. When they opened again, her face wore the gaunt, aged look that I had seen there, three years before. “Yes. Except I knew it would happen. Eventually. He…Edward is my brother!” she cried. “I…I loved him, when I was small. I revered him. When he came home for the school holidays, I would treasure any time he deigned to give me—reading a story, building a fortress. He was my big brother, who lived in another world, but occasionally would visit.
“Not like Tommy. Tommy played with me as if he were close to my own age, never made me feel like a child. When he died, my world ended. And when Edward moved back home the following spring, my world…turned upside-down. He was unhappy, deeply so, and he…”
Her voice faltered, and stopped—but in fact, I had scarcely heard a word after her first cry.
Edward is my brother! Four words, but with them, the edifice that I had built, all my conclusions about money and greed and political machinations, everything shifted, to reveal the shape underneath.
That shape had been at the back of my mind for days—weeks, now. The sequence of Vivian’s life and madness, the dry notes of the asylum doctors, the cheeky maidservant at Selwick. The dairy-woman, Emma Bailey, had known, and told me across her kitchen table.
Dear God. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.
The shape had been pushing at me, I think, since the train back from Surrey, when I seized on the clean and straightforward answer of money. I had been loudly irritable with Holmes, so eager to condemn the male race, to condemn the Marquess of a lesser crime, because I could not bear facing the awful knowledge whispering in my ear.
“Your brother molested you.”
Her eyes snapped up. “You know?”
I was ashamed to tell her how long it had taken me.
Chapter Forty-five
I WAS OF COURSE FAMILIAR with Dr Freud’s theory, that a claim of incest reveals the sex fantasies of an hysteric. But “hysterical” is the modern’s cry of witchcraft, its punishment incarceration instead of burning. As a woman—and as a student of Sherlock Holmes—I should have used William of Ockham’s razor to cut to the truth: that some claims of incest were in fact just that.
Not that I was certain Vivian Beaconsfield had openly made such a claim. Emma Bailey’s suggestion had been far from overt. The notes of a dozen different mental doctors had employed cautious language and faint distress over these accusations made against a man of his rank.
Of course, if she had made those accusations in the open, would it have done her any good? Even I, trained in Holmesian cynicism, had managed to squirm out from the unpleasant hypothesis that Emma Bailey, medical records, and Vivian’s own personal history had pushed into my face: namely, that in 1916, Lady Vivian’s surviving brother, resentful at being forced out of his lively home in London by the War and financial straits, looked at this pretty and vulnerable twenty-five-year-old near-stranger and saw not a sister, but a woman. And like all women, she was there for his convenience—even if some young housemaids might believe that his interest was personal.
Looking across the table at her, sitting here on this island of the mad, I could not avoid the hardest truth of all: this poor creature had been betrayed, first by her blood, then by those whose job it was to heal her soul. Time and again, she’d been granted asylum; she’d been fed and rested and declared healed—and then, like a shell-shocked soldier, sent back to precisely the situation that had driven her to insanity.
How many women locked inside Victorian asylums, I had to ask myself, were there because they had offended their doctors with disgusting, ungrateful, and obscene “fantasies” about the male relatives who controlled their lives? The crime here was not the theft of a diamond necklace. It was the theft of a woman’s person, her security, her very mind and spirit.
I’m safe here, Vivian had said. And she was speaking nothing but the truth. I forced myself to continue.
“You showed no real sign of problem before your brother moved home. But within weeks, you had stripped your rooms to the walls and thrown your drawings of Selwick Hall out of the window. Your only acts of physical violence were against him. When you were away from him, you got better.
“And no one believed you. Not even the doctors.”
If she’d been startled before, now she was stunned. “How…?”
“I read your case file, at Bedlam. One doctor after another wrote, ‘She’s an hysteric, making wild accusations against the man who has done everything to help her.’ You would talk to them; they would make their notes; you’d realise it was leading nowhere and go silent; and they would happily declare you cured and send you home. To him.”
Tears glistened in her eyes.
“Dr Freud has many insightful conclusions about the human mind,” I continued bitterly, “but when it comes to women, he might do better investigating the male sex’s preoccupation with cigars.”
To my astonishment, she let loose with a snort of astonished laughter. A moment later, the rattle of cups signalled the arrival of the two who had been waiting at the door. Vivian dashed the moisture from her eyes and swept our masks and the envelope off the table.
Strong tea, fresh milk, hastily cut triangles of cheese sandwich, a plate of delicate almond biscuits. Truce, and silence, for a couple of minutes—during which Holmes eyed Nurse Trevisan with curiosity, Nurse Trevisan eyed Vivian with concern, and Vivian eyed something no one else could see. Then she looked up at the other woman.
“Rose, I think it’s time to introduce Miss Russell and Mr Holmes to your cousin.” Rose didn’t look altogether convinced. “They’ve been here, they’ve already seen him. And they want to help.”
The two women continued the wordless conversation for a time, until Rose put down her cup. “Come on, then. But keep quiet—people are asleep.”
Holmes and I followed her down the stairs and along the corridor to its end. We came to a halt at the last door on the southern side—the room where we had seen the mad doctor. Light shone from beneath it. The door was fitted with a sturdy hasp and padlock. I frowned, trying to remember if I’d seen other padlocks as we came along.
Holmes, however, was in no doubt. He made a Ha! noise, indicating sudden revelation—always irritating, if one hasn’t yet made a connexion—and raised an eyebrow at the nurse. “Your cousin?”
She, too, kept her voice very low. “My mother’s brother had a daughter and two sons; this is the younger. He was a doctor, who came back from the War badly damaged. Some men get over it; others do not. He, I believe, never will. Do you need to see him? Strangers make him…troubled.”
Holmes shook his head, and although I was not sure I agreed, I was willing to go along for now. As we made our way back towards the stairs, I thought of the island where the Hon Terry had stopped our motor, the outline of the bell-tower in the night.
“Was your cousin held on San Servolo?” I asked.
“No, it was a dark and terrifying asylum on the mainland. They kept him chained, though he’s never been violent.”
“Yet you leave him in a room with slits in the shutters, where trespassers are sure to peer in and see…”
“We give him the toys he loves, and what work he is capable of. Some of which is surprisingly helpful.”
Holmes stopped dead on the landing. “Cadaverine!”
I stared at him, caught up by one of my more vivid laboratory memories—then started to grin. “No! Is that what we smelt? The rotting corpse I thought we were about to step into?”
“On the path, yes.”
“The fellow on the vaporetto even told me that people found the island’s odours unnerving.”
“I imagine they did, particularly as it tends to linger in the pores.”
“Lysine and sodium bicarbonate. Good Lord.”
Nurse Trevisan nodded. “We only put it out when we’re having problems, since we then have to live with it for weeks.” I could well imagine: Holmes’ demonstration of the stuff, some years back, had been the impetus for one of Mrs Hudson’s longer trips away.
“And in the meantime, your cousin provides the island with a mask of madness. Helping to promote your neighbours’ belief that the place is haunted. Ingenious.”
Back in the sitting room, Nurse Trevisan took the chair beside Vivian, while Holmes and I sat across the low table from them.
“So, what?” I asked. “You live here on an island you pretend is haunted?”
“Oh, none of us doubt it is haunted. Yes, we encourage the belief with the odd wail and the occasional walk along the front wearing an old bed-sheet—and we’ve found offensive smells particularly effective in discouraging both children and courting couples. But how could this place not be haunted? Centuries of plague victims died here. The north side of Poveglia—across the foot-bridge—appears on older maps as ‘the burning grounds,’ since that is where generations of the dead were incinerated. The soil there is lovely and rich. And the wild place on the other side of the church? That is given as ‘the plague field.’ They tried to start a garden there but had to give it up—apparently the number of skulls and scapulas was a bit disheartening.”
“Who is ‘they’?” I asked.
“Women, of course.”
“Women like us,” Vivian added.
“Meaning…Sapphic?”
“Some. Not all.”
The nurse explained. “Some of the women here have spent time in insane asylums. Others were merely fed up with the world of men. You, Miss Russell, would be quite welcome,” she added solemnly, “were you to become tired of your current situation.”
Holmes and I laughed—his, it must be said, was a touch hollow. “But you can’t be planning on hiding behind a ghostly veil for long?”
“There’s a bit more to it than bed-sheets and ghostly wails,” Rose replied. “Poveglia is in fact a registered mental asylum—‘asylum’ being a word that to the outside world means a place to lock up lunatics. But to those inside, it can indeed mean shelter. A place to lock the world out. My cousin downstairs is listed as the asylum’s doctor, though he arrived with a diagnosis of dementia praecox—what is now called schizophrenia. Since he came, two years ago, I’m told the number of illicit visitors has fallen dramatically. Poveglia’s neighbours seem quite content to leave its madwomen to the care of a mad doctor.”
“A new kind of plague island,” Holmes commented, “offering quarantine against the insanity of the world. While the inmates are free to come and go to the city.”
“And to the Lido’s cabarets,” I added.
The woman had a most unexpected dimple in her right cheek. “We have a storage room filled with appropriate dress.”
“But who is in charge?” Holmes asked. “Who started it all?”
Nurse Trevisan turned on him a rather pitying look. “Sir, those are two very different questions—although they take the same answer. No one person started it, and no one person is in charge. All work, all vote, all perform different functions. Some voices receive more attention, either because that woman brought more money with her or because she suffered more to get here, but in the end, each vote is equal.”
“How long have you been here?” I wondered.
“Me, personally? Ten days. I was born and raised in London, and would come to Venice on family visits. But one of my cousins—her brother is the man downstairs—moved here in 1920, the year after it started. You know what happened to women everywhere as soon as the War was over, when the men returned? Three Venetian war widows were among those faced with the realities of what is called ‘normality’: one was told by her father that she must marry a wealthy but crippled returning officer; another’s brother-in-law assumed he’d take over her husband’s business that she had been running; and the third was threatened with committal to San Clemente if she did not make room for her uncle and his large family in the house she and her husband had built. The three women were friends, and together they found another way.
“The woman with the business happened to be a partial owner of Poveglia, which at the time was deserted but for the nets of fishermen drying on the path-ways. The other two women scraped together enough money to buy out her brother’s interest in the island, and the three of them set up a sort of camp here. Others heard of them, and came to join. The only rule is that there can be no long-term residency of children. It is not fair to them—and besides, families may be willing to rid themselves of spare women, but they do not feel the same over their young.”
“How many women do you have here?”
“Thirty-two or -three—one is trying to decide.”
“And only one man?”
“My cousin, yes. Shall I tell you how that came about?”
“Please.” Holmes sat back, fingers on lips, while Vivian curled up on the chair in the attitude of a child settling in to hear a favourite story.
“As I said, this community began a few months after the War ended, when all was in confusion and people were only slowly returning to the city. My cousin Emelia came eighteen months later, when Pov
eglia had a population of fourteen.
“They knew even then that it could not last. Women, trying to live by themselves on an island? They were armed, yes, but all it would take was one boatload of drunken men and it would end. In fact, when I came back to Venice to celebrate my great-grandmother’s ninetieth birthday one December—this would have been 1922—they’d just had an incident where a fisherman tried to force his way into the building. Two of the women threw on men’s clothing and chased him off with sticks, but they were worried, rightfully so.
“I was working at Bethlem hospital, and I happened to tell my cousin Emilia how surprisingly little trouble the hospital had with the neighbourhood ruffians. That the reputation of Bedlam appeared to keep them out.”
I stirred. “When I met you—when Ronnie and I brought little Simon to Bed…Bethlem—you told me something of the sort. That an evil reputation could be a protective wall.”
“True with stone, and all the truer when the walls are of water. My cousin was interested, and so they found ways to strengthen those walls. Sympathetic family members spread rumours, reinforced by the bed-sheets and strange noises.”
“And your resident Dr Moreau.”
Rose Trevisan’s face was attractive, when dimpled into a smile. “A clever piece of theatre, is it not? Emilia arranged for him to come here the following summer. He seems happy. And there’s no doubt, having a man—a licensed physician, at that—to hide behind has proved terribly convenient.”
Holmes pulled at his lip in thought. “Why did you decide that Poveglia might be a reasonable place to bring a Bedlam patient?”
Vivian sat forward sharply. “She didn’t—”
“No,” Nurse Trevisan interrupted, “it’s a valid question. You are quite right: if Vivian had been an actual patient—committed by doctors, in need of treatment and a carefully controlled routine—it would have been hugely irresponsible of me. And I would have been professionally negligent to have entered into any sort of a personal relationship with her. But by the time we met, Vivian was no more insane than you or I. She was there voluntarily, behind those walls, putting up with its boredom and bad food and discomfort over the very real perils of living outside.”