A Madness So Discreet

  Her indecision was short-lived, for the door was flung open unceremoniously and a tall, dark woman soared into the room, irritation stamped firmly on her features. “Really, Brother,” she was saying, “a two-line letter with an address and a room number isn’t exactly inviting.” She flung her wrap across a chair, words still flowing. “And not being bothered to answer the door yourself is downright rude. If Father were still alive—oh . . .” The words died on her lips when she saw Grace.

  “There’s one mystery solved,” she said. “No wonder he’s not exactly brimming with excitement at my arrival. He leave you out here to greet me? Still wrestling with the inconvenience of proper dress, is he?”

  Grace knew her mouth was open and that no words were coming out. The crushed hat was still in her hands, her fingers working the brim in their anxiety. Thornhollow’s sister circled her, skirts swishing as she made the inspection.

  “No wonder he’s mystified by his own dinner clothes. He’s never been one to worry much about what is proper. But you already know that, don’t you?”

  Grace flushed bright red at the implication.

  “You’re smaller than what he usually goes in for,” the woman went on. “By the cut of your dress, a little more refined as well. I’m a bit surprised, to be honest, but maybe you’re simply another experiment.” She finished her turn around Grace, who still stood stupefied.

  The women came face-to-face, and Grace raised her eyes, locking them with Adelaide’s. Even if she couldn’t force words, she could wear the face she had so often presented to her mother, silent yet defiant.

  “I hardly need to tell you . . .” The doctor’s sister trailed off, confusion clouding her face as she met Grace’s gaze. “Wait, what’s this? No, you’re far too intelligent. He doesn’t want a challenge.”

  She was still trying to compute the intelligence she saw in Grace’s eyes with her assumptions when the bedroom door blew open, and Thornhollow—still not finished dressing—burst out. “Adelaide,” he cried, the moment he saw her. “What are you doing?”

  “I was performing my usual chore of running off whatever unacceptable woman you’d attached yourself to this time, but I’ve come to an impasse. She’s not one of your chippies, is she?”

  “No,” Grace said, voice suddenly found. “I’m a mental patient.”

  “Melancthon!” Her confusion was swept away in outrage, her nettling attitude toward Grace morphing into protection as she bodily put herself between them. “This is a new low, little brother. She’s a pretty girl, but I never thought you would—”

  “Adelaide!” Thornhollow bellowed, his temper flaring. “You have completely misread this entire situation, as usual assuming the worst of myself without bothering to—”

  “Misread?” the woman fired back. “What conclusions should I come to with a pretty woman in your room, clothing flung everywhere, and you half-dressed?”

  The doctor drew himself up to his full height in an attempt to regain composure. “I am merely struggling with my ascot.”

  “And no wonder, I doubt you’ve had to dress properly for anything since coming to this backwoods river town, pouring your prodigious talents into the mad when you could be—”

  Thornhollow tore off the offending ascot, throwing it to the ground. “I did not invite you here to have my profession belittled yet again.”

  “You didn’t invite me at all! I had to tell you I was coming in order to force you to acknowledge that you have a sister in the first place.”

  Grace, aware that she was not necessary to the conversation, sat down and finished reshaping the hat she’d sat on.

  “Yes, and why would I want to avoid having us in the same room?” Thornhollow asked sarcastically. “Clearly we should spend much more time together; it’s so beneficial.”

  Adelaide’s chin shot up, her nostrils flaring. “One does not maintain family bonds because they are beneficial but because they are family.”

  “Tell that to Grace,” Thornhollow fumed. “I’ve had to scar her permanently and drag her across three states to deliver her from the clutches of her father.”

  Grace shot up from the couch, hat forgotten. “How dare you?” she shouted, her voice soaring.

  “Is this true?” Adelaide asked, turning to Grace with a new softness in her eyes.

  “Whether it is or not, it is not your place to announce it in front of a stranger,” she said, her voice cutting. Thornhollow paled, holding up one hand in apology and dropping into a chair.

  “Hardly,” his sister agreed, lacing her arm with Grace’s to form a unified front against her brother. “This is a lovely dinner party you’ve put together. I should’ve known better than to even come. But as it stands, I am here, and I am hungry.”

  The doctor had his head in his hands, eyes rooted to the floor between his feet. “I can hardly go to dinner now. I’ve ruined my ascot and Grace crushed my hat.”

  “Only the beginning of all sorts of punishment she could rightly bring down on you,” Adelaide said, patting Grace’s hand. “I’ll see to dinner. Surely there’s some decent place around that will feed us in your apartments.”

  Thornhollow raised his head. “They’ll do that?”

  “If you pay them enough, they’ll do anything,” his sister answered, gathering her wrap. “I shall return,” she said, “and try to put right all the wrongs you’ve already piled onto our evening, Melancthon.” The door slammed behind her as she left.

  “I’m sorry, Grace,” Thornhollow said, the misery in his eyes bringing instant forgiveness from her. “Adelaide’s assumptions about you along with her derision of my career made me lose my temper and say things that weren’t mine to say. I apologize.”

  Grace stood over him, one hand on her hip. “Melancthon?”

  “Don’t start.”

  THIRTY

  “So then the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association merged to create the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which personally I think is rather a mouthful,” Adelaide said as she set down her wineglass.

  “I’m sure others have much shorter terms,” the doctor said, sawing into his steak with more vigor than necessary.

  “Such as?” Grace asked.

  “There are plenty who just call us bitches, dear,” Adelaide explained, and Grace’s eyes went wide. She smiled and touched Grace’s wrist.

  “I’m sorry for my language. When you’re at the front of the movement like I am you hear all manner of things and a certain coarseness creeps into your speech.”

  “A beautiful way of saying you’ve lost your manners,” Thornhollow said into his half-empty wineglass.

  “That’s a nice criticism coming from a man who drags young women to murder sites.”

  “I only drag the one.”

  “Regardless,” Grace interjected. “It’s good to know that something is being done for women, and I thank you for doing it. You’re free to use any language you like around me.”

  Adelaide shot Thornhollow a look before nodding toward Grace. “I imagine you’ve seen all kinds of things, as a patient.”

  “Yes,” Grace said, her mind turning back to Boston only when she forced it to. “I couldn’t quite get my mind around the fact of where I was, even a few days in. That something so horrible could happen easily, that’s the true insanity.”

  “Well said,” Adelaide agreed. “The signature of one judge and the word of a male family member and that’s that.” She snapped her fingers. “You’re insane.”

  “I probably seemed it,” Grace said, fingers toying with her glass stem. “I was screaming and kicking the entire way. I remember I pulled a chunk of hair right out of one orderly’s scalp.”

  “Good for you,” Adelaide said, touching her glass to Grace’s.

  “And I’d add, it stands as only further proof of your sanity,” Thornhollow said, leaning back from the table. “You knew where you were going and what awaited you. Any mentally sound person would fight tooth
and nail to prevent it.”

  “However, to the average person your fit only solidifies the claim,” his sister said. “Believe me, dear, I work side by side with women who have been in lunatic asylums, and their stories make my toes curl. And not in a good way,” she added, making Thornhollow rap the table sharply.

  “I’m lucky to have your brother,” Grace said quickly to avoid another family argument. “Without his intervention I doubt I would’ve made it another week.”

  “You would have,” he said.

  “Yes, and about that . . .” Adelaide pushed her wineglass away from her, eyeing Thornhollow over the table. “How goes this catching of criminals by studying their brains?”

  Thornhollow’s brow turned cloudy again, but he spoke amicably enough. “The theory behind it is sound, I truly believe that.”

  “I do as well,” Grace added. “At the first murder we worked together your brother had the offender figured before we left the scene.”

  “And since then?”

  Thornhollow wadded up his dinner napkin. “We’ve had a repeat killer we haven’t had much luck with.”

  “Really?”

  Adelaide soaked up the details as Thornhollow and Grace filled her in on the three dolls, her mind working as quickly as her brother’s.

  “I don’t think he’s showing any particular hatred toward women,” she said when they’d finished. “I’ve seen plenty of that, and it’s a bloody business.”

  “I agree,” Thornhollow said. “Their faces are unharmed and no particular violence done to their female anatomy.”

  “Were they raped?” Adelaide asked.

  “Anka was not,” Grace said, her memory ticking off the facts. “Mellie Jacobs was in the ground before we knew she was a victim of the same killer, and the third girl had been outside for so long that we simply don’t know.” Grace’s eyes clouded as she realized something. “I never asked you her name.”

  “Janet. Jenny. Something like that. I don’t know,” Thornhollow said.

  “A prince of the people,” Adelaide huffed. “Although I’m not surprised. He’s never been good with names. I didn’t even have to run off the last girl who had attached herself to him. He managed that all by himself by calling her by her predecessor’s name at dinner.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Thornhollow objected, glancing at the clock. “I couldn’t recall her name at all, so I chose one.”

  Adelaide shrugged. “Whatever the case, my job was done without a finger lifted.”

  “And why is it your job, exactly?” Thornhollow asked, irritation slipping back into his voice.

  “Because, little brother, you’re the last of the Thornhollows,” Adelaide said, her eyes thinning to slits over a well-worn argument. “My last name is no good to anybody since I have to give it up or bear a bastard, which carries its own stain. Mother would die if you got a baby on a girl she didn’t deem worthy, and she’ll die if you don’t manage to get one on anybody at all.” She nodded to the clock herself. “Ticktock.”

  Grace’s knife struck her plate with a teeth-chattering clash, her eyes wide and face pale.

  “I hardly think that’s the comment to lose your head over,” Adelaide said, but Grace ignored her.

  “Doctor,” she said, her voice a barely contained whisper. “Doctor, I think I’ve got it.”

  “By God, Grace,” Thornhollow said as his eyes roved over the chalkboard. “You could be right.”

  They were safely tucked back in his office after leaving Adelaide in a rush, anxious to get back to the asylum. Thornhollow’s sister had scribbled down her Boston address quickly and placed it in Grace’s hands before they left. She rubbed her fingers over the thick stationery idly, her thoughts preoccupied by the board.

  “It’s mystified me from the beginning,” Grace said. “Why start now? Your sister’s words to you over dinner made me look at it in a different light. What if he’s under pressure to marry? If he’s always been incompetent with women, it would be his shameful secret. To suddenly be thrust into a marriage where another will know his inability might be too painful to bear.”

  “That very well could be,” Thornhollow said, hands on his hips. “If he doesn’t want to meet with the same defeat on his wedding night, he may be attempting to practice—if you will—with these girls. His failure results in a rage. If I’m correct and there’s an overbearing mother in the picture, she may be demanding grandchildren and watching the clock as her son grows older. That helps narrow down the field, if we can assume this is no spring chicken we’re trying to nab.”

  “What about the girl in the snow and the lull in killings?” Grace asked. “Are you still convinced it’s a town doctor we’re looking for?”

  “I am.” Thornhollow nodded. “Her name was Jenny, by the way. Jenny Cantor. I remembered on the way back home. And her death doesn’t change my thoughts. He made his first kills in the city, where he felt safe. The kitchen girl was an opportunity—perhaps while out driving or visiting a country patient.”

  Grace thought for a second, piecing through Thornhollow’s argument in order to find any loose threads he may consider bound up.

  “What if he’s not an only child?”

  He shook her off immediately. “No, all the evidence of his intelligence and planning points to an only child, or older sibling. Which, if we are to follow your line of thought, he’d have to be the only male child in order to feel the pressure of continuing the family line—which, I assure you, can be quite intense.”

  “What if he had an older brother who died recently?” Grace went on, ignoring his confidence. “That would explain why he suddenly has that weight to carry, and it has morphed into these horrible actions.”

  “I don’t see it,” Thornhollow said.

  “What if you’re wrong?” Grace insisted.

  “What if you’re wrong?” he shot back. “It’s possible we’re both completely off and our killer is a middle-aged mother of four who simply wants to fill her evenings with a little bloodshed.”

  “Now you’re being ridiculous,” Grace said. “I’m going to bed.” She was at the office door before she turned, temper extinguished. “I wanted to thank you for dinner, and for meeting your sister. She was really quite lovely, in the end.”

  “Oh yes,” the doctor said, slipping into the chair by the fire. “All the Thornhollows are, once you get used to us.”

  Grace returned to her room to find an envelope addressed to her resting on the pillow. Reed’s careful handwriting sent her heart into her throat, and she tossed Adelaide’s address on her nightstand to tear into the envelope. Pages fell out, one of them weather-beaten and misshapen by the elements. Grace set it aside, preferring Alice’s voice to be the last she heard before falling asleep. Falsteed’s letter was short, its message frightening.

  Dearest Grace—

  I know that the long interval while you waited to hear from your sister may have seemed unbearable, but I fear what reaction the wished-for letter will bring. Reed has been as vigilant as can be expected, given the Boston winter, but I imagine many pages of your own as well as hers have been lost to the winds. I enclose the one he retrieved just yesterday with a heavy heart, questioning my judgment in sending it to you.

  The papers tell me that your father was recently under your very roof. I hope it was not too troubling for you. As to your sister, I will see what may be done, if anything. I fear my reach does not extend far beyond these walls. And yourself, as a person presumed dead, are nearly powerless. I will think, here in the darkness. You do so as well, but do it in the sunlight, where you belong.

  Falsteed

  With trembling fingers, Grace turned to the weather-beaten page, anxious to read the words, yet dreading what they would say.

  Fair Lily—

  The winter must be hard on you, for I have only had the one letter from you since the first. I write and find my pages gone in the morning, but perhaps the fairies cannot always get to it before the snows do. The winter is
not fun. I am inside always and Mother says I am too old for my toys, but when I ask to have my hair put up again she says I’m not old enough yet. I do not know if I am a lady or a child.

  I miss Grace. And Father. He has left again to go talk to people. On his last trip he brought me home a pretty blue hat with velvet ribbons. He said he’ll bring me something even better this time, but I’ll have to do him a special favor to get it. I don’t know what could be prettier than that hat. Father says it matches my eyes.

  Write back if you can, as I am bored.

  Alice

  Grace crushed the letter in her hands, and she coiled into a ball on her bed, allowing the darkness that Falsteed had warned her against to take over.

  “We must do something,” Grace said, flinging Alice’s letter to the table in Thornhollow’s office. “I cannot stand by and let her suffer the same fate as I did.”

  Thornhollow picked up the letter, scanning it quickly, his expression blank. “I have been following your father’s movements in the papers. His speech schedule is set and it will be a matter of weeks yet before he returns home.”

  “And then what?” Grace cried. “What will we do?”

  He didn’t meet her gaze, his eyes on the sleet-covered window instead. “Grace . . . I don’t know what we can do. Falsteed said it himself; you’re presumed dead, he’s in an asylum. In my opinion you’ve already put too much on Reed by asking him to run your letters. What would you have him do now? Risk imprisonment by kidnapping your sister?”

  “Yes,” Grace said, her face a white sheet. “If that’s what it takes.”

  “Ridiculous. As the only living child of a powerful politician there’d be a manhunt. He’d never even get her out of the city. Not to mention it would scare the poor child witless.”

  “Better a frightened child than a child no longer,” she said. “And you forgot to number yourself among my allies.”

  He tossed his hands in the air, baffled. “What can I do?”

  “What can you do?” Grace seethed. “Do you think I don’t see the expensive cut of your clothes, or your sister’s jewels? No one would care if an inconsequential family name stopped dead with a brooding doctor—who happens to drive a very expensive carriage, as well. And women don’t just flock to looks, Doctor. I’ve been in society; I know exactly how important a good marriage—”