A Madness So Discreet (21 page)

Grace's mouth fell open, her rage evaporated. “What?”

“She stands about four feet eleven inches, which may be taller than when you saw her last. She likes to sing and seems to have a particular affinity for ‘Oh Promise Me' at the moment. As for the new hat, it is indeed quite pretty. The men I've been paying to watch your house for months even said so.”

Grace gaped, her tongue searching for words. “Doctor, I . . .”

He carefully folded Alice's letter, newly stained with Grace's tears, and handed it back to her. “Alice is important to you, which makes her important to me. She will not suffer needlessly. We
will
think of something, Grace. I promise you.”

Grace took the proffered letter, her hand still shaking with emotion. “I'm sorry for what I said. I had no idea—”

Thornhollow shrugged. “Once I learned you had a younger sister I knew it was only a matter of time before his affections transferred to her. Your presence shielded her for some time, but with you no longer in the house she became vulnerable.”

Grace's hands went to her head. “I should never have left. I should've taken what life had dealt me so that it would never land upon her.”

“Nonsense,” Thornhollow said. “Actions such as your father's are driven by power, nothing else. He seeks to dominate everyone around him, and he'll use any tool in his arsenal to do so. Even if you'd stayed, Alice would have fallen victim to his need for control eventually. You being there would only result in a shared misery.”

He handed her a handkerchief and she wiped her face. “These men you have watching? What can they do?”

“Little more than watch, I'm afraid,” Thornhollow admitted. “But I thought having eyes there would be beneficial. If nothing else, it can bring you some comfort to know that your sister is still happy enough to sing.”

Grace smiled through her tears. “It does. Thank you, Doctor.”

“Am I to understand that your mother cannot be looked to for help?”

The smile vanished. “No. Our mother is a jealous woman. Once we become women we are no longer her children but competitors for his attention.”

Thornhollow sighed. “All right. I will think on it. We have weeks before your father returns home. In the meantime, you're in dire need of distraction and I have just the thing.”

“My mind is latched on to it rather firmly,” Grace said. “I'm afraid it won't let go easily.”

“Perhaps. But I considered your thought that the doctor may have had an elder sibling who died, thrusting the responsibility for the family legacy upon him. And while I still don't agree, there's no reason why you shouldn't look into it.”

“How would I do that?”

“Obituaries,” the doctor said, rapping his knuckles on the table. “Assuming that the possibly fictitious brother's death occurred in the months or weeks leading up to his first kill, reading the obituaries from each paper in the city from that time period might turn up something.”

“And how many papers does the city have?” Grace asked, her heart sinking.

“Four. I took the liberty of visiting their offices this morning and
found that their unsold copies are bought for a pittance by the fish and meat shops to wrap their wares in. I was able to find quite a few papers from the right time by wading around in their back rooms, which I can tell you was quite unpleasant. I brought the lot back here for you to go through, but they've rather taken on the smell of their last residence and I couldn't bring them into the women's wing without Janey tearing into me. You'll have to work out in Ned's stables.”

“Quite all right. I wouldn't mind the walk, and if it affords me the chance to prove my point, all the better,” Grace said, wiping the last of her tears away and offering the kerchief back to Thornhollow.

“You keep that,” he said. “You'll want to cover your nose.”

“
H
e wasn't lying about the smell, was he?” Elizabeth said as they pushed open the door to the stables.

A few explanatory lines on Grace's slate had been enough to lure her friend out to Ned's stable to help scan obituaries. Lazy motes of dust drifted through the air in the winter sunlight, the smell of hay not quite taking the sting out of the reeking newspapers.

“It's like a wharf in here,” Lizzie said, balling her handkerchief more tightly to her nose as they ventured past the stalls. “Poor Ned.”

Grace craned her neck, looking for the stable's human resident. The asylum horses nickered as they walked by, sticking their noses out for a scratch, which both girls happily gave.

“Ned,” Lizzie called out. “It's Elizabeth and Grace. We're here to look over those nasty newspapers Dr. Thornhollow dumped on you.”

A door at the end of the stall corridor opened, and Ned stuck his head out. “Hello there, girls. I've got mince pie on the mind today.”

“Mince pie is lovely,” Lizzie said, voice slightly muffled by her handkerchief. “Do you know where the doctor put the papers?”

“I've got an empty stall here to the left,” he said, herding them into it. “My Helen died not so long ago and we've not replaced her.” His wide eyes immediately filled with tears. “I kept her tail. The doctor said that was all of her I could have, but I've got that much, at least. I put a couple of chairs in there for you along with the stinkers.”

“Thank you, Ned,” Lizzie said as the girls settled in, wobbling piles of newspaper surrounding them. “We apologize for invading your space.”

He shook his head. “I don't mind you girls so much. When I say the things that don't make sense you answer me anyway. It's like having green in your shirt.”

“Green is my favorite color,” Lizzie said.

“I'll be across the way in my quarters,” Ned said. “I'll leave the door open so that the stove can heat you a little. I'm whittling today. She'll be my five hundred and sixty-seventh horse when I'm done.”

“Very nice, Ned,” Lizzie said. “And thanks again.”

The girls looked at the papers piled around them as the steady
snick-snick
of Ned's whittling filled the air, along with his humming of “Yankee Doodle.”

“I guess we should start by weeding out the pages with the
obituaries and tossing the rest,” Lizzie suggested.

Grace nodded and the two girls started sifting through the piles, delicately handling pages that were moist from the humidity of their former residence. Some pages disintegrated in their hands, some had wetly adhered to one another and ruined their print. An hour later their fingers were stained black. They draped wet pages on the stalls around them to dry as they pored over readable pages that had obituaries. Elizabeth fanned a page open and pulled a face.

“Every time I think I'm accustomed to the smell I get a fresh whiff that sets me back,” she said, rummaging in her pocket. “I brought the last of my mother's perfume with me. A dab under the nostrils might do the trick.”

She tipped the little glass bottle onto her finger pad, then rubbed the dimple above her lips. “Here,” she said, offering it to Grace. “Take a drop.”

Grace waved her off, pointing to the bottle and then her friend's heart. Lizzie pulled Grace's hand toward her and put a drop of perfume on her finger. “There's nothing wrong with giving something precious from my past to someone special in the present,” she said.

The delicate scent of rosewater wafted through the air, a fine, pleasant thread among the stable smells and heaviness of the molding, fishy newspapers. Grace dabbed above her lips and the rosewater filled her nostrils, reminding her of the basement in Boston, Falsteed, and Thornhollow cutting into her temples to deliver
her from everything. A smile crossed her face as she rubbed her fingers together, strengthening the scent.

“It's nice, isn't it?” Lizzie asked, tucking the bottle back into her skirt pocket. “Mother gave it to me when I came here.”

Grace's eyes left her own newspaper, watching her friend as she scanned hers. She touched Lizzie's knee hesitantly.

“I don't mind talking about it,” Elizabeth said, looking up. “My mother didn't want to give me up, but Father insisted. Put all the blame on Mother's side of the family, which I suppose is true enough. Mother's mother had String, you see. I could always see it. Mother said I loved Grandma the most, even as an infant. I always wanted to sit in her lap and I'd swipe at String, trying to catch it.

“Grandma knew that Father wouldn't approve, so she never said a word about String in his hearing. When Mother was heavy pregnant with her second, String told Grandma that it would be born dead, with the cord about its neck. She ran over to our house, barefoot and in her nightgown, to try and save it, but it was too late. I saw my baby brother, face black as coal, and Grandma talking about String so loud she'd woke me.

“Father wouldn't have any of it, though Mother tried to tell him it was harmless. He called it witchcraft and threw Grandma out the front door. I remember he shoved her so hard her head bounced up off the rocks and String went flying. Mother was wailing and Father was screaming and the midwife was trying to keep everyone
from killing one another. I put my little hand up on the window and Grandma just got up, real slow, smiled back at me, and hobbled home. I woke up in the morning with String on my shoulder and a voice in my head saying Grandma was gone. I marched downstairs and said so, and Father never looked at me the same after that.”

Grace's fingers hovered on the obituaries, her eyes still on Lizzie, who tossed her old newspaper for a new one without breaking stride in her story.

“Father kept to himself on the subject until Mother was pregnant again and he didn't want me near her. She cried and cried but couldn't convince him there wasn't any harm in String. For the sake of peace she took me to the train station one day, handed me a ticket and this bottle of perfume so I could smell it and remember she loved me. Tears were streaming down her face but she let me go, my own face dry as a sunny day because String had told me all along I was meant for something different.

“If I'd known this is what String had in mind, I might've put up more of an argument,” Lizzie said, holding a wet paper away from her at arm's length, nose wrinkled.

Grace laughed, reaching out to squeeze her friend's hand.

“I'm fine,” Lizzie said, smiling back. “I have no shame in String. I'd rather live where String can be String and I can be me without having to pretend I'm something else.”

The returned squeeze on Grace's hand was almost too much to
bear as she looked back to her newspaper, the ink twice blurred by smears and the tears standing in her eyes.

Grace knew death. Knew it well from following in its footsteps only minutes after they'd been made. She had learned how to trace its passage backward from knife wounds and bullet exits to the thought that had conceived of the act and in whose mind it had occurred. Death's less brutal faces were unfamiliar to her, but she learned their names in the stall, their portraits spelled out in blurry letters reeking of fish scales.

Tuberculosis. Dysentery. Cholera. Malaria. Typhoid. Pneumonia. Diphtheria. Scarlet fever. Brain fever. Whooping cough.

In her room that night she rubbed her eyes to free them from the words that still seemed to dance on the backs of her eyelids, the names of the remaining family members listed as if to stand in defiance of death, proof that their blood would continue. But none of them had the prefix
Dr.
attached to them, and Grace had returned to her room without informing Thornhollow of her failure.

Grace stretched under her bedcovers, her eyes returning to Alice's letter on the bedstand, her heart lurching. She'd been unable to find the words to respond; the only thing she burned to write was to tell Alice to get out, to run away and never return home. But that message would never be delivered, Grace knew. Falsteed wouldn't allow her to advise Alice onto a path that could deliver her into another
breed of harm, or bring it home to roost on Grace's doorstep if she declared herself the author.

With blurred newspaper print still dancing in her eyes, Grace tossed and turned, the smell of rosewater following her down to sleep.

Plaster trickled onto her face along with the first rays of the sun. Grace pulled away from the wall as Joanna pounded on the other side, her leather mitts dulling her impact but reinforcing her determination. Grace sighed and sat up, her hands going to her scars for reassurance and bringing the lingering scent of Lizzie's mother's perfume with them. Her eyes still ached from deciphering columns of newsprint the day before. Her heart was heavy with futility, and Alice's fate hung like a sword above her head. For the first time, the walls that held her felt less like safety and more like imprisonment, binding her to an existence where she could witness suffering but do nothing to help.

The rosewater stayed with her as she pulled her hair up, glancing into the cloudy mirror as she did, her town dress reflected alongside her own face. Without thinking, she pulled curls down to cover her scars, pinning them in place along with the matching hat. The dress followed, and Grace surveyed herself in the mirror, every inch a normal girl with no cares in the world, her surroundings screaming out the opposite.

She snuck into Elizabeth's room, tiptoeing in her boots so as not
to wake the other girl. Grace riffled through Elizabeth's dresser until she found the little bottle of perfume, carefully easing Lizzie's door shut behind her when she left. Joanna's constant thumping covered Grace's footsteps as she slipped down the stairs and out the door long before the rest of the asylum was awake.

Fresh flakes of snow fell on her as she crossed the grounds, catching in her hair and filling the footprints she left behind her. With Nell on her mind and Elizabeth's bottle in her pocket, Grace followed the path the Irish girl had shown her down to the frozen river. She crossed easily, the ice firm beneath her feet, and soon she was on the edge of town, the sun waking up the residents and shops just opening their doors.

Grace shook the snow from her shoulders and walked through the streets, nodding greetings to those she met while her eyes roamed the storefronts for what she needed. She found a chemist's shop on Hudson Street, the midmorning sun lighting up the colored bottles in the window and drawing her to them.

She opened the door, a bell dinging overhead as she did so. The man behind the counter was in conversation with another customer, so Grace browsed the shelves. Colored bottles in various sizes lined the walls, their labels promising cures for everything from chicken pox to dandruff. A table set with everything a fine lady would need for her toilet caught Grace's eye, and she made her way to it. She removed the stoppers from the perfumes to take experimental sniffs.

None quite matched Elizabeth's scent, their much heavier tones
almost overpowering Grace. She put the stopper back on one, barely restraining a sneeze when she noticed a small, hand-lettered sign on the table.

Custom Fragrance Matching Available

Inquire With Chemist

Grace's fingers tightened on Elizabeth's bottle as she waited for the man ahead of her to finish his business. His voice carried as he turned to leave. “We're glad to have you back in regular business, Beaton. The wife swears by your glycerins, says she won't put anything else on the baby's bum. Begging your pardon, ma'am.” He tipped his hat to Grace. She nodded in return as the bell dinged over his departure and approached the counter.

“Excuse me,” she said, “I was wondering if you could—”

Her words died in her mouth as she faced the man across the counter, his massive shoulders spanning the width of a sign above him that read:

Physicians Prescriptions Carefully Compounded

“I . . .” Grace's voice was as forgotten as it had been in Boston, her mind losing all words as she regarded the man whose portrait she and Thornhollow had been drawing for so long without any defining characteristics.

The vague shape of what they had anticipated filled out in flesh and blood provided a rush of details that her mind locked on to. He was tall and broad, his shape more what one would expect behind a blacksmith's hammer than a chemist's counter. His eyes were bright, avoiding hers at all costs as a flush crept over his face. Grace turned to pull Elizabeth's bottle from her pocket and felt them dashing over her body, his curiosity devouring her in the only way he was capable. When she glanced up and locked her eyes with his for the barest of moments she could see his intelligence, no less quick than her own. She reminded herself to be wary and clenched her fingers as they itched to touch her scars.

“I apologize,” she said, fanning her face. “I think some of the perfumes may have overwhelmed me for a moment.”

“Quite all right,” he said, eyes rooted on the counter, cheeks still flushed red in her presence. He cleared his throat and seemed to steel himself before he raised his gaze. “What can I help you with, Miss . . . ?”

“Madeleine Baxter,” Grace said. “I'm in town visiting an old friend and her mother has run out of her favorite scent. Since they're putting me up for some time I thought I'd try to make a little gesture of thanks by refilling it, but you don't seem to have anything with quite the same fragrance.”

She set the bottle on the counter and he removed the stopper, sniffing it. “Seems to be a simple compound of rosewater, although
there may be a touch of bergamot as well.” He held it up to the window, the tiny blue of the glass nearly lost in his hand. Grace watched him as he sniffed again, dabbing his palm with the stopper, all confidence restored when he was lost in his work. The bottle went back to the sunlight, followed by the stopper, and he frowned.