The Bedlam Detective (31 page)

S
O WHEN
B
EDLAM WAS FULL, THEY BUILT
B
ROADMOOR
.

Sebastian telephoned to make the appointment, and on Friday morning he and Evangeline traveled out into Berkshire on the train together. At a little station built to serve nearby Wellington College they disembarked, and from there took the carriage that was waiting to convey them to the world’s first purpose-built asylum for the criminally insane.

During the ride, which took them past the village of Crowthorne and on a steady climb up the wooded hill that overlooked it, Sebastian said, “Here’s an irony for you. You remember Joseph Hewlett? The man who slashed Elisabeth and then cut his own throat? He survives. The knife he used on her was filthy, and poisoned her blood. The one he turned on himself was the hospital’s own, and clean. The attention he received saved his life. And on the advice I gave him, he now pleads an unsound mind. So he won’t even hang.”

“Surely they won’t let him go free.”

He looked out into the autumn woodland, where the passing trees stood like lonely soldiers. “We’ll see how far he makes it if they do,” he said.

She seemed startled by his tone. “Would you hunt him down?”

“I don’t know. I know it would be wrong. But would it be unjust? Because hunting down men for justice used to be my living.”

“You won’t do it, Sebastian,” she said, as their landau swung into the approach to the asylum’s main gate.

“You don’t know me that well.”

But it was empty talk, and Sebastian knew it. His thoughts of revenge were a consolation, but nothing more than that. Most likely Joseph Hewlett would be committed to some institution very like this one, if his plea of insanity were to be accepted. Those who killed, and were judged mad, might be spared a hanging; but they were neither forgiven nor set free.

Broadmoor Asylum’s main entrance had the look of some grim railway terminus, with brick towers and a big clock above the gateway arch between them. The gates opened at their approach, and the carriage passed inside and stopped. Thirty feet beyond this entrance was a second gate; the inner gate would not open until the outer had been secured. The asylum had been designed by a military architect, and built like a fortress.

For an hour the previous evening Sebastian had studied the case notes of Bernard Somerville, Ph.D. After his return from the expedition, unable to work and with his health broken, Somerville had been obliged to lodge with his sister. He slept badly, and as a consequence was hard to rouse in the mornings.

One day, following a particularly bad night, his sister had entered his bedroom with his morning tea, to find him hidden in a swirl of blankets and covers with only his big toe sticking out and visible. His sister, who sounded like a jolly sort, had taken hold of the toe and tugged on it to wake him. Whereupon he’d flown out of bed in an instant and pinned her to the wall, fixing her there with a forearm and seizing her head with the other hand to smash it into the plaster.

She managed to escape and ran from the house. Somerville pursued her, caught her in the street, and tried to finish her off with a rock. He would have killed her for certain, had he not been restrained by passersby. He’d raged in the Black Maria, and only achieved calm in his police cell some hours later.

His explanation to the custody sergeant had been that in the state between sleep and waking, he had not recognized his sister. He had mistaken her for something inhuman and malevolent. He had acted violently out of fear, and to protect himself.

“I am not,” he had pleaded, “and have never been, a knowingly dangerous man.”

S
OMERVILLE WAS
confined on the second floor, in a single room on an L-shaped corridor. Somerville had offered no threat to anyone since his arrival, saying that for the first time since the voyage home, he’d felt safe. The superintendent’s deputy was to remain with them throughout the interview.

Though unmistakably a cell, with bars at the windows and an inspection slit in the door, the room was not without its comforts. It had an armchair, a writing table, and a bookcase filled with botanical and other learned texts. In the armchair sat Somerville, enormous, a walrus of a man. He did not rise as they entered, but he did close the book that he’d been reading.

In the doctored photograph at the front of Sir Owain Lancaster’s book he’d been represented as a tall, spare member of the party with white hair and a long goatee. In life, his beard was a dirty gray. Combed out, it reached to his chest. He wore a smoking jacket, a waistcoat that was almost bursting its buttons across his girth, and checked trousers. One leg was extended and supported by a padded stool, recalling the infection for which he’d been treated on the voyage home. He wore a carpet slipper on the elevated foot, slashed open to relieve any pressure.

Sebastian introduced himself and Evangeline and said, “Thank you for consenting to see us.”

“I don’t recall consenting,” Somerville said. “What I recall is the suggestion that I might be returned to the disturbed ward if I refused.”

“Who suggested that?”

“Who indeed.”

“If this goes well, then perhaps I can intercede for you. See if I can’t persuade the superintendent to let you hold on to your privileges.”

“Can we drop the charade?” Somerville said. “It’s been made very plain to me. I tell you my tale or they take my books away.”

“As you wish,” Sebastian said, and there was a pause in proceedings as extra chairs were brought in.

When all were seated, Sebastian said, “You were in the jungle with Sir Owain Lancaster.”

“I was.”

“And apart from him, you were the only survivor of the party.”

“Not exactly. A number of the men turned back early and missed the worst of it.”

“All right, then,” Sebastian said patiently. “You’re the only other man who completed the journey and survived.”

“I told the story for the inquest in Brazil. I was too ill to attend the court, but my account was translated and read into the record.” At this point, he looked toward Evangeline. He said, “It has elements that are not pleasant for me to recall, or for anyone else to hear.”

Evangeline said, “Don’t be too concerned on my account.”

“Very well, then,” Somerville said. “Just bear in mind that these are the words of a madman. Even
I
can’t trust everything that I say.”

I
BELIEVE THAT
S
IR
O
WAIN HAD ALREADY SPENT TWO YEARS PREPARING
the expedition before I joined it [Somerville began]. The design of those great steam cars was his own. I traveled up to his estate and saw the plans there, and he took a party of us to his engineering works to see them being built. His original idea had been for the Europeans to traverse the jungle in airships while the Portuguese-speaking
camaradas
and their mules kept pace with us on the ground, but he’d been persuaded to abandon that. Not for any technical reason, I don’t think, but because his wife refused to fly.

You’re aware that he took his wife and child on the expedition and they didn’t survive it? They appear nowhere in any of his retellings, but I don’t believe there was ever any doubt that they’d accompany us. Mrs. Lancaster brought outfits for almost every occasion, but nothing for the conditions that we actually encountered. I can’t imagine that he’d given her any true idea of what might lie in store.

For a man who prided himself on his thoroughness and rigor, Sir Owain came badly unstuck. He planned around his vision meticulously. But try suggesting any possibilities that were not part of his vision, and he’d give you very short shrift. I had been to the Amazon before and knew what to expect. Sir Owain had read up on the Amazon and was sure he knew better.

Take me, for example. I was engaged as the expedition’s botanist. Only once we were under way did I learn that I was to perform as the expedition’s doctor as well. He’d planned this to keep the numbers down. He called it good business sense.

I said to him, “But I have no more than one year of medicine. What if illness should strike?”

He said, “Then I shall expect you to go out and find suitable remedies in the local vegetation.”

I argued that I had only basic first-aid skills—I could set a leg or drain a wound, but nothing much beyond that. He assured me that nothing more complicated would ever be called for. “An accident,” he would quote in response to any disagreement, “is an inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.”

Well, as you know, two of those mighty land craft broke down and never made it to our assembly point. So even before we set off inland from the coast, we were abandoning supplies. Another of them burst its boiler three days inland. That meant another two tons of goods to leave by the wayside. He wouldn’t dump his family’s luggage—not even that infernal rocking horse—but instead he recalculated everyone’s rations with the aim of supplementing them with game from the jungle.

The plan was to travel overland to the lake headwaters of a particular uncharted river, where we’d unload our boats. The steam cars and the mules would make their way back, and the main party would navigate the river all the way down to the sea. Along the way we were to stop at predetermined points, to take measurements and make celestial observations for Sir Owain’s global ordnance system.

I was traveling some way behind the engines, in the mule train. Some days I could be as much as a mile back from the leaders. As we went along I’d see sacks and boxes by the trail, opened and rifled by those ahead of me. Sir Owain continued to ride in luxury at the head of the parade, unaware of the vital supplies hemorrhaging away in his wake. When I raised it in camp the
camaradas
blamed the Indians, while the Indians either failed to understand, or pretended so.

We were a week behind schedule when we reached the lake that was the birthplace of our unpronounceable river, although Sir Owain declared his confidence that we’d make up time once we were on the water. It took us two days to prepare the boats and load our goods onto them. This involved some inevitable stock-taking, and for the first time I saw Sir Owain show concern. The boxes of staples—by which I mean salt beef, tinned hams, biscuits—were by now far outnumbered by those packed with fine wines, champagne, olives, and foie gras.

The lamp burned in his work tent for most of that night, and some harsh words were spoken. By morning he and his quartermasters had radically revised the expedition plan to suit our remaining supplies and manpower. One-third of the
camaradas
were paid off. They were sent back with the mules and oxen, which I gather they promptly stole.

Everything and everyone else was loaded onto the boats and launched across the lake. This lake stood on a level plain, with mountains behind it and the jungle sloping away below. Without wind or tide to disturb us, that first day’s crossing was like a lazy afternoon on the Thames.

The river itself was another matter. It began quietly enough at the point where the lake emptied, but within the first mile it began to narrow and speed up, and then its course very soon took some rapid turns. Rocks and islands set up eddies that made the boats sometimes hard to control. Nevertheless, after two days we reached a point close to our first measuring station with some excitements but without any real mishap.