Page 40 of Silence of Deceit
Still, even with that plan in place, a sense of disappointment settled over her shoulders. “I suppose it’s not an entirely wasted trip.”
“It hasn’t exactly been fruitful,” Hugh grumbled, pushing up from his chair. “Are you ready to leave?”
Audrey stood, her muscles stiff from sitting in the poorly cushioned chair for so long. “You need not even ask.”
“I’d like to speak to the matron on our way out.”
“Mrs. Derry? Why?” She would have been happy to never set eyes on her again.
“I would like to know more about the former superintendent. I haven’t seen his file. Have you?”
The folios scattered around their feet suddenly seemed pointless. She sighed. “No.”
“Do you recall him?”
She grimaced. “Doctor Warwick. Yes. He was always so patronizing. So smug, wearing this little pleased grin…as though he was amused by all of us.” She didn’t understand what Estelle, who had quite openly admired him, had seen in his character. Audrey didn’t like thinking of him, or the sessions she was forced to sit through while he spoke to her like she was a petulant child.
Hugh snatched his hat from the other end of the couch. “He sounds like a prat. Let’s see what Mrs. Derry remembers about him.”
After a pert knock upon the door, the orderly stationed outside unlocked the office and allowed them to exit. Audrey and Hugh followed him toward the dining hall where Mrs. Derry was supervising. He led them through a few winding, narrow passageways. Patients—or residents, as Audrey preferred to call them—shuffled about. Some aimlessly, others chatting arm-in-arm, looking as though they were strolling down Bond Street for a bit of shopping. Again and again, Audrey recalled the indignity of living here. If it could even be called that.
She hadn’t been living. She’d been existing. Waiting. There had been so many days when she’d feared her mother and uncle would never arrange for her release. That they would be happy to leave her there forever. She hadn’t belonged at an asylum—so many of them hadn’t belonged—and yet she’d been powerless to change her situation. Unless she tried to run away, as Tabitha had, only to meet with such misfortune for her efforts. She’d been laid to rest in the burial ground on the property. Even in death, she had not been able to escape. Once Audrey finally left Shadewell, she’d promised herself she would never again be put into a position of powerlessness. She’d believed being a duchess would grant her that.
And yet, she wasn’t entirely free. She was still, in some ways, trapped and restricted. Oh, nothing at all like when she’d been imprisoned here in this desolate place, where people were tucked away to be forgotten. But the position of duchess had walls of its own.
The orderly led them around a corner, into a wider corridor. At the base of a wide set of stairs, an older woman sat in a rattan Bath chair. She rolled her wrists, fluttering her fingers through the air as she hummed, a smile fixed upon her face.
Audrey’s feet scudded to a stop. “Lady Gladdington?”
The woman’s humming fell off, and she lowered her hands to grip the arms of her chair. She sat forward, though her feet remained propped on the Bath chair’s footrests. With an unexpected rush of emotion, Audrey shifted direction and went toward the older resident.
Lady Beatrice Gladdington was a widowed countess, and when Audrey had come to Shadewell, she had already been there for a decade. Like so many others, Lady Gladdington had seemed…normal. But the woman had soon proved that she was not. During the daylight hours, she hummed and sang and twirled through the rooms and halls as if at some soiree of her former years. But as the sun set, she became nervous, then hysterical, cowering in her room as she wailed about the monsters in the night coming to devour her.
Though it had only been a handful of years since Audrey had left, Lady Gladdington’s face appeared sallower and more lined, as though another decade had passed. The woman’s watery blue eyes peered up at her, first in confusion, then in recognition.
“Odd Audrey?”
Hugh had stopped now, as had the orderly, and turned back toward them.
“Yes, Lady Gladdington, it’s me. Odd Audrey,” she replied, recalling the older woman’s habit of calling others by silly names. Mary had the unfortunate sobriquet “Scary Mary” for when the girl had dissolved into her fits of temper and whole-body spasms. Teddy had been “Tippled Ted” because of his rosy cheeks.
“It is good to see you,” Audrey said after a moment.
The woman’s bright smile waned. The brackets between her silver brows deepened. Had she detected the lie? It wasn’tgoodto see her. Rather, it was quite sad. The countess would be a lifelong resident.
“Miss Smith.” An involuntary spluttering of Audrey’s pulse made her feel ill as she turned toward the matron, now stalking toward them. “Are you quite finished with your task?”
Mrs. Derry was clearly no more pleased to see her and Hugh than she had been the first time.
“We are,” she replied, thankful they would soon be gone from this place. “However, before we go, we have a last question about the former superintendent, Doctor Warwick.”
The matron stiffened, her square chin lifting. “What about him?”
“Wicked, wicked Warwick,” Lady Gladdington sang.
Mrs. Derry’s harsh stare cut to the countess.
“We’d like to know where he went after leaving Shadewell,” Hugh said, observing Lady Gladdington with curiosity as she continued to giggle and sing, “Wicked, wicked Warwick.”
