Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë Page 4

  “We shook hands after Mr. Thackeray’s lecture last night.”

  I took a closer look at him. He had pink, boyish features, a slight build, and a habit of tilting his head. His eyes were large, brown, protuberant, and shining with earnestness. His clothing was neat and clean, but frayed at the collar and cuffs, his shoes polished but worn. He didn’t look familiar, but there had been such a big crowd at the salon, I could easily have forgotten him. “Well, it’s a pleasure to see you again, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Oliver Heald.” Seizing my hand in both of his, he pumped it vigorously. His hands were warm and moist. “I’m so glad we ran into each other! I’ve been so wanting a chance to talk to you. I love Jane Eyre. I’ve read it ten times. It’s my favorite book.”

  He held my hand too long. He stood too close, leaning toward me, his earnest brown eyes gazing into my face. As I stammered my thanks, I backed away, but he followed.

  “I can’t wait to tell everyone at school that I met you.” Mr. Heald added, “I teach geography.” That he was a teacher didn’t surprise me. His diction was that of an educated man, and I could imagine him with a class of boys who did mocking imitations of him. “I heard that you were once a teacher, too. Is it so?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you went on to become a famous authoress.” He confided, “I write a little, too. Were you also a governess?” When I admitted as much, he seemed gratified. “I hope you’ll pardon me for saying that you are exactly as I pictured Jane Eyre.”

  Too many people have likened me to her. Although I am aware of the resemblances, it embarrasses me. I made polite, modest disclaimers as I sought a chance to escape.

  “You are unmarried?” Mr. Heald inquired.

  I owned that I was, although my spinsterhood is a tender subject that I don’t care to discuss. People assume that it is due to my plain appearance. They don’t know that I have turned down four marriage proposals, including Slade’s. I was beginning to be annoyed by Mr. Heald.

  He greeted my admission with delight. “I, too, am unattached.”

  This conversation was going in a direction that I did not like. “Sir, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you, but my friends are waiting for me. I must go now.”

  When I joined the Smiths at our carriage, I forgot Mr. Heald. He was a chance encounter of no significance—or so I believed at the time. My thoughts returned to John Slade.

  I knew I must go back to Bedlam, for another look at that lunatic.

  4

  AS I WRITE MY STORY, I BECOME EVER MORE AWARE THAT THERE is much more to it than what I personally experienced. The whole of it includes crucial dimensions that I can never know as intimately as do the people who shaped them. I can only conjecture at the scenery, sensations, and emotions involved. That is the limitation of writing from the first-person point of view, as I did when I wrote Jane Eyre. The characters other than Jane, the narrator, could be portrayed only as she saw them. They depended on her to bear witness to their actions and feelings and bring them to life. I faced the same problem when I penned the story of my adventures of 1848. Many things important to understanding the big picture happened to people besides myself; yet I am the sole narrator. My solution was to recreate the story’s hidden dimensions using my imagination, my knowledge of the facts, and my skill as an author. I will employ the same strategy now.

  Reader, forgive me if I take liberties with the details. Be assured that my narrative captures the essential truth. Here I will begin with the story of the man around whom my story revolves.

  THE SECRET ADVENTURES OF JOHN SLADE

  1848 December. A blizzard assailed Moscow. Its rooftops, domes, turrets, and spires disappeared into the swirling white sky. Snow from earlier falls mounded the walls of the buildings, lay piled along every street. Sleighs zoomed through the city, their runners creaking, their harnesses jingling, their horses blowing jets of vapor out of ice-caked nostrils.

  John Slade leaned into the wind that blew cold, stinging snowflakes against his face as he strode along Tverskaya Street. After two months in Moscow, he blended perfectly with the Russians. He appeared to be one among hundreds of men muffled in fur-lined greatcoat, hat, and boots. No one could tell he was English. After days spent exploring the city and striking up conversations with strangers, he had learned where to find the people he wanted to meet.

  He turned onto a side street lined with restaurants and taverns. Lights burned in windows fogged with steam. He entered the Café Philipov. Heat from a blazing fire and the sweet, Oriental-smelling smoke from Russian cigarettes engulfed him. Young men, engaged in loud, fervent conversation, crowded around the tables. Waiters served tea from samovars. Slade sat in a corner by himself. He shed his outdoor garments, lit a cigarette, and ordered tea. Listening to the other men nearest him, he learned their names and occupations.

  “Damn the censors!” said one unkempt, shaggy-haired fellow named Fyodor, a writer for a progressive journal. “They suppress all my articles!”

  “The Tsar doesn’t want ideas about freedom to spread from the West to the populace,” said Alexander, dignified and bespectacled, who taught philosophy at Moscow University.

  Their companion was a burly, bearded poet named Peter; he thumped the table with his fist. “Revolution is coming, whether His Royal Highness wants it or not!”

  Slade hitched his chair up to their table. “Revolution has already come to most of Europe, and often failed, thanks to the Tsar. He has sent his army to crush rebellions wherever he could. He is determined to keep revolution from spreading here. No wonder he’s known as the Policeman of Europe. If you want things to change, you’ll have to do more than talk.”

  The men turned to Slade. “And who are you?” Fyodor asked.

  “Ivan Zubov,” Slade said. “I’m a journalist from St. Petersburg.”

  He spoke Russian perfectly, a result of his natural aptitude for languages and intensive study with native experts. For months before he’d come to Moscow, he’d lived in St. Petersburg, where the experts had drilled, coached, and groomed him. He’d practiced in that city until he was confident that he had mastered the role he’d chosen as his disguise. But the men regarded him with suspicion: they couldn’t afford to trust any stranger who wandered into their haunt. As Slade prepared to convince them that he was a fellow radical, the door burst open. In rushed a dozen big, stern-faced men wearing gray greatcoats and hoods, armed with clubs and pistols. Someone exclaimed, “It’s the Third Section!”

  Slade knew that the Third Section was the Tsar’s secret service, the branch of the government charged with maintaining surveillance on the citizens, censoring publications, and uncovering plots against the Tsar and his regime. It employed many police, spies, informants, and agents provocateur, and had arrested hundreds of intellectuals who embraced Western notions of government reform. It had evidently learned that these intellectuals liked to gather at the Café Philipov.

  Customers jumped up from the tables and rushed toward the back door. Slade didn’t want to be arrested any more than his new acquaintances did. He followed them. The Third Section policemen lunged after the departing horde. They attacked men too drunk or too slow to run. As they wielded their clubs, Slade heard bones crack and cries of pain. He evaded the policemen who grabbed at him, but Alexander the professor wasn’t so agile. A policeman caught him. He called for help. Peter and Fyodor hurried to his rescue, but Slade shouted, “Go! I’ll save your friend!”

  He seized the policeman who had begun beating Alexander. The policeman rounded on Slade, club swinging. Slade ducked. He rammed his fist into the policeman’s stomach. The policeman grunted and doubled over. Slade wrested the club from his hand, then smote him on his head. He fell, unconscious. While Slade hurried Alexander to the door, the other police fired their pistols. Gunshots erupted behind Slade. Bullets struck walls, shattered windows. Slade and Alexander tumbled outside, into the blizzard.

  Peter and Fyodor were waiting. “Hurry!” they cried. Supporting Alexande
r, whose leg was hurt, they led Slade through the maze of alleys. Behind them, rapid footsteps broke the snow and screams blared as the police pursued other men who’d escaped from the café. More gunshots exploded. Slade and his group tumbled down a flight of icy stairs to the cellar of a tavern. They crouched, coatless and shivering, until the night was quiet.

  “Thank you,” Alexander said to Slade. “If not for you, I would be dead now.”

  The other men nodded. The suspicion in their eyes had given way to respect. Peter said, “You may be a stranger in town, but you are our comrade.”

  As Slade shook hands with his new friends, he felt a mixture of satisfaction and sadness. He liked these men, and he sympathized with their cause, but he was duty-bound to exploit them. He regretted that the friendships he cultivated in the course of his work often turned out badly, for both sides.

  5

  I FELT BETTER AFTER MAKING THE DECISION TO RETURN TO Bedlam, but I couldn’t go alone, and I knew Dr. Forbes would be unwilling to escort me. During breakfast at Number 76 Gloucester Terrace the next morning, I told George Smith what had happened the previous day and tried to press him into service. He said, “I’m sorry, Charlotte, but I think Dr. Forbes is right. You must have made a mistake. It would be best to forget the whole business.”

  “Surely, Miss Brontë, you wouldn’t drag George into it?” his mother was quick to object. “Not on his Saturday off.” She sounded as much aggrieved because I dared make work for him as appalled that I’d gotten mixed up in sordid doings.

  I said, “I am afraid that until I discover the true identity of the lunatic, I won’t be able to concentrate on my writing.”

  This was sheer blackmail. Mrs. Smith bit back a retort: she knew how much the fortunes of Smith, Elder and Company depended on me. George protested that another trip to Bedlam would only worsen my state of mind, but in the end he capitulated.

  While we drove through London, rain began to fall. We hurried up the steps of Bedlam, got drenched in the downpour, and paid our admission fees. As I hurried George through the wards, I noticed matrons and attendants standing in huddles, conversing in low, nervous voices. Patients roved, more agitated than they’d been the day before. Upon reaching the door to the criminal lunatics’ wing, we found a uniformed police constable standing guard.

  “What’s going on?” George asked.

  The constable was young, as fresh-faced as a farm boy, and clearly distressed. “There’s been a murder.”

  The word struck a mighty throb of alarm through me. My fears for Slade surged higher.

  “Who’s been killed?” George asked.

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” the constable said. When I threw myself at the door, he held me off. “Sorry, mum, you can’t go in there.”

  George read the name on the constable’s badge and said, “Look here, Constable Ryan—I’m George Smith of Smith, Elder and Company, and the police commissioner is a friend of mine.” It was true; George had many friends in many places. “Let me in, or the next time I see him, I’ll mention that you were uncooperative.”

  Constable Ryan hesitated, torn between his duty and his fear that George could put him in bad odor with his superior. He opened the door and stood aside.

  “I’ll see what’s happened,” George told me. “You stay here.”

  “No! I’m going with you!”

  I spoke with such determination that his will gave way to mine. Together we entered the criminal lunatics’ wing. The stench and the inmates’ howls greeted us.

  “Good Lord,” George muttered.

  Blind instinct guided my steps through the dungeon. As I broke into a run, I chastised myself for allowing Dr. Forbes to rush me away from Bedlam yesterday, and for my doubt that the lunatic was Slade. Was he dead? Might I have saved him? Winded and panting, I arrived at the cell in which I’d seen Slade. Voices issued from the open door. Inside, two police constables were milling around, examining the table with the straps, the weird apparatus. Two more, and a man who wore a black raincoat, stood gazing down at something at their feet. I perceived an odor at once sweet and salty, metallic and raw.

  The odor of blood.

  It seemed to leap through my nostrils and claw at some deep, vulnerable place in me. The blood was wet and fresh and shockingly red, pooled on the floor, smeared where feet had skidded in it. A frantic cry burst from me: “Slade! No!”

  The men turned. As they stared at me, they shifted position, and I saw what they’d been looking at. Two men lay on the floor. They were dressed in plain cotton trousers and smocks. One was crumpled on his side. A gory halo of blood surrounded his head. The other man sprawled on his back, arms flung out. From his left eye protruded a slim glass cylinder equipped with a plunger, such as the one I’d seen used by the foreigner yesterday. Its needle had penetrated deep into the man’s brain.

  I experienced an onslaught of relief, confusion, and astonishment.

  Neither dead man was Slade.

  I fell into the arms of George Smith. He beheld the scene inside the room and said, “Good Lord!” He turned me so that my face was against his chest and I could see no more.

  I managed not to faint; my adventures of 1848 had given me a reserve of stamina. But I was so breathless that I couldn’t walk. George carried me out of the lunatics’ wing, shouting for help. I was put in a wheelchair and conveyed to a chamber used for conferences. A doctor administered smelling salts. A matron fetched me a cup of hot tea. I drank the tea and revived somewhat. George sat at the table with me; he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “That was the most awful sight I’ve ever seen. I’m just glad it wasn’t your friend who was murdered.” He paused, then said, “Who exactly is this John Slade?”

  I hadn’t told him that Slade was a spy for the Crown. None but a few privileged persons were supposed to know. “He’s a clergyman from Canterbury.” That was a false identity Slade had once used. It would have to do.

  “How did you come to know him?”

  I’d been sworn to secrecy about the circumstances under which I’d known Slade. “We had a mutual acquaintance.” It was Isabel White, the woman whose murder had launched me on my adventure of 1848.

  George stroked his chin; he seemed to debate with himself on the wisdom of pursuing the subject. “May I ask exactly how well you know Mr. Slade?”

  He didn’t want to hear that Slade had been my suitor, I could tell. He most certainly didn’t want his company’s famous authoress to have romantic connections with a mental patient. What an ado the newspapers would make about that! And I couldn’t tell him anything of what had passed between Slade and me.

  “Mr. Slade is a good friend, but no more,” I settled for saying.

  George scrutinized me closely, and I averted my eyes from the suspicion in his. Fortunately, we were interrupted by the arrival of the man in the black raincoat and a middle-aged woman dressed in a gray frock, a white apron, and a white cap. She had a prim mouth, sharp eyes and nose, and cheeks as rosy, mottled, and hard as crabapples.

  “I’m Henrietta Hunter, matron of Bethlem Hospital,” she said. “Are you feeling better?”

  I said I was. The black-coated man said, “Good, because I want a few words with you.” His high, stooped shoulders, black garments, and long face gave him the look of a vulture. His greenish eyes flicked over me as if I were a carcass he was wondering whether to eat. “I’m Detective Inspector Hart, from the Metropolitan Police.”

  George rose and demanded, “What is going on here? Who were those men that were killed? Who killed them, and how did it happen?”

  “Mr. Smith, is it?” D. I. Hart said with a humorless smile. “You bullied my constable into letting you into the crime scene. You hadn’t ought to have done that. He’s in trouble, and so will you be, unless you sit down and keep quiet.”

  George reluctantly obeyed.

  “That’s better.” D. I. Hart pulled up a chair next to mine, turned it to face me, and sat. Matron Hunter remained standing
near me, like a jailer. He asked my name, and after I gave it, said, “What do you know about this, Miss Brontë?”

  My status as a famous authoress gave me the confidence to stand up to him instead of meekly surrendering. “I refuse to say until you answer Mr. Smith’s questions.”

  D. I. Hart looked surprised and vexed. I folded my arms. He put on a condescending expression and said, “The murder victims were nurses. It was an inmate who killed them.”

  I had been so relieved to discover that Slade wasn’t the victim, but now I felt a cold, ominous touch of dread.

  “As far as I can deduce, they were removing him from the treatment table,” D. I. Hart said. “They thought he was unconscious, but he was faking. When they undid the straps, he attacked them. He hit one nurse on the head with a truncheon. He fought with the other, grabbed a hypodermic syringe, and stabbed him through the eye.”

  George Smith shook his head in disapproving wonder. I could hardly bear to ask whether Slade was the murderer, but I had to know. “Was the inmate a tall, thin man with shaggy black hair and gray eyes, about forty years old?”

  Interest kindled in D. I. Hart’s gaze. He looked even more carnivorous than before. “So I’m told. How did you know?”

  It was as I’d feared: the police thought Slade was the murderer.

  “A nurse reported that a lady visitor had wandered into the criminal lunatics’ wing yesterday.” Matron Hunter bent a speculative stare on me. “Was that you, Miss Brontë? Did you see the inmate then?”

  “It was, and I did,” I said. “But he didn’t kill those men!”

  “What makes you so sure?” D. I. Hart said. “Do you know him?”

  “Yes,” I said with passionate conviction, “and I know that John Slade is innocent.”

  “It appears you don’t know the man at all,” D. I. Hart said with a smug, unpleasant smile. “His name isn’t John Slade. It’s Josef Typinski. And it’s highly unlikely that you’ve ever met him. He’s a refugee from Poland.”