Doctor Who_ The Sleep of Reason - Martin Day [9]
‘Dr Smith has been with us for a few months,’ said Bartholomew, picking up on the unspoken question. ‘Dr Oldfield and Dr Thomson will, I am sure, introduce themselves to you in due course.’ She made as if to usher Laska away.
‘You mentioned the history of this place,’ said Smith. ‘Perhaps you should talk to my friends Fitz and Trix.’
‘Unusual names,’ said Laska, mocking Smith’s earlier statement with a grin.
‘Really?’ said Smith. ‘I’d never thought about it. You should hear my full name!’
Laska was puzzled. ‘Something-or-other Smith? Hardly.’
‘Ah.’ Suddenly Smith looked embarrassed. ‘Of course.’
‘Dr Smith is hiring a cottage in the grounds,’ explained Bartholomew. ‘I’m quite jealous of him – what a wonderful commute every morning, just walking up the path to the front door!’
‘Fitz and Trix are researching the history of this house – a snapshot, if you will, of society’s attitudes to the mentally ill,’ said Smith. ‘In answer to your original question, I’m pretty sure this place has never been open to the public.
Before it was a hospital it was an asylum, and before that a workhouse. Why do you ask?’
‘I just have a feeling that I’ve been here before,’ said Laska. ‘The kitchens are over in that wing,’ she continued, pointing, ‘there’s an old cellar immediately beneath our feet, the outer wall to the north is in need of repair.’ She pointed again. ‘The patients stay over there, the stables are – or were – some-15
where there. On the second floor there’s a bricked-up window that would have looked down over the formal gardens.’ She smiled. ‘How am I doing?’
Smith seemed to take all this in his stride, but Dr Bartholomew’s voice betrayed her surprise. ‘How do you know. . . ?’
‘Most nights I dream I’m here,’ Laska said. ‘And now, finally, I am.’
16
Three
Architecture and Morality
(Angel of Death)
Extract from the Diary of Dr Thomas Christie Thursday 24th December 1903
I awoke feeling bitterly cold and am sure that the chill remained with me all day. I understand that we English are notorious in the eyes of our foreign neighbours for always wanting, above all other things, to talk about the weather; on a day such as this one can only imagine that it is because the climate behaves as if designed to assault our senses and dominate our every waking thought.
Dark clouds are gathering – both literal and, if I might be permitted so fanciful a notion, symbolic – and I do not happily watch them as they form.
My first appointment of the day was with one Joseph Sands, a well-to-do fellow who arrived early to complete his yearly ritual. Why the man should chose to come to Mausolus House on such a day – it bothers me not in the least, but Mr Sands seemed a God-fearing sort of fellow – I cannot fathom.
Mind, perhaps I am doing him a grave disservice – he did not strike me as a casual hypocrite and I would always rather that good was done out of some sense of obligation than it not be done at all.
A less rational man than I might have stared down at the horses, wondering whether – brute creatures though they be – they might be able, in some way, to sense the air about this place. Did they flinch at the slightest noise? Were their ears pricked and alert for a potential danger they could not understand? I do not know the truth of this, for I was hard at work when Mr Sands knocked upon my door. (It transpired that he was able to make his way directly to the office without any help from the staff; it is indeed strange how, almost without our bidding, the human mind can remember those things we perhaps might wish to forget, and allow to fade to dust those things we most desire to cherish.)
I bade him enter – somewhere in the house I could make out the sound of a patient crying – and the man swept in. He was a tall, ascetic fellow with 17
hollow cheeks and grey eyes. His frock coat and dark silk choker were several decades out of fashion; he was every inch the Victorian gentleman, all these months after the death of the queen.