London - Edward Rutherfurd [518]
“It is a most remarkable case,” said Silversleeves. “A complete transference of personality. Notice the change of voice. He even seems to suppose he has another family.”
“So is he mad?” Bocton asked.
“Oh, entirely.”
“You can lock him up?”
“Certainly.”
“When?”
“Now, if you like.”
“That,” Bocton replied, “would suit me admirably. It will even help the political process.”
So great was the general public fury at the action of the Lords the night before that by mid-morning Sir Robert Peel’s new police, and the mayor’s police in the City, were preparing for riots. Within an hour of the vote in Westminster, members were saying that the king would be obliged to create more Whig peers to get reform through.
“The absence of my father,” Bocton remarked drily, “will reduce that necessity by one.”
At eleven-thirty in the morning a closed carriage entered the gates of the great hospital of Bedlam in Lambeth and from it the Earl of St James, looking frail and confused, was led into its splendid entrance hall.
He was not destined, however, to remain there very long.
It was the practice of the Bedlam, as long as you were a respectable person and purchased a ticket, to allow members of the general public to visit. Thanks to this liberal-minded policy, the curious could enter and observe all the persons whom either the criminal courts or Silversleeves and his friends had declared to be mad. Some, harmless enough, could be talked to. Several gentlemen believed they were Napoleon and would strike splendid, brooding attitudes. Others would laugh or gibber. Yet others were chained to beds and would sit there sullenly staring or perhaps might take their clothes off and perform acts of strange lewdness. It was really, most people agreed, quite amusing. One old man, half an hour after admission, said he was the Earl of St James.
It was not long after noon that Meredith arrived. Young George, as soon as he discovered what had happened to his grandfather, had gone to him for advice.
The Meredith Bank had prospered considerably in the years since the near-crash of 1825, and Meredith was tolerably rich now. The greying of his temples had lent his tall figure a look of patrician distinction. His advice to George had been quite bleak. “I think your father will almost certainly succeed, with Silversleeves’s help, in getting your grandfather declared incapable. What we must do is get him out of Bedlam. You probably can’t because Bocton will have warned them to expect you. But I might.”
“And then?”
“I’ll have to find somewhere to keep him in tolerable conditions. I dare say something can be done.” He smiled. “I still owe him my bank, remember.”
“But they’ll come and demand him back.”
“They’ll have to find him first.”
“But that’s kidnap, Meredith!”
“That’s right.”
“You’ll have to hide him somewhere straight away though,” George pointed out.
“I can think of a place,” Meredith said.
His approach to Bedlam was cunning. Sending a boy ahead to ask for Silversleeves, the boy ascertained that he had departed with Bocton for an hour or two. No sooner had this information been brought back than Meredith’s carriage swept into the courtyard, and stalking into the building, he told the doormen to fetch Silversleeves and bring him to him immediately. Ignoring their assurances that he was not there, he strode down the hall demanding to see St James. The moment he found him, he took him firmly by the arm and led him back to the entrance.
“Where the devil is Silversleeves?” he repeated irritably. “I have orders to escort this patient to another place at once.”
“But Mr Silversleeves and Lord Bocton said –” the head doorman began, only to be cut off instantly.
“You do not understand.