The Bedlam Detective

THIRTY-NINE

When Evangeline went looking for Sebastian Becker at his home, she got no farther than the funeral wreath on the door. She knocked and waited, then knocked again, but no one answered. The wreath was a striking weave of laurel, lilies, and black feathers, but in the week since the funeral the petals had fallen and the leaves were beginning to curl. This was her third attempt to reach him. Perhaps Sebastian had taken his son and sister-in-law and gone away? She made inquiries at the wardrobe maker’s, but no one there could help.

Then, in a moment of inspiration, she made her way through the borough’s streets to the pie stand under the railway bridge and there he was, at the stand’s folding side counter. He was a figure apart from the cabbies, looking through his work messages while taking sips of hot tea from a tin mug.

He was unaware of her approach. She was almost at his shoulder when she spoke.

“Sebastian,” she said, and he looked around in surprise.

Her heart lurched at the sight of him. He bore all the signs of the blow that he’d sustained. The sleep-deprived pallor of his face, the dazed look in his eyes. As if they gazed on a reality other than this one, seeing a fading version of the world that he was reluctant to leave.

He started to speak, hesitated, turned and set down his tin mug, and then said, “Miss Bancroft.”

“Sebastian-” She had been pursuing him. With reluctance, but knowing that she must. But speaking to him now for the first time since the day of their return from Greenwich to find tragedy in his home, all that she could say was, “I am so sorry.”

“Please,” he said, raising a hand before she could go on. “I never had a chance to thank you.”

“Thank me? What is there to thank me for?”

“The care you took of Robert that afternoon. He speaks of you often.”

“How is he?”

“Confused. I know the loss has touched him. And before too long I’m sure it will show. Until then … he goes on exactly as before. Are you well? I’d have been in touch to ask, but I didn’t know where to find you.”

“I came to the funeral,” she said.

“I didn’t see you there.”

“I stayed back. I wasn’t properly dressed. But so many people!”

Elisabeth Becker’s funeral service had been conducted by the hospital’s chaplain in the Evelina’s own small chapel. Evangeline had hurried over in the middle of the day and slipped into the nave behind some nurses standing at the back. Even greater in number than those crowded into the chapel had been the families and children that filled the passageway outside it, joining in with the hymns, bowing their heads in silence for the prayers.

Sebastian said, “Elisabeth was a good friend to many. Had it been my funeral and not hers … I think it would have been a much quieter affair.”

“I do wish I could have spoken to you on the day. How are you, Sebastian?”

He gathered and placed the half-dozen message slips-hers among them, she noticed-inside his notebook, closed it, and put it away inside his jacket. “I get along,” he said. “I follow Sir James’s advice. He has the same answer to all of life’s ills. ‘Work, and plenty of it.’ Of course, for him it’s a choice. For the rest of us, a necessity.”

She said, “I hesitate to raise this. But I can see no other way. Have you had any news from Arnmouth?”

“Arnmouth has not been very close to my thoughts, I’m sorry to say.”

“So you don’t know that Grace is dead.”

“Grace Eccles?”

“You didn’t know.”

He shook his head. Evangeline went on, “Cruelly murdered. Close to her cottage. How much more there is to it, I don’t know yet. Mother put it in a letter, but she spared me the details.”

“Does it relate to the other murders?”

“I don’t know. Nobody knows.”

She’d hoped to ignite him with this news, and he tried to respond; but it was like an invalid’s brief effort to rise, quickly abandoned.

He said, “I can’t pursue this with you, Evangeline. Look at me. I don’t sleep. I drag myself through the days. And if that weren’t enough, I have to support three of us on half the income.”

“I know,” she said. “And believe me, I am ashamed to be intruding on your grief. But I’ve located the other survivor of the expedition. He’s close to London.”

“And?”

“I can get no further.”

“If you can do such detective work, you clearly don’t need me.”

“But I do,” she persisted. “He’s in the Broadmoor Asylum. They’ve refused me a visit. That’s why I’ve had to seek you out. I don’t imagine they can turn away a Lord Chancellor’s man.”

“What’s the patient’s name?”

“Somerville. Doctor Bernard Somerville. Not Summerfield. Our master’s mate had it close, but not quite right.”

“I’ll give you a letter.”

“A letter’s no use. He won’t correspond and he won’t agree to a visit. But he’s the only man who knows what really happened in the jungle. He’s our only chance of a window into Lancaster’s madness. Aren’t you even curious to know why the man’s in a hospital for the criminally insane?”

“In all honesty? I feel very little of anything. And you’re proposing that we use one madman to explain another? That’ll wash, I’m sure.”

But he was interested despite himself. She could see it.

“They say his behavior is unpredictable but his thinking is lucid,” she said.

“Much like Sir Owain’s.”

“Can I walk with you? I’ll tell you as we go.”

Sebastian could offer no objection. They started toward the river, through the wide iron passage under the railway lines. The racket of trams and carriage wheels and overhead trains forced her to raise her voice.

She said, “After his return to England, Somerville set up house with his sister. At some point-and from what I read in the newspaper, he swears to this day that he doesn’t know why-he beat her almost senseless against his bedroom wall and then chased her naked down a public street to finish her off. He claims that his violent acts and his inability to remember them are a product of his experience on the Lancaster expedition. He is judged to be dangerous to others. And that’s why he’s where he is now.”