Shadows of Madness Read online

  Shadows of Madness

  By Tracy L. Ward

  The Marshall House Mystery Series

  CHORUS OF THE DEAD

  DEAD SILENT

  THE DEAD AMONG US

  SWEET ASYLUM

  PRAYERS FOR THE DYING

  SHADOWS OF MADNESS

  Willow Hill House

  Ontario, Canada

  Ebook Edition

  ISBN: 978-0-9958914-1-8

  Copyright © 2017 by Tracy L. Ward

  Cover Art Copyright © 2017 by Jessica Allain

  Edited by Lourdes Venard, Comma Sense Editing

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For Mrs. Sandra Bethel,

  who taught me I should never strive for less than 100%

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Edinburgh, 1868—Blood has a peculiar consistency. It congeals and forms a layer, a semi-solid state, which if pushed aside reveals a deeper pool, untouched by air and its sometimes harmful additives. Surgeons like Jonas Davies know the substance well. It is the ever-present element of their trade, giving life or taking it away.

  Bathed in the warm light of the morning sun, Jonas flexed his right hand and felt the blood, now cold and somewhat hardened, seep between his fingers. He knew it was blood. He could tell as much without having to open his eyes. This blood had been spilled on the floor for a while. The pool itself felt thin, the blood having spread out from its originating source growing thinner and thinner as it crept toward him.

  His mind begged for more sleep, but his body ached to move.

  Get up.

  His bed for the night had been hard. His muscles were now stiff and his joints tender. He couldn’t help but groan into the wood floorboards at his cheek as he forced his arm to move. His fingers touched something metal, something that spun freely in the sticky pool.

  Get up, now.

  His eyes shot open. His image of the world was marred by blood, a great lake of it starting inches from his face. The nearly solidified pool gave off a sheen like satin, reflecting portions of the ceiling as he eyed it from his place on the floor. He was not drunk or recovering from its effects. No headache greeted him, no nausea plagued him. It was just sleep that beckoned him.

  His right hand began to tingle. The metal thing, twirling, tapped his finger, sending a rush of pulses down to his wrist. Instinctively, he grabbed for the metal object and recognized the feeling of the handle in his grasp. It was a surgical blade. He had one of his own in his medical bag.

  Surgery, he told himself. You were performing a surgery.

  But he hadn’t performed any surgeries in the previous two days. As the pieces of his memory filed into their rightful place, a panic set in.

  Get up, you fool!

  This was his voice now, his own admonishment for not being able to pull himself from his hazy state. With a great concentrated heave, he pushed himself up from the floor and spied his colleague, Professor Frobisher, laying close by, a gaping wound to his abdomen, blood seeping out over his clothes and spilling out over the floor.

  “No,” Jonas said, looking to the knife in his hand. “Please God, no!”

  Chapter 1

  Ainsley couldn’t stand the smell of the alcohol vapours, the microscopic miasma meandering in the air. The stench, once pleasant and desirable, turned his stomach as he made his way through the theatre lobby, which was so jammed with patrons he was forced to turn sideways to slide by. Everyone seemed pleased with the performance. Even Aunt Louisa and Ainsley’s sister, Margaret, who kept close behind him, appeared to be in good spirits after the play despite the story’s tragic outcome.

  He could tell they wished to stay, to mingle with the others, perhaps enjoy a drink as midnight turned to next day but Ainsley felt an urge tugging at his throat and chest, a panic that had been needling him since the start of the fourth act. Something was wrong, deeply wrong, and he needed to get home.

  “Peter, darling, perhaps you’d like to speak with the Driscolls,” Aunt Louisa suggested from behind Margaret as he led them toward the front doors of the Royal Opera House. “I hear they acquired the house next to Marshall House for their son.”

  “I shall speak with them another time,” he said unapologetically. When he looked over his shoulder, still walking in the direction of the doors, he saw Margaret’s look of worry. This was very unlike him. Ainsley was not easily spooked and she knew this. Something was urging him on.

  “Aunt Louisa, perhaps you’d like to stay for a short time,” Margaret suggested, pulling the train of three to a stop.

  Ainsley glanced to the doors, four paces away, and could feel the crowd of boisterous theatre patrons swell as they spilled out from the main gallery. The street out front was a quagmire of carriages and drivers, horse teams and their excrement, another maze to be manoeuvred in order to make their way home.

  “We can send the carriage back for you,” Margaret explained, stealing a glance to Ainsley. A carriage ride for the two of them would allow him the freedom to explain his sudden departure from the theatre without their meddling aunt injecting her own thoughts on the matter. Clever.

  Aunt Louisa looked about, pursing her lips as she surveyed the crowd. She swallowed hard before looking back to Ainsley. “No,” she said at last, pulling her shawl higher onto her shoulder, “I shall come with you both. It seems whenever I lose sight of you calamity is sure to follow.”

  Ainsley was in no condition to argue. The feeling of panic pressed its way down to his stomach, wreaking havoc on the bile and what little he had had to eat. There was something amiss, something foreboding happening.

  The smell of October rain greeted them at the front doors. A sudden blast of air whipped through their hair and left scarves, shawls, and coattails flapping in the wind. Jacob, the Marshall family driver, had done as instructed and waited with the team at the corner of Bow and Russell streets. While the other drivers huddled together, smoking and sharing sips from their flasks, Jacob brushed the horses and fed them treats, often speaking stories to them as if they were children enraptured by his yarns.

  Startled by the family’s approach, so sudden after the final curtain call, Jacob stood at attention and nodded to Ainsley before jumping to open the latch of t
he carriage door. As the door opened, the step mechanism was released, bringing two metal steps out from under the belly of the cab.

  “Was it a good performance, sir?” he asked.

  “As good as any, I suppose,” Ainsley said. He stood on the other side of the steps and offered his hand to his sister and Aunt Louisa.

  “Millie would enjoy it,” Margaret said, knowing that by the end of the following week Jacob would wish to take his wife.

  Margaret stepped in first, and Aunt Louisa after. Before Jacob could turn to his bench, Ainsley snatched his shoulder. “Fast as you can, Jacob,” he whispered as he leaned in close.

  A dutiful servant, Jacob nodded and scrambled to his place while Ainsley slipped into the carriage and snapped the door shut. He took his place on the bench opposite Aunt Louisa and Margaret.

  “Do you think it may be Lucy?” Margaret asked, her own voice sounding anxious and ill at ease.

  Lucy was the five-month-old Ainsley had adopted as his own only two months before when both her parents had been killed.

  “I’m not sure,” Ainsley answered honestly. The panic he felt, dry and gnawing, couldn’t be traced to a specific event or thought. There was something else, he reasoned, something ethereal. He wasn’t a stranger to otherworldly interference. For the past year his mind seemed to teeter on the edge of realism and spiritualism, coaxing him, taunting him. For a time, he was in a state of denial, unable to comprehend what was happening. Even now, while the muffled whispers echoed from the recesses of his consciousness, he wasn’t sure that it wasn’t just his mind playing tricks on him.

  By the time the carriage pulled up in front of the house, a grand three-storey terrace house in the heart of London’s Belgravia, Ainsley was jumping out of his skin. He was the first to step out onto the pavement. Decorum demanded he remain to assist the women from the conveyance but he did so with apprehension, unease, and an unrelenting sense of urgency.

  The street was dark. The gas lamps above shed little to no light and the cold kept biting at him as he stood beside the carriage steps. Only once all three were touching pavement did he turn to the cement steps that would take them to the front door of Marshall House.

  A shadow moved beside them. Behind him Aunt Louisa gasped as Ainsley stopped suddenly. The shadow grew larger. Margaret clutched at his arm, more to pull Ainsley back than seek protection. Slowly, the shadow morphed into the silhouette of a man, broad and tall. In the lamplight, Ainsley could not see his face.

  “Do not take another step,” Ainsley commanded. Inside he shivered but he knew such emotions were never good to reveal. “Who are you and what is your business here?” He tried to shield Margaret and Aunt Louisa. Running for the front door was out of the question. There simply wasn’t enough room between them and the man in front of them.

  The horse team stomped impatiently at the kerb, and breathed a heavy sigh. Ainsley could hear the reins, clasps, and buckles clinking amongst the leather of the halters and bridle. He wasn’t sure where Jacob stood but he hadn’t abandoned them. The loyal servant either saw what Ainsley witnessed or was questioning the sanity of his lordship’s son.

  Ignoring Ainsley’s command to stay, the shadow moved closer.

  “Peter?” Aunt Louisa called but remained close to the carriage.

  “Announce yourself!” Ainsley commanded, taking a half step forward. He wasn’t in the habit of carrying a pistol as other men of means had been known to do. This was the first time Ainsley wished he had such a weapon to brandish, and perhaps deter any would-be bandits.

  Ainsley watched as the form stopped a mere two paces away from them. There was something familiar in its stance, something Ainsley had not noticed until then. “Have you no patience,” the stranger asked, “for an old friend?” The figure pulled at his hat and allowed the lamppost to bathe him in soft light.

  “Jonas?” Ainsley stepped forward, a rush of relief giving way to joy as he took in the sight of his friend and medical school colleague.

  Margaret pulled back on Ainsley but he ignored her.

  With arms open wide for an overdue embrace, Ainsley stepped forward toward his friend but stopped suddenly at the sight of something black, no crimson, glistening over Jonas’s white shirt.

  “What’s happened here?” Ainsley asked, afraid to commit to the embrace.

  Weary and pained, Jonas looked to Ainsley, his eyes pleading. “You have to help me, friend,” he said. “Something terrible has happened.”

  “What? What is it? What do you need me to do?”

  Ainsley would have done anything for the man, his friend. While in school together, he regularly gave up sleep to help Jonas raid the country graveyards for fresh cadavers. The money they made by selling them to the very medical school they attended helped Jonas pay his fees. In truth, Ainsley, the second son and heir to the Earl of Montcliff, could have paid Jonas’s fees ten times over had the man let him, which he did not. The cost of his schooling and his subsequent success as a surgeon was all due to the tenacity of Jonas himself.

  This time Jonas did not readily accept Ainsley’s offer of help. Jonas stood still for many moments. His face twisted into a painful grimace. His eyes unfocused. His shoulders slouched.

  “Tell me,” Ainsley pleaded. “I can help you.”

  Margaret came alongside Ainsley, pulling her shawl tighter over her shoulders. “What is he saying, Peter?”

  Ainsley shook his head but did not take his eyes from his friend. Something wasn’t right. This didn’t seem like Jonas at all. “He isn’t saying anything,” Ainsley said. “I don’t understand.”

  At the sound of Ainsley’s voice, Jonas turned and started down the pavement, carrying his hat at his side.

  “Jonas, wait!”

  “What’s happening?” Margaret asked, frightened. She clutched Ainsley’s sleeve tighter, preventing him from running after his friend.

  “He’s leaving. Don’t you see?” Ainsley finally looked to Margaret and saw the fear embedded in her eyes. “It’s Jonas. He’s right there.” When Ainsley turned back, his friend was gone, swallowed by the black night of London.

  “Let’s get you inside and out of this cold,” Aunt Louisa said, gesturing for them from the top of the front steps.

  “Tell me you saw him,” Ainsley said when he turned back to his sister. She had been standing at his side the entire time. She couldn’t have missed seeing him. “Margaret?”

  Margaret looked as if she could cry at any moment. Good-natured and kind, Margaret often took his side in family squabbles, even at times when she doubted his motives or questioned his means. In this moment she could not bring herself to lie, not even to him. “We”—she swallowed hard—“we don’t see anything.”

  Ainsley stared down the now-empty street.

  “It’s getting late,” Margaret said softly, taking his hand and hinting toward Aunt Louisa. “You need rest.”

  ***

  Ten minutes later Ainsley was in his room, dropping his favourite carpet bag on his bed and unlatching it. Since arriving home he had roused both Maxwell, their butler, and Cutter, their footman, with instructions to help him pack. Maxwell had disappeared into the basement with two pairs of Ainsley’s shoes while Cutter headed into the attic to retrieve his trunk.

  Appearing at the door with her arms crossed, Aunt Louisa looked on contemptuously as Ainsley tossed a few items in the waiting bag. “You’ll be glad to know no one else saw your little performance,” she said.

  Ainsley eyed her from the other side of the bed. He was in no mood for another of her lessons on decorum and respectability.

  “I’ve spoken with Jacob, who has graciously agreed that none of the events that transpired tonight will pass his lips, which is a blessing considering the track record this family has with less-than-loyal servants,” she said, sauntering into the room. She stopped suddenly when she saw the carpet bag and her face blanched. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Peter, you can’t go barrelling off into the night. We haven�
�t the slightest clue what this man has gotten himself involved in. How on earth do you expect to help him?” She turned to Margaret, who stood just inside the door, seeking reinforcement.

  Ainsley could tell by the look on Margaret’s face that she was as equally worried for their friend’s welfare as he was. Realizing she was alone in her protestations, Aunt Louisa waved a dismissive hand at Margaret.

  “Oh fiddlesticks,” she said. “You two are acting more with your hearts than your heads.”

  “I see nothing wrong with that,” Ainsley said, feverishly pacing the room and scooping up anything he thought he may need.

  “I know you believe these visions are real—”

  “They are real,” he said pointedly.

  Aunt Louisa looked poised to laugh but merely closed her eyes instead. “It must be a trait from your mother’s side because I have never heard the like.”

  Ainsley had no need for her to understand. He knew a small part of these visitations, these spectres, were real in some way. He had ignored their warnings before, but now, in good conscience, he could not. Jonas was a good friend and had been for some years. If he was dead or at death’s door, Ainsley needed to know.

  “Peter, this is not wise,” Aunt Louisa said. “Your brother will not—”

  “My brother has everything well at hand,” Ainsley said, angrily tossing a book onto the top of the bed. “He certainly has no more use for me, or Father, even though he lives. He may as well assume his position as head of the Marshalls and leave me to live my life as I see fit.” He gave his aunt a pointed finger. “You would do better to do the same.”

  Ainsley, born Peter Benjamin Marshall, was the second son and heir to Lord Abraham Marshall, third Earl of Montcliff. Bedridden after sustaining a head injury, Lord Marshall, a once-commanding patriarch, had forbidden Ainsley’s early pursuits into science and only relented to his medical studies when his son agreed to attend under his mother’s maiden name, Ainsley.