hated now to have to pursue the matter of Elsie Draper, instead of merely thanking Drummond and going out. But the question pressed on his mind, clamoring for an answer. He felt an incompleteness like hunger.
'Thank you, sir.' He let out his breath slowly. 'Sir, I would like to find out more about Elsie Draper-the madwoman. Just before she struck at Royce she called him by name. She wasn't killing at random; she hated him-personally. I'd like to know why.'
Drummond stood still, looking down at the empty space on his desk, the quill and inkstand set in dark Welsh slate, unostentatious.
'I wanted to know too,' he said. 'I wondered if she were after Royce all the time, and she mistook the first three for him. I couldn't find anything in common among them, except that they live on the south side of the river not far from Westminster Bridge, within walking distance, and they have a superficial physical resemblance. They have no special political opinions in common, but then a madwoman who has spent the last seventeen years in Bedlam would hardly care about such things. But I did inquire what Royce was doing seventeen years ago.'
'Yes?'
Drummond's smile was tight, bleak. 'He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Secretary.'' His eyes met Pitt's.
'So they all held that office!' Pitt exclaimed. 'Perhaps that is why they died. She was looking for Royce, and she still thought of him in connection with the office he held when she worked in his house. She must have asked around,
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and she found three other men living south of the river who had held that position before she got the right one! But why did she hate him so long and so passionately?' 'Because he had her committed to Bedlam!' 'For melancholia? Perhaps. But may I go to Bedlam and ask about her, to see what they know?'
'Yes. Yes, Pitt-and tell me what you find.'
The Bethlem Royal Hospital was in a huge old building on the Lambeth Road on the south side of the river, a block away from the Westminster Bridge Road where it curved up the hill away from the water and the Lambeth Palace Gardens, the official house of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England. Bedlam, as it was commonly known, was another world, shut in, as far from sweetness and ease as the nightmare is from the sleeper's sane and healthful room, where flowers sit in a vase and the morning sunlight will presently stream through the curtains onto a solid floor.
Inside Bedlam was madness and despair. For centuries this hospital, whether within these walls or others, had been the last resort for those no human reason could reach. In earlier times they had been shackled night and day and tormented to exorcise them of devils. Those with a taste for such things had come by to watch them and taunt them for entertainment, as later generations might go to a carnival or a zoo, or a hanging.
Now treatment was more enlightened. Most of the restraining devices were gone, except for the most violent; but tortures of the mind still persisted, the terror and delusion, the misery, the endless imprisonment without hope.
Pitt had been in Newgate and Coldbath Fields, and for all the superintendent in his frock coat and the stewards and medical staff, the walls smelled the same and the air had a fetid taste. Pitt's credentials were examined before he was permitted the slightest courtesy.
' 'Elsie Draper?'' the superintendent asked coldly. ' 'I shall 280
have to consult my records. What is it you wish to know? I assure you, when we released her she'd been calm and of good behavior for many years, nine or ten at least. She never gave the slightest indication of violence.' He bristled, preparing for battle. 'We cannot keep people indefinitely, you know, not if there is no need. We do not have endless facilities!'
'What was her original complaint?'
'Complaint?' The man asked sharply, sensitive to any criticism.
'Why was she admitted?'
'Acute melancholia. She was a simple woman, from some country area, who had followed her mistress when she married. As I understand it, her mistress died-of scarlet fever. Elsie Draper became deranged with grief, and her master was obliged to have her committed. Very charitable of him, I think, in the circumstances, instead of
