An Oxford Anomaly Read online

  An

  Oxford

  Anomaly

  NORMAN RUSSELL

  ROBERT HALE

  Contents

  1 A Mad Woman Cured

  2 At Jerusalem Hall

  3 A Cut-Throat Business

  4 Mr Tonson Remembered

  5 Miss Probert’s Testimony

  6 A Dinner at The Randolph

  7 Uncertainties

  8 A Murderous Night

  9 Sophia Jex-Blake

  10 The Espied Spy

  11 The Dappled Partridge

  12 Delusional Spasm

  13 Our Lady of Refuge

  14 Jeremy Oakshott’s Day

  15 Guy Lombardo Explains

  16 An Oxford Anomaly

  Author’s Note

  Endnotes

  1

  A Madwoman Cured

  As the coachman urged on the horses through the driving rain, a vivid flash of lightning rent the sky. It was gone in a moment, but not before the occupant of the closed carriage had seen for the first time the square white bulk of Frampton Asylum, surrounded by its cloak of swirling, storm-tossed trees. The pitch dark of the countryside returned, and as they left the muddy track to rumble over a brick causeway, the expected crash of thunder seemed to shake the very foundations of the earth.

  The coachman drew the horses to a halt in front of the house, and at the same moment a door opened, and two servants emerged, carrying umbrellas. They hurriedly opened the carriage door, and helped its occupant to alight.

  ‘Can you bring the coachman inside, and give him something to eat and drink? He’s soaked through to the skin.’

  One of the servants motioned to the man to get down from the box, and all four hurried into the candle-lit hall of Frampton Asylum.

  A gentleman in evening dress stood waiting for them. The servants ushered the coachman down a dim passageway towards the kitchen quarters of the house.

  ‘Dr Oakshott?’ asked the gentleman. ‘I am Dr Samuel Critchley, the Chief Physician here. What a night you have chosen to come out this far from town! Come into my office. There’s a good fire burning there.’

  Critchley thought, so this is old Ambrose Littlemore’s nephew. A nice enough fellow, quite smartly dressed, but rather nondescript. A beard or moustache would have improved his appearance, and taken people’s eyes away from the bald patch developing on the crown of his head. In Critchley’s view, not to make the best of one’s appearance was a rather perverse form of affectation.

  The office was a large, cheerful place, which to the man called Oakshott seemed part drawing room and part laboratory. The flickering firelight threw moving shadows on the glazed cabinets lining the walls, and glinted from a number of glass vessels and medical instruments laid out on a long table. There was also a phrenologist’s model of the human head; Oakshott hoped that this was a relic of the past, not something that was used in the enlightened years of the late nineteenth century.

  A desk calendar standing among the instruments showed the date: Monday, 6th August, 1894. It would surely be remembered as a particularly important day in the annals of the Littlemore family.

  ‘We have not met before, Dr Oakshott,’ said Dr Critchley, motioning his visitor to an armchair placed on one side of the fireplace.

  He sat down opposite him, placed the tips of his fingers together, and regarded him with what seemed professional interest. To Oakshott he looked like a man very much at ease with himself, a man hovering between fifty and sixty, red-faced and clean shaven, with a shock of abundant greying hair.

  ‘So you are a doctor?’ he said. ‘I expect, then, that you will be well acquainted with Miss Arabella Cathcart’s mental condition on admission here in 1879—’

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Oakshott. ‘I am a Doctor of Civil Law.’

  ‘I beg your pardon. Well, this establishment offers asylum and treatment for certain persons who have been declared clinically insane. We have manic depressives, mentally impaired epileptics, and some people who are criminally insane, but declared not responsible for their own actions, and so placed with us. These criminal lunatics are by law kept under restraint. And then we have a few sad cases of septic insanity—’

  ‘Most interesting, Doctor,’ said Oakshott. He desired to hear no more. His imagination conjured up visions of ropes, manacles and straightjackets. ‘And what can you tell me about Miss Arabella Cathcart’s history? Although I am here at the behest of my uncle, I am myself distantly related to that lady.’

  ‘Miss Cathcart was brought here in 1879. To all outward appearances, she was sane, but in fact she was a victim of delusional spasm. She was then in her forties – much the same age, I should think, as you are now, Dr Oakshott. Miss Cathcart had become jealous of a neighbour’s young daughter, a girl of twenty-two. She envied the girl’s prettiness and liveliness, and also her intellectual ability. One day, while this girl was telling her about the latest book that she was reading, Miss Cathcart stabbed her in the back with a pair of scissors.’

  Oakshott listened to the rain driving against the windows. He glanced at a painting above the fireplace, which showed Frampton House, a four-square, white stucco mansion raised in the last century. He imagined its unseen rooms and cells, and some of the demented people confined there. Had Uncle Ambrose’s sister-in-law been a murderess?

  ‘The young girl died?’ Oakshott asked.

  ‘Yes, she did. Arabella Cathcart ran away, and the girl bled to death. Murder, you see. Miss Cathcart at first could not see that what she had done was wrong,’ Dr Critchley continued, ‘and that, of course, is one of the hallmarks of criminal insanity. She was arrested, but found unfit to plead, and so the authorities ordered that she be brought here.’

  ‘And she was confined to a cell?’

  ‘Only for six months. After that, we deemed her ready for a course of treatment involving psychiatric counselling, drug therapy, and regular sessions of electrical stimulus to certain areas of the brain.’

  Oakshott shuddered. He would be relieved to get Aunt Arabella, as he called her, out of this asylum and back to Hazelmere Castle. How had she survived being incarcerated in this sinister place for fifteen years?

  ‘Well, Dr Oakshott, I am delighted to say that we effected a complete cure! Miss Cathcart is now able to take her place once more in society. It was a protracted business, but it was worth all those long years of perseverance. After you’ve taken some refreshment, I’ll bring you the necessary certificates of discharge for you to deliver to Mr Ambrose Littlemore, your uncle. By then, Miss Cathcart will be ready to accompany you back to the bosom of her family.’

  ‘These words that we use, physician and layman alike,’ Oakshott asked, ‘what do they really mean? Madness, insanity – what would you say, Doctor, were the hallmarks of the madman or madwoman? To me, they seem to be an acceptance of violence, even murder, as something justifiable. But not all insane persons are what one calls “raving mad”.’

  ‘No; no, indeed,’ Dr Critchley replied. ‘There are many clinically insane people who outwardly seem as normal as you or I. Let me give you an example. A colleague of mine at Bethlem Hospital in London had a patient who was convinced that he was the richest man in the world. He claimed that all the banks on earth belonged to him, so that his wealth ran into countless billions of pounds.’

  ‘And what did he do?’

  ‘Do? He did nothing. He was a highly respectable, educated man, a good conversationist, and a very able player of the violin. Visitors to Bethlem often mistook him for one of the doctors. But because of that single mental flaw – belief that he was the richest man in the world – he had to be confined for life.’

  ‘Why? Surely he was merely an eccentric?’

  ‘Oh no, Dr Oakshott.
A man like that could, at any moment, decide to believe something else equally insane. He might take it into his head that all red-headed men, for instance, were instruments of the devil, and set out to rid the world of them. That kindly, educated gentleman could in theory become a mass murderer if he were ever to be released from the confines of an asylum. People like Miss Cathcart betray their madness through acts of violence, and so can be treated early, and in many cases are able to return to society fully cured, like your aunt.’

  Dr Critchley permitted himself a little giggle. He was a man not at all averse to the occasional joke.

  ‘When you return to Oxford, Dr Oakshott,’ he said, ‘keep a wary eye on some of your colleagues, especially those who seem most sane and sober. You never know!’

  The rain gave no sign of abating on the journey back from the asylum. Oakshott lit the carriage lamp fixed to the doorjamb, blew out the wax vesta, and carefully returned it to the match box. By the dim light of the flickering candle, he covertly studied the woman sitting opposite him.

  She had a long face, deeply etched with lines of suffering. Heavy eyelids all but veiled her dark eyes. Her hair, which he had seen when Dr Critchley had brought her down to the study, was steely grey; it was now hidden beneath the hood of her travelling cloak. She sat upright on the carriage seat, her hands folded in her lap.

  The carriage toiled through the dark country lanes, the driver, now clad in borrowed oilskins, urging the horses on through the night. They clattered through a hamlet, and Oakshott heard a church clock striking. He slipped his watch from its fob-pocket, and by the light of the carriage lamp saw that it was ten o’clock.

  Insanity … People had often remarked glibly that there was insanity in the Littlemore family. It was not a pleasant thought, because the Oakshotts were closely related to the Littlemores. Dr Critchley, presumably, considered himself to be eminently sane and sober, but who knew what strange proclivities lurked dormant in the mind of a man who spent his time inserting electrodes into the exposed brains of his wretched patients?

  Aunt Arabella seemed to have fallen asleep. Oakshott withdrew a wallet from an inner pocket of his coat, and extracted two photographs, which he studied by the feeble glimmer of the carriage lamp. One was a faded carte-de-visite, showing a beautiful auburn-haired girl of eighteen or so, her eyes fixed nervously on the camera lens. Oakshott’s eyes brimmed with tears. Vivien … It had not been scissors in her case.

  The second photograph was modern, taken only a few months previously. Here was a woman in her forties, handsome, assured of herself and of her position in society, looking fearlessly at the photographer, her face animated by a slightly sardonic smile. They had met several times at various meetings and seminars, and she had given him the photograph when it had apparently dawned upon her that she was in the process of attracting not only a kindred spirit, but a potential lover. He and Celia Lestrange were destined to be soul mates.

  Oakshott had visited Vivien’s grave earlier that year. The stone had begun to sink, and the glass dome placed over the white marble flowers had been shattered. All that beauty, all that vivacity, all that promise … No, it had not been scissors in Vivien’s case. The visit had been quite unbearable. He would never go again.

  ‘I don’t think that I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance.’

  The quiet tones of Miss Cathcart, who had not spoken to him since his arrival at Frampton Asylum, made Oakshott jump with shock. The voice was that of an educated lady, but even in those few words it seemed that she was mocking him. He hastily returned the photographs to his wallet, and slipped it back into his pocket.

  ‘I am Jeremy Oakshott, the nephew of your brother-in-law, Mr Ambrose Littlemore,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm … And what do you do for a living, Mr Oakshott?’

  ‘I am a Fellow of Jerusalem Hall, in Oxford.’

  ‘A Fellow? Not much money there, then.’

  Miss Cathcart closed her eyes, and seemed to go to sleep again. Jeremy Oakshott thought, either she really does not remember me, or she is pretending, for some odd purpose of her own. This woman, with her hand luggage on the seat beside her, had murdered a young girl. She had escaped with her life, but had paid in part for her crime by long years of confinement in a lunatic asylum. He would be glad to be rid of her, so that he could return to his familiar set of rooms in Jerusalem Hall. The revelation of what she had done awakened disturbing memories in his own past, memories that he had long striven to banish from his waking thoughts.

  Did madness run in some families? Perhaps so. It was an unpleasant thought.

  At last! They were entering familiar territory. Here was the village of Hadleigh, where his friends David and Mary McArthur lived. Another half hour, and they would enter the grounds of Hazelmere Castle.

  ‘I’m unwilling to bring her from one confinement to another, Jeremy,’ said Jeremy’s Uncle Ambrose, ‘but I shan’t produce her when I’m having company here, until I think she’s ready to face that ordeal. I’ve prepared a suite of rooms for her on the first floor, and engaged both a maid and a nurse to see to her wants. Your friend David McArthur will be in constant attendance.’

  ‘Does Dr McArthur know about – about Aunt Arabella’s past? You realize, of course, that I knew nothing about it?’

  ‘Oh, yes. McArthur knows all. As the family physician, it was imperative that he was au fait with the whole matter. As for you – well, I didn’t think you needed to know about it. I told you that Arabella was suffering from “nervous affliction”, and you seemed contented with that.’

  Uncle Ambrose was sitting in his favourite chair in the castle dining chamber. Cadaverous? Was that the right word to describe him? Oakshott looked at his skull-like face, with its prominent cheekbones and sunken eyes, and decided that skeletal was a more apt description.

  ‘Did Dr Critchley—’

  ‘Yes, Uncle. He told me all about it. He volunteered the information, you know. I didn’t ask for it.’

  ‘You’re a good fellow, Jeremy, and I think you know how highly I regard you. I wish you had embarked on a career that would have paid you a stipend – the Church, or the Army, you know. But there. You chose to be a scholar. Well, never mind.’ He waved his hand around the room. ‘One day, Jeremy, all this will be yours.’

  Jeremy Oakshott dined and slept at the castle, and was relieved when the next morning proved to be warm and sunny. His uncle’s coachman was ready with the second coach and fresh horses to convey him the five brisk miles back to Oxford. He marvelled at his own ability to behave quite normally in close proximity to a gentlewoman who had murdered a young girl by stabbing her in the back with a pair of scissors.

  ‘Have you everything you want, Mr Sanders?’

  The question was a mere formality, requiring the briefest of answers, so Mrs Tench was startled when her paying guest paused in the business of trimming his sparse, greying moustache to give her his full attention.

  ‘If I had everything I wanted, Mrs Tench,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose I’d be staying here in Hadleigh. I’d be dining up at the castle with Mr Littlemore. If I had everything that I wanted, I’d be living in style at the Savoy… . Who knows? One of these days I may well be doing just that. As the old Romans used to say, Mrs Tench, Audentes fortuna iuvat, which, as you may know, means, “Fortune favours the brave.” So … There, I’ve lost track of what I was saying. What did you ask me?’

  ‘I was just asking, sir, if you’d everything you wanted on that breakfast tray. There’s bacon and eggs under that china cover, and the tea’s fresh-brewed.’

  Her guest managed a rather shamefaced smile.

  ‘There, now, I’ve been wasting your time with my idle chat. I’ll eat my breakfast straight away, before I get dressed. And then I’ll – I’ll go for a stroll down to the Bull, for a pick-me-up.’

  Mrs Tench surveyed her paying guest as he moved away from the mirror over the mantelpiece and made his way to the little table standing in the bay window. Poor Mr Sanders! He co
uldn’t be more than forty or so, but he moved like an old man. He’d been handsome once, no doubt of that; but his cheeks had fallen in, and his shoulders sagged like those of someone defeated by life. Still, he’d kept his fine shock of black hair. Later, he’d plaster it down with one of the creams or pomades that he kept on the dressing table.

  There were little healed scars on his cheeks, where he’d obviously cut himself shaving. His right hand trembled, but it wasn’t the onset of palsy. The room smelt of drink. It was drink that had loosened his tongue that morning. When he’d gone down to the Bull, she’d open the windows and air the place.

  ‘He’s been at the bottle again,’ said Mrs Tench to her husband. ‘He’ll not last long if he goes on like that.’

  Mr Tench bit into his bacon sandwich, and chewed silently for a minute. A wiry, sun-bronzed man in his sixties, he spent his days out of doors on his extensive smallholding. With another couple of acres, he could have called himself a farmer.

  ‘They’re all the same, Doris, these commercial travellers,’ he said at last. ‘They meet together in alehouses to listen to each other’s stories, and then they get addicted to spirits, and beer, and such like. But he’s no trouble, is he? Very polite, and quiet, like. Pays up on the nail every Friday.’

  ‘I wonder why he mentioned Mr Littlemore, up at the castle. Do you think he knows him? Or maybe he’s heard about Miss Cathcart being brought home. One of the other commercial travellers may have mentioned her. She’s settled in well, from what I hear.’

  ‘Very like,’ said her husband.

  ‘He tries to take care of himself,’ Doris continued, ‘but his clothes are getting threadbare. I offered to darn his socks, but he said he was going into Oxford tomorrow to – what did he say? To “replenish his wardrobe”. But I don’t think he will, Joe.’

  ‘He’s been more cheerful of late, Doris,’ said Joe, ‘so maybe there’s some good fortune coming his way. I hope so. He won’t make much money trying to sell cravats and waistcoats to little village tailors. Not round here, he won’t.’