Page 86 of The Matrimonial Advertisement

When it chimed twelve, she was still talking.

Mr. Pelham occasionally asked a question or requested clarification, but the majority of the time he merely listened—all the while jotting notes in his little book.

“You describe the first treatment at Lowbridge House as a cold water treatment,” he said at one point. “Can you explain what that entailed?”

Helena nodded. “If you like.” She folded her hands in her lap. They were shaking quite out of control. “The matrons at Lowbridge would put me into a tub filled with ice cold water. There was a…a sort of lid. It had a hole in one end for a person’s head. It allowed them to keep a patient in the cold water for as long as they pleased. Mr. Glyde said—”

Mr. Pelham raised his head from his notebook. “Mr. Glyde was present during this treatment?”

“Yes. It’s part of the reason my uncle employs him. Whenever I resisted one of the treatments, he would take me by the arms and shake me into compliance. Then, when I was quite subdued, he would drag me wherever it was I’d been ordered to go. At Lowbridge, when I wouldn’t…when I wouldn’t undress and get into the tub, the matrons called him. He—” She broke off, briefly losing her composure.

Jenny took her hand and squeezed it. “It’s not decent. You shouldn’t have to repeat it.”

“It’s your choice, my lady,” Mr. Pelham said quietly. “But know this: you are not alone. I’ve spoken to countless others, both men and women, who have been subjected to equally appalling treatments at private asylums just like Lowbridge House.”

Helena gave him an almost imperceptible nod. “It’s all right, Jenny. I need to finish.” She gently extricated her hand and folded it back in her lap.

She wanted to do this on her own, without clinging to Jenny or Justin. It seemed somehow important that she maintain a sense of independence—of control—in the telling of her story, however illusory that control might be.

“Mr. Glyde was outside with the carriage,” she continued. “The matrons summoned him and, with his help, they…they stripped me down to my shift and…forced me into the tub. They put the lid over me, trapping me inside.” Her voice trembled, but she kept on. “There was n-no way to get out. I was frozen. Numb. I b-begged them to let me go, but it only strengthened their resolve to keep me in the water. Mr. Glyde said he knew of a lunatic who’d once been kept in the cold baths for three days straight.”

Mr. Pelham looked up at her, his expression grave. “How long were you kept in the bath?”

“Two hours, that first time.”

“And subsequent cold water baths?”

Helena shot a brief glance at Justin. He was still standing by the mantelshelf. His arms were crossed, his jaw hardened. Even from a distance, she could see the rhythmic spasm of a muscle working in his cheek. “Three, maybe four hours,” she said. “One loses count.”

“Were these cold baths always administered at the asylum?” Mr. Pelham asked.

“Yes. It was only the bleeding and the electrotherapy that were done at Grosvenor Square.”

“By Dr. Collins, Lord Castleton’s private physician?”

“That’s correct.”

Mr. Pelham’s pencil flew across the pages of his notebook. She wondered if he was writing in shorthand. “I’ll need you to describe those treatments as well,” he said. “I understand it’s difficult.”

Mr. Finchley withdrew his pocket watch and looked at the time before dropping it back into the pocket of his waistcoat without a word. He’d remained silent throughout the interview, sitting nearby with a notebook of his own in which he occasionally jotted something down.

“Are you able to go on?” Mr. Pelham asked her.

Helena assured him that she was. She spent the next hour telling him everything about the other treatments to which she’d been subjected. The leeches and lancets which had bled her until she was faint and listless. The purgatives which had left her sick and weak. And the electric shocks which had terrified her almost as much as the ice baths at Lowbridge House.

“Dr. Collins had an electrotherapy machine,” she said. “A portable device in a wooden box. I don’t know quite how to describe it. It operated by magnet, I think. He would turn a little crank on the side of the box and it would produce a jolt of electricity. He applied it with a pair of brass handles placed over a wet piece of sponge.”

“Where on your body did he apply it?” Mr. Pelham asked.

“My arms or my…my legs. The shock wasn’t severe, but if he turned the crank very fast, he could make it stronger.”

Justin made a low sound of displeasure from his place by the mantel. “It sounds more like torture than medicine. All of it does.”

“It’s quackery,” Mr. Finchley told him. “Plain and simple.”

“Finchley’s right,” Mr. Pelham said. “Unfortunately, anyone with enough coin can purchase an electrotherapy machine. They’re advertised as being capable of curing every ill, from cancer to toothache.”

Jenny’s lips thinned with anger. “It looked like something out of the Spanish Inquisition. An infernal contraption, operated by a doddering old fool. And after every treatment, Lord Castleton would appear in the room with that dratted paper.”