“If you want your son home with you, Dabber, I’ll not stop you,” said Lord Mayor Feenix. “Anything to reduce the temperature of your growing aversion to this institution. As to your other charges, I will authorise an investigation. You are right that things have not run as smoothly as of late as they once did.”
Dr. Towlinson’s face now gave a look of some confusion that was brought to rein by a pat of the arm by the current board chairman, the rising and falling of his beefy paws bearing strong resemblance to a bear rapping upon a captured bee hive.
“In defence to our esteemed colleagues, Doctors Towlinson and Fibbetson,” said Feenix, “the charges you have made, while possessing some merit, do not address the difficulties presented by this sudden degenerative turn in the conditions of our T.T. patients.”
Sir Dabber knew now just as surely as did I the deceit of the spurious Terror Tremens and even some of its underlying purpose, but demonstrated a savvy prudence in not raising the issue under these circumstances, and thereby betraying to the men in the room the degree to which we had informed ourselves about the inner-workings of the Tiadaghton Project.
“And what of Hannah Pupker?” I struck in. “Is she to continue to be made prisoner in this place based solely upon a father’s singular fallacious charge of madness?”
“Stay your tongue!” ordered Lord Mayor Feenix. “You have no voice in this meeting, and, moreover, the matter of young Miss Pupker has already been addressed by the court.”
“Through self-serving machination,” added Dabber, saying that very thing that I should have liked to say, had I a “voice in this meeting.”
“I’ll hear no more about Hannah Pupker, who blithers and drools in her chambers even as we speak, for I saw her just moments ago in my monthly round of inspection.” The Lord Mayor indicated that the topic of Hannah Pupker had come to its end through the sudden application of his paws and eyes to the various papers collected before him.
During this brief interval, I succumbed to the desire to bend my eyes to Ruth Wolf, who responded with a slight and almost imperceptible shake of the head. It was not she, the nurse was thus telling me, who had made Hannah Pupker “blithering and drooling.”
A sickness rose up in my stomach, accompanied by a feeling of profound helplessness in the cause of Hannah Pupker.
The Lord Mayor took a deep breath and rearranged his Bulldog bulk in his chair. “So Dabber. Take your son at the close of this meeting. By all means. He shall be one less mouth to feed and one less reeking slop pail to empty. Shall we make this official, gentlemen? Shall we have a vote? Let me see the hands of those who agree that the “Rokesmith Ruin,” Dabber’s son Bevan, should be released this very evening to the custody of his father.”
All the hands of those who had standing in the meeting rose, save one — Towlinson’s with some hesitation, and Fibbetson’s after seeing the way that the majority would go. The single exception was the lugubrious Judge Fitz-Marshall, who professed a policy of never reversing a lunacy commitment to which he had been judiciary signatory.
“Fitz-Marshall, you are outvoted,” said the Lord Mayor. “The boy will be released. Moving on now to that grave matter which brings Miss Wolf before us: Miss Wolf, your attendance at this meeting has been requested for the following reason: that you should tender your resignation as nurse in service to Bethlehem Hospital upon Highbury Fields, such resignation effective upon receipt.”
Lord Mayor Feenix pushed a piece of paper and quill to Nurse Ruth Wolf. She stared down at the paper, neither speaking nor moving her hand to affix her signature to it. “Your services to the Lung Hospital will also be terminated. You will surrender your medical bag this evening.”
“I don’t have it with me,” said Ruth Wolf in a small voice.
“Where is it?” asked Towlinson.
“At home.”
“No, it is not.”
“You’ve been to my house?”
“It has been searched. The bag was nowhere to be found.”
“What difference does it make?” asked Ruth Wolf, putting forth the pretense that the contents of the bag should have no value at all.
“It makes a very great difference,” said Towlinson with a pregnant, knowing look. “And I should like its return — to my office — to-morrow morning at the latest.”
“I don’t understand why I am being dismissed,” said Ruth Wolf in a mechanical voice that said she knew quite well a number of underlying, unspoken reasons for her termination. But she was nonetheless curious (as was I) about what should be the purported grounds for her departure from the institution, which had employed her for the entire length of her sojourn as counterfeit Dinglian.
“Am I to believe that you actually do not know?” shot back Towlinson, playing the role expected of him. “If I must say it, then I will say it. An investigation into the recent death of the T.T. patient Gamfield has pointed every finger to your singular culpability. Moreover, there was an eyewitness to this murderous act: one of the orderlies who attended you in Mr. Gamfield’s final moments. He was present to see you administer the drug that sadly ended Gamfield’s life.”
Ruth Wolf raised an eyebrow in dubiety. Now that the axe had fallen, she did not appear quite so nervous. The thing was done, her course now set. She could afford to be a mote contentious, a bit wise to the mechanics now being employed to remove her from Bedlam.
She cut her eyes to Fibbetson. He would not engage her with his own.
“The orderly stated that the patient was very much alive when you entered the room, madam,” Towlinson went on. “It was you who killed him. Either with specific intention or through gross neglect, it is no matter. You are unfit to continue in the employ of the hospitals of the Dell. Sign the paper. Return your bag on the morrow and let us put an end to the sorry chapter of your tenure here.”
“Yes, let us indeed do that,” said Ruth Wolf in a sarcastic underbreath. She picked up the quill, dipped it into the ink well that accompanied it, and affixed her signature dutifully to the document before her. Then she rose from her chair. “Sir Dabber. I shall wait for you and Mr. Trimmers in the corridor to assist you in conveying your son to Dabber Hall.”
“Hold please, my dear,” said Dabber, rising from his own chair. “I myself have no further need to continue with this meeting.”
“Now that you’ve received that chief thing that you sought from us all along,” said Dr. Towlinson with a dark chuckle. “I have never said, sir, that you are impenetrable. Take your son away and spend the remainder of your days cleaning up his incontinent shit. That will be your lot, you fat, wheezing old fool.”
I watched my friend bunch his fingers once again into fists and wondered if his pugilistic abilities rose to the level of his laureled youthful wrestling proficiency. I would not receive an answer to my musing, for Dabber did not tarry to exchange blows with his detractor, removing himself instead with a quick and contemptuous sweep from the room.
Together Dabber, Miss Wolf and I stepped away from that place where we had won a small triumph, but where one of us had suffered a great defeat, and made our hurried way through the asylum’s labyrinthine passages to the cellarage stairs.
Momentarily deterred by Oscar the attendant’s unwillingness to admit us to Bevan’s cell without proper authorisation, we did not have to wait long before consent came in the form of a verbal directive from Towlinson’s assistant Howler, who had been hastily detailed by his employer to this very purpose.
None of us — our number now having grown to four, with young Bevan Dabber in tow — spoke a word until we had safely assembled ourselves within Dabber’s cabriolet, and even then there was not much speaking in the first moments of our situation there, given that the lovers Ruth Wolf and Bevan Dabber had a personal need which took precedence: to embrace and to wipe away with great tenderness their mutual tears, and to wonder if the angels of fate had not for once smiled upon a Dinglian in a rare act of good, deserved fortune.