The Taxidermist's Daughter by Kate Mosse Page A

condition. Even so, Woolston was particularly proud of what was being pioneered at Graylingwell, and his small contribution to it. No forbidding walls, no iron gates to keep the patients in, no use of restraints. They treated all forms of mental illness – acute mania, melancholia, epilepsy, hereditary feeble-mindedness and genetic alcoholism – in modern, humane ways. There were some patients who would never leave, but many would, in time, be relieved of their symptoms and returned to their families. From time to time he would stroll through the grounds and wonder about the lives that the patients led. More often, when walking up North Street or through the Pallants, he wondered if any of the people he encountered had ever passed through his hands as names on a piece of paper.
    Now, because of this damnable business, all this was at risk. It had robbed him of any pride or pleasure in what he had achieved. His entire world had been stripped back to that one night ten years ago.
    Woolston took a deep breath and walked in through the gates. The distinctive outline of the water tower loomed ahead of him, constructed like most of the buildings in a warm red brick. The hospital was almost entirely self-sufficient, with two working farms, substantial vegetable gardens and a meat herd. There were separate wards for men and women, as well as accommodation for private patients and an isolation hospital. At the heart of the site were the administration buildings and a theatre, which was where Brook’s instructions said he was to go.
    Woolston followed the gravelled path beneath the chestnut trees with their pink and white blossom. Wednesday afternoon was visiting time and, due to the clement weather, there were several patients walking in the grounds with their families or sitting in one of the pleasant wooden shelters in the airing courts. At a discreet distance, attendants and nurse probationers kept a close eye on their charges.
    It was rare for a patient to escape, though just before Easter a private patient had managed to slip into the gardens and make their way out of the grounds. Even though the fee-paying inmates stayed in what had been the Graylingwell farmhouse, away from the public wards, the security was as stringent there as in the rest of the hospital. It was clear that someone must have helped them. The nurse on duty had denied any complicity, but she’d been dismissed all the same.
    There were regulations governing everything. All patients, having been certified as insane, were committed to the asylum in the first instance by a justice of the peace and could only be released on the order of a doctor. However, if someone did escape, and succeeded in remaining at large for the statutory period of fourteen days, it was considered evidence enough that they were capable of surviving outside of the hospital. Woolston didn’t know the precise details of the recent case, but so far as he was aware, the patient had not been apprehended.
     
    *
     
    Woolston reached the administration buildings without meeting anyone he knew. With relief, he stepped into the corridor and walked quickly to the entrance to the theatre and through the double doors.
    The auditorium was empty. For a moment, he stood still in the shadow of the overhang of the gallery. The dominant colours in the room were cream and beige. Everything was designed to be soothing to troubled spirits. A pleasing repeat-pattern wallpaper, brown and cream, below the dado rail. Small pillars set on pale painted plinths supported the balcony. It was modern and clean and light. Dr Woolston admired the interior of Blomfield’s design as much as the exterior. He had once nursed similar ambitions, and had it not been for his father’s insistence that he should follow in his footsteps as an army doctor, he might have trained as an architect. Harold had inherited his artistic inclinations, though he too had been forced to accept a position with good financial prospects. If he