The Other Lady Vanishes (Burning Cove #2)(55)

“You’ve heard of it?”

“Sure. I used to be in the import-export business, remember? I’m aware of all the major shipping companies on the West Coast. Never had any dealings with Conrad Massey himself, though. I don’t know the man. I seem to recall hearing rumors that his company was facing some serious financial problems.”

“All I can say is that, in hindsight, I should have known Conrad was too good to be true.”

“Mr. Perfect swept you off your feet?”

“Yes. For a time.” Adelaide glanced down at her left hand as if there had once been a ring on one finger. “He asked me to marry him. But that’s where things get murky.”

“How murky?”

“Conrad wanted to elope. He claimed he was so passionately in love with me that he could not go through a long, formal engagement. Because I was still grieving the loss of my parents, the last thing I wanted was a big society wedding. I admit that, at first, I was dazzled by Conrad. But I started to get the feeling that I was being rushed. It was as if I could hear my parents’ voices in my head, telling me to slow down and be very sure of what I was doing. So I told Conrad that I wanted time to think about it. He agreed but he insisted on giving me a ring.”

“An engagement ring?”

“He said no, that it was just a token of his affection, something to make me think of him whenever I looked at it. I wore it for a while but the more I thought about a future with Conrad, the more uneasy I got. I just couldn’t see myself married to him. I had inherited money, but my parents had never moved in the social world. I didn’t feel comfortable at the nightclubs and restaurants that Conrad enjoyed. I think he must have realized that I was about to end things, because he invited me to a private dinner in his town house one evening. That night I told him that I couldn’t marry him and I gave him back his ring.”

“How did he react?”

“He said he was disappointed but that he would wait for me to change my mind.”

“What happened next?”

“I drank some of the champagne that he had poured for me, and about twenty minutes later I went crazy. I started hallucinating wildly. I was consumed by panic and paranoia. I was convinced that I was falling through the floor of the dining room into hell. The devil himself came toward me. He was wearing a surgical mask. He gave me an injection. I was locked in a delirium nightmare. I didn’t come out of it for nearly three days. When I woke up, I was in a locked room in an insane asylum named Rushbrook Sanitarium.”

Jake put his fork down with great precision. He had to work hard to control the searing fury that burned deep inside him.

“Sounds a lot like what happened to me last night,” he said.

“Yes. Fortunately you didn’t drink all of that water. You got a fairly light dose. I’m sure that the drug they used on you was the same one they used on me while I was locked up at Rushbrook, the one my parents discovered.”

“Daydream.”

“Yes. When I slowly came back to my senses, I tried to explain to everyone at Rushbrook, including Dr. Gill and the director of his private lab, Dr. Ormsby, that I was all right. I told them I was convinced that Conrad had drugged me and that someone had helped him.”

“The man in the surgical mask.”

“Yes.”

“How did Gill and Ormsby react?”

“They gave me another dose of Daydream,” Adelaide said.

Jake realized he was gripping something in his right hand. He looked down and saw that he had picked up the knife. Very deliberately he put it down on the table.

“Some monsters are real,” he said quietly.

“I finally realized that Gill and Ormsby had been conspiring with Conrad from the start. In fact, I’m quite sure that it was Gill’s idea to use me.”

“Use you?”

“They needed another test subject, you see. I was Patient B. Evidently, Patient A died. The people housed on ward five told me that one day Gill and Ormsby would kill me with the drug and I would become a ghost, just like the other patient who had been locked in my room.”

“Gill and Ormsby conducted experiments on you?”

“They had other patients they could have used, of course, but those people were all locked up at Rushbrook in the first place because they had been diagnosed as suffering from some type of severe mental illness. Gill and Ormsby wanted a research subject who was . . . normal.”

“They didn’t just want a subject who was normal,” Jake said. “They wanted someone who was alone in the world. Someone who didn’t have any family members who might ask awkward questions.”

“They could have kidnapped some poor soul off the street if that was all they wanted,” Adelaide said. “But they also needed money. They had a nice little sideline going with the sales of some drug that they packaged in perfume bottles, but they didn’t have the capacity to produce and market large quantities of the stuff. And, as it happens, experimental research is expensive.”

“Massey agreed to give Gill a share of the money he got from your inheritance.”

“Yes.”

“How did Conrad Massey get involved in this?”

Adelaide’s smile was both cold and sad. “He wanted to marry me for the oldest reason in the world.”

“He needed money.”