The Other Lady Vanishes (Burning Cove #2)(56)

“Yes.”

“But to get control of your inheritance, he would have had to marry you,” Jake said. “Not only that, he would have had to be your husband in order to have you committed against your will. You said you decided not to marry him. You gave him back his ring.”

“I told you, that’s where things get murky. You see, when I woke up in the Rushbrook Sanitarium, everyone insisted on addressing me as Mrs. Massey. I had a gold wedding band on my left hand.”

“The bastard claimed he had married you? Dr. Gill believed him?”

Adelaide shrugged. “I think it was Gill’s idea from the start. But here’s the problem—it might be true. I don’t know if I’m actually married to Conrad.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t have any clear memories of the time between the night of my so-called breakdown in Conrad’s dining room and the morning I finally started to recover from the delirium. I lost three days of my life to a nightmare. I was told that during those three days, Conrad and I had eloped to Reno. I was also informed that it was the stress of my wedding night that had caused my nervous breakdown. Gill said that I was suffering from amnesia.”

“Even though you collapsed in Massey’s town house shortly after you drank some drugged champagne?”

“I was advised that I could not trust any of my memories of events that took place during those three days.”

“You said that they were using Daydream, the drug your parents discovered, for the experiments. How did Gill and Ormsby get hold of it?”

“Gill was well aware of my parents’ research. He’s in the business of operating a psychiatric asylum, after all. My father had said Gill was especially interested in a drug that would cause patients to become highly suggestible. Gill claimed he wanted a drug that would induce a trancelike state so that a doctor could use hypnosis in a therapeutic way to stabilize a patient’s unbalanced mind. To some extent Daydream accomplishes that goal—it certainly has hypnotic properties. But as you discovered, it has some very serious side effects.”

“The hallucinations?”

“Yes. It is also very unpredictable. It can make you extremely paranoid, for example. In the end my parents concluded that it was simply too dangerous. They informed Gill that they were closing down the research into Daydream.” Adelaide paused. Her eyes tightened at the corners. “Coincidentally, my mother and father were killed less than a week later in a mysterious explosion in their laboratory, and all of the research files on Daydream disappeared.”

“But you doubt that?”

“Supposedly my parents’ notebooks were destroyed in the blast, but I’m very sure that Gill and Ormsby stole them.”

“You think Gill and Ormsby murdered your parents.”

“At the time I was convinced that the explosion really was an accident. But I stopped believing that when I woke up in a room at Rushbrook.” Adelaide made a face. “As I said, I may be a little na?ve, but once I know the truth about someone, I learn my lesson.”

“What about the antidote?”

“Gill and Ormsby never knew about it. In hindsight, I think my parents may have been starting to get concerned about Gill. There must have been a reason why they did not record the formula for the antidote in the notes that they kept in their laboratory.”

“But you knew the ingredients because you had done the research for your mother.”

“Yes. Once I realized what was happening to me, I set about collecting them. Some of the herbs were actually growing in the hospital gardens. The rest of the ingredients were smuggled in by my friends.”

He set his mug down hard on the wooden table. “You had friends in that asylum?”

“I was there for two months,” Adelaide said gently. “I had time to get to know a few people—the janitors, one of the guards at the front gate. A nurse. A member of the kitchen staff. I was also friends with some of the patients, especially the woman everyone called the Duchess. I owe them all more than I can ever repay. It took a while but eventually they helped me collect the ingredients that I needed for the antidote.”

“How did you manage to make it without attracting the attention of Gill and Ormsby?”

“I kept the herbs under my mattress. After each session in the lab, a friend in the kitchen made sure to send a pot of hot tea to my room. I added the herbs. I was terrified that, in my drugged state, I would accidentally give myself away. But some of the effects of the drug can be . . . managed . . . once you’ve had experience with it. Thanks to Gill and Ormsby I got a lot of experience.”

Jake sat back in his chair. “What happened to the wedding ring?”

“I’ve still got it. I keep it in a box under the bed, the same place I keep my gun. I’ve been afraid to sell it for fear someone would ask questions. I didn’t want my new friends here in Burning Cove speculating about my husband.”

“What about a marriage license?”

“I don’t have a copy of it but that doesn’t mean I didn’t sign one in my hallucinatory state. I’ve thought about it a lot, though, and I doubt that one exists. It’s very possible there never was a marriage. There was no need for one, you see. It’s extremely rare for someone to actually demand proof of a marriage.”