Sweet Things Dying - Epilogue

Where one tangled thread ends, there is another waiting to be unwound...

Epilogue

Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, Berkshire

Christmas Day 1887

Tossed and twisted bedsheets betrayed a restless sleep. The ill-kept, bearded man who sat on the bed betrayed a restless mind. He smiled at Cole, who stood by the bolted door at the end of the narrow room, and he held up a thin finger.

“Another minute,” he said, and Cole could smell his sulphurous breath even from across the room.

Sunlight fell through the slit of the window high up on the wall opposite the door. The light was split by the iron bars in the casement, so that it threw parallel golden shafts on to the bed. While the heavy frost that had turned England white was invisible from inside the room, and the sun would soon shift and leave the room in shadow, to the rest of the world it was a glorious Christmas morning.

“Almost ready,” the bearded man insisted. “Your gift!”

He indicated a blank page that lay on the bed in the centre of the square of light. He carefully adjusted it with the slow movement of the sun.

Cole stood with indifferent patience. Inside he burned with an urge to leave. Why in hell had he given into the visit in the first place? He should have burned the bloody note – ignored the plea to visit his father on Christmas.

The man hopped about the bed like a skeletal ape until the sunlight moved off the edge and began its slow crawl up the wall. With careful fingers he lifted and presented the leaf of paper to Cole.

“Here my son,” he said. “Your gift! I was hoping you would be here Christmas Day to receive it. It is ready just in time!”

Cole accepted the paper. He turned it over, saw only blank white on either side.

“Oh, do be careful, Adam! Do not shake it about too much!”

“What is this?”

“Gold dust. Manufactured by sunlight. My confinement has given me time to experiment. I’ve only recently discovered the process.”

“Remarkable.”

“Is it not? The idea is not wholly original to me, I admit. It is an old alchemical process that I’ve refined. Science in other words. You are keen on science, yes?”

“Not keen enough apparently. But thank you.”

His father waved him off and sat at the foot of the bed. “Are you well, son?”

“Mostly.”

“You look tired.”

“It’s been a tiring time.”

“Yes, so I’ve read,” his father said. “Your name has been in the papers again. A terrible business that. The poor girl. How could a father – ?” He stopped suddenly; remembered.

“I cannot imagine,” said Cole. He gritted his teeth, changed the subject: “Tell me, are they treating you well?”

“Oh, well enough. The doctors’ experiments are not too harsh now. They talk of a new method, using electric currents on the brain but are not as yet equipped. The tea could be better, however. Would you care to sit?”

“I’m fine standing. I shall not take up much more of your time, father.”

“Oh, you are not bothering me. Not in the least. I wish you would stay, William. I’ve not seen you in years.”

“That’s because he is dead,” Cole said.

“What?”

“You called me after my brother. I am Adam, not William. And you’ve not seen him because he’s been dead more than fifteen years.”