Chapter Thirty-One
After presenting himself and Jack at the reception, Tobias found himself following Jack into the office of the Medical Superintendent of Broadmoor, Dr. David Nicholson, who stood up upon their arrival and walked around his large mahogany desk to greet them.
“Inspector, welcome,” the man said, his Scottish brogue thick in the air as he extended his hand out to Tobias.
Tobias shook his hand, noting the firm grip. He’d heard good reports of the doctor, a man who had extensive experience in medicine and psychiatry, with expertise in dealing with the criminally insane. “Doctor, thank you for seeing us on short notice.”
“Not a problem,” the doctor replied before turning to Jack. “And you must be Miss Maguire.”
Tobias had been surprised when Jack had given the receptionist her real name to pass on to the doctor, but she’d explained she wanted the baron to know who she was.
“It’s nice to meet you, Doctor.” Jack held her hand out and the doctor took it, bowing over it.
“Likewise. My assistant said you were both wanting to speak with Lord Denton, is that so?” The doctor was peering at Jack, almost like he was assessing her to make sure she had really asked to do just that.
“We do wish to speak to him,” Tobias replied, quickly filling the doctor in on some of the facts of the investigation that were pertinent to the request. “Hence, not only do we need to confirm the baron is here, but we think he might be able to provide us with some information on the suspect involved in these murders.”
“I can personally attest to the fact that the baron is most definitely still here at Broadmoor,” the doctor replied.
“I saw him myself this morning, after his morning treatment session with his attending doctor. Though whether he’ll be able to provide you coherent information is another story.
The man is quite disturbed.” The doctor turned to Jack.
“I appreciate that speaking with him might assist you to gain some insight into this case; however, I must warn you, Miss Maguire, that the man truly is criminally insane. It might be difficult for you to be present in the room with him, given what he did to your mother and what you witnessed.”
“You know I saw my mother being murdered?” Jack asked.
“I do. I make it a point to know as much as I can about all the patients here. When I started at Broadmoor about seven years ago, I read through all fifty-three patient records, and the baron’s case stood out as particularly horrific.
Especially when I read that his victim’s eight-year-old daughter had been present and witnessed the crime. ”
He was thorough, Tobias would give him that. “Is there anything that you can tell us about the baron, Doctor? Do his wife or son ever visit?”
“His wife visits once a month, but his son passed away about fifteen years ago.”
“His son is dead?” Jack asked.
The doctor nodded. “Yes, in a fire, I believe. However, the baron suffers from delusions and often talks as if his son were still alive, which we must keep reminding him is not the case. After all, to help him, we must not agree with his delusions, which only serve to derail his treatment. Reality, even if it’s a bitter pill to swallow, is an important component when trying to help those regain some semblance of sanity. ”
“You try to help these monsters?” Jack asked, her eyes pinning the doctor’s, her mouth settling into a hard line.
“I appreciate your position, Miss Maguire, and though this might be difficult to hear, we do try to help the patients here. Most we can’t, but there are some we can help, or at least try to.”
“And the baron fits in the category of those you try to help, despite the brutality he displayed when killing my mother.”
“Truthfully? No, I don’t believe the baron can be helped.
He’s far too lost in his own world of fantasy and delusions to ever properly be able to be helped.
Though there are some instances when he does demonstrate a measure of sanity.
Which, for the most part, is all we can hope to achieve here for him.
” The doctor paused and assessed Jack, his eyes never wavering from her own.
“Are you sure you still wish to see him?”
“Sometimes the fear of someone is far worse in one’s imagination than in actual reality,” Jack replied, her chin lifting slightly as she stared the man down.
“I’ve allowed my imagination to get the best of me when it comes to the baron for far too long.
It’s time to let go of my fear and face the man who took my mother from me. ”
Slowly, the doctor nodded. “Very well, then. It appears perhaps this visit might be beneficial for both you and the baron. Though I caution you from revealing who you are, and I would ask you not to mention your mother, Miss Maguire. Stick to asking about your current case, and I think you might face a relatively sane baron today. Come along, then.”
The doctor grabbed a set of keys from his desk and bustled from the room, motioning for both Jack and Tobias to follow him out the door.
As they followed him from the room, Tobias reached out and gently grabbed Jack’s shoulder. She paused and glanced back at him.
“Are you sure you wish to see him?” Tobias asked, doing his best to see behind the carefully erected walls now shuttering her eyes. “You really don’t have to.”
“I do.” She nodded. “It’s time I banished the monster in the shadows.”
*
Jack really hadn’t known what to expect upon seeing the baron again after all these years, but this old and decrepit man hadn’t been it.
Standing behind the glass window of the interview room, watching as the orderlies escorted the baron over to the chair behind a desk, she’d been shocked to recognize it was him.
From the many wrinkles now lining his skin, and his once neatly trimmed onyx-black hair a shaggy mess of white strands greasily stretching down to his shoulders, he looked nothing like the powerful, giant man from her memories and nightmares.
His back was hunched over as he slowly shuffled into the room and collapsed onto the seat, appearing so very frail and old. This was what the baron had become? A shell of a man, with the wild eyes of someone who had indeed lost a hold of their mental faculties.
Unaccountably, Jack felt sorry for him. Sitting there, twitching and flinching at every movement the orderlies made as they handcuffed both of his hands to the metal bracket anchored to the top of the table, he looked sad and pathetic.
It was hard to correlate this version of the man with the one from her memories. The man who had destroyed her family.
“He’s secure now,” the doctor said. “If you’d both like to follow me.”
Jack took a deep breath before following both Tobias and the doctor into the space.
“Good afternoon, Lord Denton,” the doctor said, coming to a halt at the table while motioning to Tobias and Jack to have a seat on the opposite side of the table to the baron. “You have some guests this afternoon who wish to ask you some questions about a matter.”
The baron blinked, his eyes slightly unfocused as he glanced up at Tobias and Jack, though he was struggling to do even that. Then his eyes latched on to Jack, and he visibly jolted back in his chair.
“Julia?” the baron exclaimed, though his voice was slurred. “Is that you, my angel? But… But how can that be…? You’re meant to be dead. Your blood was all over me…” His eyes bore ravenously upon Jack, hunger warring with the madness in their depths.
“This is not Julia, Edward. Remember, we’ve spoken about this before. Julia is dead,” the doctor said, drawing the baron’s attention onto him for a brief moment before the man’s eyes swung back to Jack.
“No, she’s here, Doctor. My son told me she would come to me, and that when she did, she would take me with her to heaven…”
“Your son is dead too, Baron, remember?” The doctor’s voice was calm and patient.
“He is? I forgot,” the baron said, sounding very confused. “But I don’t understand. I spoke to him the other day… At least I think I did. Everything is so foggy in my head at the moment.” He slammed his head down onto the table, and Jack jumped in her seat.
The man truly was not of sound mind.
One of orderlies rushed over and pulled him back against the chair, holding him in place.
“Baron, we’ve spoken about this,” the doctor warned. “You mustn’t hurt yourself, remember.”
The baron slowly nodded, his forehead now dripping blood onto his face. “But my son can’t be dead… He just visited me this week.”
“No, Edward, your son didn’t visit you,” the doctor again interjected, drawing the baron’s attention back to him. “He’s dead, remember?”
“That’s right…” the baron said, shaking his head, confusion rife in his gaze.
“But I had to have spoken to him because he told me she would be coming soon, and look, here she is!” He swung his attention back to Jack, his eyes desperately searching hers.
“Have you come to take me with you to heaven, Julia? You have, haven’t you? ”
He tried to reach his hands out towards Jack, but the shackles held them locked into place. Rage flew across the man’s face, and he began violently trying to yank his arms free from the cuffs, but the steel was unrelenting.
“Baron, if you can’t behave, you will be taken to the isolation room.”
The man stopped his thrashing and pressed his lips together. “My apologies. I don’t know what came over me. Dreadfully sorry, Doctor.”
The baron’s whole demeanor had changed in an instant and he sounded completely sane. Jack wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. How could he go from mad to acting like a gentleman in a split moment?
“That’s quite all right, Baron,” the doctor replied before glancing over at Tobias. “Inspector, did you have some questions you wished to ask the baron?”
“Yes,” Tobias replied. “Baron, do you know what happened to your signet ring?”
The baron glanced down at his shackled right hand.
“Why, my son has it, of course. He is my heir, and while I’m conducting my business affairs in here, he must continue our family legacy in London.
He can’t do that properly without the family ring on his finger.
If he didn’t have it, no one would know he was representing our family in our quest.”
“Your ‘quest’?” Tobias asked.
The baron laughed. “Yes! Our quest for revenge, of course. What else would he be doing? He knows I was falsely accused. I could never have killed my beautiful angel… No. It was that horrible magician Maguire who destroyed the most pure, beautiful woman. I could never have harmed her. That bastard must be stopped!”
“Maguire was killed fifteen years ago, Baron,” the doctor said. “And he wasn’t responsible for Julia Maguire’s death. You were. Remember, that is what you’ve been working with your doctor to accept.”
“No.” The baron shook his head. “I would never hurt her. Never… It wasn’t my fault… She wouldn’t leave him… She wouldn’t be with me… She shouldn’t have made me angry… It was her fault, not mine!” the baron yelled as spittle flew onto the table and dribbled down his mouth.
His eyes fell upon Jack again. “You’ve come for me, haven’t you?
! Just like my son said you would. That you would come and when I saw you, I would be taken away…
taken to heaven with you!” He again yanked at his cuffs, seemingly trying to lunge forward towards Jack.
“I must go with you! You’re my destiny!”
“All right, I think the baron’s had enough,” the doctor said, nodding to the orderlies before turning to Jack and Tobias. “If you’ll both accompany me outside, the men can fix up the baron and escort him back to his room.”
But then suddenly, the baron’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he started to froth at the mouth, his body convulsing sharply in the chair.
“Quickly, we have to get him on the ground!” the doctor yelled.
Jack pushed back from the table, standing up and watching almost transfixed, as the doctor, Tobias, and the orderlies, all rushed over to the baron. The orderlies unlocked his cuffs, then dragged him to the ground.
“Help pin him down,” the doctor directed Tobias and the orderlies. “What’s he been given?” the doctor yelled at the orderlies, quickly placing a hand at the baron’s neck and checking for a pulse.
“Just a syringe of his medication,” one of the orderlies replied. “About ten minutes ago.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Tobias asked, helping hold down the baron’s shoulders as the man still convulsed.
“I don’t know,” the doctor said, his voice strained as he pulled open the baron’s eyelids and inspected his eyes. “It looks like he’s been poisoned. He’s stopped breathing. Quickly, roll him from side to side; we need to stimulate his breathing.”
Tobias and the doctor rolled the baron on the floor from side to side for several minutes, but then the man’s convulsions suddenly stopped, and his body became unnaturally still. No one moved for several moments before the doctor pushed back on his haunches and sighed.
“It’s no use. He’s dead.”
The words rang in Jack’s head. Words she’d thought she’d rejoice in hearing, but strangely, she felt no joy from them. She stood there, staring down at the baron as his glassy eyes stared up at the ceiling, all life having fled.
“What medication was he given?” Dr. Nicholson asked the orderlies.
The smaller man stepped forward, his eyes wide. “The new one listed on his medication sheet. To be given to him before he had any visitors.”
“What are you talking about?” Dr. Nicholson exclaimed. “I never authorized a new drug to be given to him.”
The other orderly stepped forward. “His treating doctor, Dr. Patterson, was the one who left those specific instructions on his file. He made it very clear the baron wasn’t to be taken to see anyone without first getting a syringe of his new medication.”
“Fetch me the syringe of whatever he was given, and get me his medical file too,” Dr. Nicholson ordered as he rose to his feet, Tobias doing so too.
“Are you all right, Jack?” Tobias asked her, coming between her and her view of the baron.
She glanced up at his eyes and could see the concern in them. Slowly, she nodded. She didn’t quite know how to feel. “I’d always thought of him as a monster… but instead, he was a sad excuse of a man, and I find myself strangely feeling sorry for him. Is he really dead?”
Slowly, Tobias nodded. “He is.”
“Well, he was right about one thing. He saw me and he was taken away.” The irony was not lost on her. “Though rather than heaven, he’s on his way to hell. Of that, I have no doubt.”
Maybe now her mother could rest in peace, and perhaps, just perhaps, so might Jack.