Asylum Read online

  That wasn’t all. There was, according to my anonymous e-mail correspondent, a connection between the Miséricorde orphanage—which surely was one of the ones to send orphans to Cité de St.-Jean-de-Dieu—and McGill. Ravenscrag. MK-Ultra. The CIA’s fierce desire to be able to brainwash the world. If another place like Miséricorde had been involved, then how many others were there? Ten? Fifteen? Fifty?

  I punched an address into the GPS and the ghosts dissipated as I drove, and within half an hour found myself on the other end of town … in every possible sense of the term. Sherbrooke Street became Côte-des-Neiges as it climbed up the side of the mountain and then I was driving through an upscale neighborhood, the fur traders’ mansions, the homes of the railroad kings, the carefully Anglophone section of the city, so high on a hill that you expected your ears to pop.

  The Allan, still housed in the mansion called Ravenscrag, isn’t what it used to be, either. The interior of the mansion had been stripped once its wealthy owners had died off; it was only impressive from the outside. Montréal’s done a grand job of erasing the parts of its past it wants to hide. Now the building houses the psychiatry department of the Royal Victoria Hospital, part of the McGill University Health Center, and if anyone finds the house creepy now, it’s only because—well, frankly, because it’s a creepy looking place. Nothing bad happens here.

  Not anymore.

  Here there was a guard shack, but I talked my way past its somnolent inhabitant easily enough—thank you, city ID. I drove up a long, very long, gently curving driveway … and, right at the top, right on cue, there it was. Ravenscrag.

  Crazy ornate Italianate style. If the Addams family had had a house at the top of a hill overlooking the city and the St. Lawrence Seaway, it would be this one. I drew in another deep breath.

  Allan’s son had wanted none of it, though, and he donated it to the Royal Victoria. The inside was gutted, and it morphed into the first of its several hospital incarnations, eventually becoming the psychiatric department of McGill University.

  According to my caller from Ottawa, Cameron had commuted here, every day, from his home in Vermont to do his experiments on “biological systems” (that’s people, to you and me). He treated his patients with hallucinogenic drugs, long periods in the sleep room, and testing in something he called the Radio Telemetry Laboratory—I really didn’t want to know what that last bit was. I shivered just at the name.

  Montréal native musician Leonard Cohen came here as a paid volunteer when he was seventeen. He talked later about the sensory-deprivation experiments, said that he liked them because he learned to dissociate, leave his body, go on long voyages through the universe. I even found a photograph online showing him wearing a blindfold, with his ears, fingers, and hands encased in padded restraints that prevent movement and cut off sensory stimulation.

  It’s eerie, Ravenscrag. And what happened inside was eerier still. The words of my anonymous e-mail correspondent came back to me: What are two McGill psychiatrists doing in a group photo on the steps of this hospital?

  My smartphone alarm went off, and I jumped. Just a reminder of my meeting with Julian, but my nerves were pretty frayed by now. Conscious of my heartbeat, conscious of blood in my ears and veins—how did mere proximity to this place make me so acutely aware of my body?—I turned around and headed back down the hill.

  After my afternoon’s travels and the thoughts they’d provoked, I felt that I really, really needed a shower.

  I settled for a glass of beer with Julian at his Anglophone pub. “Well?”

  “You don’t look very chipper,” he said. He, of course, looked as perfectly put together as ever.

  “Been on a sightseeing tour,” I responded, and took a rather large swallow of the lager in front of me.

  He politely waited a moment for me to elucidate, then shrugged lightly when I didn’t. “Well, I think we’re on the right track,” he said. “For a couple of reasons.” He numbered them on his fingers. “One. Violette Sobel is scared out of her wits. She knows damned well where her adopted sister lived before coming into the heart of the Desmarchais family, and she knows damned well how it happened. Father caught sight of Annie when he was working over at Saint-Jean-de-Dieu and she haunted him, until he pulled her out and took her home. Or at least that’s the story Violette got; I wouldn’t stake anything on its veracity. Maybe he thought that bringing one of ’em home would balance things out. Violette says that Annie spent the first half of her life grateful to him and the second half blaming him for his role in it all.”

  “Lots of mixed feelings there,” I said, nodding.

  “Less mixed as time passed, it seems. Annie’d been looking at death for a while.” He hesitated. “She had a cancer scare last year, and it came back this winter. Violette says she wanted to do something important before she died.”

  “Such as?” I took another hefty swallow of beer.

  “Such as trying to get an equitable settlement for the remaining orphans,” he said. “They’re organized, you know, you must have seen it in the news. They call themselves the Duplessis Orphans—and you know that the government gave them something back in 2002, some restitution money, right?”

  I nodded. I’d heard that, of course, from Elodie.

  Julian cleared his throat. He’d been reading up on things. “It’s all been desperately horrible for them,” he said. “They’d been trying to get some sort of settlement since 1988. In 1999, the Church pretty much refused all responsibility, the archbishop of Montréal said they’d have to present case-by-case proof before he’d so much as issue an apology—oh, and that has still not happened, by the way. The Sisters of Providence said they’d do their own investigation, but ended up saying there’d been no abuse. Premier Bernard Landry finally put together an apology and an offer in 2002: each of the orphans received a ten thousand dollar lump sum and an additional thousand dollars for every year they spent in the asylum, which translates into roughly twenty-five thousand dollars per person.”

  Someone had already given me those figures. Elodie? “Is that a lot?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No other government concession in history has ever been so low. And it seems Annie wanted to do something about that.”

  “Why?” Annie Desmarchais was beyond wealthy.

  He smiled quizzically. “For justice, Violette said. Incidentally, she approved not one little bit. The past should stay in the past, all that sort of thing, that’s Violette’s take on it all.”

  “Violette didn’t spend the first ten years of her life in a hellhole.”

  “There is that,” Julian acknowledged. “Anyway, it’s all Annie talked about, ever since the cancer came back. She wanted to do something for the other orphans. She remembered a lot of them, kids that were tortured, kids buried out on the farm. She had names, names of the dead. She said everyone should know about them.”

  “That wasn’t good news for somebody,” I said.

  “It simply isn’t done at their level of society, you see.” He managed a smile at his halfhearted attempt at levity. “Violette’s husband was Jewish, and Annie pointed out that in Canada, what happened to those kids should be as well known as the Holocaust. She said that if she had her way, Canadians wouldn’t ever forget, either.”

  He paused. I was thinking it over. “And number two?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You were naming reasons we’re on the right track,” I reminded him. “Violette Sobel was number one. What’s number two?”

  “Ah.” He grinned vividly, wickedly. “My boss has taken me off the case.”

  I stared at him, aghast. “You’re not serious.”

  “Au contraire. I’m very serious. They’re arraigning their homeless suspect down on Rue Notre-Dame as we speak, or they will be tomorrow.”

  I closed my eyes. I suddenly felt exhausted. We were up against something so gigantic … I could see the superior court building, its massive columns, the sheer size of the place daunting. Justice, one felt
, was being meted out there. But without Julian … “Merde,” I said with feeling.

  “Not to worry,” he assured me. “While it seems that my extraordinary skills are apparently needed, or so I am told, in solving a case that was clearly a matter of domestic abuse drawn to its logical if tragic conclusion, I have informed the powers-that-be that I am indisposed. I require a week’s holiday, as from now.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. We’re getting there, Martine, don’t you see that? Come on, think about it. Why do you think I was put on the case? I’m the resident bad boy. And when you decided to investigate, they probably thought you were harmless, you’ve never solved a crime in your life. Do you really think they imagined we’d figure anything out? They don’t think much of either of us, they don’t expect anything from us, and that’s a good thing, it really is.” He paused and took a breath. “And I’m damned if I’m going to let some poor homeless fellow do a man in the iron mask and rot in prison for the rest of his life so that, once again, Québec’s sins can be swept under the carpet.”

  “That’s a lot of metaphors,” I said with admiration.

  “I pride myself on my metaphors,” he said, grinning. “So glad you noticed. Now, here’s the thing. Annie Desmarchais wasn’t expecting the government to pony up all the settlement money she wanted.”

  “Then who was she targeting? The Church?”

  “Not that Violette noticed,” he said. “Though they sure as hell should pay, if you ask me.”

  “Which, of course, I didn’t,” I murmured.

  “Which you didn’t,” he confirmed. “Here’s the thing. Violette knew that Annie had been meeting with a professor from McGill—”

  “Christopher MacDougal,” I said, reaching his wavelength with a click that must have been audible.

  “None other than,” Julian agreed. He took a sip of Guinness and looked out approvingly over the stream of pedestrians passing by. “A solid connection, that, I’d say, wouldn’t you?”

  “She wanted McGill to pay?” I must have sounded as disbelieving as I felt. “Julian, listen, that means she had proof of a connection between the Allan Institute and the Cité de Saint-Jean-de-Dieu! I mean, everything that we have, it can be explained away. We don’t have anything concrete. She had to have proof, she was a businesswoman, she knew damned well that it would have to stand up in court.”

  “And that, my little chickadee, is exactly what you’re going to talk to Dr. MacDougal about.”

  I was doggedly following my own thread of thought. “We still have to connect the other women,” I said. “Danielle is easy, she was doing MacDougal’s research for him. But the other two?”

  Julian finished his Guinness and, putting some money on the table, stood up. “That,” he said, “is what I’m going to find out next.”

  I was to learn to read and write.

  It was a privilege, everyone said, and I agreed: when I was learning to read and write, I wasn’t running all over the institution with messages, I didn’t have to go down to the basement or out to the farm. They needed me to help with recordkeeping, Sister Béatrice said. That was why I was to learn.

  And it was easy, really. Figuring out which symbols stood for which sounds. Seeing my own name take shape under my pen. Beginning to read the signs that seemed to be everywhere at the asylum. “Private.” “Hydrotherapy.” “Locked ward.” There was magic in what I was doing, unlocking an understanding of the building around me.

  Marie-Rose told me about books. She couldn’t read them herself, of course; but back at the orphanage sometimes one of the older girls used to read books to her. “Stories,” she said wistfully. “Stories of days gone by, and princesses and kings. And saints, too”—she blessed herself—“and foxes that could talk. Will you be able to read the books, Gabrielle? Will you be able to tell stories?”

  I would be able to read books, I thought. Someday, I would leave the asylum, and I would read a book. And another. And another.

  Sister Béatrice was not offering books, and I knew better than to ask for them. I concentrated hard during our lessons, and practiced with every word I encountered, wherever I went, and she seemed surprised by—and pleased with—my progress. “You’re a clever girl, Gabrielle.”

  Finally I was put in a room with a long shiny table and rows and rows of filing drawers and given a task. “We will bring you a list of names,” said Sister Béatrice. “You will look them up in the files. You will write down next to each name whether or not that person has family, and if so, what family there is. Father, mother, uncle, cousin, do you understand? And the family’s address.”

  “Yes, Sister.” There was a time when I would have asked why, but I didn’t want to go back into restraints, and Sister Béatrice was famous for putting you in them for the most minor of infractions. I could feel the cuffs cutting my wrists just thinking about it. Nothing was worth that.

  “Bien.” She looked at me suspiciously, as though she could read my thoughts, and I arranged my features into the most bland of all possible expressions. She was back in a very short while, the promised list in her hand. “These are the files you will use,” she told me, indicating three or four of the file cabinets. “When you’ve finished, come find me in the dayroom on the third floor. You can find that, can’t you?”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  “All right, then.” And she was gone.

  I worked hard on the list, but when I brought them to Sister Béatrice, she barely glanced at them. Names and names and names and names—the latitude and longitude of our lives … What I hadn’t expected was to recognize them.

  The names were nearly all those of children who had been brought there from my orphanage. Names I knew; faces I knew; stories I knew.

  “You’ll have to work more quickly in the future,” she said. “All right. You’ll need to take this directly to the basement clinic yourself, I don’t have time to have Sister Marguerite send someone.”

  No one was in the small antechamber, but one of the doors stood open. I stood and waited, watching the clock’s hands move around. Wasn’t Bobby down here anymore? I was going to get in very bad trouble if I didn’t return to Sister Béatrice, and soon.

  I kept looking at the open door until finally, hesitantly, I went through it. There was very little light in the corridor, just some bulbs placed at what seemed to be long intervals along the hallway, and I stood there for a moment, trying to get my bearings. A door was open, but the doorway was covered with thick strips of clear plastic hanging vertically from the door, and I stopped there, indecisive about what to do.

  Voices inside. “Disconnecting the frontal lobe didn’t seem to help the last time.”

  “That’s true, Doctor.”

  “But we need to know why. And whether it would happen again.”

  Calm voices, it was always a relief to hear calm voices, or so I’d come to understand. In a place like Cité de Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, calmness was a rare commodity. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the vertical strips of heavy plastic away.

  I was looking at a table with lights pointing down toward it, and a body lying on the table, and blood everywhere. People standing around it. The doctor said something sharply when he saw me, an expression of irritation. The nun—Sister Lise—strode over to me, blocking my view of the table. “What are you doing here?”

  I held up the paper that was still, miraculously, in my hand. “I’m supposed to give this to you. From Sister Béatrice.” I couldn’t work out how words were coming out of my mouth: my lips felt as though they were covered with something heavy and fuzzy, as though they could scarcely work. And my stomach was heaving.

  She snatched the paper from my hands. “Bien. You may go now.”

  I turned, and in that moment I saw Bobby, standing off to the side holding something in his hands. He didn’t look at me. He’d made his choice: cigarettes and a place where he could be respected, a place where he could be somebody.

  I ran.

  CHAPTER TWEN
TY

  Christopher MacDougal was early.

  I saw him from a distance as I was walking through the park, a vast, beautiful bit of nature in the middle of the Plateau, with an “espace”—space—in the center, run as a nonprofit that included a bistro and an amphitheater for plays, films, and so on. Mixing culture and nature. I hadn’t personally come up with the idea, but I sure as hell made certain everybody knew about it: it’s a great PR angle.

  My phone rang just as I was heading down the path toward the espace. “Martine LeDuc,” I said, keeping my voice down even though MacDougal couldn’t possibly hear me from this distance.

  “Babe? What’s going on?”

  “Not much,” I said, mystified that Ivan should be calling me. “Why?”

  “You were supposed to be here at lunchtime to look at some security tapes.”

  Oh, merde, yes. The people at Danielle’s funeral. I’d completely forgotten. “Oh, Ivan, I’m sorry. I got busy and—”

  “Forgot,” he finished for me. “No big deal, but I’m heading downtown for a couple of meetings, so if you come now—”

  “I probably won’t get to it today, chéri,” I said apologetically.

  “All right then. No worries. I’ll see you tonight. Take care.”

  “You, too,” I said automatically, already clicking off the smartphone. MacDougal had caught sight of me and was walking in my direction. My gut remembered the night in my office even if my head knew how safe I was here, and I felt it twist in fear. Standing next to him was making my skin crawl.

  “Mrs. LeDuc,” he said, offering his hand.

  I shook it firmly. “Professor MacDougal.”

  He half turned, gesturing toward the bistro, people flowing in and out of the indoor serving area, others settling in at the tables grouped under the trees. “Perhaps something to drink? An apéritif?”

  I’d already had a glass of beer I’d drunk far too quickly, and I needed my wits about me. “An espresso,” I agreed, and we found a small zinc table outside. Around us, voices in a babble of French and English, though mostly French. We did the pretend-you’re-looking-around-while-feeling-awkward thing that people who don’t know each other do when they’re first together, and I wondered for a moment where the little train was that took children around the espace. Only on weekends, I remembered.