He quickened his pace and moisture began to sheen his face, his chest. He forced his legs to eat up the distance to the end of the hall and he barely paused before that door. He fit the key in and yanked it open, bracing himself for what he’d find.

His breath came in panicked gasps as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark. He blinked . . . blinked . . .

Empty. Just a loose sheet thrown carelessly off the edge of a stained cot.

“I’m not mad, Mitchell. I’m not mad”.

He forced himself to walk in. To sit on the bed. He put his palm on the mattress and felt a surprising calm. A disconnection from reality.

“Dr. Turner. What are you doing here?” Thornhill’s voice jarred him back to the present.

As Thornhill loomed in the doorway, his large frame blocking the light, his face was the same. Exactly the same as when he’d told him Dahlia needed to be in this place—told him, with sickening pity, that his wife was dead and he must come away from this cell. It couldn’t have been prevented, he’d said. These things simply happened.

Liar.

Thornhill could have stopped it. He could have stopped it. Someone should have.

Harford’s revelations returned to him then with a strange ring of truth.

“Where is she?” Mitchell’s chest strained against his shirt with each breath.

The same dull pity softened the man’s features. “She is dead, Dr. Turner. Your wife is—”

“I mean Vivienne Mourdant. Where is she? And is it true that my signature is on her intake form?”

Thornhill’s face remained stoic as the seconds ticked by. “Who might that be, Doctor?”

“Vivienne Mourdant, who was supposedly transferred. I know for a fact she wasn’t.” He rose, shoulders squared. “What have you done with her?”

The pity in Thornhill’s features deepened. “There is no one of that name registered at Hurstwell, Dr. Turner. There never has been.”

Mitchell narrowed his eyes. Something electrified in him. He shook, skin clammy, and shed his coat, slinging it over the end of the bed. What game was this? “Bring her to me now, or so help me I will smash every stone in this place to find her.”

“You won’t find anything.” His voice gentled. “And I won’t allow you to damage—”

“The one you call Cora Fletcher. But you know that isn’t her name, don’t you? Knew it the minute you heard her play the pianoforte. Or perhaps before that.” Everything seemed clear now. Too clear. “The truth, Dr. Thornhill. Tell me the truth about her. Now.”

Thornhill gripped Mitchell’s shoulders and forced him back onto the bed, as if to have a serious conversation with a burgeoning doctor.