“Perhaps you can simply leave me in the file room for a while. I can see you’re all busy, and I’d like to familiarize myself with the patients and their conditions.”

Her glare was anything but welcoming. “Those are private. Only Dr. Thornhill sees the patient records, and they aren’t none of our business.” She kept walking, near sprinting, and expecting me to follow.

“It’s just that I’ve never been in a place like this, and—”

She spun on me. “See here, I’ve no time for your needless chatter, unless you’d like to clean up the vomit on the third floor and dress wounds in the infirmary. That’s what you’re keeping me from.” She spun back with a long-suffering sigh.

“I beg your pardon.” I increased my pace so I could walk beside her and catch her eye. “By the way, who was that brute of a man? I’m sure you didn’t deserve whatever he said to you.”

She slowed her steps and her shoulders slumped forward, a bit of tension leaving her. “That’s Dr. Turner. Dr. Mitchell Turner of the women’s chronic ward. Only doctor always on staff this side of Hurstwell—the rest float between the wards.”

“Is he always so surly?”

“Only when a body won’t do things to his liking—and there’s a lot that’s not to his liking. He’s particular and stubborn, wretched man. Stay out of his path and you’ll manage.”

“Perhaps he should be the one locked up.”

The woman gave a short laugh. “Everyone here’s locked up.”

We paused before a cluttered, oversized kitchen, and she waved a spindly arm about. “This is likely where they’ll put you, unless you don’t suit. Then it’ll be the dayroom with the invalids or the slaughterhouse.”

“They have one of those here?”

“Hurstwell takes care of itself. Everything done right here on the grounds, from the meat to the dairy and the farming. Even the graves are dug by the patients in the men’s wing.”

“Graves?” Perhaps they simply dug them for a local cemetery. A parish service to earn their keep.

She waved me down another hall and jabbed one long finger at the window. In the bleak light of dusk, stones rose and fell like crooked teeth protruding from the rolling green hills that stretched on forever. Absolutely forever. There must have been hundreds. “Got to have somewhere to put the bodies, now, don’t we?”

I squinted, wondering if I’d see the name Rosamond Swansea on one of those stones. It was the most likely explanation, but one that sunk my heart. The moment I’d recognized that face, the porcelain skin, dark hair, and gentle eyes, I had ached to find her. To rescue her as she’d once rescued me, in a way.