I frowned. “Perhaps she isn’t dead, just moved to another part of the asylum. And sometimes . . . sometimes she’s able to wander the halls. Was she—is she—a patient here?”

“She used to be—not terribly long ago. Epileptic ward, even though she wasn’t epileptic.”

“Come, I’m certain—”

“She told me she was here because she fell in love with the wrong man. A duke named Santiago, and she was only a musician.” She would not, it seemed, be dissuaded from her recitation. The words spilled out like a waterfall too long dammed up. “She carried his child and went mad when the babe died. Well, at least she thought it died, but I’m almost certain they merely took the child away. I heard it cry a few times after they said it died, but perhaps it’s just as well. A woman cannot raise a babe in a place like this, and the duke wasn’t about to let her out. Then after a time, she vanished. I believe she was killed, and the killer never faced justice. So ever since, she’s stuck here, waiting . . . waiting . . .”

I lowered my lids and forced myself to listen quietly to the outrageous tale. To tread gently. “I’m afraid I have nothing to offer this specter, if in fact that’s what she is. It isn’t as if I was even here when—”

“If you don’t believe me, go and look her up. The records of all the patients who’ve died are in the cemetery gatehouse. You’ll find her name, as sure as I stand here.”

I was seized with a panic, a deep unexplainable dread, that her words might be true—that Rose was Rosamond, and that she was dead.

“I just thought . . . I thought someone should remember her.” Clara’s fingers twisted in the fabric of her skirt. “Someone should know her story so she didn’t simply vanish.” Her voice was quiet. “No one deserves that—not even the people here.” She sucked in a breath. “But I shouldn’t have said anything. I always do that, always get myself into these scrapes.” Moisture glistened on her skin.

Her fear, at least, was quite real. That made her stories harder to ignore. “How . . . how did she die?” I couldn’t force my mind to wrap around the possibility. This wasn’t the end of the story I’d hoped for. Not at all.

“She became so violently mad in the end, after the babe, that they locked her up in the tower and we never saw her after that. Then, according to an aid, she fell to her death from a window—some say she did it herself, others say she was pushed by someone the duke hired. Or perhaps . . . by Thornhill.”

My gut twisted.

“So now she walks the halls, looking for escape. Trying to get out, to be free again.”