“Quite at odds with the timid soul you knew as a child,” James suggested. He leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees as he listened intently.
She sighed. “Yes. Malcolm angrily refused to try a third school, so tutors were hired instead. Malcolm had a keen intellect, and he liked learning. Ultimately, Vicar Douglas became his educator and Malcolm calmed down and felt happy.”
“So, at a young age he was considered—in some way—defective,” Cecilia said. She frowned. “That sounds harsher than I mean it to.”
“But it is true, in its way,” Mrs. Montgomery said. “Ewan Montgomery—quite unlike my own father—liked Alastair Sedgewick for Alastair did not mind Malcolm’s occasional odd behaviors and strangeness, and he seemed able to pull Malcolm out of his timid self. Malcolm enjoyed the adventures Alastair suggested. Mr. Montgomery trusted that Alastair wouldn’t lead either of them into mischief. They would simply enjoy the summer outdoors.”
Mrs. Montgomery paused and plucked at the folds of her gown. “Alastair told me Malcolm felt damaged,” she said softly, “splintered like a log with an ax embedded in it. He said sometimes they would talk for hours at a time about how Malcolm felt. Malcolm informed Alastair that he had blocks of time that he could not account for. He did not know where he’d been or what he’d done. It was like he’d been in a walking, waking sleep.”
Cecilia and James again shared concerned glances.
“Abiding by my father’s wishes, I married Malcolm.” She smiled gently. “In the early years of our marriage, we werecontent. We did not have a love match. We were friends and that helped. Malcolm seldom displayed his strangeness. It was whispered that it was to be hoped he’d outgrown whatever malady occasionally afflicted him. He had only a few times of losing his sense of self and time and that pleased him, too.”
She picked up her teacup but did not sip her tea. She stared into the cup as if it were a memory mirror. “Then, sometime after Sorcha, our second child, was born in 1800, he started changing.”
“Changing?” James prompted.
Mrs. Montgomery compressed her lips for a moment. It was obvious she didn’t quite know how to continue. She licked her lips. “He became more than one person,” she said in a rush, a red blush rising in her cheeks.
“How do you mean?” Cecilia asked.
She lifted her hands helplessly, then let them fall back into her lap. “Just that. When I talked to Malcolm, sometimes it wouldn’t be Malcolm I would be speaking to.” She laughed brittlely. “Sometimes it would be Gregory, occasionally Archie—an evil, violent man, that one was.” She visibly shivered at some memory only she could see.
“E’gad!” exclaimed James as Cecilia drew in a sharp breath, her eyes wide. She reached out to Mrs. Montgomery, laying her hand on hers in comfort for the memories.
“Sometimes it would be another altogether! Gregory was the nicest of the—of the—I don’t know what to call them. People? Others? Ghosts? He kindly told me they all knew what Malcolm did and what each other did; however, he said Malcolm had little memory of what they did or said, just remnants of feelings. Gregory said no one liked Archie. Unfortunately, Archie was growing stronger, and he warned me that he might not be able to protect us from Archie!”
“The church would call him demon possessed,” James said.
Mrs. Montgomery nodded. “Of a certainty they would, but it wasn’t outside demons he warred with, not like they speak of from the pulpit. Malcolm reassured me that, contrary to what Gregory said, he was gaining more awareness. We had a very serious discussion. He knew he was ill—admitted he’d been ill since he was young—but he told me he could handle things. I wanted Malcolm to see a doctor. There are some brilliant doctors in Edinburgh who deal with illness of the mind. Malcolm saidno. And for several years, it appeared Malcolm was correct, he could manage things. We lived happily, with only occasional instances of other persons taking him over at odd—sometimes humorous—times.”
“But eventually, his demons won in the battle for control,” James concluded for her.
“Yes, his personal demons that lived within him.” Mrs. Montgomery visibly swallowed and stared across the room at another distant memory.
“Rather than demons, let’s call them ‘others’,” Cecilia gently suggested.
She smiled weakly at Cecilia. “Aileen, our eldest daughter, had just turned fifteen and stood on the precipice of leaving childhood behind. She was blossoming,” she said quietly.
Cecilia and James nodded in understanding.
“One night, sometime after midnight, Malcolm stumbled into my room. He was shaken and crying. He’d‘woken’if that is what to call it, back in control of his body and found himself bending over Aileen’s bed. He felt lust thrumming through him. Lust for Aileen!”
“He thought he’d been possessed by one of the ‘others’within him, and they lusted for Aileen,” James said.
“Yes. And at that point, it shook him so badly that he finally made the decision to seek help, to check himself into a sanatorium. If his‘others’gained more control, he fearedwhat he might do when one of them was in control. He said he couldn’t take that risk for us. In consultation with various medical resources and the family solicitor, he first chose Autumnvale as the sanatorium, as it was only one hour away. It was a small, sunny, pleasant facility. Most of the patients in residence were older and suffered from dementia.
“That poor man,” murmured Cecilia.
“He became terribly melancholy,” Mrs. Montgomery said. “At first, I visited regularly. After six months, he asked that I not come anymore, that in consultation with his doctor, he’d decided to move to Camden House, a different sanatorium farther way, down in Lincolnshire.” She looked away from them as she sighed deeply and dabbed her tearing eyes with her handkerchief.
Resolutely, she lowered her hand and turned back to face them again. “Two months after that, I was informed he’d died, that he’d taken his own life,” she said matter-of-factly, “Which we know now was a lie,” she ended with a long sigh.
James frowned. “How could he have arranged all that? For I gather he must have,” he said.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I surmise it was with the help of his cousin. His cousin was Malcolm’s father’s estate executor and so I wrote to him—as I thought only proper—to inform him of my intent to marry Alastair. And it was he, in turn, who wrote to me to say I couldn’t marry Alastair as Malcolm was alive.”
“Is this cousin the estate executor and guardian of your son as well?”
