Free Grace and Disgrace by Kayne Milhomme

actions, my Robert—Father Donnelly—pushed me away forever.” She stared at the table as if ashamed to look up. “He was involved in the trial, and scarred by it. He was therefore part of the archbishop’s embarrassment. The good doctor called that year the ‘beginning of the end’ for his brother….so it was the end for me and Father Donnelly.”
    The doctor did not challenge Mary’s heartfelt comment, and Tuohay looked on in silent contemplation.
    Eldredge cleared his throat. “I do apologize, Miss Hart, but I must ask: you had every reason to despise Father Aiden Kearney, did you not? He exposed your relationship with Father Robert Donnelly, which ended as a result, per your remark.”
    “Yes,” said Mary. “You are right on both counts, Mr. Eldredge. I despised Father Kearney. And I am usually a fast learner, only…”
    “Only what, Miss Hart?” Tuohay prompted.
    “Only, my anger against Aiden Kearney blinded me to my Robert’s shortcomings. I was not aware of the type of man ‘the great’ Imhotep, my Robert, really was, and how far he would be willing to go to save himself, and perhaps the archbishop, from further embarrassment.” Her voice faltered. “He was a teacher to me, a companion, a lover. Yes, he always had the promise of severity about him, but never—never of menace.”
    Tuohay pressed gently. “What do you mean?”
    “I…”
    “What she means…,” the doctor interrupted, but Mary quieted him with a gentle touch of her hand. She looked up with a firm gaze.
    “What I mean, Mr. Tuohay, is that four years ago my beloved Robert…the acclaimed Father Donnelly…had me committed to a lunatic asylum.”
    An uneasy silence fell across the table.
    “It was to keep me quiet,” Mary continued. “I was committed shortly after the trial between Father Kearney and the archbishop ended. Directly after my testimony against Father Kearney, in fact.” She laughed at the irony. “And there I languished, bound like an animal to my bed, probed and prodded like some kind of experiment. All the while I did exactly as they had asked all along.” Mary’s voice grew thick with emotion. “I would have gone mad if the good doctor did not get me out when he did.” She closed her eyes as if to shut out the memories themselves.  
    “Egads,” Eldredge whispered, his hand frozen above his drying ascot.
    “What prompted you to get Miss Hart out of the asylum?” Tuohay asked the doctor.
    “Not out, transferred ,” corrected Doctor Kearney. “I moved her from the asylum in Danvers to the hospital in Medfield, where I have some jurisdiction, and where Mary would receive proper care. They had her on crude preparations of morphine and heroin, and on additional nerve-seizing drugs. Hallucinates. Her recovery has been slow. Currently I have her on Doctor Leven’s Anti-Anxiety Number 9 and laudanum.”
    Mary extracted a small glass bottle of pills and a vial of crimson liquid from her purse. She rattled the pills with a remorseful smile. “I have them wherever I go. Whenever a bad dream threatens, I just swallow a pill and wash it down with a tincture of opium. Good night, Mary.”
    “The experience sounds dreadful,” said Tuohay. “But certainly Mary is not the only patient to have ever been exposed to such medical practices. Why did you specifically move her from the hospital?”
    Doctor Kearney leaned both elbows on the table and looked as if he was about make a very grave statement. “Miss Hart was a concubine for Father Donnelly, the very man, who along with the archbishop, destroyed my brother. And then Father Donnelly attempted to destroy her because she was proof of his transgressions. She had been his lover, and she knew the truth about how the trial was staged, of how she was forced to bear false witness against Aiden.” Doctor Kearney’s voice was as solemn as his graying temples. “I discovered through Aiden, before his untimely death, that Mary was a witness with information that