Session 1.5
From Tatters of the King
This was a special one on one session with Dr Bartlett as the only player character.
Session Report
October 20th 1928
Doctor Bartlett receives a letter from Dr Charles Highsmith, superintendent of St. Agnes Asylum in Weobley, Herefordshire, requesting a meeting on the 28th at the Great Western Hotel in London.
October 28th 1928
At the meeting, Highsmith explains that the patient he wishes to consult Bartlett about is Alexander Roby, who has been committed to St Agnes for the last 2 years following the brutal murders of his Father and Sister, killings he initially claimed responsibility for, but was never in fact charged with.
Highsmith has to make a recommendation for the release, or otherwise, of Roby and was leaning towards release when he came under pressure from the Roby family, through the conduit of family physician Dr Lionel Trollope to keep Alexander confined. The head of Alexander's family is his brother, the prominent banker Graeme Roby.
Highsmith wishes to understand the motives behind the family's position, but they hasn't been able to get them to reveal any details. He also wants Bartlett's professional opinion of the state of mind of Alexander Roby, and asks Bartlett to accompany him when he returns to Herefordshire on the 30th. Intrigued, though unsure of his suitability for what amounts to a private investigation, agrees.
October 30th 1928
Bartlett joins Highsmith on the 10.20am train, to change at Bristol for Hereford. A car meets them and takes them the 20 miles to the village of Weobley. The asylum squats on a hill overlooking the village - a grim Victorian building.
Highsmith describes Roby's symptoms - extreme night terrors, or scotophobia, which manifest around the anniversary of the Roby murders in October each year and continue until April. The attacks are controlled with high doses of laudanum. apart from these attacks, Roby is uncommunicative and seems to live in a world of his own. Highsmith suggests that Bartlett examine Roby on his own initially, and instructs two of his male staff, Nurse Price and Reeves, his secretary, to accompany Bartlett.
En route to Roby's cell Price asks if Bartlett is here about 'the murder', which turns out not to be the Roby killings, but a murder that happened within the asylum a year before. Bartlett asks is he can talk to Price about that after seeing Roby.
In roby's cell, the madman is reading a book and does not react to his visitors. Bartlett examines Roby's books, which are all poetry by modern poets such as Graves and Pound, and discovers marginal notes in pencil throughout them. He is astonished to find a note referring to 'Carcosa' and soon finds other referring to Cassilda, Hastur and other elements of the play.
Eventually Bartlett gets a reponse from Roby, who soon goes into a strange monologue, which Reeves records in shorthand and types up later. When Roby asks Bartlett if he's seen the Yellow Sign, Bartlett says 'yes'.
After that, Roby returns to reading his poetry, so Bartlett sends Reeves to type up the statement and goes with Price to the staff break room to hear about the asylum murder from 1927.
The murder was brutal and mysterious. A nurse called Cuthbert Yates was slashed to death with at least 2 knives in the cell of Roby's neighbour, the brain-damaged Lucius Harriwell. The polcie suspected harriwell, but since hw was clearly insane and already indefinitely incarcerated they saw no point in prosecution. The asylum staff, however, don't believe harriwell capable of such a thing - he was found cowering in his cell, insisting 'the Devil' was responsible, and no weapon was found. Roby was heavily sedated, and despite the interesting parallels with the Roby murders, could not have been involved.
The stange thing, however, was that the amount of blood found in the cell far exceeded that which could have been lost by the victim a lone. No second victim was found, and nobody was reported missing.
