The sister, apparently. Handle with care. Rampole said:
"I just met her today. I scarcely know her at all."
"Then you've never heard of Chatterham prison?"
"Never."
The doctor clucked his tongue. "You've got something out of Payne, then. He took you for an old friend… Chatterham isn't a prison now, you know. It hasn't been in use since 1837, and it's falling to ruin."
A baggage truck rumbled. There was a brief glare in the darkness, and Rampole saw a curious expression on the doctor's big face, momentarily.
"Do you know why they abandoned it?" he asked. "It was the cholera, of course; cholera-and something else. But they said the other thing was worse."
Rampole got out a cigarette and lighted it. He could not analyse his feeling then, though it was sharp and constricting; he thought afterwards that it was as though something had gone wrong with his lungs. In the dark he drew a deep, breath of the cool, moist air.
"Prison," continued the doctor, "particularly prisons of that day, were hellish places. And they built this one round the Hag's Nook."
"The Hag's Nook?"