Текст книги "The Bedlam Detective"

Автор книги: Stephen Gallagher

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

WHILE LONDON SUFFERED UNDER FOG, IT WAS A CRISP October day in the West Country. Driving a pony and trap borrowed from his father’s neighbor, and grateful that the pony was more experienced than he, Detective Stephen Reed made the long and lonely trek from Arnmouth to Arnside Hall at the heart of the Lancaster estate. Along the way he saw not one estate worker, nor any other living soul apart from a herd of deer that scattered away from the road as he passed by. He saw a male with broken antlers, another dragging a lame foot. Stephen Reed was no gamekeeper, but he knew neglect when he saw it.

At the Hall, he was met with silence. He tethered the pony by a water trough in the fancy courtyard and went to bang on the great iron knocker that adorned the entrance doors. It made a noise like gunfire in the yard; he imagined that it must sound like cannon fire within.

After half a minute, he banged again. Then he tried the handle out of curiosity, but the doors were locked. A minute or so after that, he heard the rattle of a key.

One door was opened and there stood Dr. Hubert Sibley, wincing at the daylight.

Stephen Reed said, “Housemaid’s day off?”

“We expect a call before a visit,” Dr. Sibley said.

“I’ll be sure to spread the word,” Stephen Reed said, and without waiting for an invitation he shouldered his way past the doctor and into the hallway.

It was gloomy within. Sir Owain was on the short balcony at the top of the Hall’s paneled staircase, looking down onto the entranceway. He seemed to hover there, like a nervous family pet; wary of visitors, but drawn by the novelty of a visit.

He called down, “Detective Reed. They told me you’d returned to other duties.”

Stephen Reed drew a folded copy of yesterday’s newspaper from inside his coat as the landowner descended the stairway. He said, “They’ve set a date to hang the tinker. Here. You can read about it.” He tossed the newspaper onto the nearest table.

As he arrived at the foot of the stairs, Sir Owain said, “What can I say? I offered myself as a defense witness. I was waiting for the call.”

“I know. But the man confessed and pleaded guilty. By now even he’s convinced that he did it.”

Sir Owain closed his fists and took a very deep breath, mastering a painful sense of upset.

He said, “No man was responsible. What would it take to make you believe me?”

“We know those children were not ‘torn by beasts,’ Sir Owain,” Stephen Reed said, with his patience growing thin. “They were disfigured with a billhook. Our police surgeon found the point of it in one of the bodies. It had broken off with the ferocity of the attack.”

“And this tinker—did he have such a billhook? If he did, were you able to fit the point to it? I suspect not. Beasts, I tell you.”

Stephen Reed considered whether to pursue the argument, and decided against it. The fact was, no, no billhook matching the point had been found, either among the tinker’s few possessions or anywhere else. But that was not the true issue, here. Arguing with a delusion simply gave it more substance in the eyes of the deluded.

Instead he said, “I take it the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor judged you sane enough to remain at large?”

It was Dr. Sibley who responded. He said, “We’ve had no formal decision yet, but I’m optimistic.”

With a glance at the doctor, Stephen Reed said, “So that’ll be your job safe, then.”

“Please,” Sir Owain said, moving between them and placing his hand on Stephen Reed’s arm. “There’s no need for this. Will you come with me?”

“Where?”

“There’s something I want you to see.”

SIR OWAIN led the way out into the grounds. Dr. Sibley followed behind. He locked the main door after them and brought along the keys. A hundred yards from the main building, reached by a graveled path, stood the estate’s private chapel. Built in stone, it was a perfect miniature of a church, complete with a porch and a bell tower. To one side of it was a small graveyard for dogs and favored servants.

The chapel was in good order. It was better than preserved; it had been fortified. There were bars on the stained-glass windows and a heavy new door with a lock that Dr. Sibley had to struggle to open.

“Please,” Sir Owain said, “come,” and he led the way inside.

The stone chapel was stone cold. The stained glass bathed its interior in the colors of blood, wine, and sap. Somewhere in a crypt under its floor lay generations of the family whose fading heritage had been bought out by the upstart industrialist. The upstart’s fortunes had faded in their turn, and rather more quickly; but in the chapel was further proof that not everything on the estate bore the marks of ruin.

There were no pews. In their place in the middle of the floor stood a mighty cast-iron vault of a tomb, black and polished. It resembled something that Houdini might lock himself up in, more strongbox than sepulchre.

“I designed this for my own remains,” Sir Owain said. “I built it to be proof against beasts. Would a man go to this trouble over a mere figment of his own imagination?”

Stephen Reed walked around it. “I’ve seen bank safes less substantial,” he said. The tomb was wider than the chapel’s doorway, and stood on feet like lions’ claws. Each dark panel bore moldings of urns and draped material. Sir Owain must have had the plates cast and brought in separately, and then assembled on-site.

Sir Owain said, “I have a genuine fear of desecration. I ask you again, Detective. Would I go to such lengths as these for no reason at all?”

“I really don’t know. All this can prove is the strength of your beliefs, not the truth of what you believe in. But that’s a lot of iron to protect mere human remains. If a man’s life is over, why fear for the flesh?”

“I can’t preserve my life. But I have seen what can happen to the flesh, as you call it. I would like to preserve my dignity when my life is done.”

“Anyone would think you planned on going soon.”

“After all that I’ve lost,” Sir Owain said, “I am counting my steps toward the day.” He placed his hand on the metal, as if he might draw some measure of strength from the contact. He said, “I think you’ll find that Doctor Sibley probably cares for my living welfare more than I care for my own.”

“Well,” Stephen Reed said, “the tinker’s lease on life is set to end in three weeks’ time. He doesn’t understand much, but he understands that.”

“What more can I do?” Sir Owain pleaded, in what seemed like genuine distress. “I offered my services to the law, but the law insists on taking its course.”

“Sir Owain,” Stephen Reed said, looking him in the eyes in a move that was often known to compel his man to sincerity. “These beasts. What are they really? Are they really out there? Or are they within?” He leaned closer. “Is this a tomb to keep monsters out, or a strongbox to contain one?”

Dryly, from over by the door, Dr. Sibley said, “I see we’ve moved on. After all the innuendo, that was almost an honest accusation.”

Sir Owain raised a hand to silence his doctor. “Please,” he said, and then he returned his attention to Stephen Reed. With one brief twitch of a rueful smile he went on, “At this point I have certain lines to speak if I wish to keep my freedom.”

“I know you’ve been rehearsed in them,” Stephen Reed said, “So let us take them as read.”

“Every man is a work in progress,” Dr. Sibley said quietly from by the door. “We should not look down on those who are damaged, just because they have further to go.”

“And may God help the tinker,” Sir Owain said, still looking at his hand, “since I cannot.”

Stephen Reed said, “The girls had a camera. For taking moving pictures. They caught something strange on their film.”

For a man so weary of life, Sir Owain was suddenly very interested.

“Where is it?” he said.

“I gave it to the prosecutors. But it was never used in evidence.”

“Why not?”

“Its images are unclear.”

Sir Owain looked across the chapel to Dr. Sibley. His agitation was obvious. The doctor gave no actual sign but returned a steady gaze as if to say, You know exactly what I expect of you at this point.

Sir Owain suddenly said, “I think I should like to pray.”

Stephen Reed could see that this took even Dr. Sibley by surprise. But what could the man do? Even the most controlling superintendent could not deny a man his prayer.

“Of course,” he said, and made a gesture of invitation for Stephen Reed to join him outside.

THEY STOOD OUTSIDE, in the October air. A squirrel came bounding through the overgrown graves, froze when it saw them, and went bounding right back again.

Stephen Reed said, “Does he pray often?”

Dr. Sibley seemed bemused. “Never,” he said.

“How well do you really know him?”

“He’s unknowable. I’ve had only the most distant glimpse of what he’s been through. Whatever you may think of him, respect him. A lesser man would have gone under.”

“I’m sure he’s a tower of strength. But would you have me believe that he never knows a moment of weakness?”

“At the beginning there were many. You know I was his doctor on the rescue ship? That was where we met. He raved. He grieved. He saw the dead, and many an apparition that was never there. By being with him from those very first hours, I secured his lasting trust.”

“You were a ship’s doctor?” Stephen Reed said. “I didn’t know that. It explains your four years’ absence from the medical register.”

“I know what you think of me,” Dr. Sibley went on. “You see me as some kind of leech that clings to him, exploiting his fragile state to my own advantage. Whereas the truth is that he dare not let me go.”

“So are you watching over him for every minute of every day?”

Dr. Sibley gestured toward the chapel, where his employer prayed alone.

“Clearly not,” he said.

“But you do seem to take your dedication to an extreme. Of the four science papers Sir Owain has published in the last ten years, your name is on all of them as co-author.”

“You’ve been doing your spadework.”

“I have. Etymology, metallurgy … quite a wide range for a medical man with a seafaring background.”

“I had no hand in the papers. I’ve never claimed otherwise. The attribution was entirely at Sir Owain’s insistence.”

“So what do you make of his monsters?”

“All such monsters are monsters of the mind. The only person they threaten is the one who conceives them.”

“Neatly said. So how do you keep them under control?”

“That’s between me and my patient. I don’t dominate Sir Owain. I don’t control him for my own advantage. I help to keep his state of mind as close to normality as it’s possible to get. That doesn’t make me his master. If anything, I’m more his prisoner. I mean, I had a life before. Look around you. This is his house, his estate, his affairs. Where is my life now?”

Changing tack, Stephen Reed said, “Grace Eccles thinks you’re trying to push her off her land.”

“Right in one respect, wrong in another. It’s not her land.”

“From what I hear, her lease has been tested in court and it held up. That should be the end of the matter.”

“Look,” the doctor said with some exasperation. “I know Sir Owain has always let her be. But now the Lunacy commissioners are looking for any excuse to take control of his affairs, and they’ll see this as proof of bad management. Her father’s lease was valid, but the right to settle died with him and can’t be passed on. Patents don’t bring in the income they once did, and that gypsy girl’s squalor diminishes the value of the property.”

There was a sound from the chapel; it was of the iron latch being lifted on the inside of the door.

“Well,” Stephen Reed said, “do you know something? For a moment there I almost felt some sympathy for you.” And now he leaned closer to the doctor and lowered his voice because Sir Owain was coming out.

“A lease will expire and the land will always be there,” he said. “Sir Owain isn’t the only one who’s ever suffered. Just leave Grace Eccles be.”

At which point Sir Owain rejoined them, and that conversation was over.

AFTER RETURNING the pony and trap to its owners and thanking them, Stephen Reed walked to his father’s cottage. It was low, small-windowed, and whitewashed, with a slate roof. With its thick walls and solid floors it had a tendency to damp, but his father kept a driftwood fire burning throughout the cold months and left every door and window wide open to air the building in the summer.

Whenever his father slipped and called him Jacky without meaning to, he wasn’t sure how to feel. Jacky was the little dog his father had bought for company. The two of them were devoted to each other, that was for sure; when his father left a room, the dog sat up and watched the door until he came back. Or simply followed him. They went out together every morning, walking miles along the beach. His father had even begun to choose which invitations he’d answer depending on whether his dog was welcome.

Jacky ran out to greet him, then spun around and ran in ahead barking a welcome. He was a devoted little dog, but not a jealous one.

Stephen Reed’s father, the town’s onetime harbormaster, was setting a kettle on the fire to make tea. He said, “Well? Are you any further on?”

“I wasted my time,” Stephen Reed admitted. “I gave him the newspaper and he showed me his tomb in his private chapel. Out of all the estate, it’s the one part he seems to be keeping in repair.”

“Really? I can’t imagine old Owain letting his property fall into ruin.”

“You might be surprised,” Stephen Reed said.

Before he’d been forced to sell it, Sir Owain’s steam yacht had been on a permanent mooring in the harbor. His father had known Sir Owain then, but would never claim to have known him well. He said he hadn’t disliked the man. But he’d thought him a little too eager to play the stepfather to all, as if buying the land had also bought him the town and the people, like a ready-made flock.

He said, “Did he admit to anything? Or is he still insisting that dinosaurs followed him home?”

“Father.”

“The man’s as mad as a box of bats.”

“Knowing that’s one thing. Proving murder’s another.”

“Then what about your tinker?”

“He’s never guilty.”

“Everybody’s guilty of something,” his father said, and went to get the teapot.

Stephen Reed stared into the fire. The fire had been made with wood from the beach, and a little coal. After decades of public responsibility, his father’s life was simple and his needs enviably few. Add to that his dog, and the rum and tobacco and his meals brought over by a woman from the Mermaid Inn, and you had it all.

Stephen Reed’s own life seemed anything but simple, right now. These matters ate at him from within. He’d checked with the local grocer and learned that the coarse flour bags that had covered the two girls’ faces were of the same brand as those supplied to Arnside Hall. But the same could be said of half the hotels and larger private houses in the parish. And the bags turned up everywhere, reused for everything from onions to oyster shells.

When the kettle started to boil and his father came back with the pot, Stephen Reed said, “No tea for me, Dad. I’ll have to be getting back.”

“Good idea.”

“Why, thank you, Father. It’s always nice to know I’m welcome.”

“You should know what I mean. Get back to your proper police work and leave it, Stephen. Don’t go sticking your neck out. If it goes wrong, you’ll be made to suffer. And even if you’re proved right, you’ll only make enemies.”

SO STEPHEN REED returned to his lodgings and his county duties. He signed in the next morning and by midday was out in the marshes with two uniformed men, hunting a thief named Little Billy. Little Billy stole from boats, stripping their brass fittings when he could find nothing of portable value. The three spent a fruitless afternoon among the barges and marsh cottages, where they were met with silence and hostility. When Stephen Reed trudged home that evening, he was wet and mud-soaked and short of temper.

During the long walk back under a wide and empty sky, his thoughts inevitably strayed from Little Billy to the murdered children, and to the mystery surrounding Grace Eccles and Evangeline Bancroft.

He hadn’t known Grace Eccles well. In fact, because of her father’s reputation, he’d been discouraged from having much to do with her at all. But he remembered her utter and abject poverty, and wished that he’d been kinder. She’d been open and cheerful then, as if no one had yet pointed out her disadvantages to her.

And Evangeline. Sad Evangeline. The librarian’s daughter. A childhood friend in more innocent times, a distant island now.

His lodging was in a house of single men, and because of the hour this was one of the few occasions when he didn’t have to queue for the bathroom. Mrs. Williams had the downstairs fire lit, so there was hot water from the back boiler. He left his topcoat and other clothes out for his landlady to do with what she could, lay in the bath, and let the day’s aches and chills soak away.

He grew drowsy. Later, he might read. Though his married colleagues reckoned they had it harder and their expenses were greater, the things that they always complained about were the things that many single men could envy. Home, companionship, family, and an outlet for desire. The married men, in their turn, envied the single man his freedom.

It would ever be thus, he imagined. It was one’s lot to achieve one state, only to yearn for its opposite. Nothing was ever so dear as that which had been lost.

On returning to his room, he found that a note had been slipped under his door. He’d barely opened the note when Mrs. Williams came knocking to ensure that he’d seen it.

He dressed in haste and went to find a telephone. It took the operator several minutes to get the connection to Arnmouth, and a while longer for Lydia Bancroft to be fetched to the receiver.

“Stephen?” he eventually heard the librarian say. “Is that you?”

“Mrs. Bancroft,” he said, “what is it? Has something happened to Evangeline?”

“It’s Grace Eccles,” she said.

“What about her?”

“I hardly know how to say it.”

But she went on to explain. A horse had been found wandering loose on Arnmouth’s main street that morning. It was a large and handsome animal, and it shied away from every approach and panicked at any attempt to get a rope onto it. No one could say where it might have come from, until someone spotted that it was missing an eye. Shy of people, and confused at its surroundings, the animal had taken some time to corner in a yard behind the Schooner Hotel; along the way it had kicked in a shop window, which had increased its agitation, and it had trampled several gardens, which had done nothing for local tempers.

Someone remembered that Grace Eccles had been treating a one-eyed animal, and she was sent for. Word came back; she could not be found, but the gates to her fields were open, her animals had scattered to the moors, and her cottage had been ransacked. The doors had been thrown wide, her few pieces of furniture upset, and there was blood on the floor. In an incongruous detail, two measured glasses of clean drinking water stood untouched amid the chaos.

Parish Constable Bill Turnbull had found her, lying in heather just a few hundred yards from her home. She was dead, and, as Lydia Bancroft put it, she had been “cruelly used.”

“Stephen,” Lydia Bancroft said. “Please. It’s as if there’s a an awful shadow that has never left this town. If Grace was not safe after all these years, then I fear for Evangeline. They keep telling us it’s over. But it isn’t. What can we do?”

Were it told in a romance that a female of delicate habit, accustomed to all the comforts of life, had been precipitated into a river; that, after being withdrawn when on the point of drowning, this female, the eighth of a party, had penetrated into unknown and pathless woods, and travelled in them for weeks, not knowing whither she directed her steps; that, enduring hunger, thirst, and fatigue to very exhaustion, she should have seen her two brothers, far more robust than her, a nephew yet a youth, three young women her servants, and a young man, the domestic left by the physician who had gone on before, all expire by her side, and she yet survive; that, after remaining by their corpses two whole days and nights, in a country abounding in tigers and numbers of dangerous serpents, without once seeing any of these animals or reptiles, she should afterwards have strength to rise, and continue her way, covered with tatters, through the same pathless wood for eight days together till she reached the banks of the Bobonasa, the author would be charged with inconsistency; but the historian should paint facts to his reader, and this is nothing but the truth.

ACCOUNT OF THE ADVENTURES OF MADAME GODIN DES ODONAIS, IN PASSING DOWN THE RIVER OF THE AMAZONS, IN THE YEAR 1770

LETTER FROM M. GODIN DES ODONAIS

TO M. DE LA CONDAMINE

ST. AMAND, BERRY, 28 JULY 1773