From Higher Places

by Roger Curtis

  It was beyond doubt that the two threatening letters shared the same typeface and were presumably written by the same person. It was both a relief and, strangely, a disappointment that the typeface did not match that of the letter of instruction from Betty Potter to her solicitor concerning the will.

  The next post included a letter from the Hillfield Veterinary Hospital at High Wycombe. It enclosed a copy of the pathologist’s report confirming, not surprisingly, that Moffat’s death was consistent with paraquat poisoning. It also mentioned abrasions and bruising within the mouth and pharynx. Why had she not thought to look for herself, she wondered. A yellow sticker on the letter bore an unsigned message which read: It seems your suppositions were well founded, but they do not constitute proof. Please be careful.

  It took Sarah-Jane an evening to compose the letter to Tom Sharp and the whole of the following day to decide whether or not to send it. Copies in sealed envelopes were sent to Mr Carruthers and to her bank, in both cases for safe keeping and with precise conditions under which they were to be opened. When they had gone she felt exhausted but reasonably satisfied that her mother would not be troubled again.

  When May came it seemed to Sarah-Jane that her life had become bland beyond description. Her existence was that of a ship setting sail, with all the recent happenings, good and bad, becoming fainter and fainter upon the shore. One by one the memories of them ceased to trouble her.

  There had been no recent contact with Brian or Alice, no further news of Alan Murphy, no word from home. Jack Adams and his mother were said to be on a cruise in the Caribbean, but no-one seemed to know exactly where. Mark left early each day and returned late, with a perfunctory kiss for her if she happened to be awake – or there. She never thought to question his movements, nor, it seemed, he hers.

  Whole days were spent whiling away the time: talking horticultural nonsense with Abel and Jed, petting the horses when she should have been riding them and sniffing flowers whenever she encountered perfumes she didn’t recognise. She avoided contacts outside her defined geographical domain, in which Marguerite buzzed around and came and went like a robotic bee.

  Although she could not bring herself to acknowledge it openly, the girl had become essential to her well-being. They had little in common and did not even particularly like one another, but Marguerite was the only friend that Sarah-Jane had – in the sense that the relationship was honest and direct.

  But compared with her physical exertions, her brain was far from idle. It had seized upon the imagery of the sailing ship; with no coast in sight, it had begun, in the quietest of ways, to exploit a freedom characterised by total absence of distraction. Her thoughts coursed over her brief adult life. Suddenly, unaccountably, her ship was heading with stately purpose up the great river, with the twin bascules of Tower Bridge giving way in salute as it made its way towards the heart of the capital. Should she listen to Brian and Alice and return to medicine, or please Mark by staying as she was? She did not know, but the germ of opportunity had vitality still. Perhaps, for a second time, she had found herself at Brian’s crossroads.

  The telephone sounded on her bedside table: Mark ringing from town to remind her about the arrangements for the dinner that evening. ‘It would really please me, Sarah-Jane, if you were to wear your little black dress. You know, the one in Brian’s portrait, with the lace collar. I’m sure the guests will appreciate the connection – at least the more observant ones.’

  She got out of bed and went downstairs to check that the arrangements were in hand. The kitchen was still full of steam, but the women who had prepared the meal were about to go; those that were to serve it would return later. In the dining room the table set for twenty people glistened with their finest dinner service, cutlery and crystal.

  She went upstairs again and sat looking at herself in the dressing table mirror, pondering what to do with her hair. Marguerite entered with an armful of freshly laundered clothes and fussed about in the drawers and cupboards in her usual irritating way.

  Between the softly billowing curtains, over the tops of the chestnut trees in the Dell, golfers moved upon the rich green swards. Birds sang in the late afternoon sunshine.

  It was still, at that moment, a perfect day.

  AFTERMATH

  May – September 1987

  11

  From the speed of the responses it seemed that Marguerite must have dialled the emergency services. But then and later she claimed to have no recollection of it, in spite of the police assurance that a young woman with her name and sounding like her had made the call. This at the time trivial inconsistency became a worry that would grow in Sarah-Jane’s mind.

  The police were first to arrive, followed by an ambulance. A young constable raced up the stairs to find Sarah-Jane frightened and trembling above the washbasin, a bloody towel clamped to her cheek. Marguerite was standing behind, clasping her shoulders, weeping against the bare skin. Sarah-Jane tried to speak, but the air from her mouth forced red bubbles from the wound. The noises sounded obscene.

  The paramedic tried to be comforting, but his face bore the expression of an antiques dealer contemplating a smashed Ming vase. ‘They’ll soon get that sutured, love,’ he said, without conviction.

  It was the ‘they’ that caused Sarah-Jane to look at him in disbelief. She tried to say that she didn’t want just to be sutured up, but the words came out as a bloody mess on the white porcelain. They led her to a chair and the paramedic held a gauze to her cheek to stem the bleeding. With some voice capability restored she felt calmer. Strangely, the searing pain in her cheek was helping to focus her thoughts.

  Here was a consideration of immense importance. She thought of patients from her days at St Catherine’s, how their outcomes so often mirrored the skills of the surgeon, how it was accepted within the surgical fraternity – but seldom admitted – that for the best cosmetic result it was critical who you got to do it. Hadn’t she herself confided this to patients, those with the rare luxury of choice?

  I want Brian, she told herself. She waved to Marguerite. ‘Paper.’

  ‘Comment?’

  ‘Allez! Get me paper and…’ It was wise to say no more.

  Her first message was to Marguerite to telephone Mr Davison. The girl accepted the sheet bearing the number and trotted off like a bookie’s runner. The second was to the paramedic, saying thank you, but she could manage to get help. If all else failed Marguerite could drive her to St Catherine’s.

  His look of bewilderment unnerved her. ‘I suppose that’s your right, but are you sure it’s sensible?’

  She followed Marguerite to the telephone.

  ‘He’s not there,’ Marguerite said. ‘It’s Alice Davison.’

  ‘Tell her what’s happened.’

  Replacing the receiver, Marguerite turned to Sarah-Jane. For the first time their eyes properly engaged. Sarah-Jane, seeing the girl’s concern, felt a desperate need to be hugged by her. She drew close, then stopped as red drops from her cheek began to speckle the girl’s white shirt.

  Marguerite smiled and Sarah-Jane realised she wouldn’t have minded. ‘Mrs Davison’s coming right away,’ she said kindly.

  Outside, another police car arrived, spewing up more gravel. A man not in uniform strode into the room holding out a hand. ‘Guthrie, Mrs Preston. Inspector Guthrie.’ She offered her own and was surprised at the fleeting squeeze that couldn’t, surely, have been her imagination. His first few questions seemed formulated to need no more than nods or shakes of the head; then he led Marguerite aside and stood talking to her at the window. Sarah heard him say, ‘Think hard. Time may just be on our side.’

  When Alice arrived she assured the police that, as a doctor herself, she could secure treatment for Sarah-Jane. Against their better judgement the paramedics drove off. The police promised to return later with more questions.

  Alic
e tried Brian’s number; there was no reply. Then she tried St Thomas’. Yes, they’d seen him only a few minutes before, but he said he was just leaving. Five minutes later they rang back to say he had definitely gone, but he’d left a message to say he was returning to his private clinic in Putney.

  Slumped back in the rear seat of Alice’s car Sarah-Jane felt guilty that they had driven away before Mark arrived, then relief that she’d been spared his reaction to her plight, his trophy wife destroyed.

  They made straight for Brian’s clinic at the Davisons’ town house. It was only the third time Sarah had been there, which said something about her friendship with Alice. The intense regularity of the manicured lawn and shrubberies against the sullen, perfect façade of the building only heightened her sense of impairment. Their echoing steps in the uncluttered hallway confirmed what she had already anticipated: Brian had not reached home. ‘You’ve really got to get yourself stitched up,’ Alice said. ‘I’m taking you to casualty.’

  The registrar was young, black and kind. Sarah-Jane remembered the inevitable misjudgements and uncertainties of her own days as a houseman, but wisely stifled an urge to seek a surgeon of higher status. She was thankful there were no students around.

  ‘Did you say a Stanley knife, Mrs Preston?’

  ‘Yes. It had a red handle.’

  ‘Then it must have had a blunt blade.’ She could see he wished he hadn’t said it.

  ‘You mean it’s not a clean cut?’

  He patted her hand.

  For Sarah-Jane, with her privileged knowledge, that information was as frightening as the act of violence itself. She could hear her old lecturer, Dr Ponsonby, and how curious it had sounded when he had spoken for the first time of healing by first and second intention. And it was fear of the latter, with its implication of scarring, that frightened her now.

  What intention lay behind her mutilation? she asked herself. Until that moment she had felt no anger towards her assailant. Somehow it had all seemed inevitable and ordered, like the appearance of the man to read the electricity meter. Now, suddenly, she was angry. She grasped the nearest object, a vase, and hurled it across the room. The glass shattered against the floor. The two pink carnations followed through the air like maimed parachutists.

  She was still there, her face stitched and bandaged, when Brian walked in.

  He took both her hands in his; his eyes pierced her through. ‘Oh, Sarah, who did this to you? Your lovely face!’

  She tried to hold his gaze, seeking the pity that that must surely be there. But, like in former days – and it came back to her like a push in the back – whatever emotion there might have been was unreadable behind a glassy film of concealment.

  Alice’s car snaked through streets full of pedestrians set there only to peer at Sarah through the hyper-transparent windows. Billboards seemed to have been placed just so that the arrogant unfocused eyes of mindless celebrities clutching cans of energising liquid or shaking lustrous locks could spring into life to follow her progress. Cringing on the back seat one thought occupied her mind: ‘Who, Brian, who? Alice, who?’

  ‘The police will go into all that,’ Brian said. He peered at her around the head-rest, subjecting her face to the same critical scrutiny she had experienced at the hospital. She returned the stare, seeking compassion, then had to look away, uncertain of what she had found. ‘It would be helpful if you could give a lead,’ he said.

  ‘Try to think,’ Alice said. ‘Try to cast your mind back. Is there anyone…’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘But there’s one possibility, isn’t there,’ Brian said.

  ‘Jack Adams, you mean?’ Sarah-Jane turned her head away. She could no longer stem the tears.

  ‘You must tell them,’ Alice said.

  The few guests Mark had not been able to contact were turned away at the gate. Marguerite handed each of the women a bouquet of lilies hastily cut from the garden. Sarah-Jane, having just reached home, wanted to do it but Mark had insisted she did not. From behind the net curtain of her open bedroom window she strained to hear their speech. Were these really expressions of concern for her – or for a lost social opportunity?

  Sarah-Jane wandered about the house and found herself in the conservatory, sitting in front of the fountain. Its silent bell-like cascade was continuous and perfect. Without knowing why she thrust her forefinger into the glistening film, and shrank back as a savage vertical gash disrupted the pattern of the flow. When she withdrew her hand the waters closed, and everything was perfect again.

  The light was fading when Marguerite found her, still gazing at what she could make of her reflection in the water.

  In the ceiling mirror above her bed the length of barbed wire connecting her mouth to her left eye seemed to flex menacingly with the forced grin. She shivered. You’ll have to keep your nerve, girl, or you’ll be lost, she told herself.

  The demons that had assembled around her as she’d drifted into sleep had taken their pleasure. One had undone all the stitches like bootlaces and retied them in random order; another had poked his pink mushroom head through the gaping wound, shrieking at her because he was in the wrong place. But the worst was the continuous trickle of fire that flowed from her mouth into her throat. When Mark woke her in the morning with a cup of juice to sip the relief was blissful but short-lived as the dream faded into reality.

  ‘You’re alive and that’s all that matters,’ he said.

  ‘But it’s not, Mark. You know it’s not.’

  There were separate calls from Alice and Brian, and from others who would have come to the dinner. The last were relationships unlikely to survive the present crisis and she expected little sympathy there. Not that the women had shown no previous interest in her – just the reverse in fact. There were times when it had been intense, like when she had once permed her hair in curls and they had all, consciously or otherwise, copied her. But how had she responded to this quasi-adulation? Why, by flirting with their husbands, just as Mark had flirted with them. What gloating there would be behind these sanctimonious expressions of concern.

  To get up or not to get up. To wander down to the beautician at eleven, as was planned, and suffer the… No, that would not do. That crazy Booker novel, maybe she would give it one more try. Or cook herself something, like eggs and bacon, but bacon was sliced and… Besides, she had almost forgotten how. Perhaps Marguerite…

  But there was a sobering thought. Didn’t her influence over Marguerite reside in the edge that her appearance gave? She rolled over in despair; the filament sutures brushed the silk pillow like stubble against the sheets when she’d forgotten to wax her legs.

  Problems. But come what may there was no choice but to get up.

  Later that morning Alice found her in the conservatory, at the far end, away from the fountain, sitting so that only the right side of her face was visible to anyone approaching. Drawing close, it seemed to her that Alice couldn’t quite disguise that familiar twist of the mouth that Sarah-Jane had come to interpret as envy. But how could that be, now, given the changed situation? Alice said, ‘It would have been silly of me to have brought you flowers, with you surrounded by them.’

  ‘Just you is enough,’ Sarah-Jane said. Her response came with a tiny jolt of surprise, because it ran counter to what she was thinking. It was like momentarily catching an exotic perfume on the wind. It seemed to come from a previously forgotten cache of affection somewhere deep within.

  A butterfly, uniformly orange with black veins and twitching antennae, settled on Sarah-Jane’s wrist. She rotated her hand as if showing off a new bracelet. The insect was one of several Mark had brought back as chrysalides from the Massingham Tower the week before.

  ‘That’s pretty,’ Alice said.

  ‘I touched one for the first time today! Can you believe that until yesterday I hardly ever came
in here? Now it’s become a refuge created just for me. Aren’t I lucky, Alice?’

  Alice was at a loss to answer. ‘Sarah, did you know that Mark had rung Brian?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me. What did he want?’

  ‘An assessment of the damage, I guess.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I’ll have to accept I’m a commodity of dubious value. Did he ask if Brian could do anything?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He said he couldn’t. I’m sorry, Sarah. I asked him myself again and again, till I was blue in the face. He says what’s done is done, and even if he could do something, he couldn’t steal another doctor’s case. And he says he’s got complete faith in Dr Ransome.’

  Sarah-Jane looked her full in the face, unable to control her anger. ‘I thought they did that all the time.’ Perhaps it was the contortion of the black and crusted line that made Alice turn her head away. ‘Alice, don’t! Please don’t!’

  ‘Sarah, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It wasn’t deliberate.’ She began crying and groping for Sarah-Jane’s outstretched hand.

  Sarah-Jane saw the door to the house open. Marguerite was standing there, uncertain whether to come forward, until the looming figure of Inspector Guthrie brushed past her.

  ‘I’ll come back later,’ Alice said, sniffing into her handkerchief and making for the door to the garden.

  There was a succession of well-wishers – against her expectation and, to her disappointment, all women – whom Sarah-Jane classified as nosey-parkers, do-gooders or malcontents; none of them did she recognise as a friend. She was polite, and glad to see them go. But having lost one advantage over them she had, unexpectedly, gained another: an aloof indifference that negated the effect of whatever platitude took their fancy. She told herself that she no longer cared.