by James Carnac
At last, on the evening of the second day, I returned from school to find a new-comer in the hall. I recognized him as another doctor, a Dr. Sims who practised in our district. He was standing with my father by the surgery door and the two seemed to be engaged in a furious argument. My father looked horribly pale and I thought, at the first glance, that he had been drinking. When he caught sight of me he drew Dr. Sims into the surgery and slammed the door; and the argument seemed to break out afresh. As I passed into the sitting-room I heard Dr. Sims say: “What do you expect me to do, eh? What can I do?” And a muttered reply from my father. Then something else from Dr. Sims which I could not catch, something about “professional reputation to consider.”
I left the sitting-room door ajar and sat down at the table, trying to catch some more. But in a few minutes the door was pushed open and the old woman came in carrying a tray; giving me a quick, furtive look, she hastily set out my meal and left the room, closing the door behind her. But as she passed out I heard the surgery door open and my father and Dr. Sims come into the hall. “—if she does,” I heard the latter say, “you’ll be finished. And not only finished—” The rest of the sentence was cut off by the closing of the sitting-room door. A few moments later the hall door slammed and then, quite loudly, came my father’s voice: “Oh my God! Oh my God!” The surgery door banged.
After gobbling down my tea I tried to fix my mind on my home-work, but I do not know how I managed to get through the evening. At about nine when I was beginning to wonder whether I had not better go up to bed, I heard the crunching of wheels outside the house: I went to the window and peered through the blinds. At that season of the year it was still light enough for me to make out a kind of van standing outside the house. The driver alighted and, coming up our path, knocked at the door while another man opened the back of the van and appeared to be pulling something out.
I heard the old woman open the door and the murmur of voices. Then my father’s voice. The man who had knocked returned to the van and assisted the other in what he was doing. Then they both came up the garden path and I saw they were carrying a stretcher. Both men were wearing uniforms and peaked caps.
With a loud trampling, everyone passed upstairs and there was an interval of silence. Then I caught the sound of the men’s return, more slowly this time. One of them said: “Mind the corner.” And then: “Your end a bit higher. Steady. Steady. That’s it.” By this time I had the sitting-room door ajar and was peering into the hall. I saw the uniformed men walk along the hall bearing the stretcher on which was a muffled figure I knew was Mary. My father and the old woman brought up the rear. As my father passed me he caught my eye, and I hastily retreated and closed the door.
Some time after the van had moved off the old woman came into the room and began to clear away the remains of my meal which had lain upon the table all through the evening.
“Ain’t it time you went up to bed?” she said, curtly.
“Have they taken Mary to the hospital?” I asked.
“Yes, she’s been took away,” the old woman replied.
“What’s the matter with her?” I persisted.
“Nothin’ you’d understand,” she said. “You get up to bed.”
Although I was of an age to resent this old woman’s orders I saw no point in remaining up. After a decent interval to show I was not to be ordered about, I went to bed. And in spite of the abnormal events of the evening and my general bewilderment I fell asleep very quickly.
On the following morning I had no sight of my father before leaving for school, and the only evidence of his presence in the house at mid-day when I came home for dinner was a low, continuous muttering proceeding from the surgery as though he were talking to himself. As I left the house to return to school I saw Dr. Sims coming down the road and evidently making for our house and, acting upon a sudden impulse, I stopped and raised my cap.
“If you please, how is Mary?” I asked him. “I’m Dr. Carnac’s son,” I added in case he should not know me—though he evidently did.
He hesitated for a few moments, eyeing me curiously. “She’s dead,” he said. And without another word continued on his way.
I was so taken aback by this intelligence—although I think I must have sub-consciously expected it—that I hesitated as to whether I should go to school or return home. Ultimately I continued to school, for obviously there was nothing I could do at home. I hardly think I felt shocked at learning of Mary’s death; my feeling was more one of morbid excitement, for this was the first time death had come within my personal circle. And even that feeling was overlapped by puzzlement regarding my father’s position in the affair. I had gathered enough during the past two days to realize that the matter meant trouble of some kind for him. His distress and the attitude of the other doctor were, alone, enough to convey that. But how could the death of a patient cause him trouble? Other of his patients had died and nothing had happened. Had he “violated professional etiquette,” a term which, in the past, I had heard him use and which I understood to mean taking insufficient care of patients? Or had he made some mistake in treating Mary? Given her poison by mistake, or something like that?
The latter theory seemed the only one to meet the case and, knowing my father as I did, it seemed not improbable. Supposing my father had been drunk when making up Mary’s medicine, for example. And had mixed poison with it. In that case would he be “struck off the medical register” (another term I had heard used) or would even worse befall? Would he get sent to prison? What, exactly, did happen to doctors who poisoned their patients by mistake—or carelessness? (Incidentally, who would know if he had been drunk when he mixed the medicine?)
And then my thoughts reverted to that other matter which I had rather overlooked in the stress of more recent events. I was not sufficiently innocent to be unable to realize pretty clearly how matters had stood between Mary and my father. And I now perceived that I had been sub-consciously feeling some sinister connection between that presumed relationship and Mary’s death. Did I then get some faint glimmer of what that connection might be? After all these years it is difficult to say.
And then I displayed my first piece of initiative in this affair. I went into a post-office near the school and made out a telegram to my mother: “Come home at once.” I knew the address at Peckham and fortunately had some money in my pocket.
Not only was I late for afternoon school, but I was kept in for inattention during the lessons.
Chapter 6
My mother returned home on the following day soon after noon, the cab in which she had driven from the station arriving at the house just as I reached it after morning school. Hastily paying the cabman, my mother, carrying a bag, followed me up the path to the street door. “What’s the matter, James?” she asked, fumbling for her latch-key. “Why did your father send that telegram?”
“I sent it,” I replied. My mother paused with the latch-key in her hand. “Is anything the matter with your father?” she asked breathlessly. At that moment we both caught sight of my father’s white face peering out of the surgery window and, simultaneously, the street door was opened by the old woman. My mother stared at her in surprise. “Who are you?” she enquired.
“Mrs. Mahon’s me name, mum,” said the old woman.
“And what are you doing here?”
“Come inside, mother,” I cried, before the old woman could reply. “I’ll tell you all about it.”
Reluctantly she followed me into the sitting-room; the old woman hovered on the threshold.
“Mother, Mary’s dead,” I blurted out.
“Mary dead!” cried my mother, incredulously. “Dead? When did she die?”
“Yesterday, I think,” I faltered, uncertainly.
“But—but I don’t understand,” said my mother. “Dead? What did she die of?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, glancing towards the old wo
man upon whose face I observed a sly smile.
“What did she die of?” my mother demanded of the woman.
“Better ask the doctor,” said the woman, jerking her head towards the surgery door. And with that she shuffled off down the passage. My mother made a move towards the surgery.
“Wait a minute, mother,” I stayed her. She turned and looked at me. “Mother—” I hesitated, “there’s something awful been going on. Father’s in some awful trouble. It’s been—awful.” I could not think of another adjective.
Before my mother could reply to this, the surgery door opened and my father came out. We both stared at him aghast as he stood on the threshold. His face was a horrible pasty white and behind his spectacles his eyes were red and bloodshot as though he had been either drinking or crying. He had not shaved and his chin was covered by a glistening stubble, while his clothes were all creased and untidy.
“John!” my mother cried. “What’s all this? What is the matter?”
My father licked his lips in a curious way and I saw the Adam’s apple in his throat jerking up and down.
“That girl Mary’s been getting into trouble,” he said.
“Trouble?” my mother murmured. “What sort of trouble? James here says she’s dead.”
“The usual sort of trouble,” my father replied. “Some man—” He moved back into the surgery and, with a quick glance at me, my mother followed him into the room. The door closed.
For some time I heard the murmur of voices. I looked at the clock; no one seemed to realize that I wanted my dinner.
The rumble of voices went on and on until, finding it was nearly time for me to return to school, I foraged in the sideboard and found some cake and biscuits. I sat at the table munching, with the door open, and presently Mrs. Mahon appeared in the passage, dressed for the street in a mantle and grotesque bonnet, and carrying under her arm a bundle wrapped in newspaper.
“I’m off,” she said to me. “Tell the doctor I want my wages.”
“Tell him yourself,” I replied rudely.
She glowered at me and then turned to knock on the surgery door, which I could see from my position; but on the instant of knocking the door was flung open and my mother came out. One glance at her face showed me that she was more bewildered than anything else. She ignored the old woman and came to me in the sitting-room.
“There’s something I don’t understand about all this, James,” she said in a low voice. “I can’t get anything out of your father; he’s been drinking again. I’m going along to the hospital. You had better get back to school. Have you had anything to eat?”
I reassured her on that point, wondering what lies my father had told her. Could she be so stupid as to have no suspicions regarding him? It seemed inconceivable; and yet I could not see suspicion or alarm in her face, but only perplexity. For I knew now—or thought I knew—what had happened to Mary. The phrase about “trouble” uttered by my father had enlightened me. I knew what a girl being “in trouble” meant. I also knew that in such circumstances, things sometimes “went wrong”; and I had read in newspapers of girls in trouble throwing themselves in the river or taking poison. I felt quite grown up and manly beside my helpless-looking mother.
I accompanied her out of the house, and as I closed the street door I heard Mrs. Mahon’s voice from the surgery: “Yes, that’s my wages all right. And is that all I gets?” My mother caught the words too, and made a half movement to return. But yielding to the pressure of my arm, she passed on down the path and into the road.
“Why don’t you go and see Dr. Sims?” I asked her. “He’s nearest.”
While she pondered this suggestion I caught sight of a policeman slowly pacing the street on the side opposite our house. I knew the policeman well, for a few weeks earlier he had chased me over the fields for some distance for helping myself to a piece of wood from one of the building plots. But it was not that fact which made me look at him so closely now, but the realization that he had been walking up and down our street ever since I returned from school. I had noticed him when I came home, and again from the sitting-room window. The sight filled me with disquiet. Could he be watching the house in case my father tried to escape? My theory that my father had in some way put himself on the wrong side of the law returned in full force.
“I think I will see Dr. Sims,” I heard my mother saying. “As your father called him in to a consultation, he may be able to tell me something.”
She left me a few minutes later and I saw her walking in the direction of Clyde Circus. But instead of continuing down Philip Lane towards the High Road, as I should have done, I paused at the corner to take another look at the constable. He had proceeded some distance past our house, and as I watched him, he turned and began to return. Then I saw old Mrs. Mahon coming out of our gate, and as she came in my direction I turned the corner and hurried away to school.
—
I left school as usual at four and hurried home at full speed in my anxiety—or excitement—to learn what had happened during my absence. And when I reached our house, I saw immediately that something had happened, for the door stood ajar and a policeman was standing on the doorstep as though on guard. I hesitated at the gate and then hurried up the path towards him.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, breathlessly.
“Who are you?” he countered.
“I’m Carnac; Dr. Carnac’s son,” I told him.
His manner changed on the instant. He gave me a curious look and then slipped into the house, leaving me on the step, for I felt too apprehensive to follow him. He was back in a few moments with another policeman—a sergeant. “You’re Master Carnac, are you, sir?” said the latter. I nodded. He pushed up his helmet and thoughtfully scratched his head. “Well, sir,” he went on, after a pause. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you there’s been an accident.”
“An accident?” I stammered.
“Yes, an accident. Now don’t take on, sir—”
At that moment the door was again pushed open and an inspector stepped out. I vaguely wondered how many more policemen there were in the house.
“The son, sir,” I heard the sergeant whisper behind his hand.
“Well, my boy, I’m afraid we’ve got a shock for you,” said the inspector. “I suppose you’ve just come back from school? Well, I’m sorry to say your father’s had an accident while you’ve been away. And your mother too.”
“What sort of accident?” I faltered. Though I knew instinctively what he meant.
“Now take it easy, my boy. How old are you?”
“Nearly eighteen,” I replied. Adding in a burst of irritation: “I’m not a kid.”
The inspector hesitated for a moment or two and then said kindly: “Well, sir, I suppose I had better tell you at once: they’re both dead. Your father and your mother.”
Without more ado, I moved towards the door and began to push by him. “Here, wait a minute, my boy,” he said, laying a detaining hand on my arm. “I don’t know whether we ought to let you in. It’s—well, it’s not a nice sight.”
I do not think that I then felt any particular grief at the news I had heard, but I was consumed by an overpowering curiosity to see whatever was to be seen inside the house. At the same time, I felt dazed in the sense that I seemed to be moving in a dreamlike state, and I was filled by an unreasoning resentment at the kindly intervention of the police inspector. “I’m going in,” I said bluntly. “I live there, don’t I?”
At that moment the street door was again opened and another man looked out; a civilian this time. He was a stranger to me, but I gathered later that he was a doctor—presumably the police surgeon. He had evidently overheard my conversation with the inspector, for in response to an enquiring glance from the latter he muttered: “Better let him in,” and something about “identification.” So they flung the door wide and led the way inside, th
e doctor in front and the inspector walking beside me and holding my arm as though he feared I might collapse. On the threshold of the surgery we halted.
On the floor lay what appeared to be two wax-work figures bearing a curious resemblance to my father and mother. That suggestion of a wax-work was the first impression conveyed to me, the figures were so motionless and their faces had taken on the colour and texture of yellowish wax. Round the front of each throat was a gaping red cut and the front of my mother’s dress and my father’s collar and shirt-front were soaked in blood. The figures lay close together and between them and, apparently beneath them, was a lake of blood. I had never seen so much blood before and gazed fascinated at the dark red mass on the yellow oilcloth. By the side of my father lay an instrument which I recognized immediately—one of his large scalpels.
I do not know how long I should have remained there staring had not the inspector jerked my arm and drawn me back into the hall. I looked at him and saw that he had gone quite pale; I felt a mild surprise. A police inspector to go white at the sight of blood! He led me into the sitting-room and pushed me into an arm-chair (he seemed to have the idea that I was an invalid) and then, turning to a decanter of brandy on the sideboard, poured some into a tumbler and offered it to me. I was surprised, for I felt no need of brandy; still I took the glass and sipped the contents. The brandy burned my throat and my eyes filled with tears. The inspector evidently misread this latter occurrence for he leant down and patted my arm in a fatherly way. “You’d better have some too,” I said.
He grinned in a sickly way and helped himself to a drink. With the glass in his hand he sat in a chair facing me and, after taking one or two sips and contemplating me for a short time, said: “Now, my boy, do you feel like answering a question or two? I suppose that was your father and mother?”