Finding Arcadia
Page 17
“This was in fact Moira,” she says.
Her brother frowns and has another chocolate—then spits it out into the rubbish bin. “Cherry,” he observes, selecting a different one. “Yes, it was Moira. Knowing your ongoing interest in discovering your ‘backstory’, as I believe it is sometimes called, I thought this was a lead worth pursuing. I do concede, though, that the conditions imposed by Möbius—that is, Moira—were a little odd. In particular, she wanted titbits of information about you. Your likes and dislikes, tales of our life growing up. Innocuous enough stuff, though in retrospect it is clear that she was building up a mosaic of your life with a view to stealing it.”
“Was it she who called you last Sunday when we were in Henry’s room?”
“Yes.” Definitely shame on his face, now amplified by body language as he lowers his head, eyes scanning the linoleum floor. “She was using an untraceable phone and a voice synthesiser. She had told me that the device would be a harmless test, but I wanted to be sure. That’s why I stayed as long as I did before she called to insist that I leave.
“Arcadia, I should have seen through this for what it was. My foolishness put you in danger. Mother would never have forgiven me for letting you down like this.” He sniffs—an allergy to the flowers? Yet the source of obstruction sounds like the nasolacrimal duct rather than the nose’s mucous membranes. “And I shall never forgive myself.”
From her reclining position it is not clear, but for the first time in her life she sees that he is crying. Once more she feels a hotness, but it is a flush of emotion. “I forgive you, Magnus,” she says.
He raises his head and pats the lump in the sheets created by her left foot, a gesture of affection that turns into an effort to straighten the creases on the bed. A small handkerchief is produced to remove any dampness from his eyes. “Well, that’s very good of you. We have much to discuss but perhaps we should do that some other day.”
Standing, he pops yet another chocolate into his mouth and immediately brightens. “Macadamia nut—now we’re talking!” He looks down at the box in his hands, now empty. Raising an eyebrow, he tosses it into the rubbish bin. “They told me that chocolates were a bit rich for you at this point,” he says by way of explanation. “They also said you need to rest. So if it’s all right with you, I might pay a visit to Mother and then head back to Cambridge. I’ll return tomorrow. Aunt Jean and Uncle Arthur will be arriving then also.”
He takes his coat from a chair beside the sunflower and opens the door.
“Magnus,” she calls him back.
He turns, his large frame filling the doorway. “Yes, sister dear?”
“Thanks for the chocolates.”
His face broadens into a smile. “You’re most welcome, Arcadia. Cheerio!”
She dozes on and off through the afternoon, analgesics taking the edge off the pain she now feels in her limbs, blunting her senses also. She has been given a morphine pump connected to a button that she can press to increase dosage. The button emits a sound every time she presses it, but experimentation reveals that the actual delivery of morphine peaks after only five uses. In any event, the pain is manageable and she needs to focus. She pushes the control off the edge of the bed, out of reach.
Footsteps outside the door alert her to another visitor. Her sense of smell is unimpaired and a waft of Old Spice reaches her. “Come in, Mr. Ormiston!” she calls, though her voice barely carries the distance.
The Acting Headmaster enters, hanging his coat on a hook behind the door and putting a small vase with gerberas next to the single sunflower.
“It’s very good of you to visit,” she says. “Thank you for the flowers.”
“Frankly it’s a relief to get away from the school for a moment,” he sighs. “Swarming with police, sniffer dogs, and so on. Then a group of men in suits got the police to leave and went over the school themselves.”
“That’s probably just MI5 or MI6,” she says. “They must be wondering whether this was terrorism. It wasn’t, of course.”
“So what was it, lass?” The voice has come from the doorway. Constable Lestrange. He is alone and out of uniform. Is this a social call?
“Good afternoon, Constable,” she says. “Have you spoken with Henry?”
“Yes we have.” He waits. Not a social call, then.
In the prisoner’s dilemma, a classic of game theory, two people are separately asked questions by the authorities. Though they cannot communicate, if they cooperate it leads to the best outcome. If one betrays the other, however, it offers a benefit to the betrayer and a punishment to the betrayed. She and Henry are not prisoners, but she needs to know if Henry has mentioned the involvement of Moira and Miss Alderman/Phaedra.
Constable Lestrange is now standing on the other side of the bed from Mr. Ormiston. As she tilts her head to look at him, her gaze falls on the sunflower in the corner of the room. By a process of elimination it is most likely from Henry. He would not buy a single flower for financial reasons and so it must be some kind of signal to her; that there was only one Arcadia, only one person taken at gunpoint. He has not mentioned Moira or Miss Alderman/Phaedra—and neither should she.
“Something must have snapped inside Dr. Starr,” she says at last. “He was saying all sorts of crazy things. He had the groundskeeper’s shotgun and was threatening to kill me. If Henry hadn’t arrived, I wouldn’t be here.”
“To kill you,” Constable Lestrange repeats. “Just you?”
She looks him in the eye. “Yes, to kill me. What are you getting at, Constable?”
He frowns. “We’ve gone over the paths into the woods and there are a lot of footprints. You can tell a lot from footprints—as you once showed me. There seemed to be more than three pairs of footprints. More than you, Starr, and Henry.”
She does her best to put on a blank stare. “I’m sorry, Constable. I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Maybe nothing, but there might have been another woman present.”
He is learning fast. She feels the urge to compliment him, but that would entail revealing that he is right. Instead she allows her head to loll back onto the pillow. “Can I ask you a question?” she asks, facing the ceiling.
“Of course.”
“Was the explosive that killed Dr. Starr C-4?”
Constable Lestrange is silent for a moment. “Is this going to be like the Rohypnol?”
“What?” She is genuinely confused.
“Are you going to make some amazing deduction and then claim that it was just a common sense observation?”
He really is improving. She will have to be more careful. Or maybe the drugs are making her sloppy. “No,” she says, adding a dreamy tone to her voice. “It’s just that C-4 seems to be what they use in the movies these days.”
“Oh.”
She senses his disappointment. Evidently, it was C-4. Dr. Starr was not the professor, but he had been a key figure in keeping Moira hostage. Had Moira followed through on her plan for revenge against him? Somehow a car bomb seemed a little… pedestrian for Moira’s tastes. And earlier in the day she said that she had used up all her C-4.
“Constable,” Mr. Ormiston is finally speaking up. “Perhaps the questioning can wait until she’s out of hospital?” Taking silence as agreement, the Acting Headmaster turns back to her. “So how are you feeling?”
She has not read the medical file, but from the dressing it does not appear that skin-grafting is going to be required. There is pain but little pressure on her wounds. “I’m OK. The burns seem second-degree at most. Surgery is unlikely. I may get through with minimal scarring.” She sees the look on his face. “Oh, you meant how am I feeling. So, pain, obviously. And I’m not particularly sad about the passing of Dr. Starr.”
The two men are unaware of her hypothesis about keeping calm when one’s life is threatened, or the data she has been collecting. So she adds, a little breathlessly: “And of course it was terrifying to have a gun pointed at me. Truly one of the most fri
ghtening experiences of my life.”
This seems to satisfy them. A doctor arrives, another familiar face. “Greentree, Arcadia,” the physician reads from her chart. “Second-degree burns—must be painful. How are you managing, and why do you look so familiar?”
“You treated my mother here about six months ago, Dr. Jackson,” Arcadia replies. “Pain is manageable.” Now focusing on it once more, the edge that the morphine took off has returned. She winces.
“Oh yes.” Dr. Jackson nods. “Is your, er, brother here?” Magnus did not make the best impression on Dr. Jackson at their last visit. “Anyway, as I was saying: second-degree burns extending through the epidermis to the dermis on the arms and shins, mostly confined to the papillary dermis. It must be quite painful, that’s why you’ve been given a—” She stops and glares at the two men standing beside the bed. “Where is the morphine pump? This young lady has second-degree burns to almost twenty percent of her body and is lying there wincing in agony. Neither of you think to help return the morphine pump that has fallen from her side? Who are you, by the way? Family?” She puts the handset back next to Arcadia’s fingers, giving it a couple of presses to start the flow of analgesic.
Mr. Ormiston and Constable Lestrange start to explain but Dr. Jackson cuts them off. “Not family, not welcome. This young lady needs to rest. You can come back tomorrow for a fifteen minute visit if you must. Now shoo!”
They say their farewells, Mr. Ormiston promising to check in on her the next day and Constable Lestrange saying he will be in touch. Dr. Jackson waits until they have left before turning back to Arcadia.
“You’re lucky that you covered your face or that pretty little nose of yours might not be there,” the doctor says. “As it is, you should be fine to go home in a couple of days. There may be some slight scarring on your arms, but otherwise you’ll be OK.”
Scarring she can live with. “Thank you, doctor. Tell me, have I had any other visitors?”
Dr. Jackson looks up from her chart. “There was some blond chap asking after you. I think he might still be hanging around—ah, speak of the devil.”
Henry has poked his head around the door, hoping to wait until the room was empty.
Dr. Jackson looks at him and then back at Arcadia. “OK, five minutes. But then this young lady should sleep.” A few more notes on her chart and the doctor resumes her rounds.
Henry enters the room and she sees that his own forehead is bandaged. The shotgun missed him, so was it from the explosion?
“Wing mirror from the car,” he answers her unspoken question. “I’ll be fine. How are you doing?”
Again the warm feeling in her chest. Oxytocin is a hormone said to be released by emotional connections—though some research suggests that it is actually the release of this hormone that causes those connections. Effect or cause, she and Henry have known each other three years now, from nodding acquaintances in the library to friends. And now she owes him her life. More than that, he is the only person in the Priory School who seems to understand her—as with the sunflower, communicating vital information in a concise, elegant manner.
Or perhaps it is the morphine.
“I’ll be fine,” she replies. “And thanks for the sunflower.”
“You’re welcome.” He moves the flower head to face her. The Italian word for sunflower, girasole, is a combination of girare, meaning to turn, and sole, or sun.
“Leaving just one was very clever, too.”
“I’m not sure about that. It’s the end of season and there was only one left at the florist. But I knew you liked them and thought it might cheer this place up slightly.”
She suppresses a laugh, in part to protect her chest but also to protect his feelings. No secret communication—so maybe it was the morphine, after all. “Well, thank you anyway. And thanks also for keeping Miss Alderman—or Phaedra—out of this for the time being. Constable Lestrange paid a visit and said he had spoken to you.”
“I didn’t lie.” Henry raises a finger in protest. “I was merely selective in my telling of the truth. You see what a good influence you’re having on me?” He cocks an eyebrow at her. “But I’m still not sure why you need to protect her. She seems pretty capable of looking after herself. Any insights into what it is that connects you two?”
She has told Henry about her meeting with Miss Alderman at Marwell Hall, but also that there is some kind of bond between them. What was the term Dr. Starr had used? “Pseudo-biological.” For a man precise with his language, it was an oddly vague turn of phrase.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Any sign of Moira?”
Henry rubs his thigh where the dart hit him a day earlier. “No. Do you think she’ll be back?”
“I’m not sure.” She looks at the window, where the light peeking around the curtain is starting to fade. “I still don’t understand: she went to all this effort to steal my identity, take my place in the world. She even showed that she could carry it off, fooling you and half the school. Yet at the final step she hesitates—no, she doesn’t hesitate. She sabotages her own plan. Giving me the chance to defuse the bomb, asking you to come to my rooms. It’s like she doesn’t want to succeed.”
“Or maybe killing you wasn’t her objective.” Henry turns the sunflower once more. “You said yourself that you thought she was testing you. Maybe this is her way of preparing you for something, for building a relationship with you?”
Is the morphine making her dumber or is Henry getting smarter. It’s a good point that he makes. As in the three-way duel, Moira fired her bullet into the ground. But why?
“And as for you,” he continues, “what’s the prognosis—will you be disfigured for life?”
“Not if I can help it.” Dr. Jackson has returned and is adjusting the morphine flow once more. “But that begins with a nap and so I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Very well, doc,” Henry says. A final adjustment to the sunflower and then he turns back to her. Standing next to the bed, he reaches out to nudge a wandering lock of hair away from her eye. “’Bye, Arcadia.” He stops, then leans down to kiss her quickly on the forehead, so gently that his lips barely touch her skin. Straightening, he buttons the coat he never took off, gives her a sheepish grin, and leaves.
She smiles also, morphine and oxytocin mixing as the warmth spreads through her body and she drifts off into a dreamless sleep.
Not quite dreamless.
The room is darker, no sunlight slipping past the curtain now. Footsteps. Another doctor? Not the familiar Dr. Jackson, but a face that she recognises. She must drag it from her memory; the morphine is like molasses, gumming up her works.
“Dr. Bell?” she says at last.
“Why hello there, Miss Arcadia,” he says. Why is he wearing a white coat? He doesn’t work here.
“Why are you dressed as a doctor?”
“But my dear, I am a doctor. You called me that yourself just now.”
Did she? He is now beside her bed, fiddling with the morphine pump.
“That’s fine, I’m fine,” she protests. “No pain, so no need for morphine.”
“Oh dear, would you look at that?” he tuts. “They’ve set the limit at 2.5 milligrams per hour. That’s nowhere near enough for a person with burns as extensive as yours.”
“Really, I’m fine,” she protests. “When did you get here?”
“I came down yesterday. I was terribly sorry to hear about poor Lysander. He must have come unhinged somehow. It is such a relief to know that you were not more badly hurt than this.”
He came yesterday? He followed her from Oxford to the Priory School? The warmth of the morphine is spreading across her body, dragging her back towards sleep.
“Why did you come yesterday? I only just left.”
“Oh but I was worried about you, my dear. After our discussion, I wanted to see for myself that you were going to be safe.” His voice slows down, or is that the drugs? “That everything was going to be safe.”
“Suggestible?” Dr. Bell completes the sentence. “Yes, that is a recognised side-effect of morphine. Most people think it’s a price worth paying for managing their pain, though I understand that you would prefer to privilege the sharpness of your mind.” He sits down on the edge of her bed. “Did you manage to find out anything from Dr. Starr before this—unpleasantness?”
Swimming through an oil slick. Is that what this is like? Is this what that is like? She shakes her head to clear it. “No, no,” she says. “Moira is my twin. But not a twin, better than me. Brighter.” Once again, echoes of the late Headmaster: a child is like a candle; the school provides a spark to see how brightly each child can shine. Moira shines like a firecracker, just as it explodes into a million points of light.
“Who is Moira?” he asks.
The darkness threatens to swallow her whole. “My twin,” she repeats. “Genetically engineered somehow. Crispy—crisper. CRISPR.”
“Genetically engineered?” He sounds sceptical. “Surely we are a long way from such things. It seems like only yesterday that Dolly the sheep was being cloned.”
“Very advanced.” Her words are slurring now.
“I see,” he replies. “Well, Miss Arcadia, it’s nice to see you again. If you recall anything else, or if there’s anything I can do for you in the future, please do let me know.” He produces a name card but her arms are too weak to lift, so he stands it on the bedside table.
She leans her head and rolls slightly so that she can see the card. Her eyes do not require glasses, so it must be the morphine making it difficult to focus, before she can read “Professor Joseph Bell, BM BCh, DPhil, FRCP”. Professor?