Visibility

by Boris Starling

  No, he thought, he was not here for Hannah alone; he suddenly realized how near he was to his mother’s ward, and thought that he should perhaps go and see her, if only to do something and therefore take his mind off Hannah’s condition.

  He went via the restroom, which was a good thing, for he was filthy, and his mother would not accept something as banal as escape from a fire as a decent excuse for sloppiness in his appearance.

  He cleaned himself up as best he could, scrubbing his face three times until the dirt was gone, and hoped that she would not notice the tidemarks on his clothes.

  Herbert approached the swing doors which opened onto his mother’s ward, and peered through the circular windows which were set in the doors at face height and which always put him in mind of the viewfinders on submarine periscopes.

  She was there, her face as long as a horse.

  His mother was rarely less than jovial, but she could snap without warning, and on the odd occasions when her mood was bad, like the girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead in Longfellow’s poem, she was horrid.

  Herbert sighed and went in.

  “The prodigal son,” Mary snarled. “You come and see your old mother …”

  She had been speaking rapidly, but now she stopped dead.

  “No, I…,” Herbert began.

  “… only when you feel like it?” she finished with a rush, and Herbert realized why she had been talking so fast and why she had ceased so suddenly. The first to get through the sentence before she ran out of breath, and the second because it had not worked and she’d had to wait for the air to return, rather like the refilling of a toilet cistern. “And don’t interrupt me,” she added.

  Herbert looked closer. Her eyes were rimmed in crimson; she had been crying.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come and see you over the weekend,” Herbert said.

  “Too busy running around after murderers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you pay more attention to the living than to the dead?”

  Herbert shrugged; there was no answer he felt appropriate.

  “And what are you doing here so early?”

  “I was in a fire. They’ve brought Hannah here.”

  “You only came because you were here anyway?” She looked as though he had caused her mortal offense. “Good Christ, Herbert, that makes it even worse.” She paused. “Who’s Hannah?”

  “She’s a friend.”

  “A lady friend?”

  “A friend who’s a lady, yes.”

  “You know what I mean, Herbert.”

  “I do indeed, Mama.”

  Herbert had no desire to wind her up, but equally he felt that she had no right to pry.

  Mary opened her mouth to continue, and then began to wheeze again. This time, Herbert knew better than to reply.

  The wheeze grew louder, which momentarily alarmed him until he realized that it was the rush of air from her breathing more freely.

  She coughed hard, hawking up a gobbet of phlegm which she caught in her hand and wiped discreetly on the sheets, decorous to the last.

  There were several other people in the ward, all long past their best, if indeed they had ever had one. They stared into space or chatted in low voices. All were far too discreet, far too polite, far too British to step between a mother and her son.

  “Perhaps we should take a holiday, Mama,” Herbert said.

  “Where to? Somewhere with a better climate than here, I should hope.”

  “Egypt?” Herbert had served some time during the war in North Africa, and now felt a sudden desire to be back in the desert, where the air was blistering hot, dry, and clear. “We could take a boat across the Channel, cross France by train, take another boat over to Egypt. Amble through the Cairo souks, go sightseeing in the Valley of the Kings. What do you say?”

  “Will you be bringing Hannah?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Mama.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Angela came in at her usual bustle.

  “The prodigal son,” she said. The same words Mary had used, which was unnerving, but at this time spoken with jocular merriment. “Hope you haven’t been letting your mother bully you.”

  “You’re the only bully round here, Angela,” said Mary. “Why won’t you let me out of here? For an hour or two? Why can’t you give an old woman some pleasure, ask the Lord?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Mrs. S,” Angela said. “You’ll only make things worse, you know you will. Come on, let’s get you into position.”

  She arranged Mary into a posture designed to help her breathe: turned onto her side, her head propped up on a couple of pillows, another pillow underneath her flank, knees bent. Mary put up resistance which started as halfhearted and quickly subsided to token. Bullies always knew when they were beaten.

  Just as with Rosalind Franklin, Herbert couldn’t help thinking that the world needed more Angelas in it; endlessly forgiving of her patients’ foibles, but absolutely intolerant of serious nonsense.

  Maybe the sick were like children: they would try to get away with anything if you let them, but deep down they welcomed boundaries, they wanted parameters, and they knew that laying down the law did not equate to a lack of love.

  Angela knew how to handle Herbert’s mother, which was more than he did.

  “That’s better, isn’t it?” Angela said, when she had finished.

  “Giving me a cigarette would be better,” Mary replied.

  “Loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless,” Angela said.

  Herbert and Mary stared at her in surprise.

  “James the Sixth,” Angela continued. “A man who knew what was what, I can tell you. Now, I’d love to spend all day chatting, but as you can imagine, the place is bedlam right now, and I’ve got hundreds more patients to check on.”

  “Hundreds?” Mary said. “Absurd.”

  “Not absurd, Mrs. S, and kindly don’t take that tone with me. It’s true. Literally hundreds. We haven’t been this busy since the Blitz. Bronchial spasms, pneumonia, corpulmonale, myocardial degeneration; all made worse by this wretched fog. Senior citizens like yourself, Mrs. Smith, and young children, too. It’s terrible. So, if you’ll excuse me…”

  “You can go, too, Herbert.” Mary flapped a weak hand toward the door. She looked like she was going to start crying again. “Go on. Get out.”

  He did not even consider protesting. What good would it have done?

  In the corridor outside, Angela took his arm.

  “Maybe it isn’t my place to say this, Herbert, but I believe in telling things like they are, so … I see the way your mother is to you, all smiles most of the time and then sometimes like she is today, and I don’t fully understand why. I know she loves you and worries about you; she might not show it the best sometimes, but rest assured you’re not the first son I’ve seen who finds his mother difficult, and you surely won’t be the last. When all’s done and dusted, she’s your mother and she’s here for a reason—and she’s not going to be around much longer, not if this fog continues the way it is.”

  How did one react, when one was told that?

  “Are you sure?” Herbert said. “I mean … how long? Days? Weeks? Months?”

  “Only the Good Lord can answer that one, Herbert. I’m a nurse, not a soothsayer. But for you to let her drive you away, it would be wrong. No matter how badly she behaves. You do realize that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And I don’t know you from Adam, but I see things in you, so if you’d let me give you a piece of advice, I’d be very grateful.”

  Herbert nodded.

  “The more you absolutely must not have or feel something,” Angela said, “the more certainly you’ll have or feel it. Make room for the darkness, when it comes. Open up a space for it, invite it to
stay awhile. My nephew used to have nightmares about monsters, you know. He would get them night after night; screamed his little head off. No one knew how to make it better.

  “Then I told him that the reason the monsters were there was that they had nowhere else to go, so what he should do was keep a small box under his bed where they could stay. That’s all they wanted, I said; a little place of their own. I found him an old wooden box and we wrote ‘MONSTERS’ in red letters on the lid, and under his bed it went. He never had the nightmare again, would you believe? He had his space and the monsters had theirs. That’s all it’s about.” She touched Herbert on the shoulder. “See you next time, Herbert.”

  He hurried back through the corridors to where Hannah was being kept.

  When he got there the doctor was waiting, looking around to see where he had gone.

  “Mr. Smith? I’ve examined your friend, and I’m pleased to say I think she’ll be all right, though perhaps not immediately. She’s suffered second-degree burns to her face, and we’ve applied ointment and dressings to those. The chest X-ray shows that her lungs have some quite serious smoke damage, and there’s also some internal burning in her airways. But her red blood count is good, as is her lung capacity; she’s young and fit, and I don’t see any long-term problems there.”

  “Doctor, she had a seizure in the ambulance.”

  “As the ambulanceman told you, this is not uncommon as a reaction to the unusual number of foreign bodies in the respiratory system. There seems to be no history of such fits otherwise, so I wouldn’t worry too much about a repeat. Just to be on the safe side, I’ve given her some medication for that, as well as some ephedrine tablets with Adrenalin solution for her inhalation. Now, these have some side effects—they can raise both blood pressure and pulse rates, they might make her head thump and her pupils constrict, and since they’re diuretic, they’ll probably affect her bladder, too—but they’re perfectly safe.”

  “She … er, she hit her head quite hard.”

  “I know. An emperor-sized lump; lucky she’s got such long hair, to hide it.”

  “No fracture?”

  “No, no.”

  “Do you need to keep her in overnight?”

  “Very much so. Again, largely as a precaution, but precautions tend to stop dramas becoming crises. You can see her now, if you wish, but I would ask that you don’t stay too long. She’s very tired, and she needs some rest.”

  Herbert pushed open the door and went over to Hannah’s bed. She had dressings on both cheeks and a bandage across her forehead.

  Hannah pointed to the dressing on her right cheek. “You know what happen here?”

  “What?”

  “I am ironing, and the phone rings. It happen all the whole time.”

  “And the other cheek?”

  “They call back.”

  First laughing, then crying, then laughing again, Herbert held her for as long as the nurses would let him; saying nothing, and feeling everything.

  By the time Herbert got on to the tube, it was already packed with the first phalanxes of grim-faced office drones, en route to another day of repetitive monotony, another eight hours of their lives gone without excitement, without any reward beyond their salaries; more of their precious allotments ticked off without protest.

  He supposed it said something for the average Londoner’s tenacity, or perhaps his lack of imagination, that he was still determined to make it into work in such conditions. The country would hardly fall apart if a day’s filing was missed, after all.

  He read the classifieds on the front page of The Times.

  “Look, sir! Hounds!”

  Boys at Kestrel’s Preparatory School, East Anstey, North Devon, not infrequently have such experiences and views from the form rooms. Rather nice. A breath of England while wrestling with Latin Primers.

  When this was over, he might retreat to a remote bucolic paradise like Kestrel’s.

  Back at his flat, he soaked so long in the bath that he had to refill it twice. By the time he got out, his skin was wrinkled like that of a washerwoman. The radio said that the fog would start to clear by mid-morning, and that the temperature would rise from freezing to around forty-five degrees.

  He began to reach for the phone to ring New Scotland Yard, to tell them what had happened, and perhaps ask for protection into the bargain. As if in anticipation of his movement, the phone began to ring. He unhooked the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Detective Inspector Smith?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Rathbone here.”

  It took Herbert half a moment to place the name; Rathbone, the pathologist who had conducted Stensness’ autopsy.

  “Mr. Rathbone,” Herbert said, remembering that he could not have used Rathbone’s Christian name even if he had wanted to; Rathbone had never volunteered such information. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve got some … well, some news, I don’t know whether it’s bad or good …”

  “Go on.”

  “I’ve just finished the autopsy on Mr. de Vere Green—I know he died yesterday, but we’ve got quite a backlog in this fog, as you can imagine, and suicides aren’t given high priority, yes?” On the slab as at the altar, Herbert thought. “Anyway, we got to him in the end, and … well, to cut a long story short, his suicide, it, er, it wasn’t suicide.”

  Herbert was half out of his chair. “What?”

  “Oh, it was carbon monoxide poisoning all right. We found all the usual traces: microscopic hemorrhages in the eyes, congestion and swelling of the brain, liver, spleen, and kidneys, and a distinctive cherry red color to the blood, yes? But the autopsy also revealed chloroform.”

  Chloroform. Kazantsev. Elkington. Cholmeley Crescent.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Oh yes. For a start, I could smell it, very faint, and only when I was right up close to the cadaver, but unmistakable. Then there was blistering on the skin around the mouth, where the liquid must have come in contact. Also burning inside the mouth, and down in the esophagus, yes?”

  “Could he have administered it himself? Trying to knock himself out beforehand?”

  Rathbone shrugged. “It’s possible, technically, but unlikely.”

  “Why?”

  “The degree of burning is consistent with the chloroform being applied with considerable force, which is unlikely when self-administered. And anyway, why would one, er, knock oneself out when the carbon monoxide would have the same effect eventually?”

  Herbert’s head reeled.

  Not suicide. But with a note and chloroform, not an accident either.

  It would have been the easiest thing in the world, he supposed, to open the valve on the gas fire in a small, stuffy room, and leave an unconscious man to take that final, small step into the next world.

  What was Herbert sure of?

  That the suicide note had been in de Vere Green’s handwriting. And, as much to the point, in his tone, style, and voice, too.

  Also, that he had had every motivation to kill himself.

  So in order to kill de Vere Green in this manner, and then make it look like suicide, one would have needed two things.

  First was the capacity to force him to write the suicide note, which anyone with a knife or gun could have done; and then to knock him out, which meant anybody with a working knowledge of chloroform.

  Second was sufficient knowledge of de Vere Green, his history, and his idiosyncrasies to ensure that the note contained no false chords to arouse suspicion.

  And that was something very few people could have done. Not Kazantsev, for a start, unless he and de Vere Green had a connection that Herbert knew nothing about.

  In fact, Herbert could think of only one person who fitted the bill: Papworth.

  A process of elimination was one thing, concrete evidence quite another. If accusing de Vere Green of treason had been serious enough, then leveling a murder charge at a member of the CIA was just as grave. Herbert could
not confront Papworth without being absolutely sure. And to be sure, he needed proof.

  If he was to find such proof anywhere, he felt, then de Vere Green’s office was as likely a venue as any.

  Leconfield House was in what Herbert could only describe as muted uproar; a wildfire of hurried whispers and murmured rumors. The news of de Vere Green’s death had already rippled through the building, though to judge from what Herbert heard as he waited in reception, that news was light on fact—the undisputed truth apart, that de Vere Green was dead—and long on speculation, with murder (a frenzied stabbing) and accident (crushed, agonizingly, beneath the wheels of a slow-moving bus) among the candidates.

  Patricia, as ever, came to get Herbert.

  “What happened?” she asked. She had not been crying, but her usual jaunty air was somewhat flattened. One did not have to like someone—and Patricia had cared little for de Vere Green—to be shocked that they were gone. “How did he die?”

  It pleased Herbert that she had used the word “die” rather than “pass away” or some other such euphemism. Death was death; why not call it what it was?

  He told her, as quickly and as simply as possible. And then he told her about de Vere Green’s relationship with Stensness.

  De Vere Green’s office had been locked and sealed. But, with a lack of attention to detail that Herbert found all too typical of Five, there was no one actually standing guard. Perhaps everyone was waiting for someone else to take charge.

  “Just stand there,” Herbert said to Patricia. Using her as cover, he picked the lock as easily as he had done in Cholmeley Crescent, and he was in.

  He had a perfect right to be here, he reminded himself; as far as he knew, the only people who had any idea that de Vere Green’s “suicide” was anything but were himself and Rathbone.

  And the killer, of course.

  Herbert went into de Vere Green’s office, shut the door behind him, and began searching through papers on his desk for—well, what exactly?

  He did not know.

  Anything relevant to the events of the past few days, he supposed; anything he could add to his report.