The Dobie Paradox: british mystery novel: where nothing is as it seems

by Desmond Cory

  Miss Daly smiled bleakly and slid the timetable sheet back into its protective plastic folder. Dobie was far from sure that he was still in her good graces, if indeed he ever had been. ‘Where would Adrian be now?’

  Train glanced at his wristwatch. ‘Twenty past six, isn’t it? He may very well be in the recreation rooms, or possibly … Can you check on it, Miss Daly?’

  ‘Of course.’ Miss Daly smiled even more bleakly than before and retired to her inner sanctum behind the filing cabinets, where a succession of rapid clicking sounds indicated various manoeuvrings of the television monitors. Meanwhile Train glanced again, and this time more pointedly, at his wristwatch. ‘I’m afraid I really must be running along. You’ll excuse me, won’t you? I’ve no objection at all to your having another little chat with Adrian, if that’s what you had in mind. As soon as Miss Daly has located him—’

  ‘In the Common Room,’ Miss Daly said frostily, reappearing and plumping herself down at her desk. ‘Playing a game of chess with Harry the Horse, I mean with … Mr Douglas.’

  ‘Harry Douglas, eh? One of our rough diamonds, but sound enough at bottom, wouldn’t you say? Well, it’s more or less on my way. Let me take you there.’

  ‘I think in fact I can remember—’

  ‘It’s no trouble at all,’ Train said firmly.

  ‘You got your name in the papers, you know that?’

  No, Dobie didn’t. He hardly ever read the newspapers. ‘This morning’s Echo. Front page at that.’

  It was lying folded on the table in front of him. Dobie picked it up and glanced at it. The photograph ran across three newsprint columns but his name, he saw, was only mentioned at the end of the report and was moreover wrongly spelled. The photograph, of course, was of Beverley Sutro or more precisely of Beverley Sutro’s head and shoulders; staring wide eyed into the camera lens, she looked about twelve years old, younger even than Elspeth. Possibly it was an old photograph. Given the choice of doing something quickly and doing it right, there was never any doubt as to what the sub-editors of the local press would plump for. Of course they’d have deadlines to meet and so on. Dobie folded the paper again and tossed it back on to the table. ‘Spelled it wrong,’ he said. ‘They usually do.’

  ‘You’ve seen that photograph?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s the girl.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s the girl all right. What they say is true enough. I and my friend Kate Coyle, we found her. Kate’s a doctor, you see, she did what she could but it wasn’t … She didn’t …’ Dobie realized from the expression on Seymour’s face that he had somehow gone off the track again. Or in some way had contrived to miss the point. ‘Sorry. What do you mean – that’s the girl?’

  ‘The one I told you about.’

  ‘You’ve seen her somewhere?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. She’s the girl in that … dark place … The one in the dream.’

  ‘Ah,’ Dobie said.

  Today Seymour really didn’t look very well. Though he didn’t look exactly ill, either. Chiefly, he looked tired. Worn round the edges. ‘You remember?’

  ‘I remember your telling me about it, yes. But I thought that dream had to do with that time in Cyprus. With … your wife and all that. This girl couldn’t possibly have come into it. Could she?’

  ‘I don’t know. They’ve got me back on sedatives again. I haven’t been sleeping well lately. It’s Valium, I think. Works all right, in that either I don’t dream or I don’t remember my dreams when I wake up. She’s still there, though. She hasn’t gone away.’

  ‘Have you told the doctors about it?’

  ‘I tried to. But Popeye’s not interested, he says all that Freudian stuff is too old-fashioned and no one goes in for interpreting dreams any more. I don’t care if it’s old-fashioned or not, that damned girl’s there, I mean … it’s as though she’s waiting for me, for when I go to sleep … Her and that other fellow …’

  ‘What other fellow?’

  ‘I can’t see him. That is, I can never see his face. He’s wearing a mask.’

  Dobie inhaled deeply but managed not to sigh. ‘Tell me about it again. What do you see, exactly?’

  ‘I don’t see anything exactly because it’s dark, it’s somewhere deep underground but there are sort of pools of light here and there and colours, blue mostly and black and … the whole thing’s somehow static, like a painting … It’s hard to explain.’

  ‘You say you’ve tried. OK. Try again.’

  ‘Well, this chap’s doing it to the girl and that’s all there is to it, really. Except that it’s frightening. It makes me feel scared. I want to run away and I find I can’t.’

  ‘And you can’t see the man?’

  ‘Because he’s on top and his face is turned down. But the girl’s on her back and I can see her face all right. And,’ Seymour said, tapping the folded newspaper, ‘that’s her. That’s the face. I can’t understand it.’

  ‘How do you know the man’s wearing a mask? If you can’t see his face?’

  ‘I just know he is. That’s all.’

  Dobie shook his head, not in negation but as though to dispel a certain unwanted mental image. ‘Maybe you’ve got that story thing you wrote at the back of your mind. The Mask of Zeus or whatever you called it. And I imagine it has to be some little while since you had a girl yourself. I wouldn’t be surprised if it hasn’t all got something to do with sexual repression, I mean your being a perfectly healthy young—’

  ‘Everything’s got something to do with sexual repression, if you’re into Freud.’

  ‘But you say that Carter isn’t.’

  ‘No, he isn’t. And anyway it isn’t the dream that worries me. It’s the girl. It didn’t worry me much before because I thought she didn’t exist, except as a figment of my imagination. But she does. Or did. Maybe it’s … Do you think I’m psychic? Or something?’

  If he weren’t something he wouldn’t have been put where he now was, but Dobie tactfully refrained from pointing this out. ‘Well, as a mathematician I wouldn’t be any too happy with that explanation, because of course it doesn’t explain anything, not really. But on the other hand I wouldn’t be prepared to discount it altogether. You’ve had this dream a number of times?’

  ‘Since I got here, yes. I don’t know how many times. At least a dozen.’

  ‘And it’s always the same?’

  ‘Yes. Except sometimes I’m standing still looking at it and sometimes I’m moving … Not walking. More like floating. You know? Moving, anyway. Unless it’s the shadows moving about. I can’t be sure.’

  ‘But the girl’s always the same? Can you see what sort of expression she has on her face? I mean, you say you’re frightened – is she frightened?’

  ‘She doesn’t have any expression at all. I don’t know … Perhaps it’s more like a statue than a painting. I know it sounds weird when you try to describe it, but it doesn’t seem at all weird in the dream, it’s just scary.’

  ‘I don’t quite see what’s scary about it.’

  ‘Well, that’s right, and that’s what’s scary.’

  After a while Dobie said, ‘Perhaps you’d better not tell anyone else about it, at least until they’ve let you out of here. They say they plan to release you pretty soon and maybe when you’ve got a job lined up … or anyway when you start work somewhere … I don’t know if my recommendations will be of much good to you but I’ve filed a reference, for what it’s worth.’

  ‘Yes. Well, thanks. Yes, you may be right. I don’t much like it here, you know … but then nobody does.’

  ‘It has its advantages. For instance, you seem to be completely in the clear on this one. And that, I suppose, has to be a pleasant change.’

  ‘In the clear?’

  ‘Whoever killed the girl, it wasn’t you.’

  Seymour stared at him. ‘Good God, of course it wasn’t. Why the hell would I want to kill a girl I’ve never even met? Except in—’

  ‘It’s be
en known to happen.’

  ‘I said I might be psychic, not a psycho. And anyway, I wasn’t serious.’

  ‘That’s just the sort of distinction,’ Dobie said, ‘that Detective Inspector Jackson gets all mixed up. But at least he won’t get confused over a good sound alibi.’

  ‘And I’ve got one?’

  ‘You were with Dr Carter at the operative time. Or so it appears.’

  ‘Saturday afternoon? Yes, I was.’

  ‘Four to six p.m.’

  ‘Right. My usual straightening-out session. Excising my alleged guilt fixation. I suppose he’s done a good job on me, as far as it goes. I’m certainly not about to confess to anything ever again, whether I happen to be guilty of it or not. It’s a great mistake. He’s convinced me of it.’

  Dobie felt a little relieved that the conversation had taken slightly more light-hearted a turn. He picked up one of the discarded chess pieces from the table and looked at it. Judging from the appearance of the board, Harry the Horse hadn’t proved to be too redoubtable an opponent; his skills would no doubt be better displayed in a boxing ring. ‘Perhaps I should book in for a session. I’m feeling more than a little guilty these days.’

  ‘Really? What of?’

  ‘Blowing up the universe.’

  ‘Oh. Is that all? No, it wasn’t you. Must have been some other bloke.’

  ‘Perhaps this Indian chap,’ Dobie said, ‘they mention in the newspaper. Professor Dhobi.’

  ‘A very likely culprit.’

  They’d got the girl’s name right, though. Which should have sufficed to put Professor Dobie and his delusions of grandeur in his proper place. He hadn’t, after all, admitted to the true reason why he was indeed feeling a little guilty.

  He was himself, properly speaking, a criminal. He had just stolen something.

  His reaction, therefore, when Detective Inspector Jackson clapped one hand on his shoulder in the classic gesture was to bound once more up into the air like a demented wallaby (always assuming that the said wallaby were to be found initially seated on a white plastic chair with a foam-rubber cushion, a sufficiently unlikely supposition, though if the animal were indeed demented, that might account for it). Lost in the ramifications of this after all quite casual similitude, Dobie was slow to recognize that his assailant on this occasion was not, in fact, Jackson but (as was logical to suppose) someone else; to wit, Dr Carter. ‘Hullo there,’ Carter said jollily. ‘I hope I didn’t startle you.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Dobie said, startled. ‘I thought you wolla wozzaby, I mean were a … worraby … or anyway, someone else.’

  ‘A wallaby?’

  ‘No, no. A linguistic confusion arising from … Never mind the wallaby. Forget the wallaby. Wallabies,’ Dobie said, becoming more and more anxious, ‘have got nothing to do with it, I assure you.’

  ‘To do with what?’

  ‘With what we were talking about.’

  ‘We weren’t talking about anything. I only just got here.’

  ‘I meant my friend here and myself.’

  ‘Ah.’ Carter had already acknowledged Seymour’s presence with a smile and a courteous nod. ‘So what were you talking about?’

  Dobie had in fact forgotten; it was therefore Seymour who replied. ‘We were telling sad stories,’ he said, ‘of the death of kings.’ If you call that a reply. Carter was clearly nonplussed. So was Dobie. To the best of his knowledge, they hadn’t been doing anything of the kind. ‘Kings? What kings?’

  ‘And queens. By implication.’

  Dobie looked round him nervously, his anxiety now bordering on agitation. ‘There aren’t any of those here, are there?’

  Seymour sighed. ‘Ah no John, no John, no. Only sad kings and princes all. Mourning for la belle dame sans merci.’

  At last, Dobie dug. ‘Poetry again, is it? That’s all right, then. Just for a moment I thought—’

  ‘If,’ Carter said rather loudly, ‘you’ve in any case now concluded your conversation, my colleagues and I were wondering if you would care to join us in the Staff Common Room. Not as commodious as this place, of course, but we do have certain amenities on tap that aren’t available here. And we’d all be interested to hear your version of a somewhat singular incident that, as rumour has it—’

  ‘Oh, that, yes, an amusing misapprehension … But all very easily explained.’

  In fact, of course, it wasn’t.

  ‘What I can’t make out is why he took me to be a Russian. You haven’t been made subject to Communist infiltration, I hope? It’s surely a little late in the day for that.’

  ‘Not as far as we know,’ Carter said. ‘Though of course Tigger here is a bit of a radical.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ Dr Ram said. ‘Ha ha ha.’

  ‘Thick as a brick, that Whybrow fellow,’ Mighell said. ‘Mind you, you have to be, to deal with some of the blokes we’ve got in here. Or anyway, it helps. He can talk to them on their own level, so to speak.’

  ‘Those are rather radical sentiments, Robert.’

  ‘Don’t quote me on ’em,’ Mighell said glumly.

  Dobie, the centre of present attention, beamed at everyone through his glasses with vague benevolence. He was finding the atmosphere and general ethos of the Staff Common Room very much more relaxing and convivial than that of the Recreation Hall, and after all, why shouldn’t he? It was one with which he was extremely familiar, not at all unlike that of the Senior Common Room at his university. The promised amenities, in the shape of a bottle of cream sherry, had indeed been provided and his companions of the moment were partaking of its content freely and in a spirit of general bonhomie – Dr Mighell’s air of somewhat cynical gloom excepted. In this ambience, Dobie’s enthralling narration had, he thought, gone down rather well. ‘There’s something faintly Chaucerian about it,’ the tall thin one said. Hopkinson? Hodgson? Hudson, that was it. ‘ “The Professor’s Tale” …’

  ‘Though lacking something in the element of ribaldry.’

  ‘Possibly our Miss Daly …’

  ‘There are certain roles in which one might readily imagine her.’ Hudson, yes. The thin one. Why, Dobie thought, am I so bad with names? And why, if it came to that, didn’t people have numbers instead? So very much more convenient and practical. And the inmates here did have numbers, come to think of it. 1248758 Seymour, A. … There you go. Nobody could possibly have any difficulty in remembering that. Dobie’s fingers encountered the slip of folded paper in his jacket pocket and closed over it possessively. ‘Though, wishful thinking apart,’ Hudson continued, ‘I suppose one would have to cast her as the Lady Prioress. Within these walls, anyway.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say she was remarkable for her tender heart,’ Carter said. ‘Though in that same general physical region, of course … some rather remarkable … I don’t know … The Merchant’s wife, perhaps? Or even the Wife of Bath?’

  ‘Ha ha ha. Ha ha.’

  ‘Did she get around to sorting out that problem …?’

  ‘Yes, everything’s back to normal,’ Mighell said. ‘Or so the Director tells me. In fact, I understand the Professor here was instrumental in ironing out the difficulty – whatever it was. Really, there should be some technician available on the premises—’

  The conversation was now becoming general as well as largely incomprehensible, at any rate to the Professor here; Dobie, however, was content enough to take refuge in his glass of sherry – metaphorically speaking – and let all this obscure stuff about the Brides in the Bath wash – speaking more metaphorically yet over his head. It was bad enough, really, getting all that poetry crap from Seymour – quoting poetry is after all a safe and recognized method of convincing other people that one’s mentis is appropriately non compos – but it was disturbing to find the members of staff here also affected, presumably by contagion, with the malady but not after all very disturbing, not when one had other and more pressing matters to think about … Ah, but Mighell, apprised perhaps through telepathic means that his guest’s mind was b
eginning to wander, was leaning forwards now in his armchair to address Dobie confidentially, though in sufficiently stentorian tones for the others to hear his question and to break off their own conversation in consequence. ‘My daughter tells me you take an interest in criminology, Mr Dobie, or in criminal cases as such. And in this business of Beverley Sutro in particular. Is this true?’

  ‘Oh no. Not exactly. It’s just that, as you know, Kate and I, Dr Coyle and I … Well, we saw her lying there. Beside the road. As you know. But I’ve no interest in criminal cases, no, not in general. Not at all.’

  ‘How very unusual. Most people are fascinated by them. You know, of course, the girl was almost certainly raped? The police seem to be acting on that assumption, anyway. Or seemed to be when they interviewed me this morning.’

  ‘Inspector Jackson?’

  ‘The same fellow who questioned me on the Saturday night. Yes, I believe the name was Jackson. He’s something of a friend of yours?’

  ‘Something, yes.’

  ‘But you’re not in any way privy to his thoughts on the matter? Or to his conduct of the case?’

  ‘Oh no. No, indeed.’

  ‘Ah.’ Mighell’s air of studied melancholy seemed, if anything, to deepen slightly at this intelligence. ‘Well, I hope it’s not developing on the usual readily predictable lines. We do have two or three convicted rapists here, but they most certainly couldn’t have been involved in this tragic affair and I trust the Director was able to convince your, er … Inspector Jackson of that.’

  ‘Rapists, yes,’ Hudson said cheerfully. ‘Murderers, no. No Hannibal the Cannibals here, ha ha.’

  ‘Ha ha. Ha ha ha.’

  ‘In fact we pay a great deal of attention to dietary considerations. That,’ Hudson explained to Dobie, ‘is why the food’s so bloody awful.’

  ‘He he he he he.’

  Schoolboy humour, Dobie decided, invariably finding in the bearded and otherwise solemn Dr Ram a ready market. Tigger, indeed. Snigger would be more like it. Ram’s explosive and often curiously timed chuckles seemed to be the only contribution he had so far made to the discussion. But then in some ways the atmosphere here resembled that of a public school rather than a university common room, with Mighell in the admonitory role of senior housemaster. ‘That,’ Mighell was now saying, ‘is not to the present point. It’s been clearly established, I hope, that the patients here have all been committed for drug-related cases only. If that little … if the girl was indeed murdered, the crime clearly must fall into a totally different category. This, apart from the sheer physical impossibility of any of our patients being responsible. We don’t call this a prison, but that’s what it is, and an exceptionally well supervised prison at that. I refuse to believe—’