The permitted outlay for care of the gardens must have been small, since apparently it served for little more than to keep the lawns and paths tidy. And there was, Fen noted, no apparent provision for safely immuring the patients – nothing, that is, in the way of barbed wire or palisades. Nor, indeed, was there any sign of patients, except where, a good way off, a white-coated attendant was wheeling a wrapped, motionless figure about in a bath-chair. The Hall seemed asleep – and the impression of drowsiness was enhanced rather than disturbed by the thin tones of a portable gramophone which seeped from somewhere in the interior.
Fen came to the main door and, since it stood open, walked in. A porter, who but for the lack of both coat and cap might have been said to be uniformed, was sprawled on a kitchen chair in the hall. At Fen’s entry he looked up from a sporting paper and asked without enthusiasm to be told Fen’s business.
‘I have an appointment,’ said Fen, ‘to see Dr Boysenberry.’
The porter was clearly relieved at not being required to grapple with any affair more complicated than this. ‘Keep straight on,’ he said affably, ‘first corridor on your left, second door on your right.’ Then he retired again into his paper. ‘Wily Wilkie,’ he read out to himself. ‘Filomela; Fiddle-de-dee, ten to one.’
Fen left him, and by following his instructions came to a door upon which was a brass plate bearing the inscription A. C. BOYSENBERRY, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.S. The sound of the gramophone proceeded from behind it. ‘I think that I shall never see,’ sang the gramophone, ‘a poem lovely as a tree.’ Fen knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again. There was again no answer. Tiring of the delay, he opened the door and went in.
The room in which he found himself was enormous, so large, indeed, as to be almost certainly the Hall’s ballroom. And its vastness was accentuated by the fact that only one remote corner of it was furnished at all – so that the effect was of a minute encampment in a gigantic desert. Far away across an expanse of polished floor Fen could see a flat-topped desk, with a telephone, a gramophone, and a litter of papers on it. In front of the desk was an elaborately bedizened pouf; behind it sat a man whose greying hair was disordered and whose pince-nez hung askew on the bridge of his nose; behind him stood a very small book-case containing about five books; above this hung a signed photograph of the man at the desk; to the left of the photograph was a stupendous metal filing-cabinet with a typewriter and a pile of gramophone records perched on top. And there was nothing else in the room whatever.
His footsteps echoing noisily around him, Fen walked across to the desk; and as he came near it, the grey-haired man raised a finger to his lips, and pointed to the gramophone, in a pantomimic demand for silence. Fen began to experience misgivings; it seemed to him likely that he was confronted with one of Boysen-berry’s patients rather than with Boysenberry himself. Life imitates literature with doggish fidelity, and in literature such situations were common enough. . . . Moreover, the grey-haired man’s first remark, after the record was finished and he had taken it off, was not encouraging. ‘Are you,’ he inquired, ‘fond of ballads?’
‘Well, no,’ said Fen cautiously. ‘I don’t think I can say that I am.’
‘Well, I am. And the one we’ve just been hearing is a particular favourite of mine. Trees, it’s called. Do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever come across a lovelier poem than Trees.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Poems are made,’ said the man, ‘by fools like me, but only God can make a Tree. . . . Mind you, in view of recent laboratory experiments the last part of the statement isn’t strictly true, but still, it’s a very fine sentiment, very fine.’
‘Are you Dr Boysenberry?’ Fen asked doubtfully.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Boysenberry. ‘Naturally I am. . . . And that particular recording of it is outstandingly excellent. Also, there’s Passing By on the other side.’
‘Unlike the Good Samaritan.’
‘That’s not so satisfactory, though: one of these modernistic things with funny chords. . . .’ And here Boysenberry, at last mindful of the duties of hospitality, put the record reluctantly aside. ‘Well, do sit down,’ he said. ‘It will have to be the pouf, I’m afraid. We’ve been here for three years, but even now the Ministry of Works hasn’t let us have a quarter of the furniture we need.’
‘And your office,’ said Fen reservedly, ‘is unusually large.’
‘It’s a damned barn, that’s what it is. You’d think in a building the size of this I could find a decent office, wouldn’t you? But when all the patients and staff have been accommodated, this is practically the only thing that’s left. I wanted to have it divided up into several smaller rooms, but they wouldn’t let me. Said it had been designed by some famous man and was very beautiful.’ Boysenberry stared about him with unconcealed distaste. ‘Grinning Gibbon or some such name.’
Fen sat down on the pouf and offered him a cigarette.
‘Thanks,’ he said, taking it. ‘Well, now, perhaps you wouldn’t mind stating your business.’
‘I telephoned to you,’ said Fen. ‘Yesterday evening.’
‘Ah, yes, of course. I made a note of it at the time.’ Boysenberry rummaged half-heartedly among the papers on his desk, but without, apparently, discovering anything to the purpose. ‘Perhaps you’d be so good as to repeat – –’
‘I’ve come,’ said Fen, ‘to ask for some information about Elphinstone.’
Boysenberry’s manner altered visibly; he became frigid. ‘It is quite impossible,’ he said icily, ‘for me to communicate confidential facts of that nature to any unauthorized person, Mr – er – –’
‘Fen.’
‘Mr Fen. You are, I take it, a journalist.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Fen. ‘I am the Oxford Professor of English Language and Literature.’
And as Boysenberry assimilated this intelligence, his attitude underwent another rapid and remarkable change. He fluttered his hands agitatedly; his mouth widened in a rictus which was seemingly intended to convey the greatest possible cordiality. ‘Dear me,’ he said. ‘How extremely foolish of me. . . . Professor Fen. Of course. This is a very great privilege indeed. . . . What will you have been thinking of me, I wonder?’ And he idiotically tittered.
The motives underlying this sudden change of front were by no means clear to Fen. ‘Very understandable,’ he murmured inconsequently. ‘Very understandable indeed.’
‘And our meeting like this the more delightful,’ said Boysenberry, ‘in that by Christmas we may perhaps be more closely associated.’
Fen, on the point of denying all charm to such a prospect, restrained himself in the interests of his errand and said ‘Ah’ instead.
‘You don’t quite catch my meaning, I suspect.’ Boysenberry continued to radiate a strenuous and determined good humour. ‘But you will be aware, of course, that the Oxford Chair of Abnormal Psychology is to be filled shortly?’ Not being aware of any such thing, Fen said ‘Ah’ again. ‘Well, I,’ Boysenberry continued modestly, ‘am applying for the job – by which I mean, of course, the position.’
‘Then I must wish you the best of luck,’ Fen responded with as much heartiness as he could muster.
‘Ah, but it’s not all a matter of luck, is it?’ By now Boysenberry’s unyielding cordiality had grown positively macabre. ‘A lot of good can be done, you know, by a word in the right place.’ And with this insinuation the effort of tactfully shooting his bolt became too much for him, and from sheer nervousness his voice rose. to a kind of shout.
‘Oh, I see,’ said Fen, at last enlightened. ‘But I scarcely think that my recommendation – –’
With a creditable effort Boysenberry regained control of his nerves. ‘You underestimate yourself, Professor Fen,’ he said; and when Fen, to whom this accusation was unfamiliar, vaguely demurred: ‘Ah, but indeed you do,’ Boysenberry reiterated firmly. ‘You must not, of course, imagine that I’m in any way canvassing. Dear me, no. But I thought that if you were to come
across any of the members of the selection panel, socially as it were, and if you were just to mention that I was at least – ha! ha! – presentable . . . ’ And he left the sentence in mid-air, straightening his pince-nez and smoothing his hair in an attempt to make this suggestion colourable.
As an Open Sesame to the minutiae of Elphinstone’s lunacy this could hardly be bettered, and Fen accepted it with a singular lack of scruple. ‘I know all the members of the selection panel intimately,’ he said, ‘and they are, on the whole, very suggestible. I think that perhaps I may be able to do something for you. These things are mostly arranged behind the scenes, you know.’ And in uttering this intolerable slander, Fen closed one eye in a knowing wink.
Enchanted, Boysenberry winked back. ‘I’m extremely obliged to you,’ he said. ‘Extremely obliged. And now – –’
‘And now, Elphinstone.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. Elphinstone.’ In his anxiety to be helpful Boysenberry rose agitatedly from his chair and then sat down again. ‘So long as I thought you were a journalist. . . . That is to say in your case . . .’ He picked up a sheet of paper and stared at it for a moment uncomprehendingly. ‘Elphinstone, yes. Naturally I shall be most happy to give you any information you require. Most happy . . . And I remember that you have been engaged in a number of cases of a criminal nature. Perhaps, with regard to this dreadful affair last night. . . .’
‘Yes,’ said Fen. ‘It’s that which interests me. The police, as you probably know, have formed the opinion that it was Elphinstone who committed the murder.’
‘So I understand.’ Boysenberry’s elation rather abruptly evaporated at the reminder. ‘And no doubt,’ he added gloomily, ‘I shall be held responsible, inasmuch as it was from here that he escaped.’
‘If it’s any consolation to you,’ said Fen, ‘I don’t myself believe that he did it. That’s why I’m here. And I expect it would help you if it could be proved that he did not do it.’
‘It would indeed,’ said Boysenberry eagerly. ‘I won’t attempt to disguise from you the fact that if Elphinstone is proved to have killed this man, the consequences for me will be – ah – somewhat awkward. It will be said by ill-natured persons that I did not keep him under adequate restraint. Do you think, now’ – he peered at Fen anxiously – ‘that such a – such a misfortune, let us say – would prejudice my chances of being appointed a Professor at Oxford?’
‘I’m very much afraid that it would.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Boysenberry in blank dismay. ‘Oh, dear. . . . Well, we can only hope that the facts are not as they at present appear.’
‘And it may be feasible to demonstrate that they aren’t.’ Wearying of these lengthy preliminaries, Fen spoke rather brusquely. ‘From what you know of his condition, would you say that Elphinstone was capable of killing?’
Boysenberry wriggled uncomfortably. ‘The difficulty is,’ he said, ‘that from first-hand observation I know very little of him. He had been here not much more than a week when he escaped – and in any case, it was quite a mistake that he was ever sent here at all.’
‘A mistake?’
‘An error of card-indexing, I believe. This Home is not intended for complex cases, such as his, but for the mild and intermittent forms of lunacy, and for patients who are convalescing and well on the way to recovery. By rights Elphinstone should have been sent to Climball or to Ferris Haugh. But someone blundered, as Browning so aptly puts it, and he was delivered here. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the Civil Service is a body whose mistakes are made so thoroughly and definitively, that they can only be rectified by a procedure equally searching and elaborate. . . . The moment Elphinstone and his file arrived I realized, of course, that he had been misdirected. But could I take immediate action to remedy this state of affairs? I could not – unless you are prepared to call the filling-in of forms “action”. And the consequence was that he escaped, since we had not the proper means of restraining him.’
‘Most unfortunate,’ Fen agreed. ‘And I can understand, in that case, why you’re unable to give an opinion about whether he might turn homicidal or not.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t go quite so far as that,’ said Boysenberry hastily. ‘If I were pressed for a diagnosis, I should, I think, say that he was not homicidal; if I were pressed, that is,’ he reiterated, thereby nullifying whatever value his pronouncement might have had.
‘Well, you may take it,’ said Fen, ‘that I am pressing you.’
‘Yes. . . . On the other hand, it would be fatal to be too definite. The public is right in supposing madmen to be logical – and in that sense their actions can to some extent be foreseen. . . . The only trouble is that the results of logic depend on its premises, and since lunatics are capable of changing their premises every two seconds, they can remain logical and yet still be totally unpredictable. For example . . .’
But Fen felt no desire for an example. ‘Yes, yes, I see all that,’ he interrupted. ‘And it leaves us exactly where we were to start with. Now, may I please hear what you know about Elphinstone’s case-history?’
‘Certainly. Certainly you may.’ Boysenberry crossed with alacrity to the filing-cabinet and produced from it a pink file, which he laid, open, on the desk in front of him. ‘All the relevant papers are here, I think. . . . Yes. Quite so. . . . Well, in the first place, he’s the son of normal middle-class parents; no previous madness in the family, so far as we’ve been able to discover. And his childhood and adolescence were perfectly normal, except that he developed, at about six years of age, a fixation about gloves.’
‘Ah,’ said Fen. Psychologists were unfortunate, he reflected, in that among technical jargons theirs alone had been so completely vulgarized as to have lost all impressiveness. Doctors could still awe their hearers with talk of oedema and ecchymoses, physicists with talk of dielectric constants, isotopes, and photonic mass, chemists with talk of allotropic modification and multiple equivalence; it was only the luckless psychologist who lacked professional runes, for trauma, complex, fixation, and the like had long since been deprived by popular usage of all hierophantic mystery. . . . ‘A fixation,’ Fen repeated encouragingly.
‘And the significance of it is not, I’m afraid, at all clear,’ Boysenberry went on. ‘In the normal way, a glove, being hollow, would of course be identified with the womb.’ He eyed Fen dubiously, as though scarcely expecting him to credit so grotesque an assertion. ‘But even if we make such an identification in this case, we are not,’ he admitted with candour, ‘very much helped by it, You must understand that, in spite of having made great strides, our science is still not able to perceive and comprehend every quirk of the human mind.’
Fen, who held the reactionary view that this prerogative was unlikely ever to be wrested from the Omnipotence, contrived none the less to look suitably sympathetic. ‘Just so,’ he murmured deferentially. ‘However, in Elphinstone’s case it’s the symptoms I need to know rather than the diagnosis.’
‘Ah.’ Boysenberry was perceptibly relieved. ‘To proceed, then . . . The glove-fixation was not accompanied by any other abnormality, and so, not unnaturally, the parents did nothing about it. and all was well until Elphinstone went to the University. There he undertook the study of philosophy, politics, and economics – and our records show,’ said Boysenberry ingenuously, ‘that an interest in these subjects often leads on to total madness. . . . However, that’s by the way. The first noticeable sign that Elphinstone’s mind was actually diseased lay in his growing conviction that President Woodrow Wilson was the most profound political thinker of our own or any age, an opinion which I’m told would be generally regarded as somewhat – ah – eccentric. At all events, his insistence on it resulted in his failing in his final examination. . . . A year passes,’ said Boysenberry, relapsing dramatically into the historic present, ‘and when we next see him – the war being over – he is visiting Paris. And during this visit we get, for the first time, evidence that Elphinstone conceives himself to be Wi
lson, since he is found by an attendant in the Conference Room at Versailles making a long speech about’ – here Boysenberry consulted the papers in front of him – ‘about the future of the Ruhr. On the attendant’s remonstrating with him he seems to have reverted for a short period to comparative normalcy, but during the voyage back to England complete lunacy at last engulfed him. By some stratagem which remains obscure he assembled several young women on the boat-deck and, after some preliminary remarks on the topic of international justice, ordered them to throw themselves instantly into the sea. They demurred at this – whereupon he seized two of them and threw them into the sea himself. . . . I’m glad to say that the women were picked up not greatly the worse for their experience – but poor Elphinstone has from that time to this been uninterruptedly insane.’
‘Dear me,’ said Fen. ‘But wouldn’t you say that his behaviour with these women indicated homicidal tendencies?’
‘Well, no, not really. You must understand that he ordered the women to immolate themselves, precisely because they were women and not men. A kind of suttee was what Elphinstone had in mind; and it was only when the women failed to co-operate that he took direct action. So although in certain circumstances he might just conceivably kill a female, I very much doubt if he would ever kill a man.’
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