[I stirred my tea energetically but the water had been boiled at least five times. It was dead]
I: The Friedrich Abbing Hospital specializes in the treatment of neurasthenic disorders.
Gregory: Daisy’s death, his own illness and being so far from home proved all too much for Barney’s system. He had a nervous collapse. People do not understand these conditions and so we kept it quiet.
Pound drank his tea with no apparent displeasure: I can understand that. I had an aunt who—
I: Yes, yes. We can reminisce later. Unfortunately for your story, Major Gregory, the Friedrich Abbing Hospital has confirmed that Barney was admitted on the day after he arrived in Bern and that they only take patients who they describe as having undergone complete moral and rational… the closest translation I can come up with is implosion.
Pound dabbed his moustaches with one of the silly little napkins provided and said: In other words, a madhouse.
101
Immediately Afterwards
GREGORY STOOD AN, arm protector clutched in his left hand.
Gregory: I do not have to put up with this. My family is none of your concern.
[Pound had risen at the same time, needlessly ready to block the major’s escape.]
I: Drink your loathsome beverage, Gregory, and I shall divulge more of the Middletons’ chronicles.
[Gregory fell back into his chair but Pound stayed on his feet.]
I: It was Colonel Middleton who arranged the unhappy Barney’s transfer to Switzerland, was it not?
Gregory only said: Yes.
And so I continued: I have read five of Dr Abbing’s treatises in various medical journals. These are so delusional as to make one wonder if he should be admitted to another hospital. He claims that he is capable of reconstructing shattered minds and therefore effecting cures. [Gregory had his head in his hand as if he had a migraine.] And in May 1881 he wrote you a letter, saying that he believed your son to be completely healed.
Gregory kept his head down: That is true.
Pound: [standing at ease] And was he?
I: That is what Colonel Middleton intended to judge for himself when he made his journey to the Bernese Oberland. [I opened my satchel.] He arrived in Rotschau on the fourth of July, an unhappy anniversary if ever there was one, intending to visit Abbing at his hospital the next day. And that is the last entry in [I produced a tattered black leather-bound book] his secret diary.
[I held it up for both to see.]
Pound strolled over: Why was it secret?
I: It is really a casebook and was written in code because it contains highly confidential information about Barney James Gregory. I do not think that Miss Middleton has managed to find the key but it was a simple enough cypher, little more than a personal shorthand.
Pound sat: And does it tell us anything else?
I slid the saucer out and placed it over my cup, weary of being confronted by its murky contents: There is a fascinating entry in May 1872 and I believe I shall read it aloud.
[I opened the journal where I had marked the page and stood up to declaim its contents.]
Thursday, 12 May 1872. A truly appalling day. Groggy sent a messenger to summon me to the Clifton Hotel. Dear sweet little Daisy had been taken from him. Marjory was in a terrible state. It was she who had discovered Daisy dead. I gave her a good shot of morphine and she was soon sleeping peacefully, but I knew that I could not relieve her pain forever. Groggy was very shaken. From the froth around Daisy’s mouth and bleeding from her nose, it appeared she had had a fatal convulsive episode. I was concerned, however, to notice petechiae in her conjunctivae and then a stain on the lower edge of her pillow. When I raised her to turn the pillow over, I found it had blood and vomit on the undersurface.
[Gregory hid his face in his hands, breathing slowly and deeply.]
I closed the journal: I shall precis the rest. Colonel Middleton very reluctantly told you that there was evidence of deliberate suffocation. Naturally you violently disagreed with him but, in the midst of the argument, you heard something and went to check your wife, only to find Barney pressing a pillow over his mother’s face. She survived another one thousand, six hundred and eighty-nine days, but never spoke again.
[Gregory’s chest heaved in and out as he struggled to inhale.]
Pound reached out as if to pat his shoulder but checked himself: Dear God.
[I had never known a policeman so readily moved to emotion. It was probably his greatest weakness and possibly his greatest strength.]
I: Colonel Middleton did not want you, his best friend, to have to undergo the horrors of having your son declared criminally insane, and even to say that Daisy had died of a fit could cause people to spread rumours about congenital idiocy, so he agreed to sign a death certificate for heart failure on condition that Barney was sent to a mental hospital. He had read Abbing’s papers too and been more impressed than I. Plus Rotschau is far enough away for staff not to gossip with anybody who knew the family. Your wife, it was declared, had been prostrated by the shock.
Gregory clenched his fists in front of his eyes: I lost my little girl and my wife, and my son was revealed as a monster.
Pound leaned towards him: Did you have no inkling that anything was amiss with him?
Gregory lowered his fists to chin height and I saw that he had been weeping: Not until he was nine. He was always a happy affectionate boy, but then he had a bad fall playing near the quarry. March saved his life by climbing a hundred foot cliff and sending her friend Maudy to get help. I wish to God she had not. [At this point Gregory broke his account to make an emotional display.] He was unconscious for four days and when he awoke he was a different child, sly and cruel. I found him torturing a mouse once. But I never thought he would do anything like that. [His arms fell.] He took a knife to Middleton on the train to Dover and managed to cut the side of his neck, though fortunately not deeply. From then on he was restrained, my beautiful son, in a straitjacket.
[Gregory fell back, his chest quivering.]
Pound waited for him to regain some of his composure before saying: Let us leave that aside for the time being. What can you tell us about Swandale’s Chemicals?
The major replaced the arm cover: Swandale’s? Why do you want to know about that?
[There was a minor commotion coming from the lobby.]
An elderly man was protesting: But I want to read my paper in there.
I: Swandale’s.
Gregory shook his head as if he imagined the action would clear his thoughts: It was a small company set up to make bleach, but there was too much competition and it was going bankrupt. Middleton had seen for himself the devastation caused to crops and grassland by locusts and the famine that resulted, and he was eager to find some means of destroying them. He could not afford to purchase and run the company alone and so he gathered like-minded men to support the venture. I could ill-afford to do so but he was a very persuasive man. [Gregory stopped to regain some of his breath.] Even so, he ended up providing the greatest part of the money and so he took the most shares. He had come across Jonathon Pillow in his army days. Pillow was an explosives man originally, but he could turn his hand to anything in the chemistry line. We gave him a ten per cent holding as an incentive to join us. Pillow experimented on cockroaches and grasshoppers. They were the closest we could get to locusts but they proved remarkably resilient, and then he came up with his gas. I assume you know about that.
[Gregory stopped, his energy evidently sapped.]
Pound: I know about the experiments with pigs from what Miss Middleton told me.
Gregory’s voice was getting hoarse: It was a gruesome sight and Middleton had not the sense he was born with, to let a child witness such carnage, but he was adamant that the experiments be stopped immediately. I was in two minds. I thought we could make a great deal of money out of his invention and put that to good use.
I: You thought it right to massacre people in order to provide funds to save p
eople?
Gregory sagged wearily: I believed that it would help protect the empire and that, if we did not equip our army with the weapon, sooner or later the French would invent it and use it on London. In the end it was irrelevant. Brother Ignatius Hart was against the idea and between them they had a majority holding, and so the project was quashed.
Pound refilled both their cups: How did Pillow feel about his work being abandoned?
[I reflected silently that he had something in common with Miss Middleton, i.e. the belief that people can accurately assess the emotions of others.]
Gregory blinked paroxysmally: He was furious. He threatened to go elsewhere with his formulae. Middleton went straight into the laboratory, gathered all the papers he could find and went to thrust them into an iron stove in the corner. Pillow was like a man possessed. Four of us had to physically restrain him. He would never be able to recall the formula as it had taken several complex mixtures in precise conditions to create it. [Gregory put his right hand to his left breast.] In the end Prendergast and I prevailed upon Middleton. At least he could keep the documents safe so that, if the French did discover the gas, we could match their threat.
Pound poured the milk, untroubled by its curdling in his beverage: Lord, what a world we live in. As if there are not enough horrors already.
[I got out my flask. The tea would be cool but at least it would be drinkable.]
I: Let us move on to May 1881. You received a letter from Dr Abbing, saying that in his opinion your son was cured and fit to rejoin society.
Gregory turned his face away: We never told him the full extent of Barney’s actions, only that he was cruel to animals and had tried to hurt his sister. Abbing put it down as a morbid jealousy, which Barney would grow out of when he was old enough to appreciate the consequences of his actions. Every sinew of me wanted to believe that and I knew I could not bring myself to condemn my son to further confinement. [He patted his own right knee hard, three times.] And so Middleton offered to go and assess him on my behalf. According to Abbing, the first impressions were favourable. Barney was calm, contrite and charming – he could always be that. Middleton took him for a walk on the mountains near Rotschau.
I unclipped my metal cup: And neither of them ever returned.
Gregory slopped tea down his front but did not appear to notice: Geoffrey Middleton was found dead the next morning on the rocks at the bottom of a waterfall. There was no sign of Barney, but a young man answering his description had been seen running away. [He clattered his cup on its saucer.] My only hope was that it had been an accident and that Barney had panicked.
Pound produced his pipe: Doesn’t seem likely, given his past history.
I: History is, by definition, past. [I pulled out the cork from my heat retentive bottle.] But it seems even less likely given his present behaviour. It was not us you were running from, was it, Major Bernard Samuel Vantage Gregory?
[Gregory sank lower in his chair but did not reply.]
Pound opened his tobacco pouch: Who then?
I took a drink straight from the bottle: Why, Barney James Gregory, of course, currently posing as Colwyn Harold Blanchflower, valet to the late Ptolemy Hercules Arbuthnot Travers Smyth.
102
Immediately Afterwards Again
MAJOR GREGORY DROPPED his cup. It fell on his knee and bounced to the floor.
He reached for it but the handle snapped and it rolled under the table: No.
Pound rubbed a twist of tobacco between his palms: How can you be sure?
I recorked my flask: Three reasons. First, he was transparently not a valet. No servant would be permitted to wear personal jewellery, yet Colwyn sported a signet ring. He did so to provide evidence that he had lived abroad, where he had picked up his faintly Germanic inflections. A stupid over-egging since nobody would have asked for evidence. Plus no valet would lay out odd socks for his master, especially not such a well-presented intelligent young man as Colwyn. Travers Smyth must have dressed himself in his typically haphazard way. Second, Colwyn gave me a cock-and-bull story about his time in Gorizia-Tyrol, though he said Merci Vielmol for thank you. No Austrian would use that phrase, though a Swiss German from Bern most certainly would. Say personality for the inspector please, Major.
Gregory snorted: What on earth are you playing at, Grice…? Oh, very well… personality.
I: You heard that, Inspector Pound?
Pound dipped his meerschaum into the pouch: I heard it but I don’t see—
I: Third, I am afraid Colwyn’s accent let him down again. Even the most skilled of actors find it difficult to remove all traces of their origins. It is like trying to alter the pattern on whorls on your fingertips. [I put my flask back into the satchel.] People unfortunate enough to hail from the northerly regions of England have a number of unpleasant vocal traits. The lower orders, as most people know, drop their H’s, though they are not unique in this. As they rise a little from the dregs towards the scum they reapply this letter but, in their anxiety not to forget, tend to add it to any word starting with a vowel. A little higher up they manage this without too much effort but there is usually a slightly greater emphasis than is required.
[A clinker cracked in the fire and they both started in surprise.]
I pressed on: What interests me more is that they complete some words. Let us take happy as an example. I have classified the vowel E into twenty-six different sounds and Lancashire is especially rich in the variety of ways it is presented.
Gregory’s left arm rose as if on a string: Just get to the point.
I: All people from that region overemphasize and elongate the al, shorten the Tee and cut it off with an aspirant – the lower orders say person-al-it-teh. Those who imagine they know better over-correct so that teh becomes tey. Those who know best clip it to person-al-it-ih. I have oft known Miss Middleton slip into that speech pattern when she is overwrought. I noted that you did too, Major Gregory, when I watched you devour that over-boiled slab of equine buttock.
Pound laughed, though I had not invited him to share the joke and concluded: One’s speech patterns are a gazetteer of one’s life – a pocket of south-west Lancashire within six miles of Parbold, formalized Swiss German from Rotschau, Bern. [I took a brown cardboard folder from my satchel.] These are strong indications of who we are talking about. [I undid the brown string.] The Friedrich Abbing Hospital may not know that insanity is incurable but they do keep detailed records, including [I opened the folder] this.
[Gregory froze, as much as his involuntary trembling would allow.]
I: It is not a good likeness. Dr Abbing explained that they had to hold the patient still whilst they stimulated the chemicals on this photographic plate. So you can see the nurse’s hands, and the face is quite blurred.
[I passed it to Pound.]
He held it at arm’s length: That’s him all right. [He held it out to Gregory, who waved it away.] So where is your son now, Major Gregory?
Gregory rubbed his chest: As God is my witness, Inspector, I do not know.
I took the likeness back. Colwyn was strapped into a chair. The sterno-mastoid muscles were splayed on either side of his neck, showing the huge physical effort he was making to resist. His mouth was open and his tongue extruded, and the eyelids were retracted.
I: God is frequently summoned as a witness. I have yet to see him in the box. Your son wants to kill you.
[Gregory struggled to rise.]
He was very short of breath and his complexion was grey: You cannot know that for certain.
Pound rose to block his escape, though Gregory was hardly capable even of walking unaided: Then why did you try to run away when we knocked on the door?
Gregory grunted in pain: I was confused. Let me be.
I leaned back to scrutinize the major: I am not a medical man but I have seen death in many guises and, if you do not sit and try to calm yourself, I shall expect to be witnessing it in this room very shortly.
Pound held up
his hand: Please sit down, Major.
Gregory took a step towards him: My son, the only child I have, is a murderous madman. If I knew where he was I would shoot him down like a rabid cur.
[The major was swaying in a manner resembling that of a drunkard.]
Pound reached out to steady him: Shall I get you a brandy or a glass of water?
Gregory staggered diagonally and grasped the back of his chair: Too late for that. [His voice came in faint gasps.] Too late. He has killed my lovely girl, my loving wife and my one true friend. God alone knows who else he has killed.
His legs buckled and Pound grabbed his sleeve: Come on, sir. Sit down.
Death Descends On Saturn Villa (The Gower Street Detective Series) Page 35