‘Did I? Well yes, I do, but—’
‘So you’re making for Paddington?’
‘Er … yes.’
‘Then we’ll be travelling together for a couple of stops. Here’s the train.’
A train had indeed arrived. It burst out of the tunnel in a gale of hot air and shuddered to a halt. Harry obediently followed Miss Labrooy aboard and sat down opposite her. A glance at some of their fellow-passengers suggested to his mind several reasons why she should be glad of a companion. Every day, presumably, she journeyed through this worm-hole of noise and filth from one of the unlovely suburbs listed on the route plan above her head to type letters and answer the telephone for Dr Peter Kingdom. She must know as much of his patients’ secrets as he did himself.
‘I couldn’t help noticing,’ said Miss Labrooy as the train lurched into motion, ‘that Dr Kingdom seemed rather upset after you left. I do hope there wasn’t a disagreement.’
Harry forced a smile. ‘Let’s say a difference of emphasis. I think finding Heather is more important than observing confidentiality. Your boss doesn’t.’
‘I thought that might be the problem. Dr Kingdom really is in a difficult position, you know.’
‘So am I, as it happens. I’m being accused of things I didn’t do – and I’m missing a friend.’
‘You mean Heather?’
‘Yes, Miss Labrooy, I mean Heather.’
The train vibrated to a standstill at Edgware Road. During the curious lull that followed, in which nobody seemed to get on or off, Miss Labrooy leaned forward in her seat and said: ‘Do you know why I decided to help you when you came to the surgery last week, Mr Barnett? Because you spoke about Heather in the present tense, as if you genuinely believe she’s still alive.’
‘I do.’
The train started. ‘I hope you’re right. Heather was – is – a friend of mine too.’
‘Really?’
‘She gave me some help when I badly needed it. I’m not likely to forget her kindness to me, so if there’s any way I can help her now …’
Hope flared in Harry. The gratitude Miss Labrooy owed Heather might outweigh her loyalty to Kingdom. ‘Anything you can tell me might be helpful,’ he said cautiously. ‘For instance, how did Dr Kingdom react to the news of her disappearance?’
‘He was very concerned. Of course, I didn’t see him until some days afterwards, so I can’t really—’
‘What do you mean – “some days afterwards”?’
‘Well, he was in Switzerland at the time. He didn’t get back until … on, it must have been Tuesday of the following week.’
‘Switzerland?’
‘He’s a special consultant at the Versorelli Institute in Geneva, which specializes in cases others have given up as hopeless. His work often takes him there.’
‘How long did be spend there on that occasion?’
‘I’m not sure I can—’
‘You said you wanted to help.’
The train had stopped again. They were at Paddington. But Harry made no move. ‘This is your station, Mr Barnett.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll overrun.’
She leaned still further forward and lowered her voice. ‘I’m not sure Dr Kingdom would want me to discuss his work with you. You must see how delicate my position is.’
‘What about Heather, Miss Labrooy?’ Harry sensed that very little pressure would be required to overcome her scruples. ‘Mightn’t her position be even more delicate?’
The doors hissed shut and the train began to move. ‘It might be, yes.’ Miss Labrooy’s struggle with her conscience was visible in her face. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘The duration of Dr Kingdom’s visit to Geneva.’
There was a further moment of hesitation, then she said: ‘He flew to Geneva on Friday the fourth of November and returned on Monday the fourteenth.’
Harry could scarcely suppress a smile. It was the confirmation he needed. ‘Is that the normal length of time he goes for?’
‘It’s usually less.’
‘And how do you know he went to Geneva?’
‘I booked the tickets for him.’ Miss Labrooy frowned in puzzlement. ‘And he telephoned me a couple of times that week from the Institute.’
It did not matter, of course. Harry had never really expected to be told anything different. Geneva on the fourth. Rhodes on the sixth. It was a demanding itinerary, but by no means an impossible one. The crucial question was: where had he been on the eleventh? ‘Any idea as to the days on which he telephoned?’
‘Monday, I think … and Wednesday.’
So: there had been no contact on the day of their visit to Profitis Ilias. Not that it would have proved anything if there had been. A man could say he was telephoning from a clinic in Geneva and actually be in a hotel on Rhodes. It was all feasible enough. Only the purpose remained obscure. They rattled to a halt and Miss Labrooy’s brown, far-seeing eyes engaged Harry’s in earnest scrutiny.
‘Why are you questioning me about Dr Kingdom’s movements, Mr Barnett?’
‘Because my impression is that he’s using the privacy of the consulting room to hide something. And what’s more’ – he decided to risk a wild guess as the train started again – ‘I think you know he is.’
Her stare would not release him. It held him in an interval of assessment more potent than the silence that accompanied it. What he was asking her to do required a degree of trust that he had too little time to earn. The train pulled into Maida Vale. And pulled out again. And then she spoke.
‘Heather’s problem was that she didn’t feel she belonged, Mr Barnett. Belonged, that is, in the family she was born to and the world she moved in.’
‘I see you really do know her.’
Miss Labrooy smiled. ‘Always that stubborn present tense. Your optimism is admirable, Mr Barnett, the more so since pessimism is, I suspect, your natural mood. An Englishman exiled in his homeland. Is that not your condition?’
‘I suppose it is, yes.’
‘It is mine also, in a sense. I am Sri Lankan by birth, but English by upbringing. My mother was the daughter of an English officer in the Indian police, who fell in love with a humble clerk in Jaffna and had the temerity to marry him. The offspring of such a union are never quite accepted – on either side of the racial divide. So, you see, neither of us feels at home here – but it is our home nonetheless. Perhaps that is why Heather felt more at ease with the likes of you and I than with her family and the friends they chose for her.’
The train stopped at Kilburn Park and the last passenger within earshot disembarked. Harry wondered what it was Heather had done for Miss Labrooy, but felt glad, on the whole, that he did not know. It was enough to have discovered one true mutual friend whose testimony could be relied upon. As the train accelerated out of the station, she said what he wanted to hear.
‘You are right, Mr Barnett. Dr Kingdom is hiding something, though I am not sure he is aware that he is. Certainly Heather did not realize what it was. Only to me, who knew them both, was it obvious. Heather entered Challenbrooke Hospital near Maidenhead as a voluntary patient in November of last year. Dr Kingdom was the consultant who took charge of her case. When she was discharged in March of this year, he continued to see her regularly, in order to monitor her recovery. As the months passed, it became clear to me, however, that he was doing something else as well.’
‘Which was?’
The train was running in the open now, the blackness beyond its windows relieved by distant amber lights which seemed to track their progress like the eyes of forest-dwelling creatures fixed on a lonely wayfarer. ‘He was falling in love with her, Mr Barnett. Slowly but surely, he was becoming obsessed with her. It is always a danger for doctors, I suppose. Their relations with patients must be intimate yet impersonal, trusting yet guarded. The balance is a difficult one to strike, the more so when a thorough knowledge of the patient’s mind as well as her body is required. I cannot say what it was i
n Heather that Dr Kingdom found so enthralling. The mystery of what one person finds fascinating in another has, after all, defeated the finest philosophers. But there is no doubt in my mind that his attitude to her became increasingly unprofessional in the course of the spring and summer.’
‘Is Dr Kingdom married?’
‘No. He lives alone. Many would regard him, I think, as an eligible bachelor. Highly eligible, if it comes to that. There would have been nothing improper in his paying court to Heather, had she not been his patient. Indeed, the fact that he did not refer her to a different psychiatrist convinced me for a long time that I had misconstrued the situation. I have worked for him for more than three years and have come to admire him both as a doctor and a man. Ethically, he had always been above reproach. That is why his conduct with regard to Heather was so difficult to understand and why, in the end, I concluded that he was in the grip of an obsession he was powerless to resist. ‘
Another stop. Queen’s Park. A gangling youth with personal stereo and the thickest-soled baseball boots Harry had ever seen fell into the adjacent seat and began slapping his knee in time to the music only he could hear. The train doors lingered open to the musty night air, encouraging Harry to sink his voice to a whisper as he said: ‘Do you have any real evidence for this, Miss Labrooy?’
‘I have the evidence of my own senses. Dr Kingdom became increasingly preoccupied and distracted, brooding, I imagine, on the conflict between heart and duty. Heather did not realize what was happening, but I did, and it saddened me to see it.’
‘It’s only your opinion though, isn’t it – only your subjective assessment?’
‘Not quite.’ The doors closed, re-opened, then closed again. ‘There is rather more to it than that.’ With a plunging lurch, the train started. ‘My suspicions were confirmed when Dr Kingdom stopped giving me material for Heather’s file. I generally type all his notes, reports and correspondence, but, during the summer, he took to typing such items which related to Heather himself.’
‘What explanation did he give?’
‘None. Nor did I feel able to ask for one. Heather and I were on friendly terms by then. We often lunched together after her weekly consultation. Dr Kingdom could have cited that as justification for keeping the material back. All the patients’ files are kept under lock and key in his office, so I only see what I am asked to type.’
‘But I don’t understand. What would have been the point of keeping the contents of Heather’s file secret?’
‘You should know the answer to that, Mr Barnett. You had a month to become acquainted with her on Rhodes. Isn’t it obvious?’ She glanced out of the window as they drew into Kensal Green station. ‘We’ve come to the parting of the ways. This is my stop.’
‘But we can’t leave it there.’
Miss Labrooy did not reply. Instead, she rose smartly from her seat and stepped out through the doors as they opened. Harry hurried out behind her, heard her shoes clicking with angry swiftness on the platform, wondered what he had done to annoy her – was he too obtuse, too inquisitive? – and was about to call after her when she pulled up abruptly and turned to face him. In the dim light, he could see her lower lip trembling slightly, as if resolution had suddenly failed her.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I may have said too much. I may have abused the trust Dr Kingdom placed in me.’
‘I didn’t force you to say anything.’
‘No. You didn’t.’
‘But now you have …’
‘I can’t just stop: is that it? You’re right, of course, but it all depends …’
‘On what?’
‘On what really happened at Profitis Ilias on the eleventh of November. I know what the newspapers say – and I don’t believe them. But what do you say, Mr Barnett? What’s your version of events?’
‘I don’t know what happened. If I did—’
‘But you were there. You were with her in the days and weeks that led up to it. Only you can tell me what I need to know. Only you can help me to be sure. Will you?’
At last Harry understood what she wanted of him. Since returning to England, he had searched in vain for somebody who was, like him, a true friend of Heather Mallender. Little had he thought to find one where now he had. Suspicion had been his watchword and perhaps Miss Labrooy’s as well. Now they were obliged to abandon that in favour of something far riskier but potentially more rewarding. For Heather’s sake, they had to trust each other.
‘Tell me every detail, Harry. Re-live every moment of those last days you spent with Heather. Then maybe I’ll know whether my fears have any substance.’
They walked slowly away from the station through a maze of dingy terraced streets. Pounding music in thin-curtained rooms. Cars propped up on bricks. Cats and who knew what else scrabbling through piled rubbish in overgrown front gardens. Boarded windows. Blocked-up doorways. Dereliction. Decrepitude. Decay. Halfway along improbably named Foxglove Road, where darkness seemed a mercy and nobody, felt Harry, deserved to live, Zohra Labrooy turned a key in a wobbly lock and welcomed Harry to her home.
A narrow passage, flickeringly lit. Dodgy wiring, thought Harry: typical of the neighbourhood, no doubt. To their left, a door stood open by about six inches, revealing a cluttered sitting room. In a vast and threadbare armchair, surrounded by brass and ivory knick-knacks, draped in a voluminous shawl, three-bar electric fire trained on her feet, sat an old woman, breathing wheezily and staring with obvious relief at Zohra. She had the sad and deflated appearance of somebody who had once lived life to the full but now had only the memories of such times to sustain her – like a galleon whose sails sag limply round the masts where once they have billowed majestically.
‘It’s me, Mrs Tandy,’ said Zohra, leaning into the room. ‘With a friend.’
‘So I see.’ The old lady smiled at Harry like a dowager duchess greeting her granddaughter’s suitor.
After a few seconds of awkward introductions, Zohra excused herself with a promise to be down for cocoa at the usual time, then led Harry upstairs. ‘Mrs Tandy remembers Kensal Green when it was a desirable area,’ she explained as they reached her flat. ‘Apart from an occasional tendency to treat me like the ayah she had in India as a child, she’s the perfect landlady.’
Harry was taken aback by Miss Labrooy’s flat. His prejudiced expectations of orientalism were confounded by restrained furnishings which could have been chosen by any Home Counties newly-wed and an offer not of tea but of gin. Seated beneath a standard lamp, glass in hand, impressionist art on the wall and thick floor-length curtains closed against the night, he found it possible to believe he was almost anywhere but where he really was.
Profitis llias, for instance. Zohra Labrooy was the ideal audience for reminiscence or confession. Neither impatient nor inattentive, she had a positive gift for remaining still and alert, her large brown eyes fixed upon him as he reconstructed those distant events, willing him to remember and recall every incident, however minor, every remark, however trivial.
He kept nothing back. Nothing, that is, of what he could definitely state. Only his sighting of Kingdom in Lindos five days before Heather’s disappearance did he withhold: he did not yet want to test Zohra’s loyalty too severely.
When he had finished, she said nothing for more than a minute, but continued to stare at him, as if still seeking the assurance she had hoped his account would supply.
‘Well?’ he said at last.
She sighed heavily. ‘It is as I feared. Not so simple. Not so simple at all.’
‘Did you think it would be?’
‘When I last saw Heather, anybody less in need of psychiatric treatment it would have been hard to imagine. Calm, purposeful and entirely self-possessed: so she seemed to me.’
‘Yet she was still seeing Dr Kingdom.’
‘Yes. I thought that was why he began to type his own notes, you see. I even hinted at it to Heather. Because she had recovered completely, I mean, so completely th
at she no longer required Dr Kingdom’s services as a counsellor. His part in her life was over, but I don’t think he could accept that it was. I believe he continued to treat her long after he needed to, that he misled her into believing such treatment was necessary and that he faked his file notes accordingly. ‘
Harry let out a long breath. It could be true, of course, and there was more to support the idea than Zohra knew. But if it was, and if Kingdom had come to Rhodes with some sinister intent – to lure Heather away, to abduct her, to seduce her – what of the photographs? They became a wild goose chase after an obsession of Heather’s very own, which, all else apart, cast doubt on Zohra’s confidence in her mental stability. Moreover, where – aside from Harry’s unsubstantiated sighting – was the hard evidence to support such a contention? And where, assuming it to be well-founded, was Heather?
‘I have said nothing because nobody would believe me if I did, because a doctor’s word would always be taken against his secretary’s, and because …’
‘Yes?’
‘Because I may be wrong. Even if Dr Kingdom did feel more for Heather than a doctor should for his patient, it doesn’t mean that had anything to do with her disappearance.’
‘But he was out of the country at the time.’
‘In Switzerland – a long way from Rhodes.’
Now was the time to tell her. He would need her help if they were to take the matter further. She had to know. ‘Not so very far. He left for Geneva, you said, on Friday the fourth of November. I saw him in Lindos on Sunday the sixth.’ He read in her face the surprise and shock that a suspicion confirmed can sometimes bring. ‘A chance encounter, that’s all. Not one he’d remember. Not one I’d have remembered, but for his losing his temper with me this afternoon. He was angry that day, too, you see. It was his anger I recognized.’
Zohra Labrooy sat quite still, her face a mask of frozen reaction. She might be frightened, Harry supposed, by the discovery that her frail and hesitant theory had substance after all. She reached out for her glass and swallowed most of the contents at a gulp.
‘If he told you he was in Geneva throughout his absence, he was lying.’
Into the Blue Page 25