by Sarah Rayne
Flora asked bluntly, ‘Who is the person you know?’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve met him, but you might have heard of him.’ Thalia paused. ‘It’s Leo Sterne.’
There was an abrupt silence; even Juliette was halted in her dissertation on how Mrs Scullion could be coped with.
At last Aunt Dilys, stammering a bit, said, ‘But . . . Oh, Thalia, you surely aren’t suggesting that someone like that would be the right kind of person . . .’
‘He was in all the papers last year,’ said Aunt Rosa. ‘I remember it very well. A patient accused Dr Sterne of – dear me, well, of seduction while under hypnosis. There was a very public case about it.’
A murmur of unease, in which the words ‘malpractice’ and ‘charlatan’ were discernible, went through the room. Cousin Elspeth’s husband said crossly that it was all nonsense, Sterne had been completely exonerated, and it had plainly been a case of wishful thinking on the part of some silly hysterical female and sensationalism on the part of the tabloid press.
Juliette remembered that Dr Sterne had looked rather intriguing, but nobody paid this much attention because Juliette often considered the most unsuitable people intriguing.
Cousin Elspeth thought there must be a grain of truth in the story; you did not get smoke without fire, and newspapers would not dare print things that were not true (even though George said they were the worst liars out), and several of the papers had related how Dr Sterne had seduced somebody he shouldn’t – the Sun had said there had been several somebodies and had dubbed Dr Sterne a pirate, not that she read the Sun, but George liked it for the gardening notes – ‘Well, that’s what you always say, George’ – and anyhow, there had been a great to-do about it all.
Aunt Dilys, who had been listening to all this in silence, now recovered her equilibrium and with it her voice, and said firmly, ‘Well, wherever Imogen goes, it’s clear that she can’t go to Thornacre. And I think that Briar House sounds all right.’ She glared defiantly round the room.
Thalia felt a deep surge of triumph. Right into my hands! Dilys is playing right into my hands!
But her face gave nothing away, and when she spoke her voice was low and tinged with sadness. She said, ‘Then if we are all agreed?’
‘I suppose we are,’ said Flora, slowly.
‘With or without the fascinating Dr Sterne?’ demanded Juliette.
‘Without for preference. But that isn’t the issue,’ said Aunt Rosa, repressively. ‘Don’t be frivolous, Juliette.’
‘What does everyone else think?’ Thalia looked round the room. ‘Rosa? Elspeth? George – everyone?’
There was a brief pause while people considered, and then one by one, heads were nodded, and murmurs of, ‘best thing in the circumstances’, and, ‘not really so very bad’, were heard.
Thalia said, ‘Then Briar House it is.’
As she went from the room, the triumph was surging up afresh. She thought: Briar House, my usurping little bitch! And I’ll make very sure that you don’t come out for a very long time!
Chapter Six
Thalia waited until everyone had left before going back to the large double bedroom.
Edmund was with her, as he had been almost all along. There had been a brief time just after the crash when she thought he had left her for good, and it had been the blackest, most bitter time imaginable because without Edmund, there was nothing in the world anywhere, ever.
The thing that had lain inside the coffin in the undertakers’ Chapel of Rest had not been Edmund, not properly. The undertakers had done what they could with the torn, mutilated body and with the ruined face, and Edmund had looked beautiful and golden and serene when Thalia went in alone for the final viewing. But it had been a sham, a deliberate deceit, like painting over a decaying old house to give it a spurious appearance of soundness. Edmund had been painted over to give his tattered flesh the appearance of health and life, but beneath it he was mutilated and terrible.
She remembered how she had asked the undertakers if they would allow her a final farewell to Edmund before the funeral. The closing of the coffin . . .? she had said. Would they allow it to be her hands that did that? Was that possible – could they indulge her? It would be her final service to her son; afterwards she would not trouble them again. Put like that, who could have refused?
She had not been refused; she had been permitted her half hour in the Chapel of Rest, and she had knelt to ask Edmund’s forgiveness for what she was doing, for the gross thing she was doing to his poor dead body . . . But it was for the great punishment for the pampered creature who had lived on instead of dying in Edmund’s place; it was the start of their retribution against Imogen – hers and Edmund’s.
Bitter anger engulfed Thalia when she remembered how she had prayed later for Edmund’s return, railing at the dark forces that ordered such things to reverse death and give back her boy, even if it was only in dreams. She could pinpoint the exact minute when she knew it had happened; there had been a smudge of movement on the edge of her vision and then a deepening awareness. Her heart had skipped a beat, and the blood had begun to sing in her veins, because he had come back to her, her beloved boy had come back, and even though he trailed with him the stench of the graveyard, to Thalia it was sweeter than all the perfumes of the merchant. But as the blurred silhouette came more sharply into focus – a little more each time she saw him – she had gradually seen that those dark forces she had beseeched and besieged had played the cruellest trick of all on her. They had given her the dreams, but they were waking dreams, terrible living nightmares. Edmund had come back, not as his golden self but as he had been at the end: the torn tortured thing who had died in that twisted mass of metal and bone and blood. When he stood before her his flesh hung in bloody tatters, and his face – oh God, Edmund’s sweet, beloved face . . .
The simmering hatred of the pampered bitch-creature had boiled over in a huge scalding wave then, burning into Thalia’s mind, etching the idea of retribution and punishment into her heart. Punishment for the whey-faced brat who would grow up in Edmund’s stead, whole and unflawed, and who might one day have Ingram’s, lock, stock and barrel.
Never! thought Thalia grimly. She would turn the tables on Imogen, and she would turn the tables on the cheating forces who had tricked her so viciously. Edmund would come back – he would come back and he would come back whole and beautiful and golden! It was then that she had become aware of something lying serpentlike in the darkest, most secret corners of her mind . . . Something that had been there for a very long time, and that was only now slithering and uncoiling into life. To bring Edmund back . . . That would be the sweetest, most comprehensive revenge of all . . .
She went stealthily into the large, first-floor bedroom. She had told the family that she would cope with what was in this room on her own and so she would. She would ask for help presently, she said; in the morning she would be very glad indeed of people to help with the burning of sheets and nightclothes. The family had shuddered as one person, and had reminded one another of Thalia’s work on hospital committees; at one time she had even helped in the local Casualty Department – which you now had to call Accident and Emergency – one of several volunteers who helped frightened or bewildered patients to complete forms, or explained about claims for street injuries, or how to find their way to X-ray. She would have seen some extremely unpleasant sights there. Elspeth’s husband, George, put forward the theory that some people were less affected than others by these things. Everyone agreed that it was amazingly brave of Thalia to cope on her own.
None of them knew that she was not really on her own. When she entered the shadowed room with its smothering stench of blood, Edmund entered it at her side, pointing out what had to be done.
Thalia threw open the windows, letting in the sweet night air. It was very late; she caught the distant chiming of a church clock. Two a.m. The smallest of the small hours. The time when graveyards yawned and gave forth their wormy dead. When m
idnight’s arch loomed dark and forbidding over the world, and when you could not be sure that eyes did not peer at you from out of the shadows . . .
There was no time to waste on imaginings, and no emotion to spare for being squeamish. The room had to be set to rights before breakfast time and what was in it had to be put into the semblance of normality. And it was important to be very quiet and very quick; Imogen was sleeping her drugged sleep along the landing. It was vital not to alert her. She closed the curtains and switched on the main ceiling lights to chase back the shadows, and then went to work.
She had brought up one of Mrs Scullion’s aprons – it went round her thin figure twice, and it could be burned afterwards if necessary – and two pairs of rubber gloves. It was not particularly difficult to strip the bedclothes and bundle them into a large plastic bin liner for the garden bonfire, and it was no more difficult to remove Royston’s pyjamas and Eloise’s nightgown. She added them to the plastic bag, and then stood looking down at the naked bodies. Royston had become flabby and slightly paunchy of late – that was something the well-cut suits had concealed. Eloise’s neck – treacherous area! – was crêpey and dry and her breasts sagged emptily. A pity John Shilling could not see her like this!
Edmund was with her as she sponged the blood painstakingly away, fetching warm water from the bathroom, replacing it several times, and finally tipping it down the lavatory. The sponge and flannels and towels could be burned with the rest of the soiled things.
The blood had been very convincing indeed. Thalia had not been in the least surprised at how thoroughly the family and John Shilling had been fooled by it. They had been fooled because it had all been carefully planned and efficiently worked out, and because Thalia herself had carried every part of it through with panache. It had been absurdly easy – even obtaining the blood had been easy. And it had worked! The fools had seen the blood puddling on the bed and they had made the obvious deduction that it was Eloise’s blood and Royston’s. They had seen the stained knife at the side of Imogen’s bed, and they had assumed that Imogen had stabbed her parents. And in the rush to protect Imogen, no one had questioned any farther. Not even that doting fool John Shilling had actually examined the bodies.
Thalia made a final check before locking the door. Everything cleaned that needed cleaning? Everything put out for burning that was blood-stained? Yes. Royston and Eloise were now dressed in fresh night things – blue pyjamas and lace-trimmed nightgown – and at first light John Shilling would come, and between them they would transfer the two bodies to the best spare bedroom and arrange them for the undertaker.
One final thing remained to be done, and that was to remove the cut-glass tumbler that had stayed so innocently on Eloise’s bedside table. In view of the way the family had come to a decision – in view of the way that Thalia had nudged them into the decision she had wanted – it was not very likely that any awkward tests would be made. But a thin smear of fluid remained in the bottom of the glass, quite sufficient to reveal that the glass had contained not innocuous mineral water at all, but a hefty mix of chloral hydrate and brandy. Eloise had been so busy with her die-away, I’m-not-strong-enough-for-all-this act, that she had hardly noticed the brandy. She had downed the draught in one go while Thalia watched.
She scooped up the glass. It would be smashed and the fragments consigned to the dustbin. If anyone noticed the set was incomplete, it would be a case of, ‘One of the crystal tumblers broken? Oh, what a shame, they are so difficult to match.’ But it might be months before it was spotted, and no one would think twice about it, just as Eloise had not thought twice about drinking from it. The poisoned cup.
Thalia turned the light off and at once the shadows pounced forward, blurred and menacing. Edmund was there as well, and there was a moment when she saw him, faint but recognisable, the blurred outline bending greedily over the two still forms on the bed.
It was then that Thalia saw the thing she had been watching for and hoping for ever since she entered the room. From beneath the sheet that covered Eloise came a faint breath and then a tiny flicker of movement. Thalia waited, absolutely motionless, and with heart-stopping slowness Eloise’s hand slid from beneath the sheet and dropped to the floor, the fingertips brushing the carpet. For three heartbeats the blueish vein at the wrist fluttered perceptibly, as if somewhere beneath the surface something was still struggling for life.
Deep, strong triumph welled up in Thalia’s mind, and for a moment the dressing-table mirror gave back a startling reflection: her own face, but sharper, crueller, thinner. As if a mask had been clapped over her everyday features. Or as if the everyday mask had been removed to show the glaring madness beneath.
Chloral hydrate had not been the ideal drug but she had had to take what she could out of John Shilling’s case, and he tended to be a bit old-fashioned. She had measured the dose carefully: enough to plunge Eloise into a coma but not enough to cause death. If John had made a more detailed examination the plan would not have worked, but he had not. He had reacted exactly as Thalia had thought he would react. It was deeply satisfying to know you could gauge people’s behaviour so accurately.
She crossed back to the bed and tucked the errant hand beneath the covers. It was flaccid and still now, but for a few seconds there had been a threadlike pulse. Thalia smiled. Exactly and precisely as she had hoped. It seemed she had judged the dose accurately.
The medical textbooks on chloral hydrate had been largely unclear to a lay mind, but what had been clear was that if it was administered with alcohol, a large enough dose could cause coma or death. Thalia had not wanted death for Eloise; she had wanted coma. And she had wanted the coma to last until Eloise was safely buried.
If things went according to plan, Eloise would come out of the coma for long enough to understand what had happened. She would die knowing she had been buried alive. A bad death. But a just and fitting retribution.
It was rather a pity that Royston had died naturally from that last coronary attack. Thalia would have enjoyed meting out a similar punishment to him.
It was a pity as well that there was no means of knowing how much awareness Eloise would have at the end.
Dan had always known, with a complete absence of vanity, that he had an aptitude for writing. He had been sufficiently successful as a journalist and more recently as a feature writer and biographer to know that he could produce reasonably written, reasonably readable prose. He had not made a fortune out of this aptitude, but he had made a living.
What he had not known was that he would be able to write like this, working deep into the night, oblivious of his surroundings, plunging fathoms down into the strange, slightly surreal world of his own creating, sliding with almost frightening facility inside his characters’ minds and into their thoughts, scraping their inner emotions away from their skins, like scraping food from the sides of a pan.
His heroine had been taken, heavily sedated and uncomprehending, to her asylum, and a bleak place it was. Her guardians had been deceived by the manicured gardens and the comfortable public rooms – and by the comfortable public manner of the sister in charge.
Dan had enjoyed himself over the sister: Sairy Gamp in modern-day garb, minus the taste for gin but plus a nicely-judged taste in gentlemen. It amused Dan to provide her with an umbrella –about three-quarters of people reading that would miss the point, but it was worth putting in for the other quarter who would not.
The problem was not so much avoiding the influence of modern-day writers as of steering clear of all those descriptions of nineteenth-century institutions. He had asked Oliver to bring anything he could find about Victorian workhouses or bedlams or even fever hospitals. If Oriel College could not supply the information, the Bodleian should be able to.
‘I know you probably won’t be allowed to photocopy anything,’ Dan said on the phone, ‘but you could make notes for me, couldn’t you?’
‘Oh yes. Yes, I could do that. It sounds rather interesting. You haven’t fo
rgotten I’m coming to stay with you for half-term? It is still all right?’
‘Yes, it is still all right, and no, I haven’t forgotten. I’ll meet the train, when you know which one you’re catching.’
‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ said Oliver, rather diffidently, ‘I’ve bought a car. I thought I’d drive up.’
‘Heaven preserve us all,’ said Dan and went back to his asylum.
Places like Rosamund’s mental hospital did not exist any more, of course – at least, it was to be hoped they did not, although Rampton had almost passed into the language as a word in its own right, and there were occasionally cases of abuse in mental homes or orphanages, uncovered by crusading journalists. He had a vague idea that there had been something recently – the Rackham Commission, wasn’t it? Something to do with searching out malpractice inside NHS mental homes. He would have to look into that in case there was anything he could use.
Oliver would remember the notes, no matter what else he might forget. Dan could just recall their father being exactly the same: charming, gentle, unworldly almost to the point of exasperation at times, but razor-sharp when it came to his own subject. Oliver was also razor-sharp on his own subject, which was day-to-day life during the Reformation, and he was pretty well honed on other periods of English history as well.
Even without the notes, Dan found himself tumbling more or less involuntarily into the mid-nineteenth century: conjuring up a dark brooding madhouse that was a nightmarish mosaic of every bleak house ever created. Dotheboys Hall and Mr Bumble’s workhouse. That stark and pitiless institution in William Horwood’s remarkable book Skallagrig.
He finished the description of his heroine’s prison with relish, and turned with interest to the matter of removing her guardians from the scene for good. It was time for the long, dark sojourn to begin, and it was necessary for the venal Sairy Gamp and the increasingly sinister characters with which he was surrounding his heroine to have complete control over her.