Master of Chaos (The Harry Stubbs Adventures Book 4)

by David Hambling

  My uppercut caught him completely off guard. His own fault, really, for leaning so close and giving me the idea. He fell back heavily against the wall, not quite knocked out but at least stunned.

  They key was still in the door to Ross’s cell. I opened it and shoved Donnelly inside; he tried to grab my arm, but I chopped his hand away, and the closing door forced him inside before he could get a foot out to stop it. I turned the key, once, twice.

  Ross looked at me, agape.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Rescuing you.”

  His response was interrupted by a hammering on the cell door beside him. Donnelly had not taken long to recover and fully appreciate the situation.

  This was not the time to have a discussion about Ross’s psychological state and the merits or demerits of an unscheduled departure from the institution. I marched him forcibly down the corridor and into a hallway. Two of the older patients were playing draughts in one corner. All they saw was an attendant leading a reluctant inmate, nothing to raise the alarm about.

  A door marled Authorised Personnel Only opened to my key. It led to the sections forbidden to patients, but nobody saw us slip through. Escape would be much easier from one of these sections.

  I had previously noted that the side corridor leading to the kitchens had sash windows with no bars over them. These windows were never opened; they had been painted over, and there were locks on them. Such a window would be impossible to open from the outside, as a locked window should be, but inside you could get some purchase on the window and give it a good heave.

  For a moment, I wondered if the thing was going to break apart and I was going to be left holding a piece of window frame, but with a loud squeal the lock gave way and the window opened for the first time in decades. There was nobody else in the corridor, but it was too much noise.

  “After you,” I said.

  Ross stepped through the window readily, and I followed and closed it behind us. I did not think we would be observed; the only windows that gave a good view of us were in the kitchen, and they were partially steamed over by preparations for lunch.

  There are three gates, and I headed straight for the side gate used for deliveries. It was not the most convenient, as reaching it took us past the entire north wing, but there was no help for that.

  White faces appeared in the windows of the common room. They were always quick to notice anything from a pigeon on the grass to a laundry van, and the sight of the two of us aroused instant interest. It would only be seconds before the attendant with them looked out too to see what the disturbance was.

  “Run for the gate,” I suggested, increasing my own pace.

  Ross ran alongside me, asking no questions.

  A window opened on the first floor, and somebody shouted down to us; I did not hear what they said. I was fumbling with the key I had taken off the board in the attendants’ common room.

  I flung the gate open, and we hurried though; I slammed it shut behind us and locked it, looking up in time to see Vanstone and Miller running towards us on the other side. I did not think they would have another key on them, as the others were in the superintendent’s office.

  “Stop!” shouted Miller.

  “Sorry!” I shouted back, and we ran off, leaving them on the other side of the bars.

  How much of a lead would we have? One minute, two minutes? I had not really thought beyond the bare necessity of getting the two of us out of there. Fortunately, mine was not the only brain at work on the task, and two streets away Ross slowed down.

  “Don’t run,” he said. “Walk. And take my arm.”

  “What?”

  “As though you were keeping me under control. That way we won’t attract quite so much attention.”

  Of course, with me in my white attendant’s tunic and him in his blue inmate’s uniform, we did attract attention. But we did not look like an escape in progress.

  “Is there a cab rank near here?” Ross asked.

  “Not this side of Westow Street that I can think of,” I said. “But there is a bus stop over there, and a Number Twenty coming down the street.”

  The conductor looked doubtful when I asked for two tickets.

  “Don’t worry about this man,” I said. “I can manage him.”

  Ross kept his eyes downcast, every bit the depressed, lifeless shell.

  “I don’t know about that,” said the conductor. “This is a public omnibus, not an ambulance.”

  “This man is a shell-shocked soldier who fought for his country,” I said. “We can transfer one poor man on a bus when he’s perfectly harmless, can’t we?”

  “He won’t cause you any trouble,” said a man sitting opposite. He was in civvies but had the ramrod carriage of an old ex-soldier. “Will you, matey?”

  “Some people,” remarked the woman next to me loudly, glaring fixedly at a point in space adjacent to the conductor. “You’d think it would kill them to show a little charity.”

  Only a little abashed, the conductor turned the little silver handle on his machine and cranked out two singles without any very good grace.

  “What regiment?” asked the old soldier opposite.

  “Royal Flying Corps,” said Ross without looking up.

  The man offered an open packet of cigarettes, and Ross took one gratefully. I politely refused.

  “You boys did a grand job,” said the man with the cigarettes. “Many and many a time, I saw your lot flying over the lines. You lost a lot of good men. We all did.”

  Luckily, he did not feel a need for any more conversation, he just patted Ross on the shoulder and went back to his newspaper.

  “Where are we going?” I had become the follower, and he was the leader. He seemed taller now than he had inside, and certainly more commanding than the meek individual in his cell.

  “We’re not going anywhere without better clothes,” he said, looking me up and down.

  Through the window there were two police officers making their way down the street, looking about purposefully, one of them fingering his truncheon. Was it paranoia to think that word about us would be out already? If so, we were a conspicuous pair.

  Ross signalled to get off the bus at the next stop. He had seen the police, too. I tried to tell him that our best chance lay in finding a faster means of conveyance, but Ross had his own idea. He had seen a pawnbroker’s shop from the bus, and we stopped in the doorway.

  “You stay here. Get that white tunic off. Slouch here in your vest as though you were drunk.”

  I did as I was told, leaning against the wall in my undershirt. I had seen men hanging around, the worse for drink, in similar states of undress. It was a mild day, but it felt strange to be half-naked in the open air. Ross quickly started negotiations with the pawnbroker. He was obviously familiar enough with the workings of such places.

  “How’s this one for ye?” The pawnbroker had a noticeable Scottish accent.

  “How much?” Ross was alert, commanding even.

  “Five shillings, very good condition, as you see. If you want better, these are ten.”

  A woman carrying a bag of groceries and holding a small child by the hand passed by. She looked away when she saw me in the pawnbroker’s doorway.

  “This one is almost decent,” said Ross. “But it’s seen better days. Look, the pocket’s torn.”

  “Ten shillings,” said the Scotsman. “I told ye before, and the price is clearly marked. I don’t have to haggle when I’m selling, so I won’t.”

  Ross emerged soon thereafter with a parcel wrapped in brown paper. We retired to an alleyway, where he slipped off his blue inmate’s shirt and donned my white tunic, then pulled the old Army greatcoat he had purchased over it.

  “Pawnbrokers are always full of these,” he remarked. The lining was riddled with moth-holes, but from the outside it looked respectable enough. And the character of the tunic underneath was concealed; it might have been any white shirt. He would not attract attention now,
but Ross was still not satisfied with the effect.

  “Tear this for me,” he said, passing me his blue shirt. “See if you can get a good long strip about this wide.”

  I did as he asked, tearing it as easily as tissue paper. Ross took the best piece and tied it around his neck as a kind of rough cravat or bandana. He looked more raffish than shabby. Sort of Bohemian.

  “Good,” he said, admiring himself frankly in a window glass. “And here, why don’t you take this?”

  He took an empty bottle from a pile by the rubbish bins and pressed it into my hand. I could have objected that it was empty, but then again, drunks do hold on to empty bottles.

  “Muss your hair up a bit and try to look more vacant,” Ross suggested, smoothing his own hair. “Dab a bit of grime on your cheek. So long as we stay a few paces apart and don’t look like we’re together—oops!”

  Ross pushed me back against the wall and flattened himself against it so we were hidden by drainpipes. I glimpsed a police constable walking past. If he had been paying attention, he might have spotted us, but he was probably looking for two men running away.

  “How far is this going to get us?” I asked.

  “Far enough,” he said. “If we can make it to St John’s Wood, there’s a place we can go.”

  We followed his plan, keeping a good separation between us and boarding separate trams heading up to Elephant and Castle. If police were looking for two men together, they would never find us. Out of our hospital clothes, there was little to distinguish us from the crowd. People steered away from me in my character as a drunk, and I had disapproving looks from more than one matron, but there was no hand on my shoulder.

  I met Ross again at the entrance to the Elephant-and-Castle underground station. Passengers streamed past in both directions, oblivious to us.

  “You don’t have to come with me,” he said. “You’ve done enough already. I could never have got out without you.”

  “I don’t have anywhere else to go,” I said, though the truth was more complicated. It might have been more honest to say I had rescued him for my own purposes, and I meant to see those purposes fulfilled.

  “In that case, I’ll put you up.”

  I started relaxing on the underground, but began thinking about what I had done. It had been a desperate gamble, but there had been little alternative. Little as I knew about Dr Nye, everything seemed to point to him as the eye of the storm, the focal point of everything. Ryan’s tiger. I asked Ross what he knew about Nye.

  Ross shook his head doubtfully. “Never heard of him.”

  “He was the doctor who signed your papers when you were committed,” I said.

  “Strange,” he said. “I feel as if I ought to remember him, but I can’t.”

  I had never visited St John’s Wood before; it’s a fashionable neighbourhood, close to Regents Park, with streets packed with three-storey town-houses. I believe many of them are Georgian; it is certainly a contrast to the Victorian brick constructions that fill the streets of Norwood. Again, I was left waiting outside while Ross knocked on a door. A woman answered whom I could not see; a few words were exchanged, then he turned and waved to me, grinning. “Come on in!”

  The entrance hall was a black-and-white pattern of chequered marble. The house had not seemed large because it was narrow, but it extended a great way back.

  Ross later explained that the property belonged to a woman he called his aunt. Technically, she was his foster mother, but she had not taken to the role of mothering. She resided principally in the south of France, but maintained it as a what he called a pied-à-terre for when she came to London. She only used it occasionally when she needed to replenish her wardrobe or plunder Fortnum and Mason for delicacies.

  Apparently, Ross was allowed to drop in and use the place any time he liked. There was only one member of the staff, a housekeeper whom Ross called Maggie and who seemed to view him with some affection. The young Ross had spent his school holidays there, and she insisted that his old bedroom was the same as ever and she would make it up for him at once.

  That afternoon, I soaked in a long hot bath on claw feet. I would have liked a decent workout, but the house lacked the facilities. It had a library, a conservatory, a morning room, and, I gathered, a superior wine cellar, but nowhere for exercise. After my bath, I found that Ross had sent out to a shop, and there was a new set of apparel in a good approximation of my size. Maggie did not blink when he asked her to make up a room for me, too. I was almost embarrassed to touch the linen, which looked not merely clean but brand new.

  Ross had busied himself reading newspapers and magazines, catching up on all that had happened in the world since he had been out of it.

  At seven o’clock, Maggie struck a gong, and dinner was served to just the two of us on a table, lit by two candelabras, that could easily have sat fourteen. I had three different crystal glasses and a whole row of cutlery, laid out in descending order of size.

  “Maggie wants to be formal because you’re here,” he said. “She’ll get over it in a day or two.” Ross filled my glass with sparkling wine and raised his own.

  “Your excellent health,” he said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  It must have been real champagne, not that I can tell the difference. The setting was almost otherworldly; Beltov’s death that morning seemed like a dream. Death and danger were not admitted to this lavish domestic scene, so utterly different to the white-tiled interiors of the asylum suffused with the odour of carbolic.

  Maggie bustled in carrying a tray, stopping in the doorway to admire Ross. Cleaned up and in evening dress, he cut a smart figure. “It’s so good to have you back,” she said, smiling.

  “Not as good as it is to come back to your cooking,” he said.

  “Oh, you,” she said, placing steaming bowls of a clear soup before us. She served soft bread rolls with silver tongs.

  I found I had a good appetite. Somewhere during the day, I seemed to have missed lunch.

  “Don’t worry,” Ross told me after I mopped up the remainder of the soup with the final scrap of roll. “There’s plenty more coming. Fish, and an omelette, and I think I smelled a venison pasty in preparation. And pudding—she makes a terrific pudding—and cheese and fruit.”

  That would explain all the cutlery. I found it hard to credit that one woman could have cooked so much at such short notice, but Maggie brought the food, course after course of it, beaming at the plates polished clean each time. Ross’s foster mother had taken on other children at various times and paid them little attention; most of the care came from Maggie, and Ross seemed to have been her favourite.

  I explained my role, which I perhaps overstated somewhat, as a sort of private investigator handling cases concerned with phenomena beyond the ordinary.

  “Sounds very glamourous,” said Ross. Perhaps I had made it sound that way, but there had been precious little glamour mopping floors and supervising basketwork for the last several weeks. “And this mysterious client of yours—they think I’m involved?”

  “It was my deduction that you hold a piece of the mystery,” I said. “My real business lies with Dr Nye, and you are my closest connection to him.”

  Maggie came in, took away our plates, and served us each a fried sole. Ross picked at his, and I did my clumsy best to extract the meat from the tiny, elastic bones. The sole was, of course, excellent.

  “Well, you’ve told me a lot,” he said. “I never dreamed that there was such a thing as a psychic detective, or whatever your correct rank is. Every day I discover something strange in the world. I owe you an explanation, too… but it can wait until the morning. I’ve had enough of madness for one day.”

  And, over several courses and as many glasses of wine, we chatted about sports, the geography of London, the war, his foster mother, and a hundred other things. In hindsight, he was trying to convince me of what a thoroughly ordinary and entirely sane character he was. It was frustrating not to be able to discuss
the one issue that mattered most, but the wine and good food worked their magic. The next day, I would discover how we would tackle Dr Nye.

  That night, I slept an exhausted sleep. It was not until the morning that I realised there had been no screaming in the night. Ross’s night terrors did not follow him outside of the hospital.

  Chapter Fourteen: Out and About

  I spent most of the morning writing up my notes and correspondence. First I penned a brief note to my brother, advising him of my situation, so he could let Ma and Pa know that I was working on a case and they need not worry about me, whatever the rumours that were flying about might say. Then I wrote a slightly longer missive to Arthur Renville, presenting a perhaps unrealistically optimistic view of the chances of resolving the matter now that Ross was free. In truth, we could have taken shelter with Arthur, but I did not entirely trust his sympathy would lie with helping to free a mental patient.

  I wrote also to Mr Hoade, the fount of all knowledge, to see what information he could glean on Dr Nye and other matters. I could try myself, but I was sure that Hoade could glean ten times as much information ten times as quickly. Naturally, I did not mention my circumstances, and I trusted that he was sufficiently removed from my normal social acquaintances not to have heard any rumours.

  Finally, my most extensive letter which I put off til last was reserved for Sally, who was owed something of an explanation, and whom I had left in the lurch without any warning. I expressed the warmth of my regards and the hope that I would be able to return soon.

  These literary exertions had given me an appetite, and I was on my way downstairs to see what the pantry might afford by way of mid-morning snacks when I heard voices from the drawing room. One of them was female, and it was not Maggie’s. Two steps later, Ross called out to me, “Stubbs! Do join us, please.”

  He was seated on the sofa, with Miss Bentham at the other end. There was a shopping bag at her feet, and her little dog was standing guard over it. He wagged his tail as soon as he saw me, but Miss Bentham looked less charmed.