by Syd Moore
I thought about how Mary Boundersby had first described the apparition. ‘What if they said they’d seen a woman ghost?’
Doctor Roberts didn’t bat an eyelid. She kept her expression soft and friendly. ‘Okay, then that would lead me more to think – is this something that’s medically or physically wrong with the eye or is this a visual processing disorder?’
‘Oh,’ I said, feeling immensely calmed by her cool logic and total lack of excitement. ‘What’s visual processing?’
‘A visual processing disorder occurs in the brain and hampers its ability to make sense of information taken in through the eyes. You know ninety per cent of vision is done in the brain?’
I shook my head, which still hurt and felt sorry for my own poor hampered brain. ‘Didn’t. No. But that makes sense.’
‘Visual processing is different to issues with sight, clarity or sharpness of vision. It’s more about how visual information is processed or interpreted by the brain. Or,’ she paused, ‘misinterpreted. People are usually aware that they are seeing things that aren’t there or that there are shapes and flickers that they can’t account for. It’s a fascinating area. Sometimes patients see objects that get bigger or smaller. Micropsia or marcropsia are the proper names for that particular condition but it’s also been called Alice in Wonderland syndrome.’
‘Really?’ This was amazing. The information emboldened me to go a step further and ask, ‘What if they were seeing a woman in old-fashioned clothes?’
Again no frown or judgement passed over her face. Just consideration. ‘Mmm. Well, there is a disorder, which has something to do with the degeneration of the macula, where symptoms involve sightings of people. Often in period costume.’
Whoa! A fuzz of excitement went off in my head and zipped down my neck. ‘You’re joking. Really?’
‘Yes, you can look it up on the Internet. It’s called Charles Bonnet syndrome. CBS for short.’
‘Charles Bonnet?’ I thought of Mary’s description of the phantom with the bonnet. Was that a coincidence or a clue?
‘That’s right,’ said Doctor Roberts. Behind her glasses grey eyes shone with sharp intelligence. ‘Quite often patients will see things out the window – Victorian people walking around in their garden. Sometimes these strangers come up to the window and look through at them.’
I laughed, but she shook her head and said, ‘No really. That’s what they see. Can be quite alarming for the patient as you can imagine. It doesn’t happen all the time, comes and goes. It’s always in their central vision, not on the periphery. Because it’s the macula that’s effected with that condition and that’s the part of the eye that’s responsible for your fine vision. If it’s impaired, it means you can’t see detail. So that’s when the brain decides to improvise.’
‘I see,’ I said without irony. What she was saying called to mind Mary’s story about the woman walking past the window of her third-floor flat.
Doctor Roberts nodded at me. ‘It’s so interesting the way a person’s brain does this when they start to lose their sight. It stumbles over the fact that it’s not getting as much information as it used to so it fills in the gaps with fantasy patterns or images that it’s stored. They’re hallucinations of course. Nothing to do with dementia or mental health.’
‘Hang on,’ I said, and remembered Mary’s large round tortoiseshell glasses. Her prescription lenses were fairly thick, if I recalled. They made her eyes look bigger. ‘But does this only happen when people are losing their sight? I mean, would they be aware that they were losing it?’
‘No, not necessarily. Not at first. But if they are experiencing symptoms of Charles Bonnet’s, then the degeneration would be noticeable.’
‘Oh,’ I said. Well, this might certainly help Mary’s defence, if she still needed one now. I’d have to get on the blower to Ray. It was good news, I thought, then another question occurred. ‘But can the patients recover?’
Doctor Roberts held my gaze, and answered without emotion, ‘No, I’m afraid it’s incurable. Blindness is inevitable.’
That was hard to hear.
Doctor Roberts was staring at my face. ‘But it could be something else. There are plenty of options that could be explored to explain these sort of hallucinations: traumatic brain injury, or maybe a cerebrovascular accident.’
I didn’t like the sound of the last one. ‘A cerebellum accident?’
‘A stroke.’
‘Oh shit.’ I had no great fondness for Mary Boundersby but one couldn’t help feeling sympathetic: none of these sounded particularly good.
Doctor Roberts folded her arms carefully and leant across her desk. ‘Listen, you should make an appointment really but I have got about thirty minutes. Hop up here.’ She tapped the weird electric torture chair that all opticians have. ‘And I’ll do a preliminary exam.’
‘Oh, it’s not for me,’ I protested. ‘It really is for someone else I’m investigating on the side. Well, when I mean on the side, I mean not for the department. It’s another matter. But I do think there might be something in what you’re saying. Can I get her to give you a call?’
Doctor Roberts didn’t look convinced. ‘Rosie, you look dreadful. I think I should take a look at your right eye. Yes, I’ll see your client but you’ve obviously been in some kind of fight yourself and I’m not letting your walk out of my surgery without checking you over first. No questions asked.’
‘No, I’m okay, really.’
Her register didn’t change as she continued to urge me. ‘Would you like me to report your extracurricular activity to Derek? I have no qualms.’
The conviction in her voice made me hesitate.
‘Sorry. I would be failing in my duties if I didn’t look at that eye.’ All resistance was futile: she was pulling on latex gloves. ‘Now shut up and hop up,’ she said. ‘Please.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
I was asleep on the sofa when Sam got home. He tried to tiptoe around me but then started banging about in the kitchen and woke me up. I didn’t mind. I was glad to see him. I wanted to talk about what I’d learnt today.
I turned on the lamps around the lounge area and kept the mood cosy. Then we sat down on the sofas with steaming piles of pasta. I was really hungry. And, to be honest, I was also glad to be spending some quality time with Sam. I felt like I had missed him today. Though we were going to be just friends, I liked the zippy feelings he gave me. I liked him. That was a good thing. Even if nothing happened. For the time being.
But we were both quite excited about talking to each other. Sam obviously had some interesting news to tell too. As ever, he was gentlemanly and let me go first.
I filled him in, between mouthfuls of tortellini, about the extraordinary conditions divulged by Doctor Roberts. He was similarly amazed by them and said ‘Well, I’m blowed’ several times and even made notes. The Charles Bonnet syndrome, he said, might explain a recurring visitation a man back in Adder’s Fork had confided to him: an Edwardian gardener who peered through his French windows. I told him about the loss of sight and blindness thing and he said that unfortunately fitted.
I also informed Sam that I had phoned Ray Boundersby and relayed this information about these conditions to him. It was a difficult conversation to have, but I seemed to find time and time again that the right thing to do wasn’t often the easiest option on hand.
As you can imagine, Ray wasn’t over the moon about what I had to share but he promised to raise the subject with Mary and was grateful for Doctor Roberts’s details, agreeing it was wise to book an appointment in the near future. I got the impression he was irritated with me or more likely with what I had to say. He probably had mixed feelings about everything. With good cause too. After all, the revelations of Jackson’s repulsive activities must have taken the heat off Mary. The former was looking like a more likely contender for suspect number one in Seth’s murder. Nevertheless, there were problems with Mary’s credibility and this could explain them in a cool scientific wa
y that courts would listen to with due care and diligence. Of course, it might mean that Mary lost her sight. Which was an unfair outcome, it was true. But whatever, she ought to be checked over. If it came to nothing then they would have just wasted an hour or two. If something was detected, then (hopefully) it could be treated and Mary would have a legal argument for her defence. He grudgingly conceded.
I had also, incidentally, been given a clean bill of health with a notice to monitor myself for anything unusual and some strong prescription painkillers that had knocked me out as soon as I got home.
Sam had wisely spent most of the day in bed until he had been awoken by a call from DS Edwards checking he had all the tapes and who also ended up telling him about the absence of the yard girl on the ones his constables had already checked over. Sam agreed that she’d probably turn up on CCTV footage from some of the other concerns that backed on to the La Fleur yard. He expressed an interest in reviewing them, when they were recovered, and was politely surprised when DS Edwards agreed. ‘He seems to have warmed up to us a bit,’ he said, and smiled at me.
A flush of guilt spread through me. I muttered something about it being important to stay on the right side of the law and then fiddled with the tortellini.
‘I know it looks like we may have got a measure on Seth’s unfortunate demise,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid it doesn’t close the case as far as I’m concerned. There are a number of incidents that have yet to be explained. It’s not only Mary who has seen the apparition, remember. MT has perceived it too.’
At the mention of her name, I relaxed a bit. Sam, after all, had a thing for MT and made no bones about hiding that. That meant it was okay for me to maybe have a thing with Jason. Made sense, didn’t it? He might even get jealous and be spurred into action. Who could tell?
‘As well as the many others who have attested to hearing it,’ he was saying, leaning into the armchair, his feet up on one of my white stools. ‘Then there’s the writing on the wall. I’m still at a loss. I don’t like being at a loss,’ he said then, amazingly, popped open a bottle of wine and poured himself a glass. ‘You’re not having any on those painkillers,’ he said, waving the bottle, and put it down close by his feet. Out of my reach.
I thought about protesting but couldn’t be bothered. Plus, he was right. Booze would put me straight to sleep again.
‘So,’ he went on and took a long glug, the rotter. ‘Once I’d finished talking to DS Edwards, I was awake. There was no point trying to go back to sleep. It was quite late in the afternoon but I decided to take myself off to the Metropolitan Archives to have a bit of a dig around in La Fleur’s past. As I said, there are certain things that don’t add up, and I’m interested in that daisy wheel, the demon trap. I’d quite like to date it. Anyway, the archives aren’t far from La Fleur actually. Though I should have got started earlier really because I was just getting stuck in when they booted me out and closed. I’ll go back first thing tomorrow.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So what did you find out?’
‘Well, Femi was right when he said that bit of London is dark.’ He put his hand under his chin and said almost to himself, ‘Now, that’s a thought! I wonder how much he knows,’ and then appeared to drift off.
He became aware of me waiting for him and twitched his head. ‘Yes, sorry, well, a few bits and bobs of what I learnt, if communicated to impressionable minds, could certainly encourage people to attribute negative meaning to random incidents they may have been witness to aurally or visually.’
I tried to translate. ‘There’s stuff gone on there that might give people the heebie-jeebies?’
‘Yes, the place is crawling with death and nasties. Much worse than Essex. So much denser, probably because it’s been intensely populated for such a long time. I mean, right on the corner of Fetter Lane and Fleet Street there was an execution site. That’s literally a stone’s throw from La Fleur. We’ve passed it several times. The Catholic priest and accused traitor Christopher Bales was hanged here in 1590. Some poor sod who only made a jerkin for Bales was executed up the road in Smithfield. Anthony Babbington, a plotter aiming to get Mary Queen of Scots on Elizabeth’s throne, was executed at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, right where the bandstand is now. This chap was hung then cut down from the gallows, still alive and conscious, and made to watch as the executioner hacked off his “privy parts”.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘Literally, I would say, for they were then flung on the fire. After this followed disembowelment and dismemberment.’
‘What a way to go.’
‘Indeed. The public outcry that followed this caused Elizabeth to insist his fellow conspirators, who were to expect the same, should be dead before the disembowelment and so forth.’
I shook my head slowly and shuddered. ‘How kind. But this means they were gutted, right?’
‘It does.’
‘Like Seth?’
‘But he wasn’t hung or quartered.’
I thought about the blood in the cracks of the cellar and imagined the sight Mary would have seen if that had taken place. It made me giddy with revulsion. ‘But he was hung up. To the hook.’
‘And Newgate Prison was up the road too,’ Sam continued, oblivious to my dry and silent retch. ‘About two hundred and fifty metres from La Fleur. It was the main site of London’s gallows after they were moved from Tyburn in 1783. The executions took place in public until 1868. In fact, if you draw a line between Lincoln’s Inn, the Fetter Lane execution site and Newgate, they form a neat triangle of death.’
‘Nice,’ I said. ‘And I bet you’re going to tell me that La Fleur is right in the centre?’
‘No, not in the centre but in it, yes. If you include Smithfield’s too it’s a kind of trapezium of death.’
‘Not so catchy,’ I murmured and grimaced.
‘Quite so,’ he nodded. ‘And there’s more. Can you cope?’
‘Mmm.’ I was feeling a bit queasy to be honest. ‘All this stuff is a bit too Chamber of Horrors for me,’ I said. ‘I find it depressing. It makes me think of damp smells and the idea that there is dirt on the floor that can’t be hoovered up. Do you know what I mean?’ I asked Sam.
He scrunched his forehead up. ‘Eh?’
I knew what I meant.
‘Okay, well, this might cheer you up. Quite amusing, I thought. You know those rooms that you pointed out that stick out over Fleet Street? The Tudor-looking ones. Well, I discovered that they’re called Prince Henry’s Room, even though they are plural!’
‘Crazy!’ I said.
‘Hang on, I’m coming to it. Well, it’s one of the few buildings to survive the Great Fire of London, you know, though the site goes way back beyond that to property owned by the Knights Templars. But for a while in the eighteenth and nineteenth century the front part of the house featured a Mrs Salmon’s Waxworks which were in fact, as you say, a Chamber of Horrors of sorts. Though these were diverting displays, really. There was apparently one of Boudicca, a Turkish harem, and an automated figure of Old Mother Shipton, a clairvoyant witch from Skipton. Quite famous. But there was one that sounds hilarious. That of Hermonia, a Roman noblewoman. Her father offended the emperor and was sentenced to be starved to death. He evaded the reaper by suckling at his own daughter’s breast!’
I stared at him. For one of the first times in my life I was speechless.
‘I thought you’d find that funny,’ he pushed on.
‘Jesus Christ. Sam! That’s gross. And there was me thinking that the Witch Museum was tacky.’
‘Now you’re sounding like an American teenager.’
‘Hey, you have completely lost any moral high ground you once had.’ I folded my arms high.
Sam rubbed his hair and looked confused. ‘Oh, all right. I thought you’d laugh. They also had a tableau depicting King Charles I upon the scaffold,’ he offered by way of consolation.
‘God,’ I said. ‘You’re right, though. All of it’s creepy. Femi, for all his weird pa
th-of-the-righteous-man act, was totally on the ball. If he knew half of that, it would make the place appear to him as corrupt and grotesque. Seriously, I’ve gone off La Fleur big time. I was going to take Monty there, but, man, that place has got a dark and belligerent past.’
‘Monty?’ Sam’s eyebrows rose.
‘Yes, you remember. I said I’d buy him dinner after the work he did for us with the witch bones.’
‘Am I invited?’
I squinted at him. ‘If you want?’
He sent me a look I couldn’t work out. It was either a ‘get over yourself’ expression or a ‘cheeky cow’ glance. I was going to ask him to clarify when he said, ‘And present.’
‘Eh?’
‘La Fleur’s sordid past taints the present too.’
‘Oh,’ I said, getting his point. ‘You mean, last night?’
He nodded. ‘The discovery of Gloria and Ruby I find supremely unsettling.’ This was something, coming from the guru of the Essex Witch Museum with all its gruesome frights. ‘I won’t hide it – I’ve been feeling on edge and upset all day. How the girls are going to recover, I really don’t know.’
His concern caused a well of deep affection to open within me. These soft moments of his were affecting and I just couldn’t help appreciating him more. At the same time, I knew exactly how he felt. ‘People are so horrible to each other. I’m amazed that kid Jackson was capable though. He didn’t look more than mid-twenties to me.’ And he’d been slight of build too, not tough-looking or macho. Just opportunistic. And clearly devoid of any moral compass. Terrifying.
‘Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed Witchfinder General,’ Sam said. ‘He was probably around twenty-six when he died. Never underestimate people. Where there is a will there is a way.’
‘Especially, if that will runs evil,’ I said, and crossed my arms, feeling this time, that I did probably look like a teenager. ‘I still can’t quite believe it. That that was going on next door. What were they going to do with them? Gloria and Ruby? What would have happened if we hadn’t found them when we did?’