The Madman's Room

by Paul Halter

  His words tapered off and a beatific expression lit up his face.

  ‘When it suits you,’ said Francis amiably, ‘I wouldn’t mind a session with you… as long as you don’t announce a forthcoming catastrophe.’

  ‘But tell us,’ said Paula, still trying to come to grips with what she had heard, ‘is there any connection between your great-uncle’s glass of water and his death, and with the water found on the carpet?’

  Brian made a futile gesture.

  ‘I’ve no idea. I’ve thought about it a great deal, particularly after my brother’s death… Why did he throw himself out of the window? And why the water on the carpet, in the exact same spot?’ He looked thoughtfully at Sarah. ‘You still don’t remember why you were so distraught?’

  Sarah trembled.

  ‘I’ve tried so many times,’ she murmured, ‘but with no success. I can see the door I knocked on and the moment when I opened it … But, after that, nothing.’ She looked dolefully into Brian’s eyes. ‘Maybe it’s a form of vertigo brought on by a premonition of Harris’s death?’

  Brian nodded.

  ‘It’s the only reasonable explanation. What’s more, such premonitions occur much more frequently than people think. I can cite numerous examples where people have been taken ill or had a nightmare at the precise moment when they lost a loved one several hundred miles away… My dear Sarah, there’s no doubt: at the very moment you started to open that door, you knew that Harris had left us forever.’

  11

  In the oppressive heat of that July afternoon, Howard Hilton contemplated the large clusters of roses that adorned the front entrance to Hatton Manor. Since the beginning of the year, it had been his task to take care of them, so as to lighten the load on old Mortimer, whose physical decline had become only too evident. He carefully checked the grafts he’d made, then, satisfied with the results, decided to take a short rest on one of the benches. He took off his hat, mopped the perspiration off his brow with the back of his arm, and sighed contentedly.

  Trying to clear his mind, he contemplated the dark green swathe of the forest, which separated the azure sky from the soft green lawns, from which emanated a suffocating heat. Yet something was nagging at him: what Sarah had said at lunchtime. Although he had nothing specific to go on, he couldn’t help thinking it would put an end to the peaceful calm that had reigned the last few months. Obviously, a woman like Sarah couldn’t be expected to stay a widow forever, but he hadn’t expected it to be so soon.

  Footsteps crunched the gravel and he saw Dorothy approaching. They hadn’t had time to talk since lunch, but by her demeanour he could see that she shared his thoughts. She sat down beside him, sombre and silent.

  ‘What a beautiful day, my dear,’ he observed in a gentle voice.

  ‘Enjoy it while you can,’ his wife replied. ‘Who knows what tomorrow will bring.’

  ‘Too true, my dear, too true.’

  After a lengthy silence, Mrs. Hilton continued:

  ‘I don’t blame Sarah, as you well know… but she could have waited a bit longer. It’s not really appropriate. And Heaven only knows what will become of us now… It’s not out of the question that, in a few months time, she lets it be known that, in the interests of privacy, independence, or who knows what else, it’s better that we live apart… Of course, she wouldn’t cut us off financially… although even that remains to be seen.

  ‘I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but since Harris’s death, she’s been looking down on us. The way she imposes her will and makes it clear to us, her own parents, that she’s the mistress of the house… The money’s gone to her head, I’m afraid.’

  Howard made a gesture showing that he agreed with her, as his thoughts went back to the end of the lunch: Sarah had waited until then to announce she was about to be engaged to Dr. Meadows. To say that it had come as a surprise to all present was to put it mildly. Francis had sat there with his mouth open. Paula had felt a knot in her stomach and Dorothy, despite her outward calm, probably had as well.

  Her husband watched her now out of the corner of his eye. As usual, she concealed her emotions. Nevertheless, years of experience had taught him that she was extremely upset. She turned to her husband:

  ‘Meadows is a perfectly respectable young man. Polite, well-mannered, always friendly, there’s really nothing to reproach him about.’

  ‘I quite agree, my dear.’

  Mrs. Hilton became tight-lipped and paused before adding:

  ‘Except that I can’t help wondering… nothing certain, you understand….’

  ‘Whether he really wants to marry her just because of her blue eyes….’

  Dorothy’s silence confirmed that she had the same suspicions.

  ‘I started wondering last month,’ said Howard, ‘when he told us he’d broken off his engagement to Bessie Blount. She’s a sweet girl and I couldn’t understand why it had happened.’ His expression hardened. ‘The question went unanswered… until today.’

  The next day, Wednesday, Francis and Paula paid a visit to Bessie Blount. They’d been in the habit of going round once a week and thought it would be insensitive not to do so now.

  Bessie’s house was situated a few hundred yards to the left on the way out of the village, beyond a heavily wooded area and just before the winding, pebble-strewn road which led gently uphill to the manor. For residents of Hatton Manor desirous of visiting the Blount residence, however, there was a path down through the undergrowth which led directly to a gate in the fence surrounding the property, from whence a path wound its way through a small meadow to a modest shed which had served as Bessie’s grandfather’s workshop.

  The old man hadn’t set foot in the place since the accidental death of his son, for which he felt himself responsible: Bessie’s father had been crushed by the weight of a heavy wardrobe which had fallen on him as a result of a faulty manoeuvre.

  Beyond the workshop lay a kitchen garden, a hedge, a small lawn in the shade of a weeping willow, and the Blounts’ house itself.

  It was the path through the undergrowth which Francis and Paula usually took to visit their neighbour. They found her installed in a deckchair beneath the weeping willow. Seeing them, she sat up and smiled warmly.

  The young couple, who had come prepared to offer words of comfort following Mike Meadows’ engagement to Sarah, were relieved to find that she was actually in excellent spirits. They sat down to tea and were caught off balance when Bessie announced:

  ‘Grandfather fell ill yesterday… Nothing serious, I can assure you.’

  ‘The heat, I suppose?’ suggested Francis, stirring his tea.

  ‘No, it was when he went into his old workshop.’

  Francis stopped stirring and Paula looked in the direction of the small building whose roof was visible through the trees.

  ‘As you know, nobody’s been in there since father died… least of all grandfather, who’s never been able to forget the accident.’ Bessie sighed. ‘Nevertheless, he went up there yesterday afternoon, to look for a tool to replace his broken spade… I can still see him making the announcement over lunch in a casual manner which fooled nobody: mother and I knew how much it cost him to go there, and he could have easily repaired his spade using his other tools. It was obviously a pretext for trying to get rid of his guilty conscience once and for all. We watched him set out briskly, whistling so as to appear confident.’

  ‘Francis, you can put your spoon down now,’ said Paula with amusement. ‘You’ve been holding it up in the air for thirty seconds.’

  ‘My spoon?’ said Francis in embarrassment. ‘Ah, yes,’ he muttered, shrugging his shoulders.

  Bessie watched him with a faint smile on her lips:

  ‘You make me think of Mike. His mind went blank like that from time to time. Where was I?’

  ‘Your grandfather was going to his workshop,’ prompted Paula.

  ‘Right. Well, he returned ten minutes later with a heavy step and looking quite haggard. He said he
’d been taken ill when he was inside and had had to lie down on the grass to recover.’

  ‘I imagine he’d relived the moment of tragedy,’ declared Paula dramatically.

  ‘Quite so, but he didn’t want to admit it. Anyway, he won’t be going back there again in a hurry.’

  ‘So nothing serious,’ said Francis, making a vague gesture.

  Bessie shook her head, still smiling faintly.

  Paula decided it was the moment to grasp the nettle.

  ‘My dear Bessie, I’m so glad to see your habitual good humour hasn’t been affected by… recent events.’

  Her friend couldn’t help chuckling.

  ‘Are you talking about Mike? And his engagement to Sarah?’

  ‘Believe me,’ replied Francis, looking down, ‘it gave us no pleasure to hear it. I’m not passing judgment about Mike, but I can’t say I’m thrilled by my sister’s behaviour, not just towards you, but also—.’

  ‘My Goodness, Francis, how old-fashioned you can be!’ exclaimed Bessie. ‘Harris has been dead for over a year, don’t you think that’s long enough to respect conventions?’ She looked at their solemn faces. ‘I think you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Mike and I stopped seeing each other—at least in the sense you mean—at the beginning of the year. After the first break-up, we tried again with the same result. Quite simply, our hearts weren’t in it. We decided to remain good friends and to put up appearances for a while. It was Mike’s idea to let people gradually get used to the idea, rather than make a sudden announcement, which would inevitably have caused gossip and would have been bad for his medical practice.’

  “Marrying Sarah will certainly put an end to that worry,” said Francis to himself.

  ‘I understand,’ he said out loud, being careful to avoid any trace of irony.

  Paula pulled a face to show she didn’t agree with her husband.

  ‘I understand,’ she repeated, ‘in one sense. But on the other hand it doesn’t strike me as a very honest way to act. What I mean is that kind of situation leads to complications. But why….’

  Paula bit her tongue as she realised the indiscretion of her question.

  ‘Why did we separate in the first place?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ stammered Paula, as Francis gave her a furious glare.

  Bessie took a deep breath. There was an intense gleam in her blue eyes which neither Paula nor Francis could interpret.

  ‘Mike,’ she murmured with a bitter smile. ‘We got on pretty well together at the start. And then things began to change little by little… insignificant details. It’s hard to explain. There comes a day when you sense things are going in the wrong direction. You dismiss the thought from your mind and then it comes back even stronger. Finally you’re sure you made a mistake. The day I expressed my feelings to Mike, he didn’t want to accept what I was saying, blaming it on the grim dark days of winter, notoriously bad for lovers. Then he claimed that without ups and downs life would be boring… and a host of other excuses.’

  ‘So it was you,’ exclaimed Paula, while Francis made a show of clearing his throat noisily. ‘It was you who….’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Bessie, smiling at her friend’s ingenuousness. ‘Yes, I was the one who broke it up. That’s why I’m in no position to reproach Mike about anything. And besides….’

  ‘Yes?’ asked Paula, leaning eagerly forward.

  Bessie sat back in her deckchair, let out a hearty laugh, and said:

  ‘I think I’ve said enough for today. Would you like some more tea?’

  Once everyone was served, Paula returned to the attack.

  ‘I get the impression you’re hiding something….’

  ‘Darling, please!’ protested Francis, spilling some of his tea.

  ‘I get the impression,’ insisted Paula, ‘that there’s a new Prince Charming in the picture.’

  Francis was about to protest some more, but stopped when he saw Bessie wink.

  ‘Another fiancé?’ he murmured.

  ‘Bessie, you must tell us everything!’ insisted Paula. ‘What does he do? Where’s he from? How did you meet him?’

  Bessie blushed, confused yet at the same time flattered by her friends’ interest. She looked briefly up at the sky with a beatific smile on her lips.

  ‘I met him in London, several months ago. You’ll never guess how… No, I really mustn’t say.’

  ‘Ah, no!’ cried Paula excitedly. ‘You’ve gone too far to stop now.’

  ‘Well, if you insist. We met in a rather unusual way… in fact he stopped me quite unexpectedly in the street.’

  Francis suppressed an indignant “what!” telling himself that provincial girls made easy prey.

  ‘In the street?’ repeated Paula with a shocked expression.

  ‘Yes,’ confirmed Bessie, ‘but in a rather extraordinary manner. I was strolling along Oxford Street when I saw a young man whom I didn’t know from Adam coming towards me, brandishing a sumptuous bouquet of roses. He stopped in front of me and announced they were for me, that he didn’t know why, that he was very embarrassed by what he was doing, that he regretted it, but that he also didn’t regret it.’

  While Paula was uttering the obligatory “how romantic,” Francis suppressed a shrug of the shoulders. The naiveté of some women flabbergasted him.

  ‘I was so taken aback,’ continued Bessie, pressing her hands to her chest, ‘that I accepted his invitation to have a cup of tea. And there you are. Since then, we’ve been seeing each other almost every week.’

  ‘Here?’ asked Paula in surprise.

  ‘No, in London. But now Mike and Sarah….’

  ‘So, will we soon get to meet him?’ asked Paula, with an enthusiasm which elicited a disapproving frown from her husband.

  ‘Not right away. He’s actually quite swamped with work at the moment. But he’s promised to spend a few days here before the end of the year.’

  Paula tried to find out more, but in the end she and her husband went back to Hatton Manor none the wiser.

  12

  The evening meal over, Sarah, Paula and Francis decided to go outside for some air. The setting sun threw long shadows over the park.

  ‘A fiancé? Well, she finished consoling herself pretty quickly.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Sarah,’ said Francis. ‘Why would she need to console herself when it was she who broke off the engagement?’

  Sarah gave a tinkling laugh.

  ‘And you believe it was Bessie who jilted Mike? What a joke!’

  ‘But no,’ insisted Paula. ‘She told us herself.’

  ‘And because she told you, you believe it?’ railed Sarah, turning to her brother and sister-in-law with an ironic, almost disdainful smile. ‘As far as psychology is concerned, you both have a lot to learn. And as regards Mike, you have the wrong version of the story. When he told her that it would be better if they separated, she clung to him, moaning and threatened suicide. Mike was very patient because he wanted to avoid a scandal at any price.’

  Francis nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘That’s funny,’ he said. ‘She didn’t give me the impression she was at all jealous.’

  ‘As I’ve always said, Francis, you know nothing about women,’ sneered Sarah. ‘It’s painful enough to have been abandoned by the one you love, but then to see him in the arms of a friend is the supreme humiliation. Do you think that, on top of everything else, she would want to shout it from the rooftops? No, there’s only one attitude to take: suffer in silence behind a mask of nonchalance. And that’s what Bessie’s doing at the moment. Mike and I aren’t fools. That said, we won’t hold it against her.’

  ‘That’s a bit of luck,’ observed Francis. ‘Bessie’s a decent girl who, I’m sure, has nothing to blame herself for, and who’s certainly not the woman devoured by jealousy you’re portraying her as.’

  ‘It doesn’t really matter what you do or don’t think,’ declared Sarah dismissively.

  Paula, who had gone ahead, chose the
path leading to the chapel, which was hardly distinguishable in the twilight, surrounded as it was by trees. As they approached, Sarah came to a sudden stop, a distressed look in her eyes.

  ‘No,’ she murmured. ‘Not this way.’

  After giving his wife a dirty look, Francis took Sarah’s arm and guided her gently in the direction of the manor. Paula shrugged and followed them. She thought about Harris Thorne with his welcoming smile, his red hair, his inevitable blue-checked jacket and his outbursts of laughter. She remembered him so vividly that she could almost see him in front of her. She shivered. “Harris Thorne,” she said to herself, “wasn’t so far wrong to be jealous of Dr. Mike Meadows, after all… And suppose his spirit is there, lurking in the shadows, spying on his wife, the wife Meadows set his sights on….”

  She was startled out of her reverie by the voice of her own husband:

  ‘Dammit! I was forgetting about good old Brian.’

  Paula was about to reply, but Sarah got her word in first:

  ‘Brian? What do you want with him?’

  ‘I promised to drop in to see him this evening,’ said Francis, rubbing his hands together cheerfully. ‘For a consultation… about my future.’

  Francis’s enthusiasm as he knocked on Brian’s door faded once he stepped into the room. In the first place, Brian’s face was more like a waxen image than his normal self and his sombre expression was hardly more reassuring. The oil lamp, furthermore, seemed to have been set to give the minimum of light, which had the effect of accentuating the shadows rather than dissipating them. The only furnishings which were visible were a table, on which stood a large glass of water, and the gold bindings of the books on the stacked shelves. Brian’s face lit up suddenly with an affable smile.