by Blake Banner
“Stone.”
“Chiddester here. I pulled some strings and they’re expecting your visit at six. I said it was an unofficial fact-finding mission sanctioned by the Home Office to help families in the States find some closure. I believe that’s the popular term. Anyway, I thought that would give you maximum elbow room.”
“That’s perfect.”
He hesitated. “Have you got a name yet?”
“Yes. But let me prove it, Chiddester. It isn’t straight forward. It’s complicated. But I hope to have the whole thing wrapped up by tomorrow morning, at the latest.”
He gave a reluctant grunt. “Very well.”
“I’ll keep you posted, I promise.”
I called down to reception for them to arrange me a car, and twenty minutes later, after I had showered and we had both dressed, we went downstairs. I signed for the vehicle, saw the price, thanked the gods in Valhalla that I wasn’t paying and we headed out toward Kent, and the village of Goodnestone.
It was a nice drive. Kent is known as the garden of England, and as we drove down the A2, the countryside all around us was green and abundant, with hedgerows like huge billows of green smoke, heavy and dense, clinging to the hillsides. At Barham, we turned north and east, down small winding roads and through woodlands, ever deeper into Tolkien landscapes where tall, red brick chimneypots peered out from among bushy clusters of foliage in every imaginable shade of green. There were villages of just a handful of houses, that had names like Nonington, Easole—which made Dehan giggle like a schoolchild—and Womenswold, which made me think of a department store in Stepford.
Finally, we came to a small crossroads with wooden signs pointing, amusingly, to Ham one way and Sandwich another, and a third pointed to Goodnestone. We followed this road through dense forest, over blacktop dappled with patches of sunlight and the shadows of twisted branches and dancing leaves, until at last we came out of the woods onto the rim of a shallow valley. We stopped a moment to have a look.
Ahead of us, the road, like a thin, black ribbon, curved gently to the east, leading to a small hamlet of ancient, red brick houses. From there, the road turned sharply west to what looked like an old Georgian manor house, surrounded by smaller, more modern buildings, and several acres of parkland contained within a high wall. This was the Goodnestone High Security Psychiatric Facility, otherwise known as Goodnestone Park.
“It just blows my mind, Stone, that after all these years, it turns out they had him all the time, and never let on. Why would they do that?”
“Politics,” I said, then looked at her. “Politics with a small ‘p’. Not party politics, conservatives, liberals, all that crap. Just avoiding a public outcry. The fewer people who knew about it, the fewer could get upset.” I started up the engine again. “When you think about it, it’s pretty controversial, with the potential to upset just about everybody. Man gets sentenced to life, without even trial; or, man murders seven women and gets off without even a trial. But from a pragmatic point of view, it saved the country a very expensive trial and took a very dangerous man off the streets without the risk of a clever defense counsel getting him off. The file was sealed to protect his identity, which some would also think controversial.”
Dehan nodded. “We have a right to know who killed our daughter. I get that.”
“Yeah. It’s tricky.”
I pulled up at the gate and a guy in a private security uniform came over to look in the window. I showed him my driver’s license.
“Detectives Stone and Dehan. Lord Chiddester arranged the visit. I believe you are expecting us.”
He checked my license and nodded. “Very good, sir. Leave the car in the car park at the right of the main building and report to reception, through the main door.”
“Thanks.”
We did as he said and ten minutes later pushed into what would originally have been the entrance hall of the manor, but was now a quiet, still reception, paneled in dark wood with bare, highly polished boards on the floor. To our left, there was a woman sitting behind a functional, white counter, looking at us through glasses that reflected the windows and concealed her eyes. Standing, leaning on the counter, smiling at us, was a man in chinos and a white coat, with reading glasses hanging around his neck. He was a well-preserved sixty and knew it. He approached us with his hand held out to Dehan.
“Detectives Dehan and Stone, I believe. I am Dr. Fenshaw, the director of this facility. Shall we go to my office? And you can tell me exactly what it is you want.”
We shook his hand and followed him down a short passage to an office with a large window overlooking a lawn at the back of the house. The office was old world, but functional, with leather furniture side by side with sage green, steel filing cabinets that looked like they had been salvaged from World War I. He waved us to a couple of chairs as he moved behind the desk and we all sat.
“You want to talk to Simon Clarence.”
It was more a statement than a question, and it felt like a subtle challenge. I gave him the dead eye and said, “That’s why we’re here. I hope you didn’t have us drive down from London just to tell us we can’t see him.”
He smiled. “Not at all. Lord Chiddester outlined the reason for your visit and I was happy to help. I am just curious about a couple of points.”
“Like how we knew he was here?”
He nodded. “The file is sealed.”
“I worked the original murders fifteen years ago. I went back to the States and almost simultaneously, your investigation here stopped. A recent murder, which has not yet been reported in the press, resurrected that investigation. So I did what I should have done fifteen years ago, I looked to see if there had been similar murders in the States. There had, and the sheriff was pretty sure it was Clarence. So then I looked into why the investigation had stopped. The answer seemed to be, ‘We were told to.’ After that, with Lord Chiddester’s help, it wasn’t difficult to get the abstract from the sealed file.”
“I see. That makes perfect sense.” He gave a small sigh. “Be prepared. Simon is more or less coherent most of the time. He has made some progress over the years, he is…” He frowned at his desk like he felt there was something wrong with it, but he wasn’t sure what. “He is attempting to feel remorse for what he did, but he doesn’t know how to. He is a deeply troubled man, who suffered a great deal as a child.” He frowned at us. “You may ask him about one thing, and he will answer something that to you may seem completely unrelated and irrelevant, but to him it will make perfect sense. This is to be expected in schizophrenics. I don’t know if you will find what you came looking for, but I hope you do.”
“Thank you. We’ll bear it in mind, but it’s pretty much what we expected.” I hesitated a moment, then asked, “Doctor, were you his psychiatrist? Was it you who made the move to have him sectioned?”
He studied me for a moment. “Detective, I authorized this visit on the strict understanding that the secret nature of the file would be respected absolutely. Anything I tell you remains strictly between we three.”
Chiddester hadn’t told me that, but I saw no point arguing, so I said, “That is understood, Doctor.”
He nodded a few times, then seemed to examine Dehan’s face. “Yes, I was his psychiatrist. I don’t know if you realize this, but it is extremely unusual for a schizophrenic to seek the help of a professional. So when Simon came to me, I at first thought that he was simply fantasizing. He had seen the murders in the papers, or on television, and projected himself into them, to make himself feel important. But with the last murder…” He gazed away to his left, trying to remember the name.
I said, “Kathleen Dodge.”
“Kathleen, Kathleen Dodge, he told me about her before the police found the body. The whole thing was plagued with problems: confidentiality, his status—was he fit to stand trial—witnesses; I would be the only witness and my testimony might be ruled as hearsay…” He shook his head. “And then there was the issue of trust. If I reported him to the police
, he would feel betrayed and the only person in the world who had access to him, me, would be lost, he would never talk to me again. It seemed to me that the most sensible thing to do was to have him quietly sectioned, a procedure I was able to make him understand was for his own good.”
He made to stand and said, “Why don’t I take you to him? I assure you he is medicated and he is not dangerous. Talk to him for a while, see what you get, and then come and see me again.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “That’s good. Thank you.”
And we rose and went to see Simon Clarence.
FOURTEEN
He was sitting at a table on a stone terrace at the back of the house. A broad lawn swept away toward hedgerows, about a quarter of a mile away, and people, some of them in brilliant white coats and dresses, wandered this way and that, or just sat and stared.
Simon Clarence was dressed in white: white deck shoes, white pants and a white shirt. He looked up at us as we came out. He was thin, with immensely long limbs, and seated in the chair, he reminded me of a bent wire hanger. I figured he must be at least six foot six, with a large, bony face, high cheekbones and a strong nose. He could have been good-looking, but there was something unsettling about his stare, like his eyes were searching for something, and didn’t care what they had to do to find it.
Fenshaw pulled up a chair and sat opposite him. Then he smiled at us and said, “Sit, sit. This is Simon. Simon, these are some friends of mine who have come to visit you. They have some questions they would like to ask you. I told them you’d be happy to help them. Remember we talked about how good it is to help people?”
He nodded. After what Bernie had told me, I had expected a dull, simple voice. The voice of a stereotypic inbred. Instead, when he spoke, his voice was clear and articulate.
“Yes, I remember that. I’ll try to be helpful, Doctor.”
Fenshaw patted him on the arm. “Good man. Give me a shout if you need anything.”
He got up and left. Simon watched him go and then looked at us in turn with oddly incurious eyes. His voice had a hint of an American accent, but not much.
“Are you cops? You look like cops from the U.S.A.”
Dehan answered, “Yup. We came over from New York, but it’s the sheriff of Washington County who asked us to come and see you.”
“I don’t really understand why they’re mad at me. For leaving. They didn’t like me there.”
Dehan frowned. “What makes you think that?”
“Samuel.”
“Samuel?”
“Samuel makes me think that.”
“Who is Samuel?”
“Samuel is dead. He was married to my mother. She said he was my daddy. But I’m not sure. He might have been. Sometime he is. But toward the end, he wasn’t.” He frowned. “I’m still trying to sort that one out. Dr. Fenshaw is helping me on that one.”
I said, “What about the girls?”
He took a deep breath and shifted in his chair. “I am really trying to be cooperative with Dr. Fenshaw on that one, too. But, thing is, I don’t know if anybody understands me, that there weren’t no girls.” He gazed out at the green lawn with the white figures. “Things happen that only I understand. I think that’s the same for everybody, but not everybody realizes it. That’s what makes me special.”
“There were no girls?”
“Everybody else thought there were. That’s the way they saw it. But when I was doing it…” He stared at me a moment, like he wasn’t sure if I knew what ‘doing it’ was. He glanced at Dehan. “You know, when I was helping her to understand, and get away from Samuel? There were no girls then. It was just me and Mom, and she was so relieved that I could help her.”
“I bet she was.”
“She told me she was. But then the problem came up with the girls. Seems every time I helped her, one of them girls got hurt. I don’t know how that happened. And it was the same in London, so there was something going on. I’m trying to help Dr. Fenshaw figure it out. That’s why I asked Dr. Fenshaw to help me.”
Dehan said, “I guess your Mom was a nurse.”
“Of course. That’s why it was always nurses. It goes back to them. Or I couldn’t have helped her. She never was able to help me. When Samuel came for us, in the dark, she could never help me. But I was able to help her. With my mind. I have a special mind. That was how I discovered the doors.”
I raised an eyebrow. “The Doors or Don McLean?”
He stared at me, blinking. Then he laughed. “You don’t understand. The doors in my mind. If I go through the doors, I can go to other places, and other people. So when he was hurting her, I could go through the door in my mind, and go inside her and stop the pain. Stop her from hurting. There were steps you have to follow. The most important one is to still the heart until he’s finished. But she could never help me to still my heart. Only I can do that. That’s why I had to go away. Cause nobody liked me doing that.”
“What about Don McLean?”
“That’s Samuel. He goes away and he comes back singing. That’s how you know he’s going to hurt you. He goes to see the boys, drinking whiskey and rye, and then he comes back singing, this’ll be the day that you die. That’s when I have to go through the doors. I don’t like talking about this.”
I glanced at Dehan, thinking I had seen all I needed to see, but before I could stand up, he started talking again.
“I had a sneaky way of getting out through the doors before he started hitting me. The belt was no good for me. He said that. It didn’t make me cry. That was because I’d gone through the door. So he used the buckle, ’cause that didn’t make me cry but it made Simon bleed.
“And while he was giving Simon the buckle, I could sneak through the door and go to help Mom. Cause she was always right there, on the floor. And I’d get to her before he did, through the door to get inside her and help her. Then he’d put his thing in her, but he said that was dangerous because it might make another little shit like Simon. So when he was finished, he would do things to stop that happening, like punch her. That’s why I had to take out her womb. Only till he’d finished beating her. First you still the heart, then you stop the seeing, by making the eyes dark, then take out the womb, so there are no more shits like Simon. Then you bring her to understanding, that it’s the song that’s warning her. When she hears the song, she has to do something to protect Simon. But it never works. It’s always a girl that gets hurt. That’s why I asked Dr. Fenshaw to help. I think he’s helping, but we’re still working on that one.”
I nodded. The shadows were growing long across the lawns. Up on the chimney, a blackbird had started its long, evening song. I wondered if it was the same one, following me around Britain. I said, “I’m sure he is, Simon. I’m sure things are getting better. Do you get many visitors?”
“No, never. Except the man, once. But I’m not allowed to talk about that.”
“The man? You mean Samuel?”
“No. Samuel is dead. Dr. Fenshaw told me Samuel is dead. The man was from the government. He told me I mustn’t ever talk about him, or what we discussed.”
I smiled, then gave a small laugh. “I bet that surprised you, right?”
He nodded cautiously.
I went on, “Not just getting the visit, which was unexpected, but that he should ask you all the same questions as Dr. Fenshaw, and then tell you it’s secret! Right? That doesn’t make much sense, does it?”
He shook his head. “Didn’t make no sense to me. But Dr. Fenshaw said it was OK.”
“Can you remember his name?”
“Peters. Dr. Peters.”
“OK, Simon, thank you very much. You have been very helpful to us. One last question before we leave you in peace. If I show you a photograph of Dr. Peters, would you recognize him?”
“Of course.”
I pulled out my wallet and saw Dehan frowning at me. I pulled out the photograph I’d had printed at the hotel and showed it to Simon. He nodded. “Yeah, that’s Dr. Peters.
I don’t know why he said the things he did.”
“Well, Simon. Sometimes people are too careful, but I can tell you that you no longer have to keep that a secret. You can tell anybody you like. I’m sure Dr. Fenshaw will say the same thing. You never told him about Dr. Peters’ secret questions, did you?”
He shook his head. “He told me not to.”
“That’s right.” I looked at Dehan. She shook her head that she had no questions—not for Simon at least—and we stood. “Take it easy, Simon.” I patted his shoulder and we went inside to look for Dr. Fenshaw.
We found him in his office, sitting behind his desk reading a file. He looked up and smiled. “Come in. Sit down. Was the interview helpful?”
We sat and while I scratched my chin, Dehan asked what I was about to ask. “Who is Dr. Peters?”
He frowned. “I don’t know any Dr. Peters.”
I said, “Let me ask you a different question. Who was Simon’s visitor?”
He went very still. “I am not in a position to answer that question.”
I grunted. “That’s what I thought you’d say.” I put the photograph on the desk and watched his face. “That’s him, right? It’s OK, Simon already identified him, but he identified him as Dr. Peters. Can you think why he would use a false name to talk to Simon?”
His expression became abstracted. He shook his head slowly, then blinked and shook it more vigorously. “I… Really, I am not in a position to answer that question. Especially as you have no jurisdiction in this country. Have an English detective come, with a warrant, and I will happily answer any questions you like.”
“I understand. Just answer me this, which I am pretty sure is not covered by any kind of privilege. It should be a matter of public record and I am pretty sure you don’t want a lot of cops, American or English, tramping around asking this kind of question—was he appointed by the court, did you choose him, or did he offer himself?”
He sighed heavily. “I certainly didn’t choose him. As to whether he was appointed by the judge or offered his services, I don’t know. It may have been a bit of both. It made sense, anyway, for obvious reasons.”