by Laura Wilson
‘I’m not!’
This was the nearest she’d come to the Monica he remembered. ‘Of course you’re not. Not really.’ I’d do anything for you, he thought, ruffling her hair.
‘Da-ad! Get off!’
‘Sorry.’
‘Now it’s all messy.’ Monica smoothed her long black waves.
‘No, it’s not.’ Stratton walked round the edge of the bed towards the rhubarb. ‘This really could have done with some manure,’ he said. ‘It should have been ready in March.’
Monica, joining him, eyed the clump critically. ‘It’s not pink enough,’ she said.
‘Not yet…You’ll miss Mrs Chetwynd, won’t you, love?’
Monica hesitated. ‘Well…’
‘It’s all right,’ said Stratton, deliberately not looking at her. ‘It would be odd if you didn’t.’
‘Yes. But we can write to her, can’t we?’
‘Course you can. And she’s invited you to stay in the holidays…It’s bound to be a bit strange at first, without your mum, but we’ll muddle along somehow, won’t we?’ When he’d prepared this in his mind, Stratton had thought he’d be able to say it naturally, but now he was aware of a note of entreaty in his tone that he hadn’t intended. For all the sensible grown-upness, Monica was still a child who had lost her mother, and he mustn’t burden her with responsibility for their fragile future happiness.
Still staring hard at the rhubarb, Monica said, ‘Yes, Dad.’
Stratton decided it was too soon to talk about Jenny – there was still too much rawness between them all. And God forbid that he should cry in front of them…For the time being, it was best left alone. And as for the brother or sister who’d died with Jenny, that, he thought, would be best not mentioned at all. Aside from Mrs Chetwynd, he’d told nobody about the baby. It was too much, somehow. He needed to contain it within himself. He looked down at Monica. I mustn’t burden her, he thought, and I shan’t. Not now, not ever.
Sixty-Nine
On the way to work the following morning, Stratton found himself noticing a girl’s legs for the first time in months. It was entirely instinctive – a reflex – but, catching himself doing it, he felt uncomfortable and slightly guilty. Not because it was a sign that he was forgetting Jenny – after all, he’d done it often enough while she was there and thought nothing of it – but because it was a sign of his being alive when she wasn’t. And – the realisation brought Stratton to a halt – it was the first time he could remember in months that the underlying feeling, now always with him, of anger and bitterness, had seemed to abate. He’d worked hard to keep it at bay, and yet, at the same time, he cherished it, knowing that it was that hard core inside him, even more than the children, that was keeping him going. At times, when he woke up in the night and lay rigid, staring into the dark, the rage seemed to fill his mind so completely, and with such ferocity, that there was no room for conscious thought. Sometimes it happened during the day, as well. He knew he must keep it in check, yet, standing in the street, he clutched it back to him in a physical movement, clenching his fists, knowing that he could not manage without it.
Mrs Ingram had been judged unfit to plead and incarcerated in Broadmoor. Doug Watson, the DI from Tottenham, had been apologetic about this, but Stratton had decided that it was probably for the best. Despite his feelings, simple humanity told him that it would be both senseless and barbaric to hang a woman so obviously deranged, and besides, it wouldn’t bring Jenny back…
It was bad enough that Reg, despite repeated warnings from Donald, had persisted, for several months afterwards, in reminding them all of how he’d said that Mrs Ingram might be dangerous. Eventually, he seemed to understand how close he was coming to losing his teeth, and shut up about it…And it was hard for Doris, too, because she’d lost not only her sister but her best friend. How many times, when Jenny was alive, had he walked into a room and found the pair of them in peals of laughter, wiping their eyes?
He’d been more grateful than he could ever have expressed for Donald’s – largely unspoken – support in the last nine months, the trips to the pub and the visits to White Hart Lane to watch football on his rare Saturdays off.
Sergeant Ballard, too, had been rock-like, patient, unintrusive, and picking up the slack without fuss. It was he who had searched the room at Eversholt Street – to no avail, as ‘Dacre’ had fled, leaving no trace – and who had visited Beatrice Dacre at Norbury to enquire about her son. This had yielded the information that the person who had visited her, claiming to be a school friend of her son, and walked away with the real James Dacre’s certificates, had called himself Norman Thomas. Enquiries at the local school – which had taken some time, since it was still evacuated and the records had to be traced to a dusty basement in the town hall – hadn’t turned up anyone of that name, and, of the register for Dacre’s year, all were accounted for. The boy that Beatrice Dacre had picked out of the class photograph turned out to be one John Walter Strang, who had drowned off the Kent coast in September 1932. Stratton would have let it go at that, despite the coincidence of their middle names – he’d seen the class photograph, and the boy, his face partially covered by a pulled-down school cap, and partly by shadow, could have been anyone – but Ballard, acting on his own initiative, had followed it up and discovered that, although a death certificate had been issued, no body had ever been recovered from the sea.
If John Walter Strang hadn’t died, he certainly had disappeared – his mother, who they had traced from 7 Ena Road, Norbury, to an address in Henley-on-Thames where she was living as a paying guest, believed him dead, and, when Ballard had visited her, had seemed genuinely puzzled by their questions. She’d given them a photograph of her son as a boy, but, although there was some resemblance, it could – in the phrase they seemed to keep coming back to – ‘have been anyone’. Ballard had reported to Stratton that Mrs Strang seemed to find it difficult to describe her son, other than to explain that the family had lost all their money but that he had retained ‘ideas above his station’. The sergeant’s observation about the woman – that she seemed to accept her descent down the social and economic ladder with a sort of miserable satisfaction – was, Stratton thought, a lot more revealing. As for his description of her jigsaw puzzle, which she was completing with all the pieces turned face down so as not to have the advantage of seeing areas of colour or the outlines of forms…it was as good a symbol of a resolutely joyless existence as he’d ever come across. Unfortunately, as Strang’s father was dead, and he had no siblings, and apparently no other relatives than an aunt and uncle in Canada, there was no-one else to ask.
As for ‘Dr Dacre’, he’d disappeared from the Middlesex Hospital as suddenly as he had from his lodgings. At the hospital, general disbelief (the consensus amongst the staff was that he’d been rather good), gave way first to red faces (the staff quickly revising their opinion of him), followed by acrimony and a lot of hasty arse-covering. Fay, who’d been released without charge by an exasperated DCI Lamb, and gone home to her parents, had, when questioned, denied any knowledge of the man’s whereabouts.
Colonel Forbes-James, who Stratton had telephoned on his return to work, had told him that the description he’d given of ‘Dacre’ appeared to correspond with that of one John Watson, who had worked at the Ministry of Health as a clerk to the National Register from October 1939 to January 1941. He had then left, ‘apparently under something of a cloud’, and had not been heard of since. As Forbes-James pointed out, this would certainly have given him the opportunity to pocket blank identity cards, and Stratton wouldn’t have minded betting that was exactly what he’d done.
DCI Lamb had asked him, when he’d returned to work, if he wished to remain on the investigations, and Stratton had said that he did. But as far as ‘Dacre’ was concerned, the trail had gone cold, and the enquiries into the deaths of Reynolds and Leadbetter were no better. At first, the shock of Jenny’s death had consumed him entirely, so that he could not think of anyth
ing else, and then came the rage which churned within him, the tight knots in his chest and stomach, the taste of bile in his mouth, any possible outlet dammed up by the utter lack of progress on the cases. Stratton wasn’t sure how much he blamed Dacre, or for what, and these considerations took him round in ever tighter, more bitter circles, so that he couldn’t tell who he hated more, Dacre or himself. Ballard certainly thought that the imposter had killed all three people at the hospital, but Stratton no longer trusted his own professional judgement where Dacre was concerned. All he knew was that he could have no peace until he found the man.
When he arrived home that evening, there was a letter sitting on the kitchen table next to a plate of salad. It was after ten, and Stratton had just returned after a long, dispiriting day. The children, as usual when he worked late, were sleeping at Doris’s, and there was nothing to welcome him but the cold supper left by Lilian, for which he had no appetite. Pushing it aside, he set the kettle on to boil and slit open the envelope.
Inside was a single sheet of paper, dated the previous day, with no address and no signature.
Dear Mr Stratton,
I am sure it will come as quite a surprise, my writing to you after such a long time, but I have long wished to tell you that I am sincerely sorry for what happened, and it is only now that I have felt able to set pen to paper. I did all I could to save Mrs Stratton. I cannot suppose it will be of much consolation, but I have spent some time in studying the treatment of wounds similar to those your wife received, and I truly believe that I could not have done more without the aid afforded by a hospital.
In spite of our hasty exchange, you are, doubtless, wondering how I happened to be at the Rest Centre at that particular time. The cause of it was my desire to speak to you personally about Nurse Marchant. I saw you escort her from the Middlesex, and was concerned that she would be charged with stealing the morphine. I can assure you that she had nothing to do with it: the fault was mine, and only mine. Fay Marchant is entirely innocent of any wrongdoing.
My reading on the subject of mental illness leads me to suspect that your wife’s assailant, Mrs Ingram, was, at that particular time, suffering from a form of delusion. Before you arrived, she told me she believed that her husband had been replaced by an imposter. She thought that Mrs Stratton, yourself, and your sister- and brother-in-law, were working as part of a conspiracy against her. I am afraid that, by telling her that you were a policeman (which she appeared not to have known before), I unwittingly reinforced this idea. I have seen this type of acutely confused state identified as Capgras Delusion or Syndrome. It is, mercifully, rare.
Words cannot express how much I regret that I was unable to save Mrs Stratton. Please believe that, despite what I said to you when we parted, I acted in good faith.
The envelope was stamped Northampton…. by telling her that you were a policeman…I unwittingly reinforced this idea. The sentence jumped out from the rest of the words as if it had been written in scarlet. It was all his fault. If Dacre, or whoever the bastard was, hadn’t told Mrs Ingram that he was a policeman, Jenny might still be alive. Mrs Ingram had had the knife with her, Dacre had said so, and Doris had confirmed that it was one of Jenny’s, but she wouldn’t have been so quick to act…He could have reasoned with her, overpowered her, taken the knife away…Except that he’d been too busy trying to arrest bloody Dacre, hadn’t he? The recollection of those frantic minutes came back to him as strongly and horribly as if they’d happened yesterday, and he sunk his head in his hands and groaned.
The kettle shrieked, and he got up and made tea like an automaton, scarcely registering what he was doing. I must find him, he thought. Whatever happens, I’ve got to find him.
Seventy
The Yard’s fingerprint men, acting at top speed for one of their own, came up with nothing from the letter, but the handwriting expert compared it to a sample of Dacre’s notes from the Middlesex Casualty Department, and to a sample of Todd’s writing, obtained from the mortuary records, and declared all three to be by the same author. Mrs Dacre, unfortunately, had destroyed the letter written to her by ‘Norman Thomas’ so there was nothing available for comparison there.
The following afternoon Stratton was trying to finish a report on a gang robbery at a jeweller’s shop, during which the owner and his wife had been tied up and menaced with guns. He’d been at it for ages, but his mind kept drifting back to Dacre’s letter. Finally, he gave up on the report, took the piece of paper out of his drawer, and read it again. He must try to stand back from it – pretend he wasn’t involved. Emotion, however justified, only served to cloud things. What could he glean from the letter?
Firstly, that Dacre was moved to write to him: partly because of Jenny, and perhaps because he felt some sort of connection to Stratton himself. God knows, thought Stratton, I feel one with him – or I would if I knew who the hell he was. He came to kill me but he saved me when he deflected that madwoman’s knife and bound up my arm. Had the doctor’s instinct taken over? After all, he’d stayed to try and save Jenny, hadn’t he? But it wasn’t the instinct of a doctor that had brought him to the Rest Centre. The letter said that his initial motivation was to exonerate Fay Marchant, so he obviously cared for her. But – Stratton’s pencil skated across the paper as his hand tried to keep pace with his thoughts – he didn’t care enough to come forward later when, for all he knew, Fay could have been languishing in Holloway prison. So, he cared about Fay, but his urge to flee was greater. Stratton spent several minutes wondering if Dacre felt guilty about that. After all, he must realise that there was no actual proof, and the penalty for stealing drugs, while severe – she certainly couldn’t have carried on nursing – was not fatal…
Stratton paused to reread the letter…. I have spent some time in studying the treatment of wounds similar to those your wife received, and I truly believe that I could not have done more without the aid afforded by a hospital.
That was professional pride. He minded what Stratton thought of him – didn’t want Jenny’s death to reflect on his competence. He’d written I could not have done more not ‘a qualified physician could not have done more’. Had he come to believe that he truly was a doctor? Or was he just unprepared to admit that he was a fraud?
Stratton tapped the end of the pencil against his mouth. In the next part, there was the business of saying what he thought was wrong with Mrs Ingram. I have seen this type of acutely confused state identified as Capgras Delusion or Syndrome…Why the hell should I want to know what you think was wrong with her, thought Stratton. ‘Can’t resist showing off knowledge’, he wrote. But surely that type of stuff wouldn’t be in an ordinary medical textbook, would it? Delusions were the province of trick-cyclists.
Where would he have come across such knowledge? Could he be a patient in a mental hospital? After all, Dacre, in his own way, was just as mad as Mrs Ingram. That was the obvious solution…But, Stratton felt, not the right one. After all, Dacre had fooled the staff at the Middlesex, hadn’t he? Fooled Stratton, too, if it came to that. And he’d felt secure enough to write the letter – if not to sign it – and was keen to present the best possible view of himself: the conscientious, knowledgeable physician. He must have found a new role somewhere. And if you’d spent your life fooling people, you must, like any confidence trickster, be a dab hand at working out how others ticked. My reading on the subject of mental illness…That suggested an interest in the subject, didn’t it?
Stratton wrote a final sentence and then began to recap what he knew, scribbling down the names in order:
John Walter Strang, schoolboy (to September 1932)
John Watson, clerk to Nat. Register (Oct 1939 to Jan 1941)
Sam Todd, mortuary attendant (April 1944 to June 1944)
Norman Thomas (name on letter to Mrs Dacre – used before?)
James Walter Dacre, doctor (July 1944 to August 1944)
There was no particular pattern, just a lot of gaps. If all these were the same person, what had
he been doing between the time of his ‘death’ in September 1932 and October 1939, and from January 1941 to April 1944? During the latter period, he’d have needed an identity card in order to obtain a ration book, although both, as Stratton well knew, could be obtained off the back of the same lorry as everything else, if you had the money. In terms of status and salary, it was definitely an upward progression. Knowing enough of such people to realise that such knowledge as they gained was rarely, if ever, wasted, Stratton was wondering whether, at this moment, in a hospital somewhere in England – Northampton? – there was a doctor who wasn’t all that he seemed…
Satisfied with his deduction, he was about to pick up the robbery report once more – Lamb had been making noises about why it, and a host of other reports about black market whisky, cigarettes, hams and the rest weren’t on his desk – when Ballard stuck his head round the door. ‘Cup of tea, sir?’
‘Thanks. Come and sit down for a minute. I’ve been looking at this,’ he brandished the letter, ‘and I’ve had an idea. I think we ought to be looking at asylums.’
‘You think he’s a mental patient?’
Stratton shook his head. ‘I think he’s become another type of doctor. A psychiatrist.’
‘Why? If you don’t mind my asking, sir.’
For answer, Stratton pushed his notes across the table and talked the sergeant through each point.
Ballard looked dubious. ‘The only thing is, sir, that he must have known about James Dacre, mustn’t he? That he’d died, I mean. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have gone to see the mother like that. That’s why I thought it must be Strang. If he’d wanted to take another doctor’s identity, he’d have to find one first, wouldn’t he? To know of one who’d died, I mean. Do you think he killed Reynolds in order to take the position at the Middlesex, sir? It would make sense.’
