by Evelyn James
O’Harris’ hand clasped tightly to Clara’s. She rested her other hand on his hunched shoulders and rubbed them gently.
“This is not over, not yet. I do not believe Peterson killed that woman. Events today have made me certain of that.”
“Events? What has happened?” A flicker of hope came into O’Harris’ eyes, enough to make Clara wish she had not said anything, she was still far from resolving this case.
“It is not something to worry about…” she began.
“Clara, what happened?” O’Harris insisted. “You have to tell me.”
Clara sighed.
“I was threatened by a thug in the alley where the woman died. He seemed very concerned I should not be looking at the scene of the crime.”
“You were threatened, are you all right?” O’Harris instantly became concerned.
“I am absolutely fine, but there is something going on in that neighbourhood and I think that was the reason why that woman died. I am also certain she did not die at the hands of Peterson.”
“I should come with you when you investigate further,” O’Harris quickly added. “I shall not have people threatening you!”
Clara gently smiled, touched by his concern. She brushed a hand against his cheek.
“I know,” she said softly. “But you cannot be part of my investigation. The Inspector has made that plain. Your presence could compromise Peterson if this ends up going to court.”
“I don’t understand, how could I compromise him?” O’Harris’ eyes burned with intensity and he set his lips into a firm line.
“Because you naturally wish to see him proven innocent. You are biased towards him, of course you are, that is not a criticism, just an observation. The Inspector feels if you were to be involved in my investigation, and this matter was to end up in a court of law, a cunning prosecution counsel could argue any evidence I gathered was biased in Peterson’s favour and have it dismissed.”
“I would never do that. I will be completely neutral!”
“I know,” Clara told him, squeezing his hand. “But the prosecution would attack your involvement nonetheless. For the sake of Peterson, and for the future of your convalescence home, you must keep your distance from my investigation. I shall regularly inform you of what is happening, of course.”
O’Harris groaned, despair coming over him again.
“I don’t know how much longer this can be kept from the newspapers. I saw Gilbert McMillan sniffing around the hospital.”
“I shall have a word with him,” Clara promised. “He owes me a favour or two.”
“This is going to come out eventually,” O’Harris said miserably. “I have had to explain what has gone on to the men and staff, it was only fair. They have seen the police on the doorstep and noticed the absence of Peterson.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That Peterson had been stabbed and that he was in the hospital. That a woman had also been stabbed and Peterson could not remember a thing about the incident. I didn’t add that the police were considering him a suspect,” O’Harris rubbed a hand over his eyes wearily. “I may need to now.”
“Say nothing that you do not know to be completely true,” Clara told him firmly. “You do not know that Peterson hurt that woman and whatever the police are speculating you must stick only to the absolute facts. Peterson was stabbed, a woman was stabbed. That is all you know for sure, and that is all you will say.”
“They’ll learn the truth eventually,” O’Harris protested.
“You think Peterson guilty?”
“No!”
“Then the truth they will eventually learn is that he was wrongly accused of this crime committed by someone else,” Clara pointed out. “You are slipping into despair. Give me a chance to resolve this.”
O’Harris looked at her and gave out a shaky sigh.
“I am not handling this well.”
“How are you supposed to handle this?” Clara asked him curiously. “This is a unique and difficult situation. Do not criticise yourself so harshly.”
Annie appeared with her consolation tea, which consisted of a strong brew laced with a lot of sugar and a drop of brandy, accompanied by a large slice of cake. Cake made everything better, in Annie’s professional opinion. She placed the tray of items before O’Harris and pressed the cup of tea into his hands.
“I want to see Private Peterson,” she said suddenly, her face hard and holding back a lot of emotion.
“Annie…”
“No, Clara, I want to see him. I like Peterson. He has attended every one of my cookery classes and he has an exceptional talent for fine pastry,” Annie said this fast before she could be contradicted. “I want to see him and find out what all this confession nonsense is about.”
“Maybe you will have better luck than me,” O’Harris sipped his tea. “He won’t speak to me.”
“Annie…” Clara tried again.
“Don’t try to persuade me out of it!” Annie said quickly, her voice trembling a little.
“I wasn’t going to,” Clara lightly laughed. “I was going to say I think that might be a good idea. Peterson needs to know he has friends who are looking out for him. He might also be more willing to explain himself to you, than to me or O’Harris. I barely know him, and he needs a friend right now.”
Annie relaxed, her shoulders sinking as the tension slipped from her body.
“He is a good lad,” Annie persisted. “Quiet, a little shy, haunted, no doubt, but he has a good heart. I won’t have anyone say otherwise. I don’t think he would hurt a soul willingly. I think it was because they made him fight and shoot people in the war that he is so damaged now. They broke his soul, Clara, and that is not easy to fix.”
Clara found herself touched by Annie’s insight and her staunch defence of Peterson. Annie saw things as they were, and when you won her loyalty – which was not easy to do – you had it for life. To have Annie so convinced Peterson was innocent made Clara even more certain he had done nothing wrong.
“I am going to find out the real culprit of this crime,” Clara told both Annie and O’Harris. “I swear to that. Peterson just has to be patient and wait for me to do what I can. Please explain that to him Annie.”
“I will,” Annie promised.
“Tell him, I am on his side too,” O’Harris added. “I believe he is innocent and would not hurt a woman. I do not think he has suddenly regained his memory and discovered himself a killer. I think he has been made to feel guilty and confess.”
“The Inspector would not do that,” Clara said, feeling she should defend Park-Coombs.
“Maybe not on purpose, but something has pressed Peterson into making this statement,” O’Harris was less sympathetic to the police. “Park-Coombs has always had one eye on the home, thinking the men there are dangerous. When he arrived on my doorstep to tell me about Peterson, I saw it in his eyes that he felt he had been proved right.”
“You are judging him too cruelly,” Clara countered. “Park-Coombs may have his faults, but he would not wish ill on your men. And he would not like to think one of them was a killer. He is looking into this matter thoroughly, don’t worry.”
“You have your opinion of him, I have mine,” O’Harris said coldly. “Now, I want to know you will be safe in your investigations, Clara. Will Tommy go with you from now on?”
Tommy had been loitering behind the sofa, listening to the conversation but with nothing of his own to add.
“What is this?” He asked.
“Clara told me someone threatened her today,” O’Harris said.
“Clara!” Tommy reacted with alarm.
Clara inwardly groaned; this was why she did not tell them about such things.
“There was a slight incident, but I handled it,” she said. “In any case, Park-Coombs has assigned me a police constable to accompany me during my investigations.”
“Who?” O’Harris demanded.
“Sarah Butler,” Clara said, f
eeling he was being over-protective. She appreciated his concern, but she was able to look out for herself and make decisions over her own safety.
“Sarah is a woman!” Tommy said loudly.
“Your observational skills are truly improving,” Clara replied coolly. “Sarah is also trained in self-defence and is mean with a truncheon. To top it off, men always underestimate women and that leads to their downfall.”
Her last comment was pointed and shut Tommy up. O’Harris looked less convinced.
“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” he took Clara’s hand in both of his. “A woman is already dead, I couldn’t bear it if you came to any harm.”
“Then you are in luck, for I don’t intend anything to happen to me,” Clara responded. “Sarah is going to be watching my back and I am not so bad at looking out for myself. I have ruffled some feathers and that is good news. It means I am heading in the right direction.”
O’Harris lowered his eyes from hers. He looked drained.
“Go home,” Clara told him. “Get some rest and have faith in me.”
“I trust you Clara,” O’Harris said in a voice barely above a whispered. “Please, solve this. For Peterson, and for the rest of us.”
Chapter Sixteen
Captain O’Harris’ arrival had delayed Clara, not that she would begrudge him her time, it just meant that she arrived at the Institute only a few minutes before it was due to close its doors to the public. The door porter was reluctant to let her see Professor Montgomery and it took some persuading to convince him to ring the academic and see if he would make time for Clara.
“He has to think about his dinner,” the porter grumbled as he picked up the telephone. “It gets served at half-six prompt.”
Clara was sure, if it was necessary, the kitchen staff at the institute would keep a plate aside for the professor, though she didn’t say it. Like a university, the institute incorporated several buildings for accommodating both students and their tutors. Most of the higher staff, and certainly the professors, had suites of rooms on site. It was essential, as otherwise they would have to find accommodation further afield and would have the complication of travelling back and forth to the Institute each day. It was a self-contained world. A vast refectory enabled students and academics to have their meals without leaving the grounds. It was easy to see how Professor Lynch had been able to exist within the walls of the Institute and never stray further away. It was also possible to see how this had enabled him to mask his illness from his colleagues.
The porter finished his phone call and turned back to Clara. In a begrudging fashion, he said;
“Professor Montgomery says he will see you. You can go up at once, you know the way.”
The porter than removed himself from his little office and made a point of locking the front doors. Clara left him to it, heading upstairs to see the professor.
Montgomery was pouring over paperwork as she knocked on his open door. He waved her in.
“You have news?” He said, as Clara closed the door behind her.
“A little, but it will not cheer you,” Clara explained, approaching his desk and taking the chair before it. “Professor Lynch’s old doctor is still alive and remembers his patient well.”
“Old Dr Finnigan is still going?” Professor Montgomery said with some surprise. “I thought he must have died years ago. He was a good friend to Professor Lynch. Took care of him right up to the end. What did he have to say?”
“In the opinion of Dr Finnigan, there was nothing about Professor Lynch’s manner in his final days to suggest he had lost his rationality,” Clara explained carefully. “His last sickness would not have caused mental decay either. According to Dr Finnigan, Professor Lynch was as sane on his last day as he had ever been.”
Professor Montgomery fell silent; that was not the news he had wanted to hear.
“Did he say anything else?” He asked, a faint hint of hopefulness in his tone.
“He did. Professor Lynch had suffered a debilitating digestive complaint most his life, which he had managed to hide from everyone until his final sickness. This condition caused Lynch a lot of misery and suffering. Dr Finnigan feels he turned to astrology to find a way to carry on through this hardship. It gave him the sort of strength others find through God,” Clara paused. “I don’t think you can judge that as an act of insanity. Rather, it was Professor Lynch’s attempt to find some sort of reason for his sickness. He was trying to make peace with his suffering.”
Montgomery was silent a while.
“I always suspected that Professor Lynch was unwell long before he was confined by his final illness, but he never confided in me. If I ever asked him, he informed me he was quite all right,” he said. “There were little things, times when he seemed to lose weight and looked very pale and sickly, but he never missed a lecture, at least not until his last year. We all have periods of sickness and you don’t tend to think about it being something serious. I suppose I was always very busy, too.”
“Professor Lynch did not want you to know about his condition,” Clara explained to him. “You were not being negligent as a colleague and friend, not when he preferred people not to know. He didn’t want sympathy, he just wanted to get on with his life.”
“Did he suffer a lot?” Professor Montgomery asked, his voice tight in his throat.
“Dr Finnigan said that, sadly, at times he did suffer greatly. The fact he carried on at all is quite remarkable.”
“He never ate his meals in the refectory,” Montgomery recalled. “And he would never accept an invitation to a private dinner in someone’s rooms. He said he liked to eat alone, it aided his digestion.”
“And it prevented you seeing the struggles he had with his stomach,” Clara nodded. “But, I think all this secrecy ate away at him. He began to wonder why he had been cursed with this complaint. It is a natural thing, we all have done it when some misfortune occurs to us. We ask why we were singled out for this bad luck and not someone else.
“For Professor Lynch, finding an answer that brought him some sort of comfort, required turning from the foundations of his scientific background and moving into astrology. He saw a pattern to the stars that made him feel better, made him think there was a rhyme and reason to it all.”
“And the prophecies?” Montgomery asked.
“They gave him hope. Despite all his sickness, I don’t think Professor Lynch wanted to imagine he was dying. The astrological charts suggested he would recover and thrive; that enabled him to endure. Professor Lynch’s life revolved around the stars in the night sky and they were what he turned to when he needed hope.”
Professor Montgomery took this all in with a great deal of thought.
“Then, he was not mad, as such, deluded, perhaps,” he said
“I would rather say it was a sort of desperation, a way of being able to keep going. At the end of the day, that has been the purpose of superstition and belief throughout human history. When the scientific world failed Professor Lynch, he needed to find something to comfort him,” Clara hoped she was explaining her point successfully to Professor Montgomery, she sensed he was not a man to understand belief of any sort easily. It was not a part of his mental make-up. “I’m afraid this does not assist us with the prophecy box. Proving that Professor Lynch was perfectly sane, if misguided, when he constructed it, does not change anything.”
“Yes,” Professor Montgomery said thoughtfully. “What do you suggest?”
“That is quite difficult under the circumstances,” Clara said carefully, knowing that what she was about to propose was not going to go down well. “My feeling is that we should endeavour to open the box ourselves, to preview its contents. It is the only way we can make a true decision on what to do next.”
“Mr McGhie would never allow it, nor the bursar,” Professor Montgomery shook his head.
“That was why I am proposing we open the box without their knowledge,” Clara explained.
Professor Mon
tgomery was surprised by the idea and that left him temporarily speechless. He stared at Clara as if she had just suggested they make a trip to the moon and back before supper.
“You mean, steal it from the library?” The academic muttered uneasily, dropping his voice as if there might be someone listening to them.
“It would not be stealing if I had your permission. Your authority overrides that of the librarian and the bursar, it also can countermand the request of a dead man. For the sake of appearances, it would be best if the box was opened at night when the librarian was not present.”
“Then there is an element of subterfuge in this?” Montgomery seemed amazed at the thought. “And if we succeed and learn the contents of the box, what then?”
“That is the problem you have been faced with since you hired me. You wanted me to discover what was in that box, so you could then decide how to handle matters. You hoped I could prove Professor Lynch insane, and thus get you off the hook for making a decision, but things are not going to be that easy,” Clara knew she was being blunt, but there was little other option. Professor Montgomery had few choices left and that she had to make plain. “Once you know the contents of the box, you can make a wiser decision. Maybe there will be something inside that will warrant a grand opening, such as a new scientific discovery Lynch made in his final days.”
Montgomery’s eyes widened as such a possibility embedded its way into his brain.
“You mean, maybe he identified a new star and wrote about it, but did not have the strength to reveal his discovery publicly?” Montgomery gasped, such a notion would warrant the full attention of the press and the authorities. “But why hide it in a box for twenty years?”
“To create a legacy? A means to be remembered by?” Clara shrugged. “Why supposedly write prophecies and hide them for twenty years? I think it safe to say we cannot know what was going through Professor Lynch’s mind in those last days.”
