“How long would it take?”
“Between one and two hours, I should think. If you are interested in doing it tonight,” I said, shifting gently from the conditional and vague to a future and definite, “you ought to have something to eat first, and use the lavatory.” I could see the simple details reassure her further.
“Tommy—Mr O’Rourke—is bringing some sandwiches. We were going for a picnic supper,” she said noncommittally.
“I could come back tomorrow, if you like.”
“No, it’s all right. Actually, you’ve got me interested in it.”
Mr Tommy O’Rourke arrived early with sandwiches and fizzy lemonade and an expression of deep mistrust when he saw me. By this time, Miss Chessman’s apprehension had given way to a degree of enthusiasm, and she explained and chattered in between bites. I turned down the offer of food, took some coffee when it was made, and then sat down to explain the process so they would both know what to expect. When I finished, Miss Chessman excused herself for a moment and left the room.
“How do you feel about all this, Mr O’Rourke?” I asked.
“D’you know, I think it may be a good idea. She’s in a real state about it all, and I think…well, if she could feel she had helped some, instead of blaming herself for not being able to help, she’d feel…I don’t know. She hasn’t been sleeping at all well, I don’t think.” He was incoherent, but his concern was unmistakable.
“You understand that she may, to a certain extent, relive the accident? That she may go through the horror again, but I’ll help her to lay it to rest, and you mustn’t interrupt? It could be hard on her to be interrupted just then.”
“I understand. Do I need to sit in the corner or anything?”
“Small noises and movements will not distract her, but please don’t address her directly unless I ask you to.
“So, Miss Chessman, all ready? You will need to be comfortable. Lie down if you like, or sit in a chair that supports your head fully. Yes, that should be fine. A pillow, perhaps? Good. Shoes off? No? Very well.” My voice became gentle, unobtrusive, and rhythmical.
“As I said, Miss Chessman, the idea of the exercise is to allow you a certain amount of distance between the world around you and the world you carry within you. We do this by steps, ten of them, by counting backwards from ten. Each of the ten steps takes you a bit futher down into yourself, and when we come back up, we reverse the process. At ten, you are fully alert, relaxed, your eyes are open, and you can talk normally. Further down, between approximately six and three, or two, you may find speech inconvenient, distracting. In that case, if I ask you a question, I should like you to raise this finger, just slightly, to indicate yes”—I touched her right forefinger—“and this finger, just slightly, to signal no.” I touched her left forefinger. “Do that now, please, for yes. That’s right. And for no. Good. We are at ten now, all ten fingers relaxed and warm. You may leave your eyes open if you wish, or close them at any time. It does not matter in the least, though many people find it helpful to concentrate on a single object” (…one pink plaster rose on a pale yellow ceiling…) “as they walk down the ten steps. Noises from the room or your body’s little reactions will not distract you, just nudge you a bit further towards the next step. We are at ten now, like your ten fingers, I want you to feel them one at a time as I count them, beginning with one.” I touched the last knuckle of each finger in a slow cadence, numbering each one in turn, but I broke the rhythm after nine. An instant after I should have touched the last finger, it twitched ever so slightly, and I smiled to myself. This lady would not only walk through a fountain; she would probably undress first if I asked her. Intelligent, well-defended people are often the easiest to manipulate. I made a mental note to add a caution before I brought her back up from the trance.
“Very well, you are now fully relaxed, and you understand what we’re doing, and in fact, when we’re finished, you’ll be able to do it all yourself. It’s actually a very useful thing to know—for when you’re going to the dentist, especially. I once had nine teeth worked on, and by walking down the steps first, I didn’t have to be bothered by the discomfort; I could answer the dentist’s questions, and afterwards I didn’t have any pain, because my body had already acknowledged it. So you can see what a useful thing it is, and very easy, really, you’ve already made the step to nine, a small step, very easy, wasn’t it? Just that bit more relaxed, your hands feel a bit heavier—feel your thumb joint, how heavy it is?—heavy and warm, even the tips of your fingers, down to nine, just under the surface now, and your face is beginning to relax now, your eyes and your mouth, like the feeling you get after a day of physical work, when you can sit back and relax, very tired, but a good tired, a satisfying tired, a tired that you feel at eight o’clock at night, in front of a warm fire with a hot drink, after eight hours out in the fresh air, but it’s evening now, and you can relax and be satisfied.”
Hypnotism is all rhythm and sensitivity, and I guided her down, never taking my eyes from her, never mentioning the night we were aiming for, always building her confidence and relaxation. In twenty minutes, we had passed through the yawning and twitching phases and were at four. Her eyes had fluttered closed. Tommy O’Rourke had not moved.
“Four, a nice balanced number, four limbs, four corners to a square. A dog has four legs, and I’d like you to do something in a minute, with your right hand, as we move down to three, only three steps now, three points in a triangle.” I talked about three for a while; then, when she was firmly settled, I said, “I’d like you to make your right thumb meet your right middle finger in a circle, but you don’t want to rouse yourself to do it; you want to let the two fingers do it, let the two tips of the two fingers come together all by themselves because it’s the most natural thing for them to do. You can feel how they want to touch, can’t you, if you just allow them. Just think about how it would feel to make a circle with those two fingers.”
I spoke very slowly now, increasing the silences between the phrases. I was myself more than halfway into a trance, and as I spoke, I could hear another voice in my ear, saying the words I was about to pronounce, a woman’s light voice with a slight German accent, speaking to a severely traumatised adolescent whose problems were considerably greater than those of Sarah Chessman’s. The voice in my mind fell silent, and I stopped talking for a minute and watched the beginnings of the involuntary muscle control in her hand, jerky at first, as her unconscious mind took control of the muscles of the thumb and finger and brought them together, slowly, inexorably, into the light joining that would be like an iron link to pull apart. O’Rourke watched the eerie movements, and I felt his eyes on me, but I had no attention to spare him, and he subsided again into his chair.
“There is now a circle, one circle, and you can feel it now, one deep, quiet circle of now and then, and you can look into this circle because you are in it, and it is in you, this one circle, and you are on the bottom step, and that is as far as we can go now, and you are free to talk as you want and think as you want, and whenever you are here, you need feel only safe and sure of yourself, and nobody can touch you here; no one can ever ask you to do anything you don’t want to. It’s your step, Sarah, yours alone, and now you’ve found it, you can come back to it anytime you want, but just now, let’s explore a bit, if you want to, and you can tell me all about the dinner you ate two weeks ago, on Tuesday night it was, you remember. It was a nice dinner, wasn’t it, and if you want to tell me, I’d like to hear about it.”
Her mouth made a kind of chewing motion two or three times, as if tasting the words, and then she spoke, her voice low and flat, slow at first, but quite clear.
“Tuesday night, we went to Matty’s house for dinner. I wore my blue dress and we took a taxi because it isn’t far and it was raining.” She was launched, and she continued on in monotonous detail until I finally eased her out of Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, then the afternoon.
“And now it’s Wednesday evening. Y
ou’ve come home from work, and Tommy’s coming to pick you up at—what time did he say?”
“Half seven. We’re going to a posh restaurant to celebrate our six-month anniversary, and there’s a flaming pudding at the next table, so I order that, and Tommy orders champers.” I let her go on again for some time before giving another touch to the reins of her narrative.
“And now it’s later, and you’re leaving the restaurant, and you’re full of lovely food and happy with Tommy, and where do you go?” My voice was light and calm. O’Rourke, across the room, was beginning to tense up, but she was not; deep in the hypnotic state, she did not anticipate anything.
“We walk to the pub where we met, back in February, and we see some friends who got married in June and we go to their house and laugh and drink and Solly has some great new records from America and we dance and then the neighbours pound on the floor and we have to leave.”
“And you set off walking and you’re humming the music, aren’t you? And you’re still dancing along, and you love Tommy and the feel of your arm in his, and you cuddle a bit here and there because there’s no one on the street, and in the light from the streetlamp Tommy sees a pot of red flowers up under somebody’s window….”
“And he starts to climb up the drainpipe to get me one, and I say, ‘Oh, Tommy, don’t do that, silly boy. Stop it. There’s somebody coming and she—’”
It came upon her as suddenly as it had that night, and she went rigid, her mouth and eyes staring wide, and I went down beside her and spoke forcibly (The sound of the voice with the German accent was deafening. Surely she couldn’t hear me over it; surely O’Rourke would stand up and come over and demand to know who it was saying, “Mary, your clever eyes can remember—”), into her ear.
“Tommy can’t see, Sarah, but you can; your clever eyes can remember—it’s like something in a cinema house, isn’t it, on the screen, but slowed down, no more real than that, a car on the screen, coming out of the darkness and hitting her and tumbling her around, and it drives around the corner and then that dirty-looking beggarman stands up and he moves and he does something. He does something; he bends down and he is doing something with his hands. What is he doing, Sarah?”
“He…He…stands up. He isn’t old. Why did I think he was old? He stands up like a young man and he goes to the pillar-box and he has…he has something in his hand. He has a pair of scissors in his hand, and he bends down, and then he…he’s winding yarn into a ball, and he picks up his briefcase that’s lying on the street and he turns his back on the…on that…She’s not dead; she just moved. Tommy, she just moved, and the man walks off. He turns and sees us and he starts to run and the car is waiting for him and the door is open, someone in the front seat is leaning back to hold it open, a small person, wearing…I can’t see, but he falls into the car, the back seat, and it starts driving away while his leg is still out of it, and then the door swings shut and the car is gone around the corner, and we go and see, but she’s dead now. Oh God, how horrible, she’s dead, oh God.”
“Sarah,” I interrupted, “the car, Sarah, look at the car going around the corner. What are the numbers on the registration plate at the back of the car?”
“That’s funny, isn’t it? There aren’t any numbers on the back of it.”
“All right, Sarah, look back at the beggarman. He’s standing up now, Sarah; he’s standing up and taking a step toward the pillar box, and he’s wearing a hat, isn’t he, a knit cap, and it’s dark on the street, but the streetlamp lights up his face from the side. See how it hits his nose? You can see his nose clearly, the shape of it. And his chin, too, against his coat, and when he turns his head, the light falls on his cheeks and his eyes. You’ll never forget the shape of his eyes, even though you can’t see the eyes themselves. They’re in the shadows, but his face, Sarah, you can see his face, and you’ll never forget it. You’ll remember him even when you’ve walked back up the steps, won’t you, Sarah, because you’re a clever girl, and Tommy’s here to be with you, and that was a good woman who shouldn’t have died, and you want to remember everything. Even if it hurts, like a sad movie, you can remember.”
Her face was faintly surprised as she stared into the room, and slightly relieved, but not afraid or horrified. I continued, “You have it now, the moving picture of the beggar standing up and the people inside the car, and you can hold on to it now, like a clear cinema film. You can run it anytime you want; you can bring it back up the steps with you. Shall we go, then? One step now. You want to turn around now, and step back up onto step number two. It’s as easy as breathing, slow and steady, taking that one section of the circle with you, up to number two, and then to three, the third step.” I watched to see when she was firmly on each level before proceeding. “And to four, four steps up, you feel like you’re waking up, though you haven’t been asleep. You’re halfway back now, at five.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath at six and stretched at eight, and her eyes found Tommy and she smiled at ten. I sat back, limp, and closed my eyes. My blouse was clinging to my back with the sweat, and my neck and shoulder throbbed with fire.
Miss Chessman, in contrast, looked better than she had three hours before. Her eyes were clear, and she seemed rested. She smiled tentatively at me.
“Is it still clear in your mind?” I asked her. The smile faded, but her answer was even.
“It is. Funny I couldn’t remember it before.”
“Shock does that. I’d like to telephone a friend from Scotland Yard. He’ll listen to your story without making you feel like a gramophone record, and he’ll bring some photographs to see if any of them match the man you saw. Is that all right? I know it will be late when you finish, but it’s best to do it while you’re fresh, and he can fix it with your employers so you don’t have to go in early.”
“I don’t mind. It would make me feel good to be doing something to help that woman. I mean to say, I know it’s too late to help her, but—”
“Fine, then. Is there a telephone?”
“Down the hallway to the right.”
I slumped against the wall as I waited for the connexion to Mycroft’s number. Holmes answered it at the first ring, and I tried to keep the exhaustion from my voice.
“Hello, husband. Would you please ring Lestrade and tell him to bring his photographs along? I’ll wait for him, then get a taxi back to Mycroft’s when they’re through with me.”
“You got it?”
“As you say, I got it.”
“It was hard?”
“In my humble opinion, psychiatrists are not paid enough. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
But Holmes arrived even before Lestrade, and we left them to it, and I stumbled off to Mycroft’s guest-room bed without even waiting to see which of Lestrade’s sheaf of portraits Sarah Chessman picked out.
TWENTY-TWO
chi
IT WAS LIGHT in the room, despite the curtains, when a small noise woke me. After a moment, I spoke into my pillow.
“It occurs to me that I am condemned rarely to awaken normally under this roof. I am usually disturbed by loud and urgent voices from the sitting room, occasionally by a particularly horrendous alarm clock at some ungodly hour, and once by a gunshot. However,” I added, and turned over, “of all the unnatural noises which serve to pull me from slumber, the rattle of a cup and saucer is the least unwelcome.” I paused. “On the other hand, my nose tells me to beware a detective bearing coffee, rather than the more congenial beverage of tea. May I take this as a wordless message that my presence is required, in a wide-awake state?” I reached for the cup.
“You may. Lestrade is sending a car for us. He has made an arrest. Two arrests.”
“The Rogers grandsons?”
“One Rogers grandson, and one friend of a Rogers grandson. A friend who has been known to carry a long and unfriendly knife, whose taste in clothing is towards the extreme, and who has in the past had contact with the long arm of the law over such varied disagre
ements as stolen property, driving a car in which a pair of unsuccessful bank robbers attempted to make their escape, and an argument over a lady in which blood was shed, but no life lost, at the end of the aforementioned knife.”
“And Erica Rogers?”
“She has been brought down from Cambridgeshire for questioning. It took some time to arrange a nursemaid for the mother.”
“Why, what time is it?”
“Five minutes before eleven o’clock.” I’d slept for twelve hours.
“Good Lord, the colonel will think I’ve walked out on him. I told him I’d stay until Friday.”
“I took the liberty of telephoning him at eight o’clock, to tell him you would not be to work today. He wished you well.”
“Yes. I have some explanations to make there, I fear. But why the coffee?”
“Your presence is requested by Mrs Erica Rogers.”
“Mrs Rogers? But why?”
“She told Lestrade that she would not make a statement without you present. My presence, though not required, is to be permitted.”
I shook my head in a futile attempt to clear it.
“Does she know who you are, then? That her gardener and the hero of ‘Thor Bridge’ are one and the same?”
“It would seem so, although I could have sworn she did not know while I was there.”
“But why me?”
“She did not tell Lestrade why, just that you must be there.”
“How extraordinary. And Lestrade didn’t object?”
“If it persuades her to make a statement, no. She’s a stubborn old lady, is Mrs Erica Rogers.”
“So I gathered. Here, take my cup. I must bathe if I’m to deal with her.”
INSPECTOR LESTRADE’S OFFICE was not the largest of rooms, and with seven people seated there on that warm morning, all of whom were to some degree anxious, it became a claustrophobe’s nightmare and stifling besides. Not everyone present had bathed that morning, and the windows were totally inadequate.
The Mary Russell Series Books 1-4: The Beekeeper's Apprentice; A Monstrous Regiment of Women; A Letter of Mary; The Moor Page 85
