Among the Mad

by Jacqueline Winspear

  “Not exactly music to the ears of a Scot, you know.” The edges of MacFarlane’s mouth twitched into a grin.

  “That’s why I didn’t want to leave it any longer, Chief Superintendent.”

  * * *

  “INSPECTOR DARBY, what do you think about the downstroke of the pencil, here, where the letter-writer makes his demands? It seems so thick, almost labored.” Without touching the paper, Maisie used her forefinger to indicate her observation.

  “Yes, I noticed that myself. Very deliberate, isn’t it?”

  “Like a child’s hand—not in presentation, but in the execution, as if the person writing the letter were moving his hand slowly, so as not to lose control.” She closed her eyes, her hand moving back and forth on the wooden desk to describe holding a pen. The three men looked at one another.

  MacFarlane made an effort to control his voice, keeping it low while Maisie was thinking. “Stratton, I know you’re not a tea-boy, but poke your head around that door and tell them that this isn’t the desert and throats are parched in here.” He turned back to Maisie, who opened her eyes and spoke again.

  “I think he or she has trouble with dexterity and concentration. Don’t you think so?” She turned to Darby.

  Colm Darby nodded agreement. “I do—but what do you make of this?” He handed her a magnifying glass, then pointed to two places on the vellum. Stratton entered the room again and sat at the table alongside Maisie.

  “It’s been moistened—by saliva, I would say.” She looked up, then down at the paper again. “Yes, that’s saliva. The person who wrote this letter was so intent on the words that his mouth was open and spittle drooled onto the paper.”

  “So what does that tell us? That we have a dribbling person out there with perfect spelling?” MacFarlane was growing impatient.

  The door opened again and a younger man in civilian clothes entered with four cups of tea on a wooden tray. He set the tray down on the table and left the room.

  “It tells us that the person has trouble with muscular control, and that concentration is difficult. It tells us that the person is compromised in some way.”

  “That’s if you’re right.”

  “Yes, that’s if Inspector Darby and I are right.”

  There was silence in the room. Stratton reached for two cups of tea, placing one in front of Maisie, who was beginning to feel the stirrings of a headache. She thanked Stratton and touched the bump on the back of her head.

  “All right?”

  “Yes, it’s just reminding me, that’s all.”

  MacFarlane reached for a cup of tea, as did Darby. “Well, that’s bloody marvelous,” said the Scotsman. “Thousands of—what did you say?—compromised people in London and we’ve got to find one of them. Needle in a bloody haystack.” He scraped back his chair and began to pace the room.

  “Do we have an identification on the dead man yet?” asked Maisie.

  Stratton shook his head. “Proving very difficult, as you can imagine.”

  Maisie looked at each man in turn, then up at the clock above the door. MacFarlane followed her gaze. “Yes, it’s time we got on with it. Miss Dobbs, a motor car will collect you from your office this afternoon at four, and we’ll reconvene here to discuss progress—or, heaven forbid, lack thereof. In the meantime, I’ll allow you to work in the way that you’ve said is best—alone. But be ready at four, otherwise you’ll have someone from the Branch at your heels from dawn until dusk until we’ve closed this case. The forty-eight hours grace our letter-writer has allowed us will be up by six o’clock tomorrow morning or thereabouts. If we haven’t got him, we’ll soon find out if we have a practical joker on our hands. And with a bit of luck, by then we’ll have an identification on the other nutcase in Charlotte Street.” He held out his hand. “We’ll see you later, Miss Dobbs.”

  “Indeed, later.”

  “And don’t forget—in all the work you do on this case, you’re under the jurisdiction of Special Branch.”

  “I understand, Chief Superintendent.”

  MacFarlane nodded and took up the letter once more.

  STRATTON WALKED MAISIE to a waiting Invicta police motor car.

  “He may be a bit of a maverick, but he’s very good.”

  “Yes, I know. Maurice has spoken about him in the past. And I expect the reason I am here is not only because my name was mentioned in that letter, but because he requested Maurice’s help first.”

  “Blanche said to contact you, that you were his successor in every way. He told Big Robbie to trust your instincts.”

  “And does he?”

  “He trusts Blanche, so yes, consider yourself trusted.”

  “I must be—his questioning was mild, to say the least.”

  As they reached the motor car, Maisie turned to Stratton and held out her hand. “I look forward to working with you again, Inspector.”

  “Ditto, Miss Dobbs. But we have to work fast.”

  “I know—I’m working already.” She stepped into the Invicta. “I’ll see you at four.”

  Hickory, dickory, dock. Tick tock, tick tock. Clocks and watches, clocks and watches, time in, time out. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head!

  The pencil began to scrape, so the man shuffled to the kitchen, took a knife from a drawer and whittled a point to the lead, the chips of wood hitting a brown stain where the single cold tap dripped water day and night. He winced at the noise, tested the sharpness with the tip of his finger as if he were about to tune a string instrument, then shuffled back to the table again and proceeded to write.

  They do not know, do not know which end is up, and that’s always been the trouble with the brass. I remember, see. Oh, it was all very well, sending out those watches, so we all had the same time, down to the second, so that we all, thousands of us, went over the top at the same time, and . . .

  Holding the pencil above the page the man gasped as memories pushed forward to become fast-moving pictures in his mind—the twisted grin of death on a uniformed corpse, the silent scream of a man he’d laughed with just moments past—and the relentless noise of battle reverberating from inside his skull into the solitude of his room, enveloping him in the fury of war. He dropped the pencil and pressed his hands to his eyes, hard, so that as his fingers touched the soft roundness he imagined that he could pluck the pictures from his head if he could stand the pain. And if he thought he would be left in peace.

  In time the ghosts drew back to the place in his mind where they were quiet, spent, so he read back over his own words, picked up his pencil and began again.

  So what’s the point of getting the time right, if it’s all you can get right? Time and consequence, time and consequence. Croucher knew about time and consequence. Poor Croucher. Very poor Croucher.

  The man set down his pencil between the pages of the leather-bound book, then tied a string around the cover so the pencil would not be mislaid or clatter to the floor. He stood up and, taking small steps toward a cupboard, pulled out a large box containing a collection of empty demijohns, tubes and rubber piping. Another box held a series of bottles filled with liquids and tins of various sizes, each one labeled with care, in pencil. If Darby had brought his magnifying glass to the labels, he might have seen the paper discolored in spots here and there, where it had become soiled by saliva from the man’s open mouth.

  Setting the two boxes on the table, he began to attach tubing to a demijohn. Had an onlooker been observing the man, he might have been reminded of the tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and might have felt concern at the recollection. Having completed construction of what was to be something of an experiment, the man pulled at the string around his diary, opened the leather-bound book again and took up his pencil.

  I was good at something, once. I was good at something, one thing, that could be of service. But they don’t want to know now. I’ll just have to show them. Toil and trouble, toil and trouble.

  THREE

  Maisie slotted her key into the loc
k and opened the outside door to the mansion in Fitzroy Square that housed her oneroom office on the first floor. She closed the door behind her and walked upstairs with a certain weariness, but stopped to listen when she heard voices coming from the office. At first she was concerned, but then a child’s squealing laughter echoed across the room, and a young voice said, “Chase us, Dad, chase me and Bobby.” She wondered why Billy was at work—not only was Boxing Day a holiday, but they often only worked a half day on a Saturday, unless a significant assignment demanded their round-the-clock attention. And he had his children with him.

  “Hello, Billy—and young Billy, and Bobby.” Maisie smiled as she entered the office, taking off her hat and scarf, but keeping her coat on. “It’s cold in here, Billy—why didn’t you put on the gas fire? You don’t want the boys catching cold.”

  Billy had been on the floor playing with his sons, but stood up, blushing, when Maisie came in. “You two play with your toys while I’m talking to Miss Dobbs—and what do you say, again, for the presents she bought you?”

  The two boys stood up side by side and in unison said, “Thank you, Miss Dobbs,” with young Billy adding, “I really liked my fire engine!”

  Maisie tousled the wheaten-hued hair of each boy in turn and told them they should play with their toys where the carpet gave way to wood. “Your fire engine will go faster there.” She turned to Billy. “Come on, let’s have a cup of tea and you can tell me what’s going on—if you want to.”

  Over tea Billy explained that Doreen had become more withdrawn as the festive season approached, and though they had never been able to afford a big Christmas Day, as a rule they would try to put by enough money for a roast chicken, and a gift each for the boys. This year she had taken almost no interest at all, except for placing a small collection of toys for Lizzie under the tree, toys that Billy tried to remove so as not to upset the boys.

  “She’s just a shadow at times, Miss, a shadow. I thought over the summer she’d picked up a bit, that we were getting through it. I mean, I miss my little Lizzie too, but we’ve got two cracking boys here and they need their mum. I tell you, Miss, I come home of an evening and sometimes she’s just sitting there, staring. The stove’s gone down, she’s got some dressmaking half done and I have to sort of get her going again, you know, help her to her feet, show her how to do this or that. There’s days when you’d think she was right as rain, then it comes again. She’s not eating much either, and I’ve always made sure there was food on the table. We might not live in clover—there’s folk round our way making do in terrible conditions, rats from the river up and everywhere—but we always kept the house nice, kept the boys clean and going to school. Now it’s like trying to stop someone falling down a big black hole.”

  “Oh, Billy, I am so sorry.”

  “So, I didn’t think you’d be here until Monday, and we’d nowhere else to go, because I wanted to give Doreen a bit of a rest in peace and quiet, and—to tell you the truth—I wanted to get the boys out of the house, away from it all for a bit. The museums on Exhibition Road are closed today—and I wanted to take them to the Science Museum, you know, to that new children’s gallery they’ve opened, with all the little machines for the kids to see how a steam train works and what happens down a mine, that sort of thing. But the office was here, so after we’d been for a walk to look in the shop windows, I brought them back for a bit of a play before we went home to Shoreditch.”

  “That’s all right, Billy. You and the boys can stay here as long as you like today.” Maisie paused. “Has Doreen seen a doctor? Or the nurse?”

  “Well, she went when we first lost Lizzie, but it’s hard to get her to go anywhere.”

  “But she might need a tonic, something to give her a bit of a lift. And she needs to be eating properly.”

  “I bought a tonic for her, and as for food, as I said, she’s eating like a sparrow, and it’s not as if Doreen ever carried weight.” He put his hand to his forehead and rubbed it from side to side. “I tell you, Miss, it scares me sometimes, reminds me of me when I came back from the war—reminds me of men I saw in the hospital, you know, the ones you weren’t supposed to see before they were sent off to another special hospital in the plain black ambulance. There’s times she’s got that look in her eyes, as if she were staring across an ocean.” He paused again. “And every time she’s like that now, I think about the bloke on Christmas Eve. That was just how he looked, out into the distance, as if there was no one else there.”

  “I think she needs to see the doctor again, Billy. She’s suffering and she should see someone.”

  “I’ve got the bonus money. I thought I’d put it away for Canada, you know, to save for the passage, but I’ll put it toward Doreen getting better.”

  “Do it soon, Billy.”

  “I will, Miss.” Billy looked across the room to his boys, who were making motor noises as they pushed their toys back and forth. Then he brought his attention back to Maisie. “I didn’t think you’d be here today, Miss—weren’t you going to stay with your dad until tomorrow?”

  “Yes, I was, but I was brought back by D.I. Stratton—and this is confidential, mind: Special Branch is involved.”

  Billy exhaled with a low whistle.

  “I know—if they’re on the job, it’s serious. A threat has been received by the Home Secretary and my name is mentioned in the letter. In addition, it is likely that the threat has some connection to the man with the Mills Bomb who committed the crime of suicide on Christmas Eve.”

  “Can’t get that out of my mind, Miss. At first I was a bit scared, I’ll be honest with you. For a minute I thought I was back over there. But there’s Doreen and the boys to think of, so I can’t be letting myself slip now, can I?”

  “No, you can’t.” Maisie paused, thinking of the time, two years before, when Billy’s own slide into the abyss was caused by the lingering pain from his war wounds. “I’ve been seconded to work on the case with Special Branch,” she went on, “so I’m going to have to depend upon you to keep our present customers happy. I’m to meet with Stratton each day, though you and I can start here in the mornings to go through work in hand.”

  “Right you are, Miss.”

  “But about the man in the street—we both believe he’d been a soldier, wounded in the legs, and it’s likely he’d been shell-shocked to some degree.”

  “I would say so.”

  “So, who was he? The police don’t seem able to get to the bottom of it, and I would like to have a name as soon as possible. If we know who he is, we can find out who he knows, then with luck we can find our way to the man who sent the threat.”

  “What will he do, the man?”

  “I don’t know—he wasn’t specific. But he said he would wait forty-eight hours for his requests to be met, which means we now have only a very limited time to find a very angry or unhappy person in London who could be mentally ill.”

  “That doesn’t narrow the field down much.”

  “I know. I sometimes wonder who’s sane.”

  Their conversation was interrupted as a squabble broke out among the boys.

  “Now then, now then, what’s all this about?” Billy moved toward his sons and held each of them gently but firmly by the arm. “You’re brothers, you’re not supposed to fight—that’s how wars start, with people fighting over the little things.”

  Blaming started as one boy pointed at the other, and vice versa, but Billy soon calmed the situation and the brothers made up, shaking hands like little men.

  “We’d better be going, Miss. They’ll be hungry by the time we get home.”

  Maisie helped Billy put the boys’ coats on, winding scarves around their necks and slipping mittens onto little hands that would only too readily feel the cold. As she pulled a woolen hat down on young Billy’s head, she saw his father take out a handkerchief and wipe Bobby’s mouth.

  Billy saw her watching him and shrugged. “I hope he gets over this soon. He’s going on five now, you
know, and this dribbling business started when we came home after the hop-picking. I reckon it’s to do with his mum. She used to give them cuddles a lot, but now she don’t. I’ve seen him run to her, but she just pushes him away, same with young Bill here.” Billy spoke softly while the children claimed their toys. “I try to give him a cuddle, when I see it happen, but I’m not there when they come in from school. He sits there with his fingers in his mouth and before you know where you are, the front of his cardigan is all wet and matted.”

  Maisie was thoughtful. “The best thing for now is not to draw attention to it. Just keep him dry so that he doesn’t get chapped in this weather. You’re doing the right thing in trying to step in when Doreen can’t, but it just points to the fact that she needs to see someone, as soon as possible.”

  Billy sighed. “We’ll be off now. See you on Monday morning, Miss.”

  Maisie bid farewell to Billy and the boys, and walked to the window to watch them make their way across the square, each boy holding on to his father’s hand as they skipped alongside him. Although she had been aware of time passing, and the letter-writer’s deadline looming ever closer, she understood that Billy needed to talk about his wife and the threat her state of mind represented to the well-being of their family. Now Maisie knew she needed to think. She turned back into the room and pulled the armchair closer to the gas fire.

  Sitting down, she gazed into the flaming jets, reflecting upon Bobby Beale and his distress as his mother receded into herself. She wanted to support the family as much as she could, but knew her efforts must be balanced with an employer-employee relationship with Billy, and must not compromise his pride. But she kept going back to the child and his physical response to emotional disappointment. Of course, one couldn’t draw too many conclusions from a single serendipitous event, but she could not help but reflect upon the days following recuperation from her own war wounds. Once well enough, she had felt drawn to return to nursing, and because of the wounds suffered by her sweetheart in the same incident, she decided to work in a secure hospital caring for men whose minds were ravaged by war.