Raising Arcadia

by Simon Chesterman

  A reasonable request, in the circumstances. “Fair enough,” she says. “There is some connection between Miss Alderman and my parents, something to do with my adoption. I don’t know the full details yet, but I’m worried that my parents could be in danger.”

  “Danger? From whom?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  The car moves again. “And what is Headmaster’s connection to all this?”

  “That I’m not sure about either. He and Miss Alderman know each other from some time in the past. Yet he was surprised when you arranged for her to teach at the school.”

  From his reaction, this confirms something that Mr. Ormiston has suspected. “All right, we’re on the main road. You’ll need to give me directions from here.”

  She does so, using her phone at the same time to try her parents’ house and their mobile numbers. There is no answer.

  “Please hurry,” she says.

  Mr. Ormiston nudges the car past the speed limit, gliding along the country road. Above them, the full moon shines down from a cloudless sky.

  10

  SCARLET

  She walks towards the house, dimly aware of a voice behind calling for her to wait. Her teacher has locked the Jaguar and is hastening to catch up with her.

  Moonlight illuminates the quiet street. There are no people, few cars. Her parents’ vehicle is in the driveway. Outside the house no other car is parked, but on the footpath outside the house is a single cigarette butt. Lucky Strike. Smoked in the past few hours, flattened into the concrete.

  The low front gate is open, but that is not unusual. Her parents were trusting types. Are. Her parents are trusting types.

  The path to the front door is also concrete, but the doormat has traces of mud. Five lines of diminishing thickness. She sniffs the mud and takes a tiny piece of it in her fingers. Clayey, not from their garden.

  The lights are on. The door is locked. The bell is to the right. It is a cool night, but not cold enough for gloves. Unlikely but possible that the white button will reveal a fingerprint. She knocks once, twice. There is no sound.

  She has a key and uses it. Opens the door.

  “Hello!”

  Silence.

  She looks before entering. Footprints on the carpet in the foyer are a confused mix, but flecks of the same mud identify a series of short steps next to the empty hat stand. With each step the mud is less visible, but two long strides can be seen going down the hallway, along with her parents’ smaller footsteps.

  Above the hallway is the light fitting. Even knowing what she is looking for, it is difficult to spot the tiny camera. But it is still there, silently transmitting an image of everyone who comes and goes from the house. But who is watching?

  Keeping clear of the footprints, she moves down the hallway towards the living room. Behind her she hears Mr. Ormiston entering the house.

  “Please don’t touch anything,” she calls. Her voice sounds hoarse.

  In addition to the mud there are four scarlet drops on the hallway carpet. But it is impossible to tell if they fell on the way down to the living room. Or on the way back.

  With a growing sense of dread she reaches the living room. It is there that she sees the bodies. Mother and Father, lifeless. They are on the ground next to the sofa. Their fingers just touching.

  Stabbed. A sharp knife. Father once, deep in the chest. Mother on her arms and in the right side of the throat. He was taken by surprise; she fought back. His eyes are open, unblinking at the ceiling. Hers are shut.

  There is so much scarlet. So much blood.

  She should run and embrace their bodies, but this might interfere with the evidence. She should cry, but this would cloud her vision.

  The window next to the back door has been smashed from the outside and the door is ajar. Shards of glass litter the floor, a few pieces lie on top of the blood-spattered carpet like so many irregular rubies.

  On the coffee table, three feet from the bodies, there are two faint circles. Whisky. And a smaller circle for Mother’s glass of water.

  “Dear God!” It is Mr. Ormiston’s voice as he enters the living room. “What happened here?”

  The teacher has taken out his phone and dials three digits. “Magnus has already called the police,” she says softly.

  She closes her eyes, shutting out the world. Only the facts matter now, not feelings. The observable evidence. And she puts herself into the other’s shoes to reconstruct the crime:

  I park away from their house to avoid suspicion, walking the last hundred yards while having a cigarette. To prepare. One last drag on the cigarette and I drop it to the ground, extinguishing it underfoot.

  At the doorstep I wipe the mud from my boots. I wore these boots earlier today while walking on the clayey soil of the countryside, possibly a farm. I am fastidious. But I am also nervous. I cannot clean them completely. Traces of mud remain and are tracked onto the carpet.

  My visit is unexpected. Otherwise Louisa would have made tea, laid the table, produced biscuits. Yet they do not turn me away. Instead they invite me in, hanging my jacket on the hat stand.

  Ignatius pours two glasses of whisky. She has a glass of water. We chat. Reminisce. We are old friends.

  It is not certain that I will kill them. If it were, I would strike immediately. Instead we talk. I ask them to do something, to agree to something. But they refuse. And soon it becomes clear how this must end.

  The knife is light in my hand. It is an extension of my hand. An extension of my will. Concealing it behind my back, I continue to smile and gesture with my right hand while the left prepares the blade.

  They suspect nothing, of course. Their dulled senses do not perceive that even I struggle to keep my voice at its normal pitch, to prevent beads of sweat forming on my brow. All is outwardly calm, all normal. All illusion.

  Amiably, I smile. I laugh. Yes, that is indeed an interesting story. All the while imagining it done. For it must be done.

  And then I strike.

  First Ignatius, who is caught unawares. The blade goes under his ribs and into his heart. He dies quickly.

  She fights back, the knife cutting her arms. But a blow to the neck fells her.

  The two bodies are on the ground. I am flustered. I had a plan, but now I am improvising.

  I open the back door and smash the window with… with my shoe, to give the appearance of a break-in. I take the glasses, wash them, and put them away.

  But I am careless. The mud from my shoes. The unwiped table. Drops of blood land in the hallway. I take my coat and return to the car. It has not gone exactly according to plan, but the street is quiet. Their bodies will not be found at least until tomorrow, when Ignatius is missed at work or when their daughter comes back from school for the weekend.

  I return to the car and drive away under a moonlit sky.

  It is done.

  She opens her eyes once more to look at the bodies that were her parents. Father looks at peace, his face relaxed. Mother’s is frozen in the struggle of her last minutes, her eyes glassy with tears.

  But her eyes are open.

  “She’s not dead,” Arcadia whispers. Then she hears her own voice shouting: “Call an ambulance!”

  Crouching by Mother, she sees that the blood is seeping from a vein in the side of her neck, not spurting from an artery. A lot of blood has been lost, but there is a faint pulse and the shallowest of breaths. She puts her hand on the wound to staunch the bleeding until Mr. Ormiston arrives with a kitchen towel. An ambulance is on its way. In her delirium Mother’s eyes occasionally meet her own, focusing and unfocusing on her face. Lips twitch as if to speak but no sound comes out.

  The police arrive first, those summoned by Magnus: Constable Lestrange once again, accompanied by a senior officer — the inspector who came to the Priory School with her on Monday. She hears Mr. Ormiston give them a quick summary and they rush to get the medical kit from their van. The ambulance is coming.

  The dressing o
n her wounds has stopped the flow of blood by the time the paramedics arrive. They clear her airways and put her on oxygen, giving her an injection for what must be unbearable pain. The lines on her face smooth slightly.

  Mother is placed on a stretcher trolley. One of the paramedics explains that they must take her to hospital as quickly as possible for a transfusion.

  “She’s O positive,” she tells them. “I’m sorry that I can’t give her a transfusion — I’m AB positive.”

  “That’s OK, Missy,” one replies. “We’ll give her some plasma in the ambulance and start the transfusion at the hospital. They’ve got plenty of O positive there. But we need to leave right now. Is there someone who can take you to the hospital?”

  “I’ll take her,” says Mr. Ormiston.

  She walks alongside the trolley as they load Mother into the ambulance. “I’ll be there soon,” she whispers, knowing that she probably cannot hear her.

  The doors shut and the ambulance heads off at speed, lighting up the street with rotating blue beams.

  “Is there anything you need to get before we go to the hospital?” Mr. Ormiston asks her.

  She forces herself to focus, to concentrate. Magnus is coming and they must work together. “Yes,” she says, “just give me a minute.”

  She goes back inside and is about to head upstairs when the two police officers come down the hallway. They do not notice her. Or anything else, it seems.

  “So you see, Lestrange,” the older inspector is saying, “we have a case here of breaking and entering through the rear door. The victims probably came home, surprised the thief who attacked them with his knife. Having planned on burglary rather than murder, he then exits through the back door. A relatively simple case, but difficult unless the lady pulls through and is able to give us a description.”

  “I see, Inspector Bradley,” Constable Lestrange nods.

  “See what?” she says, unable and unwilling to disguise her contempt. “Congratulations, Inspector, you have correctly identified the suspect as male. On every other count, of course, you could not be more wrong.”

  “Young lady,” replies Bradley. “I understand that you are probably in shock and so will overlook any rudeness on your part. But I advise you to let us do our job.”

  “I would be happy to do so if you displayed the slightest competence in it.”

  “Now look here — ” Bradley begins, but Lestrange cuts him off.

  “Ah sir, as you say, the lass is in shock. But perhaps we might hear what she has to say. It could be, er, therapeutic.” He turns to her. “So then, Miss Greentree, what do you see?”

  “Well, that you should be looking for a left-handed man who is around six feet tall. He was in the countryside earlier today, smokes Lucky Strike cigarettes, and is well-educated — possibly a medical doctor. He is a person who knew my parents reasonably well in the past, but has since fallen out of touch. He is fastidious in his habits and yet excitable, nervous even. Oh, and he entered and left through the front door, not the rear.”

  Bradley is beginning to turn purple again. “And just how do you claim to have deduced all that?”

  She should go to the hospital, but there is a slim chance that if she pushes these officers in the right direction they will have a better chance of finding the man who attacked her parents.

  “That he is left-handed is clear from the wounds, which are mainly on the right sides of the bodies. His height and his country visit can be seen in the mud on the doormat and the length of stride down the hall. A Lucky Strike cigarette was extinguished on the street before he came in, you can find it there still. His education can be inferred from his precise knowledge of human anatomy. He must have known my parents because they invited him in for a glass of whisky even though he had not called ahead — if he had, then Mother would have laid the table — at least for tea and cake. You will recall, Constable, her unfailing hospitality when you were here.”

  Despite himself, Lestrange smiles.

  “Your man is also fastidious but excitable: he wiped his foot five times on the doormat. And yet he also made mistakes: the mud from his shoes, the unwiped table, drops of blood in the hallway. As for your theory of entry and exit, he does indeed want us to think that he smashed his way in the back door. You may recall, however, that someone managed to break in that door two days ago without smashing the window. In any event, in this case when the window was smashed some pieces landed on top of blood drops on the carpet. Unless painstakingly moved, the shards of glass landed on the floor after the blood was already spilled.”

  “That’s incredible,” she hears Lestrange say under his breath.

  “Yes, well, thank you, Miss Greentree, for your little theories,” says Inspector Bradley. “We shall of course consider them closely. But for the moment I suggest that you head to the hospital. Your teacher is driving you, correct?”

  “Correct,” she replies.

  “Then get whatever it is you came inside to get and go to the hospital. Your mother needs you now.”

  “Yes, Inspector Bradley.”

  She goes upstairs to her parents’ bedroom. She knows that she should simply confide in the police, but their efforts to date have not inspired much confidence. It is also possible that she would be leading them on a wild goose chase. She opens Mother’s underwear drawer and takes out the Chinese box that is hidden behind the false back. A red stain on the wood draws her attention until she realises that her left hand is still damp with Mother’s blood.

  She washes her hands in the en suite and takes the box to her room. The box and a change of clothes go into a backpack and she returns downstairs. Until she has conferred with Magnus, she resolves not to say anything further to the police — about the cameras, Miss Alderman, or Headmaster. She steps outside to where Mr. Ormiston is waiting. They get back in the car and drive towards the hospital, the backpack on her lap.

  She phones Magnus. Her brother listens to the terse update. “I’ll come at once,” is all he says. “See you at the hospital.”

  They drive in silence for a while.

  “How did you know?” Mr. Ormiston asks.

  “Know what?”

  “You said at school that you feared something terrible had happened. How?”

  “I didn’t. It was my brother who told me.” How could she not have seen it herself?

  “So, how did he know?”

  She considers this. “My brother is well-connected, but he is also adept at drawing connections. Far better than I. He saw, when I did not, that tugging at this web could lead to disastrous consequences.”

  “What ‘web’?”

  “Whatever it is that connects Headmaster, Miss Alderman, and the person to whom she spoke earlier today.”

  “You think Sophia is connected to what happened at your house?”

  “I’m not sure. But when she said that my parents and I were going to have a long discussion this weekend, the person on the other end of the phone decided to go and see them.”

  “Arcadia, we have to tell the police this.”

  “Not yet. Let me speak with Magnus first.”

  “You said he’s coming from Cambridge? That could take more than an hour.”

  “Magnus will find a way.”

  They arrive at the hospital, pulling into the car park as a helicopter passes overhead and lands on the roof. It pauses for only a minute and then takes off once more, the beating of its blades fading as it disappears back into the night sky.

  “What on earth is a military helicopter doing here?” Mr. Ormiston muses to himself, craning his neck to watch it depart.

  “It’s probably my brother.”

  They enter the intensive care unit just as Magnus walks in, slightly unsteady, dark hair askew. A raised hand stops her question. “I shall be fine,” he says. “I called in a favour to get here quickly, but will not be returning to Cambridge by helicopter. Now, how is Mother?”

  A nurse explains that Mother is in surgery and that they cannot se
e her yet. They are taken to a waiting room where a doctor briefs them.

  “So there is good news and bad news,” the doctor says. “The good news is that the main wound was clean and didn’t damage the carotid artery, which supplies blood to the brain. We are almost finished patching up her throat. The bad news is that she has lost a great deal of blood. We’re giving her a transfusion, but in cases of massive blood loss the brain may not get enough oxygen and the patient can fall into a coma — a kind of deep sleep.”

  “We know what a coma is,” Arcadia says testily. “Will she wake up? And what are the chances of permanent loss of brain function?”

  The doctor looks at her, her brother, and Mr. Ormiston, reassessing her communication strategy. “It’s too soon to say. There was significant injury to both the external and internal jugular veins as well as her trachea. Even if she wakes up, we don’t know what kind of brain damage she might have suffered. There is also a high likelihood of nerve damage, meaning that she could be partially or totally paralysed.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Jackson,” Magnus says. “When are you likely to make another assessment?”

  The doctor frowns, realising that she forgot to introduce herself — but also forgetting that her name is on the ID card at her waist. “I’ll come back to you in about an hour. You can stay here if you like.”

  Dr. Jackson returns to the ICU, leaving the three of them in the waiting room. It is now 11pm.

  “It’s good to see you again, Magnus.” Mr. Ormiston is trying to make small talk. “A shame about the circumstances, of course.”

  “I forget myself,” says her brother. “A pleasure to see you also, Mr. Ormiston. And do give my best wishes to Mrs. Ormiston — you are making the right decision.”

  Mr. Ormiston opens his mouth to ask something, but Magnus moves seamlessly on. “Now, Arcadia,” he says, “tell me about these cameras.”

  “The cameras themselves are approximately a quarter inch in diameter and an inch and a half long,” She pictures the cameras in her mind’s eye, “with a thin cord connecting them to what appears to be a power source and transmitting device. I found four in the house, but have not conducted a complete search. There could be more.”