The Bedlam Detective

by Stephen Gallagher

  Toward the end of the ghost story, Sir Owain’s man came in. He waited until the tale was over before clearing the plates and the bones.

  He said to Sir Owain, “Will you need me for anything else tonight, sir?”

  And Sir Owain said, “No, Thomas. Just bring us the pudding and the rest of the night’s your own.”

  Dessert was a dish of vanilla-flavored cream. When they were done, Dr. Sibley started to collect their crockery together.

  “Oh, leave it, man,” Sir Owain said. “Thomas will deal with all that in the morning.”

  “Not on a Sunday, he won’t,” Dr. Sibley said.

  “It can wait until Monday, then.”

  “So we just close the dining-room doors on all the mess? And what will your guest think of us if we do?” He said it with a wink to Sebastian, who could imagine that the mariner in him was offended by such untidiness.

  With good humor, Sir Owain pushed himself back from the table and let the physician get on with his domestic business. Sibley piled up the dessert dishes with Sir Owain’s barely touched portion on top.

  Sebastian said, “May I have the use of your telephone? There’s a call I ought to make.”

  “Come to my study,” Sir Owain said. “You can have some privacy there.”

  Sebastian was led to the book-lined room where he’d conducted his first interview with the industrialist. The typewriting machine was still on the desk, but he saw no telephone until Sir Owain reached down and produced one from the drawer.

  After making sure that Sebastian knew how to get a connection, Sir Owain withdrew. Within a few minutes Sebastian was speaking to Stephen Reed, who’d been awaiting this call.

  Sebastian said, “All’s well. But it’s not the night we were hoping for.”

  “No confession?”

  “The pair of them are being downright sociable.”

  “Don’t lower your guard,” Stephen Reed warned him.

  “No, of course not. But I’ve watched Doctor Sibley account for most of a decent Burgundy, and if a man doesn’t make a slip after that, you start to wonder if there’s a slip to be made.”

  As if in ironic counterpoint to his remark, at that moment there was an offstage crash from somewhere in the direction of the kitchens. The sound of breaking crockery is unique and was easy to identify.

  Sebastian said, “I suspect that was him.”

  “What should I do? Wait up for you?”

  “No,” Sebastian said. “They’ve just dismissed their driver, so I imagine I’ll be offered a bed for the night.”

  “Be sure you lock the bedroom door.”

  “I’ll have a chair under the handle and my revolver under the pillow,” Sebastian said. “Don’t lose any sleep over me.”

  At that point, he became aware of Sir Owain standing in the doorway. He hadn’t even heard the study door open. How long had the man been there? What had he heard? Sebastian quickly finished the conversation, ending it with a few neutral pleasantries that alerted Stephen Reed to the change in his situation.

  When he saw that the call had ended, Sir Owain came fully into the room and settled himself into the second chair, across from Sebastian.

  “So,” he said.

  “So indeed,” said Sebastian, uncertain of where this was going.

  “There was a piece of moving-picture film? What did it show?”

  “Nothing conclusive,” Sebastian said. “Something or someone rushing at the camera.”

  “Do you know who or what?”

  “I’m in no position to say.”

  Sir Owain said, “I know what your real suspicions are. You want to know if I could have killed those children. So do I.”

  Sebastian started to frame a reply, then stopped. Sir Owain seemed entirely serious. Sebastian said, “Did you kill them?”

  “I don’t know,” Sir Owain said.

  “But are you telling me it’s possible?”

  “My heart says no. But I’m a scientist. I have to start by accepting that everything is possible, and then be guided to a proper conclusion by the evidence. Evidence-based thinking, Mister Becker. The greatest single achievement of the human animal. Without it we’d be praising God while shivering in our caves and dead by the age of thirty.”

  “And what does the evidence tell you?”

  “That I don’t have enough of it to form a reliable conclusion.”

  Sebastian sat back in the captain’s chair. “This isn’t what I expected to hear,” he admitted.

  “Nor is it what the good doctor would want me to say. But I won’t live a lie, Mister Becker. If a lie is what it is.”

  “What makes you suspect yourself?”

  “I’ve examined the timings. I can’t account for my whereabouts with any certainty.”

  “Any blood on your clothes? Your hands?”

  “A man who can kill and not know it can surely bathe and not know it.”

  He stood up and indicated for Sebastian to follow him. Sebastian scrambled to his feet. This seemed too good to be true. He hadn’t dared to hope for a confession. Much less for Sir Owain to act as his own inquisitor.

  As he led the way out into the hallway, Sir Owain said, “We’ll settle this tonight, you and I. Doctor Sibley is dedicated to the preservation of my health and my freedom. His livelihood depends on both. But I care nothing for either. In my time I have been an arrogant man. Experience has made me a humble one. I wish only to be judged as I deserve.”

  He stopped and locked the study door behind them before walking on.

  Sebastian said, “And tonight’s so-called celebration …?”

  “Was my excuse to bring you here. And a way to disguise the direction of my thinking for the good doctor.”

  “But the moment he sees your purpose, he’ll interfere.”

  “I planned for that,” Sir Owain said, and they entered the kitchen.

  The kitchen was a tall room, two stories high, on the north-facing side of the Hall. It was tiled in yellow, with a cement floor and visible pipework. A black iron range covered the length of one wall, with ovens and griddles enough for a dozen cooks to work at once.

  The range was cold, however, and there was only one figure in the room, and he was sprawled on the floor amid a mess of leftovers and broken china. Dr. Sibley lay without moving, the tray that had borne it all lying close to his outflung hand.

  FORTY-SIX

  Dr. Sibley must have been as surprised as anyone by his collapse. It was as if he’d dropped in midstride, pitching forward and landing hard.

  “Did you plan for this?” Sebastian said.

  “Actually,” Sir Owain said, looking down on his motionless companion, “I did. Although what I intended was something less spectacular. He was supposed to start yawning and take himself off to bed.”

  “You drugged him?”

  “A few drops in his wine. They ought to have been perfectly safe. The drug came from his own kit.”

  Sebastian said, “I don’t see him breathing.”

  “No,” agreed Sir Owain. “Nor do I.”

  Sebastian dropped to one knee and checked the doctor’s pulse. First at the wrist, and then again at the side of the neck.

  “The man’s dead,” he said.

  “Is he?” Sir Owain said. “Damn.”

  Sebastian looked up at him. “Is that all you can say?”

  “It was only supposed to put him out for a few hours. I must have misjudged the dose.”

  “Well, you’ve killed him. Which makes the rest of any scheme for determining your guilt a touch redundant, wouldn’t you say?”

  “It is a setback, I have to admit.”

  “A setback?” Sebastian said, rising, and with a sudden rush of blood to the head that made him dizzy. “I’ll say it is. It’s all over, Sir Owain. Consider yourself arrested.”

  “Can you do that?” Sir Owain said. “You’re not a policeman.”

  “Any private citizen is bound by law to …” He meant to go on to say, arrest any perso
n who commits a felony in his presence, but his thoughts wandered right off his subject and then he struggled to remember what he’d intended to say.

  Sir Owain said, “How do you feel?”

  Sebastian snapped himself back into focus.

  “Why?” he said. “What did you do?”

  “The dose was in the decanter. That’s why I only drank water.”

  It was a moment or so before the realization took hold. Sir Owain seemed willing to give Sebastian all the time he needed, watching him with patient sympathy. Sebastian made a start toward the door and Sir Owain stepped aside to let him by.

  He felt a sudden need for the night’s cold air. He seemed to float out of the kitchen and down the hall toward the main doors. He was aware of his legs working under him but not so sure they were under his control. He failed to stop himself and hit the door hard. He’d have slid to the floor, but he managed to keep hold of the handle.

  He thought at first that he lacked the strength to get the doors open. But then he realized there was a much simpler explanation. They were locked.

  Sir Owain had caught up with him by now.

  He said, “If it’s any reassurance, Doctor Sibley downed far more of it than you did. How was I to know it would be the death of him?”

  Sebastian remembered the revolver. He’d been able to fit it into one of the jacket’s lower pockets, in the lining on the inside. He fumbled for it. It should have come out easily. But it wouldn’t. The harder he tried, the more entangled he became.

  Sir Owain watched him for a while, then reached in and took the gun away, unhooking it from the lining with ease.

  He said, “Mine are not the kind of beasts you can fight with one of these. Trust me. I have tried.”

  Sebastian pushed him away. He aimed himself toward the study, where the telephone was. He rattled and rattled at the doorknob, and then belatedly remembered how Sir Owain had turned the key in the door when they left it.

  “Give in, Mister Becker,” Sir Owain pleaded with him. “I can see you’ll need to sleep this off before we can hope to achieve anything.”

  With a great effort, he knocked the older man aside. Sir Owain staggered a little. Sebastian moved without a plan, willing to settle for any route to safety, not even knowing where safety might lie.

  He found himself in a corridor by the kitchen, a service way between a wall of the old house and some of the newer work; there were iron girders overhead, and glass skylight panels above the girders. Some of the glass had been smashed, and the roof was open to the night, but far too high to reach.

  The fallen glass hadn’t been cleared up, and crunched underfoot.

  Sir Owain said, “That’s what happened when the beasts tried to enter.”

  There was a door at the end of the passageway. It wouldn’t open. Or he couldn’t open it. Sebastian turned around and fell back against the door.

  Sir Owain gestured toward the damage.

  “They came out of the jungle and followed me all the way home,” he said. “Now they wait for the dark. I do my best to fortify the building, and they do their best to find a way in. I stay up all night and I fight them off. Or do I? Do I, Mister Becker?” His face was right before Sebastian’s now. “Or do I merely create powerful memories of events that never took place? The human mind is an amazing instrument of perception, Mister Becker. How far should we trust the instrument’s perception of itself? That’s what you can help me to find out.”

  Sebastian felt his legs going. Sir Owain caught him quickly and helped to lower him to the ground.

  “Now,” Sir Owain said, “what has all this running achieved?”

  “I won’t sleep,” Sebastian vowed. He wasn’t sure whether he was speaking aloud, or merely forming the words in his mind and getting no further with them.

  It seemed he spoke, because Sir Owain responded.

  “I don’t think you’ll have any choice,” he said. “I’m not even sure what I gave you. If there’s an antidote, I’ve no idea what it would be. We’ll just need to get through this.”

  “Get me to a doctor.”

  Sebastian was terrified of sleeping at the madman’s mercy. But he could feel himself sliding ever farther away.

  “It would make no difference,” Sir Owain said. “Sleep, Mister Becker. And when you wake up-assuming that you do wake up-we can begin.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Sebastian dreamed of Elisabeth.They were at home. One of their past homes. All was well but he was possessed by a certainty that something terrible was going to happen. She was moving about the room, not looking at him, speaking; later he would struggle to remember what she’d said. He knew that this was a dream, and that unless he could work out the secret of how to remain then he’d soon be pulled out of it and back into the waking world. He tried to imagine what lay outside the door, beyond the windows. If he could only populate this place, give it geography, render it all in enough detail to snap it into the real … it was almost as if, by perceiving with sufficient intensity, he might dream her back into life again.

  But wherever he moved his attention, the rest began to slip. It was a room on an island in a fog, where Elisabeth walked and spoke, and he would not remember her words.

  He could feel the covers of a bed or a divan underneath him. His chest hurt. He knew that he was awake, but he didn’t open his eyes. When he opened his eyes, that would be the end of it.

  He heard Sir Owain say, “How’s the head?”

  Sebastian gave in.

  It was daylight. He was lying flat and looking up at a paneled ceiling. From somewhere to his right, Sir Owain said, “It was touch and go there, rather. You almost stopped breathing twice.”

  “You could have killed me,” Sebastian managed to say.

  “I could. And yet I feel no conscience about it. Is that significant, do you think?”

  Sebastian turned his head to look at him. He could barely keep his head lifted from the pillow. The room had painted wallpaper and heavy, masculine furniture. The bedcover on which he lay had a satin look, but was coarse and scratchy to the touch.

  “Here,” Sir Owain said, and put an arm under Sebastian’s shoulders to lift and get him sitting upright. “Let’s get you active. See if we can clear that head for you.”

  He turned Sebastian so that his legs swung off the bed. Then he helped him to rise to his feet and supported him walking.

  “Let me sit a while,” Sebastian protested.

  “Trust me,” Sir Owain said. “I know what you need.”

  They emerged from the room and into a wide gallery. This was a part of the house that Sebastian had not seen before. The gallery was formed by vaulted timbers that curved overhead, as if cut by a shipwright. It was painted in red, and its sides were lined with specimen cases and statuary.

  Sebastian was helpless. He was like a drunk with a benefactor walking him home. At the end of the gallery they turned around and started back. When they staggered a little on the turn, Sir Owain said, “Forgive me. I’m not the man I used to be.”

  Sebastian said, “What do you think this is going to achieve?”

  “I’ve an open mind,” said Sir Owain. “But I’ve an idea of what I expect.”

  “Where’s Doctor Sibley?”

  “Just as dead as he was last night. That was his bed you were lying on. My dear Mister Becker, don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

  “I meant to say, what have you done with him?”

  “Well, I couldn’t leave an old friend just lying there on the kitchen floor,” Sir Owain said. “There’s no dignity in that. So I cleaned him up, and I put him somewhere fitting. It was a struggle. I had to manage on my own. I could hardly involve Thomas, could I? It wouldn’t be fair. He’s a faithful servant, but that’s far too much to ask of a man’s loyalty.”

  Thomas? The chauffeur. Sebastian filled his lungs and yelled the man’s name at the top of his voice.

  Sir Owain bore the racket patiently, so loud and so close to his ear. And then he
said, “If you expect to get anyone’s attention, you’re wasting your time. I give Thomas his Sundays off. And it’s been some time, now, since I had to let the others go.”

  They turned again, and started back. Sir Owain said, “That was a sad day for me. A house of this size, Sebastian-may I call you Sebastian? It takes a certain number of people just to bring it to life.”

  As they went along, Sebastian felt his strength returning. Movement forced the sluggish blood around his system. Soon he would be recovered enough to overpower Sir Owain. But better not to try, until he was sure.

  At the end of the gallery they went through a curtained opening and across a landing. On the other side of the landing they entered a suite of rooms, where Sir Owain released Sebastian to fall onto a couch. Sir Owain’s exhaustion now seemed to match his own.

  “This was Hubert’s study,” Sir Owain said, fetching himself a chair. “Is it just me, or do you share a sense of discomfort at being in here? As if he were still alive. He so valued his privacy.” He set the chair down before Sebastian, and went over to the writing desk. “Well,” he said, “he’s gone and there’s no protecting it now.”

  Although not quite ransacked, it had the look of a room that had been thoroughly searched. Every drawer in the writing desk was open. On the floor was a doctor’s bag, also open. Beside that was a medium-sized wooden chest with racks of glass, rubber tubing, and a Bunsen burner in a clip. Sir Owain glanced back and saw where Sebastian was looking.

  “That’s the kit that he kept locked away,” Sir Owain said as he returned from the desk with a bound journal in his hands, “and these … these are the notes he was keeping on my treatment. I’ve been reading them. I have to say there are no big surprises.”

  He sat and began to leaf through the journal. He was about to speak, but one of the pages caught his attention for a few moments, as if he’d noticed something that hadn’t registered with him before.

  Then he remembered himself, and went on, “Did Doctor Sibley tell you how he’d been managing me? There’s a list here of all the drugs he tried. Most of them will cause hallucination in one form or another. It may seem an odd form of treatment to give to a man deemed to be a fantasist, but I’ve been assured that the technique has a growing reputation for treating depressive illness. I used to joke with the good doctor that he was a homeopath at heart. Making me a little mad to cure the greater madness. But I don’t think he saw the humor in it.”