Requiem

by Clare Francis

  ‘Yes.’ He had pulled the mask back over his face.

  ‘How did it come about? Did she lose the desire to eat?’

  ‘No. She lost the ability to absorb her food.’

  ‘So she ate as much as usual but still lost weight.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What other symptoms did she have?’

  ‘She was in pain nearly all the time.’

  ‘I see. What sort of pain? Can you elaborate?’

  ‘All her joints and – well, all over. And vicious headaches.’

  ‘Did this pain disturb her a great deal?’

  ‘It was unbearable.’

  ‘And she was given drugs for it?’

  ‘Yes. Morphine.’ His voice had dropped until it was barely audible.

  ‘And this was prescribed for her?’

  He gave the briefest nod of his head.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘The American doctor.’

  ‘This doctor?’ The procurator fiscal said, picking up the affidavit. ‘Dr Gravely?’

  He gave a slight shrug. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What dosage did she take?’

  ‘It varied. I don’t know.’

  ‘Then she herself determined the dose?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see.’ A pause. ‘May I ask, Mr Mackenzie, was your wife depressed at all?’

  He didn’t reply for a moment. ‘What sort of depression are you referring to? Endogenous or exogenous?’ he demanded, and there was an edge to his voice.

  ‘Well – I don’t think we need to know …’

  ‘It’s an important distinction,’ Nick said defensively, his voice rising. ‘If you mean had my wife lost the will to fight her illness – absolutely not. Even at her worst she never gave up, never doubted that she’d get well. But the illness itself – sometimes she felt so bad that it got her down. Physically, I mean. But it was never so bad that – ’ He broke off. He didn’t need to finish; everyone knew what he had intended to say. But he said it anyway. ‘That she would consider taking her own life.’

  ‘On the day of her death, was she particularly depressed?’

  ‘No.’ There was a tremor in his voice, as if he were controlling himself with difficulty.

  ‘She didn’t make any remark, any comment that could have a bearing on later events?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There was no note, no message of any kind?’

  It was an instant before Nick managed to answer. ‘No,’ he said with emphasis. ‘There was not.’

  There was a short pause while the procurator fiscal consulted his notes.

  ‘Your wife didn’t have a family doctor here in Scotland?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why was that, may I ask?’

  ‘She’d had enough of doctors. And before that she never needed one.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The procurator fiscal sat down. The worst was over; but then the damage had already been done.

  Nick’s lawyer did what he could, going over Alusha’s health before the accident and the devastation of her illness, but there was no disguising the fact that, according to Nick’s own evidence, the toxicologists had been unable to offer explanations about the cause of Alusha’s illness, nor had they been able to support the allegations about Reldane.

  Finally Nick was allowed to leave the box. He strode back to his seat, his face set, his expression guarded.

  The court adjourned for lunch. The press were up and making for the door before the sheriff had left the court. As the spectators stood up, Daisy looked for Nick but there was no sign of him and she realized he had been ghosted away, perhaps into a side room. She spent the hour rebuilding Campbell’s spirits in the nearest pub.

  When the court reassembled, the procurator fiscal said to the sheriff: ‘In view of the highly technical nature of the affidavit from Dr Gravely I think the court may benefit from some elucidation.’ He nodded to the clerk who recalled the pathologist to the witness box.

  The pathologist shook his head. ‘I find it very difficult to interpret this statement, Mr Procurator Fiscal. Certainly it doesn’t match with my findings.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He mentions liver damage. I found no evidence of that whatsoever. He also mentions heart damage. Again I found no evidence of that. And as for hypothalamus malfunction – well, that’s impossible to measure; there is no test for hypothalamus function. And he talks about T-cell damage of a type unknown to science.’

  ‘So there would seem to be some discrepancy?’

  ‘Yes, and I think I can offer an explanation. I took the liberty of looking up Dr Hubert Gravely in the United States medical register. I could not find him there.’

  ‘You’re saying he’s not a registered medical practitioner?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  There was a rustling in the room. The two women in front of Daisy exchanged glances at this unexpected turn of events. Nick had a hurried consultation with his lawyer. The two of them seemed to be in some disagreement because, though Nick was strongly arguing some point or another, the lawyer wasn’t having any of it and kept shaking his head.

  Then the procurator fiscal recalled Nick.

  It was obvious that Nick’s mood had shifted. The largely impassive expression of the morning had been replaced by one of guarded belligerence. He no longer sat erect, but hunched forward, one elbow on the chair-arm, knuckle against his chin, glaring at the procurator fiscal with what might easily be interpreted as suspicion. There was something else, too, a heaviness to his eyes, an unfocused look. It suddenly occurred to Daisy with slight shock that he had been drinking.

  The procurator fiscal went back to the matter of Alusha Mackenzie’s medical care in America. Nick left no one in any doubt as to his dislike for this line of questioning, grunting the briefest of replies, and executing some fairly obvious manoeuvres around direct answers. But it came out all the same.

  Alusha Mackenzie had gone to Dr Gravely only after several stays in hospitals in London and New York, where, despite running every possible test, the doctors had been unable to offer an explanation for her illness.

  ‘They could find no abnormalities whatsoever?’ asked the procurator fiscal, clearly puzzled.

  ‘Tests don’t pick up everything,’ Nick snapped. ‘They’re not perfect.’

  ‘So in the absence of any diagnosis from the physicians, your wife went to Dr Gravely. He was an alternative practitioner, was he not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Forgive me, but I’m confused on two matters here,’ said the procurator fiscal. ‘First, what reason was offered by Mrs Mackenzie’s physicians for the considerable pain she was in, the loss of weight and so on?’

  Even from that distance Daisy could see Nick’s jaw muscles working overtime.

  ‘I have to ask, Mr Mackenzie.’

  Still Nick didn’t answer.

  ‘Was it suggested that your wife was suffering from a nervous illness?’

  Nick flinched slightly as the procurator fiscal touched the raw spot. ‘She was damaged by a highly toxic substance,’ he said bitterly, ‘but it didn’t fit the textbook, you see, so they were too frightened to give it a name! They couldn’t find out exactly how the damage was done and couldn’t see a neat list of symptoms, so that was that! They had to dredge their ideas bags and come up with something else – anything else.’

  Wrong way to go, Nick. Looks bad. Too emotional, too defensive, too angry.

  The procurator fiscal hesitated, as if genuinely regretting the necessity to press the matter. ‘So – what was it they finally suggested?’

  ‘Ha!’ It was several moments before he managed: ‘They said it was depression. But it wasn’t true. There’s no way it was true.’

  The procurator fiscal nodded slowly and for a moment Daisy thought he might let it go at that. But he was too professional to forget the other matter that had been confusing him. She had a good idea of what was coming, and she was right.

 
; ‘One last question, Mr Mackenzie, you said that Dr Gravely prescribed the morphine for your wife, yet he was not a qualified practitioner. Could you – er – clarify this point?’

  ‘I must have been mistaken,’ Nick said impatiently, his face puckering warningly.

  ‘It was another physician then?’

  ‘Yes – what the hell does it matter anyway?’

  The procurator fiscal looked a little taken aback at that and for a moment Daisy thought he would drop the point, but he pressed: ‘You can’t recall the name of this other physician?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But it was prescribed by a doctor during your stay in the United States?’

  Making little effort to hide his exasperation, Nick barked: ‘Yes.’

  After a last glance at Nick’s face, the procurator fiscal allowed him to leave the box.

  The next hour was taken up by evidence from the Mackenzies’ staff corroborating the events of Alusha Mackenzie’s last days. The housekeeper was adamant that Mrs Mackenzie had not been in low spirits; the estate manager, though fiercely loyal, was less certain. She had not looked well, he said. He could not say in what way, and in evading the question left the unfortunate impression that he had seen her looking depressed.

  The toxicologist was last on. He didn’t say anything unexpected, and he didn’t say anything helpful either. Reldane was regarded as a relatively safe product, he stated. Of proven low toxicity, it had never been known to cause serious side effects among people regularly exposed to it.

  As the court was adjourned until the next day, a shaft of weak sunlight the colour of amber splashed against the wall of the court, a sudden incongruous shaft of brightness.

  Wherever Nick had been spirited to during the noon recess, he did not go there now. Instead, with his companions forming a tight circle round him like soldiers round their warrior king, he ran the gauntlet of the photographers and hurried from the building.

  Back at the hotel Daisy called the office. She got straight through to Alan, and she had the strong feeling that he had been waiting for her call.

  Having martyred himself on the field of the trustees’ presentation all day, he was at his most scathing.

  Going her own way, he accused, acting entirely at the expense of everyone else. No allowance for the load she was dumping on the rest of the team, no consideration. No pulling together. It was getting to the point, he added ominously, where Catch was becoming unworkable.

  Ignoring the spirit of the last remark, Daisy made the appropriate noises: apology and entreaty, a little well-chosen flattery and some overt grovelling. Eventually Alan allowed himself to be placated, though grudgingly and with extremely bad grace so that she was left in no doubt that he was still highly displeased.

  It was twenty minutes before she got to speak to Jenny, and even then she had to remind Alan she was calling longdistance before he would remove himself from the line.

  ‘Tried the Civil Aviation Authority,’ Jenny murmured, keeping her voice down. ‘They don’t give pilots’ addresses out to the public, but they do forward letters, so I wrote.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But they couldn’t be sure the address they had for Peter Duggan was up-to-date. It was abroad somewhere – outside Europe, presumably, because they asked for extra postage. I turned on my persuasive powers’ – she gave a self-mocking giggle – ‘but they wouldn’t say which country.’

  ‘There must be other ways to find pilots,’ Daisy said more in hope than certainty.

  ‘I’ll keep trying.’

  ‘And the mechanic?’

  ‘I’ve got someone trying all the Robertsons in the Inverness phone book. Not a simple task!’

  Daisy spent the remainder of the afternoon with the local police, going over the flying notifications for the previous summer. The officer in charge was most co-operative. Acorn Flying Systems had sent out no less than twenty notifications for the Argyll area, but none of them was for any patch of forest adjacent to Ashard, and though they had posted their intention of spraying forest near to Adrian’s, the work had been undertaken in July, well after he had been doused.

  Dispirited, she took the last stuffy symptoms of her cold back to the hotel for an early bed with an aspirin and a cup of hot lemon. She slept until four, and then listened to the wind and thought of Nick Mackenzie at Glen Ashard.

  The next morning it was raining again. The papers had been reasonably restrained. Only a couple of the tabloids had reported Alusha Mackenzie’s ‘heavy morphine usage’, but had refrained from further comment, waiting, presumably, for the findings of the inquiry before running their main stories.

  When the court resumed, just one witness was called, a psychiatrist named Carter, as smooth in appearance as he was in speech. He had examined Mrs Mackenzie during the previous October in London, he said, and had run extensive tests.

  ‘And what was your diagnosis?’

  ‘Acute clinical depression.’

  Daisy closed her eyes momentarily.

  ‘And what was the treatment you recommended?’

  ‘Antidepressants, graduated exercise, psychiatric therapy. But Mrs Mackenzie was removed from my care before the treatment could begin.’

  ‘Removed?’

  ‘Her husband came and discharged her very suddenly.’

  ‘And this was against your advice?’

  ‘Very much so. I was extremely concerned for Mrs Mackenzie’s health.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Daisy bowed her head.

  ‘I thought she might attempt to take her own life. I was extremely concerned about it.’

  Nick’s lawyer did his best to shift the elegant Dr Carter from his position, but he was not be ruffled and not to be drawn. If exposure to chemicals could produce such symptoms, then he had never heard of a single case.

  All that remained was for the procurator fiscal to summarize the evidence. He was thorough and meticulous. He recalled the pathologist’s statement which allowed for the possibility that the deceased’s illness had contributed to her death. But as to the cause of that illness, he believed the evidence to be inconclusive. While Mrs Mackenzie may well have inhaled Reldane, and it might have caused some temporary symptoms, there was no evidence that it could have caused the chronic debilitating illness of the following ten months. The chemical Reldane had been in existence for years; it was considered relatively safe. It seemed an unlikely culprit. And then there was the evidence as to the deceased’s state of mind. Dr Carter had diagnosed clinical depression, and had warned of the dangers of his patient’s state of mind. And it must not be forgotten that she had experienced a traumatic year, with both an accident and a miscarriage. It was possible, therefore, that her illness and indeed her death were of nervous origin, and did not result from inhalation of the chemical Reldane.

  Mr Mackenzie, on the other hand, was convinced that his wife had not been depressed, but if the court accepted that, then it left her considerable physical deterioration unexplained, and could well implicate some as yet unidentified factor.

  As to the actual day of the death, he would only summarize the few facts, that no note had been found, that she had been seen to be looking unwell on the day of her death, that she had taken a high dose of morphine. The role which the drug may or may not have taken in the death was impossible to determine.

  The sheriff announced that he would like the weekend to reflect, and would give his finding on Monday morning. The tension fell back uncertainly, people stirred discontentedly, as if they had been cheated.

  Even before the sheriff had left the room, Nick was on his feet and striding down the aisle so rapidly that it was only by jumping quickly and awkwardly from her seat that Daisy made it to the door first and, passing quickly through, held it open for him. But before she had the chance to speak he had gone, speeding past with the barest flicker of a glance. An instant later his companions burst through the door in hot pursuit, one bumping into her with a muffled apology.

  T
he party had almost reached the main entrance when it suddenly ground to an abrupt halt, the cohorts almost colliding with one another. It was Nick who had created the jam, she realized. He had stopped at the doors. He was turning to David Weinberg.

  She hurried forward, aware that if she was going to speak she must say the right thing and in the right words, aware that she would have only a few moments in which to say it.

  He saw her, he frowned. Close up, he looked raw, defeated, heart-stopping. Suddenly anything she might have said seemed crass and inappropriate.

  Finally she blurted: ‘Can I talk to you?’

  People were crowding round him. She could sense his panic, his need to escape. With an obvious effort he forced himself to look down at her.

  She didn’t know why at that moment of all moments she should look at anything but his face, why as she drew breath to ask him if she could come to see him that evening she should look past his shoulder and notice the head of the man passing behind him. But she did, and there was something about the retreating head, the greased-back hair and fat neck, that caught her by surprise. The words died on her lips, and in the second that she was distracted, in the very instant she was about to force her eyes away from the bull-like neck and back to Nick’s face, something made Nick take fright because suddenly he was turning and before she realized what was happening he was pushing his way clear and his friends were rapidly closing ranks behind him.

  Her heart bumped, she pushed after him, through the crowd, out of the doors and into the rain. Emerging, she realized there would be no second chance. The press were converging for their close-ups. As Nick made for his car they shouted questions, pushed shamelessly in front of him, held cameras in his face. Watching the mêlée, Daisy could only feel glad when he reached the shelter of the car and it tore away in a welter of spray.

  She stood in the rain, filled with disbelief. She had let him go. She allowed herself a moment of sharp self-rebuke and something approaching misery, before peering through the sheeting rain, searching for the fat neck and slicked-back hair that had jerked at her memory. She began to half walk, half run along the street, examining the memory as she went. The image of the bull-necked head had been incongruous yet familiar.