‘To pour over him?’
‘The old methods are the best. Oh, and you might make a pot of strong coffee as well.’
In fact it required more than one jugful of icy water, and several hard slaps to the face, to bring Klüver round. He sat up suddenly, rubbing his grizzled head, and groaning slightly.
‘Here, drink this,’ I ordered, shoving a mug of steaming coffee into his hands. ‘My name is Webster; I came to see you about Lucy Paxton – do you remember?’
He nodded, and even that small effort caused him to wince with pain.
‘My associate, here, has been trying to establish your bona fides, doctor. The Institute in Cape Town were very forthcoming. We know that you’re a charlatan, and that you’ve been up to your old tricks again.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ he asked, putting on his glasses and squinting at me.
‘You’ve been hypnotising patients and abusing them.’
‘How dare you!’ he exclaimed.
‘It’s a different kind of abuse this time,’ I went on. ‘Not touching up female clients, something much more sinister.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m referring to Lucy, of course. You used hypnotic techniques to make her believe that Owen Phillimore was a total stranger, even though they’d been lovers for months. You systematically washed away all her memories of him. I call that abuse.’
‘What possible reason could I have for doing such a thing?’ objected Klüver, sobering up by the second. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. Anyway, how do you know she was having a relationship with Owen?’
I produced the photo album and pointed to the relevant pages. The faintest flicker of indecision passed across Klüver’s pasty features. ‘This is all news to me – I had no idea.’
‘I don’t believe you. However, you’re right to say that you have no motive for tampering with Lucy’s mind.’
‘Exactly!’ exclaimed Klüver indignantly.
‘Which leads me to believe you were acting on behalf of a third party – probably under coercion. After all, a man who goes around pretending to be something he isn’t is extremely vulnerable to coercion.’
‘Who is this third party you’re talking about?’
‘Someone you’re afraid of; someone who’s already murdered one man; someone who wouldn’t stick at murdering you if it became necessary.’
Just at that moment there was a thunderous series of knocks on the front door, which caused Klüver to jump nearly out of his skin. The timing was impeccable.
‘No doubt that’s the individual now,’ I remarked. ‘Would you like us to hide nearby – in case there’s trouble?’
Klüver did not object to the idea; in fact he seemed relieved that he would not have to face the situation alone.
Mo and I took up strategic positions in the kitchen. I made sure the hatch which connected it with the lounge was slightly ajar, so that we could keep an eye on proceedings.
We heard Klüver walk along to the front door, open it, and mumble a greeting.
A few seconds later a familiar, more robust voice rang out in the hallway: ‘Have you been on the piss?’
‘I’ve had a few drinks, yes,’ replied Klüver in an apologetic tone.
As I peered through the hatch the burly form of Trevor Paxton lumbered into view.
‘Has Webster been here?’ he demanded.
‘He came and went,’ replied Klüver airily.
‘What did you tell him?’
‘Nothing he didn’t already know.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Paxton sharply.
‘He’s found out that I hypnotised Lucy. And that you blackmailed me into doing it. He even knows that you forced Owen to put his head in that noose.’
‘How does he know?’
‘I’ve got absolutely no idea.’
‘I think you must have told him yourself,’ concluded Paxton, in a quietly menacing manner.
Suddenly his huge hands were around the older man’s throat and they both fell back onto the sofa in a deadly embrace.
Feeling this might be a propitious time to intervene I rushed through into the lounge, followed closely by Mo. Paxton looked utterly astonished when he saw us, but his grip on poor Klüver – whose face had by now turned an alarming shade of purple – did not weaken. Mo pulled at one of Paxton’s arms, I the other, and eventually we managed to prize him loose. With a growl of anger he lashed out at both of us simultaneously, knocking us aside, before running down the hall and out of the house.
‘Shall we go after him?’ cried Mo, picking himself up from the floor.
‘No! It’s more important that we get to Lucy,’ I replied.
‘Why?’
‘He might grab her and try to leave the country. She still has absolute faith in him, remember.’
‘Take me to her,’ gasped the half-throttled Klüver. ‘I’m the only one who can make her see sense.’
I considered the suggestion for a moment. ‘Will you admit to her what you’ve done?’
He nodded emphatically. ‘Everything – I’ll tell her everything.’
‘Very well. Help him into the car, would you, Mo?’
By the time we set off up Trumpington Road the therapist’s face had returned to an acceptable hue, but he was still finding it hard to catch his breath.
‘Are you sure you’re alright?’ I asked him humanely. ‘We can stop off at the hospital if you want.’
‘No, there’s no time. Keep going.’
I took the quickest route I knew through the town. While we were waiting at traffic lights I phoned Lucy and advised her to lock herself in, and not to open the door to anyone until we arrived.
‘Not even my husband?’ she asked in surprise.
‘Especially not your husband.’
‘Why? What’s going on?’
‘I can’t explain now, but you must do as I say.’
She agreed, albeit grudgingly.
Eventually we turned into the Paxtons’ drive, and to my great relief Trevor’s car was nowhere to be seen. Lucy was gazing down at us from a bedroom window.
A few seconds later she emerged from the front door looking bewildered. ‘What’s all this about? Why have you brought Dr. Klüver with you?’
‘He has something very important to say,’ I explained. ‘But as you can see, he’s not feeling very well. Could we go inside?’
Lucy led the way into the drawing room and sat Klüver down on the sofa.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ she enquired, inspecting his neck. ‘How did he get these marks?’
‘You may well ask,’ I replied, aiming a glance at Mo.
‘Is that what you’ve come to talk to me about?’
‘Not exactly, no.’
‘What then? Not those photos again, I hope?’
‘Dr. Klüver, here, would like to make a confession.’
Lucy’s brow puckered into a confused frown. ‘What kind of confession?’
The therapist cleared his throat, and then looked her straight in the eye. ‘Originally you came to me complaining of depression, do you remember?’
‘Yes. So?’
‘That depression wasn’t caused by your failure to conceive a child with Trevor – as you now believe.’
‘What, then?’
‘The truth is, you never really loved him, and you felt trapped in the marriage. This led to you having an affair with Owen Phillimore, which in turn made you feel confused and guilty.’
‘Why are you lying?’ shouted Lucy, stamping her foot petulantly. ‘I never knew Owen Phillimore.’
‘Please, hear him out,’ I entreated. ‘Carry on, doctor.’
Klüver smiled wryly. ‘That’s the trouble; I’m not really a doctor at all – I never qualified. Trevor found out. He came to me one evening and threatened to expose me unless I did exactly what he asked. He already knew you were seeing Owen, and he wanted me to make you stop – using hypnosis. I was in no position to refuse.
‘Because you’re such an excellent, suggestible subject it took only a few sessions to turn you into something you weren’t – a happy, devoted wife. The next stage was to suppress all your memories of Owen. That took longer – but I succeeded in the end. Unfortunately, the young man refused to be put off. He couldn’t understand why you had suddenly spurned him. He began hounding you in the street.’
‘Which is where we came in,’ I said, taking up the story. ‘If we’d talked to Owen he may well have been able to persuade us that your behaviour was unnatural – that something very odd was going on. Trevor knew that, and couldn’t risk it. That’s why he murdered him.’
‘Trevor didn’t murder anyone,’ exclaimed Lucy. ‘It was suicide – I saw it with my own eyes.’
‘That’s how it was made to look, certainly. But there was no note. You’d expect a clever, literary chap like Owen to put a few words together for the occasion, wouldn’t you?’
‘Lot’s of people kill themselves without leaving notes,’ protested Lucy.
‘All the same, it was indicative. And there was something else that made me suspicious. Just after we discovered the body I was about to go downstairs to phone the police. Trevor instinctively reached out to stop me, and then checked himself. You see, he already knew the telephone in Owen’s hall wasn’t working – because he’d been in the flat before. Yet why should he have been there, if it wasn’t to murder him?’
‘I know my husband couldn’t kill anyone,’ said Lucy with unshakable conviction. ‘You haven’t got any proof, anyway.’
‘The police will be able to link him to the murder forensically,’ I assured her. ‘You can’t force someone to hang themselves without leaving some trace. The trouble is he returned to the scene with me, probably wearing the same clothes. That was clever, because now anything they do find can be attributed to the second, innocent visit, rather than the first.’
‘I have proof,’ said Klüver calmly.
We all turned to him in surprise.
‘Well, I needed to have some way of clearing my name, in case all this came out. So I secretly taped our conversations.’ He addressed Lucy solemnly. ‘Your husband explicitly admits to the killing on one of the tapes; it’s safely lodged with my solicitor, if you want to hear it.’
Poor Lucy seemed momentarily rocked by this new revelation, but she quickly recovered her composure. ‘Tapes can be faked, just like photos.’
I smiled, and placed an avuncular hand on her arm. ‘Look, Lucy, the reason you won’t hear a word against Trevor is because you’ve been brainwashed into thinking like that. But don’t worry – Dr. Klüver can easily undo the damage.’
‘No!’ she cried, shrinking away from me. ‘I don’t trust him. I don’t trust any of you. You’re all against Trevor! I’m going to wait in my bedroom until he arrives.’
She ran out of the door.
‘There must be something we can do,’ said Mo, after a pause. ‘We can’t let her go through life thinking that bastard is some kind of saint.’
‘I can’t force her into anything,’ pointed out Klüver. ‘If she refuses treatment I’m powerless.’
I hit my forehead in a gesture of self-reproach. ‘This has been badly mishandled. We should have gone along with whatever she said at first – to gain her trust. Then she might have agreed to be treated. As it is we’ve alienated her completely.’
Klüver nodded his agreement.
‘Those tape-recordings really do exist, I suppose?’ I asked him.
‘Of course.’
‘Then at least Paxton should be convicted. That’s one small mercy.’
And so it proved to be. The jury required little deliberation to find Trevor Ralph Paxton guilty of murdering Owen Phillimore.
Lucy refused to take any part in the trial, and to this day believes her husband is the victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice. She visits him regularly in prison, and has stubbornly refused any kind of psychiatric help, from Klüver or anyone else.
A number of articles appeared in the serious press about her unusual situation. It became something of a cause célèbre for a while. One Labour M.P. even called for the total abolition of hypnosis.
I was most impressed, however, by a thought-provoking piece in the Guardian. It expressed doubts as to whether Paxton could ever have found contentment with his wife, knowing that ‘every word of devotion she spoke was artificial, every embrace a synthetic sham.’ It concluded: ‘To believe that love can exist without free will – that, surely, is the biggest self-delusion of all.’
Within the last month there has been a concerted campaign to persuade Paxton to confess everything from prison, in the hope that this will make Lucy more amenable to a course of de-programming. It remains to be seen whether he bows to public pressure and does the right thing.
GARDENER’S QUESTIONS
CHAPTER ONE
As a general rule I avoid my namesake’s meretricious habit of
drawing multiple inferences from a casual glance at a person. But in the case of Mr. George Beaumaris, who visited our consulting-parlour one afternoon in the late spring of 2013, I was tempted to make a rare exception.
‘Let me hazard that you are retired, or perhaps of private means. You possess two or more cars, at least one of which is a vintage model. As to hobbies, you are an enthusiastic, not to say a fanatical gardener.’
My visitor grinned broadly, which had the effect of inverting his foxy brown moustache.
‘You certainly live up to your name,’ he said, ‘I am a keen gardener. How could you tell?’
‘Your clothes are impeccably tailored, yet there are splashes of fresh mud on your shoes and trousers, and what I take to be earth underneath your fingernails. Obviously you felt compelled to tend your beloved plants despite this morning’s torrential rain. It even made you half an hour late for our appointment.’
‘Ah, yes, sorry about that,’ said Beaumaris, shifting in his seat. ‘I’m afraid my rosarium has become a bit of an obsession over the years. You ought to see it, Mr. Webster, next time you’re in the Saffron Walden area.’
‘Thank you, I will. But what about my other conjectures? Was I right about the cars?’
‘Yes. I own four in all; three from the thirties, and that Volvo estate outside. It was the R.A.C. Club tie that gave me away, I suppose?’
‘Quite. And are you retired?’
‘Have been since my father died, twelve years ago. I was lucky enough to inherit a considerable estate.’
‘Which explains how you managed to see me at such short notice. A man with professional commitments would surely have needed longer. But I’m digressing from the purpose of your visit, Mr. Beaumaris. A problem concerning your new fiancée, if I remember correctly?’
‘Yes. I think it’s off beat enough for you. Let me put the thing into context first, if I may. My wife, Gloria, died in a car crash two years ago. She was driving back from my sister’s house when she lost control of the car. We’d been happily married for many years.’
‘Very distressing,’ I sympathised.
Beaumaris nodded, his eyes moistening slightly.
‘Yes – yes it was. Still haven’t really got over it, to be honest. Anyway, last year a close friend suggested I should try to meet some other women. He said it would be therapeutic – bring me out of myself. At first I was reluctant, but my friend persisted, and in the end I agreed to join a dating agency – Top Table Introductions.’
‘Sounds rather exclusive,’ I commented.
‘Well, I suppose it was, in a way. They put me in touch with several suitable ladies, some of whom were extremely charming, others less so. But there was no spark with any of them, if you know what I mean. I quickly became disillusioned – told the agency not to bother with me any more. Several months passed, and I’d completely forgotten about the whole thing when I got a call from a woman named Janine Yorke. She’d been given my details by the agency at the same time as the others, but hadn’t got round to phoni
ng me till then. I imagine she was just as sceptical about the process as I was. We got chatting, and she seemed to be on my wave length, so I decided to give it one last go.
‘We met for lunch the next day, at a country hotel just outside St. Albans. It transpired that she shared my passion for flowers. I was pleasantly surprised, because none of the other ladies I’d met were particularly interested. In fact Janine fulfilled virtually all the requirements I put on my original application form. Even down to the auburn hair!’
‘Can you still remember what those requirements were?’
‘Yes, I think so. Honesty – that was at the top of my list, beauty, good sense of humour, height between five foot three and five foot seven, age between thirty-five and fifty. The red hair and love of gardening were optional extras, really. Oh, and I don’t like spectacles on a woman.’
‘How old is Janine?’
‘She’s thirty-six.’
‘I see. Please continue.’
‘Well, things went pretty smoothly after that first meeting. She came to my house the following weekend. I showed her round the garden, and she rattled off the names of some of the plants, in Latin. I suppose that’s when I really fell for her. Within a month we were engaged.’
‘This all sounds most heart-warming,’ I said. ‘But presumably something went awry otherwise you wouldn’t be here?’
Beaumaris nodded gloomily. ‘We fixed a date for the wedding. Then I decided I ought to tell Top Table about their successful match. However, Janine had heard rumours that the agency had gone bust recently, which was a bit sad. I phoned their number, and sure enough it was unobtainable. I did some research – unbeknownst to Janine – and tracked down the proprietress Mary Catchpole. She was the one who originally conducted my personality assessment.’
‘Why unbeknownst to Janine?’
‘I had the vague idea of inviting Miss Catchpole to our wedding, as a surprise.’
‘I see. Go on.’
‘I phoned her at home, and she confirmed that her business had indeed gone under. I offered my commiserations. Then I told her the good news about Janine and me, and thanked her sincerely for bringing us together. She seemed a little overwhelmed at first – didn’t know what to say. After a long pause she congratulated me on my choice of partner. I asked her if she’d like to come to the wedding, and she said she’d be honoured.’
The Sherlock Effect Page 13
