He put the phone away into a desk drawer and spent a couple of seconds collecting his thoughts before looking up.
“This is very short notice. Miss, er, Schechter,” he said to her at last.
In fact, what he had said was, “This is very short notice. Miss, er—” and then he had paused and peered into another of his desk drawers before saying “Schechter.”
It seemed to Kate that it was very odd to keep your visitors’ names in a drawer, but then he clearly disliked having things cluttering up his fine but severely designed black ash desk, because there was nothing on it at all. It was completely blank, as was every other surface in his office. There was nothing on the small neat steel-and-glass coffee table which sat squarely between two Barcelona chairs. There was nothing on top of the two expensive-looking filing cabinets which stood at the back of the room.
There were no bookshelves—if there were any books they were presumably hidden away behind the white doors of the large blank built-in cupboards—and although there was one plain black picture frame hanging on the wall, this was presumably a temporary aberration because there was no picture in it.
Kate looked around her with a bemused air.
“Do you have no ornaments in here at all, Mr. Standish?” she asked.
He was, for a moment, somewhat taken aback by her transatlantic directness, but then he answered her.
“Indeed I have ornaments,” he said, and pulled open another drawer. He pulled out from this a small china model of a kitten playing with a ball of wool and put it firmly on the desk in front of him.
“As a psychologist I am aware of the important role that ornamentation plays in nourishing the human spirit,” he pronounced.
He put the china kitten back in the drawer and slid it closed with a smooth click.
“Now.”
He clasped his hands together on the desk in front of him, and looked at her enquiringly.
“It’s very good of you to see me at short notice, Mr. Standish—”
“Yes, yes, we’ve established that.”
“—but I’m sure you know what newspaper deadlines are like.”
“I know at least as much as I would ever care to know about newspapers, Miss, er—”
He opened his drawer again.
“Miss Schechter, but—”
“Well that’s partly what made me approach you,” lied Kate charmingly. “I know that you have suffered from some, well, unfortunate publicity here, and thought you might welcome the opportunity to talk about some of the more enlightening aspects of the work at the Woodshead Hospital.” She smiled very sweetly.
“It’s only because you come to me with the highest recommendation from my very good friend and colleague Mr., er—”
“Franklin, Alan Franklin,” prompted Kate, to save the psychologist from having to open his drawer again. Alan Franklin was a therapist whom Kate had seen for a few sessions after the loss of her husband, Luke. He had warned her that Standish, though brilliant, was also peculiar, even by the high standards set by his profession.
“—Franklin,” resumed Standish, “that I agreed to see you. Let me warn you instantly that if I see any resumption of this ‘Something nasty in the Woodshead’ mendacity appearing in the papers as a result of this interview I will, I will—”
“ ‘do such things—’ ”
“ ‘What they are yet I know not—but they shall be—’ ”
“ ‘The terror of the Earth,’ ” said Kate, brightly. Standish narrowed his eyes.
“Lear, Act Two. Scene Four,” he said, “And I think you’ll find it’s ‘terrors’ and not ‘terror.’ ”
“Do you know, I think you’re right?” replied Kate.
Thank you, Alan, she thought. She smiled at Standish, who relaxed into pleased superiority. It was odd, Kate reflected, that people who needed to bully you were the easiest to push around.
“So you would like to know precisely what, Miss Schechter?”
“Assume,” said Kate, “that I know nothing.”
Standish smiled, as if to signify that no assumption could possibly give him greater pleasure.
“Very well,” he said. “The Woodshead is a research hospital. We specialize in the care and study of patients with unusual or previously unknown conditions, largely in the psychological or psychiatric fields. Funds are raised in various ways. One of our chief methods is quite simply to take in private patients at exorbitantly high fees, which they are happy to pay, or at least happy to complain about. There is in fact nothing to complain about because patients who come to us privately are made fully aware of why our fees are so high. For the money they are paying, they are, of course, perfectly entitled to complain—the right to complain is one of the privileges they are paying for. In some cases we come to a special arrangement under which, in return for being made the sole beneficiaries of a patient’s estate, we will guarantee to look after that patient for the rest of his or her life.”
“So in effect you are in the business of giving scholarships to people with particularly gifted diseases?”
“Exactly. A very good way of expressing it. We are in the business of giving scholarships to people with particularly gifted diseases. I must make a note of that. Miss Mayhew!”
He had opened a drawer, which clearly contained his office intercom. In response to his summons, one of the cupboards opened and turned out to be a door into a side office—a feature which must have appealed to some architect who had conceived an ideological dislike of doors. From this office there emerged obediently a thin and rather blank-faced woman in her mid-forties.
“Miss Mayhew,” said Mr. Standish, “we are in the business of giving scholarships to people with particularly gifted diseases.”
“Very good, Mr. Standish,” said Miss Mayhew, and retreated backward into her office, pulling the door closed after her. Kate wondered if it was perhaps a cupboard after all.
“And we do have some patients with some really quite outstanding diseases at the moment,” enthused the psychologist. “Perhaps you would care to come and see one or two of our current stars?”
“Indeed I would. That would be most interesting, Mr. Standish, you’re very kind,” said Kate.
“You have to be kind in this job,” Standish replied, and flicked a smile on and off at her.
Kate was trying to keep some of the impatience she was feeling out of her manner. She did not take to Mr. Standish, and was beginning to feel that there was a kind of Martian quality to him. Furthermore, the only thing she was actually interested in was discovering whether or not the hospital had accepted a new admission in the early hours of the morning, and if so, where he was and whether she could see him.
She had originally tried the direct approach but had been rebuffed by a mere telephone receptionist on the grounds that she didn’t have a name to ask for. Simply asking if they had any tall, well-built, blond men in residence had seemed to create entirely the wrong impression. At least, she insisted to herself that it was entirely the wrong impression. A quick phone call to Alan Franklin had set her up for this altogether more subtle approach.
“Good!” A look of doubt passed momentarily over Mr. Standish’s face, and he summoned Miss Mayhew from out of her cupboard again.
“Miss Mayhew, that last thing I just said to you—”
“Yes, Mr. Standish?”
“I assume you realized that I wished you to make a note of it for me?”
“No, Mr. Standish, but I will be happy to do so.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Standish with a slightly tense look. “And tidy up in here please. The place looks a—”
He wanted to say that the place looked a mess, but was frustrated by its air of clinical sterility.
“Just tidy up generally,” he concluded.
“Yes, Mr. Standish.”
The psychologist nodded tersely, brushed a nonexistent speck of dust off the top of his desk, flicked another brief smile on and off at Kate and then escorted he
r out of his office into the corridor which was immaculately laid with the sort of beige carpet that gave everyone who walked on it electric shocks.
“Here, you see,” said Standish, indicating part of the wall they were walking past with an idle wave of his hand, but not making it in any way clear what it was he wished her to see or what she was supposed to understand from it.
“And this,” he said, apparently pointing at a door hinge.
“Ah,” he added, as the door swung open toward them. Kate was alarmed to find herself giving a little expectant start every time a door opened anywhere in this place. This was not the sort of behavior she expected of a worldly-wise New York journalist, even if she didn’t actually live in New York and only wrote travel articles for magazines. It still was not right for her to be looking for large blond men every time a door opened.
There was no large blond man. There was instead a small, sandy-haired girl of about ten years old, being pushed along in a wheelchair. She seemed very pale, sick and withdrawn, and was murmuring something soundlessly to herself. Whatever it was she was murmuring seemed to cause her worry and agitation, and she would flop this way then that in her chair as if trying to escape from the words coming out of her mouth. Kate was instantly moved by the sight of her, and on an impulse asked the nurse who was pushing her along to stop.
She squatted down to look kindly into the girl’s face, which seemed to please the nurse a little, but Mr. Standish less so.
Kate did not try to demand the girl’s attention, merely gave her an open and friendly smile to see if she wanted to respond, but the girl seemed unwilling or unable to. Her mouth worked away endlessly, appearing almost to lead an existence that was independent of the rest of her face.
Now that Kate looked at her more closely it seemed that she looked not so much sick and withdrawn as weary, harassed and unutterably fed up. She needed a little rest, she needed peace, but her mouth kept motoring on.
For a fleeting instant her eyes caught Kate’s, and the message Kate received was along the lines of “I’m sorry but you’ll just have to excuse me while all this is going on.” The girl took a deep breath, half-closed her eyes in resignation and continued her relentless silent murmuring.
Kate leaned forward a little in an attempt to catch any actual words, but she couldn’t make anything out. She shot an inquiring look up at Standish.
He said, simply, “Stock market prices.”
A look of amazement crept over Kate’s face.
Standish added with a wry shrug, “Yesterday’s, I’m afraid.”
Kate flinched at having her reaction so wildly misinterpreted, and hurriedly looked back at the girl in order to cover her confusion.
“You mean,” she said, rather redundantly, “she’s just sitting here reciting yesterday’s stock market prices?” The girl rolled her eyes past Kate’s.
“Yes,” said Standish. “It took a lip reader to work out what was going on. We all got rather excited, of course, but then closer examination revealed that they were only yesterday’s, which was a bit of a disappointment. Not that significant a case really. Aberrant behavior. Interesting to know why she does it, but—”
“Hold on a moment,” said Kate, trying to sound very interested rather than absolutely horrified. “Are you saying that she is reciting—what?—the closing prices over and over, or—”
“No. That’s an interesting feature of course. She pretty much keeps pace with movements in the market over the course of a whole day. Just twenty-four hours out of step.”
“But that’s extraordinary, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes. Quite a feat.”
“A feat?”
“Well, as a scientist, I have to take the view that since the information is freely available, she is acquiring it through normal channels. There’s no necessity in this case to invent any supernatural or paranormal dimension. Occam’s razor. Shouldn’t needlessly multiply entities.”
“But has anyone seen her studying the newspapers, or copying stuff down over the phone?”
She looked up at the nurse, who shook her head dumbly.
“No, never actually caught her at it,” said Standish. “As I said, it’s quite a feat. I’m sure a stage magician or memory man could tell you how it was done.”
“Have you asked one?”
“No. Don’t hold with such people.”
“But do you really think that she could possibly be doing this deliberately?” insisted Kate.
“Believe me, if you understood as much about people as I do. Miss, er—you would believe anything,” said Standish in his most professionally reassuring tone of voice.
Kate stared into the tired, wretched face of the young girl and said nothing.
“You have to understand,” said Standish, “that we have to be rational about this. If it was tomorrow’s stock market prices, it would be a different story. That would be a phenomenon of an entirely different character which would merit and demand the most rigorous study. And I’m sure we’d have no difficulty in funding the research. There would be absolutely no problem about that.”
“I see,” said Kate, and meant it.
She stood up, a little stiffly, and brushed down her skirt.
“So,” she said, and felt ashamed of herself, “who is your newest patient? Who has arrived most recently, then?” She shuddered at the crassness of the non sequitur, but reminded herself that she was there as a journalist, so it would not seem odd.
Standish waved the nurse and the wheelchair with its sad charge on their way. Kate glanced back at the girl once, and then followed Standish through the swing doors and into the next section of corridor, which was identical to the previous one.
“Here, you see,” said Standish again, this time apparently in relation to a window frame.
“And this,” he said, pointing at a light.
He had obviously either not heard her question or was deliberately ignoring it. Perhaps, thought Kate, he was simply treating it with the contempt it deserved.
It suddenly dawned on her what all this “Here you see” and “And this” -ing was about. He was asking her to admire the quality of the decor. The windows were sashes, with finely made and beautifully painted beads; the light fittings were of a heavy dull metal, probably nickel-plated—and so on.
“Very fine,” she said accommodatingly, and then noticed that this had sounded an odd thing to say in her American accent.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” she added, thinking that that would please him.
It did. He allowed himself a subdued beam of pleasure.
“We like to think of it as a quality caring environment,” he said.
“You must get a lot of people wanting to come here,” Kate continued, plugging away at her theme.
“How often do you admit new patients? When was the last—?”
With her left hand she carefully restrained her right hand which wanted to strangle her at this moment.
A door they were passing was slightly ajar, and she tried, unobtrusively, to look in.
“Very well, we’ll take a look in here,” said Standish immediately, pushing the door fully open, on what transpired to be quite a small room.
“Ah, yes,” Standish said, recognizing the occupant. He ushered Kate in.
The occupant of the room was another non-large, non-blond person. Kate was beginning to find the whole visit to be something of an emotionally wearing experience, and she had a feeling that things were not about to ease up in that respect.
The man sitting in the bedside chair while his bed was being made up by a hospital orderly was one of the most deeply and disturbingly tousled people that Kate had ever seen. In fact, it was only his hair that was tousled, but it was tousled to such an extreme degree that it seemed to draw all of his long face up into its distressed chaos.
He seemed quite content to sit where he was, but there was something tremendously vacant about his contentedness—he seemed literally to be content about nothing. There wa
s a completely empty space hanging in the air about eighteen inches in front of his face, and his contentedness, if it sprang from anything, sprang from staring at that.
There was also a sense that he was waiting for something. Whether it was something that was about to happen at any moment or something that was going to happen later in the week, or even something that was going to happen some little while after hell iced over and British Telecom got the phones fixed, was by no means apparent because it seemed to be all the same to him. If it happened he was ready for it and if it didn’t—he was content.
Kate found such contentedness almost unbearably distressing.
“What’s the matter with him?” she said quietly, and then instantly realized that she was talking as if he wasn’t there, when he could probably speak perfectly well for himself. Indeed, at that moment, he suddenly did speak.
“Oh, er, hi,” he said. “OK, yeah, thank you.”
“Er, hello,” she said, in response, though it didn’t seem quite to fit. Or rather, what he had said didn’t seem quite to fit. Standish made a gesture to her to discourage her from speaking.
“Er, yeah, a bagel would be fine,” said the contented man. He said it in a flat kind of tone, as if merely repeating something he had been given to say.
“Yeah, and maybe some juice,” he added. “OK, thanks.” He then relaxed into his state of empty watchfulness.
“A very unusual condition,” said Standish, “that is to say, we can only believe that it is entirely unique. I’ve certainly never heard of anything remotely like it. It has also proved virtually impossible to verify beyond question that it is what it appears to be, so I’m glad to say that we have been spared the embarrassment of attempting to give the condition a name.”
“Would you like me to help Mr. Elwes back to bed?” asked the orderly of Standish. Standish nodded. He didn’t bother to waste words on minions.
The orderly bent down to talk to the patient.
“Mr. Elwes?” he said quietly.
Mr. Elwes seemed to swim up out of a reverie.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set Page 34
