‘Hi, Harry. It’s your old friend Jackie here.’
Jackie? Of course: Jackie Oliver. What could the wretched woman want?
‘Harry?’
‘Yes, Jackie?’
‘You might sound more pleased to hear from me.’
‘What can I do for you?’
‘Since we bumped into each other, I’ve been thinking it might be nice to have a longer chat about old times, that’s all.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeh. Why don’t you let me cook you lunch this Sunday? I’m a wow in the kitchen and we could swap life stories. You looked a bit down in the mouth when we met. I could try and cheer you up.’
Sunday lunch with Jackie and her latest husband was the very last thing Harry judged capable of lifting his spirits, but somehow he could not find the energy to argue.
‘What do you say, then?’
‘All right. I’ll come.’
‘We’re at seven, Chelsea Drive. Quite a way for you to travel. Do you want me to pick you up?’
‘No. I’ve got my own transport.’
‘Great. See you about midday, then.’
Suddenly, Harry’s company was in demand and he could not for the life of him understand why. To compound his bemusement, the telephone rang again before he had taken three steps along the passage. He snatched it up irritably, only to find that this time the caller was somebody he had been anxious to hear from.
‘Harry? It’s Zohra Labrooy here. I’ve got the information we need.’
‘You have?’
‘Yes. And now that I have, I’m at a loss to know what we should do.’ She sounded worried, which was odd, since Harry had expected to hear that her enquiries had put her mind at rest. ‘Could you come to Kensal Green on Saturday morning? We need to talk this through.’
‘Well, yes, but—’
‘I’ll expect you about eleven o’clock, then,’
‘All right, but Zohra—’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s clear to me that I was making more of my suspicions about Dr Kingdom than I should have done. The Versorelli Institute have confirmed he was with them on the eleventh, haven’t they?’ There was no reply. ‘Zohra?’
‘You’re mistaken, Harry.’ She sounded calmer now. ‘That’s what I want to talk to you about. He was absent from the Versorelli Institute from midday on Thursday the tenth until midday on Saturday the twelfth. His movements on Friday the eleventh are completely unaccounted for.’
It made no sense. Jack Cornelius and Peter Kingdom, both absent from their posts, whereabouts unknown, on the day of Heather’s disappearance. Surely to God, surely to calm sweet reason, they could not be in this together.
‘Harry?’
‘Yes?’
‘There’s something else you ought to know. I can’t think what’s caused it, but I’m almost certain it’s the case. He knows I’m spying on him, Harry. He knows we’re on to him.’
35
BY REACHING KEW Gardens with a quarter of an hour to spare, Harry hoped to win himself a much-needed interval of planning and preparation, a chance to assess Kingdom’s choice of venue and to rehearse what he would say. As soon as he turned away from the entrance booth with his ticket, however, he realized the folly of imagining he could outwit somebody as familiar as a psychiatrist was bound to be with the wiles and strategems of humanity. For there was Kingdom, waiting for him on a nearby bench and smiling in greeting. Harry had been forestalled.
‘Glad you could make it, Mr Barnett,’ Kingdom said, as he rose from the bench and extended a welcoming hand. ‘You’re early, I think.’
‘A little, yes.’ But not early enough: that was clear.
‘Do you know the Gardens?’
‘Not at all.’
‘I’ll lead the way, then.’
They set off down a broad driveway, with glasshouses to right and left and tree-dotted acres stretching away beyond. The day was still, grey and mild, the gardens solemn and wintry, reserved and silent as if made over for their private use. Kingdom was immaculately dressed in crombie, tailored trousers and polished shoes, their steel caps clicking self-importantly as he walked. He was breathing deeply, as if sampling the air, and gazing about as some squire might in his personal domain. Trailing beside him in his ill-fitting clothes, the thinning sole of one of his shoes admitting the dampness of the path, Harry felt as overawed and inferior as he suspected he was meant to.
‘Heather adored the Gardens at every season,’ said Kingdom. ‘Since I live nearby, she often preferred to meet me here rather than in Marylebone. One advantage psychiatry has over other branches of medicine is that it can be practised in a variety of surroundings. Shall we aim for the river?’
‘By all means.’ What direction they took was of no consequence to Harry. Kingdom’s presence and all the immanent uncertainties it gave rise to were more than enough for his senses to cope with.
‘I hope your agreement to meet me signifies that we may forget our misunderstanding of last week, Mr Barnett. There was no call for me to question you so agressively, nor for me to react as I did when you responded in kind.’
‘I agreed because you said you were concerned for Heather’s safety.’
‘So I am. That is why I thought it necessary to examine the possibility that you knew more of what had occurred on the day of her disappearance than you were yourself aware of knowing.’
‘How could that be?’
‘The suppression of a traumatic experience by the conscious mind is a commonplace of psychology, Mr Barnett. It can be overcome by a variety of methods: hypnosis, analysis, therapy. But all require time and trust. I regret to say that I rushed the fence.’ He shot Harry a smile of transparent reassurance. ‘For Heather’s sake, I’d like to try and mend the fence.’
‘You’re suggesting I become your patient?’
‘I’m suggesting we pool our resources – your memory and my expertise – in the hope of discovering what has befallen our mutual friend, Heather Mallender.’
‘That’s how you think of her, is it? As a friend?’
Kingdom chuckled. ‘You’re referring now, I suspect, to my outburst when you implied our relationship might have been unprofessional. Well, I did and do regard Heather as a friend, yes, as I do all my long-term patients. And I did take her to the Skein of Geese on the tenth of September, but not as part of some campaign of seduction. Heather asked me to escort her there and I agreed.’
‘If not seduction, what was the purpose?’
‘To establish the validity or invalidity of a conviction which she felt unable to accept was merely a delusory symptom of her illness.’
‘You can’t tell me what that conviction was, of course,’ said Harry sarcastically.
‘On the contrary.’ A smile of mild reproof. ‘I came here today specifically in order to do just that. On condition that you agree to help me in any way you can.’
Harry had no intention of helping a man he knew to be a liar and suspected of being something worse. Yet the promise seemed cheap in view of what it might yield, so he gave it eagerly. ‘All right. I agree.’
‘Good. What do you know of Heather’s illness, Mr Barnett?’
‘Not much. She hardly spoke of it. Depression sparked off by her sister’s death, I assumed.’
‘It was rather more than that, I fear. Heather suffered a severe breakdown in November of last year: sudden and substantial personality dysfunction with many of the characteristics of clinical schizophrenia. She was admitted to a hospital where I am retained as a consultant and her case was referred to me. Once her condition had been brought under control, it became clear that her sister’s death, though pre-dating her breakdown by five months, was the cause of her mental disintegration. This was not delayed grief, you understand, but an inability to sustain normal life without the counterpoint of her sister’s example, compounded by a belief that her family and friends would secretly have preferred her – the less beautiful and talented of the two – to have be
en the one to die. It was a difficult case, because there was some justification for how she felt. Her family, so far as I could judge, were crassly unsympathetic. Nevertheless, after some initial problems, excellent progress began to be made. She was able to leave hospital in March of this year and to resume a relatively normal existence. I had hoped a few months of regular consultation would see her recovery complete, but one delusion proved particularly stubborn and it was in the hope of ridding her of it by shock tactics that I agreed to take her to the Skein of Geese on the tenth of September.’
Harry could not deny that Kingdom was master of a persuasive tone. It would have been wonderfully and utterly convincing, but for all the good reasons Harry had to disbelieve every word: Zohra’s belief that he was a man obsessed; Harry’s sighting of him in Lindos; his absence from Geneva on the day of Heather’s disappearance. They were traversing a rhododendron glade now, and, after pausing to allow a gardener with a wheelbarrow to pass, Kingdom resumed.
‘Heather’s deepest rooted delusion was that her sister’s death had not been the terrorist mishap everybody supposed. She could frame no specific allegation as to what had occurred, yet she persisted in the belief that Clare had been deliberately murdered, rather than merely killed in mistake for her employer. She had tried to suppress the notion in the immediate aftermath of the event, but this had only added to the severity of her breakdown when it came. It was therefore no surprise to me that it proved the most durable feature of her disorder. I presented her with its obvious interpretation: that to invest the incident with a deep and sinister significance was to give it some meaning which might lessen the horror of its impact, in other words that the belief was a subconscious device for keeping at bay the sense of inferiority to her sister which was the true origin of her illness. She accepted this interpretation, but still could not bring herself to abandon the belief. I hoped the visit to the Skein of Geese would finally lay it to rest.’
They emerged from the tree-lined path onto an open lawn, with a broad sweep of the Thames coming suddenly into view beyond a boundary fence. On the farther shore the empty acres of Syon Park stretched towards the distant bulk of Syon House. Drawn up on the lawn and commanding this vista were several benches. Kingdom walked casually across to one of them and sat down, waiting for Harry to join him before continuing.
‘The last time Heather and I met here was on the sixth of September. That was when she challenged me to take her to the Skein of Geese and prove or disprove her point for good and all. She knew Clare had dined there shortly before her death and was convinced that if she could discover what had happened on that occasion, her suspicions of foul play would be vindicated.’
‘Clare dined there with Alan Dysart.’
‘Quite So. An innocent enough event, it would seem, and that is what I hoped Heather would be able to accept. I think she might have done, but for the proprietor, Rex Cunningham, feeding her a cock-and-bull story about seeing Clare in possession of a photograph which he was sure only a lover would carry. Like Cunningham and Dysart, the man in the photograph was an Old Breakspearean and that was enough for Heather: he immediately became the villain of the piece so far as she was concerned. As soon as Cunningham delivered his fanciful recollection, I knew she would fall for it and I knew why.’
‘Well?’ said Harry, once Kingdom’s failure to continue could no longer be ignored.
Kingdom turned to face him: he smiled faintly. ‘I have your assurance you’ll hold nothing back yourself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well. Heather believed Clare was pregnant when she was killed. I was unable to decide whether this belief preceded or arose from her breakdown. Her contention was that Clare had admitted the fact to her around the middle of May last year – no more than a couple of weeks, that is, before her death – in the strictest confidence. She had not named the father. She had further told Heather only three days before her death that she proposed to have an abortion. After Clare’s death, Heather had tried to elicit from members of her family some evidence that they knew of the pregnancy, but it seemed they did not. When the subject arose during my treatment of Heather, I approached Clare’s general practitioner and he assured me that, so far as he knew, she had not been pregnant. Of course, it is not uncommon for a single woman to keep such a fact from her GP, so his statement was scarcely conclusive, but, taken together with Heather’s predisposition to believe Clare was murdered, it suggested that she had invented the episode in order to lend weight to her theory. The disturbed mind is surprisingly cunning, Mr Barnett. It is capable of many subterfuges.’
‘You dismissed Heather’s version of events, then?’
‘To my own satisfaction, yes. But her disappearance casts a new light on affairs. It could prove she had not recovered as well as I’d hoped, or it could prove she genuinely had something to be afraid of. What I want to ask you is whether anything she ever told you or anything you’ve subsequently discovered could suggest that Clare Mallender really was pregnant when she was killed.’
More warnings than Harry could absorb sounded in his mind at that moment. For more than a year, Heather had struggled to persuade herself that Kingdom was right: her memories were delusions. Then, at Flaxford Rectory on 18 September, she had learned the truth: that only her memories were to be trusted. She had confided no more in Dr Kingdom. Harry had the man’s own word for that. Therefore, he must follow her example. ‘I’ve absolutely no reason to believe Clare was pregnant.’
Kingdom sighed with disappointment. ‘I’d hoped you might have turned something up.’
‘I’m afraid not. Cunningham told me about the photograph he’d seen in Clare’s possession, but I’m not sure I believe him. The man in the photograph is a schoolteacher named Cornelius. As far as I can establish, he had no connection whatsoever with Clare Mallender.’
Kingdom nodded glumly. ‘My enquiries had the same result.’ He pressed a gloved hand to his forehead. ‘Let me ask you something else, Mr Barnett. When Heather met me here on the sixth of September, what she said made me fear that a relapse in her condition was imminent. Aside from insisting that we should visit the Skein of Geese, she claimed to have been given evidence that her father’s firm, Mallender Marine, for which she’d been working part-time since April, was guilty of large-scale bribery and corruption. Have you found anything that might suggest that was true?’
‘No. Nothing at all.’
‘Then I must assume I was correct in my interpretation of her claim. Wild allegations of this kind can be a by-product of schizophrenia. Within a few weeks, Heather was herself prepared to admit she might have been wrong. She seemed happy to accept Dysart’s offer of a holiday on Rhodes in the hope that there she could put all her delusions behind her.’
A name had suddenly lurched to the front of Harry’s mind: Nigel Mossop. He had been unable to understand Heather’s choice of Mossop as a companion on her visit to Tyler’s Hard. Now it began to make sense. They had worked in the same office. They had drunk and talked together on Friday evenings. They had travelled with each other to the New Forest on 28 August. And eight days later Heather had told Kingdom she had evidence of financial irregularities at Mallender Marine. The connection was irresistible: Mossop was the source of her evidence. ‘What would it mean,’ Harry said, trying to sound calmly speculative, ‘if we could prove Clare had been pregnant and that Mallender Marine had been resorting to bribery?’
Kingdom looked back towards Syon House. ‘Why then, Mr Barnett, we would know those beliefs were not delusions on Heather’s part. In that event, it would become conceivable that her belief her sister was murdered was likewise not a delusion. And it would become distinctly possible that whoever had murdered Clare had also been instrumental in Heather’s disappearance.’
Kingdom was right. All of that did flow from what he had presented as a remote hypothesis but which Harry sensed was the absolute truth. But why had he volunteered as much as he had? Anxious to staunch the sudden desire to trust the man,
Harry said: ‘When did you last see Heather, Dr Kingdom?’
‘Mmm?’ Kingdom’s manner suggested the point was an inconsequential one, but to Harry it could be scarcely more significant. Kingdom had been in Lindos on 6 November, as Harry knew from the evidence of his own eyes and ears. He could only have been there to see Heather. It was possible, just possible, that the visit had an innocent explanation. If so, he would make no secret of it. If not, it followed as night followed day that he had only staged this expert pretence of seeking Harry’s help in order to gauge how much he knew and how great a threat he posed. ‘When did I last see her?’ he repeated quizzically.
‘Yes. I wondered what her state of mind was when you last met.’
‘But I’ve already told you, Mr Barnett. She was beginning to believe she’d been mistaken all along in detecting some sinister conspiracy behind her sister’s death. That was at our last consultation, in Marylebone, on the eleventh of October, two days before her departure for Greece. That was the very last time we met.’
Kingdom was condemned from his own mouth. A chill ran through Harry as he realized that this well-dressed, well-spoken, well-mannered man seated beside him on a bench amidst Kew Gardens’ manicured charms was more than just a proven liar. It was also quite possible that he was Heather’s murderer.
‘The real question is this, Mr Barnett: are you willing for me to probe the sub-conscious areas of your mind in the hope that we may find there the clue your conscious mind has not so far uncovered? You may have seen or heard something, glimpsed or gleaned some sight or impression that would tell us what’s become of Heather.’
Harry knew that if he had not recognized Kingdom from their encounter in Lindos – if he had not learned from Zohra to distrust him – he would probably have succumbed to his ploy. And in agreeing to Kingdom’s proposal for Heather’s sake, he would probably have betrayed himself. ‘What would be involved?’ he said, struggling to sound no more than understandably cautious.
Into the Blue Page 30
