The Death Chamber

by Sarah Rayne

  There had been times during the past two years when Jude would have traded his soul to be back in the days when he and the camera crew had rattled across war-torn landscapes in one of the terrifyingly erratic jeeps they used to hire. Jude would be writing the reports as they went, trusting to heaven or hell they would get back to the base to send them; the camera crew would be cursing because the terrain was too uneven for filming, the interpreter would be looking out for likely people to interview along the way . . . There had been a great many times during those journeys when they had known they might be the target of a sniper or that a bomb might explode in their path at any minute, because their luck would not last for ever. But they had gone on anyway. Until the day when the luck had run out, and the bomb had exploded, and two of the camera crew had been killed and Jude had been blinded.

  But when it came to this journey, Chad merely said, ‘I expect you’d prefer to sit in the front, wouldn’t you?’ opened the car door and left Jude to find his own way in, and grapple with the seat belt by himself. Then he said, ‘Are you set to go? The journey’s a good five hours, although once we’re clear of London quite a lot of it’s motorway. I thought we’d stop off for some lunch about halfway, and we’ll probably reach the destination about five. Is that all right with you?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I usually have a tape on while I’m driving,’ said Chad, and Jude felt the movement as he reached forward to slot a cassette into the tape deck.

  ‘That suits me. I shan’t have to listen to the other drivers sounding their horns when you cut them up. I suppose you still drive as badly as ever.’ He listened for Chad’s reaction to this, and was absurdly pleased when he picked up a ruffle of amusement. This sensing of other people’s responses and emotions was not something he could do with everyone and it really only worked if it was someone with whom he was properly in tune, but he was getting better at it. He was sufficiently pleased at picking up Chad’s amusement to say, ‘I won’t probe for clues about the destination because that might spoil your experiment, but I already think we’re travelling north.’

  ‘Why do you say that? Magnetic pull of the north pole or something?’

  ‘No, the timing’ said Jude. ‘If we drove for five hours due south or east we’d end up in the English Channel or the North Sea.’

  ‘Holmes, my dear fellow, you never cease to amaze me. But how d’you know we aren’t going due west? Into Cornwall or Devon.’

  ‘We might be, but I don’t think so. I don’t care where we’re going, anyway. It’s just a pity five hours isn’t long enough to take us into Scotland.’

  ‘Why the sudden yearning for Scotland?’

  ‘Single malt, dear boy. I may be blind, but I can still drink you under the table.’

  ‘And have done so on several occasions. We’ll put it to the test when this is over,’ said Chad. ‘I liked your new flat, by the way.’

  ‘Mortgaged up to the hilt,’ said Jude carelessly, but he was pleased because finding and buying the lease of the big airy flat in Little Venice had been difficult, and then furnishing it without knowing what he was buying or how the rooms looked, had been bitterly frustrating. ‘I’ve only been there for three months but it costs the absolute earth, in fact I suspect the bailiffs are already gathering, and— God Almighty! what’s just thundered past?’

  ‘A juggernaut.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s all it was? It felt more like the four horsemen of the apocalypse, or at the very least a herd of Valkyries. Listen, would you mind not playing hopscotch with pantechnicons? I don’t much care if you prang your car, but there’re six bottles of wine on the back seat, to say nothing of two jars of caviar, and I’d like them all to arrive intact.’

  At first sight, the deed boxes with their printed legend of Kane on the lid did not appear to contain anything of very much interest. Georgina, curled up on the floor, meticulously sifting papers, thought that Walter, rather than becoming clearer, seemed to be getting more obscure.

  There was some correspondence about a house he had bought in the early 1950s a few miles outside Lucerne; most of this was in German, but Georgina managed to make out a few phrases of what appeared to be the Swiss equivalent of an estate agent’s advertisement, from which it seemed that the house had been attractive and had lovely views and lush gardens. This could probably be taken with a pinch of salt, and stripped of estate agent’s language it might just as easily have been a poky cowshed or directly under a ski-lift mechanism.

  His daughter, Georgina’s grandmother, did not seem to be mentioned anywhere. Why? Was it simply that nothing about her had found its way into the boxes?

  But after a time a faint pattern did start to emerge. Walter had apparently left Calvary at the beginning of 1940 – there was a note from someone called Edgar Higneth, written from there in March 1940, saying, ‘We are missing you greatly, but our loss is the army’s gain.’ So Walter must have offered his services to the medical corps shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, which suggested he had cared more about helping the living than about psychic research, at that stage of his life at any rate.

  There were medical journals – Georgina wondered if these might be of any interest to medical schools – and a couple of postcards, apparently from prison staff, one of them asking Walter if the army made him wear woolly bedsocks, or whether he had found a better way of keeping warm at night, haha, and one or two scrappy notes from people Georgina thought must have been prisoners. ‘Wishing you well, and thanks for everything, Dr Kane,’ said one.

  There were seed catalogues in English and German, and a couple of brochures for sales of antique furniture in London and also in Lucerne. The dates tallied with the purchase of the Swiss house, so it looked as if Walter had been stocking his garden and also his rooms. Georgina had a sudden strong wish to see the house he had bought and the things he had put into it.

  But other than the indication that Walter had liked good furniture and presumably been able to afford it, there was nothing that opened up his life. He was as much of a mystery as ever.

  Extract from Talismans of the Mind, by C. R. Ingram

  It is likely that even without the spectacular unmasking that finally took place amid such tragic and bizarre circumstances, Bartlam and Violette Partridge would not have flourished very far into the nineteen twenties. To some extent, most of us are products of our own era, and these two were classic products of theirs.

  The details of their unmasking are reasonably well documented, but what happened to their clients? To ladies such as the one who wrote the letter reproduced below? Did they seek out other vultures who would fasten onto their sensibilities, their griefs and their bank balances? The authenticity of this letter cannot be verified, nor has it been possible to trace the full name of the sender, since she only signs her Christian name. But it does give a few more details about the machinations in the house in North London.

  November 1917

  My dear Bartlam and Violette

  I must begin by thanking you for last evening’s Meeting. For the first time since the news of his death in France, I felt my beloved boy close to me again, and the manifestation we saw as we sat around the table was a truly moving experience. It was unmistakably him, and I see now that you were right to counsel me to be patient: to wait until I had attended three or four Meetings, and until the three of us and the other friends in the Circle, knew one another better. How true it is that those of us who seek to go beyond this life must be properly attuned.

  My husband makes no objection to my attending your Meetings, and I shall do all I can to persuade him to accompany me in the near future, although he is, of course, extremely busy.

  You referred to some degree of financial embarrassment when last we met. Between such friends as we have become I should not like to think that lack of funds might hinder your work. Vita, my dear, you have been such a sympathetic friend and such a willing listener to my memories of my dear boy, that I hope you will not find it
tactless of me to send you the enclosed bank draft. Please do accept it in the spirit in which it is sent, and use it in whatever way will best benefit your work.

  Until our next Meeting,

  I am your very dear friend and admirer

  Clara

  There is no means of knowing how much money the trusting Clara sent or how it was used, although it’s likely that Bartlam’s wine merchants benefited quite heftily.

  There is no means of knowing, either, how Clara coped with the removal of Bartlam and Violette Partridge from her world.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Georgina had intended to spend all day immersed in Walter’s world, but by midday her head was starting to ache from poring over faded writing and tattered receipts that were of no interest to even the most avid researcher. She would have an hour’s break – some fresh air and modern-day reality.

  The King’s Head provided exactly the right note of modern reality. It also served very substantial bar lunches; Georgina’s plate came heaped with crisp fresh salad and several thick slices of home-cured ham. She took it to a table in the little dining alcove, along with a copy of Talismans of the Mind, which she had bought on the drive here, and which she was reading out of curiosity and also out of vague deference to the proximity of C. R. Ingram. She was enjoying the book; she propped it up on her table while she ate because she always felt a bit self-conscious about being on her own in a pub.

  The tables were fairly close together and the King’s Head was quite crowded. Georgina was not listening to anyone else’s conversation, but it was difficult to avoid hearing the discussion at an adjoining table, where a girl of around her own age and a young earnest-looking boy with a flop of brown hair and glasses, were eating lasagne.

  ‘If you want to know the truth,’ said the girl, who had long fair hair and a languid voice, ‘I’m actually finding Neville Fremlin deeply interesting – I’ve turned up a fair bit of stuff about him already. As a matter of fact, I think there’s something very nearly sexy about villainy on that scale.’

  ‘I think you’re winding me up,’ said the boy in an American accent.

  ‘You’re not sure if I am though, are you?’ said the girl. ‘Listen, I know we didn’t set out to focus on Fremlin, but Chad’s getting seriously interested in him. I bet he’d look at the budget to see if we could do a spin-off. Or extend what we’ve got into a two-parter. I tell you what, let’s rough something out anyway.’

  ‘I admit Fremlin’s turning out to be kind of interesting.’

  ‘He is, isn’t he? He must have had terrific sex appeal to lure those females into his murderous den. But how did he behave in ordinary life? That’s what I find most interesting. Everyone focuses on the killing parts of murderers’ lives, but what were they like for the rest of the time?’

  The American boy appeared to think for a moment, then said carefully, ‘When the enterprising burglar’s not a-burgling/When the cut-throat isn’t occupied in crime.’

  ‘Oh God, now, you’re quoting something at me.’

  ‘Gilbert and Sullivan.’

  ‘You’re so highbrow, Phin, I don’t know how you can stand yourself.’

  ‘The Pirates of Penzance isn’t highbrow—’ said Phin hotly.

  ‘It is to me. But I suppose you just lerve English light opera.’

  ‘My father has the complete works of Gilbert and Sullivan and I think they’re just the wittiest . . . Anyhow, you were the one talking about villains not engaged in villainy.’

  ‘It is an interesting angle though, isn’t it? Was Fremlin the average, run-of-the-mill pharmacist, measuring out pills and potions, and whatnot? “Our newest line in face creams, moddom, and did you want something for the weekend, sir?” Sorry, Phin, that’s an old English expression, you probably wouldn’t know what I mean – But presumably Neville Fremlin didn’t spend his entire time murdering gullible females and then burying their naked bodies to avoid getting caught. He’d have a living to make between times, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘I thought he murdered his victims for their money. Why would he need to work at all?’

  ‘P’raps he just liked killing people. Or maybe they didn’t have as much money as he thought. Or he liked a really glitzy life and used the money up very fast.’

  ‘Or,’ said Phin and Georgina received the impression that he made a mental pounce, ‘he needed the chemist’s shop as a bait for the victims. Like, uh, a spider’s parlour for the fly to walk into.’

  ‘It kills me to say it, but that’s actually very shrewd of you. In any case he’d have had bills to pay, wouldn’t he? Electricity and income tax. Even a mortgage.’

  ‘Would Fremlin have had a mortgage?’ Phin sounded doubtful.

  ‘He might have done. And he wouldn’t give murdering as his occupation when he applied. He’d say chemist, which is very respectable indeed. I’ll bet he’d have been looked on as a very safe thing for a loan. “Come into the office, Mr Fremlin, sign here and there’s your cheque.” It’d all make a good angle for a programme, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘An ordinary day in the life of a murderer,’ said Phin, thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes. I’ll tell you what else we could do, Phin, we could check who was working in Calvary when Fremlin was executed. We can find out who the hangman was easily enough, but how about others? There’d have been a prison chaplain and a doctor, wouldn’t there?’

  ‘That might be a really good angle. It’s not so very far back, either.’

  ‘Nineteen thirty-eight. I should have thought that was pre-history to a child of your tender years.’

  I’ll have to say something to them, thought Georgina, and before she could worry about whether they would think she was intruding, she moved to their table, and said, a bit diffidently, ‘I hope you don’t think I’m butting in, but I couldn’t help hearing what you said about people who worked at Calvary. Uh – I’m Georgina Grey and my great-grandfather was the prison doctor there in the thirties. His name was Walter Kane. I’m in Thornbeck for a few days to sort out some of his old papers.’

  Far from thinking she was intruding, they welcomed her enthusiastically. The girl, whose name was Drusilla, invited her to sit down and despatched the American boy who was called Phin Farrell, to the bar to buy her a drink. Drusilla explained about the television programme.

  ‘We’re sort of the advance party – research and preliminary material.’

  ‘Except we’re starting to think there’s more than one programme in all this,’ said Phin.

  ‘Yes, and if your great-grandfather really did attend Neville Fremlin’s execution . . .’

  ‘I should think it’s a good possibility,’ said Georgina. ‘The dates fit.’

  ‘Well then, if you do find anything that mentions Calvary, and if you felt like giving us permission to use it . . .’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ said Georgina, ‘you’re welcome to Walter’s entire history. All I know about him is that he was Calvary’s doctor in the years leading up to the Second World War, and that he lived abroad afterwards.’

  ‘It’s the Calvary years we’re after,’ said Phin. ‘Nothing – uh – private, of course.’

  Georgina said she didn’t think there was anything private. ‘Or if there is, I haven’t found it yet. How long are you staying in Thornbeck? Because if you want to come up to Caradoc House sometime, you can see what there is. So far I’ve only found mostly medical papers, but there’s a second box of stuff I haven’t looked at yet. That might yield something more interesting.’

  ‘We’ll take you up on that offer,’ said Drusilla at once. ‘Can we bring Chad? Dr Ingram? He absolutely loves primary source material.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Georgina did not say she would be intrigued to meet Chad Ingram. ‘If you think it’ll be worth it. When would you like to come?’

  They looked at one another. ‘Would Friday be all right?’ said Drusilla.

  ‘Yes, certainly. Would you . . .’ Georgina hesitated, and then said, ‘Would lunchtime s
uit you? I expect you’ve got a lot to do, so I could put out some salad and cheese or something and you could eat while you look at everything.’

  ‘We’d like that,’ said Drusilla at once. ‘Thank you very much.’

  She likes to give the appearance of finding life too boring for words, thought Georgina. But she’s genuinely keen on her job. And Phin is like an eager puppy. They’re nice, both of them.

  She said, ‘I’ll expect you any time after midday.’

  They exchanged mobile phone numbers in case of any last-minute change of plan, and Georgina went back to Caradoc House pleased to have made this small, friendly contact.

  October 1938

  As Walter prepared for his first meeting with Neville Fremlin he felt tremors of nervous apprehension, and as he walked along Calvary’s corridors, the gaolers unlocking gates and doors as he went, the ghost of his seven-year-old self walked with him. The gaolers on that morning had studiously avoided looking either at him or his mother and, at a brief word from Sir Lewis Caradoc, they had unlocked the doors. For years afterwards one of Walter’s childhood nightmares had been the sound of keys being turned in locks.

  He could still remember the female gaoler who had been on duty in his father’s cell. She had had a pixie face, and his father had called her Belinda.

  It was important that Fremlin did not pick up his nervousness. Fremlin must regard him as sympathetic but detached. Walter reminded himself that he was no longer a fearful seven-year-old; he was a qualified doctor and the health of everyone in Calvary was his responsibility. It was not his father who was waiting for him in the condemned cell, it was a stranger – a man who was not going to the gallows for a belief and a cause, but for the deaths of five women. And he, Walter, had been charged with finding out if that five might be six. He had no idea, yet, how he would go about this, but he had given his word to Edgar Higneth that he would try.