The Hissing of the Silent Lonely Room (The Christy Kennedy Mysteries Book 5)

by Paul Charles

  Kennedy wondered was it those special times with his father that separated him from Esther Bluewood. Was it the unspoken love between father and son during their bonding sessions that set him up for the path that he today strolled?

  He’d asked his father a million questions during these sessions; all million answered with the patience and wisdom of a saint.

  A lot of the lessons he’d learned then were standing him in good stead today, even though at the time they didn’t seem like lessons at all. Kennedy recalled one memorable occasion it was just after the Christmas holidays and he had received a ‘junior carpentry’ set as his major Christmas present and he was forever going on to his mother and father about how he was going to make them some chairs for the house.

  A few weeks later, his father asked Christy how he was getting on with the chairs. Christy reluctantly showed his father his effort. Well, it was all a tangled mess really, the young Kennedy couldn’t effect a design that included seat, legs, back and support rims, and still stood up. The elder Kennedy took three pieces of wood from his son’s disaster of a chair. He nailed them together in the shape of a rectangle with the bottom side missing, like a letter ‘n’. He told his son that was a chair until such a time as he could make a more sophisticated model. But in the meantime the new sample would do fine. It was a variation on the, ‘You got to learn to walk before you can run,’ theme. Christy Kennedy never forgot it and found it helpful in his police work. ‘Work with what you’ve got,’ was something he was always telling his team. ‘When you work out exactly what it is you’ve got, then you can learn more, and move on to the more sophisticated model.’

  In refurbishing his office, Kennedy had found this little compartment, probably once the home of a small safe, and he had matched up the oak with some wood he’d found in a timber yard. Then he’d fitted a matching secret door, which opened with a click when you pushed the panel against its spring, clicked shut on to a magnet, and was invisible when closed. Kennedy now shut it securely and went off in search of Coles and Irvine. As a result of his recent readings he had a list of eight people he wished to talk to. Nine if you counted Jill and Jim as individuals and not a couple.

  ‘So,’ Kennedy said, twenty minutes later, following a brief synopsis of the journal, ‘we need to question, Paul Yeats (again); Dr Hugh Watson; Jill and Jim Beck; Victoria Lucas; Judy Dillon (again); Esther’s mother; the mysterious Josef Jones; and Rosslyn St Clair, Yeats’ mistress.’

  ‘But,’ Coles began, ‘do you think Esther Bluewood committed suicide?’

  ‘That’s a question we should save until we have four legs on our chair,’ Kennedy replied.

  Both Coles and Irvine looked bewildered. Kennedy gave nothing away; he merely, proudly, surveyed his handiwork in the office and added, ‘But perhaps Dr Hugh Watson can throw more light in that direction for us.’

  Chapter 9

  Friday I’m in Love

  Friday 13th November

  I WENT to see Doc Watson today. I told him that’s what I called him because of his funny cowboy boots. It’s his one and only fashion statement. He told me he saw me on TV last night for the first time. He said I looked uncomfortable, scared, drawn, a bit like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car. I told him just because I was breeding like a rabbit there was no need to be calling me names. I laughed, but it was too stiff. He knew I forced the laugh because I didn’t want to discuss it any further. Of course I’m awkward and scared. I’m a songwriter. I’m not a TV star. I don’t want to be a TV star. It’s like you’re not allowed to feel anything or express anything except feeling acceptable for the camera.

  I know people would kill to have my opportunity to be on television I told him. I suppose in a way I nearly did (kill) to be on it; another of my jokes that fell flat in front of the doctor. Flippancy is the spring in my stride. As usual after a few minutes, while the doc quietly sits out all my attempts at bravado, I slow down and talk to him. I tell him I live to write my songs. I go to a place no one, or nothing, can take me to. It’s better than any of the medicine my body has been subjected to for the last twenty years. I tell him this. I also tell him about a dream I had where all the medicine and pills and drugs I had ever taken in my life were all in a room and my father was there with me, but for some reason he only had one leg, and I asked him should I take the medicine and drugs and pills and he said, ‘Don’t be stupid, Esh.’ My father never ever called me Esh, I don’t remember him calling me anything. I seem to remember the tone of his voice for some reason. But in my dreams and thoughts he calls me Esh because I always thought a dad would have an affectionate nickname for his darling daughter and I couldn’t think of one which fitted with my name but after a time Esh seemed to be called out in my dreams. But my father, with his single leg and one hand stiffly supporting my back as though I was a ventriloquist’s dummy, said, ‘Don’t be stupid, Esh if you do that you’ll kill yourself.’

  Doc Watson asks me why I love writing songs so much. I tell him because songwriting is the only thing into which I can totally escape, leaving all the other stuff behind. I tell him writing can help with the battle, it… When my writing is sad I’m not necessarily sad because when I’m articulate in my writing those are the times I’m dealing with it the best. He then wanted to know why I could not feel comfortable performing these songs on television. I tell him that television is not interested in capturing the performance of the song, it only wants someone looking pretty, white teeth, heavily made-up, groomed hair, eyes open – I can’t it seems be obscene or naked. So the television wants the picture postcard look even if it’s at the expense of the song. You see, it’s because the screen can only portray the two dimensions. They don’t have the facility yet to convey all of what you give in the performance. They can’t transmit sweat, fear, smells, imagination: it all has to be done with pictures – pleasant, pleasing pictures. They can’t show you being a woman.

  He then wants to know if I should not feel more comfortable talking about my songs.

  I tell him this feels like an interview and I further advise him all anyone may ever want to know about me is there in my songs, waiting for them to discover it. If the press would just find the time to listen to my music, then they’d also find out everything about me they ever wanted to know. What’s the point in continuing to talk about it further when it’s already there? It’s done. I’ve said it in the song. People should just listen to songs. People just look at paintings, but with paintings that’s enough. People never asked Van Gogh to continuously re-paint his self-portrait. It was already all there, conveying all the pain you could ever wish to convey.

  Why do I do it then, he asks.

  Because I’m a vain bitch and I want to sell my records, I answer.

  He laughs at this, maybe more out of relief than from the humour. Humour?

  Hey, that’s it. That’s the truth. You work so hard at your life, at doing what you do, at being allowed to continue to do what you do. And that means selling records. You have to sell records before you can make more records, which you then have to sell before you… But that’s the recurring story an artist has to put up with.

  The truth is, I make music. I want people to love my music and I hope that by loving my music they’ll love me. I need to be loved. It’s so simple, really, isn’t it? It doesn’t cost money to be loved. You just pick anyone, like Dylan wrote, and pretend that you’ve never met. I wonder, does Dylan feel a need to be loved? I thought Yeatsie loved me. I tell the doc this and he asks, how come I’m so sure he didn’t, or doesn’t, love me? I tell him he couldn’t love me because of Rosslyn. He says, ‘What about Josef?’ I tell him to shut up!

  I actually said, ‘Shut your effing mouth.’

  Isn’t that a weird thing? I can’t actually write that word. I can say it. I can swear it at a perfectly friendly doctor trying to be helpful. I can do the act with another human being; I can do it to Josef, too. He can’t do it to me though (only Yeatsie can do that). But I still can’t write it.
That’s ma’s fault, she’s as retentive as the Gadobie Dam.

  The doc thought he’d hit on something, didn’t he? Maybe he did. I didn’t want to go there, so we didn’t. I wish it was as easy as that with Yeatsie. Yeatsie did help me, though. He loved me at a time I needed to be loved. His love healed me. It’s as simple as that. But love that had be strong enough to heal me was never going to last. It was always going to burn out. It had to be bright to save, but, equally, it was therefore too bright for its own good, so it was inevitable it would burn out.

  I tell this to the doc. He says, ‘Quite possibly, but now you think this love is gone, what’s keeping you well? Or are you now so strong because of his love that it doesn’t matter?’

  I tell him it is the love of my children that now keeps me together. They love me. They love me unconditionally. They love me because they need to love me. They love me because they depend on me. I’m the big person who will hold their hand and look over the tall hedges and make sure there is nothing bad on the other side. I will look in the cupboards in their bedroom and under their bed before they go to sleep to assure them there is nothing bad lurking in the shadows. I am the person who will recline with them on the bed until they are safely off to dreamland.

  Why do children become aware of evil spirits so early in their lives? Who introduces them to this world? I have tried to keep my children away from demons but they both discovered the world when I wasn’t looking. The doc says this is because evil rises, it never falls! He looked guilty when he made this perfectly profound statement and I asked him if he wished he hadn’t said it.

  He put his hands in his back pockets, Bette Davis style, and asked me if I wished he hadn’t said it.

  I said it was time to go, the other Dillon will need her McDonald’s Medication shortly.

  Is there a Gadobie Dam?

  *

  Hugh Watson turned out to be similar to a friendly parish priest; able to listen in a kindly manner, but when push comes to shove, a man with his own agenda. Kennedy guessed he’d be in his early fifties. He was dressed in a Fred Perry three-button blue shirt, a brown V-neck pullover and a fawn button-up cardigan over a fairly-wrinkled pair of grey flannels and, surprise, surprise, a pair of cowboy boots. The skin around his eyes was as wrinkle-free as smooth silk, making him look like he’d benefited from plastic surgery, though Kennedy was sure this couldn’t be the case. His short, black curly hair displayed hints of Brylcreem.

  He took Kennedy and Coles straight through to his ‘Surgery’, a comfortable book-lined room at the rear of his house. He lived and worked in one of the grand houses at the end of Regent’s Park Road, on the corner just before the railway bridge. Watson’s stride appeared to be limited by the weight of the boots, Kennedy assessed. The silver studs and blue flaked glass stones seemed like they also would weigh several pounds. He flopped down in his favourite, well-worn and even more used leather chair. It came with some Native American patterned cushions, but the extreme angle at which Watson inclined, hands clasped in front of him, made it look as though his spine was in danger of permanent damage. Although the room appeared to be centrally heated, Watson also enjoyed a two-bar electric fire, which was working at fifty per cent capacity, affording his boots a permanent carmine glow.

  Coles and Kennedy both avoided the couch and sat side by side on the leather sofa, as far apart as possible. Either they were seeking the support of the sofa’s arm or the comfort of the space. Somewhat dry-throated, Kennedy began, ‘We are hoping you can give us some background on Esther Bluewood…’

  ‘I’ve been expecting you ever since your sergeant rang me this morning,’ Watson began. He had a slow drawl, more English Midlands than American Midwest.

  ‘Yes, it’s so sad, such a talented woman,’ Kennedy replied.

  ‘Ah, you knew her then?’ Watson said, eyes opening a little wider.

  ‘I know her work. I’m an admirer,’ Kennedy smiled. ‘We know she was seeing you and we are trying to assess her state of mind. Whether or not you think it possible she might have—’

  ‘Committed suicide,’ Watson said, immediately finishing the detective’s sentence as though impatient. ‘On this earth humans die from a natural cause, or an accident, or a suicide or a homicide. These are the only four classified causes of death. That which is fact is not to be avoided. You, in your work, are used to the word homicide, but take a person whose relative has been murdered, do you think they are scared to hear the word “murder” mentioned? That is wrong, purely and simply incorrect. Equally, you are nervous mentioning the word “suicide” merely because Esther Bluewood was my patient. But that’s not all she was. I am not the patient, I did not suffer from the whatyamacallit…’ and here Watson paused, rolling his eyes up as if the word was written on the ceiling, ‘…ailment,’ he announced with relief. ‘I was not the one suffering from the ailment. I was helping her treat it.’

  Watson then broke into a warm smile; Kennedy assumed the smile was meant to be a sign that he was not being reproached. Kennedy didn’t know what to say next.

  To fill the lull in the conversation, Coles asked, ‘How long had you been seeing Esther?’

  Watson looked at Coles and broke his hands apart, just slightly so that he could tap his fingers together. The tapping fingers were just below his face and occasionally brushed the beginnings of stubble on his chin. ‘Esther Bluewood had been a patient of mine since she moved to London six years ago. Her doctor in Boston – Ernest Siddons – had referred her to me. He’s an old chum, we meet occasionally at conferences.’

  ‘How often did she see you?’ Coles continued.

  ‘Oh,’ Watson paused and blew air through his lips, ‘sometimes, as often as three times a week and at other times, maybe once every four months.’

  ‘Why were her visits so irregular?’ Coles asked.

  ‘Okay, some people are ill,’ Watson began, clicking his fingers in time to the rhythm of his vocal delivery. ‘When they are ill they go and see someone about it. Now if you suffer from arthritic pains or heart problems, for instance, you will go and see a specialist doctor, someone who can look after your ailment. If your ailment is psychological, that is of the mind, then you consult someone like myself. If we do what we are meant to do – that is, help make our patients better – then there is no need for our patients to visit us often. Occasionally you get patients, and this applies as much to those with physical pain as it does to those with psychological needs, who will become dependent on their doctors; I always say that which is a crutch-cure is not healthy.’ Here, Watson smiled gently but only with his eyes. The rest of his face hardly moved. ‘Such patients will find an excuse to visit us as often as possible. Esther worked hard at helping herself to cure her pain.’

  ‘So would you say Esther was keen to fight her…her illness?’ Kennedy asked.

  ‘All of us play a vital role in keeping ourselves alive. In Esther’s case she continuously fought to turn those self-destructive forces into life-saving enlightenment. The major part of what we all do for ourselves is to acknowledge that there are certain crises which we cannot handle alone. We need to seek out professional help. This seeking out professional help is a major step in the treatment. There are those out there,’ Watson looked briefly over his right shoulder, ‘who feel that we are quacks and that mental pain simply doesn’t exist, full stop. They’d like to take away our status so that they could remove our funding. But thankfully, temporarily at least, we’ve come out of the dark ages.’

  Where did that soapbox come from, Kennedy thought. He was warming to the man, though. He loved the language Watson used to discuss that great taboo; the taking of one’s own life. Few who haven’t suffered mental stress themselves can fully comprehend it, but at the same time there are few in the world who, at some time or other, haven’t contemplated suicide, if only for a fleeting second.

  ‘Ahm, I wonder…could you tell us where Esther’s anguish came from?’ Kennedy enquired, as he settled comfortably back into the corne
r of the sofa.

  ‘What was the problem, in other words?’ Watson said, eyes smiling again. It was a unique gesture, or at least Kennedy had never before noticed anyone whose face didn’t break into a smile at the same time as their eyes. ‘The two vital words with suicide are “childhood” and “unhappiness”. A suicidal feeling never grows from happiness. We know that suicide can occur with adults who cannot stand the pain of grief or loss after the tragic death of a loved one, irrespective of a good or bad childhood or loving or unloving parents. But even then it would be my view that the fact that such people cannot withstand these adult whatyamacallit…ahm…storms, yes storms, lies in the lowest recesses of personality which are formed in a very early childhood.’

  ‘So you’re saying what happened to Esther Bluewood in her childhood had a direct bearing on how she was feeling at the time of her death?’ Kennedy found himself asking.

  Watson shot the detective one of his impatient teacher-to-pupil stares.

  ‘Yes, yes of course.’ Watson replied, picking up his pace a little.

  ‘And this was?’ Kennedy asked, offering a little of his own impatience.

  ‘The love of her father or, in Esther’s case, the lack of love from her father,’ Watson replied, the smile now missing from his eyes. ‘This is thirsty work, isn’t it? Shall we treat ourselves to some tea?’