Doctors Wear Scarlet

by Raven, Simon

  “You’ll be seeing them?”

  “Of course. Tomorrow or the day after.”

  “Hm,” grunted Tyrrel. “And what have you told Doctor Goodrich? And your gossipy friend Honeydew?”

  “I wrote to them both from Orvieto. I told Walter that we had found Richard suffering from strain and overwork, but that he was now having a nice, restful holiday and was well on the mend. As for Marc, I told him much the same – spicing it up with a few misleading hints to satisfy his sense of drama.”

  “Will they believe you?”

  “Walter should be more or less happy, because my story will be rather a relief. And whatever Marc thinks of it, he will hardly be able to guess the truth.”

  “You haven’t heard from either of them?”

  “No. I had enough on my hands… I didn’t want Walter nagging at me to make Richard stay in Greece, and I didn’t want anyone to start getting at Richard directly… So I told them we’d all be moving around too much to get any letters.”

  “Hm,” grunted Tyrrel again. “So far, so good, I suppose. But now for the real point. What sort of state is he in, this Richard Fountain? How did he behave on the way home? And what about this business of…infection?”

  “You can’t believe in that?” I said.

  “I don’t know what to believe, Mr Seymour. Your story is a little unusual, you know.”

  “So it’s me you don’t believe?”

  Tyrrel smiled with warmth and even with affection.

  “I believe you, sir,” he said. “It’s just that I find it a little difficult to discover…an intellectual framework for all this. I am trying to work out what possible rules there can be. It isn’t easy. You know that for yourself.”

  “I do indeed.”

  “Anyway, sir, just try to tell me what you’ve noticed about Mr Fountain’s behaviour. That will be the easiest thing. Has he been what you might call ‘himself’ since you left Crete?”

  “At first,” I said, “he was too weak and delirious to be anything. But as he got stronger – after we’d been about a week in Orvieto – he began to be very much as I’d always remembered him. He started to enjoy things in his rather stiff and reserved way. He made apt and sharp comments about the place and the people. He talked intelligently, though sometimes impatiently, of the things we went to see. He was affectionate, after his slightly proud fashion, to both of us. He seemed grateful for the trouble we were taking. But there was one definitely odd thing. He seemed to have no wish whatever to talk about what had happened to him in Greece and Crete, and no curiosity about what had occurred in the mountains. He did not seem to remember anything or to wish to remember anything. It seemed – how shall I put it? – like a case of deliberate amnesia. As if he had just blotted out of his memory the events of some five or six months, and was going to leave the matter at that – accepting an area of dead time in his past as you or I might accept a patch of dead skin on a finger. If anyone mentioned Delphi, say, or Cnossos, he would just make some very general remark about the place and immediately pass on to another topic.”

  “And you felt it wise to leave the matter like that?”

  “For the time being. Until he was fully recovered. But eventually it seemed to Piers and myself that we must make him realise what had happened – how both Roddy and Chriseis had died – and that we must try to find out, in case of future complications, exactly what were the strange things he had helped Chriseis to do in the earlier stages of their association. So one night in Florence – about a month ago now – Piers told him straight out, in my presence, of everything that had happened in the mountains, and then asked him absolutely bluntly for a full account of his relationship with Chriseis from the first day to the last.”

  “And how did he react?”

  “At first, most favourably. Far better than we had hoped. He listened with great attention to Piers’ story and interrupted with a number of questions. He was particularly interested to know how the woman had, so to say, hypnotised myself, and how his last minute cry for help had awoken Piers. Then, when the story was finished, he thanked us both, lamented the death of Roddy with a very painful bout of crying, and expressed virulent hatred of Chriseis.

  “It was at this stage that Piers went on to say that it was in everyone’s interest to know more of what had passed between him and Chriseis when they first met in Corinth, and also how she had later come to persuade him to her own particular type of…intercourse.”

  “Rushing things a bit?” said Tyrrel.

  “Perhaps. But he seemed genuinely moved by the whole topic and fully prepared to discuss it. Piers felt – as I did – that the opportunity, that Richard’s favourable mood, must not be wasted. And certainly the enquiries were well enough received. He started to tell us, without any apparent strain, all that happened to him since leaving England last year. At first, while he was talking of his travels and his researches, he went into considerable detail. He spoke clearly and with evident pleasure – pleasure both in the memories and his relation of them – and the further he went the more our hopes were raised. But then, just as he was reaching his first meeting with Chriseis in Corinth, he seemed to get dazed and muzzy: his voice became low, his head drooped: he mumbled and muttered and repeated himself; until he seemed to be talking almost in his sleep…”

  “So you had overdone it?” Tyrrel said.

  “Evidently. We both realised this, and suggested that Richard must be very tired and that we could hear the rest of the story the next day. Piers even made to help him from his chair. But Richard waved him away, seemed to make a great effort to rouse himself to the telling of his story, and then continued, still in very low tones, but quite firmly and consecutively.”

  “Ah,” said Tyrrel.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to be as disappointed as we were. He went on with his story all right, and in a perfectly sensible fashion: but it came out in exactly the same way as it had done that afternoon on the mountain. All in entirely general terms. How he couldn’t make love to Chriseis properly, and how she said it didn’t matter because there were ‘other things’. How they did these things together, ‘fearful, ugly things’ – but never a word as to exactly where or what. And then how he returned from Delphi and met her again, and she turned herself entirely on to him; but no explanation of her actual fashion of behaviour, what methods she had used to persuade him, whether he had given in easily or only after a struggle. And so on for the rest of the story: a vague and general account, no real reasons given, only the most broad of motives, and above all no details of any particular thing that happened. So that when he had finished we were no wiser at all.”

  “Did you press him?”

  “Oh no. He was clearly too exhausted for that. We just thanked him and saw him to bed… But the next evening Piers brought the subject up again. This time Richard seemed neither anxious nor reluctant to talk of it. Just neutral. So Piers, thinking the prognosis might be worse, forged ahead, and said that while we’d been very interested in Richard’s story as he had told it, it was important to us to know it in greater detail. He pointed out absolutely flatly that these ‘things’ Richard and Chriseis had done might still have embarrassing consequences, and that Richard’s health might have been damaged by their later intercourse. He must, said Piers, tell us everything: no detail was too small.”

  “And then?”

  “Well, all the time Piers had been saying this Richard had been looking grimmer and grimmer. No, not exactly grim. A sort of mixture: trapped, sad, petulant, unwilling, uneasy, irritated, even at times uncomprehending – any and all of these he had been looking, and they all seemed to add up to a kind of blank stubbornness, which had been getting blanker and more stubborn with every word Piers said. And when Piers had finished, Richard just got up and left us. He rose from his chair, nodded at both of us, and left. The next morning he was entirely affable; but he made no mention all day of the previous night’s conversation – if you can call it that – and no reference
whatever to Greece or his own life there. So Piers and I concluded that we had best leave him to talk in his own good time; and that meanwhile we must simply concentrate on making his holiday as pleasant and happy as possible.”

  “Perhaps it was as you said. Amnesia. Perhaps he really couldn’t remember certain things. Or wouldn’t.”

  “I dare say,” I said; “and in any case the strain of the whole business must have been very severe. One could quite see he might not often be keen to discuss it. If it had been only this – only his refusal to give details of what happened – I should not have worried so much.”

  “So there was something else?”

  “Yes. After we left Florence, Richard was getting stronger and more normal every day, till I dare say he was as fit as he’s ever been in his life. As I say, Piers and I set out to give him a good time, and I really think we brought it off. We went to beautiful places, ate good food and drank quantities of wine. Piers was at his gayest and most appealing. The weather was perfection wherever we went. So that Richard really did seem to be happy. After a bit we spoke a good deal of the future. He seemed perfectly content to be going back to Lancaster – Walter, Penelope and all –; and we – Piers and I – judged it best not to mention Marc Honeydew’s warning about Walter, not in so many words at any rate, lest it should impair his pleasure. After all, Richard is not wealthy and he must make his living somewhere: if he felt good about the prospect of Lancaster, then so much the better – for the time being at least. So by way of inoculation against future trouble Piers and I made a lot of little jokes about Walter’s possessiveness – jokes in which Richard joined –; but in the main the mood was one of peaceable acceptance of Lancaster College and all that it contained.

  “But on two of these occasions on which we discussed Cambridge and the future something very unpleasant happened. On the first of them we were driving across the Lombard Plain, about three weeks ago now, and Piers was talking about Walter’s house in Grantchester, and giving a malicious account of a tea-party he once went to there, and how Penelope presided. And all of a sudden Richard said, just like that and with no particular tone or emphasis – ‘I wonder what Penelope will make of Chriseis when she comes to England.’

  “Piers and I said nothing at all to this, and Richard went on – ‘We thought she might come next spring sometime. I was always telling her how beautiful Cambridge is in the spring.’

  “And then he went on to ask what the Backs had been like this year, so the subject was mercifully changed. But you can imagine how sick it had made Piers and me. After all, it was then only four or five days, a week at the most, since Piers had told Richard, with great clarity, everything that had happened in the fort.”

  I paused for a moment. Tyrrel, swishing his ruler down among the flies, made no other comment.

  “And then,” I went on, “a few days later, we were having some lunch in Geneva one afternoon when Richard started discussing, without any prompting from us, what he was going to do about his supposed engagement to Penelope. This was a topic everyone had avoided so far, so naturally Piers and I listened with some interest. Richard said he didn’t really want to marry anyone for a few years, but when he did – this in an off-hand way – he supposed there might be worse fates than Penelope. And then he said, once again in an entirely normal manner – ‘But I’m damned if I know what Chriseis will say if I do marry Penelope.’

  “Then Piers, who had clearly heard enough of this, leant across the table and said very coldly and fiercely indeed – ‘Chriseis is dead, Richard. You know that. And better dead.’

  “But Richard just didn’t seem to hear him. He didn’t look at Piers, he didn’t nod, he made no sign of any kind. He sat there looking vaguely thoughtful, and then he started talking again as if he were merely adding to his own remarks, as if there had been no interruption at all other than his own voluntary pause to collect his thoughts.

  “‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I might be able to make Chriseis understand the position if she comes to Cambridge in the spring… Or if I go to Greece again, I can talk to her about it then. It seems a bit hard though… To take advantage of her company in Greece and then, just as I’m getting on the boat, to announce that I’m going home to marry someone else.’

  “‘You won’t be able to go to Greece again,’ Piers said. ‘If you do, they’ll shove you in gaol. For Christ’s sake talk sense.’

  “And once again Richard took no notice at all. Just sat there looking thoughtful.

  “‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘how soon Walter would let me go back to Greece. I’ve gathered up quite a lot this last time, but I could do with a few more months of research.’

  “And then, by the mercy of heaven, he started talking about his research, so we heard no more of Chriseis. Either then or later. But what we had heard was more than enough.”

  “As a matter of interest,” said Tyrrel, “what about this research? I imagine that most of his time was…otherwise occupied.”

  “As far as I can make out,” I said, “he’s done more than you might have expected. After all, he went to Greece last autumn and he didn’t meet Chriseis for some time. Richard is capable of very hard and concentrated work.”

  “So he’ll have done enough to put up a plausible showing? With Doctor Goodrich and the rest?”

  “I think so. He seems to have some good stuff on early fertility cults – with a strong sideline on temple prostitutes. That’s what kept him so long in Corinth. There was an important temple of Aphrodite in the old city there…”

  “Well,” said Tyrrel with a broad grin, “that’s one practical problem out of the way, Mr Seymour. It would have looked a bit odd if he’d come home empty-handed. But unfortunately it’s not the only problem and indeed it’s probably the least important. Do you mind if I ask you some more questions? There’s one or two things I must get absolutely straight.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Firstly, then, he’s given no details at all of these things Chriseis and he did together when they first met?”

  “None. He just implies they were very unpleasant.”

  “That,” said Tyrrel, “we don’t need to be told… And secondly, he’s given you no idea of the way this woman set about…seducing him?”

  “Very little. She clearly had a powerful personality.”

  “And thirdly,” Tyrrel went on, “apart from his general evasiveness about a lot of his life in Greece, and apart from these very disagreeable references to Chriseis as a living person, his behaviour has been entirely normal?”

  “That is correct.”

  “In which case I gather you’ve not taken him to any doctors? In Italy or Switzerland?”

  “No.”

  “And do you intend to?”

  “That depends on his future behaviour.”

  “Umph,” said Tyrrel rather crossly. “And where is Mr Fountain now?”

  “In the country with Piers. They left this morning. They’re going to spend a week watching cricket in Kent.”

  “A very soothing occupation, Mr Seymour. And will Mr Clarence enjoy it?”

  “Not a lot. But Richard will. He nearly got a cricket blue, you remember. They might even offer him a place in one of their Festival Matches.”

  “Better and better. But the cricket season is nearly over, sir. The days are getting shorter now, and September will draw to a close. ‘Farewell, summer, summer farewell’,” he murmured across the table with a faint smile. “A sad song, sir. Unlucky too, they say… But what happens then? Doctor Goodrich gets back from his summer holiday, and the stumps are pulled up, and it is time for Mr Fountain to pack away his cricket bat and to put in an appearance at Cambridge; and there, amid the falling leaves of autumn, they are confronted with one another. So what happens then, Mr Seymour?”

  “I don’t honestly know,” I said. “All I can tell you is that Walter is expected back in Lancaster in about a week. I telephoned the Porters’ Lodge this morning.”

  “And how soon must
Mr Fountain present himself?”

  “He needn’t go into residence until the beginning of Full Term – October the twelfth or thereabouts. But once it’s known he’s back in England, after a year away, mind you, it’ll be thought very odd if he doesn’t pay a courtesy visit to the Provost and at least make his number with Walter.”

  “And in any case,” said Tyrrel, “sooner or later he must meet Doctor Goodrich, not to mention his charming daughter. And what, Mr Seymour, happens then?”

  We were both silent for a time. The sunlight slunk slowly away across the desk and on to the floor: the flies, tired with their day’s sport, were silent. Tyrrel flexed his ruler, aimed a kick at the wastepaper basket, and finally said: “Would you be interested, sir, to hear my view of the situation?”

  “Very.”

  “Well then. In the first place it is clear that rough justice has been done. You have given me an account of something which happened in a territorial area where my powers are not in any case applicable and in the affairs of which it is no duty of mine to interfere. So speaking as a man, Mr Seymour, and as your friend, I say that justice of a kind has been done. In so far as Mr Fountain assisted that woman in her outrages, he was not properly responsible for his actions. In so far as the woman herself has sought to corrupt or destroy others, and to corrupt and destroy Mr Fountain, then she has been quite properly destroyed in her own turn and the world is well rid of her. This is my opinion, and I have little doubt that the Greeks, when they finally come to realise the truth, will share it. I think we shall have no further trouble from them, Mr Seymour; and even if they do want trouble, they are too far away to make it. So far, so good.”

  He flexed his ruler again and surveyed me almost paternally.

  “But now, sir,” he said, “Mr Fountain is back in England. So now it is my duty to take thought for the future, not only as a friend, sir, but as a policeman. And the question I must ask myself is this: is Mr Fountain likely to prove a danger, to himself or to the community?