The Experimentalist

by Nick Salaman

  Once ensconced in Los Angeles, we set about looking for a suitable base where I could carry on with my studies undisturbed. I had accumulated a small library of reference into the early fifteenth century and I needed space, somewhere congenial to my pursuit, big spaces where I could pace and think and take myself back in time to this poor forebear of ours, hemmed about with enemies and vicious people. Middleburg, in conjunction with another cousin of ours – so-called since I could not verify it nor did I even want to, a man called Brickville, whom he had found at some gathering in London and persuaded to come over and help him attend to my requirements – bought a lease on what was supposed to be a French castle up in the foothills of the Sierra, built by some eccentric millionaire who had gone bust. At any rate, this place, the Château de Cauchemar as it came to be called, fitted the bill exactly. It had silence, it had space, it was well protected from unwanted visitors. The air was good. It seemed ideal and we moved in.

  It was here that the nightmare began. It was necessary for me to go to New York – which I did with Middleburg – where I had to sign certain documents which appointed Middleburg as my deputy and signatory. The lawyers raised their eyebrows but, because I was so rich, they didn’t like to cross me. I just wanted to get back to my library and poor old Gilles de Rais and his enemies. He too was a man obsessed.

  When I returned, the castle seemed to have acquired a few new guests. It did not matter to me so long as they kept out of my way. They were friends of Middleburg and his crew. These too stayed away much of the time, working away at making money for my company, they told me, and I was foolishly and gullibly satisfied. A young friend of theirs, a fellow called Prelati, stayed and became a kind of surrogate host, which suited me well. People stayed and ate and drank a great deal as they do in English country houses, but they left me alone. There was music and dancing, some of the guests were women, there was song and even theatricals of a kind. There were people who called themselves the Merry Pranksters. One particular fellow called Eliphas was a magician, rather a good one, as I recall. A good man – he tried to warn me about Prelati and even Middleburg, but I would not listen.

  She stopped reading for a moment. Prelati, she thought. I know that name.

  I had started to take a little cocaine to keep me awake, there was a great deal of marijuana smoked – no good to me for it made me fall asleep – and one of the people who came was a professor of psychology who advocated a substance called LSD, which has the effect of heightened perception. He also advocated a magic mushroom called psilocybin. And mescaline too. I had come to something of an impasse with my studies for much of the evidence seemed to suggest that Gilles was guilty even though I found that hard to accept. In despair, I asked the Professor if I could try his pharmacopeia and he gave me some to take. An extraordinary perception overtook me with far-reaching intuitions about the object of my studies, of consciousness, myself and the universe. I travelled down vast abysses and merged with a giant flower. It seemed to me that my hero was guilty and not guilty. He could be both the same, at once.

  In this manner, weeks passed and I was tightly wound into the nightmare surrounding poor Gilles until it seemed I was in the cauchemar myself and becoming the very man I wrote about. My consciousness, my sense of reality had become obscured; shadows passed, terrible visions assailed but I was powerless to act. A wicca, a tall man with staring eyes and a mane of blond hair, a very devil, said he could raise the spirit of Gilles de Rais for me and made me watch while the nightmare happened and kept happening, a true cauchemar, and I could not move. There was darkness and blood and the thudding of a drum. There were girls, boys and children too young to be there. I saw them but where did they go, what did they do? Figures moved in procession, someone screamed. Malestroit, Bishop of Nantes, the Duke’s brother, came to protest, but he was sent packing. Someone gave me papers to sign of which I knew nothing…

  Morning again. The mist clears. They tell me they have found the bodies of 39 children and there may be more. How did they get there? How did they go?

  As it happened, I had been signing my wealth away, but one thing I did not sign, nor could have done, was a paper for my heir – the little girl Marie whom I had left alone with her nanny in the Castle of Fairlie – to sign herself when she was old enough. In the strange back and forth of my life, I had dreamt of Amélie and she’d told me to be alone with the old lawyers. And so it happened, and I asked them to do this. The paper I signed stated that, come what may, when you were twenty-five all that I had would be yours. I thought it might be considerably diminished, little realising that Middleburg and Brickville were turning my huge estate into something enormous for themselves. They have the devil’s own luck.

  A special paper was drawn up returning all of my share to you. And that is where you find yourself now, my darling girl. They have accused me of terrible crimes which I have not knowingly committed. They have done it to blacken my name and to make their takeover of my affairs seem to be in the family’s, in the public’s, interest. The police are coming for me but Middleburg and Brickville talk of sending me over the border to Mexico so that I can escape. I am sure it is for their sake rather than mine. I am less trouble in Mexico, the prisons are harder, and the death penalty more certain.

  If I should not see you again – which seems likely since Eliphas, my loyal servant here, tells me to make ready – I can only leave you my story and beg you to forgive me. Had your mother not died, your life and mine would have been different. Think of that. Perhaps the good times are happening somewhere else and what we have here is just the reverse, the negative of that life. Somewhere we are strong and happy. Meanwhile here, in this place that we know as life, remember that your adversary the devil walketh about, seeking whom he may devour…

  They are coming for me now, they will take me over the border and the Mexican police will pick me up. There is no extradition treaty with the USA. I will be a prize exhibit like a Fat Lady, the Most Evil Man in American History, a monster, a legend. They will keep me alive for that reason and treat me abominably. They will scourge me. And when the excitement has died down, they will kill me. I am not afraid, but I fear for you.

  Pray for me.

  Your loving father,

  Giles Lavell

  ***

  Marie put down the last sheet of paper and found that she was shaking. She had not expected to be so moved. She had thought that she knew about pain, but reading her father’s account, she realised that she only knew one piece of the giant jigsaw that says Human Suffering on the cover. A phrase from her childhood English lessons came to mind: ‘thoughts that do lie too deep for tears’. Yes, that is what they were. Her powers of response seemed to have dried up. It was like seeing Fate at work; a moment of weakness followed by that implacable turning of the screw. She wanted to feel sorry for him, but she also wanted to blame him. She wanted to blame him – but could not, because she felt sorry for him.

  And the tragedy of it all was that it was so unnecessary, so frustrating. It could so easily all have been different. She turned at last to Felipe who had crept in and was sitting quietly beside her, saying nothing.

  ‘What do you think? You have read all this?’

  ‘He ask me to read. He teach me to read.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think he was unlucky, but I am sure he is not wicked man. He did not do those things that they accuse him of. How could he? The wicked ones were the ones you have met. They knew there were many new people come to California in those days after the war, displaced, nowhere to go. Murders, rapes, gang fights, suicides … people were glad to get rid of the bodies and they were all sent round or collected by someone, or some people, at the castle.’

  ‘Where did they keep them?’

  ‘Oh, they were buried in a pit nearby. Convenient for evidence against your father.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘I tell you. I had to kill a bad man once. The word got around I was a killer.
I know things.’

  She was silent for a moment. There was still all the other stuff that Felipe did not know about her childhood and upbringing.

  ‘You must forgive him,’ Felipe said as if reading her thoughts.

  Could she do that? Forgive him for those days of loneliness and shame in the cold castle? The dread of bad blood? The cold shoulder of the girls at school? The rejection by her own boyfriend’s parents? The oppression and cruelty of Brickville, the menacing caringness of Middleburg, the loss of her baby to the Izzards and Fist. Hard to forgive. Of course, there are always excuses. Her father’s own upbringing was responsible. He had been encouraged from an early age to think only of himself, heir to a kingdom of gold. That was why his love for Amélie was so shocking for him, she thought. When she was gone, all he’d had left was ruin and a broken idea of himself.

  But having a bad time yourself doesn’t excuse giving a bad time to somebody else, especially when it’s your own child. And hadn’t she just done that to her own child? That was another thing she couldn’t get away from. She turned to Felipe again. ‘Did he believe he had done those terrible things?’ she asked him.

  ‘I do not really know. We were both in prison in bad circumstance. He was weak and sometimes hardly conscious. He taught me English and I taught him to survive. I am afraid he was the more successful. His mind had been torture with drugs. He hardly knew who he was any more.’

  ‘But did he do these things they accuse him of?’

  Felipe shook his head. ‘I am sure he did not.’

  ‘And is he still there in that dreadful place?’ A sudden wild hope filled her that perhaps, after all, she was not alone in the world, that she had a father – not a monster, but a man much-abused. ‘I was told long ago that he was dead. I must go and see him.’

  ‘No. I am told they move him – somewhere more terrible still. He died there. No one survive. It is for enemies of government.’

  ‘Are you certain he is dead?’

  ‘For sure. I make enquiries. I know a man who know…’ he corrected himself, ‘who knew one of the guards. He catch fever and die.’

  Hope vanished as quickly as it had grown. ‘How did you get out?’ she asked.

  It was a question she had been anxious to ask but somehow it had seemed embarrassing to do so. She looked round at the wretched apartment and realised that Felipe was literally starving. She must buy him more food. Even with what she had given him, he was still paying off his debts. He couldn’t afford to feed himself, let alone feed her, but she was so happy to be free of Middleburg and the poison they were giving her that she felt quite undaunted. She smiled and the older man seemed quite warmed by it. He answered quietly but honestly. He too was weak – it cost him much to speak at all.

  ‘I understand why you ask,’ he said. ‘Of course I can. It is a question we all ask in prison about every kind of privilege or privation. Why me and not him? There was change of government and my accusers had been discredited. But his so-called crimes were so enormous that there was no chance he would ever be release. It would be a crime against humanity to let him out. Imagine in a place like that! A crime against humanity! It was a crime against humanity to keep anyone inside that prison.’

  She knew what her father had been accused of – accused and found guilty. She was silent for a moment. ‘How did you find me?’ she asked.

  He smiled. ‘Not so much how as why. I promised your father before they take him away that I would find you, no matter where you were or what it cost. It is possible to find anyone with a little patience and some criminal friend.’

  ‘What made you think I would still be alive?’

  ‘He says they need you alive to sign the documents. He told me he had signed them himself when he was under the drugs, but they would need you to sign them when you were of age. They would know how to try and make you sign them.’

  She shivered. She knew very well that what he said was true. There seemed no end to their power or capabilities.

  Felipe passed his hand over his face. Was he unwell, Marie wondered. His colour was up, she noticed, as he sank back a little in his chair. He saw her looking at him with concern.

  ‘I caught malaria in prison,’ he told her. ‘It come back a little now and then.’

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ she asked.

  ‘A cold beer from my fridge,’ he said. ‘And one for you. I get them.’

  He started to rise but she pushed him back. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Leave it to me.’

  ‘Take the keys.’ He smiled gratefully and tossed them over.

  She returned in a couple of minutes with the beer. They drank in silence for a moment.

  ‘You must have spent ages looking for me all that time,’ she told Felipe. ‘Few people would do so much for a stranger they had met in jail.’

  He thought about it, brows furrowed. ‘He was a great man,’ he said. ‘Your father was a scholar, a saint. He rescue me when I had nothing to live for. I would not break my word to him. He ask me to find his daughter and tell her the truth.’

  ‘Tell me about him,’ she asked. ‘What sort of man was he?’

  ‘He was a gentle man and a gentleman. He seemed to carry a great dolor, how you say … sorrow when I knew him but he was not without laughter. He was like a professor, a scholar. It was his passion.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘He was tall, thin, dark hair with high forehead and bright pale eyes like yours, forever studying and reading. His obsession was to put right the wrongs done to your ancestor Gilles de Rais. He bought this old castle someone had brought over from France. He called it Cauchemar. Your father’s error was the folly of a very rich man who does not pay attention to his business affairs. He left the running of his fortune to his cousins. This was mistake in two ways. They were not just on the make, not to be trusted, they were evil. And when certain envious people told them of his interest for Gilles de Rais – your father say that Joan of Arc introduce Gilles to the old religion, the witches – they make him ill with drugs and keep him prisoner, feeding him lies, fantasies, drugs and poison. When I meet him he is man broken by poor food and ill health but even then he has not lost his kindness or his scholar interest. He teach me English and even some Latin.’

  He thought about it for a while.

  ‘And the other thing that never leave him is his love for you, his daughter,’ he told her.

  They sat in silence as she tried to imagine her parents – her mother who would never be old, and her stricken father whose hand had written these words and touched these pages; riches to rags and dust to dust.

  ‘So here we are,’ she said. ‘Now what is to be done? How am I going to punish the people who have done this?’

  ***

  It is hard, when you are twenty-four years of age, to feel laden with the sins of your father, or burdened by the obscurity and uncertainty of his fate. However, a sleep, a bacon sandwich and a good cup of coffee from the diner around the corner conspired to encourage optimism.

  Marie put on a summer frock, said goodbye to Felipe and took a bus to downtown LA where the richer shops were and the richer people looked important. Wilshire Boulevard started here on its course northwest across town. A bit further on it became a more relaxed sort of street, but here it bristled with shops and offices. Well, actually, it didn’t bristle. It didn’t even flaunt. It stated.

  Further out, there were gardens, white houses where people lived and more leisurely businesses, but here, there were department stores, office buildings, an upmarket gentleman’s club called the St James’s, a theatre, a sprinkling of fine restaurants and trattorias whose fragrant offerings – bakery and cakery, patisserie and rotisserie, wine and roses and specials of the day – wafted across the pavements, lending a certain relish to the business of the day.

  And just round the corner from the Los Angeles Athletic Club on Figueroa Street was the LA version of Merrymaids, lending a certain frivolity and forbidden fruitishness to the muscles an
d Mammonry of the area. Outside the establishment, lit up decorously on one flank of the building, was a gargantuan Merrymaid picked out in neon lights.

  Marie, remembering her days at the establishment, was adjusting her expression into one of wise innocence – an oxymoronic cut of jib much favoured by the management of Merrymaids – when heels behind her on the pavement stopped their clickety-clacking, and a voice said, ‘It can’t be.’

  It was Margot, whom she had last met at Pilgrim’s Piece, still unmistakably the same but in a more prosperous mode. ‘What are you doing here, Marie?’ she asked.

  ‘I want to be doing what you’re doing. Making money, I hope. I thought you might be here, don’t know why.’

  ‘You must be crazy. The LA version of Merrymaids is just like Sussex only worse, though the men are even richer.’

  ‘Have you got time for a coffee before you go in?’ Marie asked.

  ‘Just about. There’s a place round the corner.’

  They found a table and ordered a couple of coffees with milk, the English way.

  ‘How did you end up here?’ Margot asked. ‘I was worried about you. You disappeared. Did you have the baby?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’