by Sarah Rayne
Chapter Fifteen
The powers that ordered life and death and ordained judgement were still with Thalia. Even if she had not known it before, she knew it now. And once that was accepted, it was no longer surprising that matters had played so neatly into her hands.
Thalia had not planned that the bitch should find out what had happened to Eloise – she had not even thought about it – but it had been like the last coruscating piece of a cosmic jigsaw fitting into its appointed place. Imogen was sunk deep in what the doctors were calling hysterical stupor, she was four days into it now, and there was no way of telling how many more days she might remain like that. Everyone agreed that it was very sad even while they were all shuddering and stunned over what had happened to Eloise. George reported that Elspeth had taken to her bed for three days, and Dilys had had hysterics all over Battersea. Juliette was believed to have got most enviably drunk at some nightclub or other, and Rosa had told Great-Aunt Flora that it was anybody’s guess whose bed the naughty girl had ended up sharing.
It was not sad at all, of course; it was the creature’s punishment and judgement, just as Eloise’s fate had been her punishment and judgement. Thalia had experienced once more the deep, secret pleasure when she had heard just how successful the plan against Eloise had been.
Wearing the falsest of all her false faces, she listened to the various suggestions put forward by the family who were beginning to recover a bit from the shock and were turning their attention to what ought now to be done regarding Imogen. As Great-Aunt Flora pointed out, it was at least something positive to think about.
Thalia pretended to agree with everyone. She made notes and nodded when stupid old Dilys made ridiculous suggestions about private nursing homes and long-term care, with the cost shared between the family. She held a serious discussion with Flora who wanted to buy an annuity which would pay for Imogen’s care indefinitely, and said this was a very intelligent idea. It might be possible to do just that; Thalia would consult with Matron Porter and Dr Sterne and report back. They could then approach Royston’s bankers for advice on how best to go about it. What did Flora think?
What Flora thought was that she had misjudged Thalia Caudle who, in the present appalling situation, was proving a tower of strength. She said so in her forthright way, and Thalia smiled faintly and looked at her nails.
Coercing Freda Porter proved to be the easiest thing of all. The secret with coercion was to find out the weakness in your victim’s armour, and use it.
Freda Porter’s weakness had been obvious. The creature had applied for the matron’s post at Thornacre, and she was waiting to hear whether it was successful. It was instantly plain to Thalia that Leo Sterne had something – probably everything – to do with it. It looked as if the Porter woman was suffering from a bad case of middle-aged infatuation for Dr Sterne. Very good; it should be used against her. Thalia, wearing the most guileless of all her guileless masks, explained to Freda that of course there was no question of anyone blaming Briar House, or Freda herself, for Imogen’s having slipped out so easily, and of course no one was going to ask for an investigation. As to the fact that Imogen had apparently been systematically fed a far heftier dosage of sedatives than was necessary, or even prescribed, oh, that was a mere nothing, said Thalia. These things happened, and it was not something that need blight Matron’s future. Especially since that future looked so promising just now. Especially with the Thornacre post on the horizon. It would be a very great pity if that was affected, said Thalia, slyly.
The shaft went home. The creature turned an unbecoming crimson and began to bluster, and Thalia felt a faint contempt for her. But she said coolly, ‘I believe it is not an unusual practice to increase a prescribed sedative dose with, shall we say, difficult patients. I don’t blame you in the least, Matron, and we should not dream of making trouble for you.’ A pause. ‘Of course, if Imogen should wake, if she should talk about how easy it was to get out of Briar House that night, and about all those sedatives she was given,’ a brief gesture of helplessness, ‘it might be difficult to keep it quiet. On all counts, it might be less dangerous if she could be got out of London.’
Freda said, thoughtfully, ‘Well, I have to say, Mrs Caudle, that we haven’t really the facilities or the staff to look after her at Briar House. Not in her present condition.’
‘You haven’t really, have you?’ Thalia slid into her softest, most coaxing voice. ‘Tell me, Matron, if you were to get this post at Thornacre, how easy would it be for you to have Imogen transferred there?’
‘Permanently?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘It would probably be quite easy,’ said Freda, slowly. ‘Dr Sterne has an interest in the case, you know.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes. He believes that Imogen will come out of the stupor more or less naturally, although he can’t tell yet how long it might take. But I think he would like to study her, which would mean transferring her to Thornacre anyway. Although it would probably have to be approved by the girl’s family.’
Thalia said, ‘But if I, as Imogen’s guardian, did approve it, it would place her directly under your care?’
‘If I were given the post, certainly it would.’
‘Yes,’ said Thalia, thoughtfully. ‘If you were given the post.’ She studied the other woman for a moment, and then said, ‘Let’s suppose for a minute you were given it. Let’s suppose we could get you into Thornacre as matron. I’m sure you would be excellent at the job, by the way.’
Freda permitted herself a small smile.
‘Would you be able to ensure that Imogen stayed there indefinitely?’ said Thalia.
They looked at one another. ‘Well, do you know,’ said Freda, at last, ‘I believe I might be able to do that. As matron I should have considerable authority.’ This had such a good ring to it that she repeated it. ‘Yes, considerable authority. I should have to be consulted about the cases there. Of course, Dr Sterne discusses a great deal with me already.’ This also sounded well. It sounded as if Dr Sterne reposed great confidence in her.
Thalia said, ‘Yes, I have realised for myself that you have quite a lot of influence with Dr Sterne.’ She registered the woman’s smirk, and the way she put up one hand to give her hair a little complacent pat. ‘And, of course, once Imogen was under your care, you could make sure that she didn’t talk about the sedative overdosing, couldn’t you? That’s a side issue, but we ought not to forget it. We ought not to minimise the possible danger there, ought we?’
Freda, white rather than red now, said, ‘Oh no,’ and gave a mad little laugh.
‘What concerns me most is protecting the rest of the family,’ said Thalia. ‘And that means protecting the reputation of Ingram’s –the company, I mean.’ She paused, frowning, as if selecting her next words with care. ‘I believe I can be open with you,’ she said, leaning forward. ‘You know what happened at my son’s funeral?’
Freda shuddered delicately and said, ‘Dear me, yes. Very nasty for you all.’
‘Imogen will inherit Ingram’s eventually,’ said Thalia. ‘But if it became known that she was, shall we say, disturbed, it might harm the company severely. People are so hidebound by the conventions, don’t you agree?’
‘Oh, quite.’
Thalia, satisfied that she had got the point across, changed tack. ‘I have met Professor Rackham,’ she said, as if she had only just remembered this. ‘In the course of some of my charity work. I wonder, supposing I were to send him a personal reference about you.’
Freda said, carefully, ‘And in return for that, you would want . . .’
Dear God, did it have to be spelled out in single-syllable words for the woman? Thalia said, ‘I would want you to make sure that once inside Thornacre, Imogen stays there.’
The two women looked at one another. Eventually, Freda said, ‘For how long? And asleep or awake?’
‘I don’t care which,’ said Thalia. ‘But I don’t want her to come out of Thornac
re for a very long time.’
Quincy had been given the especial task of watching Imogen in case she woke up.
This was an extremely important job, and Quincy had stared with wide, scared eyes when Matron Porter and Dr Sterne had explained it to her, and then had said a bit breathlessly that she would do it; she would do anything in the world for Imogen. She would sit up all night and not go to sleep in order to watch, she said earnestly. Dr Sterne had smiled at that – he had a nice smile but at the moment it was very tired – and had said that would not be necessary; they would have an extra nurse on duty by tonight, and in any case Imogen would have woken up by then. Quincy had not liked to ask what would happen if Imogen did not wake up.
Porter-Pig had not been pleased about any of it; Quincy had known that at once on account of the little jagged spikes all round Porter-Pig’s head, like angry buzzing hornets. Hornets were like wasps only a lot bigger and a whole lot more dangerous. Drawing Matron with the hornet-crossness around her head would make a good new picture.
Dr Sterne would make a good picture as well. Quincy had not drawn him yet, but when she did, she would make him a dark, faintly mysterious figure against a background of light, like the coloured windows you saw in church. She had never been to church until she came to Briar House; people in Bolt Place had spent Sundays sleeping off Saturday night’s drinking, or dodging the rent man. Quincy had once, greatly daring, ventured into St Thomas’s and crept into one of the seats, fascinated by the marvellous rich colours in the windows, and by the faint drift of polish and old wood and the enormous feeling of peace. She went several times after that, until Mother and the men in the pub found out and sneered, and told coarse stories about vicars, and Mother dug the men in the ribs and shrieked with mirth at the things they said.
Quincy did not go to church again after that, and she did not go when she came to Briar House, either. It was not part of what you did here; Freda said her staff had better things to do than trail people all the way to church, particularly with Sunday being a visiting day for so many. Visitors to Briar House expected to smell the good scents of beef roasting for a traditional Sunday dinner and to go away feeling comfortable about leaving their relatives in such a pleasant, homelike place where such nice meals were cooked. A few favoured guests were sometimes invited to stay to share the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding or the pork with apple sauce, and it all meant extra work and the staff demanded bonuses for working on Sundays.
Imogen might stay asleep like this for a very long time. She might not wake up for months and months and she might not wake up at all. Quincy had heard Matron say this to Dr Sterne; they had been crossing the hall and Quincy had been on the half-landing. She had huddled behind the curtains at the long windows, and she had heard Matron say something about comas and something else about vegetables, which was bewildering, and then about brain death which sounded appalling.
Normally Quincy would have gone away then, but she wanted to hear more about what was going to happen to Imogen. Matron and Dr Sterne were going into Matron’s sitting room – the light from the front door was just falling across Dr Sterne so that it looked as if he was wearing a crimson and sapphire cloak of light, and Porter-Pig was poking and pecking her head forward like a long-beaked, bulgy-breasted animal.
Dr Sterne said, very sharply, ‘It’s not a coma, Matron.’
‘Whatever name we give it, Dr Sterne, she can’t stay here. We haven’t the facilities.’
‘Have you talked to her family yet? There are some very good private places that specialise in that kind of care.’
There was a sudden pause, and then Freda said, ‘I’ve talked to Mrs Caudle, of course. She is the girl’s guardian.’
‘Why on earth – oh, she’s still under age, of course. Sixteen?’
‘Almost eighteen. And it seems,’ said Freda, still in the same careful voice, ‘that the family are not prepared to finance an indefinite stay in Briar House. Even if we had the resources.’
Quincy, still curled into her hidey-hole, could no longer see Porter-Pig’s face, but she could hear that there was something very odd in her voice when she said this about Imogen’s family. Dr Sterne seemed to have heard it as well, because there was a moment of silence, as if he might be looking at Matron very carefully.
But after a moment he seemed to accept it. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘I wonder if it’s “can’t” rather than “won’t”. Maybe Ingram’s is suffering from the recession like everyone else.’
‘Well, that isn’t for me to say, Dr Sterne.’ And then, as if she might have taken a deep breath beforehand, she said, ‘And so if you are to continue to treat her, I am very much afraid there is only one place for her, isn’t there?’ She did not say ‘I’ when she talked to Dr Sterne: she said ‘Ai’, in the way people did when they were trying to sound expensive and well educated. Porter-Pig was neither of these things and she only made Dr Sterne wince when she put on this pretend-posh voice. The words came out as, ‘Ai am very much afraid there is only one place for her,’ and Quincy knew that Dr Sterne would have liked her much better if she had been ordinary and natural.
But he said, half to himself, ‘Thornacre,’ and Quincy felt a wash of cold horror engulf her. ‘I’ll ring them up straight away and make the arrangements. If the guardian is agreeable—’
‘Oh, most definitely.’
‘Then she’d better go at once.’
And Matron Pig said, in her silly, simpering voice, ‘And did you know Ai shall be going to Thornacre as well, Dr Sterne? Yes, confirmed this morning. Professor Rackham telephoned me himself. Mai word, what a charmer he is. Ai almost think Ai made a conquest there. And you and me working together. It almost seems meant, doesn’t it?’
Imogen’s room smelt of nice things, expensive things like the good soap she had brought with her and the box of powder that went with it, which Quincy thought was like floaty pink icing sugar. There was the scent of clean hair as well, and of thin, soft underthings. On the little table under the window was a bowl of what was called potpourri. Quincy knew about potpourri; you saw it in shops and it smelt delicious. But Imogen had said it differently to the way Quincy had thought it was said. Quincy had pronounced it silently when she was on her own, trying to make her voice sound the same, and then she wondered if she was only being like silly old pretend Porter-Pig, trying to be something she was not. It was not very nice to think of old Freda being at Thornacre with Imogen. Quincy was unhappy about that.
Somebody had undressed Imogen and put one of the silky nightdresses on her, and Quincy had been allowed to brush the long dark hair and arrange it neatly on the pillows. Imogen had not moved the whole time and although her eyes were a bit open, she looked as if she was seeing things a long way away from Briar House. Quincy knew it was because of what she had seen in her mother’s coffin; she had heard two of the assistants talking about it and she knew that Imogen had crept out to the graveyard when it was dark.
Imogen’s mother had been alive when they put her in the ground, just as Thalia Caudle had said. The lady with the beautiful name, Eloise, had been alive, and she had tried to get out and she had died screaming for help, and nobody had heard her.
Quincy had dreamed about Imogen’s mother several times and woken up frightened. Once she had tried to draw it, because Dr Sterne said that drawing frightening things was a good thing to do. There was a long word for it which Quincy could not remember, but it meant that it helped you to stop being frightened of things. But the drawing of Imogen’s mother had been so terrible that she had had to stop. It had started out as a good-looking lady, a bit like Imogen, but then it had changed on the page into a red, raw screaming thing, all twisted and writhing and blood-spattered, with torn-off fingernails where it had tried to claw its way out of the ground.
Quincy had not been able to stop thinking about it. She had not been able to stop thinking that it was all her fault. If she had gone to the cemetery earlier that day she might have saved Imogen’s mother. If she had n
ot gone at all, nobody would have known anything about it, and Imogen would not have fallen into this faraway sleep. Quincy did not know which would have been better.
She sat down in a chair at the foot of Imogen’s bed. Dr Sterne had made a chart so that they could keep a count of how long Imogen was asleep like this. He was crossing off the days, one at a time, and six had been crossed off already. Quincy stared at the chart, not seeing it.
Imogen was going to Thornacre, and Thornacre was the worst place in the world. It was a place that made people evil; they looked ordinary on the outside, but underneath they were evil and cruel. They wore masks, just as Thalia Caudle had worn a mask.
There had been a doctor in Thornacre who had looked quite ordinary and who had pretended to be kind. He had talked to Quincy in a special voice, and listened to her telling about how after her mother’s funeral the man who owned the house was going to throw her into the street because she had no money and how she had had to lie on the bed and let him poke himself inside her. The man had said it was what her mother had always done when there was no rent money, and a young slag was as good as an old one, and one pair of open legs the same as another.
The Thornacre doctor had listened to everything, and then he had locked the door and told her to undress, beause they were going to act out what had happened with the rent man and all the other men, and then afterwards Quincy would be able to forget all about it. He had used a word Quincy had never heard – something beginning with cat, something that sounded like cattersis – and his eyes had been cold and glittery. He had said she must tell him exactly what each man had done to her, and then he had unfastened his trousers and pushed her over the desk. She had felt the hard poking part thrusting against her.
He had not done it to her at the front like the other men; he had done it from behind and it had been the most painful thing she had ever known. It had gone on for what had seemed to be a very long time, but then right at the end the doctor who was the Cattersis-beast had jerked her round to face him and forced her to kneel down, pushing into her face and making her open her mouth. He had panted smelly breath on to her, and his body had been sour in her mouth. There was a word she had heard – rancid. People said butter was rancid when it went off in the hot weather. The doctor’s body and the wet stickiness spurting into her mouth were rancid.
