JM01 - River of Darkness

by Rennie Airth

He slid a pile of papers into an open drawer.

  “I keep telling myself it’s the women. It must be the women. But he never touches them. So could it be something else?” He looked at Madden questioningly.

  The inspector shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”

  4

  Madden left Scotland Yard in the early evening and walked along the Embankment to Westminster. With summer drawing to an end the city was filling again. Sitting on the upper deck of an omnibus bound for Bloomsbury he looked down on pavements crowded with young women, typists from government offices hurrying home at the close of the working day. He could remember a time before the war when the same sidewalks would have held only clerks in bowler hats and high stiff collars. He liked the change that had come about.

  Late that morning a telegram had been delivered to his desk by one of the commissionaires. It was from Helen Blackwell. CAN YOU MEET ME IN LONDON THIS EVENING QUERY. She gave an address in Bloomsbury Square and a time: six o’clock.

  The two weeks were only just up and Madden hadn’t dared to hope that he would hear from her so soon.

  Earlier, at the regular Monday conference in Bennett’s office, he had given an account of his trip to Maidstone and the conclusions he and Sinclair had drawn from it.

  “We think it’s the same man.”

  Chief Superintendent Sampson had responded with incredulity. “Now look here, Madden, you’ve got a gypsy who hanged himself in police custody. That sounds like a pretty fair admission of guilt to me. And where’s the connection with the Highfield murders? Granted a woman had her throat cut in each case. But the man who killed those people at Melling Lodge also robbed the house. We know that. The stuff taken from the farmhouse was lifted by the gypsy. You can’t have it both ways.”

  “The Bentham case was reported in the newspapers,” Sinclair interjected. “I believe our man might have read about the robbery and decided to do the same at Melling Lodge. I still think he was trying to mislead us.”

  “You think. You believe.” Sampson scratched his head. “The trouble with this inquiry is it’s all guesswork.”

  “Nevertheless, we have to consider the possibility that these two cases are linked.” The chief inspector was insistent. “And, if they prove to be, the implication is serious. Even chilling. It means we have a man committing murders, seemingly at random, for motives which are a mystery to us. I repeat, it may be necessary to look at fresh ways of approaching this investigation.”

  Watching Bennett’s face, Madden couldn’t gauge his reaction. The deputy assistant commissioner listened without comment.

  The address Madden had been given was that of a handsome Victorian house in Bloomsbury Square with a brass plate beside the door on which the words “British PsychoAnalytical Society” were engraved. A receptionist was seated at a desk in the otherwise bare entrance hall.

  “I’m afraid you’re a little late for Dr. Weiss’ address,” she told Madden. “It must be almost over by now.”

  He explained his presence.

  “Dr. Blackwell? Isn’t she the fair-haired lady? You can wait for her down here if you like, or you could go up.” She pointed to the stairway behind her. “Just slip in quietly, no one will mind.”

  Madden went up a flight of carpeted stairs lined with portraits of solemn-looking men in formal attire. When he reached the first floor he heard a voice coming from behind a closed door. He opened it quietly and found himself looking into a large room where perhaps forty people were seated in rows of chairs. Facing them was a short, dark-haired man who stood behind a table carpeted in green felt on which a jug of water and a glass rested beside a pile of notes. He was addressing the gathering.

  “. . . but since the issue of abnormality has been raised, may I say that I believe—and here I am quoting Professor Freud again—that the impulses of sexual life are among those which, even normally, are the least controlled by the higher functions of the mind. Generally speaking, we know that anyone who is abnormal mentally is abnormal in his sexual life. What is perhaps more interesting is that people whose behaviour in other respects corresponds to the norms can, under the tyranny of the sexual instinct, lose the capacity to direct or control their lives.”

  Madden saw Helen’s fair head in the second row of chairs. There were some empty seats at the back of the room and he took one.

  “. . . something you said earlier. Does that mean you would sanction perversions?” A middle-aged man in the front row had risen to ask a question. Madden had missed the first part of it. “More generally, it does seem to me and to others outside the profession that everything in the world of psychiatry revolves around sex. Or perhaps I’ve misunderstood you, Dr. Weiss?”

  “It is more likely that I have misled you.” The speaker was smiling. “My English is not as fluent as I would wish.” To Madden it seemed that he was fully at home in the language, although he spoke with a strong accent. “But let me say first that, speaking as a psychiatrist, I would not normally use the word ‘perversion’ as a term of reproach in the sexual sphere. To put it bluntly, most of us enjoy some degree of ‘perversion’ from the norm.”

  An embarrassed ripple of laughter came from the audience. At that moment Helen Blackwell looked over her shoulder and her eyes met Madden’s. His heartbeat quickened. For a moment her face seemed to register surprise. Then she smiled.

  “However”—Dr. Weiss leaned forward, resting his hands on the table—“on the more general question, while I would not agree that ‘everything’ in our work has to do with sex, I cannot deny the central position occupied by this most imperious of instincts. Let me be plain. I regard human sexuality as the single most important force in our lives, both as individuals and as members of society. Consider only how it lies at the very root of our capacity to love human beings other than ourselves. Truly, the seed of our happiness.

  “But the tale does not end there, sad to say, and this is evident from much of the work being done in my profession. The sexual instinct flows like a river through our lives, and if, for many, it is a broad sunlit stream, for others it can be a source of pain and anguish. A river of darkness. Aphrodite appears to us in many aspects, some of them strange and terrible. We should regard her with awe.

  “In this connection, and to answer more fully your earlier question, I cannot do better than draw your attention once more to the writings of Professor Freud, whose work has figured so largely in our discussion this evening. As my old teacher has observed, even the most repulsive sexual acts can be transformed by the human mind into idealized creations. I will close with a quotation from Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality freely translated: ‘The omnipotence of love is never more strongly proved than in aberrations such as these. The highest and lowest are always closest to each other in the realm of sexuality.’”

  The speaker smiled at his audience and bowed. A polite round of applause broke out as he began to collect his notes from the table in front of him. There was a shuffling of feet and chairs. Madden made his way to the front. Helen awaited him, her eyes meeting his when he was still some way off and then holding them in her steady glance as he approached.

  “John, dear . . .” She shook his hand. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t be able to come at such short notice.” As people milled about them she moved closer to him. “I got back yesterday evening and found an invitation to this lecture waiting at the house, so I decided to take a chance and come up.”

  She was wearing a dark high-waisted dress with a matching velvet toque. A fringed shawl of red silk was draped loosely about her shoulders. Her glance shifted and he became aware of a figure standing beside them.

  “Franz, how lovely to see you again.”

  “Helen, my dear . . .” Dr. Weiss took her hands in his and kissed them, first one then the other. He was perhaps half a head shorter than she was and she smiled down at him.

  “This is my friend John Madden.”

  “Mr. Madden.” Dr. Weiss brought his
heels together and executed a brief bow. His dark wavy hair was flecked with grey at the temples. His liquid brown eyes, crinkled at the corners by a smile, held a look of rueful intelligence.

  “Inspector Madden. John works at Scotland Yard. You must have read about those terrible murders in Highfield . . .”

  “Indeed. Our papers carried several reports.” He looked at Madden curiously.

  “I stayed with Franz and his family in Vienna before the war,” Helen told Madden. “He and father are old friends and I went there to study German.”

  “We still miss you.” Dr. Weiss regarded her fondly. “Mina was devoured by envy at the thought that I might see you on this trip. Mina is my wife.” He turned briefly to Madden. “She was not alone. Jakob insists that he remembers you well and wants to know when you will return.”

  Helen laughed. “Since Jakob was only three at the time, I find that hard to believe.”

  “Some memories we carry in our hearts.” Dr. Weiss touched his chest.

  “Dear Franz . . . please give them both my love, and tell them I will come back and see you all again.”

  “But not yet, please!” Dr. Weiss held up his hand. “Vienna is not a place one should choose to visit at present.”

  “Are things still so bad?”

  “Bad enough. Expressed in our currency, the modest fees I am receiving for these lectures will seem like a fortune.” The doctor smiled wryly. “An illusory one. They say soon it will take a suitcase of banknotes to buy a loaf of bread.”

  “Oh, Franz!”

  “Still, we learn through suffering—isn’t that what the Greeks have taught us?” He became animated. “Last winter we had to burn some of our furniture to keep warm. When patients came to the house I would wrap them in blankets and lay them out on the couch. Professor Freud, as you may know, has developed a technique of free association in analysis,” he bent towards Madden again, “but it’s hard for a patient to concentrate on retrieving some memory from the past when all he is wondering is whether he can reach the end of the session without turning into an icicle!”

  Helen Blackwell’s laughter brought Madden the memory of a grassy bank and the sound of a blackbird’s call.

  “So here I am, earning a crust as they say.” He glanced about him. “The Society feels it would be of benefit to introduce psychoanalysis to a wider public in Britain. Well and good, I say. Unfortunately, to most outsiders psychiatry equals Freud equals sex.” He looked droll. “One has only to mention his name in front of a roomful of Englishmen and half a dozen of them turn red with embarrassment.”

  A figure was hovering behind him. Dr. Weiss looked round. “Yes, of course—forgive me. I shall only be a moment longer.” He addressed Helen. “I leave for Manchester tomorrow. Then Edinburgh. But I shall return to London in a week and I will get in touch with you. Perhaps we could have lunch together? Yes?”

  “Of course, Franz. But you must come down to Highfield and see Father again.”

  He took her hands and kissed them as before. He bowed to Madden—“Inspector.” With a smile at them both, he turned and joined a group of men waiting behind him.

  Helen took Madden’s arm and they moved off down the aisle between the chairs.

  “Are you one of those half-dozen, John Madden?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Yes, I believe you’re blushing.”

  They went down the stairs and out into the soft evening light. The plane trees in the square were bowed under the weight of summer foliage. The air was warm and heavy with the dust of the city.

  “Would you like to hear about Sophy? She started talking again a week ago. I spoke to Dr. Mackay in Edinburgh. So far she hasn’t mentioned that night, and when Dr. Mackay asked her about it she went silent for another two days. It was a warning—‘Keep off!’ But she hasn’t asked for her mother, and Dr. Mackay thinks she knows and accepts that she won’t see her again.”

  He told her about the drawings. “We believe the man who broke in was wearing a gas mask. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one. They’re quite hideous. A child would have been terrified.”

  They continued slowly around the square. She kept hold of his arm, walking close beside him, her body brushing against his.

  “Would you like to have dinner?” he asked, unsure how to proceed. He didn’t want her to think he was taking anything for granted.

  “Yes, please. I haven’t eaten all day.” She looked directly at him. “Then could we go back to your place? I’m staying with a girlfriend in Kensington. I’d like to take you there, but she’s terribly strait-laced and I simply haven’t the courage.”

  She smiled into his eyes and he smiled back, his heart lifting. He found it hard to believe there was anything in the world for which she did not have the courage.

  They sat across from each other in the restaurant. Candlelight brought out the glint of gold in her hair. She told him about her marriage.

  “I met Guy when we were students, but he gave up medicine and decided to read law instead. He was still doing that when the war began. Each time he came home on leave it was harder. I had to try to remember why I’d married him, why I’d loved him. When he was killed, all I could think was that I’d failed him and now I’d never have a chance to make it right.”

  Madden’s wife had been a schoolteacher. They had been shy with each other, still strangers after two years of marriage. He had difficulty now recalling her features, or those of their baby daughter who had died at the age of six months, within days of her mother. During the war he had come almost to forget them, as though their deaths had ceased to matter in the great slaughter going on around him. Later he had tried to recover his feelings, to mourn afresh, but they remained dim in his memory and he never spoke of them now.

  Instead, he talked to her about the case. He told her about the murder of the farmer’s wife at Bentham.

  “We haven’t put it out, but we think it was done by the same man. We don’t understand his reasons for killing. We can’t find a motive that makes sense.”

  She wanted to know what had happened to him and Will Stackpole in the woods at Highfield. Lord Stratton had told them little about the ambush and she was shocked when she heard the details. “You could have been killed, both of you. Was it terrifying, being trapped like that? Were you very afraid?”

  “Not really. Not enough—” He stopped, conscious of what he had said. When he didn’t go on, she asked, “Was that how you felt in the war?”

  He nodded. He found it hard to speak. “Towards the end, yes. There seemed no point in being afraid anymore. Either you survived or you didn’t. But when I felt the same thing up in the woods, it was as though I’d never escaped from it—that feeling that nothing mattered any longer.”

  She took his hand in hers.

  The past two weeks had not been easy ones for Helen Blackwell. The problem of fitting an affair into her busy, tightly structured life had occupied her mind at length. But she had also found herself wondering whether she was wise, after all, to involve herself with a man so clearly suffering from inner torments.

  Her wartime work had taught her much about the effects of prolonged exposure to trench warfare. Everywhere in the land there were men who woke each morning unable to control their trembling limbs and eyelids, who started at the sound of a door being slammed and dived for cover when a car backfired. She knew what mental efforts were required by those who remained active and in command of their lives.

  Returning to London, she had not been surprised to feel a renewal of physical desire when they met. The mysterious bonds of sexual attraction drew her to this silent man. There was no wishing them away. What she was unprepared for was the sudden rush of tenderness that had filled her when she glanced over her shoulder and found his anxious, troubled eyes searching for hers.

  Later, he took her to his rooms off the Bayswater Road. To the shame of peeling paint and stained wallpaper and the sour smell of rented furniture. Here was a truth he could not hide f
rom her: that he had ceased to care how he lived. A photograph of his dead wife and child, standing on a side-table, was all he had salvaged from his past. She asked him their names and he told her. Alice and Margaret. Margaret after his mother, who had died when he was a boy.

  When he began to speak, to make some apology for the place he had brought her to, she stopped his lips with hers. “Come.” She took his hand and led him into the bedroom.

  At the sight of her naked body, white and gold and rose-tipped, he started to tremble, and when they lay down together he continued to shake helplessly. She held him in her strong arms, saying nothing, pressing his body to hers, her cheek to his. After a while she began to kiss him, first on his face and throat, then on his chest, her breath warm on his skin. His body was marked by wounds: one shaped like a star under his breastbone, the legacy of a bullet that had passed clean through him, somehow missing his heart, the other a jagged ridge of tissue on his hip from the same shrapnel blast that had torn his arm. Her lips moved freely over his scarred body, until he could bear it no longer. When he reached for her she was ready.

  “I’ve thought about this every day.”

  He was inside her in a moment, but this time she checked him. Slowed him. “It’s so lovely . . . let’s make it last.”

  Even so, for him it was over too soon. Too soon. But she kissed him and held him to her and he heard her soft laugh again.

  “What was it Franz was saying?” Breathless beneath him.

  He fell asleep and dreamed of a youth named Jamie Wallace who had once been a student at the Guildhall in London. One of the young men with whom Madden had enlisted and trained, he’d been the possessor of a sweet tenor voice and had often entertained the other men with ballads of the day. On the first morning of the Somme he and Madden had found themselves side by side in the forward trench. All night the artillery bombardment had sounded. At sunrise it ceased and a small miracle had occurred. Larks arose from the blasted fields and canals all around and the sky had been full of the sound of them. “Do you hear that?” Jamie Wallace had asked, his face lighting up. In Madden’s dream his lips framed the same silent question. Do you hear that? A moment later the whistle had sounded for the start of the attack and the men had gone up the ladders into the lark-filled morning.