Nor All Your Tears (23 page)

She first of all put Michael in his cot in the nursery upstairs, then re-joined me in the hallway. I had one more thing to raise; I told her what Max had said about Albert Stewart's confession regarding Twinkle.

‘But you said it was Tristan Charlton.'

‘I thought it was.'

‘Is she going to press charges?'

‘I don't think that would be in anyone's best interests. Max agrees.'

She didn't look impressed. ‘So it was pointless for me to go to Springfield Hospital.'

‘Sorry.' She didn't say anything more, but then she didn't need to. For just a brief moment I thought I was really in trouble and that she would arrest me for wasting police time. I hastened to add, ‘But I think I might have woken the sleeping dragon.'

Her face as I went on to tell her about Max's encounter with Tristan said it all; by the end of it, her eyes were closed and her face was raised to the heavens. ‘Sorry,' I mumbled.

‘We can't do anything more as it stands,' she sighed. ‘Unless he actually touches her, threatens her or is persistent in his attention, he is beyond my reach.'

‘I know,' I said, because I did. It wasn't what I wanted to hear, though.

She showed me out. On the step I tried one last time. ‘Whatever you can do, Jean. Please.'

She smiled and agreed to do what she could. We both knew it was precious little.

I didn't tell Max that I had been to see Jean Abelson; I didn't like deceiving Max but then, I knew that if I told her, she'd be incandescent. On my way back to a dinner that Max was cooking, I wondered idly why she had taken against the police sergeant, but to no avail; it was just a personality thing, I supposed. Over pork chops, boiled potatoes and carrots, I brought Max up to speed regarding the murders, deciding not to go into details how I knew; Max assumed that it was Masson who had been my informant, and I did not disabuse her. To my surprise, she agreed with Masson's thinking. ‘Anyone who could do that to a poor, innocent rabbit is clearly mad and capable of anything.'

I knew I would be on dodgy ground if I argued; even suggesting that homicide and lepicide weren't exactly equivalent would, I strongly suspected, be interpreted as heterodoxy of a dangerous, subversive kind. ‘Be that as it may be,' I replied cautiously, ‘I still don't see that he's got a motive for killing Marlene Jeffries. She was too young to have taught him.'

‘But she was living with Yvette Mangon; that's the connection.'

‘If his interest is to kill teachers against whom he has a grudge, then killing Marlene Jeffries, just because her social arrangements brought her into contact with one of them, doesn't make sense.'

‘Perhaps he doesn't like lesbians either.'

‘That would give him a second, entirely different motive.' Max saw nothing wrong with that. I pointed out, ‘And Marlene was the first to die. That's a bit odd, isn't it?'

I think she might have seen some sense in what I was saying, but Max could only see that Albert Stewart was a self-confessed rabbit-killer and therefore, by definition, beyond the Pale. ‘I expect there's a good reason why he killed them in that order. You wait and see.'

I didn't say any more but as we sat and watched Gordon Honeycombe reading the
News at Ten
, his bald pate adding an air of authority to what was happening in the world, I tried to chase down what had begun to nag me when I was sitting in Jean Abelson's house. I fell asleep on Max's shoulder, and she had to wake me by gently shaking me at just before eleven. We went to bed and I was no nearer to catching and dissecting what was bothering me . . .

In the middle of the night, though, I was suddenly awake. There it was, in my mind, the reason for my psychic discomfort. It wasn't much, though. Probably nothing. Certainly not worth making a fuss about it; not until I had had a chance to cogitate a bit. I turned over and closed my eyes, thinking about it. It was obvious, I decided.

THIRTY-ONE

P
erhaps you can imagine my delight to arrive at the surgery next morning to discover that in the small ‘doctors only' car park in front was an interloping vehicle, and that in that interloping vehicle was one small, choleric inspector of Her Majesty's Constabulary. He was accompanied by Sergeant Abelson, but she had on her official face which, although not in any way unpleasant to feast upon, was distinctly unresponsive in that way that I have often found with those who, even metaphorically, wear the Queen's blue uniform. As soon as I got out of the car, I was accosted, as I knew I would be. He had been smoking and the faint tendrils of blue-grey smoke that drifted around him as he emerged into the foetid early morning air gave him faintly the image of a malevolent daemon summoned into the corporeal realm without his permission.

‘Can I have a word, Doctor?'

If ever there was a needless question, that was it. I carried on walking and said as I passed, ‘I haven't got long before morning surgery.'

He followed, taking my reply as consent to his question; it occurred to me that this small exchange had succinctly encapsulated our relationship; I was ahead of Masson when we went into my room, but in every other way – spiritually, legally and psychologically – it was Masson who was the leader. I sat behind my desk and he sat in the patient's chair, Sergeant Abelson on the only other one in the room, the one that is meant for mothers when they bring in little Johnny after he's spent the night projectile-vomiting. ‘What do you want?'

‘Arthur Silsby is a patient of this practice.'

He had me there, bang to rights. Since this was not obviously uttered in an interrogative manner, I didn't respond. He said after a short pause, ‘I'm given to understand that he's attempted suicide.'

‘He's in hospital being treated for an overdose of paracetamol, yes.'

I was treated to an owlish stare. ‘Why do you put it like that? Do you know something we don't?' His voice was so suspicious I felt that he was ready to slap the handcuffs on.

‘No. I just prefer to not to make premature assumptions. That's all.'

He was doing the thing that he always did when he was barred from playing a game of ‘dare' with the lung-cancer fairy, which was to fiddle with something in his jacket pocket; presumably his cigarette packet or lighter. His shirt-collar button was undone and his tie at half mast; somehow, Jean Abelson was remaining apparently unaffected by the already rising environmental temperature. He said, ‘We've checked with his wife. She was in the house all the night and heard nothing. They sleep in separate rooms, so she had no idea until the morning that he had done anything like it. The house is secure and they had no visitors. He did it himself, all right.'

‘But that doesn't necessarily make it suicide.'

‘The doctors looking after him tell me that, to judge from the blood levels reached, he took at least forty tablets. Difficult to see that as an accident.'

‘Maybe para-suicide?'

‘Which is what?'

‘A cry for help; an attempt at taking one's life that is meant to draw some attention to the individual rather than result in death.'

‘If that was his plan, he's in for a shock. The quacks didn't get to him in time to save his liver; they say he's going to die a rather unpleasant death in about a week.'

I ignored the derogatory nomenclature for my usually so well-regarded profession. ‘Is he conscious?'

‘Yes.' He sounded bitter. He added, ‘And he's saying nothing of any use, other than that he's ashamed of showing such weakness. Apparently, it's not something that a proper man should do.'

That sounded like Arthur Silsby, all right. I asked, ‘So?'

‘His wife says that that's typical of the man. Would you agree with that assessment?'

‘Absolutely. Arthur Silsby is the archetype of morality, decency and any old-fashioned Christian value you'd care to mention. He would see suicide as a mortal sin, and not the kind of thing a man of honour should do.'

He squinted at me, one hand fiddling in his jacket pocket while his teeth seemed to do a bit of grinding. There was a bit of heavy breathing – as if he were working himself up to tossing the caber or a bit of ‘clean and jerk' in the gymnasium – then he asked in a voice that suggested much restraint of passion and little hope, ‘I'm not going to ask you to betray medical confidences because I know I'd be wasting my breath, but do you have any reason to believe that he is in any way involved in this business?'

I could never resist baiting Inspector Masson and I pondered the possibility of what deeply seated psychological urge drove me to poke this feral law-enforcement officer so relentlessly as I replied, ‘Please, Inspector, you know I couldn't possibly give away any confidential information, even if it's to aid the police in a murder enquiry . . .'

He exploded and turned to his sergeant at the same time. ‘You see! I told you this would be a waste of time.'

Which changed things. Had I known that it was Jean Abelson's idea to talk to me, I might have been a little less aggravating. I raised my voice through his bluster and continued, ‘
However
, I don't wish to appear deliberately unhelpful.' And that made him turn back to me.

‘What does that mean?' he enquired, his voice subsonic with suspicion.

‘I see no reason why I shouldn't tell you the negatives. Arthur Silsby has not been to see us for over a year. That visit was, I can assure you, for a reason that can possibly have no bearing on this case. He has since made no contact with the surgery.'

He digested this, although to judge from his expression, it was more an act of indigestion. Eventually he shook his head, ‘Why on earth has he done it, then?' he asked. ‘He must know something, Doctor.'

‘Have you got any solid evidence for that assertion?'

It was Jean Abelson who replied, however. She looked up from the notebook in which she had been scribing and said, ‘His wife tells us that he's been under a lot of strain these last few days. Acting very strangely and refusing to tell her what's wrong.'

‘That doesn't surprise me. His school – and believe me, he thinks of it as most definitely
his
school – has been beset by scandal and murder. I should think that to someone like Mr Silsby, that's about as bad as it gets. Losing three of his teachers in such circumstances would be bad enough, but finding out that two of them were lesbians was probably overwhelming for him.'

He considered this but he had already made up his mind. ‘No, he's hiding something.'

I knew that there would be no budging him, so I changed the subject to what had been bothering me, what had awoken me in the night. ‘Have you considered the possibility that there might be more than one killer?'

His head jerked up and for once his expression was neutral. ‘Go on,' he invited in a voice full to overbrimming with curiosity.

‘The first two murders – those of Miss Jeffries and Miss Mangon – were frenzied. They had the mark of a murderer who hated them.'

Masson asked curiously, ‘Don't most murderers hate their victims?' This took me aback somewhat.

‘I think you know what I mean.' He acknowledged this with a curt nod and a faint smile; Inspector Masson's smile was a fragile and rare thing and I was reminded of those jungle plants that flower only once every century. I continued, ‘Whoever it was who killed them didn't just want them dead, he wanted them completely obliterated.'

‘You have a way with words, Doctor.'

I was emboldened to continue. ‘The murder of Jeremy Gillman was different, though. No blood, and not even much of a display of anger. Almost an afterthought, you might say.'

He was listening to all appearances quite intently; so was Jean. He opined, ‘So, two MOs, therefore two killers.'

‘Yes.'

‘Someone searched both houses,' he said thoughtfully; actually, I was rather pleased to think that he said it as if he was looking at things anew.

‘Yes,' I conceded. ‘But quite conceivably Jeremy Gillman's killer was an opportunist thief who saw him out walking the dog, killed him, then burgled his house.' He seemed quite taken with this idea, so I sallied forth. (Did I think that this detecting lark was easy? You bet I did.) ‘Was anything taken?'

He took a long breath in, a long one out, then stood up. ‘Thank you for that, Doctor.'

He was out of the room before I could react, leaving me looking at Jean. ‘What's going on?'

She smiled tiredly. ‘I think there are times when you underestimate my boss, Lance.' She stood up and followed Masson out of my surgery. At the doorway she turned and said, ‘Gillman left his house locked, as he always did. He had five hundred pounds in one of the drawers of his kitchen dresser – he was something of a horse-racing man, apparently – the drawer had been left carelessly open and it was obvious to anyone in the room that the money was there, but it wasn't taken. OK?'

It was to an empty room that I said after a while, ‘Oh . . .'

THIRTY-TWO

T
hey had put Arthur Silsby in a side room not because of his social status, but because they knew he was going to die; it afforded him some privacy, and it also saved everyone else from the agony of being reminded a hundred times a day of his doom. I had a spare hour before my first afternoon visit and I popped into Mayday Hospital to see him, partly because he was a long-standing patient of the practice, partly because I was very intrigued as to why he had done something so out of character. I could not bring myself to believe Masson's theory that he knew something about the recent killings, but I could not conceive of what his motive had been.

It wasn't yet visiting hours, but that was not a problem both because of his fate and because of who I was. Having checked in with the sister in charge for the sake of politeness, I made my way to his room. I knocked gently but received no answer; looking through the square window in the door, I could see that he was asleep, so I quietly went in and stood at the end of the bed. He had a dextrose-saline drip feeding a Venflon in his left elbow and he was attached to a heart monitor that did its annoying beeping thing in the background. He didn't look well; not well at all; was there already a hint of jaundice, I wondered? As usual with me, having got there, I didn't know what to do; I thought about waking him, then thought perhaps it would be best just to let him sleep a while, so sank quietly into one of those over-padded, high-backed chairs that are only found in NHS institutions.