The Dark Palace--Murder and mystery in London, 1914 (29 page)

‘Hudge up!' said Appleby, squeezing himself in beside Quinn. It meant somehow rotating the angle of Miss Dillard's rigid body closer to the vertical. Timberley peered in with a forlorn expression, like a child deprived of a treat.

‘Drive as quickly as you can, without occasioning undue shocks,' directed Quinn.

The taxi lurched off. It was soon apparent that the driver wanted them out of his cab as quickly as possible. Quinn's admonition for caution was largely ignored.

The strangulated sound at the back of Miss Dillard's throat tightened. Her hands became claws, clutching at their own pain. One somehow lodged on to Quinn's forearm and again he was astonished by the strength hidden away in this frail, ruined woman.

He clung on to her as tightly as she clung on to him. He was trying to close down her convulsions with the firm press of his embrace. But also, he was aware that he was trying to hang on to the life in her. That if he let go of her, he would lose her.

The high pointed tower of the St George's Union Infirmary, with its arched windows and weather vane, gave the building the appearance of a massively enlarged church. No doubt its vaguely religious architecture was meant to inspire hope. Now it was just a looming shape in the darkness. A shadow within a shadow.

Appleby sprang out and ran towards the great cathedral of medicine.

Quinn extricated himself more carefully. As he laid down her head, her body was wracked by its most violent convulsion yet. The foam at her mouth had blood in it now. There was every chance that she had bitten through her tongue.

In the dark, he could not see her eyes. He was unable even to imagine the beautiful shimmering grey of her irises. It was as if the blackness of her hugely dilated pupils had spread out and swamped everything. He felt a wrench at his heart at the thought that the beautiful pewter grey was lost forever. If only he could see her eyes, that grey, she would live. Everything depended on his being able to see her eyes. He wanted to call for a lamp, or a torch, to shine into her face. To dispel the blackness that had seeped into everything.

Her legs gave a final double kick against the inside of the cab, then stiffened. Her arms formed jagged shapes, and held them, as sharp and permanent as the branches of petrified trees. The strangulated gurgling in her throat was no more.

T
he next day, inside the curtained house, he could not dispel the blackness from the corners of his vision. He looked for the gleaming pewter grey of her eyes everywhere. But the only grey was the dour cheerless grey of an empty English Sunday. A godless, lifeless grey.

There were murmured consolations, though why it was felt that he needed consoling more than anyone else he could not grasp.

The other lodgers wanted to discuss why she might have done it. They sat in the front parlour drinking tea. The question came to their lips as regularly as the bone china.

‘But why, that's what I cannot understand?'
Clink.

‘Why would she do such a thing?'
Clink.

‘What on earth could have possessed her?'
Clink.

And all the other variations of
why?
punctuated by the chinking of cup against saucer.

The question was never answered, except by a furtive, meaning look in Quinn's direction.

Were they placing her death on his conscience? But how could it be his fault? All he had done was offer to pay her rent until she was in a better position to pay it herself. How could that be the reason she had killed herself?

Mrs Ibbott distracted the attention from him somewhat by blaming herself, not without some justification, Quinn felt. But the focus of her self-recrimination was entirely on the means by which Miss Dillard killed herself, rather than her motivation. It seemed that the strychnine had been given to Mrs Ibbott years ago by a male cousin who was a gamekeeper on a Suffolk estate. At the time, there had been a problem with rats in the cellar. The bottle had remained at the back of the scullery cupboard ever since. How Miss Dillard had known about it, or whether she had simply gone looking for some suitable substance to achieve her goal, was a matter of speculation.

Betsy, the maid, was distraught. She was the last to have seen Miss Dillard alive, leaving the kitchen with something concealed in her hands. She had thought at the time that it was a crust of bread or an apple, perhaps. But it now seemed clear that it was the bottle of strychnine. ‘
If only I had said something … It's all my fault
…'

‘No.' Quinn was watching Timberley and Appleby as he spoke. He noticed that for once they had little to say for themselves. Perhaps they sensed that their characteristic facetiousness would be out of place. Or perhaps it was a sense of guilt that inhibited them. Quinn continued: ‘You were not to know. You said nothing out of kindness, because you feared it would embarrass her if she had taken something to eat. You mustn't blame yourself.' His words were meant for Betsy, but he continued looking at the two young men.

At last, Appleby looked up and caught his eye. Colour rushed to his cheeks.

‘Mr Appleby, would you step outside the parlour and speak with me for a moment.' Quinn voiced it as a command, not a question.

In the hallway, he closed the door with quiet precision on Mr Timberley's anxious, inquisitive face.

‘How may I be of service?' Appleby whispered.

‘She overheard you. You and Timberley, speaking of a matter that related to me. What did you say?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘What did you and Timberley say to each other?' There was a quality to the sudden firmness of Quinn's voice that was consistent with the moment he had threatened to kill the cabbie last night.

Appleby must have sensed this. ‘We … we may have talked about the fact that you had offered to pay her rent. Mary – Miss Ibbott – told us.'

‘And she heard you? Miss Dillard heard you?'

‘I don't know. How can we know? We were on the landing. Her door was ajar. And then it closed.'

‘It closed. Can you remember exactly what had been said just before the door closed?'

‘It wasn't anything. Not anything that could have precipitated … this.'

‘What did you say? What were the exact words?'

‘Exact words? I don't know. You can't expect me to remember the exact words. One of us might have said something about you taking pity on her.'

‘
Pity?
'

‘Yes. Well, isn't that what it was?'

Quinn narrowed his eyes but did not answer.

‘At any rate, I cannot see the harm in that. How could that induce her to take her own life?' Appleby even had the effrontery to add: ‘You mustn't blame yourself, old chap.'

But Quinn was thinking only of her eyes, trying to remember the exact quality of their metallic hue. It was there, in them, that Miss Dillard was beautiful.

‘I say, it wasn't more than that, was it? It wasn't more than pity?'

Quinn wondered if he should try to explain it to Appleby. But first he would have to explain it to himself and he was not sure that he could. He did not know why he had offered to pay Miss Dillard's rent, but he did not think it was out of pity. It was rather because he had found the thought of never seeing her eyes again unbearable.

Q
uinn got out of the Model T in Harley Street and looked up. His gaze deliberately sought out the sun. The effect was as he knew it would be. The white orb turned black. The blackness spread out from it, contaminating the milky sky.

An all-encompassing darkness descended.

He had brought this darkness on himself, because today he could not bear the sight of the world, the pitiless cruelty of its renewal.

In many ways Miss Dillard's death had come as a release from the intractable difficulties of her life. It was all very sad and unnecessary, but he should not reproach himself. He had done all he could for her. Of course,
all he could
was not enough to save her life. But that was not the same as to say that he was to blame for her death.

Her younger, married sisters had turned up yesterday. They filled the house with sniffles and whispers and husbands. These were tall, silent presences, who made no comment but held their heads at sympathetic angles.

The question –
why?
– was brought out again and aired, like a wound from which the dressing was removed, while those present peered at it with a mixture of curiosity and distaste. Quinn knew from his own experience that it was a question that the living would never tire of asking, but to which no adequate answer could ever be found. Because the only one who had the answer was dead.

The fog of his temporary blindness lifted partially, enough to allow him to make out the dark rectangle of Dr Casaubon's door. He perceived it as black, though whether that was its true colour, he could not remember. He pushed against the field of blackness, this time without ringing the bell first. It was within the hours of Dr Casaubon's surgery, and the doctor was expecting him.

Now the self-imposed darkness was absorbed into the drapery-imposed darkness of Dr Casaubon's surgery. The voice of that darkness had just asked him a question about his father's suicide.

‘Once again, I did not come here to be psychoanalyzed by you.' But the question of why he had come to Dr Casaubon was only vaguely answered in Quinn's mind. He might justifiably say that it was to do with the investigation. But even he sensed that was a pretext rather than a reason. Was it possible that it was to do with Miss Dillard's suicide? If so, it was strange that Quinn was scrupulous in avoiding any mention of what had happened at the lodging house.

‘And yet you have consented, once again, to lie down on my couch.'

‘I did not want to. I did it to please you.'

‘Are you often driven to do things to please others?'

‘Far from it. Those who know me would find that rather amusing.'

‘Do you feel the need to earn the approval of your father?'

‘How can I? He's dead.'

‘But that need may still be there. Especially as he died unexpectedly, when you were a young man. What will happen is that you will transfer these feelings on to other men, older men, father figures, we might call them. That is why you lay down to please me. There is someone in your life whom you would describe as a father figure? Your superior at your work, for example?'

‘Sir Edward.'

‘You work hard to please him. You sometimes go too far, in fact. That is why people die. It is all because you are trying to please Sir Edward, and through him your father.'

‘But Sir Edward frequently disapproves of my methods, or so he says.'

‘The eternal tension between father and son is played out. You seek his approval, which he perpetually withholds.'

Quinn shook his head impatiently. An invisible gesture in the darkness. ‘I did not come here for this. Doctor, have you any experience in the psychology of murderers?'

‘I have had the privilege to speak to a number of murderers in my career.'

‘The privilege?'

‘Murder is an act of wish-fulfilment. Wish-fulfilment is the cornerstone of Freudian dream analysis. Anyone who has lived out an impulse of wish-fulfilment to such an extent is naturally of interest to a doctor of the mind.'

‘It is a strange word to use.'

‘Do you not find yourself drawn to murderers? Could that not be why you have chosen this unusual profession? Is it not a privilege for you to be able to hunt them down and kill them?'

‘I do not always kill them. That is certainly not my intention when I begin an investigation. Sometimes it is necessary to take steps to protect myself and the public. But I have not come here to justify myself to you.'

‘You have so far told me several reasons why you did not come here today. You have yet to tell me why you did.'

‘I have come to ask for your assistance in an investigation.'

‘My assistance?'

‘If you were to look at the work of a particular artist, would you be able to tell if that artist had a predisposition to murder?'

‘A lot would depend on the nature of the work. Are these paintings?'

‘Not paintings. Motion picture films. The subject is a film director.'

‘You have piqued my interest, Inspector. However, I cannot promise any definite results, and it might be rash in any event to offer firm pronouncements, especially if there is a danger you might act upon them.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘I wouldn't want to be the reason you killed someone.'

‘I would not act solely on the basis of your opinion. I would only make an arrest if there were also material evidence against the suspect. And as I said before, it is not my intention to kill anyone.'

‘I confess, it is an intriguing proposal.'

‘My sergeant is waiting outside in a car. Would it be possible for you to accompany me to the Yard now? We have the films there. And a projector with which to view them.'

‘Very well. You have come at a good time. I have finished my appointments for the morning.' Dr Casaubon began to draw back the drapes. ‘But tell me, Inspector, what is the name of this director? I am quite an aficionado of the kinema.'

‘Konrad Waechter.'

There was a beat. ‘Of course!'

‘By that, do you mean that you think it is possible, after all?'

‘Let us watch the films, Inspector. Then I will be able to offer a more informed opinion.'

A rectangle of light shimmered and fluctuated, as if trying to latch itself on to something solid in the darkness. Its edges sharpened and softened. Swirling flecks and particles swam across it, as it shrank and expanded, jerking itself into its ideal size.

Macadam positioned the projector to shine its beam on to the one vertical wall in the department, the wall that usually used held the photographs of victims, sketches of crime scenes, biographic details of suspects and other notes and documents relevant to the investigation. This was no ordinary wall, it was
the wall.