All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By (13 page)

"It's your contention, then, that Dr. Holley was the victim only of his overwrought imagination?"

"Worn to the quick, defenseless in his fatigue, he experienced waking nightmares. He perceived gross apparitions in the most innocent forms of nature. And when his Christian conviction, his knowledge of salvation through the perfect love of God, began to fail him, he adopted the magic of the Negroes, with which he was quite familiar. He'd had to be, in order to treat them successfully."

"Obviously he suffered another, similar breakdown quite recently. Why?"

Mary Burgess shook her head in despair. "I can't be sure. There were no significant changes of personality. In his dealings with the other Hawkspurn residents and staff he remained cordial but rather aloof, as customary. His routine was the same right until—I mean, he took his morning exercise, he had his music, chess and books. But he was dismayed by the war, the threat of invasion, although as you know in East Riding we've scarcely been touched by the raids. Even secondhand I suppose it was terrible enough for someone of his fragile emotions: the war news on the wireless, the effects of the blitz which he could observe in the faces of the poor children placed in our homes for safekeeping. 'A beast is loose,' he said once to me. 'Naught will do but that we shall be scourged. We have summoned the beast of the buried mind and now nothing else matters—angel, vision, light and body; nor the little children who are the sun of our Own souls."

"Certainly not the sentiments of a crazed man. But a voice of doom, regardless."

"He turned to the Romantic poets, his favorites, no doubt hoping to affirm the perdurable in a time of crisis. Instead he found a new obsession in the life and works of Keats."

"How odd. That ill-fated young genius. Let me make a guess. Dr. Holley's obsession had to do with the narrative poem 'Lamia."

"Quite perceptive."

"There've been clues. '
Lady In thy serpent prison-house
. . .' Definitely Keatsian. Quoted directly from the poem itself?"

"I don't know," she said. "I'm not that familiar with it."

"He was attracted to Keats because of this one poem?"

"Because he judged the poem written from experience, not imagination."

"In other words he felt that Keats truly believed—"

"No, no, had
encountered
such a creature, which eventually was to be the death of him."

"Consumption was the death of Keats, as I recall. Also his brother, what was the name?"

"Tom Keats. Yes, Keats the poet died of the wasting disease, in Rome, in 1821. But Eustace claimed his end was hastened by the serpent-woman whom he loved, who night after night in unholy conjugation drew the substance of life from Keats's body, resulting in a lingering death."

Lord Luxton smiled. "Analogous to Holley's own haunted life. But the life of Keats has been exhaustively researched, and he was a prodigious letter writer. He had two well-documented affairs of the heart, with Isabella Jones and then Fanny Brawne. How did Dr. Holley ex plain a third, hitherto undetected
amor
?"

"He wouldn't argue his case with me. But he was convinced 'Lamia' existed—that
they
exist, are everywhere as common as alley cats."

"Or doppelgangers?"

"Perhaps a month ago—no, even more recently, toward the end of May—something occurred that severely depressed Eustace. I don't know what it might have been, a broadcast, a news item, but his obsession took a new potentially disastrous turn. Out came the fetish, in a corked bottle which he had secreted God knows where these many years. Naturally I was curious. He owned nothing, had not a single photograph or memento to remind him of his long service in the African forest. Suddenly here was this—ghastly thing, wrought with his own bloody hands, which he clung to day and night. 'The beast is loose,' he said. 'This must keep her from my bed.' I fully believe he was personalizing the dread of the war that is everywhere around us. I was afraid then, afraid that his sinking spell would result in a permanent derangement. I was afraid of the fetish, which seemed to be the engine of his morbidity."

"So you took it from him without his knowledge."

"Yes, on impulse, night before last." She turned and jabbed a finger at the hot stove. "But if you believe that filthy token had anything to do with his death—"

"I don't believe it, no. However—"

"Eustace did. Quite right and he was terrified, having lost his—his power, his singular defense against the spawn of a destructive subconscious."

"Thus he placed those importunate words on the wall of his bedroom."

Mary Burgess made a choking sound, and turned her face away.

His lordship studied her. He noted that his pulse was fast, his face flushed, and it wasn't just the heat of the stove on a mild June night. He always felt this way moments before making the crucial move that could stop a bomb—or kill him: steady, at a miraculous peak of hazard, not afraid but in a state of almost toxic excitement or elation, as if he shared in a mysterious way the timeless secrets of the universe—ultimately what he experienced was a feeling of total freedom, a willingness to confront any truth.

"What are your conclusions now as to the manner of Dr. Holley's death?" he asked her.

"It was sheer chance. An unexploded bomb. My God, can't you let him rest in peace?"

"Mary, I've seen flora proliferating in bomb craters in the heart of London which resemble nothing known on this earth. These plants are mutants, created by intense heat and some sort of short-lived radiation of which we are totally ignorant. Likewise I know that atrocious mutations of human nature are common in wartime. Is it so difficult to believe in strange animal forms, born of the enormous energy of human hatred and aggression that now threatens to destroy us all?"

"Yes. It is impossible to believe. I will
not
believe—"

"But you accept the longevity and reported ferocity of Gen Loussaint, who at best seems to have been half-mad, and at worst a Gorgonish mutation herself, ritually created by her cult of reptile-worshiping savages."

"She was old; on the verge of death. She could not have had anything to do with Eustace Holley's breakdown."

"Unless he was seduced by her, in the form of a ravishing serpent-woman that waxed and grew powerful as a consequence of his sexual desire."

"Sheer—bleeding—insanity!"

"What actually happened to him in the park this morning? Why were his genitals so ruthlessly ripped away? What caused those marks on his buttocks? Were sharp fingernails sunk into his flesh at a moment of ecstasy, or release—before she blew him straight to kingdom come?"

Tears flowed unnoticed down Mary Burgess's cheeks. "Why—
why
should she come back to him, after all this time?"

"Revenge, perhaps. Or a necessary culmination: She needed his death to be free to roam at will."

They stared at each other. Her eyes were red with pain. Tears dripped from her rumpled jaw.

"Even with the world gone berserk, choking on blood, there can be no such thing. God would not permit it. There must be something left we can hold fast to. Safe, familiar. How difficult it is already to heal the sick, to bring comfort into the lives of the incurable. It taxes me to the utmost. I'm not entirely well myself. I beg of you. I haven't the strength to accept responsibility for his death. Such a meaningless thing—claws, bone, a few feathers. It was a bomb. My lord? Wasn't it?"

The lag set in, the vital sense of mission thwarted by circumstances beyond his control. His pulse idled; he sighed. "Yes, Mary. It was a bomb. So I shall report to the Department of Scientific Research."

She nodded dumbly, then unselfconsciously dried her face on the sleeve of her coat. There was a knock at the door. Sir John opened it. Medwick stood outside.

"The young lieutenant, m'lord. Says it's urgent."

Luxton turned to Mary Burgess and excused himself. He left the examining room. Mary Burgess closed the door again. She went directly to her autoclave, took out a sterilized hypodermic syringe. From the drug safe she obtained a quantity of morphine, and shakily prepared an injection. She peeled back her left sleeve, but then put the syringe aside. After turning off the lights she raised a blackout shade and just stared through the window at the rooftops of Nuncheap, the faint brew of northerly stars.

Within a couple of minutes Lord Luxton returned and knocked. She glanced at the syringe, hesitated, grimaced, rolled her sleeve down and joined him in the waiting room.

"I'm afraid I must leave at once," he said.

"There's a bomb?"

"Something with a new type of fuse I've been keen to have a look at. This is only the second one that's survived intact."

She didn't know whether to feel relieved or apprehensive, but suddenly she was in control of herself. They walked outside together.

"Thank you so much for your time, Mary."

"I'm glad we talked. Dispelled the nonsense."

"Yes, reckon we've cleared the air."

'We're not children, after all, to be frightened by shadows, boggles or omens. How far must you travel tonight?"

"Portsmouth. Rather a lengthy drive."

"If it's wanting immediate attention, shouldn't you fly?"

He smiled sheepishly. "Oh, no, I never fly. Petrified at the idea of leaving the good old terra firma."

She smiled, too, skeptical but fond. "You're a most unusual man, my lord. Should you come this way-again—"

"By all means."

"I'll say a prayer."

"Well, goodbye."

She thought she had seen the last of him, but as she was about to open the front door and go back in he came hurrying from the gate, not using the shielded flashlight.

"Mary, by the way—"

"Yes, my lord?"

"The young man? Jackson Holley. Can you tell me what's happened to him?"

She felt an irrational charge of cold fear. "Yes, he—he became a physician himself. But I'm afraid he's quite removed. He practices in one of the western provinces of Canada. Or is it the U.S.? I could look up his address for you."

Luxton thought about it. Mary Burgess said, "From the tone of his letters he seems to have achieved peace after many, years of living rootless, shifting from place to place. Perhaps he's married now, settled in. News of the death of his father will come as a shock, of course. But I'm certain that if Jackson can accept his death as another tragic consequence of the war, then that shock will pass quickly, and there'll be no tormenting aftereffects."

Moonlight was meager, and because of the blackout there was no light from the house behind them. Mary Burgess couldn't read the expression in his eyes as Lord Luxton lifted his head.

"Yes. Does make sense. Well, it was a notion I had—actually no need for me to contact

They said no more goodbyes. Mary Burgess watched as he climbed into the passenger compartment of the long Rolls Phantom. When it was gone she bolted the door and thought instantly of the waiting hypodermic, her mouth sticky-dry from longing. Her body pained, every inch of it, her nerves were shreds of hot wire dangling from old bones. It would only be twice today—no, she wouldn't lie to herself, that was demeaning. Admit it; three times. But she
needed
it, the limpid twilight, the deceptive bliss. She knew what she was doing, so—no. Definitely no, she had to establish firm limits or all would be lost. She could get along without that third injection. Her head nearly splitting from anxiety. If she went upstairs immediately to lie down she could get by. Till morning clinic. The worst over now. Wasn't it? Just till morning, dear Lord. Her head coming apart in a long rip of agony, front to back.

A
t 2:15 the next afternoon Mary Burgess was in the garden dusting her roses with lead arsenate to kill the chafers when Lieutenant Kellow arrived at her gate. Mary straightened and took off her gardening gloves, narrowing her eyes against the bright sun reflected from the windscreen of the lorry as the bomb-disposal engineer approached her.

"Dr. Burgess?"

"Good afternoon, Mr. Kellow. Still grubbing for devices in the park of Hawkspurn?"

"No, we've packed it in. We're returning to Driffield, but it occurred to me that—perhaps you haven't heard the news."

"It was on the BBC this morning. Dreadful."

"Yes. A tremendous jolt. He was a hero to all of us."

"The report was sketchy at best. How did it happen?"

"An unexpected patch of fog in the Chiltern Hills, a cow in the road. Lord Luxton's driver managed to avoid the animal, but we can speculate they were traveling rather too fast for the road, so he lost control and smashed into a tree. His lordship died just before dawn of a broken neck in Radcliffe Infirmary."

"I had a feeling—such an awful feeling—shortly before he left here. But I thought it would be the bomb, you see, the one he was anxious to inspect."

"A sad twist of fate," Kellow said, with a look of distance in his eyes, as if his own fate had come into view and he was finding it rather lacking in swagger, shabby and unfitting. A cow in the road. He licked a corner of his mouth; he was at a loss. Mary Burgess let him off with a placid smile and a nod of thanks.