Among the Mad (35 page)

“It comes and goes,” said Priscilla, “but mostly it
comes. I am not happy here, not as I was in Biarritz, and it’s troubling,
especially as I’m the only one in the family not to have settled, in one way or
another.”

“You were very busy in Biarritz, though, weren’t you?
You took the boys to the beach, you drove down into the town, saw friends, and
even when you went to Paris a few times a year, you were among people you knew,
and who knew you. You’d all, for the most part, gone down to Biarritz after the
war to lick your wounds.”

Priscilla was silent for a moment, running her hand up
and down the arm of the sofa, as if she were stroking the back of a frightened
animal. “Well, I’m a bit of a slug here, I must say. It’s so . . . so . . .
restricting. Or do I mean constricting? Perhaps a bit of both. And it’s a
bloody depressing place, if you ask me.”

“I had a thought. Remember you had that grand plan of
opening up the family house, where you grew up? Why don’t you do it? Why don’t
you put your mind to setting up your home there, get out into the country and
start enjoying yourselves and perhaps claim some of that freedom you had in
Biarritz.”

“But, Maisie, the boys are at school here and they
love London, and Douglas . . .”

“It’s not that far—what, an hour or two’s drive out of
London? You could go down on a Friday as soon as the boys are home from school,
then come back on either a Sunday night or Monday morning. They can bring their
friends and you can have the best of both worlds. And I bet you’ll have all
sorts of guests coming to see you.” Maisie reached over and placed her hand on
Priscilla’s arm. “Do you remember what you said to me, when I was in France?
Face your dragons. That house holds your memories, but think of the new
memories you can build there.”

Priscilla bit her lip and walked to the drinks
cabinet. “I think you’re right. I had all sorts of plans for the place when we
first came back to England.” She turned around and faced Maisie, changing the
subject. “By the way, did I ever show you the photographs I took while you were
with us last year? I found them the other day, as I was unpacking some
boxes”—she picked up an envelope—“and I put them out to show you.”

Priscilla passed each photo in turn to Maisie,
reminding her of what had happened and when. “And this is you with Tarquin—look
at that smile. Just like my brother, you know. He’s definitely an Evernden
through and through, no doubt about it.”

“May I have this one?”

“Well, yes, of course. Would you like this photograph
too? It’s you and I in the garden, and here’s one of you with all three toads.
Tante Maisie is quite a hit with the boys!”

Maisie left Priscilla’s Holland Park house after
lunch, knowing that she had sown a seed of possibility in the mind of her
dearest friend. And as she settled in the driver’s seat of the MG, she sat for
a while before setting off for Scotland Yard. She wanted to look through those
photographs once again, photographs for which she would buy frames as soon as
she could.

“RIGHT, GENTLEMEN—and lady.” MacFarlane shuffled
papers in a folder on his desk and took out the document he was searching for.
Darby, Stratton and Maisie sat on the opposite side of the desk. He looked up
at Maisie and smiled as he said lady. “Time for our little postmortem here.” He
cleared his throat. “You all know that our man has not been identified. Anthony
Lawrence didn’t know him, and—thanks to you, Miss Dobbs—we brought in Catherine
the chemist. The poor lass began listing to starboard as soon as she saw the
body, and though she wasn’t sure at first, she said it wasn’t him because the
man who came to their meeting did not have a scar on his face.”

Maisie shook her head.

“Anything to say, Miss Dobbs?”

“No, not really. It’s a strange thing, though. Had I
not spoken to Catherine, and had the word foundling not come up, I might not
have found the killer.”

“Oh, but you would have.” MacFarlane tapped a pencil
on the file in front of him. “You found our man because you were suspicious
about Edwin Croucher. There was something about his manner that made you think
twice, so you followed him. And that’s good police work—listening to the gut while
wearing out a bit of shoe leather.”

“But I might not have been at the hospital had I not
wanted to speak to Anthony Lawrence before he went home—and he’d gone already.”

“Then it was luck. And I know your Dr. Maurice Blanche
has a lot of time for a little bit of luck.”

“Anything new from the pathologist?” asked Stratton.

MacFarlane flicked through more pages in front of him.
“Interesting thing. Our man was lame, carried one hip higher than the other,
and one shoulder similarly out of symmetry, giving the impression that he had
suffered some serious wounds to the spine. Yes, there was scarring and shrapnel
fragments still embedded in his legs, but the pathologist says that there was
no physical reason why this man could not have walked upright, with perhaps the
slightest limp.”

“Shell-shock,” said Maisie.

“Shell-shock?” Stratton turned to Maisie.

“Yes. Shell-shock. What you’re describing is another
sign of a deep wounding to the psyche, the outer manifestation of the scars in
the mind.” She paused, sighing before she continued. “When I was at the
Clifton, I observed similarly afflicted men who, under the influence of
hypnosis, shed their crippling disability and walked tall as if they were ready
for the parade ground, only to shrivel again when taken out of the trance.” She
looked at each of the men in turn. “And before you say or think otherwise,
these were men who were good soldiers, who had exemplary military records, men
who had been repatriated after demonstrating some level of neurosis or hysteria
that led to an inability to function as a soldier. They were not shirkers, but
broken men.”

MacFarlane, Stratton and Darby were silent for a
moment, then Darby spoke. “What happens now, gov? Do we go on trying to
identify him? What’s going to happen to the body?”

“We’re pretty sure he was working alone, so there’s no
urgency now to identify the body, however . . . ” He looked at Maisie, then
back at Darby and Stratton. “I’ve been thinking about what Miss Dobbs has said
about this sort of person, and it’s clear he may not be the last. So we will be
doing a wee bit of what Miss Dobbs does very well—building a template of a
type. In the meantime, the body will be released to Dr. Anthony Lawrence as
soon as we’ve tied up our loose ends.”

“Dr. Lawrence?” Maisie leaned forward.

“He made a special request, said the cadaver could be
used for research purposes in the fields of”—he looked at a sheet of paper,
then back at Maisie—“neurosurgery and psychiatry. They want to see what’s in
his brain. I would have thought you’d’ve understood that, Miss Dobbs. I’m sure
you’ve cut up the odd cadaver yourself.”

“Yes, of course, but—” Maisie did not continue,
realizing that, of course, there was no family to receive the body. But she was
still unsettled by the news.

“Anything else, Miss Dobbs?”

“What about Croucher?”

“Ah, yes, Croucher.” MacFarlane shuffled the notes
once again. “Another one living alone and with nothing in his rooms to indicate
who our killer might have been, though he did not live as much a Spartan life
as his two friends. There were other papers, other items that would identify
him.”

“But might there have been anything else there that
would connect him to our man in some way? Something to indicate that he has
known him for some time, perhaps?” asked Maisie.

“The only thing amiss with Edwin Croucher—aside from
the fact that he was associating with a man bent on killing half of London on
the steps of St. Paul’s—was that he had a memory problem. Turns out he wrote
down such things as when he had to be here or there, lists of what he needed
for this or that. At work he tended to check, double-check, and then go back
again for another look to make sure that something had been done. But there’s
nothing to be found in the rooms with either Ian Jennings’ name, or our Mister
No-name.”

“That’s strange.”

“The pathologist says the nature of the man’s
forgetfulness was probably limited to certain tasks, the jobs that were before
him each day. It would not affect his functioning as a member of society,
though I can see why he lived alone. Imagine being married to someone who kept
asking where they put something, or what was for dinner for the tenth time.
There was a place for everything in his rooms, and those places were labeled.”

“He was lucky to have a job, I suppose,” said
Stratton, as if to remind MacFarlane that he and Darby were in the room.

“And he’s certainly not lucky now, eh?” quipped
MacFarlane.

The men’s laughter was nipped in the bud by Maisie,
who had more questions. “Chief Superintendent, I wonder, would it be possible
for me to speak to Catherine Jones? I’m still curious about the man she claims
came along to the meeting of union activists—I’d like to ask her a question or
two more, if that’s all right.”

MacFarlane shook his head. “Bit too late, I’m afraid,
Miss Dobbs. Miss Jones has been released. The prosecutor went through
everything we gave him and concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence there to
bring her to trial.”

“Not enough evidence? I thought—”

MacFarlane shrugged, but did not look at Maisie
directly, closing the folders as he answered her. “We always do our best, Miss
Dobbs. We pull together as much as we can, then we send the whole case to the
prosecutor. Her fellow anarchists will be sent down, but not Miss Jones. He’s
concluded that she was a person in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Maisie nodded her head as she replied, “I see. In the
wrong place at the wrong time. Lucky Catherine.”

“We can’t win them all, Miss Dobbs.”

Maisie began collecting her document case and shoulder
bag. “Well, if that’s all, Detective Chief Superintendent MacFarlane, I had
better be off. As they say, time and tide wait for no man—or woman, come to
that.”

“Oh, but before you go, Miss Dobbs.” MacFarlane stood
up, as did Darby and Stratton. “I’ve decided to celebrate Burns’ Night in
London with my immediate colleagues here at the Branch. I’ve bought tickets for
a show at the Palladium for everyone, and there will be supper afterward
upstairs at the Cuillins of Skye—it’s a pub, just off Covent Garden. January
twenty-fifth—I hope you will join us.”

Maisie looked at MacFarlane, then at Stratton and
Darby, as if to ask if they were going.

“You’ll not be the only lassie there, Miss Dobbs,”
added MacFarlane.

“Perhaps I can let you know in a week or so, Chief
Superintendent. And thank you for the invitation. Now, I should be on my way.”

MacFarlane thanked Maisie again for her part in
bringing the case to a close, and handed her an envelope with a check inside.
She shook his hand and hoped she had made it clear by her demeanor that his
occasional flirtatious manner had not borne fruit.

“I’m glad that’s all over,” said Stratton.

“Are you?” said Maisie.

“Of course I am. Can you imagine what it would be like
if our man were still at large?”

Maisie opened her mouth to say more, but paused and
instead commented on the invitation. “What’s all this about Burns’ Night? It’s
a bit unusual, isn’t it, being treated to a night out by the Chief
Superintendent?”

“I know. Darby says he’s done it before, taking a
whole gang out for the evening. Apparently he thinks it’s good for morale,
brings everyone together.”

Maisie took out her keys as they reached the MG. “I
think there’s more to it than that, Inspector Stratton. I think he’s a bit
lonely. Didn’t you say his wife left him?”

Stratton nodded. “A few years ago. It’s a hard life,
being married to a man who’s married to his job. She was alone a lot, and as
far as I know, took up with someone else and just up and left.”

“And now he’s the one who’s alone. That’s why
everyone’s invited to go out with him on Burns’ Night.” She inclined her head.
“I really do have to rush now.”

“Going anywhere interesting?”

“The Princess Victoria Hospital—only don’t tell
MacFarlane, will you?”

“Mum’s the word,” said Stratton as he brought a
forefinger to his lips. “Do you think—”

“I’ll let you know.”

A PORTER INFORMED Maisie that she would have to wait
to see Dr. Lawrence, and that he might not even be able to see her at all,
given that he had been with his students for a good two hours this afternoon
already and was late getting to his rounds.

“I’ll wait,” said Maisie, taking the same place as
before on the bench seat facing the porters’ office.

Over an hour passed before the porter came out of the
office. “He’s still on his rounds, Miss. Would you like a cup of tea while
you’re waiting?”

Maisie opened her mouth to answer, but was interrupted
by Lawrence, who approached from the corridor behind her.