Among the Mad (36 page)

“Miss Dobbs! I wasn’t expecting you today, so this is
something of a surprise. What can I do for you?”

“May we go to your office, Dr. Lawrence? I would like
our conversation to be in private.”

“Yes, of course. One moment while I just use the
telephone in the porters’ office.”

Lawrence stepped into the office, placed his telephone
call, and joined her once again, leading her up the staircases and through
locked doors that led to other locked doors before opening out into the floor
that housed the staff offices.

“Here we are.” Lawrence looked at his watch. “I’m a
bit short on time, Miss Dobbs, so—”

“Oh, this won’t take long, Dr. Lawrence. I just
wondered if I might visit Stephen Oliver. I learned so much about him, you see,
as part of my investigation, and feel rather sorry that he’s here without visitors.”

Lawrence began running his fingers back and forth
along the files on his desk, setting them two inches from the right side and
two inches from the top, so they were positioned much in same way that a stamp
would be attached to an envelope. “Miss Dobbs, I cannot allow such a thing.
After all, you are not a relative, and you must appreciate that Dr. Oliver is
in a very delicate state.”

“Yes, I suppose if one’s seen as nothing more than a
cadaver available for experimentation, he would be in a delicate state,
wouldn’t he?”

“Now you look here, Miss Dobbs—”

“The man who wrote the letters, who killed dogs,
birds, a junior minister, and who planned to kill a legion of revelers on Old
Year’s Night was Stephen Oliver, wasn’t he?”

“I categorically assure you—”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Nothing happened, Stephen was a brilliant scientist—”

“I know how brilliant he was. I’ve heard it from two
people already. And I know you do not have Stephen Oliver here at the
hospital.”

“And I assure you that we do, now if you don’t mind—”

Maisie reached for the telephone receiver. “If you
don’t mind, I think I’d like to hear that from Sheila Kennedy. By the way, do
you know how I am acquainted with Mrs. Kennedy? She was the Sister-in-Charge of
the casualty clearing station where I was stationed in the war. I don’t know if
she’ll remember me, but you never know.” She dialed the operator.

Lawrence leaned forward and pressed down on the bar,
cutting off the call. “No, don’t.”

Maisie replaced the receiver. “Are you going to tell
me what’s going on?”

Lawrence scraped back his chair, stood up and began to
pace, then sat down again. “You should cease wondering about this case, Miss
Dobbs, because you are out of your depth.”

“I don’t seem to be floundering, Dr. Lawrence, but if
you are having trouble with the truth, then let me tell you what I think has
happened here, and you can correct me if I’m wrong.”

Lawrence clasped his hands together on the desk. “I
have little time to indulge you, Miss Dobbs.”

Maisie pressed her point. “Stephen Oliver was admitted
to the Princess Victoria on at least two occasions since his initial release
from an asylum, where he was committed during the war. I know that you
witnessed at least one breakdown at Mulberry Point, and I know he was a very
valuable person with regard to work undertaken at the government laboratories.
And he was also a very interesting specimen, wasn’t he? A man who had not only
suffered shell-shock, but was so intent upon finding answers to the questions
that dogged him in his work that he even became his own guinea pig.”

“They all experimented on themselves, all of them.
They don’t call them mad professors for nothing.”

“But the madness didn’t stop there, did it? You
increasingly saw Oliver as your own experiment. After all, time was marching on
and you had a legacy to leave—a book about the psychological effects of
chemical and biological testing on those exposed to contaminants. And every
time he regained some semblance of normal functioning, you willingly went along
with requests to send him back to Mulberry Point, because Stephen Oliver still
had a razorsharp mind when it came to his work—it was unfortunate that he just
didn’t have the emotional foundation for sustained experimentation, did he?”

Lawrence nodded, but was silent as he listened, his only
movement being to pick up an item on his desk, look at it, then put it down
again.

“Now, I haven’t worked out the details yet, but at
some juncture he was discharged. Was it an oversight at the pensions office? A
young clerk perhaps, who added a name to the list of someone who should never
have been added? Or was it that you had to release a certain number of patients
to make economies, and because he could take care of himself, he was released?
On the other hand, perhaps his release was part of your experiment—and then he
managed to give you the slip.”

Maisie bit her lip. Lawrence’s manner was unsettling
and she wondered if her speculation had been wide of the mark.

“Either way, you lost him, lost a valuable man who
could only control himself physically and mentally for short periods of time
while engaged in the same sort of work he was undertaking when he was first
wounded—again, in his mind as much as his body—on the battlefield. That work
was in the development of weapons that should never be given the light of day.
And he could only immerse himself in such an endeavor for so long before the
cannonade went off in his mind, or when he collapsed in a state of nervous
exhaustion.”

Maisie sat back and looked out the window, the view of
falling snow obscured by iron bars. Iron bars, even in the offices of a doctor
for whom she once had the utmost regard. She was about to speak when there was
a knock at the door, and without being summoned the visitor walked into the
office.

“Sorry, Lawrence, it took me a bit of a while to get
here.” Gerald Urquhart took off his hat and looked at Maisie. “A delight to see
you again, Miss Dobbs. Now, I wonder what might bring you back to see Dr.
Lawrence—after all, you’re not on Special Branch time now, are you?”

Maisie looked at Urquhart, then Lawrence. “Is this
what you meant by out of my depth?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Oh, so Stephen Oliver was more than an experiment for
you. He was an experiment for the Secret Service as well. Even though there was
a risk to the general public, you knew he would continue with his work in
whatever way he could.” Maisie shook her head, her mind racing. “Or was he
released deliberately, just to see who might come out of the woodwork and claim
him, who might try to squeeze him dry before tossing him aside?” She looked at
Urquhart again. “No wonder you were panicking when you lost him. You knew who
you were looking for the moment that first letter was received, but you just
couldn’t find him, even with an array of intelligence resources at your
fingertips.” Drumming her fingertips on the desk, Maisie paused for thought
before speaking again. “And I’ll bet you didn’t show your hand to MacFarlane
until Catherine Jones was brought in—or perhaps you got to Jones first, and
only later did the Commissioner step in and put an end to speculation by
announcing the case closed.”

“The case is closed, Miss Dobbs. It is only you who
are showing continued interest in the man who tried to kill a significant
number of innocent people.”

“I think it’s time for me to leave.” Maisie stood up,
collected her bags, and stepped toward the door, but before leaving she spoke
directly to Anthony Lawrence. “I am sure you will write a very good book, but
there will probably be something missing.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Speak to Dr. Elsbeth Masters. Ask her what happens
when a gazelle becomes a lion’s prey.”

Maisie left the office, but when she reached the first
set of double doors she realized she was trapped without keys.

“Damn!”

“Rather a hasty exit, Miss Dobbs.” Urquhart waved a
set of keys as he approached. “I’ll escort you out.”

“I won’t ask why you have a set of keys.”

“No, better not.”

They walked in silence down the stairs and through
several more sets of locked doors before reaching the empty entrance hall.

“I’m sorry I can’t tell you more, Miss Dobbs.”

“Oh, I think I’ve got the gist of the matter.” She
looked over at the porters’ office, then back at Urquhart. “I have a feeling
that Edwin Croucher was once a porter or employed in a similar caretaker job at
Mulberry Point, where as we know almost every member of staff became a subject
in an experiment at some point or another. I suspect that’s how he lost his
short-term memory—possibly through overexposure to a nerve agent of some sort.
But he never forgot Stephen Oliver. Perhaps Oliver had shown him a kindness, so
that when he found out the scientist had been brought to the Princess Victoria,
he applied for a job as a porter. Or it might have been just one of those
serendipitous events in life. Am I getting warmer here, Mr. Urquhart?” Maisie
raised a hand. “No, don’t answer, but let me see if I can work this out.
Lawrence didn’t know about Croucher’s previous employer, because people like
him never see people they consider to be minions. He interviewed the scientists
and those of a certain level working at the laboratories, but not the tea
ladies or the other ancillary staff.”

“An admirable imagination, Miss Dobbs.”

“And I haven’t finished yet. Croucher was a kind man,
a man who gave the impression of being brusque, but really he was trying to
keep his life in order, so that he could keep a job. But he always tried to
help the men on the streets who had fought in the war—he had doubtless been a
soldier himself. And then he met Jennings, saw that he was an educated man, and
thought he and Stephen Oliver would be company for each other. Croucher must
have wondered what he had done, when Oliver began planning his revenge on those
he saw as perpetrators of want.”

Urquhart nodded his head in a knowing way, so that
even this movement smacked of sarcasm. “Considering you haven’t had any formal
training in intelligence gathering, Miss Dobbs, you do very well, don’t you.”

“But that’s where you are wrong, Mr. Urquhart. I have
had training from an expert in such matters. I just don’t work for you.”

“Well, you never know.”

Maisie turned to leave, but Urquhart caught her arm.

“Miss Dobbs—before you go, please don’t think of
telling that wonderful story to anyone else, will you?”

Maisie shook off his hand and walked away.

MAISIE DROVE TOWARD Pimlico amid snow flurries and sleet.
More than anything, she wanted to shut the door and wrap the walls of her flat
around her. Outside, the world could do as it wished. She parked the MG and
walked toward the main door, only to see MacFarlane’s motor car waiting
outside.

“Oh, not again!” Maisie uttered the words under her
breath.

MacFarlane emerged from the vehicle. “Miss Dobbs, glad
to have caught you.”

“I don’t have any soup, Chief Superintendent.”

“And I’m going out to supper, so I’ll pass on your
kind invitation.”

Maisie looked aside. “I’m sorry. That was unkind of
me.”

MacFarlane regarded her for a moment, then set his
hand on her shoulder. “It’s hard, but there are walls you can’t hammer your way
through.”

“I know, I know. But aren’t you angry, aren’t you
furious at what they’ve done, what they’re doing, and how this experiment got
out of hand? That a man . . . ”

“I’ve learned over time to pick my battles, and to
know when not to crush my knuckles pounding at doors that won’t open. Urquhart
had his job to do, Lawrence was doing his, and if you speak to your John Gale,
he too knew about all or part of what was going on. When you get into the
realms of the country’s security, you find the right arm never, ever knows what
the left arm is doing. We both have to get on with our work now, Miss Dobbs,
and allow this case to be closed. All right?”

Maisie nodded. “All right. I know, I know. This is not
the first time I’ve hit my own fist against that wall. And as they say, it’s
best to let it slip away, because time and tide wait for no man.”

“I’m sorry, lass, you’ll have to be a bit more
succinct.”

“They all said that, you know. It’s one of those
sayings that people pick up. I heard John Gale say it, then Stephen Oliver
wrote it in his diary—and don’t worry, I won’t mention his name again. Anthony
Lawrence repeated it too. It’s a common phrase, but you find people tend to
repeat that sort of thing when they live or work together. It only takes one to
start the ball rolling.”

MacFarlane laughed and shook his head. “That’s
something Blanche would have noticed. Anyway, talking of starting the ball
rolling, I’ll see you on the twenty-fifth, I hope.”

“What’s on at the Palladium?” Maisie called after him.

“Oh, you’ll enjoy it. The show’s been on the bill
several times over the past few months now with that grand gang of funny
men—you know, Flanagan and Allen, Jimmy Nervo, Teddy Knox, Charlie Naughton and
Jimmy Gold. They call it Crazy Week.”