4 Fatal Inheritance, page 21
‘Did you see him when he came?’
‘Not I, ma’am, but the ones who did said he was lovely.’
I leant forward, enjoying myself, but worried lest Sister Theresa should find a spare moment to come back and check upon our whereabouts, and lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
‘Polly, can you tell me anything about Miss Krieger’s writing?’
Her eyes grew round.
‘We’re not allowed to talk about the patients, ma’am,’ she said.
I smiled kindly.
‘There’s no harm in talking with me,’ I said. ‘In fact, you could help me. You see, I’m trying to find out why the poor young man who came here went and killed himself. I’m trying to understand the reason.’
‘Surely it had nothing to do with his visit here, did it?’ she said.
‘Well, I think that it did. Because if not, why would her family suddenly write to the sanatorium forbidding her to receive any more visitors?’
‘Why, I don’t know. It’s strange. Miss Krieger never had any other visitors anyway. That was the only one. That’s why it caused such a to-do. She never had any other. That’s what they all say, at least.’
‘Do you know if Miss Krieger spoke about the visit after it happened?’
‘No, I wouldn’t know that, I don’t talk to the patients myself,’ she replied. ‘She might have done, to her doctor, but then again she might not. She doesn’t say much as a rule. There’s not much to say, really, in here, it’s so shut away. If I didn’t get out to see my family on my half-days, I sometimes think I’d go all strange myself.’
‘What do the doctors do here, to cure the patients?’ I asked. ‘Do you know anything about that?’
‘They’ve all kinds of machines,’ she said. ‘They have the patients spinning round or taking cold baths; ever so many things. A French doctor came here once and he put some of the patients into funny trances, so they’d do anything he said. But with Miss Krieger, they say the doctor only gets her to write. She’s not allowed to write any other time, you see. We’ve been told to keep papers and pens away from her, and she mayn’t go into the writing room. She may only write for Dr Richards. But she doesn’t need the cold baths and other things, because she’s always calm.’
The idea that had sprung up in my mind in the doctor’s waiting-room was fast becoming an absolute determination. Time was short and no elaborate planning would be possible. But simplicity is often the best way, in any case. The vastness of the building and its long empty corridors could be turned to my advantage.
‘Polly,’ I said, rising and gathering my things, ‘I need to find out why Miss Krieger’s visitor killed himself, and I know it has something to do with what she writes. I want you to help me.’
‘Oh, ma’am, I can’t,’ she said, turning pale. ‘It’s as much as my place is worth. Why, if I don’t take you straight down to the gatehouse in a minute, I’ll be in trouble already.’
‘I won’t ask you to anything forbidden,’ I promised. ‘In fact, I’m asking you almost nothing at all. Do take me to the gatehouse. Let’s go there now.’ I rose, and something passed from my purse to my hand, and from my hand to Polly’s. She uttered a little cry and it disappeared into her apron pocket.
‘When the porter opens the gate to let me out, you turn back to go up the path,’ I said. ‘Then you trip and fall down and cry out. He’ll come to you and help you get up. Cry out that it hurts and get him to look at your knee, so he doesn’t look at me for a few moments. That’s all I want you to do. Don’t even think about me after that. Don’t pay attention to anything. Just go back to the house, and go about your duties.’
She looked at me with great curiosity.
‘Oh – I think I can do that!’ she said. ‘But are you not going to go out at all?’
‘You don’t need to know anything about that,’ I replied firmly.
‘It’ll be the porter’s fault, not mine, if they do find you back inside,’ she said, and burst into a merry laugh. Out we went, along the corridors into the grand main foyer, out the front door, and straight down the path to the gatehouse, Polly wearing a great air of doing her duty. The porter stood up and unlocked the gate, pulling it inwards to let me out. I took a step to the side, and Polly turned away. I held my breath. A shriek from behind me made the porter whirl around, and in the flash of a second, I was hiding in the thick shrubbery next to the gate, peering through the prickly leaves to see how he raised Polly from the ground as she bent over, and clutching her knee and howling, ‘Oh, it’s broken, it’s broken; oh please look at it, do; oh, is it bleeding?’ like a five-year-old child. If he was a little surprised by my total disappearance during the short time it took him to pull her upright and utter something between a consolation and a remonstrance, he did not show it, but contented himself with locking the gate as she followed him, limping, whimpering realistically and demanding attention.
At length he sent her off, and she went back up the path, still hobbling, and disappeared into the building. I had in the meantime taken advantage of the racket to slip through the shrubbery as far away from the gate as possible, and had by now reached a place where I thought the rustling caused by my movements would not be noticeable. It seemed that I could continue to creep behind the shrubbery around the entire perimeter of the sanatorium’s enormous grounds, which, apart from the bushes along the railings, were green and quite empty even of trees. I continued my thorny trajectory for what seemed an immense distance, until finally the porter’s cabin was out of sight. Then I came out, brushed leaves and twigs from my clothing, and crossed the lawn with what I hoped was a confident step.
I was naturally worried about detection, but not excessively so, for several other people were dotted about the grounds; doctors and nurses, and even a number of normally dressed people quite like myself, going back and forth from the outlying buildings for reasons of their own. They did not appear to be patients, and I soon realised that the patients were not free to wander about the full extent of the grounds, but were confined to a particular, rather large and quite lovely garden of their own, set behind the building and to one side, and surrounded with its own set of iron railings. Here was a much thicker concentration of nurses, together with a number of people, some of whom appeared normal enough, but others who disported themselves strangely, uttered peculiar noises, or were covered in rugs and pushed about in wheeled chairs. There were even a few visitors who actually stood outside the railings, conversing with patients on the inside; an excellent arrangement allowing patients to receive visits while taking the air, and while protecting the more sensitive visitors from sights or sounds that might alarm them when experienced at close quarters.
I joined these people and stood looking in. The weather was unusually bright, but extremely cold, and it was not surprising that of the six hundred patients in the sanatorium, there were no more than forty or fifty in the garden at that particular moment, most of them walking about quite briskly. My heart beat; Polly had said that Lydia Krieger enjoyed walking in the garden. In the strictly regulated life of the sanatorium, this particular moment must correspond to the hour for visits and garden walks and it was perhaps the only chance during the day at which patients were allowed outside. She might well be there.
After some moments, my eyes located a figure that I thought might be Lydia. There was no way to be certain, but the gentle demeanour, the dreamy expression, the greying hair of the rather lovely woman I saw, wearing an elegant fur stole and hat, denoted the right age and style, and it seemed to me that I could detect a faint family resemblance to Tanis Cavendish. Resemblances are infinitely subtle, but my instinct told me that this could well be Lydia Krieger, and my heart beat faster as I tried to imagine a way to attract her attention. Sebastian had come here just a month ago, and he had seen Lydia, just as I believed I was seeing her now. And he had spoken to her – and perhaps she had written for him, as I would wish her to write for me, and some secret had been thence revealed. And Sebastian had died, and Lydia remained a prisoner, and no one but she now knew exactly what had taken place here on that day.
My determination to understand grew and intensified, and plans rushed through my head. But she was at too much of a distance for me to call out to her, and I was afraid of drawing attention to myself; there was nothing to do but wait and hope that she would draw nearer in her circulation. I observed her carefully, I tried to catch her eye, I readied myself – and then suddenly, I saw a young nurse hurry from the building into the garden, straight up to the very woman I was watching so closely, and speak to her urgently, taking her arm to lead her inside. The woman replied, making a gesture indicating the garden and the sky, as though she would wish to remain there, but the young nurse was adamant and drew her indoors as fast as she could, casting a hasty glance about the garden as she did so.
My disappointment was keen, but not as strong as the sudden piercing sensation of fear. What could be the meaning of the little scene I had just witnessed, other than that the alarm had somehow been raised, and the staff informed that I was still within their gates and probably determined to force a meeting with Lydia Krieger? The porter must have been surprised not to see me walking away down the road after the little scene with Polly, suspected that I hadn’t left at all, and decided to alert someone. And not knowing where I might be hiding, the hospital had been very quick to spirit Lydia out of the way of a possible encounter. It might seem like a rather grand reaction to such a little thing, but Lydia’s previous visit had ended with a suicide, and I could imagine how desirous they might be of avoiding any repetition of such a tragedy.
I left the garden at once, and circled the building back towards the front entrance with as tranquil and confident an air as I could muster. From what I had seen, the giant foyer with its towering arched ceiling contained no official person in the role of watchdog; this was not necessary, as visitors were accompanied up to the house from the gate, and led immediately to their proper destination. My best hope, then, was to behave as normally as possible and thus remain unnoticed. With a firm, unhesitant gesture, I pushed open the great entrance door, went in, crossed the foyer and tried to take the same path along which I had been led so speedily less than an hour before.
On I went, through a veritable maze of corridors, trying to recognise this or that landmark, occasionally returning the way I had come to search for a more familiar scene. I crossed a few busy employees, carrying domestic items or leading patients, but they ignored me and I ignored them, and kept moving along rather quickly as though I had a specific task to accomplish – which, indeed, I did.
Thanks to my observation of the route we had taken previously, I did eventually manage to arrive at a door I recognised as being the suite attributed to Dr Richards. There was no one in the hall, and, as slowly and silently as possible, I turned the knob and gave the gentlest possible push at the door, not to open it even by the smallest crack, but simply to test whether or not it was locked. Finding that it yielded, I released the knob, moved a little way down the hall to the top of a staircase, and concealed myself behind the heavy drapes that hung in front of all the corridor windows.
Ideally, what I wanted was a moment in which I could be certain that Dr Richards was alone inside. If he should be out of the office, I feared he would probably lock the door, and if a patient or someone else were inside with him, my plan would certainly fail. I waited and observed and watched until my legs were full of pins-and-needles.
Now and then, someone passed down the corridor in one direction or the other. Through a crack in the curtains I saw people being escorted away, and knew that visiting hours had come to an end. A little later, a nurse arrived with a patient who continually dragged her fingers through her hair, pulling and deforming the neat bun which the nurse pinned back for her repeatedly with perfunctory remonstrances of ‘Now, dear’. These two stopped at the door of the doctor’s ante-room, and the nurse opened it, went in, and knocked gently on the inner door. A murmured word, a moment’s wait, and the doctor ushered a gentleman patient out into the nurse’s capable hands and led the woman with her hair now half-falling down one side of her face into his inner room. He closed the door and the nurse went away with the gentleman, who was mumbling in a ceaseless monotone. I waited for twenty minutes or half an hour.
At the end of this time, my hopes were raised by the sight of a tea-trolley being wheeled along the corridor: the long rows of white cups with little dishes next to each containing scones were probably for the patients, but surely the doctors were also soon to be served. And indeed, the nurse returned, the lady with her hair now completely down around her face and shoulders came out and went away with her, and a minute later a little maid – not Polly, unfortunately, but some other similar little village Molly or Sally – arrived carrying a beautifully decked tea tray laden with much nicer things than what the patients were having. Having delivered this, she departed, and I knew that the doctor was alone, and that my moment was at hand.
I gave myself three minutes just to let the good doctor get properly relaxed, then set up a sudden and tremendous cry of ‘Dr Richards! Oh, please! Oh, Dr Richards, come quickly! Please!’ I was gratified to see him come rushing out of his office, hasten down the hall in the direction of my voice, and hurry down the steps near the top of which I was concealed.
I almost flew down the hall in the direction of his rooms; within a mere three or four seconds I was standing inside his private office, which was filled with the pleasant aroma of buttered toast. Another second and I was pulling open the drawer marked ‘K’ that my eyes had already accurately located at my earlier visit. Five seconds later my trembling fingers found and snatched out the file marked ‘Krieger’, and I clapped the drawer shut. I could not hurry away now without risking crossing the doctor’s path as he returned, but the risk of discovery would be too great if I remained in the room; the ante-room was the least dangerous place, and I was there in the flash of an instant, clutching my prize, lying at full length behind the settee, and trying not to breathe.
There were calls and voices from outside, and the doctor returned, flushed and displeased to judge by his breathing, and stalked into his room to finish his tea. Alas, he did not quite close the door of his private office, thereby foiling my plans for immediate escape. I remained perfectly still, and occupied myself in hoping that this obstacle might lead to some interesting event, such as a visit from Lydia Krieger. But nothing so exciting occurred, and the next person to enter was no other than little Molly-Sally, on her way to collect the tea tray. With great good manners, she balanced it on one arm while pulling the doctor’s door shut behind her, and then left, also closing the door to the hall. Instantly I was on my feet and following her, hoping that the doctor would attribute the double sound of the door, if he could hear it at all, to the struggle of the young girl with a heavy tray. I had no choice but to follow her straight out – there was no time to check whether anyone else was standing in the hall right then, but as a matter of fact the coast was clear – and off I went down the stairs, along the corridors and right out the front door, happily carrying my heavy prize concealed beneath my shawl.
Now came the difficulty of getting out of the grounds. I was afraid that the porter might recognise me from earlier, especially if he had noticed my disappearance (or rather, my failure to have properly disappeared) and raised the alarm. It was awkward, and I could not think of anything better to do than to insert myself into a group of four or five working women, probably daily assistants from the village hired to aid with the cooking, cleaning or caring for patients, by the simple expedient of asking them if they could be so kind as to show me the way to the train station. I made sure to engage them in conversation so as to look as much as possible like part of their group, and in return they were very friendly. We all exited together as easily as possible; indeed, it was quite dark outside by this time, being after five o’clock, and the porter didn’t notice a thing. I allowed myself the luxury of a tremendous sigh of relief accompanied by some nervous giggles, hurried to the train station, purchased a ticket, and leapt upon the first train to London with a feeling of unspeakable triumph. I may not have been able to talk to Lydia, but I believed I had seen her – and I had obtained a tremendously important set of documents, and played a trick on the obnoxious doctor to boot!
I settled back into my seat, extracted the thick folder of documents from the folds of my shawl, and began to examine the contents. I read, and I read, and I read.
But if I had expected a revelation – and I realised now that clearly I had – I was destined to be sorely disappointed.
According to her medical records, Lydia had been pilled and syruped, hypnotised and lectured, subjected to innumerable constraints, told to speak while writing and write while speaking, to write with her left hand, to write copying what the doctor wrote, to write with her hand guided by the doctor and a multitude of even more peculiar, irrelevant and unfortunate experiments, all of which had met with total failure and left her condition quite unchanged. As time passed, the doctor’s notes became briefer, his experiments rarer, and, above all, the expression of his inability to comprehend her meaning moved over the years from the description ‘indicative of internal logic incommunicable to outside world’ in the early stages to ‘incomprehensible’ and even ‘ranting’ towards the end.
By an unfortunate psychological mechanism which I could not rationally explain to myself, my contempt for Dr Richards’ failure was not in the least diminished by the fact that, had I been shown the many dozens of pages covered in Lydia Krieger’s characteristic flowing handwriting under any ordinary circumstances, I might well have been capable of using the very same words to describe their contents myself. I read them through, and read them through again, then shook my head.
