Among the Mad (23 page)

“You wanted to see me, Catherine?”

The woman nodded. She seemed frail, and betrayed her
nervousness in the way she shook her head at the end of a sentence, as if this
experience of incarceration could be dismissed as never having happened. She
rubbed her upper arms in a self-embrace, and tapped the floor with one foot and
then the other.

“What is it you have to tell me?”

She shrugged. “Don’t know if you’ll be interested.”

“You’ve made it clear that you wanted to see me, so I
am interested already.”

The woman nodded, and rubbed her hands back and forth
along her thighs. “I remembered someone. Someone who came to one of our
meetings.”

“A man?”

“Yes. Said he wanted to take action, that there were
too many without work, that it was all very well the politicians wanting you
for their armies when there’s a war to win, but they didn’t want to know about
you and your problems once you were back.”

“I’m sure there are many men and women who share those
feelings.”

She looked at Maisie—who did not flinch from her gaze.
“You have no idea what it is like to be without work, what it’s like for the
men and women who walk from place to place each day in search of a job. Some
haven’t worked for years. Years. Year after year of walking and begging for a
job every single day. Except the days when they don’t have the will to walk
anymore, when their insides are growling so much for want of food, it’s as if
the body is eating itself. Then there is only sleep. That’s all you can do.
Sleep until you wake and then walk again.”

“I know, Catherine.”

Catherine rubbed her arms again, and moved to sit
sideways on her chair.

“Is there more you can tell me about the man? Do you
remember his name?”

“I didn’t think you were interested.”

“Of course I am.”

She sighed before continuing her story. “I remember
him because he seemed, you know, a bit off.”

“A bit off?”

“Not that he was soft in the head, not like some of
them who come to the meetings.” She paused. “He was bright. Very sharp. He
talked about being over in France, in the war, about what he’d seen. It seemed
as if every bone in his body shook when he talked about it. And he said he
hadn’t been able to get work, not since he’d lost his last job.”

“Did he say where he worked?”

“He said he couldn’t tell me, that it was a secret.”

“What else did he say—and what else gave you cause to
doubt him?”

“Oh, I didn’t doubt him, Miss Dobbs. No, I didn’t
doubt him because we talked a few times about work, the sort of work I used to
do but don’t now because I don’t have a job. This man knew what he was talking
about. I would say he knew a lot more than me.”

“Then what is it that you question?”

“Miss Dobbs, I do not know if you are aware of the
leaps one has to take to become a university student, especially if one is a
woman, and all the more so if one does not come from wealth.”

Maisie allowed no emotion to show on her face, or in
her manner. “I am aware of what is required to gain entrance, especially if
one’s field of study is in the sciences.”

“And you know the cost?”

“Yes.”

“Well, this man said, one day, that he was a
foundling. ‘I might have had a better chance in life, had I not been a
foundling.’ I thought it was a bit archaic, using the word ‘foundling.’ I
thought he was gilding the lily, telling a lie about himself to spark interest.
I mean, he could have been a boy from one of the Barnardo Homes, couldn’t he?
But how many of them go to a university to study?”

“Did you believe him, when you reflected on the
conversation afterward?”

“I didn’t know what to believe, to tell you the truth.
He might have been a man with a gift for a tall story, and he certainly didn’t
seem all there.”

“Did he have obvious wounds?”

“Sometimes he limped, then at other times he didn’t,
as if it came and went. And on those days when he was lame, there was no doubt
that it was genuine. I had the feeling that he only came along for the company,
and as I said, he only turned up to a few meetings.”

“Were you afraid of the man?”

Catherine was silent for a moment, considering the
question before she replied. “Funny you should ask that, because I was afraid
of him. When you were talking to him it was as if you were in one of those
rooms where the floors aren’t level, you know, the sort you get in an old
house, where the ground has settled and you could put a marble on the floor and
it would start to move because there’s a slope. You never felt as if you were
on firm ground.”

“Is that enough to point the finger at a man?”

“Probably not, Miss Dobbs. But he did tell me, the
last time I saw him, that he could bring the city to its knees before the year
was out.”

“His name?”

“Oliver. Just Oliver. As in Twist, I would imagine.”

TWELVE

Maisie checked her watch upon leaving Scotland Yard.
It was now past noon. She had briefed MacFarlane on her conversation with
Catherine Jones and thought he seemed skeptical at best.

“Oliver bloody Twist? A right joker, that one. If she
thinks she can get out of—”

“I’m going to follow the lead anyway, Chief
Superintendent. We have precious little to go on, so this may be just the
breakthrough we need.”

“Stratton’s working on another tip-off, so I can’t
spare anyone to help you.”

“That’s all right, it’s best that I work alone, or
with my assistant.”

“Telephone if you need anything.”

“I will.”

“And you can have that sample by tomorrow morning. I
could be shot for this, Miss Dobbs.”

“You won’t be, Chief Superintendent. And thank you for
your trust in me. I doubt if anything but a specialist laboratory will be able
to shed light on the constituent properties of this particular compound—and I
think I know just the person in just the right place to do the job.”

Maisie asked the driver to take her directly to her flat
in Pimlico. From there, she collected her MG, went to a petrol station to fill
the tank, then drove to the asylum, where she hoped to find Anthony Lawrence.
On the way, once again she tried to negotiate the web of clues left in the wake
of a man who would kill to be heard.

Following the Embankment, she wove her way toward the
City, then away from the river, and as she drove along the Gray’s Inn Road, she
remembered walking this very route just a couple of years before, on her way to
Mecklenburg Square. And she remembered wondering about the rubble left behind
following the demolition of a hospital built some two hundred years earlier, a
place of great innovation in its day. It was not an institution where medicine
was practiced, though it could be argued that it was a place where lives were
saved. It was a place where unwanted children, some just hours old, were left
to be cared for. Now it was closed, and with only part of the original building
left standing, the site was languishing in the midst of the country’s economic
depression. Maisie felt a sensation across the back of her neck, as if the
gossamer wings of a butterfly had touched her skin. She remembered the name:
the Foundling Hospital. When first built, it provided respite for children who
might otherwise have died on the streets, situated as it was amid fields and
gardens. Now it was part of a growling metropolis where horses were giving way
to motor cars, where trains belched their way across and underneath London, and
trams clattered back and forth. If she remembered correctly, the Foundling
Hospital had not closed entirely, but had moved out of London so the children
would be where they were originally intended to be—in the country.

Foundling. It was a word used only by those of a
certain generation, a word that spoke of the time in which the hospital was
first built, when the life of the poor was all but worthless, and new life was
cast aside to die in the gutter. Foundling. An infant deserted at birth, a
child abandoned, unwanted. Maisie turned the word around in her mind. Could the
man who had the power to kill thousands have been an orphan? And if he were,
how would he gain an education? How might someone of that order—Maisie checked
herself. Though there was no witness to her thoughts, her cheeks burned with
shame. She had been considered of a lower order herself, and but for good
fortune and a serendipitous discovery by her employer, she herself might never
have had the advantage of an education, or a profession. Other gifted children
of working-class origins had been sponsored by her mentor, Maurice Blanche, but
it was an unusual opportunity—and one for which she was eternally grateful. But
to begin life as a foundling represented a more arduous ascent. And if a boy
was able to make such a climb, he would be known and remembered. Unless, of
course, he was something of a chameleon. Like herself.

MAISIE SLIPPED INTO a lower gear as she approached the
Princess Victoria Hospital. She parked the MG outside and ran up the steps to
the main entrance, where she pulled open the oak doors and stated her business
with the porter.

“I’m afraid the doctor has only just arrived for his
rounds. He was at the Queen Elizabeth all morning, and is very busy.” The
porter checked a list of staff, then verified the information again on a
timetable of rounds that was hanging up on the wall behind the counter.

“Yes, I am sure he is, however, I wonder if you could
tell me when I might see him.”

The porter pulled a fob-watch from his waistcoat
pocket and frowned, then ran his finger along a row on the timetable with
Lawrence’s name at one end. “Well, I doubt it will be before two.”

“May I wait?”

“Suit yourself, Madam, but as I said, you could be
here for an hour or so.”

“Right, Mr. . . . ”

“Croucher.”

“Right, Mr. Croucher, I’ll just wait over there, if
you don’t mind. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to let me know when the doctor is
available.”

The man straightened his spine and looked at his watch
again, then at the clock on the wall above the bench where Maisie was now seated.
He pursed his lips and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, don’t blame me if you’re
sitting there for a long time today.”

Maisie took a notebook from her bag and smiled at the
man. “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

It struck her that the porter was as short in his
manner as he was in stature. He was a stocky man, yet his movements were exact,
and she observed—as she watched him across the counter—that he checked and
rechecked every task, whether placing mail in departmental pigeonholes, or
giving instructions to his fellow workers. He would say everything twice,
verify an action twice, and then he would sweep his hands through his hair and
back across his head. It was a lifetime habit, thought Maisie, looking at his receding
hairline. And how old was this man? Probably about forty years of age, she
thought.

She continued making notes, noticing that, as the turn
of the hour approached, Croucher lifted the telephone and called to see if Dr.
Lawrence had returned to his office. Half an hour later, a shrill single ring
issued from the telephone and, after responding to the call, Croucher summoned
Maisie to the counter, his finger crooked as he beckoned her to him.

“Dr. Lawrence is in his office now and can see you.”
He pulled a chain from his pocket at the end of which was a large ring and
several keys of varying sizes. “I will have to accompany you, of course.”

“Of course, I understand. I once worked with Dr.
Lawrence, you know. Many years ago now, when I was a nurse.”

The man’s eyes opened wider at the news, though his
only comment was, “You’ll know how busy he is, then.”

“THANK YOU, CROUCHER,” said Anthony Lawrence, when
Maisie arrived at his office. “I’ll summon you when Miss Dobbs and I have
finished talking.” He turned to Maisie, holding his hand out toward the
visitor’s chair, and took a seat behind his desk. “I didn’t expect to see you
again so soon, Miss Dobbs.”

“It’s good of you to spare me some time, Dr.
Lawrence.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I understand that you once worked at Mulberry Point,
the government’s weapons testing laboratory, in Berkshire.”

He shrugged, much in the way that Croucher had
shrugged earlier. “It was quite some time ago now—just after the war. Not there
long, short-term business.”

“I understand that you were there to monitor the
psychological effects of testing, and the effect of such work on the men who
were employed at the laboratories.”

“How do you know?”

“I met with Elsbeth Masters this week—on quite another
matter, I might add—and she happened to mention that you had worked together
there.”