Crazy Lady (19 page)

“Aren't you happy with your Peter?”

“Of course. But he's not exactly Casanova. Anyway, my point is that publishers and the media will love it. Just do it.”

”Rewrite the whole thing?”

“Yes, if that's what it takes. Yes.”

As Bliss is putting down the phone in his Côte d'Azur apartment, J.C. Creston is getting an update from his man in Vancouver.

“We had to give her a sedative,” explains Craddock, adopting a partner to boost his credibility and his final invoice. “But she'll be OK.”

“And what happens now?”

“Well, my people on the inside will let me know when the heat's off. As soon as everything's cool we'll move her.”

“Not back to Beautiful.”

“Shit, man. That's the first place they'll hit. In fact you'd better warn your man there to expect a visit.”

However, neither Wayne Browning nor Joseph Creston need worry yet. Clive Sampson is telling no one of Janet's abduction and won't be talking at all unless a neighbour, or the mailman, investigates his smashed door and unties him from his bed. In any case, Janet doesn't officially exist. In fact, officially Janet Creston, née Thurgood, has never existed in Canada. She was shipped into the country over forty years ago by private jet, and not a single government official has ever recorded her name. She's not alone.
Beautiful is not the kind of place where record keeping is encouraged, although since Janet's disappearance, Wayne and a couple of his most trusted angels have been quietly shredding everything that could be linked in any way to the Creston foundation.

“So where have you got her?” asks Creston thoughtlessly and Craddock explodes.

“Christ, man. Are you shittin' me?”

“Mr. Craddock —”

“Craddock.”

“Craddock. Will you please stop taking the Lord's name in vain.”

“Sorry, man, but this is an open line for Christ… Jeez… What in hell am I supposed to say? Hey. She's safe, OK? That's all you need.”

“All right. Keep her that way. I'll have to decide what to do.”

Janet's safety is not at stake. Being bound and gagged in the back of a van parked inside Craddock's garage may not be comfortable but, in many ways, it is no worse than the privations of Beautiful.

Trina Button's confidence in her private investigator's manual, and her own abilities, may be unswerving, but Daphne Lovelace would rather consult a professional over the handwriting on the doctors' records, and she stands in front of the mirror in the tight hallway of her Westchester home and works her way through her hat rack as she prepares to visit one in London. Flouncy, lacy, and white are out, and she finally settles on a staid bowler with its serious edge taken off by a slender pink ribbon and a silk rose, then she shrinks at her partner's millinery choice.

“We are going to the City, you know,” she reminds Trina a touch acerbically at the sight of the other woman's Yankees baseball cap, but the Canadian shrugs it off with a laugh.

“Oh, Daphne. Sometimes you can be so… Miss Marple, so Agatha Christie. Me, I'm more of an Ian Fleming.”

Mark Benson is an ex-MI5 operative who never came close to anyone resembling James Bond during his service. He's a spindly, pencil-sharp figure with Coke-bottle glasses and a taut mouth who spent his time as a spy in a back room poring over ciphers, until he discovered that there was more capital and less politics in private practice.

Daphne and Trina find the document examiner's garret office from the brass plaque beside a door in a narrow backstreet behind the Central Criminal Court — the venerable Old Bailey — from where he caters to the hurried needs of defence lawyers.

“In my opinion, based on a cursory examination,” Benson advises them over the top of his bi-focals, once they've laboured up four flights, “at least one of these documents may not be precisely what it seems.”

“A definite maybe,” suggests Daphne under her breath, but Trina is less pessimistic.

“I knew it —” she starts, but Benson cuts her off with a warning hand.

“Ms. Button. Document examination is an art, not a science. There is always an element of subjectivity.” Then he eyes the papers critically. “An ink analysis will show that two different types were used, but we can see that by the colour. As to whose hands were holding the pens at the time, that will always be open to a degree of speculation.”

“We'd be happy to accept whatever you can give us,” says Daphne, while Trina wanders the room, nosing at various pieces of equipment as if she is conversant with their uses.

“It'll take me a day or so…” Benson starts, and then he firmly removes a calibrated magnifier from Trina's hand and gently replaces it on his workbench. “Very delicate,” he warns as Trina pulls out a chequebook.

“We only have a couple of hours,” she says with pen poised. “How much would that be? Say, five hundred dollars?”

“I thought he was going to faint,” laughs Daphne a few minutes later as they wait in a nearby coffee house from where they can see the scales of justice atop the renowned court's dome.

“I'm sure it's the same writing,” says Trina. “And I'm pretty sure that our Doc Symmonds knows more than he's letting on.”

“But how we will get him to talk? You won't buy him off with a few hundred quid. Fixing death certificates has got to be a serious crime.”

“So why would he have risked it?”

“Money,” suggests Daphne.

“There you go,” says Trina with a hint of triumph. “Everyone has their price.”

Janet Thurgood is paying the price for her escape from the nightmare of Beautiful as she lies, bound and gagged, on an old mattress in the back of a broken-down Ford van in Craddock's garage. The taste of the duct tape across her mouth makes her retch, and her bony wrists ache from being immobilized, but she is no stranger to isolation.

I don't deserve this
, she tells herself, and then admits that she probably does; for the past forty years, judgment day has always been just around the corner. But hasn't she been punished enough? Four decades in a prison administered by a lunatic; forty years of beatings and sexual slavery; forty years of pseudo love — love used as a weapon to be withheld or given on a whim: one word out of place, one wrong move, and a week's isolation.

“Our Lord Saviour must be obeyed,” Browning would declare. “You will only find salvation with God through me. I am punishing you for your own good. You must change your ways Daena… change your ways to please your master.”

“Yes, Our Lord Saviour.”

“You must change before I will speak to you again.” One week, two weeks — the agony of rejection, the withdrawal of affection, even the twisted affection of a control freak.

“Chastise me. Tell me I must change to please you. Tell me what a terrible person I am. Tell me anything. Brand me, mark me, just don't ignore more. Please don't abandon me, I need you.”

And then, eventually, when he is ready and not before, “See, I've forgiven you, Daena. Our Lord Saviour is pleased with you. You can rejoin the fold.”

“Thank you, Our Lord Saviour. Thank you.”

T
he Truth Behind the Mask by David Anthony Bliss
, writes Bliss on a clean pad of paper as he prepares to start his novel for the third time. But now he has a mission; now he knows the conclusion and knows the direction he must take; now he knows the passion felt by Louis XIV's most notorious prisoner as he endured eleven years in the island fortress across the bay from the fishing village of St-Juan-sur-Mer in the late 1600s; now he knows of the heartbreak of a man whose stolen love took him to the edge of sanity; now he knows that he will do all in his power to reclaim Yolanda.

It is the month of May, sixteen hundred and eighty-seven
, Bliss continues writing, his pen flowing easily across the virgin page.
Orange blossoms, jasmines, and mimosas scent the air of Provence, but only the stink of hot coals and sweat pervades the forge in the Fort Royal on the Isle Ste. Marguerite. In a hell's kitchen of fires and furnaces, legion-naires wrestle to hold screaming men down as blacksmiths
forge shackles around their ankles and wrists. However, in one corner, two flambouyantly attired Musketeers anchor a man whose head is being sheathed in an iron mask. Unlike the shackled prisoners in the their rags, this man holds himself aloof, and as the final rivet is hammered in place, he has a smile on his face as he is helped to his feet; though no one sees it. Indeed, no one will see his face again — ever — should his great plan fail.

Mark Benson turns up trumps with the documents. “Good news, ladies,” he says with a smirk of satisfaction as he welcomes Trina and Daphne back into his office.

“Hold on a minute,” wheezes Daphne. “Those stairs…”

“Here,” he says, offering a chair, then he carries on. “I would say that there is a ninety-nine-percent chance that the second and third documents — those pertaining to Giuseppe and Johannes Creston — were written by the same person, despite the fact that they purport to have different signatures.”

“Really. How can you be so sure?” Daphne wants to know, though Trina is beaming as she silently pumps the air with a fist.

“Similar characteristics,” he explains, then he pulls up a greatly enlarged computer image from a comparison microscope. “Fortunately these were written when most pens still had nibs,” the expert carries on as he indicates consistencies between the two magnified samples that sit side by side on the screen. “Also,” he adds, “judging by the wear pattern on the nib I would say that the all the entries relating to the third child — Johannes — seem to have been made at roughly the same time, even though it was supposedly written over a six-month period, from birth to death.”

“When was it written?” asks Daphne as she critically eyes both the screen and the original medical record.

“That's another interesting thing,” says Benson becoming more animated as a second digital picture from the microscope pops onto the screen. “I've enhanced this area,” he says as he points to a corner where a faint impression of “August 17^th, 1963” can be seen like a spectre in the paper.

“But Johannes died on August 15,” Daphne reminds herself as she picks Amelia Drinkwater's newspaper clipping from her bag and shows it to Benson.

“What does that mean?” asks Trina, peering inquisitively over his shoulder.

“It means that when this document was written, the previous one on the pad was dated two days later,” says the examiner sagely over the top of his bifocals. “It appears that someone rewrote these records after the child's death.”

“Wow,” says Trina, then her cellphone interrupts. “Rick?” she asks, hearing her husband's voice. “What time is it there?”

“About nine. Look, your office called in a panic about one of your patients, a Mr. Sampson.”

Clive Sampson is nursing a smashed face and a bruised ego as he sits by the phone, refusing to go with the paramedics until he's spoken with Trina.

“They took her,” he shrieks as soon as Trina gets through.

The angered woman spits, “I bet it's Browning and his freaks,” as soon as she's heard his tale. Then she spins around to include Daphne in her plans. “OK. We've got everything we need here. We're on our way back.”

“We?” questions Daphne jauntily.

“Of course,” says Trina, lacing her arm through her partner's and leading her out of Benson's office. “If anyone knows the truth it's Janet.”

“And Doc Symmonds,” adds Daphne.

“Yes. Well he ain't talking to us is he?”

“But…” protests Daphne, so Trina puts on a frown.

“You don't want another trip to Vancouver?”

Daphne bends. “I'll have to get someone to look after Missie Rouge.”

“It's a deal, then,” laughs Trina, and she whips her baseball cap back to front to signify success.

Coppersmiths beat the final pieces of sheathing into place atop the Château Roger while beneath them a legion of workers decorate the expansive rooms with Chinese silks, Persian tapestries, and Venetian chandeliers from the island of Murano
, writes Bliss as he views the now decrepit building from his balcony and imagines the original owner taking a similar view.

“My great testament to my lost love nears completion,” said the lovelorn man, watching from his cell across the bay as the edifice's state rooms were filled with the most sumptuous furnishings from around the world: opulent gold and silver ormolu furniture, emulating the style set by Louis himself in Versailles; the finest porcelain and silverware from the king's own factories in Gobelins; beds made of the softest Norwegian down. Servants by the score, all decked out in uniforms of finest Egyptian cotton, walked the halls…

“Thirty pages,” muses Bliss with satisfaction as he sits back and puts down his pen at the end of his first day's serious writing. It's amazingly easy when you know the whole story, he thinks, although he knows that is not true; while he wants a happy ending to his story he has a huge stumbling block in his path — historical fact. No matter how he contorts his plot he cannot alter the authenticated records of the day that show Louis XIV's unnamed and unknown prisoner was destined to die miserably in the Bastille in 1703.
However
, Bliss tells himself,
would I get onto a plane if I knew it was going to crash?
So, knowing that somehow he
will find a way to avert disaster, he falls onto his bed, exhausted, eager to start early tomorrow and the next day, and next,
ad infinitum,
until his script is complete and, just like his rejected predecessor, he can wrest his true love from another and begin the remainder of his days in her arms.

Maybe I really am a reincarnation of the Man in The Iron Mask
, he considers as he falls asleep no more than a couple of leagues from the place where the famed prisoner slept three hundred years before.