The Black Tower (5 page)

Dalgliesh said:

“Start with yourself. You haven't told me who you are.”

“Good God, nor have I! Sorry. I'm Maggie Hewson. My husband is resident medical officer at the Grange. At least, he lives with me in a cottage provided by Wilfred and appropriately named Charity Cottage, but he spends most of his time at Toynton Grange. With only five patients left you'd wonder what he finds to amuse him. Or would you? What do you suppose he finds to amuse him, Adam Dalgliesh?”

“Did your husband attend Father Baddeley?”

“Call him Michael, we all did except Grace Willison. Yes, Eric looked after him when he was alive and signed the death certificate when he died. He couldn't have done that six months ago, but now that they've graciously restored him to the Medical Register he can actually put his name to a piece of paper to say that you're properly and legally dead. God, what a bloody privilege.”

She laughed, and fumbling in the pocket of her slacks produced a packet of cigarettes and lit one. She handed the packet to Dalgliesh. He shook his head. She shrugged her shoulders and blew a puff of smoke towards him.

Dalgliesh asked:

“What did Father Baddeley die of?”

“His heart stopped beating. No, I'm not being facetious. He was old, his heart was tired and on 21st September it stopped. Acute myocardic infarction complicated by mild diabetes, if you want the medical jargon.”

“Was he alone?”

“I imagine so. He died at night, at least he was last seen alive by Grace Willison at 7.45 p.m. when he heard her confession. I suppose he died of boredom. No, I can see I shouldn't have said that. Bad taste, Maggie. She says he seemed as usual, a bit tired of course, but then he'd only been discharged from hospital that morning. I came in at nine o'clock the next day to see if he wanted anything from Wareham—I was taking the eleven o'clock bus; Wilfred doesn't allow private cars—and there he lay, dead.”

“In bed?”

“No, in that chair where you're sitting now, slumped back with his mouth open and his eyes closed. He was wearing his cassock and a purple ribbon thing round his neck. All quite seemly. But very, very dead.”

“So it was you who first found the body?”

“Unless Millicent from next door came pussy-footing in earlier, didn't like the look of him and tiptoed home again. She's Wilfred's widowed sister in case you're interested. Actually, it's rather odd that she didn't come in, knowing that he was ill and alone.”

“It must have been a shock for you.”

“Not really. I was a nurse before I married. I've seen more dead bodies than I can remember. And he was very old. It's the young ones—the kids particularly—who get you down. God, am I glad to be finished with all that messy business.”

“Are you? You don't work at Toynton Grange then?”

She got up and moved over to the fireplace before replying. She blew a cloud of smoke against the looking glass over the mantelpiece then moved her face close to the glass as if studying her reflection.

“No, not when I can avoid it. And by God, do I try to avoid it. You may as well know. I am the delinquent member of the community, the non-co-operator, the dropout, the heretic. I sow not, neither do I reap. I am impervious to the charms of dear Wilfred. I close my ears to the cries of the afflicted. I do not bend the knee at the shrine.”

She turned towards him with a look half challenging, half speculative. Dalgliesh thought that the outburst had been less than spontaneous, the protest had been made before. It sounded like a ritual justification and he suspected that someone had helped her with the script. He said:

“Tell me about Wilfred Anstey.”

“Didn't Michael warn you? No, I suppose he wouldn't. Well, it's an odd story but I'll try to make it short. Wilfred's great grandfather built Toynton Grange. His grandfather left it in trust jointly to Wilfred and his sister Millicent. Wilfred bought her out when he started the Home. Eight years ago Wilfred developed multiple sclerosis. It progressed very swiftly; within three months he was chairbound.
Then he went on a pilgrimage to Lourdes and got himself cured. Apparently he made a bargain with God. You cure me and I'll devote Toynton Grange and all my money to serving the disabled. God obliged, and now Wilfred's busy fulfilling his part of the bargain. I suppose he's afraid to back out of the agreement in case the disease returns. I don't know that I blame him. I'd probably feel the same myself. We're all superstitious at heart, particularly about disease.”

“And is he tempted to back out?”

“Oh, I don't think so. This place gives him a sensation of power. Surrounded by grateful patients, regarded as a half-superstitious object of veneration by the women, Dot Moxon—the matron so-called—fussing round him like an old hen. Wilfred's happy enough.”

Dalgliesh asked:

“When exactly did the miracle happen?”

“He claims, when they dipped him in the well. As he tells it, he experienced an initial shock of intense cold followed immediately by a tingling warmth which suffused his whole body, and a feeling of great happiness and peace. That's exactly what I get after my third whisky. If Wilfred can produce it in himself by bathing in ice cold germ-laden water, then all I can say is, he's bloody lucky. When he got back to the hospice he stood on his legs for the first time in six months. Three weeks later he was skipping around like a young ram. He never bothered to return to St. Saviour's hospital in London where he was treated, so that they could record the miraculous cure on his medical record. It would have been rather a joke if he had.”

She paused as if about to say something further and then merely added:

“Touching, isn't it?”

“It's interesting. How does he find the money to fulfil his part of the bargain?”

“The patients pay according to means and some of them are sent here under contractual arrangements by local authorities. And then, of course, he's used his own capital. But things are getting pretty desperate, or so he claims. Father Baddeley's legacy came just in time. And, of course, Wilfred gets the staff on the cheap. He doesn't exactly pay Eric the rate for the job. Philby, the odd job man, is an ex-convict and probably otherwise unemployable; and the matron, Dot Moxon, wouldn't exactly find it easy to get another job after that cruelty investigation at her last hospital. She must be grateful to Wilfred for taking her on. But then, we're all terribly, terribly grateful to dear Wilfred.”

Dalgliesh said:

“I suppose I'd better go up to the Grange and introduce myself. You say there are only five patients left?”

“You're not supposed to refer to them as patients, although I don't know what else Wilfred thinks you can call them. Inmates sounds too much like a prison although, God knows, it's appropriate enough. But there are only five left. He's not admitting from the waiting list until he's made up his mind about the Home's future. The Ridgewell Trust's angling for it and Wilfred's considering handing the whole place over to them, lock, stock and gratis. Actually, there were six patients a fortnight or so ago, but that was before Victor Holroyd threw himself over Toynton Head and smashed himself on the rocks.”

“You mean he killed himself?”

“Well, he was in his wheelchair ten feet from the cliff-edge and either he slipped the brakes and let himself be carried over or Dennis Lerner, the male nurse with him, pushed him. As Dennis hasn't the guts to kill a chicken let
alone a man the general feeling is that Victor did it himself. But as that notion is distressing to dear Wilfred's feelings we're all busy pretending that it was an accident. I miss Victor, I liked him. He was about the only person here I could talk to. But the rest hated him. And now, of course, they've all got bad consciences wondering if they may have misjudged him. There's nothing like dying for putting people at a disadvantage. I mean, when a chap keeps on saying that life isn't worth living you take it that he's just stating the obvious. When he backs it up with action you begin to wonder if there wasn't more to him than you thought.”

Dalgliesh was spared the need to reply by the sound of a car on the headland. Maggie, whose ears were apparently as keen as his own, sprang from her chair and ran outside. A large black saloon was approaching the junction of the paths.

“Julius,” Maggie called back to him in brief explanation and began a boisterous semaphoring.

The car stopped and then turned towards Hope Cottage. Dalgliesh saw that it was a black Mercedes. As soon as it slowed down Maggie ran like an importunate school-girl beside it, pouring her explanation through the open window. The car stopped and Julius Court swung himself lightly out.

He was a tall, loose-limbed young man dressed in slacks and a green sweater patched army fashion on the shoulders and elbows. His light brown hair, cut short, was shaped to his head like a pale glinting helmet. It was an authoritative, confident face but with a trace of self-indulgence in the perceptible pouches under the wary eyes and the slight petulance of the small mouth set in a heavy chin. In middle age he would be heavy, even gross. But now he gave an immediate impression of slightly arrogant good looks, enhanced rather than spoilt by the white triangular scar like a colophon above his right eyebrow.

He held out his hand and said:

“Sorry you missed the funeral.”

He made it sound as if Dalgliesh had missed a train. Maggie wailed:

“But darling, you don't understand! He hasn't come for the funeral. Mr. Dalgliesh didn't even know that the old man had snuffed out.”

Court looked at Dalgliesh with slightly more interest.

“Oh, I'm sorry. Perhaps you'd better come up to the Grange. Wilfred Anstey will be able to tell you more about Father Baddeley than I. I was at my London flat when the old man died so I can't even provide interesting death bed revelations. Hop in both of you. I've got some books in the back for Henry Carwardine from the London Library. I may as well deliver them now.”

Maggie Hewson seemed to feel that she had been remiss in not effecting a proper introduction; she said belatedly:

“Julius Court. Adam Dalgliesh. I don't suppose you've come across each other in London. Julius used to be a diplomat, or is it diplomatist?”

As they got into the car Court said easily:

“Neither is appropriate at the comparatively lowly level I reached in the service. And London is a large place. But don't worry, Maggie, like the clever lady in the TV panel game, I think I can guess what Mr. Dalgliesh does for a living.”

He held open the car door with elaborate courtesy. The Mercedes moved slowly towards Toynton Grange.

Georgie Allan looked up from the high narrow bed in the sick bay. His mouth began to work grotesquely. The muscles
of his throat stood out hard and taut. He tried to raise his head from the pillow.

“I'll be all right for the Lourdes pilgrimage won't I? You don't think I'll be left behind?”

The words came out in a hoarse, discordant wail. Helen Rainer lifted up the edge of the mattress, tucked the sheet neatly back into place in the orthodox hospital approved style and said briskly:

“Of course you won't be left behind. You'll be the most important patient on the pilgrimage. Now stop fretting, that's a good boy, and try to rest before your tea.”

She smiled at him, the impersonal, professionally reassuring smile of the trained nurse. Then lifted her eyebrow at Eric Hewson. Together they went over to the window. She said quietly:

“How long can we go on coping with him?”

Hewson replied:

“Another month or two. It would upset him terribly to have to leave now. Wilfred too. In a few months' time both of them will be readier to accept the inevitable. Besides, he's set his heart on this Lourdes trip. Next time we go I doubt whether he will be alive. He certainly won't be here.”

“But he's really a hospital case now. We aren't registered as a nursing home. We're only a home for the young chronic sick and disabled. Our contract is with the local authorities not the National Health Service. We don't pretend to offer a full medical nursing service. We aren't even supposed to. It's time Wilfred either gave up or made up his mind what he's trying to do here.”

“I know.” He did know, they both did. This wasn't a new problem. Why, he wondered, had so much of their conversation become a boring repetition of the obvious, dominated by Helen's high didactic voice.

Together they looked down at the small paved patio, bordered
by the two new single-storey wings which contained the bedrooms and dayrooms, where the little group of remaining patients had gathered for the last sit in the sun before tea. The four wheelchairs were carefully placed a little apart and faced away from the house. The two watchers could see only the back of the patients' heads. Unmoving, they sat looking fixedly toward the headland. Grace Willison, her grey untidy hair ruffled by the light breeze; Jennie Pegram, her neck sunk into her shoulders, her aureole of yellow hair streaming over the back of her wheelchair as if bleaching in the sun; Ursula Hollis's small round poll on its thin neck, high and motionless as a decapitated head on a pole; Henry Carwardine's dark head on its twisted neck, slumped sideways like a broken puppet. But then, they were all puppets. Dr. Hewson had a momentary and insane picture of himself rushing on to the patio and setting the four heads nodding and wagging, pulling invisible strings at the back of the necks so that the air was filled with their loud, discordant cries.

“What's the matter with them?” he asked suddenly. “Something's wrong about this place.”

“More than usual?”

“Yes. Haven't you noticed?”

“Perhaps they're missing Michael. God knows why. He did little enough. If Wilfred's determined to carry on here he can find a better use for Hope Cottage now. As a matter of fact, I thought about suggesting that he let me live there. It would be easier for us.”