The Death Chamber (4 page)

Walter, understanding that the lunch was probably an informal preliminary interview, had written back to accept, and Sir Lewis had sent directions on how to find his house. It was a slight
surprise when he turned out to live in the old farmhouse Walter had admired from the road.

‘Were you thinking I’ve chosen to remain in Calvary’s shadow?’ said Sir Lewis, welcoming him, and Walter, who had not expected quite such perception or directness, said,
‘Yes, I was thinking that. It’s a beautiful house, though.’

‘It is, isn’t it? Parts of it are Tudor. It’s much too beautiful for a discussion about the judicial killing of murderers, but we’d better discuss it anyway.’

It was slightly disconcerting to take a seat in the mellow, low-ceilinged room, and know that the man facing him across the table had lived most of his life among convicted killers. Caradoc must
be sixty at least but he had the energy of a man far younger, and his eyes were dark and intelligent. There was no one else present; Walter tried to remember if there was a Lady Caradoc and could
not.

‘Hanging’s an ugly business, Dr Kane,’ said Sir Lewis. ‘I make no apology for talking about it while we eat, by the way: if you get this job that kind of ugliness will be
part of your life.’

‘I understand that. And I’m aware that hanging’s an ugly process.’

‘It’s squalid and raw.’ Caradoc studied Walter for a moment. ‘And,’ he said softly, ‘whatever your private beliefs, hanging a man is a distressing
business.’

They looked at one another. Then Walter said, ‘You’re thinking of my father, aren’t you, sir?’

‘Ah. So you do know what happened to him,’ said Caradoc. ‘I wasn’t sure whether you did.’

‘I do know.’

‘You can’t have been more than seven when he died. Hardly old enough to have understood.’

‘I didn’t understand,’ said Walter. ‘Not then, not properly. But later on I did.’

‘Did you know I was Calvary’s governor at the time?’ said Sir Lewis.

‘Yes.’ No need to delve into that memory of over twenty years ago: a younger Sir Lewis seated behind a desk and Walter’s mother seated opposite him, her face hidden by a thick
veil but the tear marks nonetheless visible.

‘Say goodbye to your father, Walter . . .’ That was what she had said as they were taken down the long passages with the cold stone floors. For a moment, he could see his own
seven-year-old self, frightened and bewildered, not understanding why he had been brought into a place of clanging doors and turning locks, and of people looking at him with pity.

‘Say goodbye, Walter, that’s what we’re here for.’

‘Yes,’ said Walter at last. ‘I did know you were at Calvary then.’

‘I thought you must.’ Sir Lewis frowned and then said, ‘Dr Kane, you’re young to be a prison doctor, but your qualifications are very good indeed and I think the board
will look favourably on your application. There’s no reason why any of them should connect you with your father. You’ve changed your name – it’s only a slight change, but
it’s remarkable how different Kane sounds from O’Kane. And it’s not for me to grill you about your work, but there is one question I’d like to ask.’

‘Yes?’

‘Was it because of your father – because of what he did and because of what happened to him – that you decided to study medicine and applied for the post here?’

‘It was partly because of my father, sir. It made me want to – to make lives more bearable for people facing death, or facing a life sentence. There’s still a dignity owing to
them, no matter what they might have done.’ He frowned. ‘That sounds a bit high-minded and grand, but it’s what I feel.’

‘I understand. Your mother’s dead, I think?’

‘Yes.’ There was no need to elaborate; to tell Caradoc that she had died of a broken heart and because she could not face the world any longer. Walter said, ‘I would very much
like to have this appointment, Sir Lewis.’

The smile came again. ‘I would very much like you to have it as well, Walter,’ said Lewis Caradoc.

‘He’s very young, of course,’ said Edgar Higneth, Calvary’s governor. ‘I had hoped for an older man. More experienced. More able to deal with the
really difficult ones. But the other applicants were quite impossible.’ He mimed the lifting of a glass. ‘One drank, the other was clearly inept. And you can’t have either in a
prison of this nature, as you know, Sir Lewis.’

‘I think Kane will deal with Calvary’s inmates very well,’ said Lewis. ‘He’s serious about his work and he’s completely honest. They’ll see that and
they’ll respect it.’

‘Yes. Very well, I’ll back your decision,’ said Higneth. He paused, and then said, ‘It looks as if Kane will have a baptism of fire. You’ve read the newspapers, I
take it?’

‘The Knaresborough case? Neville Fremlin? Yes, certainly, I have. There doesn’t seem to be much doubt about his guilt.’

‘I don’t think there’s any doubt at all,’ said Higneth. ‘Five women killed for sure – two stabbed through the base of the skull and two probably strangled.
The fifth was too badly decomposed for them to establish how she died. The bodies were all buried in Becks Forest a few miles outside Knaresborough.’

‘And one other possible victim, wasn’t there?’ said Lewis.

‘Yes, except they haven’t found her body. They’re bringing Fremlin here tomorrow, so I shouldn’t wonder if the newspaper reporters don’t flock here as well. Still,
it’ll be over by this time next month.’

Extract from
Talismans of the Mind
by C. R. Ingram.

It’s undeniable that down the centuries, men and women have ceaselessly sought for reassurances to ward off the darknesses of death – charms, spells, formulae.
Sometimes the charms have been elaborate and ceremonious – Druidic rituals or the breaking of bread and wine before an altar – and sometimes they have been macabre, as in the theft of
the hand of a hanged murderer.

Answers have been sought in strange places – a round table in a darkened room with a group of grief-stricken people groping for a hand-holding assurance that death is not the end. There
have even been men and women who have sought enlightenment within the death cells of the world’s prison-houses – the despair-soaked rooms where the remaining minutes of a life ticked
away like tiny hammer blows, all the way to the stroke of eight . . .

CHAPTER THREE

Thornbeck, when Georgina reached it, was one of those nice little market towns with which this part of England is sprinkled. It was tucked into the foothills of an unassuming
mountain which the local map disclosed as being Mount Torven. There was a clean-looking main street with bow-fronted shops and a couple of large chain stores specializing in walking boots and
camping and climbing equipment. There were also three white-fronted, bow-windowed pubs advertising bar food. None of it was aggressively touristy and at half past five in the afternoon the place
was modestly busy with people clambering onto buses or negotiating cars out of parking areas. After the lemming-like migration of London’s rush hour this was restful.

Caradoc House was on the outskirts of this subdued activity. Georgina, following Vincent Meade’s directions, was not quite sure what she had expected of a place that had been built or
purchased with Walter’s bequest, and she had whiled away the drearier parts of the journey by considering the possibilities. In the event, it turned out to be a medium-sized grey-stone house
that might originally have belonged to a modestly prosperous businessman, and it was situated on a steep winding little street near to a rather attractive square. Mount Torven reared up behind it.
Even on the brightest of summer days the rooms at the back would not get very much light, but if you lived here you probably would not mind because the surroundings were so gorgeous. Georgina liked
the house. It faced straight onto the road, but she managed to park at the side, and then walked around to the front. A square brass plate proclaimed it as, ‘The registered headquarters of
the Caradoc Society, formed for the pursuit of knowledge of psychic phenomena and the paranormal. Founded in 1917 by Sir Lewis Caradoc.’

The Caradoc Society might be winding itself down but it appeared to be doing so in a civilized and gentlemanly manner. The door was painted a glossy green, the brass door-knocker was polished.
As Georgina reached for the knocker a curtain in one of the downstairs windows twitched, and then the door was opened by a man who was presumably Vincent N. Meade. He was older than he had sounded
on the phone – at least sixty and probably a bit more – and well-built in a rather soft, flabby fashion. He wore a dark red velvet jacket, (
velvet
at half past five in the
afternoon?), with a pale pink shirt and a flowing cravat knotted at the neck. Georgina’s inner eye placed him in a sugary pink room furnished with puffy white sofas and tasselled satin
cushions.

Vincent Meade was apparently charmed to meet Georgina – actually Walter Kane’s great-granddaughter, my word, this was a historic day in the Society’s annals. His large soft
hands enfolded Georgina’s, and she had to repress the urge to snatch them away from him.

They were all so pleased she had agreed to make the journey, said Vincent, especially at this time of year, so dreary the autumn he always thought, and no doubt she led a very busy life. And was
this the only suitcase she had brought? Then he would carry it upstairs for her there and then – no, he insisted; there were two flights of stairs, and the second one was quite steep. To
someone who had had three years of David’s equality (‘You can manage your own cases, can’t you, George? Yes, thought you could,’), this modest chivalry was agreeable.

The flat was on the second floor, and consisted of an L-shaped room with easy chairs and a coffee table in the larger half, and sink, cooker and fridge in the shorter half. There was a narrow
bedroom with a divan and wall cupboards, and a minuscule shower room and loo opening directly off it. It was all perfectly clean and comfortable, although it had the characterless look of a hotel
bedroom and Georgina itched to bring the marvellous purple hillside colours into the house, and to put strong green ferns in copper pots to contrast with the white walls and beige carpet.

‘I think you’ll find it all right here, Miss Grey,’ said Vincent, setting the case down. ‘It’s very small, but we always hope it’s acceptable to our
visitors.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Georgina. ‘I’ll be very comfortable.’

‘There’s milk and bread in the kitchen, and the bed’s made up. There’s a radio but no television I’m afraid, on account of being almost smack up against the
foothills of Torven, as you might say. It’s only a small mountain, well, the purists would say it’s not really a mountain at all – not
high
enough, you see – but
whether it’s a mountain or a molehill the TV signal’s virtually non-existent.’

‘I believe I’d rather have Torven than television anyway,’ said Georgina, glancing through the window at the sweeping scenery. Even on a dark October evening the would-be
mountain was a spectacular, velvety sweep of purple and cobalt blue. She would leave the curtains open tonight so she could watch the light changing on Torven’s slopes.

‘Would you really? Now I’ll just bring you up a cup of tea – no, it’s no trouble at all, I had the kettle on in readiness for your arrival. I won’t be a
minute.’

He bumbled happily away, and while he was gone Georgina unpacked the few things she had brought with her, hanging her jacket in the wardrobe where it rattled emptily.

The tea, when it came, was in china cups with lemon as well as milk, and biscuits arranged on a paper doily.

‘The Society’s solicitor is expecting us at his office tomorrow morning,’ said Vincent busily pouring out the tea. ‘He’ll see the letters you’ve brought with
you, and there are a few of your great-grandfather’s papers that he’ll probably hand over at the same time. Ten o’clock. That won’t be too early after your long drive
today?’

‘No, of course not.’ Georgina was conscious of a twist of pleasurable anticipation. Papers that had been Walter’s. Perhaps letters or photographs . . . She had not realized how
much she had been looking forward to reaching back and taking hold of a hand out of the past. She asked Vincent if he had been secretary of the Trust for long.

‘I have held the post for forty-one years,’ said Vincent, with a sad brave smile. ‘I came to Thornbeck as a young man of twenty-one, and the Society has been a major part of my
life since that day – I have written a great many articles and pamphlets about our work. It’s very sad for me to see it all ending – and seeing this house sold as well. It was
bought with the Kane bequest in 1940, you know.’

‘Well, no, I didn’t. I don’t actually know very much about any of it,’ said Georgina. ‘I do know my great-grandfather worked at Calvary Gaol in the 1930s, but other
than that—’

‘Ah, Calvary,’ said Vincent, infusing his voice with a kind of affectionate sadness. ‘Calvary, Miss Grey—’

‘Georgina.’

‘Calvary, Georgina, has been almost as much a part of my life as this Society. Who knows what happened inside those grim walls in the past?’