The Death Chamber (6 page)

‘And then Fremlin was arrested for the other murders in the same area,’ said Walter.

‘Yes. The Mollands followed the trial closely hoping for some clue, but there was nothing. They want to know the truth about what happened to their daughter.’

‘Even if the truth is that Fremlin killed her?’

‘Yes. That may sound strange but I can only liken it to the telegrams that used to be delivered to families in the war. “Missing, believed killed”, that was the wording used.
People who were sent those telegrams always said that not knowing was the worst part – that they would rather have a clean grief to cope with. You’re too young to remember the war, of
course, but—’

‘Sir, are you trying to ask me if I’ll question Fremlin about this girl, this Elizabeth Molland? In the hope that he’ll – what? Confess?’

‘Yes,’ said Higneth thankful to have it in the open. ‘Not question precisely, but probe a little. The inspector in charge of the case has made a private request to me that we
do all we can to find out.’

‘Why me?’ said Walter. ‘Why not you?’

‘It’s unlikely Fremlin will talk to me,’ said Higneth. ‘Although I shall try, of course. But he’ll see me as an authority figure – an enemy, even, and
he’ll close down.’

‘What about the chaplain?’

‘The chaplain,’ said Higneth sourly, ‘feels it would not be right for him to quiz a man under sentence of death, or to make use of any subterfuge. In any case, he will
apparently feel obliged to regard anything Fremlin tells him as under the seal of the confessional.’

‘Fremlin’s not a Catholic, is he?’ said Walter.

‘No, but the chaplain considers the same rules apply. Dr Kane, if you do this you must be very careful.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Higneth made an impatient gesture. ‘I don’t mean physically. I mean during conversations with him. He’s a clever devil and extremely charming. He’ll assess your weak
spots and make use of them. He’ll find out about you – who you are, what your hopes and ambitions are, details about your family. He’ll slide under your skin and you won’t
even realize he’s doing it. That’s how he’ll have got the confidence of all those women, and charm’s a thing that works on men as well as females, Dr Kane. So you must be
very wary of giving away any information about yourself.’

‘Would he use information to get sympathy?’

‘He might try coaxing you into some kind of mad escape plan,’ said Higneth. ‘It wouldn’t succeed – he’ll be well guarded – but that mightn’t stop
him trying. And if he decides he can’t charm you into helping him, he might try blackmailing you.’

‘Surely he wouldn’t do that.’

‘He’s got three weeks to live,’ said Higneth drily. ‘He’s got nothing to lose.’

Walter considered for a moment. ‘I won’t force anything with Fremlin,’ he said at last. ‘And I won’t use subterfuge.’

‘But you will do it?’

‘Yes, I will. I’ll talk to him.’

November 1917

‘Talk to him, Walter,’ his mother had said on that long-ago day. ‘Tell him what you’re going to do with your life.’

‘Will he want to know?’ The small Walter had not really understood what this was all about – he did not understand why his father had to be in this place or why they were going
to see him like this – but he did not like to ask questions. His mother had been crying and he had never seen her cry before, so he would have promised her anything in the world. He had said,
yes, he would tell about what he wanted to do when he was grown-up, and when finally they sat in the terrible room he had done as she had asked. The room had a smell to it that his seven-year-old
self had not recognized, but which his grown-up self later knew for human despair and misery. The dark-haired man seated at the table had not seemed to care about it or even, thought Walter, to
notice. It was difficult to think of him as his father because Walter did not really know him – he was always away fighting people it seemed.

But he explained about wanting to be a doctor when he grew up, so he could make people better.

‘That’s a very praiseworthy ambition, Walter.’

Walter had not known what praiseworthy meant nor what an ambition was, but his father seemed pleased, which was good.

‘There’ll be some money,’ he said, looking at Walter’s mother. ‘You understand that, don’t you? More than enough money to pay for his training –
university – whatever he ends up wanting.’

At the mention of money Walter’s mother had glanced at the other two people in the room, which Walter knew was because you did not talk about private things in front of strangers. The two
people were standing just inside the door, not speaking and not looking at anything; one was quite a young man with skin like lumpy porridge and little squinty eyes like a pig, but the other was a
lady, with fair hair and a face that slanted upwards like one of the pictures in
Peter Pan
, which was Walter’s most favourite book in the world. He had not expected to find a naughty
fairy like Tinkerbell in this bad-smelling place, and he had wanted to go on looking at her. He had not done so because it was rude to stare at people.

‘It’s all right,’ said Walter’s father. ‘They hear everything I say. These two – or two like them are with me all the time.’ He paused, and then said
softly, ‘It’s to make sure I don’t die too early. Death watch, they call it.’

At this, Walter’s mother pressed her handkerchief to her lips as if she might be sick which worried Walter greatly. She said, ‘The money – I don’t want the money. Every
time I used it I should see the drowned faces of all those young men you betrayed.’

‘That’s being melodramatic. See now—’

‘It’s the money they gave you for what you did, isn’t it?’

There was a pause then he said, ‘It is not,’ but Walter knew from his voice his father was lying.

Walter’s mother knew as well. She said, ‘It’s tainted. I’d rather give it away.’

‘Then give it to Walter. Let it help him when he needs it – sometime in the future.’ He made an impatient gesture, and said, ‘I never wanted paying, you know. I believed
in what I did – I thought I was serving a cause.’ A brief shrug. ‘All wrong, of course. I was angry with the British – you never saw what they did in Ireland, did you? And
we had a dream – Irish Independence.’ He frowned, and then said, ‘Remember, Walter, that it’s a marvellous thing to have a dream, an ideal. But you have to make sure
it’s the right dream.’

‘Yes, sir,’ mumbled Walter, who had no idea what they were talking about but was trying to store the words in his mind. He thought one day he might understand; so it was important to
remember as much as he could.

‘I had the wrong dream, you see. Dying in a war – for a cause you believe in – that’s romantic. It’s very nearly noble. But if it turns to hatred, that’s a
bad thing.

‘The Easter Rising was meant to achieve so much. But it achieved nothing except failure. Dublin fell, and they executed the rebels in Kilmainham Gaol . . . De Valera’s in gaol, and
the sovereignty they promised Ireland isn’t likely to happen – remember I said that, will you? We all expected to die,’ he said. ‘Patrick Pearse, Michael Collins and all the
rest. Everyone who signed the Proclamation of an Irish Republic knew there was about a thousand to one chance of surviving.’ He blinked, and then seemed to realize where he was. ‘But I
never expected to die like this, in a squalid death cell, counting the hours away until the day after tomorrow.’ A look passed between them at that point; as if, Walter thought, they had
clasped their hands together. ‘You know it will happen the day after tomorrow?’

‘Yes. Sir Lewis Caradoc told me.’

‘Eight o’clock,’ said Walter’s father. ‘I understand they’re always punctual. They’ve got extra guards on, I think.’

‘In case you fight to get free?’ It came out on another of the stifled sobs.

‘I shan’t fight my love. But they’re worried in case a rescue’s tried.’

‘Will it be?’

‘I don’t think so. No. You mustn’t even think it.’ He looked back at Walter. ‘Walter, there’s a piece of writing I want you to have. Part of a poem. You
won’t understand it now, but one day – perhaps when you’re that doctor you’d like to be and you’re helping to make people better – then you will understand
it.’ He held a sheet of paper up for the two people at the door to see, and the mischievous-fairy lady nodded, and he said, ‘Thank you, Belinda,’ and gave it to Walter.

Walter was not sure if he was meant to read it at once, and when he looked at the words, he did not think he could manage them anyway. He looked at his mother in sudden panic, but then his
father said, very softly, ‘Walter, this is what it says.

‘It’s a poem written by an Irishman called Tom Kettle. I know you don’t understand it now, but one day I think you might. So when you’re a bit older I’d like you to
read it sometimes and think about me. Will you do that, Walter? For me? Because I’m about to die for a dream, you see.’

‘Yes,’ said Walter. Not really knowing what he was promising. ‘Yes, I promise.’

‘Nicholas, they are looking after you, aren’t they? They are being kind to you?’

‘I have no complaints,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Although there’s a doctor here who stares at me as if he’d like to collect my soul. It’s not worth the
collecting, of course.’ He glanced at the warders, and then reached for her hand and held it tightly. In a totally different voice, he said, ‘Pray for me when eight o’clock chimes
the day after tomorrow. Will you?’

‘Yes. There’s no chance of—’

‘A reprieve? A rescue? No chance at all.’

After they got home – two long train journeys, the carriages stuffy and crowded with bad-tempered people – Walter had his supper, and went to bed as usual.

All through the next day he thought about the dreadful room and the man in it, and he pored over the writing on the paper trying to make out the words. He thought about the woman with the slanty
face and tilting-up eyes, as well. Belinda, that had been her name. It was a very suitable name for her, and he was glad she was there with his father in the sad room. Once or twice he thought
about the doctor who had wanted to collect souls. You surely could not collect a soul, could you?

On the second morning his mother came into his bedroom very early – it was barely half past six and a thin grey light trickled in through the curtains; it was only then that he remembered
this was the day after tomorrow.

He had a mug of milk and some bread and honey, and they walked quietly along the street to the little church where they went each Sunday morning and which smelled of the stuff the vicar put on
his chest every winter.

‘It’s not your father’s Church,’ said his mother. ‘Not exactly, because he’s Catholic. But it’s my Church and it’s where I want to be now.
There’s no one about,’ she said, pushing the door open and peering inside. ‘That’s very good, because no one must know any of this. You understand that, don’t you,
Walter? You must never tell anyone where we were two days ago. In any case, we’re going to live somewhere else soon, and we won’t be called O’Kane any longer, just
Kane.’

‘Won’t that cost a great lot of money?’

‘We have some money,’ said Walter’s mother, but she shuddered as she said this and Walter remembered what she had said about the drowned faces in the money. He thought he would
make sure not to look at the money too closely in case the poor drowned faces swam up out of it like dead fish.

But he was intrigued by the thought of going to live somewhere else and of changing his name, and he thought about it while they knelt down in the pew they always had on Sundays. His mother read
bits from her Bible, and then she read the writing on Walter’s piece of paper. Walter listened, not speaking, because you had to be very quiet in church. He supposed that one day he would
understand the words about dying not for a king but for a dream.

He was so absorbed in thinking about all these things, that he did not hear the church clock begin to chime eight.

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

During the First World War, telegrams were sent to inform relatives that their sons, husbands, brothers, were ‘Missing, believed killed’. They were grim, soulless
little pieces of paper but, given the circumstances and the technology of the times, it’s difficult to know how else the information could have been conveyed.

And so, from the complex emotions of not knowing whether their loved ones were alive or dead, a whole new culture of spiritualism grew up – a culture of table-turners and mediums offering
to contact the spirits of the dead young men; of automatic writing and Ouija boards. Letters of the alphabet arranged in a ring with fingers on a glass tumbler to pick the letters out so a message
was spelt out, often to the accompaniment of accusing voices claiming that somebody had pushed the tumbler. Was it you who pushed it, Arthur? Certainly not, says Arthur indignantly, even though he
did in fact push the tumbler. But to be fair to him, it was because he is weary of his poor wife’s grief and of his own grief as well, and if there can be a message from their boy who died on
the Somme perhaps the family can find some peace at last.

‘J’, says the tumbler squeaking decisively across the table top, and there’s a gasp from the darkness. A female voice, pitiful with hope, whispers, ‘Is that you,
John?’ or ‘James?’ or ‘Joseph?’ And, oh yes, of course, it
is
John or James or Joseph. Such a useful letter to choose: J, the start of so many good English
names.

Don’t worry about me, ma, spells the message laboriously; it’s all peace and love and sunshine up here, and Baby Jack who died of the cholera when he was a mite, sends his best, and
grandma says hello . . . Oh, and remind pa to make a contribution as you go out – there’s a box in the hall . . .

Within that culture grew a subterranean culture of its own – that of avaricious charlatans, manipulators and what were once called thimble-riggers, all of them hell-bent on exploiting the
bereaved.