Thorn (11 page)

Leo took the cup of coffee absently. ‘I shall find out eventually, of course,' he said, and Freda thought that any other man saying this would have sounded arrogant. Dr Sterne said it as one simply stating a fact. ‘But until I do find out, it would be very cruel indeed to keep her in Thornacre.' Leo paused, and then said, ‘I wondered whether you might be able to find a place for her here, Matron. I should be very grateful if you could.'

Freda maintained her smile but said it might be difficult. You did not run a nursing home on fresh air; books had to be balanced and bills paid. Briar House was not a charity.

‘I didn't expect there to be any charity in the arrangement,' said Leo, expressionlessly. ‘I thought it might be possible for her to work here and earn her keep. I'm sure you find it as hard as the rest of us to get good staff.'

This, of course, put a different complexion on the thing. The idea of gaining an unpaid helper was very appealing, and having one of Dr Sterne's protégées here might mean regular visits from him. Her mind flew ahead, seeing herself and Dr Sterne discussing the case over dainty tea tables, or even cosy little suppers.

And so she said cautiously that it might be possible to find a corner for Quincy. Should they say a trial period? Perhaps six weeks?

‘Good idea,' said Leo, standing up. ‘I'll arrange for her to come right away. She's an odd-looking little thing,' he said. ‘And by the way, she has a really remarkable talent for drawing and painting. I'd like that to be encouraged as much as possible, if you would, Matron. I think it's how we'll eventually reach her mind.'

‘We will hope so, of course, Doctor.' It was impossible to resist Dr Sterne when his eyes glowed with enthusiasm like this.

And really, so far it did not seem to be working too badly. Quincy was willing; she would do whatever was asked of her. She helped in the laundry and with the preparation of meals, even though her ideas of hygiene had made Freda throw up her hands in horror.

But she was sly. More than once, Freda had come upon her curled into the deep window seat on the half-landing, or folded into a corner of the nurses' common room, concealed by shadows or long curtains. Listening, said Freda, not best pleased. A sly little thing, creeping unnoticed about the house, picking up gossip and storing it away. A plain little thing as well. Dr Sterne might be concerned with Quincy's mind, or the lack of it, but Freda had to think about character, and what she thought was that Quincy was sly.

As for the famous art talent, as far as Freda could see the drawings were no more than scrappy bits of paper covered with time-wasting scrawls, best thrown in the dustbin. Real drawing was a nice vase of flowers, or a pretty landscape, or a rose-gardened cottage, not queer, warped people with distorted faces or disturbingly out-of-scale backgrounds. She thought, but did not say, that Quincy's peculiar drawings were as likely to be caused by astigmatism as by talent. An eye test and a good pair of glasses would cure that nonsense. She would take the girl to the optician's. It would look well to Dr Sterne; it would look concerned.

She made the appointment herself, and then turned to the matter of the Ingram girl. Unless Freda mistook the matter, this was one who was going to resist the prescribed sedatives. Freda knew all about these sly-boots girls who flushed tablets down the lavatory, and she was going to begin the tried and tested practice of crushing up an extra tablet or two in Imogen's cup of morning coffee. It would not hurt the child, and Freda was not going to risk losing this new and very welcome source of income. All kinds of extras had been suggested to Imogen's family and all had been agreed to without demur. Freda was thinking of having her private sitting room redecorated on the strength of it.

Having his brother in the flat was as easy and as undemanding as Dan had known it would be.

Oliver arrived just after lunch on Friday, his clothes untidily packed in a suitcase that was already spilling over the back seat of his car, but the notes for Dan's Victorian asylum-cum-workhouse pristinely arranged and slotted into a neat, labelled folder. He had quite enjoyed the drive here, he said. He had had a bit of difficulty finding one or two of the roads, but he had consulted an AA map a few times and in the end had found the way all right.

It was good to see him. It always was. Dan listened with interest to the gentle Oxford news and the unmalicious gossip and bloodless feuds, and wondered, as he always did when he was with Oliver, if he should have followed in his footsteps.

Oliver said he had quite a good set of students at the moment; a surprisingly large number of females were taking his course on national finance during the reign of Henry VIII, which was very gratifying. Of course, females took a much greater interest in finance these days, and old Henry was a colourful personage by anyone's standards.

Dan looked at his brother's ingenuous expression; at the clear grey eyes fringed with thick dark lashes and the lock of soft brown hair that tumbled almost permanently over his brow, and did not find it in the least surprising that Oliver had so many female students. The first time Dan had heard his brother lecture, his mouth had dropped open with astonishment. In everyday life, Oliver was hesitant and unsure; on home ground, talking about his own subject, he was incandescent. The women hung on to his every utterance, and he played them like a violin. The pity was that he did not realise it. Dan suspected the male students realised and privately ground their teeth.

One of the best things about Oliver was that he understood that when you were working, you were
working
and could not always afford to come out of it for very long. Dan, who could hardly bear to leave Rosamund for too long at this stage, seized Oliver's research notes about asylums and plunged back into chapter ten the same afternoon.

Rosamund was now completely isolated from her family and anyone else who might have rescued her – although Dan might allow her a faithful friend who could share some of the ordeals. She was tied up in a careful net of intrigue, starting with Margot who was after Rosamund's inheritance, and who was at the web's centre. She was a very feisty lady indeed, this one; Dan was greatly enjoying her. She had killed Rosamund's parents very satisfactorily, laying her complicated plans, and luring them both down to her country cottage and then into the disused wash house where she first drugged and then stabbed them. Dan became so enrapt with the gore and the stench of spilled blood and the screams for help that went unheard and unheeded that he forgot the time, and it was only when Oliver returned from wherever he had been for the afternoon that Dan discovered it was nearly seven o'clock. He stopped typing and said, vaguely, that they would send out for pizzas presently.

‘Certainly not. You've been working and you can go on working. I'll make us omelettes when you're ready. I can't bear those red and yellow rubber pizza things.'

Dan returned to the intriguing problem of how Margot was going to dispose of the two corpses which were still lying in a welter of gore in the wash house. He thought that the phone rang at one stage and he dimly heard Oliver answer it and hold a brief conversation with somebody. There was something about, ‘I'll make sure he phones you back as soon as possible – has he the number?'

Dan mentally relegated the telephone to the back of his mind and returned to Margot's dilemma. Was it possible that she could make use of the wash house to get rid of the bodies? Yes, of course she could.

And of course she did and it worked splendidly. She tipped both bodies into the old copper boiler, half-filled it with water, and lit the stove-like contraption underneath. Memories of visits to his grandmother in the country surfaced in Dan's mind: there had been a small stone wash house there, which had provided terrific quarters for hide-and-seek when he and Oliver stayed during school holidays. He remembered exactly how the mechanism had worked; he understood what had to be done, and Margot understood as well.

The stench of the boiling bodies was nauseating but there were no near neighbours so it did not matter. Margot did not mind the smell, in fact she gloried in it. She was an evil, warped bitch, and she exulted in what she had done. The abominable smell mingled with the drifting scents of somebody's autumnal bonfire in a nearby field. It was almost two days before the bodies of Rosamund's parents were boiled down to bones. The chapter ended with Margot standing gloatingly in the evil-smelling wash house, the twilight trickling in through the tiny grimed window and showering her with twisting purple and violet shadows.

Dan reread it critically and thought it was not bad. He thought he had evoked the claustrophobic eeriness of the place when it was deserted and also the nightmarish quality of the huge copper boiler itself. Could any of it be used as the reason for Rosamund's final plummet into real insanity? This had worried Dan quite a lot, because while beleaguered damsels had perforce to be consigned to pitiless stone wings of briar-enclosed castles, and villainesses had to stalk the darkness brandishing dripping knives, manipulating their wards' bank accounts by way of spare-time entertainment, it must all be credible.

Supposing Rosamund accidentally discovered what Margot had done? Supposing she somehow came upon the mutilated remains of her parents – perhaps her mother? Wouldn't that be enough to send a sensitive girl rocketing into hysteria at the very least? And wouldn't that hysteria be sufficient reason to take her from the relatively gentle, more or less humane side of her asylum and lock her away in the grim dark wing reserved for the helplessly insane?

And then Dan thought: what if Margot
makes sure
she comes upon the mutilated remains? Oh,
yes
.

He grinned with delight, jotted this down as the superstructure for the next chapter, and got up from the desk, conscious for the first time of aching back and shoulders. He walked round the sitting room twice to unstiffen his cramped muscles, and then went to see what Oliver had managed by way of supper, and who the phone call had been from.

Oliver was cooking cheese omelettes and the kitchen was pleasantly filled with the scents of melting cheese and garlic. He had found a French loaf that Dan had bought earlier that morning and forgotten about, and had spread it thickly with butter and chopped garlic, and put it in the oven, wrapped in foil. He had managed not to blow the cooker fuse this time, and had remembered how to set the timer as well. He had also opened a bottle of very good red wine which was, it appeared, one of a case given to him by the bursar of his college, three bottles of which he had brought for Dan.

The phone call had been from Dan's agent who had reportedly said that if Dan was not too taken up with writing the Great British Novel, there was a commission for him from a magazine.

‘He said it would be light relief and also some income. Dan, you aren't broke, are you?' said Oliver, concerned.

‘Not yet,' said Dan, dialling his agent's number.

‘Are you ringing him now? Isn't it a bit late?'

‘Piers never sleeps if there's money involved,' said Dan caustically.

‘It's a profile for
Women in Business,
' said Piers, who answered on the second ring. ‘I put you up for it and they're agreeable. Reasonably factual, and not too frivolous – well, you know the kind of thing, you can do it standing on your head. And that new magazine,
Integra,
they're interested in something as well. I've had a word with the features editor. You can be as frivolous as you like for that one, of course.'

‘Of course. How much are
Women in Business
paying? Ah. And
Integra
?
How
much? Yes, I thought that was what you said. Yes, I know it's generous. Well, of course I'll accept it.' He made a few quick notes, and then said, ‘Who's the subject, Piers?'

Piers laughed. ‘The new head of Ingram's Books.'

‘D'you mean Royston Ingram?'

There was the sound of papers being shuffled at the other end, and Dan had a swift, vivid image of his agent's office and the serried highly-organised chaos that reigned there.

‘Royston Ingram's dead,' said Piers. ‘Don't you read the obituary notices?'

‘No, I don't. I read the bankruptcy listings, to see if I'm in them yet. When did he die? And how?'

‘Heart attack just over a week ago. His wife died at the same time and—Did you say something?'

‘No. Go on.'

‘She had – what was it? – oh yes, a perforated stomach ulcer. One line of gossip says it was her death that brought on his heart attack, in fact. But no one really knows.'

‘I don't suppose they do.' But I think I know, thought Dan. I know why Royston Ingram's heart failed. He said, carefully, ‘Where do I come in? And who's the new head of Ingram's?'

‘Thalia Caudle,' said his agent.

There was an abrupt silence. Then Dan said, ‘Did you say Thalia Caudle? She of the voracious appetite for young men and lip-smacking mien?'

‘I did.'

‘
Thalia Caudle
's the new head of Ingram's?'

‘In theory. Royston left her control of the lot, or as near to the lot as makes no difference. The house in Hampstead, sixty per cent of the shares in Ingram's. The general opinion is that she'll float a public company like one or two other publishing houses lately, but I wouldn't bet the ranch on that. A press handout's just come through – I'll get a copy to you.'

‘How do I get to meet the lady?' demanded Dan. ‘Am I expected to climb the dark topless tower of the necromancer? Or ride on a bat's back—'

‘I've got her phone number,' interrupted Piers. ‘She's expecting a call from you. It's all very interesting, isn't it?'

‘That's not the word that springs to my mind.'

‘What is?'

‘Fortuitous,' said Dan. He wrote the phone number down and rang off.