Tower of Silence (17 page)

He came back into the room and got into bed. As he tried to sleep, he felt his mind reaching out to Joanna who had slept in this bed and used this room. He had never been able to decide about telepathy, but he and Joanna had been so well attuned that they had often picked up
one another’s thoughts or started to say exactly the same thing at exactly the same moment. If Joanna was still alive surely she would be picking up his frantic anxiety about her now? But I can’t feel anything at all, thought Krzystof, and was aware of a cold clutch of despair. Don’t be dead, Joanna. I couldn’t bear you to be dead.

But although he could not sense anything of Joanna, he could sense other, slightly uncomfortable, things inside this dim, old-fashioned house. ‘That’s the Hungarian half coming out, Krzystof darling,’ Joanna would have said, grinning the urchin-grin. ‘The half that thinks it ought to be fey, and know about old romances and ancient ghosts and weird forest-spirits.
Rusalka
and
vila
and what not. You do trade on your Hungarian mama at times, don’t you?’

Nobody but Joanna had ever spotted that Krzystof, born and brought up in England, did trade on the Hungarian half, usually at times when he was feeling particularly unsure of himself. It was a mask to hide behind and it was a good mask. But Joanna had seen the mask from the first, of course; she had seen behind it to the real person, and that was one of the reasons why Krzystof had fallen in love with her.

He thought he was not being Hungarian or fey about Teind House, though. At first encounter it felt like an ordinary, rather quiet, house, its atmosphere the atmosphere you got in places where people had lived uneventful lives, and there had mostly been old people and no children. As if the walls soaked up the long periods of silence and stillness.

But Krzystof had the feeling that Teind House might have other, less tranquil, things beneath its façade: he thought it might have dark memories and old unhappinesses, into which, if you were not careful, you might stumble by accident, in the way you could stumble into a pool of sour icy water in the dark…

He sat up in bed, punched the pillows crossly to make them more comfortable, dragged the covers around him, lay down again, and finally fell down into an uneasy sleep where he dreamed that Joanna was drowning in a bottomless pit of black and freezing water, and he was unable to reach her.

A watery sunlight trickled into the small square room that Miss March had referred to as the breakfast room, and as Krzystof sat down at the neatly laid table a small, streak-haired creature wearing a purple T-shirt and rainbow-coloured combat trousers came in, bearing a platter of scrambled eggs and ham. Krzystof said good morning, and then realised that this must be Miss March’s ‘helper’, Emily. He saw what Joanna had meant about the three-cornered face. It was a bit like being served breakfast by a Puck-character, who might disapprovingly have surveyed the mushroom table with its hazel-cups of mead and moon-parch’d grains of wheat and said, oh sod this, let’s eat proper food this morning.

In addition to the eggs and ham, it seemed that the kettle was just boiling, so there would be tea any minute, although not orange juice because the fridge had
defrosted itself during the power cut, and not coffee either on account of the percolator’s having blown a fuse when the power came back on again.

‘Tea’s fine,’ said Krzystof. ‘Are you Emily? My wife–Joanna–mentioned you in a letter.’

The wood-sprite admitted gravely to being Emily, suddenly observed that the milk jug was missing and that Miss March would go ballistic if she spotted it, and darted into some nether region to remedy the omission.

When the errant milk jug had been brought, and with it a large pot of tea, she said, ‘It must be agony having your wife suddenly vanish.’

‘Yes, it is. The police think she’s gone off with a lover.’ He watched Emily covertly to see what reaction this got.

Emily said at once, ‘She wouldn’t have done that.’

‘You’re the first person I’ve met in Inchcape who doesn’t think so.’

‘She missed you,’ said Emily. ‘There wasn’t anyone else.’

‘Did she tell you that?’ Krzystof poured himself a cup of tea.

‘No, but she–when she talked about you–about missing you–her whole face changed. As if a light had come on inside. You don’t look like that if you’re having an affair.’

Krzystof stared at her. ‘Thank you, Emily,’ he said at last.

‘Did you know her laptop’s still upstairs?’

‘Is it? Are you sure? I didn’t see it.’

‘Miss March put it inside the large suitcase. She thought it would be safer there.’ Emily hesitated, and then said, ‘Your wife came here to work, didn’t she? To make notes for a new book, or research a plot or something like that. She was here for four days before she vanished, and I’m sure she did quite a lot of work in her room. She wouldn’t have gone off and left all that behind, would she?’

‘No,’ said Krzystof slowly. ‘No, she wouldn’t have done that.’ He took a sip of the hot tea, and as she turned to go he said, ‘Hold on a minute, Emily. You’ve got some connection with Moy, haven’t you? I’m hoping to go up there after I’ve talked to the police at Stornforth, to see if I can pick up any clues to Joanna’s disappearance–she gave a talk there, I think. But I don’t know who I should ask to see.’

It appeared that the Moy connection was via Emily’s father who was one of the wing governors at Moy. ‘He’d be very happy to talk to you, I should think–his name’s Don Frost–but it’s Dr Irvine you really ought to see,’ said Emily, and Krzystof saw her cheeks turn pink when she said Irvine’s name. ‘That was who your wife saw,’ said Emily firmly, and Krzystof remembered what Joanna had said about a bit of a yen, although he suspected that Emily was a bit old to be suffering from a bit of a yen. The look was deceptive; she was probably twenty or even twenty-one.

He said, ‘Thank you. I’ll phone him after breakfast and see if I can get out to see him later today.’

Krzystof had been in too many of the world’s odd places
not to know that strong emotion could print itself on the air, could even bury itself in walls and stones and timbers as well, lingering on for years sometimes. But he had not been prepared for the bleak loneliness and the bitter despair that lingered within Moy.

There was a feeling of tension, as well: of anger and bitterness and bewilderment, all tangled messily up together, but all rigidly suppressed. As if a lid had been clamped firmly onto a seething cauldron whose contents were just that little bit too violent for it, so that tiny hissing spurts of emotion escaped at intervals.

‘I don’t think I can be of much help,’ said Patrick, when Krzystof reached his office later in the morning. ‘I wish to God I could–you must be absolutely frantic with worry. Let me see. Well, your wife was certainly here on Thursday afternoon. She got here just before two, talked to a dozen or so of the inmates, and left around five. I didn’t see her actually leave, but I did check with the gatehouse when Miss March phoned. The man on duty was definite about her driving away.’

Patrick had seen, almost straight away, that he had been quite wrong about the kind of man Joanna Savile had married. Krzystof Kent was neither wimpish nor dominant. He was a thin, slightly untidy young man of around thirty-five, with gentle eyes and hands, and an intelligent mouth. He had very clear grey eyes, black-rimmed, and Patrick noticed the high, eastern European cheekbones. Had Joanna said Romanian or Hungarian or half Hungarian? Despite the gentleness, he thought there was a hidden core of toughness here, and he thought that
this was a very good partner for Joanna. He hoped very strenuously that she would turn up unscathed, and then he hoped even more strenuously that she had not run away with a lover.

Krzystof Kent said, ‘I’ve talked to the police in Stornforth. They’ve made a bit of a search, but because a few of her things are missing–extra clothes and shoes–it looks as if she went voluntarily. As if it was planned. So they aren’t prepared to mount a full-blown search.’ He leaned forward. ‘But I don’t believe she went off like that. I can’t. Her letters—I’d have known if there was a lover in the picture. So I’m trying to scrape up a few clues–something that will help me find out where she is. Or something that will make the police think again about a proper search.’

Patrick felt an unexpected pang. How must it feel to be so extremely close to someone that you could speak with such absolute conviction? Krzystof Kent wasn’t just hoping that Joanna hadn’t gone off with another man, he
knew
she hadn’t.

‘I wondered,’ said Krzystof, ‘if Joanna had seemed to–to latch onto any of the people here? I’m groping in the dark, you understand. But the police have helped me to piece together a sketchy timetable, and it sounds as if she vanished just after leaving here. The car she hired was left outside Teind House, but Miss March didn’t hear her actually come in.’

‘The inference being that she parked the car and went off to–wherever she is now?’

‘Yes. Either she went very quietly into the house and took some things from the wardrobe, or she had them in
the car already and–well, transferred them to another car.’ He paused, and then said, ‘I know this sounds peculiar, but I wondered if anything was said while she was here that might have–well, unsettled her.’ He made a quick impatient gesture with one hand. ‘Or that might have dredged up some memory—’

‘And triggered off a bout of amnesia, or a psychotic disturbance?’ You’re clutching at straws, my friend, thought Patrick. People with amnesia don’t collect extra clothes before they vanish. But as if he had picked this up Krzystof Kent said, ‘Agatha Christie vanished for a couple of weeks, and nobody ever really had a satisfactory explanation.’

‘If I said that the disappearance was very good publicity for Miss Christie’s books, would you punch me?’

‘Yes, but I’d probably apologise afterwards,’ said Krzystof, and smiled.

‘Your wife struck me as being particularly well balanced,’ said Patrick after a moment. ‘But there was one very small thing—’

‘Yes?’

‘The talk she gave was by way of a
quid pro quo
. She was hoping to get some background for a book–I expect you know about that. She offered to give the talk so that she could pick up a few details about ordinary daily life inside Moy.’ Patrick smiled. ‘Always allowing for the fact that life inside Moy, or any other criminal asylum, is seldom ordinary.’ He paused, and then said, ‘I thought she seemed particularly interested in one of the inmates.’

‘You did? Who was it?’

Patrick hesitated again. I could be wrong. I could be sending this nice, clever, worried young man onto a wildly wrong track. But there was that look in Joanna Savile’s eyes—

‘It was Mary Maskelyne,’ he said, and Krzystof frowned, as if processing this information.

‘The teenage murderess?’ he said, at last.

‘Yes. She was transferred here two or three weeks ago.’

‘I don’t remember reading about that. But I’ve been abroad for several weeks so I could easily have missed it. I can’t think of any reason why Joanna would find her especially interesting,’ said Krzystof. ‘It was a
cause célèbre
in the Sixties, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, Maskelyne killed both her parents. She was only fourteen at the time and it was just after the hanging law was repealed; if it had been three or four years earlier and she had been three or four years older she would probably have been hanged. She might have been released at eighteen but it was believed that she had killed the matron of the YOH–they never proved it and the verdict was accidental death, but I don’t think anyone was in much doubt. So the Home Secretary was recommended not to release her. And then later, of course, Maskelyne killed twice more.’

‘And Joanna seemed interested in her?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s presumably completely mad, this woman?’

‘A lot of people would tell you that she has quite
prolonged intervals of complete sanity,’ said Patrick dryly.

‘You’re hedging. Patient confidentiality?’

‘Partly. I won’t bore you with labels, but I can tell you that there’s a strong personality disorder at base.’

‘Multiple personality?’ asked Krzystof, hesitantly. ‘Schizophrenia?’

‘The word covers a multitude of demons, but it’s as good a one as any. She certainly has delusions.’ Patrick had been watching the other man closely, but there had seemed to be no reaction at all to Maskelyne’s name. He said, ‘Joanna asked me about Maskelyne prior to the talk. She seemed particularly interested in her. It might just have been the publicity that had surrounded the transfer–the original murders were dragged out and re-examined by the wretched media, of course, and your wife might simply have been thinking it would be a good case study for her research. But—’

‘But you think there was a bit more to it?’

‘Yes, I do, actually.’ Patrick hesitated. Do I tell him that the interest seemed to be two-way? That I saw Maskelyne’s face take on that look–that
hungry
look–when she saw Joanna? Choosing his words carefully, he said, ‘Is it at all likely that your wife had ever known Mary Maskelyne?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Krzystof. ‘I should think she’d have mentioned it. And anyway there’d be a gap of about twenty years between their ages, wouldn’t there?’

‘Yes, but Joanna might have known the family. Or her mother or father might have known them. If that was
so she’d probably have been a bit curious about Mary. Anyone would.’

‘Joanna’s parents died in a car crash when she was at university,’ said Krzystof. ‘And she was an only child. There are a couple of aunts and cousins, but they aren’t very close. I don’t really think there’s any connection with Mary Maskelyne; in fact I think you were probably right about Joanna seeing the case as a good one to use for background.’

‘I expect you’re right.’

Patrick waited, and after a moment Krzystof said, ‘Would you allow me to see her?’

‘Maskelyne?’

‘Yes.’

There was a longer pause this time. Then Patrick said, ‘If you think it would do any good—’

‘She might remember something that Joanna said. I’d be extremely careful,’ said Krzystof. ‘I’d observe any rules or security checks you wanted.’

‘All right,’ said Patrick, after a moment. ‘We’ll do it now, if you like. Her room’s in D wing–that’s at the centre of the building, on the first floor.’

‘She has her own room?’ Krzystof had been imagining wards, grim dormitories.

‘They all do. It’s the only way we can operate,’ said Patrick. ‘We simply can’t risk putting them all together. And when they do meet we see to it that they’re always accompanied by at least one attendant to every four.’

‘They do get together at times, then?’

‘Yes, certainly. Most of them eat together–there’s
a quite cheerful dining room downstairs. Some of the patients are too severely disturbed to be allowed to mix, but quite a number can. We give them group therapy and occupational therapy–music sessions, educational classes.’ He stood up and reached for a set of keys in the drawer of the desk.

‘I’ll have to come in with you, of course, but you can talk to her fairly freely. I won’t interfere unless I think I can help. Or,’ he said, ‘unless I think she’s edged you into a potentially dangerous thread of discussion.’

‘Is that likely?’

‘She might. How much do you know about her?’

‘I know she butchered her parents, but I don’t know very much more.’

‘Looked at objectively she makes an interesting study,’ said Patrick. ‘She’s extremely clever, by the way. That surprises you?’ he said, for Krzystof had looked up sharply.

‘Yes. I don’t know why it should.’

‘Maskelyne is clever and cunning and very devious,’ said Patrick. ‘However ordinary she might seem, she isn’t ordinary in the least.’ He thought for a moment, and then said, ‘I don’t think it’s breaking confidentiality very much to say that in my opinion it’s when she appears sane that she’s at her most mad and her most dangerous.’ He opened the door and stood back to let Krzystof go through. Krzystof noticed he locked the office door before leaving.