Chapter One. Saturday.
Dr. James Stevenson sat back in his chair, adjusting his glasses in order to take a good long look at the man sitting to one side of the desk in his private consulting room. The doctor, a tall, austere looking man with iron-grey hair and somewhat aquiline features, had known the patient for many years, yet never had he been as concerned about him as he was at this time. He had seen the signs developing for many weeks now and knew that unless something happened to ease matters, there was every chance that the man would suffer a complete nervous breakdown. It was his considered opinion that the crisis point was fast approaching and needed to be dealt with as a matter of urgency. The difficulty as far as he was concerned lay in getting his patient to accept that fact. He put his hands together pensively under his chin as he decided upon the best way to deal with matters.
“My earnest advice,” he said slowly, carefully observing the patient’s reaction as he spoke, “is that you should take a complete break. I know that I’ve said this to you more than once of late, now I honestly feel it is imperative that you should do so, and soon. Get away from everything for a while, and give yourself a chance to recharge the batteries. Take it from me; working yourself to death is no answer to the situation. If you go on as you have been doing, well, let me put it this way; the chances are that you will make yourself seriously, and I do mean seriously, ill.”
The man addressed by the doctor made no immediate response as he rose from the chair he had been sitting on. He walked slowly across the room to gaze out of the window. He stood there, just staring out at nothing in particular and not really seeing anything. A tall, dark-haired well built man in his late thirties, with square-ish features, a strong jaw and heavy brows, he looked pretty much what he was, a confident, successful businessman, a person well able to cope with the ups and downs of life; a man who might listen, yet never be told, a man accustomed to making his own decisions in life, and having the nerve to back them up no matter what the risk. Strong, confident, determined, and yet there was also a dead look about his eyes that spoke of a deep inner suffering from which there seemed to be no escape.
“A holiday,” he murmured without much expression in his voice as he turned to face the doctor after about a minute of sightless staring out of the window. “Frankly, a holiday is probably the last thing I need. No, keeping myself fully occupied during the day, and consoling myself with whiskey of a night is the only way I can cope. I appreciate what you are saying; it won’t work. Can’t you just give me something to help me sleep?”
“I could,” the doctor agreed. “I could prescribe all sorts of things. Do you really want to go along that path? In your condition you could all too easily become dependent on them, just as I fear you are already getting a mite too dependent on the whiskey. Look, I know these last few months have been pretty hard for you, but you have to face up to things because there is no choice; life has to go on.”
“Does it?” There was still no expression in his voice. He walked slowly back from the window to slump down into the chair once more.
Although he was a few years the senior, Dr. James Stevenson had known Martin Isherwood from college days, and even though their careers had followed different paths, they had remained friends. James had gone on to medical school and had eventually graduated, and after a brief period as a junior house-doctor in a London hospital had returned to take up general practice in his old home-town. A few years later, following his own graduation, Martin had joined the engineering business founded by his father, who had died many years earlier, and had eventually taken over as managing director and principle shareholder. James had been the best man at Martin’s wedding, and at that point in his life it had seemed that luck had been smiling upon Martin, for he had been fortunate enough to find a wife in a million, as he proudly told all of his friends on many an occasion.
Then only a few short months ago, and quite without warning, his wife Alicia had suffered a massive stroke. Within twenty-four hours, in spite of everything that medical science could do, she had died. The whole thing had come like a thunderbolt, shattering his idyllic existence to smithereens. She had been a perfectly healthy woman who hardly suffered a day’s illness in her life; suddenly, she was no more. There was no family history suggesting that such a terrible eventuality was possible, and all who knew her were equally shocked and distressed. Martin had been totally devastated, and it had taken him a long time even to accept that she was really dead. He was like a man living a waking nightmare, mechanically going through the routines of life, yet feeling somehow detached from it all. In place of his once happy and wonderful life there was no simply a black empty vacuum.
Martin had buried his wife some three months since, but the agony of his loss would not leave him, nor would it diminish in intensity. During the day he threw himself into his work, and the pain receded a little into the background. At the end of the working day he would return to his home and the memories would come crowding back. He spent the nights endlessly pacing from room to room, yet there was no escaping from his tortured memories of one who had been more important to him than life itself. Consciously he accepted that there was no way the past could be undone, and that he needed to put everything behind him, yet somehow he simply could not come to terms with what had happened. Work, like drink and drugs gave only fleeting relief, and seeing his old friend James in his professional capacity was his last effort to break the cycle of the mental anguish and the resulting sleeplessness that was slowly destroying him. His
with his loss. Nights were an ordeal he dreaded; he lay for hours on end pining for Alicia, and sleep, when and if it came, was at best fitful. His common sense told him he couldn’t go on like it, yet how to break the cycle seemed to be forever out of his reach.
“I appreciate what you are saying,” he sighed at last. “I know that I need to be strong for Beverley’s sake. Believe me, I want to, I really do; if I could only sleep, maybe I can learn to live with the loss and perhaps get back to something like a normal approach to life.”
James was scribbling something on a pad as Martin was talking, and then he tapped a few keys on the computer keyboard that sat to one side of his desk. A few moments later the printer came to life and the doctor picked up the paper it ejected, scanned through it, and then offered it to his friend.
“Try these,” he said. “They are not the answer, but they may help in the short term. Only take them when you retire if you feel it is absolutely necessary. Just think over what I’ve said; get away somewhere, take a few weeks complete rest, give yourself the chance to grieve, because at the moment you are holding it all in, and it is eating away at your life like a psychological cancer. Believe me, Martin, it’s the only way you are going to get through this.”
By the time Martin reached his home it was mid-evening. He had stopped off at a chemist’s shop on the way and waited whilst the pharmacist dispensed the prescription. He was in no hurry, because there was nothing to look forward to beyond an empty house that resounded with echoes of Alicia. He parked the car in the garage and let himself in through the front door. As always, the silence and emptiness hit him hard. Alicia had always been there to greet him when he returned, no matter what the hour. There had always been something refreshing and relaxing about her; and the cares of the day would soon wither away as he relaxed in her company. She had been more than just a wife; she had been his soul mate. She could tune into his moods and worries with uncanny accuracy, and just talking with her smoothed out the problems and brought him peace of mind. He had always loved her, yet not until she died did he realise the full extent of how much he loved and depended on her.
They had had so many plans for the future, all the things they wished to do together. They were going to tour the world; they were going to visit relatives in Australia and New Zealand. They were going to found a charitable trust to help needy pensioners, together with various other projects. So many plans, hopes and ambitions, and now of course there was nothing. If he was honest, it was only the thought of Beverley being left to face the world on her own that stopped him contemplating something irrevocable.
He closed the door behind him and paused on the threshold as he often did. The house seemed to echo with the sound of her happy voice, her gentle laugh, and her whispered comments. Everywhere he looked there were reminders of her presence, and each one of these pierced him through and through. He poured himself a straight whiskey and took it through the house and out onto the rear patio. He slumped down in a chair and gazed out over the garden. It was her garden, her hobby, her main interest in life after the welfare of her family. He could almost see her there, waving to him in between attending to some task or other. It was still the same garden, yet in a way it mocked him, because the magic had gone out of it with her passing.
He downed the drink, wishing as he did so that he had thought to bring the bottle with him. It wasn’t the answer, but he knew from experience that once he had drunk enough it dulled the ache down to the point where he no longer cared about anything. He sat there for close on an hour before stirring himself. He wondered through to the kitchen where his part-time housekeeper, Mrs Croft had left a cold supper for him. He hadn’t eaten all day, and knew that he should, only right then he couldn’t face it. He went upstairs and had a shower and later, clad in dressing gown and slippers, he returned to the kitchen, picked up the cold meal, and took it, along with the newspapers into his study.
He had no real interest in the papers, they were a means of distraction. There was a decanter on a side table, and a second whiskey was soon to hand as he forced himself to read the Guardian and the local paper from cover to cover. The reading was mechanical, and most of what his eyes covered never registered. The international situation was tense, but then it always was. The financial markets were in crises, and there was nothing new in that either. The government was finally admitting that it had lost control of the immigration situation, a fact that had been common knowledge to everyone apart from the government for years. He finally threw the papers down in disgust and gazed unseeingly out of the window.
Maybe James was right; he needed to get right away from familiar surrounding for a while, away from everything that reminded him of what he had lost. The question was, even if he could stir himself enough to make the effort, where could he be bothered to go? The thought of visiting one of the more popular holiday resorts was an anathema, but then neither did he fancy trekking through uncharted country, or going on a safari or climbing a mountain. He’s done all these things in his time, and he had done them with Alicia, and Alicia was dead and he didn’t want to do any of it any more. Certainly he didn’t want to go anywhere where he would have nothing to distract him from the constant grinding ache of bereavement.
He reached for his whiskey tumbler again, and as he did so, his eyes fell on an envelope lying on his desk. Why one particular envelope amongst others should attract his attention he couldn’t for a moment imagine. It had obviously been opened, and it lay there with some papers partly protruding from within. Normally, he was a tidy and methodical man, but from the moment Alicia had died everything had become neglected. Papers, post, memos, assorted documents of every sort had simply been dropped on his desk, many of them unopened. He had scarcely been in his study from the time of his bereavement, except to raid the whiskey decanter, and he knew that he really should be dealing with matters.
He brushed the newspapers aside, picked up the envelope and pulled out the sheets of paper that were within.
As he looked at them, he suddenly remembered what they were. It was a letter from his solicitor dated a good three months ago, along with some documents and other matters that had seemed important at the time. He suddenly recalled that he had actually been reading the covering letter when tragedy had struck, and from that moment, along with everything else, it had lain forgotten on his desk.
In looking at the letter he recalled the gist of it. Matters had been so fraught after it had been received that he had done nothing about it; indeed, right up until that moment he had forgotten the matter entirely. The letter was from his friend and solicitor Charles Gordon, and referred to the will of his recently deceased uncle, Dr Henry Marston. Dr Marston was Martin’s late mother’s older brother, and as far as he could recollect, had been something of a recluse. The essence of the letter was confirmation that his late uncle had left Martin his house, together with the residue of his estate. Reading the letter again brought the whole business back to his mind.
Martin sat back in his chair, holding the letter in one hand and the whiskey glass in the other. As far as he could recall he had only seen his uncle once, and he had been a small child of about five at the time. Apart from a few disconnected fragments, his memory of the man, his home, even the nature of the occasion of that visit was all now hopelessly lost in the mists of time. He wasn’t aware of the existence of any particular family disputes, yet his mother had hardly every referred to her brother, and certainly he had never given the man any thought himself. Why he would want to leave him the house and the residue of his estate was a mystery, presumably it was because he had no descendants of his own, and there were no other close family members.