"I must say I was worried before you telephoned to let me know what you
were up to. I had visions of the same thing as last time -- laying the
X-ray staff low in droves. Er . . ."
"If you're going to say something," Paul invited, "spit it out."
Ferdie took a deep breath. "She didn't perhaps put you in a compromising
situation without your encouragement, did she? That sort of thing can
happen so easily, and if your friend Dawkins burst in he could very well
have -- "
"That's enough," Paul snapped. "No, this is not, simply not, so! I'd
taken her for a drive all afternoon, we'd come m just a few minutes
before Maurice showed up, I'd been fixing a snack in the kitchen and
Urchin was in the bathroom. He knows my wife Iris, and his dirty little
mind invented an equally dirty reason for Urchin's presence. That's
all." He mopped his forehead absently. "Well, I'd better be getting
along. Among other things, there's a damaged hired car parked outside
my house that somebody is going to be looking for pretty soon, so I'd
better get in touch with the police. By the way, I know the psychiatrist
who looks after Maurice in London; I'll get on to him too and tell him
we're transferring him his patient tomorrow."
"Tomorrow's Sunday," Ferdie said.
"I know it is. He probably won't be at the hospital, but -- "
"Paul, I haven't got a spare driver available to take a patient to London
on a Sunday! We have a few empty bed-spaces; he'll do all right here
until he's far enough past his peak to be escorted home by train, or
maybe simply discharged."
-- No. I cannot, I dare not have Maurice at large in Chent spreading tales
about Urchin!
Paul climbed to his feet and stood over Ferdie with his fists clenched.
"Am I the psychiatric registrar here, or are you? Remember, I've dealt
with this man before and you haven't. I say he needs to go back at the
earliest possible moment to his regular therapist and the hospital he's
been in before!"
His swarthy Iberian face paling, Ferdie also rose. He said with equal
force, "And I happen to be the medical officer on duty here. I am not
going to send my one and only available ambulance all the way to London
with one patient on your say-so!"
"Then I'll just have to get someone to come up here and fetch him!"
"You do that," Ferdie said, swinging on his heel and marching towards
the door. "That, thank goodness, will be no concern of mine!"
Paul stood aghast as the door slammed. He had never before seen the
normally imperturbable Guianese even mildly annoyed. The implications
were terrifying.
-- He believes the story Maurice told him. He thinks I'm lying and want
to get Maurice away before I'm found out. Is he going to put it all in
the admission report? I'm done for, I'm ruined. God damn you, Urchin,
parading around naked for Maurice to see.
That thought washed away in another surge of actually painful desire.
When he recovered, he found to his horror that he had been picturing
himself going to the dispensary and drawing a hypodermic secretly,
thrusting it into Maurice's heart to inject a bubble of air at a point
where the bruise would conceal the mark from casual inspection.
-- Never. It's a disgusting idea. But if Maurice were . . .
He ran blindly out of the room, out of the building, as if he could
literally flee from such thoughts. At the Needle he stopped and bought
a bottle of vodka which consumed almost all the cash he had left since
his impulsive spending spree to clothe Urchin.
It was no longer Iris's presence that haunted his home now, but Urchin's.
The scent he had brought hot on her skin from the bath seemed to float
after him wherever he went; a shadow he mistook for hers darted away
at the edge of his vision, and imagination filled his hands with the
firmness of her muscles, the sleekness of her skin.
Hopelessly drunk, at four in the morning he found himself encouraging
her in hoarse whispers to finish the job she had begun on Maurice, to
clamp her steely little fingers on his fat wobbling throat and choke
the life out of him so that they might couple undisturbed beside his
body on the floor.
*39*
On Monday morning he did what he could to conceal the haggardness of
his appearance and went first thing to Holinshed's office.
"Yes?" the medical superintendent said, glancing up. "Oh, it's you, Fidler.
I was just about to send for you. Sit down. What is it you want, first?"
The words choked Paul as he forced them past his stiff tongue.
"Sir, I've been thinking over what you said on Saturday morning --
about Urchin -- and I've come to the conclusion that it would perhaps
be best if Dr Rudge took over her case."
"It's a bit too late for that, Fidler," Holinshed grunted. "I already have
the admission report here on this man Maurice Dawkins, and it's pretty
damning, to say the least of it. You've been caught
in flagrante delicto
with a female patient, and I have no choice but to suspend you from your
post forthwith and report your conduct to the General Medical Council."
"You're not going to believe the accusations of a psychotic!"
"If you imagined that Maurice Dawkins was insane, your incompetence must
be total and I cannot guess how you ever deluded me into accepting you on
my staff. He is and has been since he awoke yesterday -- and no doubt was
when you misused your status to have him committed -- in full possession
of all his faculties." Holinshed shuffled his papers noisily. "Dr Silva
assures me the matter is beyond doubt."
Paul screamed.
On Sunday afternoon after a great deal of difficulty, he managed to reach
his former colleague in London, and informed him that Maurice was at Chent
but ought to be brought back to his regular therapist at once.
"Sorry, old chap," the voice at the far end of the line replied, "no go.
No point! I'm moving to Edinburgh tomorrow and Charlie's emigrating to
America and nobody else here has any knowledge of his case. You have,
though. I'll send up his recent case-notes for you; I can't do any more."
"For God's sake -- "
"He's no particular trouble, old son. Bit of a loudmouth when he's in
the manic phase, of course. You should hear some of the dirty gossip he
spread about me around this place. It was kind of flattering -- answer
to a maiden's prayer stuff -- but he got practically everyone believing
it for a while."
Paul threw the phone at the wall and it smashed.
In the end Paul decided to ignore the whole business, trust to his ability
to furnish glib excuses for any accusation Holinshed might level at him,
and continue his work in exactly the same pattern as hitherto. Oliphant
brought in some memos from his charge nurse and plonked them on the desk.
"Morning, Doc," be said cheerfully. "Nice bit of nooky on Saturday night,
I hope? Heard about it from the ambulance driver. You old so-and-so, you!"
He gave Paul a playful jab in the ribs and went out.
"I must congratulate you, Doctor," Matron Thoroday said. "Of course,
it's hardly conventional treatment, but what insight to diagnose that
this was precisely what Urchin needed! She'll be out of here inside a
week if she continues to improve this rapidly."
"Can't say I expected you to take what I said about the therapeutic value
of orgasm at its face value in this fashion," Alsop grunted. "However,
the proof of the pudding, as they say . . . It's a remarkable development
in psychotherapy, to my mind, well worth a short paper in the
BMJ
. If
you'd care to use my name as co-author, please do so. I propose to try
the technique myself at the earliest opportunity."
"Brave of you," Mirza approved. "Often thought about it myself, to be
frank, but I didn't quite have the guts. Also there's the problem of
finding a suitable patient. I've got Urchin over in the male wards now,
though, co-operating an absolute treat. It's put life back into at least
half of the men there. And she's got such fantastic stamina! She seems
positively starved for it; been through about thirty of them already."
Paul picked up Maurice's clock by the statuette on top and smashed it
over Mirza's head.
"Thanks very much, Paul," said Maurice, washed, shaved, neatly dressed,
extending his hand to be shaken. "I don't know what I'd have done the
other day if I hadn't been able to locate you. I was sure you'd be able
to help."
Paul gripped the proffered hand squarely. "It's a pleasure, Maurice,"
he said. "Any time. And, speaking of time, did I remember to thank you
for the clock? Most kind of you." He hesitated. "Will you be seeing Iris,
by any chance?"
"I expect so. Bertie and Meg have invited me to dinner tomorrow, and
I imagine I'll see her there. I'll tell her you're getting on okay,
shall I? Not too badly despite her going away, at least not since you
acquired this snazzy little girl-friend I met at your place. One of the
patients, I gather. Look, if she gets out of here and is ever in London,
put her in touch with me, won't you? I doubt if Meg will tolerate Bertie
messing around with Iris indefinitely, and it would be nice for him to
have a complete contrast for the next one. You can trust me to pass her
on unscratched, tee-hee!" He giggled in his familiar camp manner.
Paul turned to pour him a farewell drink. Into one of the glasses he
tipped a generous measure of cyanide.
When he went to answer the knack at the door, he found Inspector Hofford
there. Hovering in the background was Mrs Weddenhall, clinging to two
monstrous hounds on a shared leash, while beyond her again were a number
of figures whose faces he couldn't discern -- whose only clearly visible
attribute, in fact, was the gun each one carried on his arm.
"Good morning, Dr Fidler," Hofford began in an apologetic tone. "Sorry to
bother you, but as the result of an information laid by Mrs Weddenhall,
JP, I have a warrant for your arrest on charges of assault and battery,
malicious false committal to an insane asylum, harbouring a dangerous
lunatic, gross indecency with a person below the age of consent, being
an accessory after the fact to an illegal entry into Britain, not having
a dog, gun or broadcast-receiving licence and disturbing Her Majesty's
peace. I also have a warrant to search these premises in connection with
the unexplained disappearance of one Maurice Boris Horace Doris Dawkins,
a spinster of this parish. How say you, guilty or not guilty?"
Paul slammed the door in his face, and it was ripped open again by the
thunderous blast of twelve-bore shotguns. Through the gap, torn in the
door like a paper hoop, leapt Mrs Weddenhall's hounds. They fell on him
and shook him like a rat until he died.
Paul pulled his car into the yard of Blickham General Hospital, jumped
out without removing the ignition key, and marched over the road to the
photographer's studio. Samuels was idly solving the crossword in his
morning paper.
"Yes, sir?" he murmured on Paul's entrance.
-- It won't be Llanraw, but at least it's away from Chent.
"I was in here on a Satutday morning some time ago, about the beginning
of March, I think, to have some pictures taken of a girl I brought in.
I'd like three more prints of that picture. Do you still have it by
any chance?"
"I believe I remember you, sir. Just a minute." Samuels vanished behind
his black velvet curtain, while Paul waited, humming to himself, surrounded
by the blind faces of strangers.
After some minutes, Samuels re-emerged. "Here you are," he said, showing
a negative. "Not much of a likeness, I'm afraid -- she wore that scared
expression while I was taking it -- but I can certainly give you some
more prints from it. How many will you be requiring?"
"Three. How soon can I pick them up?"
Paul walked into the bank and rang the little bell on the counter. To the
girl clerk who appeared he said, "I'd like to aee my current balance,
please."
Armed with the statement, which showed a healthy sum in credit, he marched
down to the far end of the counter and rang another bell labelled
Inquiries, Foreign Exchange.
To the stiff-collared male clerk who answered him this time he said,
"I'd like to draw my balance in traveller's cheques. How soon can you
have them ready for me?"
At home he kept a rubber stamp with the address of Chent Hospital on
it, for use when he had to deal with medical correspondence away from
the office. Chuckling a little over the almost hypnotic force which
rubber stamps exert on the official mind, he carefully laid it on the
back of each of the passport photographs of Urchin. Picking up a pen,
he hesitated.
-- Joseph Holinshed, MD, certifies that this is a true likeness of . . .?
Mirza Bakshad . . .? No, of course!