The Bedlam Detective (37 page)

Toward the end of the ghost story, Sir Owain’s man came in. He waited until the tale was over before clearing the plates and the bones.

He said to Sir Owain, “Will you need me for anything else tonight, sir?”

And Sir Owain said, “No, Thomas. Just bring us the pudding and the rest of the night’s your own.”

Dessert was a dish of vanilla-flavored cream. When they were done, Dr. Sibley started to collect their crockery together.

“Oh, leave it, man,” Sir Owain said. “Thomas will deal with all that in the morning.”

“Not on a Sunday, he won’t,” Dr. Sibley said.

“It can wait until Monday, then.”

“So we just close the dining-room doors on all the mess? And what will your guest think of us if we do?” He said it with a wink to Sebastian, who could imagine that the mariner in him was offended by such untidiness.

With good humor, Sir Owain pushed himself back from the table and let the physician get on with his domestic business. Sibley piled up the dessert dishes with Sir Owain’s barely touched portion on top.

Sebastian said, “May I have the use of your telephone? There’s a call I ought to make.”

“Come to my study,” Sir Owain said. “You can have some privacy there.”

Sebastian was led to the book-lined room where he’d conducted his first interview with the industrialist. The typewriting machine was still on the desk, but he saw no telephone until Sir Owain reached down and produced one from the drawer.

After making sure that Sebastian knew how to get a connection, Sir Owain withdrew. Within a few minutes Sebastian was speaking to Stephen Reed, who’d been awaiting this call.

Sebastian said, “All’s well. But it’s not the night we were hoping for.”

“No confession?”

“The pair of them are being downright sociable.”

“Don’t lower your guard,” Stephen Reed warned him.

“No, of course not. But I’ve watched Doctor Sibley account for most of a decent Burgundy, and if a man doesn’t make a slip after that, you start to wonder if there’s a slip to be made.”

As if in ironic counterpoint to his remark, at that moment there was an offstage crash from somewhere in the direction of the kitchens. The sound of breaking crockery is unique and was easy to identify.

Sebastian said, “I suspect that was him.”

“What should I do? Wait up for you?”

“No,” Sebastian said. “They’ve just dismissed their driver, so I imagine I’ll be offered a bed for the night.”

“Be sure you lock the bedroom door.”

“I’ll have a chair under the handle and my revolver under the pillow,” Sebastian said. “Don’t lose any sleep over me.”

At that point, he became aware of Sir Owain standing in the doorway. He hadn’t even heard the study door open. How long had the man been there? What had he heard? Sebastian quickly finished the conversation, ending it with a few neutral pleasantries that alerted Stephen Reed to the change in his situation.

When he saw that the call had ended, Sir Owain came fully into the room and settled himself into the second chair, across from Sebastian.

“So,” he said.

“So indeed,” said Sebastian, uncertain of where this was going.

“There was a piece of moving-picture film? What did it show?”

“Nothing conclusive,” Sebastian said. “Something or someone rushing at the camera.”

“Do you know who or what?”

“I’m in no position to say.”

Sir Owain said, “I know what your real suspicions are. You want to know if I could have killed those children. So do I.”

Sebastian started to frame a reply, then stopped. Sir Owain seemed entirely serious. Sebastian said, “
Did
you kill them?”

“I don’t know,” Sir Owain said.

“But are you telling me it’s possible?”

“My heart says no. But I’m a scientist. I have to start by accepting that everything is possible, and then be guided to a proper conclusion by the evidence. Evidence-based thinking, Mister Becker. The greatest single achievement of the human animal. Without it we’d be praising God while shivering in our caves and dead by the age of thirty.”

“And what does the evidence tell you?”

“That I don’t have enough of it to form a reliable conclusion.”

Sebastian sat back in the captain’s chair. “This isn’t what I expected to hear,” he admitted.

“Nor is it what the good doctor would want me to say. But I won’t live a lie, Mister Becker. If a lie is what it is.”

“What makes you suspect yourself?”

“I’ve examined the timings. I can’t account for my whereabouts with any certainty.”

“Any blood on your clothes? Your hands?”

“A man who can kill and not know it can surely bathe and not know it.”

He stood up and indicated for Sebastian to follow him. Sebastian scrambled to his feet. This seemed too good to be true. He hadn’t dared to hope for a confession. Much less for Sir Owain to act as his own inquisitor.

As he led the way out into the hallway, Sir Owain said, “We’ll settle this tonight, you and I. Doctor Sibley is dedicated to the preservation of my health and my freedom. His livelihood depends on both. But I care nothing for either. In my time I have been an arrogant man. Experience has made me a humble one. I wish only to be judged as I deserve.”

He stopped and locked the study door behind them before walking on.

Sebastian said, “And tonight’s so-called celebration …?”

“Was my excuse to bring you here. And a way to disguise the direction of my thinking for the good doctor.”

“But the moment he sees your purpose, he’ll interfere.”

“I planned for that,” Sir Owain said, and they entered the kitchen.

The kitchen was a tall room, two stories high, on the north-facing side of the Hall. It was tiled in yellow, with a cement floor and visible pipework. A black iron range covered the length of one wall, with ovens and griddles enough for a dozen cooks to work at once.

The range was cold, however, and there was only one figure in the room, and he was sprawled on the floor amid a mess of leftovers and broken china. Dr. Sibley lay without moving, the tray that had borne it all lying close to his outflung hand.

D
R
. S
IBLEY MUST HAVE BEEN AS SURPRISED AS ANYONE BY HIS
collapse. It was as if he’d dropped in midstride, pitching forward and landing hard.

“Did you plan for
this
?” Sebastian said.

“Actually,” Sir Owain said, looking down on his motionless companion, “I did. Although what I intended was something less spectacular. He was supposed to start yawning and take himself off to bed.”

“You drugged him?”

“A few drops in his wine. They ought to have been perfectly safe. The drug came from his own kit.”

Sebastian said, “I don’t see him breathing.”

“No,” agreed Sir Owain. “Nor do I.”

Sebastian dropped to one knee and checked the doctor’s pulse. First at the wrist, and then again at the side of the neck.

“The man’s dead,” he said.

“Is he?” Sir Owain said. “Damn.”

Sebastian looked up at him. “Is that all you can say?”

“It was only supposed to put him out for a few hours. I must have misjudged the dose.”

“Well, you’ve killed him. Which makes the rest of any scheme for determining your guilt a touch redundant, wouldn’t you say?”

“It
is
a setback, I have to admit.”

“A
setback
?” Sebastian said, rising, and with a sudden rush of blood to the head that made him dizzy. “I’ll say it is. It’s all over, Sir Owain. Consider yourself arrested.”

“Can you do that?” Sir Owain said. “You’re not a policeman.”

“Any private citizen is bound by law to …” He meant to go on to say,
arrest any person who commits a felony in his presence
, but his thoughts wandered right off his subject and then he struggled to remember what he’d intended to say.

Sir Owain said, “How do you feel?”

Sebastian snapped himself back into focus.

“Why?” he said. “What did you do?”

“The dose was in the decanter. That’s why I only drank water.”

It was a moment or so before the realization took hold. Sir Owain seemed willing to give Sebastian all the time he needed, watching him with patient sympathy. Sebastian made a start toward the door and Sir Owain stepped aside to let him by.

He felt a sudden need for the night’s cold air. He seemed to float out of the kitchen and down the hall toward the main doors. He was aware of his legs working under him but not so sure they were under his control. He failed to stop himself and hit the door hard. He’d have slid to the floor, but he managed to keep hold of the handle.

He thought at first that he lacked the strength to get the doors open. But then he realized there was a much simpler explanation. They were locked.

Sir Owain had caught up with him by now.

He said, “If it’s any reassurance, Doctor Sibley downed far more of it than you did. How was I to know it would be the death of him?”

Sebastian remembered the revolver. He’d been able to fit it into one of the jacket’s lower pockets, in the lining on the inside. He fumbled for it. It should have come out easily. But it wouldn’t. The harder he tried, the more entangled he became.

Sir Owain watched him for a while, then reached in and took the gun away, unhooking it from the lining with ease.

He said, “Mine are not the kind of beasts you can fight with one of these. Trust me. I have tried.”

Sebastian pushed him away. He aimed himself toward the study, where the telephone was. He rattled and rattled at the doorknob, and then belatedly remembered how Sir Owain had turned the key in the door when they left it.

“Give in, Mister Becker,” Sir Owain pleaded with him. “I can see you’ll need to sleep this off before we can hope to achieve anything.”

With a great effort, he knocked the older man aside. Sir Owain staggered a little. Sebastian moved without a plan, willing to settle for any route to safety, not even knowing where safety might lie.

He found himself in a corridor by the kitchen, a service way between a wall of the old house and some of the newer work; there were iron girders overhead, and glass skylight panels above the girders. Some of the glass had been smashed, and the roof was open to the night, but far too high to reach.

The fallen glass hadn’t been cleared up, and crunched underfoot.

Sir Owain said, “That’s what happened when the beasts tried to enter.”

There was a door at the end of the passageway. It wouldn’t open. Or he couldn’t open it. Sebastian turned around and fell back against the door.

Sir Owain gestured toward the damage.

“They came out of the jungle and followed me all the way home,” he said. “Now they wait for the dark. I do my best to fortify the building, and they do their best to find a way in. I stay up all night and I fight them off. Or do I? Do I, Mister Becker?” His face was right before Sebastian’s now. “Or do I merely create powerful memories of events that never took place? The human mind is an amazing instrument of perception, Mister Becker. How far should we trust the instrument’s perception of itself? That’s what you can help me to find out.”

Sebastian felt his legs going. Sir Owain caught him quickly and helped to lower him to the ground.

“Now,” Sir Owain said, “what has all this running achieved?”

“I won’t sleep,” Sebastian vowed. He wasn’t sure whether he was speaking aloud, or merely forming the words in his mind and getting no further with them.

It seemed he spoke, because Sir Owain responded.

“I don’t think you’ll have any choice,” he said. “I’m not even sure what I gave you. If there’s an antidote, I’ve no idea what it would be. We’ll just need to get through this.”

“Get me to a doctor.”

Sebastian was terrified of sleeping at the madman’s mercy. But he could feel himself sliding ever farther away.

“It would make no difference,” Sir Owain said. “Sleep, Mister Becker. And when you wake up—assuming that you
do
wake up—we can begin.”

S
EBASTIAN DREAMED OF
E
LISABETH
. T
HEY WERE AT HOME
. O
NE
of their past homes. All was well but he was possessed by a certainty that something terrible was going to happen. She was moving about the room, not looking at him, speaking; later he would struggle to remember what she’d said. He knew that this was a dream, and that unless he could work out the secret of how to remain then he’d soon be pulled out of it and back into the waking world. He tried to imagine what lay outside the door, beyond the windows. If he could only populate this place, give it geography, render it all in enough detail to snap it into the real … it was almost as if, by perceiving with sufficient intensity, he might dream her back into life again.