The House on the Strand (28 page)

"I understand," I said, but it was not my voice. "What do you want me to do?"

"They are on their way to the mortuary in Fowey now, Mr. Young," he said. "I hate to trouble you at such a moment, but I think it would be best if we took you there right away to identify the body. I should like to think, for both your sakes, yours and Mrs. Young's, that it is not Professor Lane, but in the circumstances I can't offer you much hope."

"No," I said, "no, of course not."

I let go of Vita's hand and walked towards the door and out of the house into the hot sunlight. Some Scouts were putting up tents in the field beyond the Kilmarth meadow. I could hear them shouting and laughing, and hammering the pegs into the ground.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE MORTUARY WAS a smallish, red-brick building not far from Fowey station. There was nobody there when we arrived: the second patrol car was still on its way. When I got out of the car the Inspector looked at me a moment, and then he said, "Mr. Young, there may be some delay. I'd like to offer you a cup of coffee and a sandwich at the caf+® just up the road."

"Thank you," I said, "but I'm all right."

"I can't insist," he continued, "but it really would be wise. You'll feel the better for it."

I gave in, and allowed him to lead me along to the caf+®, and we each had some coffee, and I had a ham sandwich too. As we sat there I thought of the times in the past, as undergraduates, when Magnus and I had travelled down by train to Par to stay with his parents at Kilmarth. The rattle in the darkness and the echo of sound in the tunnel, and suddenly that welcome emergence into the light, with green fields on either side. Magnus must have made that journey every school holiday as a boy. Now he had met his death by the entrance to that same tunnel. It would make sense to no one. Not to the police, or to his many friends, or to anyone but myself. I should be asked why a man of his intelligence had wandered close to a railway-line on a summer's evening at dusk, and I should have to say that I did not know. I did know. Magnus was walking in a time when no railway-line existed. He was walking in an age when the hillside was rough pasture, even scrub. There was no gaping tunnel mouth yawning from the hillside in that other world, no metal lines, no track, only the bare grassland, and perhaps a man astride a pony, leading him on...

"Yes?" I said. The Inspector was asking me if Professor Lane had any relatives.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I didn't hear what you said. No, Commander and Mrs. Lane have been dead for a number of years, and there were no other children. I've never heard him mention cousins or anyone." There must be a lawyer somewhere who dealt with his affairs, a bank which managed his finances: now I came to think of it I did not even know his secretary's name. Our relationship, binding, intimate, did not concern itself with day-to-day matters, with ordinary concerns. There must be someone other than myself who would know about all this. Presently the constable came to tell the Inspector that the second patrol car had arrived, and the ambulance too, and we walked back to the mortuary. The constable murmured something which I did not hear, and the Inspector turned to me.

"Doctor Powell from Fowey happened to be at Tywardreath police station when the message came through from our patrol," he said, "and he agreed to make a preliminary examination of the body. Then it will be up to the Coroner's pathologist to conduct the post mortem."

"Yes," I said. Post mortem.. inquest... the whole paraphernalia of the law.

I went into the mortuary. The first person I saw was the doctor I had met at the lay-by, who had watched me recovering from my attack of vertigo over ten days ago. I saw the instant recognition in his eyes, but he did not let on when the Inspector introduced us.

"I'm sorry about this," he said, and then, abruptly, "If you haven't seen anyone before who's been badly smashed up in an accident, let alone a friend, it's not a pleasant sight. This man has had a great gash on the head."

He took me to the stretcher lying on the long table. It was Magnus, but he looked different—smaller, somehow. There was a sort of cavity caked with blood above his right eye. There was dried blood on his jacket, which was torn, and a tear in one of his trouser legs.

"Yes," I said, "yes, that is Professor Lane."

I turned away, because Magnus himself wasn't there. He was still walking in the fields above the Treesmill valley, or looking about him, in great wonder, in some other undiscovered world.

"If it's any consolation to you," said the doctor, "he couldn't have lived very long after receiving a blow like that. God knows how he managed to crawl the few yards to the hut—he wouldn't have been conscious of his movements, he would have died literally a few moments afterwards." Nothing was a consolation, but I thanked him all the same. "You mean", I said, "he would not have lain there, wondering why nobody came?"

"No," he answered, "definitely not. But I'm sure the Inspector will let you have the full details, as soon as we know the extent of the injuries."

There was a walking-stick lying at the end of the table. The sergeant pointed it out to the Inspector. "The stick was lying half-way down the embankment, sir," he said, "a short distance from the hut. The Inspector looked enquiringly at me, and I nodded. Yes," I said, "it's one of many he had. His father collected walking-sticks; there are about a dozen in his flat in London."

"I think the best thing to do now is for us to run you straight back to Kilmarth, Mr. Young," said the Inspector. "You'll be kept fully informed, of course. You realise that you will be required to give evidence at the inquest."

"Yes," I said. I wondered what would happen to Magnus's body after the post mortem. I wondered if it was going to lie there through the weekend. Not that it mattered. Not that anything mattered. As the Inspector shook hands he said that they would probably come out on Monday and ask me a few more questions, in case I could add to my original statement. "You see, Mr. Young," he explained, "there might be a question of amnesia, or even suicide."

"Amnesia," I repeated. "That's loss of memory, isn't it? Most unlikely. And suicide, definitely no. The Professor was the last man in the world to do such a thing, and he had no cause. He was looking forward to the weekend, and was in very good spirits when I spoke to him on the telephone."

"Quite so," said the Inspector. "Well, that's just the sort of statement the Coroner will want to have from you."

The constable dropped me at the house, and I walked very slowly through the garden and up the steps. I poured out the equivalent of a triple whisky, and flung myself on the divan bed in the dressing-room. I must have passed out shortly afterwards, for when I woke up it was late afternoon or early evening, and Vita was sitting on the chair near by with a book in her hands, the last of the sun coming through the western window that gave on to the patio.

"What's the time?" I asked.

"About half-after six," she said, and came and sat on the bed beside me.

"I thought it wisest to let you lie, she went on. The doctor who saw you at the mortuary telephoned during the afternoon, and asked if you were all right, and I told him you were sleeping. He said to let you sleep as long as possible, it was the best thing that could happen." She put her hand in mine and it was comforting, like being a child again.

"What did you do with the boys?" I asked. "The house seems very quiet."

"Mrs. Collins was wonderful," she said. "She took them down to Polkerris to spend the day with her. Her husband was going to take them fishing after lunch and bring them back about Seven. They'll be home any moment now."

I was silent a moment, and then I said, "This mustn't spoil their holiday, Magnus would have hated that."

"Don't bother about them or me," she said. "We can take care of ourselves. What worries me is the shock it's been for you."

I was thankful she did not pursue the subject, go over the whole business again—why it had happened, what Magnus had been doing, why he did not notice the approaching train, why the driver had not seen him; it would have led us nowhere.

"I ought to get on the telephone," I said. "The people at the University should be told."

"The nice Inspector is taking care of all of that," she said. "He came back again, quite soon after you must have gone upstairs. He asked to see Magnus's suitcase. I told him you'd unpacked it last night and hadn't found anything. He didn't either. He left the clothes hanging in the closet."

I remembered the bottle in my own suitcase, and the papers about Bodrugan. "What else did he want?"

"Nothing. Just said to leave everything to them, and he'd be in touch with you on Monday."

I put out my arms and pulled her down to me. "Thanks for everything, darling, I said. You're a great comfort. I can't really think straight yet."

"Don't try," she whispered. "I wish there was more I could say, or do."

We heard the boys talking together in their room. They must have come in by the back entrance. "I'll go to them," said Vita, "they'll want some supper. Would you like me to bring yours up here?"

"No, I'll come down. I'll have to face them some time." I went on lying there awhile, watching the last of the sun filtering through the trees. Then I had a bath and changed. Despite the shock and the turmoil of the day my bloodshot eye was back to normal. The trouble may have been coincidental, nothing to do with the drug. In any event it was something, now, that I should never know. Vita was giving the boys their supper in the kitchen.

I could hear what they were saying as I hovered in the hall, bracing myself before I went in.

"Well, I bet you anything you like it turns out to be foul play." Teddy's rather high-pitched, nasal voice came clearly through the open kitchen door. "It stands to reason the Professor had some secret Scientific information on him, probably to do with germ warfare, and he'd arranged to meet someone near that tunnel, and the man he met was a spy and knocked him on the head. The police down here won't think of that, and they'll have to bring in the Secret Service."

"Don't be idiotic, Teddy," said Vita sharply. "That's just the sort of frightful way rumours spread. It would upset Dick terribly to hear you say things like that. I hope you didn't suggest such a thing to Mr. Collins."

"Mr. Collins thought of it first," chimed in Micky. "He said you never knew what scientists were up to these days, and the Professor might have been looking for a site for a hush-hush research station up the Treesmill valley."

This conversation had the instant effect of pulling me together. I thought how Magnus would have loved it, played up to it, too, encouraged every exaggeration. I coughed loudly and went towards the kitchen, hearing Vita say Ssh... as I passed through the door. The boys looked up, their small faces taking on the expression of shy discomfort that children wear when suddenly confronted with what they fear to be an adult plunged in grief.

"Hullo," I said. "Had a good day?"

"Not bad," mumbled Teddy, turning red. "We went fishing."

"Catch anything?"

"A few whiting. Mom's cooking them now."

"Well, if you've any to spare, I'll stand in the queue, I had a cup of coffee and a sandwich in Fowey, and that's been my lot for the day." They must have expected me to stand with bowed head and shaking shoulders, for they cheered visibly when I attacked a large wasp on the window with the fly-swatter, saying "Got him!" with enormous relish as I squashed it flat. Later, when we were eating, I said to them, "I may be a bit tied up next week because they'll have to hold an inquest on Magnus, and there'll be various things to attend to, but I'll see to it that you go out with Tom in one of his boats from Fowey, engine or sailing, whichever you like best."

"Oh, thanks awfully," said Teddy, and Micky, realising that the subject of Magnus was no longer taboo, paused, his mouth full of whiting, and enquired brightly, "Will the Professor's life story be on TV tonight?"

"I shouldn't think so," I replied. "It's not as if he were a pop-singer or a politician."

"Bad luck," he said. "Still, we'd better watch just in case."

There was nothing, much to the disappointment of both boys, and secretly, I suspected, of Vita too, but to my own considerable relief. I knew the next few days would bring more than enough in the way of publicity, once the press got hold of the story, and so it proved. The telephone started ringing first thing the following morning, although it was Sunday, and either Vita or I spent most of the day answering it. Finally we left it off the hook and installed ourselves on the patio, where reporters, if they rang the front-door bell, would never find us. The next morning she took the boys into Par to do some shopping, leaving me to my mail, which I had not opened. The few letters I had were nothing to do with the disaster. Then I picked up the last of the small pile and saw, with a queer stab of the heart, that it was addressed to me in pencil, bore an Exeter postmark, and was in Magnus's handwriting. I tore it open.

'Dear Dick,' I read, 'I'm writing this in the train, and it will probably be illegible. If I find a post-box handy on Exeter station I'll drop it in. There is probably no need to write at all, and by the time you receive it on Saturday morning we shall have had, I trust, an uproarious evening together with many more to come, but I write as a safety-measure, in case I pass out in the carriage from sheer exuberance of spirits. My findings to date are pretty conclusive that we are on to something of prime importance regarding the brain. Briefly, and in layman's language, the chemistry within the brain cells concerned with memory, everything we have done from infancy onwards, is reproducible, returnable, for want of a better term, in these same cells, the exact contents of which depends upon our hereditary make-up, the legacy of parents, grandparents, remoter ancestors back to primeval times. The fact that I am a genius and you are a lay-about depends solely upon the messages transmitted to us from these cells and then distributed through the various other cells and throughout our body, but, our various characteristics apart, the particular cells I have been working upon—which I will call the memory-boxstore—not only our own memories but habits of the earlier brain pattern we inherit. These habits, if released to consciousness, would enable us to see, hear, become cognoscent of things that happened in the past, not because any particular ancestor witnessed any particular scene, but because with the use of a medium—in this case a drug—the inherited, older brain pattern takes over and becomes dominant. The implications from a historian's point of view don't concern me, but, biologically, the potential uses of the hitherto untapped ancestral brain are of enormous interest, and open immeasurable possibilities.