The thirteenth tale (45 page)

‘Bones? I see… She is the owner of the property, yes… An elderly
person and in poor health… A sister, gravely ill… Some likelihood of an
imminent bereavement… It might be better… Given the circumstances… I happen to
know of someone who is going there in person this very evening… Eminently
trustworthy… Quite… Indeed… By all means.“

He made a note on a pad and pushed it across the desk to me. A
name and a telephone number.

‘He would like you to telephone him when you get there to let
him know how things stand with the lady. If she is able to, he will talk to her
then; if not, it can wait. The remains, it seems, are not recent. Now, what
time is your train? We should be going.“

Seeing that I was deep in thought, the not-so-very-young Mr.
Lomax drove in silence. Nevertheless a quiet excitement seemed to be eating
away at him, and eventually, turning in to the road where the station was, he
could contain himself no longer. “The thirteenth tale…” he said. “I don’t
suppose… ?”

‘I wish I knew,“ I told him. ”I’m sorry.“

He pulled a disappointed face.

As the station loomed into sight, I asked a question of my own.
“Do you happen to know Aurelius Love?”

‘The caterer! Yes, I know him. The man’s a culinary genius!“

‘How long have you known him?“

He answered without thinking—“Actually, I was at school with
him”—and in the middle of the sentence a curious quiver entered his voice, as
though he had just realized the implications of my inquiry. My next question did
not surprise him.

‘When did you learn that Miss March was Miss Winter? Was it when
you took over your father’s business?“

He swallowed. “No.” Blinked. “It was before. I was still at
school, he came to the house one day. To see my father. It was more private
than the office. They had some business to sort out and, without going into
confidential details, it became clear during the course of their conversation
that Miss March and Miss Winter were the same person. I was not eavesdropping,
you understand. That is to say, not deliberately. I was already under the
dining room table when they came in—there was a tablecloth that draped and made
it into a sort of tent, you see—and I didn’t want to embarrass my father by
emerging suddenly, so I just stayed quiet.”

What was it Miss Winter had told me? There can be no secrets in
a house where there are children.

We had come to a stop in front of the station, and the young Mr.
Lomax turned his stricken eyes toward me. “I told Aurelius. The day he told me
he had been found on the night of the fire. I told him that Miss Adeline
Angelfield and Miss Vida Winter were one and the same person. I’m sorry.”

‘Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. I only
wondered.“

‘Does she know I told Aurelius who she was?“

I thought about the letter Miss Winter had sent me right at the
beginning, and about Aurelius in his brown suit, seeking the story of his
origins. “If she guessed, it was decades ago. If she knows, I think you can
presume she doesn’t care.”

The shadow cleared from his brow.

‘Thanks for the lift.“

And I ran for the train.

HESTER’S DIARY II

From the station I made a phone call to the bookshop. My father
could not hide his disappointment when I told him I would not be coming home.
“Your mother will be sorry,” he said.

‘Will she?“

‘Of course she will.“

‘I have to go back. I think I might have found Hester.“

‘Where?“

‘They have found bones at Angelfield.“

‘Bones?“

‘One of the builders discovered them when he was excavating the
library today.“

‘Gracious.“

‘They are bound to get in touch with Miss Winter to ask her
about it. And her sister is dying. I can’t leave her on her own up there. She
needs me.“

‘I see.“ His voice was serious.

‘Don’t tell Mother,“ I warned him, ”but Miss Winter and her
sister ire twins.“

He was silent. Then he just said, “You will take care, won’t
you, Margaret?”

*       
*        *

A quarter of an hour later I had settled into my seat next to
the window and was taking Hester’s diary out of my pocket.

I should like to understand a great deal more about optics.
Sitting with Mrs. Dunne in the drawing room going over meal plans for the week,
I caught sight of a sudden movement in the mirror. “Emmeline!” I exclaimed,
irritated, for she was not supposed to be in the house at all, but outside,
getting her daily exercise and fresh air. It was my own mistake, of course, for
I had only to look out of the window to see that she was outside, and her
sister, too, playing nicely for once. What I had seen, caught a misleading
glimpse of, to be precise, must have been a flash of sunlight come in the
window and reflected in the mirror. On reflection (On reflection! An unintended
drollery!), it is the psychology of seeing that caused my misapprehension, as
much as any strangeness in the workings of the optical world. For being used to
seeing the twins wandering about the house in places I would not expect them to
be, and at times when I would expect them to be elsewhere, I have fallen into
the habit of interpreting every movement out of the corner of my eye as
evidence of their presence. Hence a flash of sunlight reflected in a mirror
presents itself in a very convincing manner to the mind as a girl in a white
dress. To guard against errors such as this, one would have to teach oneself to
view everything without preconception, to abandon all habitual modes of
thought. There is much to be said in favor of such an attitude in principle.
The freshness of mind! The virginal response to the world! So much science has
at its root the ability to see afresh what has been seen and thought to be
understood for centuries. However, in ordinary life, one cannot live by such
principles. Imagine the time it would take if every aspect of experience had to
be scrutinized afresh every minute of every day. No; in order to free ourselves
from the mundane it is essential that we delegate much of our interpretation of
the world to that lower area of the mind that deals with the presumed, the
assumed, the probable. Even though it sometimes leads us astray and causes us
to misinterpret a flash of sunlight as a girl in a white dress, when these two
things are as unlike as two things can be.

Mrs. Dunnes mind does wander sometimes. I fear she took in very
little of our conversation about meal plans, and we shall have to go over the
whole thing again tomorrow.

I have a little plan regarding my activities here and the
doctor.

I have told him at great length of my belief that Adeline
demonstrates a type of mental disturbance that I have neither encountered nor
read about before. I mentioned the papers I have been reading about twins and
the associated developmental problems, and I saw his face approve my reading. I
think he has a clearer understanding now of my abilities and talent. One book I
spoke of, he did not know and I was able to give him a summary of the arguments
and evidence in the book. I went on to point out the few significant
inconsistencies that I had noticed in it, and to suggest how, if it were my
book, I would have altered my conclusions and recommendations.

The doctor smiled at me at the end of my speech and said
lightly, “Perhaps you should write your own book.” This gave me exactly the
opportunity have been seeking for some time.

I pointed out to him that the perfect case study for such a book
was at and here in Angelfield House. That I could devote a few hours every day
to working on writing up my observations. I sketched out a number of trials and
experiments that could be undertaken to test my hypothesis. And I touched
briefly on the value that the finished book would have in the eyes of the
medical establishment. After this I lamented the fact that for all my
experience, my formal qualifications are not grand enough to tempt a publisher,
and finally I confessed that, as a woman, I was not entirely confident of being
able bring off such an ambitious project. A man, if only there were a man,
intelligent and resourceful, sensitive and scientific, having access to my
experience and my case study, would be sure to make a better job of it.

And in such a manner it was decided. We are to worktogether!

I fear Mrs. Dunne is not well. I lock doors and she opens them.
I open curtains and she closes them. And still my books will not stay in their
place! She tries to avoid responsibility for her actions by maintaining that
the house is haunted.

Quite by chance, her talk of ghosts comes on the very day the
book I am in the middle of reading has completely disappeared, only to be
replaced by a novella by Henry James. I hardly suspect Mrs. Dunne of the
substitution. She scarcely knows how to read herself and is not given to
practical jokes. Obviously it was one of the girls. What makes it noteworthy is
that a striking coincidence has made it a cleverer trick than they could have
known. For the book is a rather silly story about a governess and two haunted
children. I am afraid that in it Mr. James exposes the extent of his ignorance.
He knows little about children and nothing at all about governesses.

It is done. The experiment has begun.

The separation was painful, and if I did not know the good that
is to come of it, I should have thought myself cruel for inflicting it upon
them. Emmeline sobs fit to break her heart. How is it for Adeline? For she is
the one who is to be the most altered by the experience of independent life. I
shall know tomorrow when we have our first meeting.

There is no time for anything but research, but I have managed
to do one additional useful thing. I fell into conversation today with the
schoolteacher outside the post office. I told her that I had spoken to John
about the truant and that she should come to me if the boy is absent again
without reason. She says she is used to teaching half a class at harvesttime when
the children go spud-hucking with their parents in the fields. But it is not
harvesttime, and the child was weeding the parterres, I told her. She asked me
which child it was, and I felt foolish at not being able to tell her. The
distinctive hat is no help at all in identifying him, since children do not
wear hats in class. I could go back to John but doubt he will give me more
information than last time.

I am not writing my diary much lately. I find that after the
writing, late at night, of the reports I prepare every day about Emmeline’s
progress, I am frequently too tired to keep up with my own record of my
activities. And I do want to keep a record of these days and weeks, for I am
engaged, with the doctor, on very important research, and in years to come,
when I have gone away and left this place, I may wish to look back and
remember. Perhaps my efforts with the doctor will open some door for me into
further work of this kind, for I find the scientific and intellectual work more
engrossing and more satisfying than anything I have ever done. This morning for
instance, Dr. Maudsley and I had the most stimulating conversation on the
subject of Emmeline’s use of pronouns. She is showing an ever-greater
inclination to speak to me, and her ability to communicate improves every day.
Yet the one aspect of her speech that is resistant to development is the
persistence of the first person plural. “We went to the woods, ” she will say,
and always I correct her: “I went to the woods.” Like a little parrot she will
repeat “I” after me, but in the very next sentence, “We saw a kitten in the
garden, ” or some such thing.

The doctor and I are much intrigued by this peculiarity. Is it
simply an ingrained habit of speech carried over from her twin language into
English, a habit that will in time right itself? Or does the twinness go so
deep in her that even in her language she is resistant to the idea of having a
separate identity from that of her sister? I told the doctor about imaginary
friends that so many disturbed children invent, and together we explored the
implications of this. What if the child’s dependence on her twin is so great
that the separation causes a mental trauma such that the damaged mind provides
solace by the creation of an imaginary twin, a fantasy companion? We arrived at
no satisfactory conclusion but parted with the satisfaction of having located
another area of future study: linguistics.

What with Emmeline, and the research, and the general
housekeeping that needs to be done, I find I am sleeping too little, and
despite my reserves of energy, which I maintain by healthy diet and exercise, I
can distinguish the symptoms of sleep deprivation. I irritate myself by putting
things down and forgetting where I have left them. And when I pick up my book
at night, my bookmark tells me that the previous night I must have turned the
pages blindly, for I have no recollection at all of the events on the page or
the one before. These small annoyances and my constant tiredness are the price
I pay for the luxury of working alongside the doctor on our project.

However, that is not what I wanted to write about. I meant to
write about our work. Not our findings, which are documented thoroughly in our
papers, but the pattern of our minds, the fluency with which we understand each
other, the way in which our instant understanding permits us almost to do
without words. When we are both engaged in plotting the changes in sleep
patterns of our separate subjects, for instance, he may want to draw my
attention to something, and he does not need to speak, for I can feel his eyes
on me, his mind calling to me, and I raise my head from my work, quite ready
for him to point out whatever it is.