Among the Mad

  Maisie said nothing as she reflected upon that morning—was it just yesterday?—when she was about to board a train for Oxford, and saw Anthony Lawrence at Paddington Station, waiting for the Penzance train. A train that just happened to stop in Berkshire, close to the village of Little Mulberry.

  ELEVEN

  December 30th, 1931

  Sometimes it seems there is only sleep. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go, and unless Croucher comes, there is no one to speak to, no human sound other than the voice in my head. Ian was another voice, but now he is gone. If only he had waited. If only he could have fought through Christmas, we might have brought them to their knees, these men who sit with their full bellies, by their warm fires, and wonder why we cannot work.

  The man moved to the iron-framed bed and drew back a mildewed blanket, damp to the touch, the wool like wire to his fingertips. He curled under the threadbare cover and continued to write with a pencil.

  I have taken a life. One more life. They should have believed me, after the dogs, after the birds. I told them. And now they know. I was discarded, not wanted, thrown aside. And soon someone, somewhere will remember. They will remember me and they will know, when little men with their little microscopes discover that what is in their little dish of flesh is something they haven’t seen before. Then they will know what I have. Then our situation will change. There will be something more for us, men who are still waiting for their armistice.

  As fatigue dragged on the man’s eyelids and cold seeped through his skin, layer by layer, it seemed as if the very blood in his veins were slowing to bring him to the edge of death, a place where he would linger, in neither this world or the next, until his eyes opened once more, still encrusted with sleep.

  MAISIE HAD ALLOWED Billy time off to visit Doreen at Wychett Hill, and was waiting for the clock on the mantelpiece to strike nine so that she could telephone Dr. Anthony Lawrence. She was now officially part of MacFarlane’s team again for the duration of the case, and there was much work to be done.

  Continuing with her notes, she was startled when a bell sounded, indicating that someone was at the front door. She walked to the window and looked down toward the door, but could see only the back of the visitor’s coat as she waited for the door to open. Maisie glanced around the square, and was about to turn away when she saw a flash of blue in the distance—and the distinctive nose of a Bugatti parked on the far side of the square where it met Conway Street.

  “Priscilla?” Maisie whispered to herself as she ran to the stairs and then downstairs.

  “I thought you’d never get here!” Priscilla used her thumbnail to eject a cigarette onto the flagstones before stepping across the threshold when Maisie opened the door. She stopped briefly to kiss her on each cheek, then held out her hand. “You’d better lead the way, Maisie—show me up to your hive of industry.”

  “What are you doing here, Pris?” asked Maisie as they ascended the stairs. She drew Priscilla into her office, and pulled two chairs in front of the gas fire, turning up the jets for more warmth.

  “So, this is where you beaver away day after day in the quest for justice, or whatever it is that you do here—you know, chasing criminals and the like.”

  “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Do you have coffee, by any chance?”

  “Sorry, Pris.”

  Priscilla waved a begloved hand. Always elegant, she was dressed in a pale gray costume, the jacket falling at thigh length with a narrow belt at the waist, and the straight, almost fitted skirt brushing her mid-calf. A black fur cape was draped around her shoulders, a match for black shoes and handbag, from which she took a packet of cigarettes.

  “Do you mind?”

  “Well, actually, I would rather you didn’t. I’ll be coughing all day.” Maisie rubbed her arms, feeling cold despite heat from the fire. “Is everything all right, Priscilla?”

  Priscilla’s eyes welled with tears. “Oh, nothing, really. I just thought . . . look, perhaps we can nip out, somewhere where I can light up.”

  “You can wait for a bit. Come on, what’s wrong?” Maisie looked at her friend of old, who even in her darkest hours had never been one to slouch, now slipping down in the chair and clutching her cape around her as if she yearned for comfort.

  “Oh, Pris . . . ” Maisie knelt at Priscilla’s feet and enveloped her with her arms. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I—I just don’t know what’s got into me. Look at me—I have a lovely home, three simply smashing boys, a husband I adore, who adores me in return—and I am just flailing around like a woman drowning.” Priscilla did not draw back, but allowed herself to be held, and seemed to be curling up like a child against her mother’s chest, so that she was surrounded by her friend’s warmth and strength. “I feel such a goose. I have felt this knot inside me getting tighter and tighter for days—and I am supposed to be looking forward to a party.”

  Maisie allowed silence to encroach upon Priscilla’s weeping, and did not try to prevent the tears. Soon Priscilla sat back, but kept a firm grip on Maisie’s hand.

  “I don’t know what I would do if you weren’t here. All the time I was in Biarritz, I missed your company very much, you know.” She pressed her lips together, then continued. “But I have felt so at sea here.”

  “You’ve had a huge change, Priscilla. Don’t underestimate it. Life is very different here in London.”

  Priscilla nodded. “I just don’t feel . . . I don’t feel . . . as if I’m home.”

  Maisie nodded and, while allowing Priscilla to continue holding her hand, pulled a cushion from her chair and sat down at her feet.

  Priscilla sniffed, drew a handkerchief from her bag and dabbed her eyes, then her nose. “I want to go back to Biarritz, only now, after that rather shaky start, the boys are thoroughly enjoying being in London, and Douglas is doing incredibly well indeed, so he’s in no hurry to rush back.” She sighed. “Oh, I don’t know, I just can’t seem to settle.”

  “You settled in Biarritz.”

  Priscilla nodded, and her eyes welled with tears once more. “What’s wrong with me, Maisie? You know all about this sort of thing. What’s wrong with me?”

  Maisie leaned back in her chair. “I can only tell you what I believe ails you, Pris, though I may be wide of the mark.”

  “No, please, tell me. Tell me what you think is wrong with me. I mean, I am weeping from the time I say good-bye to my boys in the morning to the time they come home. And I bite my lip to maintain a cheerful face at social engagements.” She dabbed her eyes again. “I feel so bloody selfish, Maisie. I mean, there are people starving in this country, men who can’t work, people who dream of the advantages I have. And I’m a wilting mess.”

  “Priscilla, when I came to Biarritz last year, you talked to me about your life there. You were brutally honest with me, and you helped me to see how I hadn’t stared down the dragon of my past—the dragon of all our pasts, men and women like us, who saw the war at first hand. I remember you telling me how you had come back from the brink, how you had built your life again, about your family and what they mean to you. You found a place where you could heal, a place that became your home. And that’s what we are all looking for, isn’t it? A home. We’re looking for where we belong.”

  “But I belong with my family, and they’re here.”

  “Yes, of course, but don’t underestimate the wrench of leaving the place where you found life again, Priscilla.”

  “And I came back to the place where death stalked me.” She looked down at her hand entwined in Maisie’s. “I couldn’t wait to get away from here, you know. England was my home. I didn’t know it before the war, but my family was my cocoon. I was so happy, Maisie, so happy. I had my brothers, my mother and father, and life was just one big party, or so it seemed—then it was gone. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “And I am so scared of losing it all again.”

  “You won’t lose it, Priscilla.”

  “But I’
m losing it already. My boys are growing, like little men. And I worry so.” She paused. “Remember that summer before the war? None of us saw it coming, not really. I think of that summer all the time, think of my brothers, think of the past. And I am so scared it’s all going to come crashing down again and I will lose them.”

  Maisie reached forward and clasped both Priscilla’s hands in her own. “You know, none of us can guarantee the future. Your boys will be growing up wherever you are. They are as much at risk here as they were swimming in the Atlantic in Biarritz—you know that. You are torturing yourself with imaginings, Priscilla.”

  “What can I do? I sometimes think my head will explode with all these thoughts.”

  “Then counter them with action. Do something, get yourself out of that head of yours. It is no good lingering in the future, you have to drag yourself back to the present.”

  “How on earth . . . ?”

  “Take your motor car into the country and find a place to ride—you used to love being out on a horse. Or do some voluntary work. I know you can’t stand all that committee lark, but you never know, you might find a way to do some good. Worry about someone else’s worries—there are plenty of them about, you know.”

  “You’re right, it’s terribly indulgent.” Priscilla’s smile was tight, a curve of red lips drawn up to show resolve.

  “No, it’s not indulgent. It’s genuine, and what you feel comes from your love of your family—just don’t let this emotion rob you of your time with them. I know your boys are growing fast, but remember that each day you are weaving a memory. Make sure you don’t look back at these times through a veil of tears.”

  Priscilla nodded and reached for her handbag. “Look at the time. I’ve to be at Fortnum’s this morning to meet Duncan’s dowager aunt.” She pulled on her black leather gloves. “She’s a bit of an old misery, to tell you the truth, so I will take it as fair warning—be not like Gertrude!”

  MAISIE SAW PRISCILLA to the door, waving to her until she reached the Bugatti, then returned to her first-floor office. She sat back in her chair alongside the fire, turning down the jets to save money, and thought about her dear friend Priscilla, who had countless advantages, or so it seemed. Yet with money, position, a happy family and a magnificent roof over her head, she still searched for some sort of anchor, some part of her soul that seemed to be missing. Even with such abundance, Priscilla did not feel safe.

  With these thoughts on her mind, Maisie picked up her notebook and ran her finger down a list of names. She picked up the telephone receiver to place the call that was interrupted by Priscilla’s arrival.

  “May I speak to Dr. Anthony Lawrence, please?” She waited for a moment until a second voice responded to her request. “Not in, but you expect him tomorrow. I see. Yes. Do tell him that Miss Dobbs telephoned and would like an appointment at his earliest convenience.” She paused again. “Yes, would you ask if he would be so kind as to telephone me at my office? Thank you.” She gave the telephone number and set the receiver in the cradle once more.

  It was not unusual for Dr. Lawrence to be unavailable, given his responsibility to the patients of more than one hospital, but the clerk who answered the telephone could not judge when he might return, which was unusual. Maisie was about to reach for the receiver again when the telephone rang.

  “Fitzroy—”

  “Miss Dobbs.” MacFarlane’s voice was low, as if he feared being overheard. “I’d like you to come to the Yard. Expect a motor car to be outside your office in the next ten minutes—a chariot to bear you here as usual.”

  “Have there been developments?”

  “We can discuss the reasons when you get here—and not on this line.”

  “Right you are, Chief Superintendent.”

  Maisie replaced the receiver, consulted the clock on the mantelpiece once again, and lifted the receiver to dial an Oxford number. She cleared her throat, ready to speak.

  “Yes, may I leave a message for Professor Gale?” She wove the telephone cord through her fingers. “Thank you. Tell him that Miss Dobbs telephoned, and I would like to speak to him at his earliest convenience.” Once more she spelled her name and gave the office telephone number. Doubtless both calls would be returned while she was out of the office, and there would be more telephone calls on her part until she effected conversation with the men. That is, if she chose to wait that long.

  As the police vehicle wove its way through the streets of London, Maisie wondered, not for the first time, why a man she did not know had mentioned her name in a letter. Had he known her after all? Could he have been a patient in the wards where she had nursed the casualties of war who were wounded in the mind? There were so many of them, men who had lingered, forgotten as time faded memory in the way that the sun took color from the back of an armchair set in front of a window. Had she known the man when she worked for Maurice? To each question she drew a blank. She had been familiar with the records of every man in her care, and there was no one with the knowledge to build a deadly weapon. For the most part these men had been bank clerks or carpenters; they had worked on the docks and in post offices; they had worked the land, the factories and the canals. And though the war might have rendered them a danger to themselves and others, there was not one who was as calculating as the man who had murdered the junior minister.

  “WHAT DO YOU make of that, Miss Dobbs?” MacFarlane skimmed a manila file across his desk toward Maisie.

  She leaned forward and took the file; then flipping open the cover, she began to read. The senior pathologist was Bernard Spilsbury, the famed forensic scientist. His notes were precise. The victim’s death had taken place within three minutes of exposure to a substance with which the department was not familiar. Three minutes. She had only been sitting on the visiting side of MacFarlane’s desk for about three minutes, and it felt like half an hour already. Three minutes in which one of the government’s rising stars could feel himself dying, could feel his flesh being eaten by—what? The report concluded that the poison had been administered in a powder form, likely thrown into the man’s face when he turned toward the murderer. A powder that had never been seen before.

  “I see a sample of the powder has been sent for additional testing.”

  “Yes, to University College, the Department of Chemistry.”

  “Is a carbon copy of this available?”

  MacFarlane held Maisie’s gaze before pursing his lips and responding to her question. “You want to take the report to someone?”

  She nodded. “Yes. And a sample of the powder.”

  MacFarlane shook his head. “You can sit here and take notes from the file, but you cannot have a sample. This stuff might be in powder form, rather than a gas, but we’re not taking chances with even one speck of it in the air in London.”

  “I assure you I will take every care. I just want a small sample, a few grains.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Professor John Gale. He’s a professor at Oxford—a scientist—and he also works at Mulberry Point. He might be able to tell us if it has been used before, even in a laboratory setting.”

  “This will cost me my job, if it gets out.”

  “It won’t.”

  He stood up, pushing his chair back against the wall. “I’ll think about it. In the meantime, remember Catherine the chemist wanted a word with you. She’s being transferred to Holloway to await trial.”

  Maisie nodded. “I’d better get on with it then.”

  CATHERINE JONES WAS sitting at the same table as before. She had made it clear that she would speak only if Maisie were left alone with her, though it was pointed out that a woman police auxiliary would remain in the room throughout the interview.

  “You wanted to see me, Catherine?”

  The woman nodded. She seemed frail, and betrayed her nervousness in the way she shook her head at the end of a sentence, as if this experience of incarceration could be dismissed as never having happened. She rubbed her upper arms in a se
lf-embrace, and tapped the floor with one foot and then the other.

  “What is it you have to tell me?”

  She shrugged. “Don’t know if you’ll be interested.”

  “You’ve made it clear that you wanted to see me, so I am interested already.”

  The woman nodded, and rubbed her hands back and forth along her thighs. “I remembered someone. Someone who came to one of our meetings.”

  “A man?”

  “Yes. Said he wanted to take action, that there were too many without work, that it was all very well the politicians wanting you for their armies when there’s a war to win, but they didn’t want to know about you and your problems once you were back.”

  “I’m sure there are many men and women who share those feelings.”

  She looked at Maisie—who did not flinch from her gaze. “You have no idea what it is like to be without work, what it’s like for the men and women who walk from place to place each day in search of a job. Some haven’t worked for years. Years. Year after year of walking and begging for a job every single day. Except the days when they don’t have the will to walk anymore, when their insides are growling so much for want of food, it’s as if the body is eating itself. Then there is only sleep. That’s all you can do. Sleep until you wake and then walk again.”

  “I know, Catherine.”

  Catherine rubbed her arms again, and moved to sit sideways on her chair.

  “Is there more you can tell me about the man? Do you remember his name?”

  “I didn’t think you were interested.”

  “Of course I am.”

  She sighed before continuing her story. “I remember him because he seemed, you know, a bit off.”

  “A bit off?”

  “Not that he was soft in the head, not like some of them who come to the meetings.” She paused. “He was bright. Very sharp. He talked about being over in France, in the war, about what he’d seen. It seemed as if every bone in his body shook when he talked about it. And he said he hadn’t been able to get work, not since he’d lost his last job.”