THE GAUDY SHADOWS Read online

  “Looking for poison?”

  “Mainly, I suppose. And there wasn’t any. But they did find some kind of chemical which is supposed to be associated with—”

  “Schizophrenia?” Laird cut in, snapping his fingers. “I read something about that once!” He frowned enormously. “But schizophrenics don’t die of fright, do they? It’s more—well, people like the man your pathologist mentioned, who are scared of confined spaces.”

  “So I believe,” Lewis sighed.

  “Anyway,” Laird pursued, “Logan struck me as one hell of a well-adjusted guy! Though of course I didn’t know much about his background until I met his sister yesterday, nor about this marriage which broke down—”

  “His sister?” Lewis interrupted. “Where did you meet her?”

  “She’s in London right now, staying at his old place. To sort out the estate and sell it up.”

  “Hmm! I didn’t know. I wish I could spare the time to talk to her, but we have a bitch of a case up in Birmingham and…” Lewis glanced at the clock. “Matter of fact, I’d best get a move on.”

  “Speaking of Logan’s marriage,” Laird said, “I met his wife yesterday, too.”

  “Did you, now? I’ve only seen her at a distance. A very beautiful woman, isn’t she?”

  “Very. But hard as nails. I—ah—I don’t suppose there’s any doubt that she is his wife?”

  Lewis looked cynically amused. “Sorry, Mr Walker, you seem to be second-guessing us all along the line. That was one of the first possibilities that occurred to us. No, she’s his wife okay, and the certificates she had to prove it are genuine.”

  The phone on his desk buzzed, and a tinny distant voice said, “Your car will be outside in two minutes, inspector.”

  “Thanks!” Lewis said, and rose, giving Laird a quizzical smile. “I hope you’re a bit wiser, Mr Walker! Because I assure you I’m not.”

  Embarrassed, Laird also got to his feet. He said, “I’m sorry, it’s just that what I’ve heard about—”

  “You don’t believe it,” Lewis supplied. “No more do I, Mr Walker—which is why I agreed to talk to you. On a purely statistical basis, the more people who are worried about that case, the more likely we are to come up with some sort of sensible answer instead of this unconvincing rubbish we have on a supposedly closed file! I was at that inquest, and I saw the looks on people’s faces as they gave their evidence. I’d take my oath on a stack of Bibles that your friend Logan did not drop dead of a simple heart-attack. He was scared, all right. And I’d like to know what of. You find out, you let me know. All right?”

  “Sure,” Laird said, grinning, and put out his hand.

  TEN

  Past noon, Laird walked through the gate alongside the sign which identified in gilt lettering The Brankside Memorial Hospital for the Treatment of Nervous Diseases. A driveway led him towards a curious mixture of buildings; a century ago, this must have been the estate of a large mansion, but now the original house was surrounded by low sheds of light wood with big metal windows and the lawns were planted with finger-posts directing visitors to “Charcot Wing” and “Jones Wing”.

  He followed those which indicated “Reception” and found himself in the dark entrance-hall of the main house, where a severe-faced West Indian nurse in starched cap and apron sat behind a little glass screen prepared to fend off the outside world. She was busy transferring names from an appointments book to a stack of record-cards, and at first she failed to realise he was standing in front of her.

  “Excuse me!” Laird said at length, and she glanced up.

  “Yes?”

  How best to explain? “Ah… Well, I wonder whether one of your doctors could help me. You see, a friend of mine used to be a patient here, and—”

  “Help you?” a man’s voice cut in. “Are you having problems? My name’s Dr Shannon, Steve Shannon. Perhaps you’d like to talk to me.”

  Laird turned. The speaker was a fresh-faced young man in a navy-blue blazer, who had come so quietly down the hall on soft-soled sandals that he hadn’t heard him approach. His expression was solicitous but wary.

  Christ. He thinks I’m a potential patient.

  The idea was very funny; Laird couldn’t prevent himself from chuckling. He said, “Sure I have problems, but not quite the sort you mean, I guess. Like I was just saying, a friend of mine used to be a patient here, and—uh—well, I was wondering if I could ask a few questions about the reason for his visit.”

  Shannon shook his head emphatically. “Sorry! You want to know the details, you ask your friend personally-”

  “I can’t,” Laird said. “He died two months ago. His name was Sammy Logan.”

  Instantly Shannon’s expression changed. “You knew Sammy? So did I! Wasn’t it a hell of a shame, him dying so young?”

  “It was indeed,” Laird agreed. “You weren’t the doctor who treated him, were you?”

  “Me? No! I’ve only been here a couple of years, and he was in here—five years ago? No, I’m a liar. More like six. He was one of old Irving’s patients.”

  “Do you think Dr Irving would—?”

  “Not a chance. Irving never talks to anyone about his patients. Sometimes doesn’t even talk to the patients themselves. Sort of a psychiatric equivalent of therapeutic nihilism, if that means anything to you.” Shannon grinned. Laird grinned back. This was an easy guy to take to.

  “So how did you come to know him?”

  “Oh, most of the staff here did, I think. He used to drop in pretty often, maybe every couple of months. Brought books for the library, flowers, that kind of thing. Gave us some tanks of tropical fish to put in the wards. Here, look, I’m just on my way down the road for a jar. Why don’t you join me and we can have a chat at the pub?”

  “Dr Shannon!” the receptionist said, looking disapproving.

  “Don’t worry, pet!” Shannon said, reaching over to pat her dark-brown cheek. “I’m not going to do anything unprofessional. I’m only going to toast the memory of a mutual friend.” He turned briskly towards the door. “And you are—?”

  Laird identified himself and gave a concise account of his acquaintance with Sammy. The conclusion coincided with their arrival at a pub where Shannon was obviously well known; immediately on seeing him the barmaid began to draw a pint of beer. Equipped with drinks and sandwiches, they passed on into a garden at the rear, a patch of tired grass under a grey plane-tree, dotted with new bright canvas chairs and metal tables.

  Shannon attacked his beer, wiped a moustache of foam from his upper lip, and spoke around a mouthful of sandwich. “Right! You want to know about Sammy’s connection with our little bedlam and why he added a codicil to his will leaving us five thousand quid. I have absolutely no objection to telling you what Sammy himself told me. Most people including my revered boss are all fouled up by the traditional attitude towards mental illness—something shameful to be swept under the carpet. Your chum Sammy wasn’t. One of my own patients came in on his recommendation, and Sammy had told her all about why he was here and what was done to him. He had a couple of screws loose, and who can wonder at that in view of his god-awful childhood? Very sensibly he decided to have himself repaired. And was so pleased at the result, he kept on coming back to say hullo right up until his death. I last saw him only a couple of weeks before he died.”

  Laird nodded. “What was he complaining of when he came here?”

  “Depression, suicidal impulses—run-of-the-mill stuff.”

  “Well, you certainly got rid of that for him,” Laird said. It was impossible to imagine the Sammy he’d known wanting to kill himself. “What brought on the depression?”

  “You can figure that out for yourself. What happened to him about six years ago?”

  Laird nodded. “His marriage broke up. I’ve been wondering about that.”

  “No doubt you’ve also wondered what made him chase women with such unrelenting ferocity,” Shannon murmured, reaching for his beer-tankard again.

 
; Click. Click. Click. Everything suddenly made a pattern in Laird’s mind: Pentecost’s reference to Sammy’s fondness for children, Polly’s description of the rigid dogma his family had been brought up to…

  “Insecure about his masculinity,” he said slowly. “Always in need of restimulation.”

  “Neatly put,” Shannon approved.

  “So that was what fouled up his marriage!”

  “Wouldn’t you expect it to? Having seen pictures of her, I imagine Madam Logan has good healthy appetites. Summary: young man on the make meets first really classy bird, woos and wins and finds he can’t keep up the pressure. Whereupon tension, rows, acute shame leading to depression and damned nearly to true clinical melancholia. Not an uncommon problem with people brought up the way he was. Like another?”

  “Let me get this round,” Laird said, and headed back to the bar. It was crowded now, and he had to wait for service. Waiting, he pondered what he’d just learned.

  So Sammy was afflicted with impotence. Poor bastard. Returning to the table with two fresh tankards, he said, “Was Sammy in the Brankside very long?”

  “Nope. He came to us in good time. Cheers.” Shannon sipped his beer and set it down. “And old Irving—who for all I poke fun at him is a hell of a good therapist—sees in him a suitable subject for LSD treatment. Need I explain?”

  “No.”

  Shannon gave him a suspicious look. “People who say that usually mean they’ve taken the stuff. You?”

  “Yes.”

  “Make a habit of it? If so you can leave right now.” The words were sharp and bitter.

  “Of course not,” Laird snapped.

  “There’s no ‘of course’ about it,” Shannon grunted. But the sudden fierceness had left his voice. “Acidheads are likely to keep me in business for the rest of my professional life, far as I can see. We have sixteen of the poor fools in the Brankside at the moment… Okay, though. What do you know about the therapeutic applications?”

  “It’s an abreactive treatment,” Laird shrugged. “You use it to dredge up suppressed material from the subconscious. What you might call bottled re-enactment.”

  “That’s oversimplifying to the point where old Irving would go grey from disapproval, but it’s near enough.” Shannon crammed his last sandwich into his mouth. “What counts isn’t how Sammy was put back together, but the fact that he was. He still had this conspicuous consumption of women bit, but of course he could afford it—lucky devil—and he was even getting over that. Matter of fact, last time I saw him he told me he was thinking about getting married again. And all that from about six LSD sessions. Classic cure!”

  Laird noted the remark about getting married again for future reference. He said, “And was that the only problem he was treated for?”

  “It was all he complained about.”

  “But the police pathologist said at the inquest his spinal fluid—”

  “Oh, that!” Shannon cut in scornfully. “Yes, I read about it. It can’t possibly have anything to do with the matter. There is a so-called labelling compound alleged to be associated with schizophrenia, but one schizophrenic in ten doesn’t have it and some perfectly normal people do. I think it’s a red herring. No, Sammy had a hideous childhood full of the threat of hellfire and all kinds of rules against enjoying himself, and it shot his emotional development to ribbons. He was satisfied with that explanation; he told me so. And if he was, so am I.”

  Laird hesitated. He ventured. “Phobias come out under LSD, don’t they?”

  “Sure. Matter of fact, they did in Sammy’s case. And we had the busies practically crawling out of the woodwork for a whole long day trying to link them up with his death. Irving gave me Sammy’s case-notes and I went through them to see if I could find anything. But everything that came out under therapy suggested he was afraid of losing what he’d got. He’d find a lose thread on his cuff. Two minutes, and he was convinced he was in rags. A spot on his hand: he’d insist that he was filthy, hadn’t washed for a week because the only bath he could have was a tub in front of the fire, there wasn’t any coal for the fire and the outside water-pipes were frozen anyway. That kind of thing. All attributable to real childhood images.”

  “And he died surrounded by concrete proof of the fortune he’d made: priceless pictures, expensive furniture, that fabulous car…” Laird shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense!”

  “Right,” Shannon agreed. “As far as our knowledge of him at Brankside goes, Sammy was a good plain case, the only kind we know how to tackle, and LSD therapy did him a world of good. Which is exactly Sammy’s own opinion—he told me so himself. And that, I’m afraid, is all I know.”

  ELEVEN

  Lincoln’s Inn Fields: cars of motley colours nosed hard in against the edge of the green patch in the centre of the square, last relic of the fields which gave the area its name. A brass name-plate polished until the edges of the graven letters were smoothed to near-flatness located the offices of Praidle and Hines.

  The entrance-way was stern and overbearing, the paint and wallpaper dark and the only decorations portraits of deceased members of the firm. Laird explained his business to a withered little man with a hoarse little voice, who told him he would have to see Mr Hines and Mr Hines was engaged.

  “I’ll wait,” Laird sighed, and took a chair. Time passed. It seemed like an eternity. He picked up and put down the magazines in the waiting-room, exactly aligned like cards in a game of patience, but none of them distracted him. He was obsessed by an unanswerable question: how can a man be scared to death who’s revealed under LSD that what he’s afraid of is being poor and dies surrounded by all the luxury he ever hoped for?

  That led on to another question: what in hell was he doing wasting a fine August afternoon in London in a gloomy lawyers’ office when all the resources of Scotland Yard had failed to provide an answer to the mystery?

  He was on the point of jumping to his feet and telling the withered little man he’d changed his mind, when the door opposite where he was sitting opened and Polly Logan came out.

  For a second he almost didn’t recognise her. Her face was pinched and white, her lips pressed hard together as though she was holding back either tears or rage. Behind her, seated at a desk, he saw a large red-faced man not turning to watch her leave but concentrating on a cigar which was burning on the bias.

  He changed his mind back again.

  “Hullo, Polly!” he said with intentional loudness. “Been discussing the disposal of your inheritance, have you? You will remember, won’t you, that if you get a cent less than thirty thousand you’ve been swindled?”

  The red-faced man jumped as though he’d been prodded with his own lighted cigar and stared towards the still-open door. Especially for him Laird added, “You said yesterday you weren’t happy with the way these people were treating you. Well, I’m sure there must be alternatives!”

  Red-face was on his feet now. Good. And Polly, who had at first looked alarmed, was suddenly looking pleased, as though she would have liked to say what Laird was saying but lacked the initiative.

  “I say, who exactly may you be?” barked the red-faced man.

  This presumably would be Hines. Laird was glad to find the lawyer wasn’t as tall as he was, and put his extra couple of inches to the best advantage as he answered.

  “My name’s Walker. I’ve been helping Miss Logan to catalogue her brother’s estate, trying to make sure she gets the thirty thousand pounds I estimate she’s entitled to.”

  “Rubbish!” Hines snapped. “Thirty’s ridiculous. You couldn’t hope for a penny more than twenty-five.”

  “You told me twenty,” Polly said, and the words floated into still air like wisps of smoke.

  Embarrassed, Hines resorted to bluster. “My dear Miss Logan, I didn’t want to raise false hopes. The depressed state of the property market—the fluctuation in the price of objets d’art…”

  Under Laird’s steady gaze the words faltered and died.


  “I believe you have a body here called—what is it?—the Law Society, isn’t that right?” Laird suggested with feathery gentleness.

  “What the devil do you mean by that, sir?”

  “I think Miss Logan ought to find out what the duty of an executor is in this country. I can’t tell her—I’m an American. But I’d have expected you to take charge of the inventory of her effects, at least. I’d have expected you to contact art-dealers and auctioneers instead of dumping the problem in her lap. What can she be expected to know about the price of a Braque?”

  “My good man, she only has to ask, and we’ll be happy to attend to that sort of thing!”

  “She has to ask, does she? And suppose she doesn’t know the right questions?”

  “I don’t,” Polly said in a small firm voice. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ve never even been in London before! And all I know about thirty thousand pounds is that it’s a lot more than twenty!”

  “Precisely!” Laird rasped. “Two months since Sammy Logan’s death, Mr Hines—two months. And as far as I can make out all you’ve done to help Polly is put a door-key in the mail to her!”

  Hines was going rapidly from red to purple. “I will not be talked to like this!” he thundered. “This is an estate of half a million pounds—you don’t deal with something on that scale in an afternoon! I’ve been very fully occupied, believe me, with the more substantial portion of the estate!”

  At that instant a voice which all three of them recognised was heard at the street door, pitched with the imperiousness of one used to instant obedience.

  “Tell Mr Hines I’m here, Woodrow. I’m early, but I’m in rather a hurry.”

  Laird locked Hines’s eyes with his own, willing the other man not to look away. He said, “I trust Mrs Logan is more satisfied than Miss Logan with the disposition of Sammy’s estate? Of course she is. After all, hers is the substantial portion that you’ve been devoting so much time to!”