Death on the Downs

Thirty-Six

This time Jude had rung ahead to Sandalls Manor and fixed a time to see Charles Hilton. Four o’clock in the afternoon.

Wednesday was the changeover day. One group of soul-searching participants had left on the Tuesday (slightly disappointed that due to the guru’s absence in Ireland, they’d been taken on their soul journey by a sub); the next consignment would arrive on the Thursday. Wednesday was the day for Anne Hilton to shout at her staff as she supervised their bed-changing and laundry work. And a day when Charles Hilton retired to his study to get on with his writing.

It was to the study that Jude was shown, with no pretence at welcome, by the guru’s wife. Charles sat behind a large desk of dark wood, at which Anne’s father had no doubt checked the farm’s accounts. The old man would have been shocked, though, to see the range of objects which neatly littered the desk’s surface. There were pebbles and crystals, fossils and face masks, evil eyes and tiny totems – a mini-museum of the world’s alternative belief systems.

On the wall behind Charles were pristine editions of Setting Free the Soul and others of his publications. There were framed texts in squiggly Oriental writing, and some in English, calligraphed and illustrated no doubt by besotted acolytes. Jude couldn’t help noticing one that read: “WE’RE ALL IRRELEVANT, AND THAT’S WHAT MAKES US ALL MATTER SO MUCH.”

She was reminded of her recent encounter with Sebastian Trent. He had stood in his Hampstead sitting room as if posing for a photograph. Jude had a feeling the neatly framed scene she was looking at might well appear on the jacket of Charles Hilton’s books.

He himself was all solicitous charm as he rose to greet the supplicant. “Jude, great to see you again. Would you care for some coffee?”

She could sense Anne Hilton’s disapproval of the offer, but that wasn’t why she declined it. If all went well, Jude didn’t intend to be in Charles Hilton’s study long enough to drink coffee. She hoped to be taken straight to see the object of her quest.

Relieved that at least she wasn’t going to have to get bloody coffee – though of course far too well brought up to verbalize any such opinion – Anne Hilton stomped out of the room, closing the door heavily behind her. Jude wondered whether this was to make a point or if she always did it like that. Anne Hilton’s upbringing had made her the kind of woman who talked loudly in public places. Maybe slamming doors came with the genetic territory.

Charles Hilton seemed visibly to relax once his wife was out of the room. Maybe he had still been afraid Jude might make some reference to his ill-considered grope of long ago. He was dressed again in neat jeans, though today’s cardigan was of an ethnic design that looked vaguely Peruvian.

“So…what can I do for you?” His smile was as bland and patronizing as he could make it, but with an undertone of anxiety.

“I want to see Tamsin Lutteridge,” said Jude.

“I’ve told you, I can’t discuss my patients’ cases.”

“I’m not asking you to do that. If you’d listened, Charles, you would have heard me say I wanted to see her, not discuss her.”

“I don’t know what makes you think I’ve any idea where she is. I’m not – ”

She cut through his bluster. “I know Tamsin’s here, because her mother told me she’s here. I did in fact ring Gillie this morning and tell her I was coming to see her daughter. She was quite happy about it.” Jude gestured to the telephone. “Ring her if you don’t believe me.”

“No, no, of course I believe you.” He seemed to recognize the pointlessness of further resistance. “But I think you owe me the courtesy of telling me why you want to see Tamsin.”

“There’s something I need to ask her.”

Charles Hilton looked even more anxious. “Is it something to do with her treatment?”

“No, it has nothing to do with her treatment or her illness.”

“Then…?”

“Then it is on a subject that has nothing to do with you, Charles.”

“Fine.” But his expression suggested everything wasn’t entirely fine. “Jude…I’ve got to make a few ground rules for when you do see her.”

“Oh yes?”

“You’re not to ask her anything about the treatment she’s receiving here.”

“All right. I told you, that’s not what interests me.”

“No…” He still wasn’t fully reassured. “The work I’m doing with Tamsin is experimental…exploratory perhaps is a better word…I don’t want any details of it to be publicly known until the process is complete, until we’ve achieved some kind of closure.”

“Charles, will you stop worrying? I’m not a muckraking journalist. I’m not interested in how you’re treating Tamsin…Well, that is to say I’m only interested in how you’re treating Tamsin if the treatment is successful.”

She hadn’t managed to remove all residue of scepticism from her voice and Charles Hilton flared up. “Look, what I’m doing is perfectly legitimate and may go on to help many other sufferers from an illness that is one of the most complex and disturbing to have emerged in recent decades. I’m a serious therapist, Jude, and I really care about helping people, making them better. It’d be so easy to pigeonhole me as a charlatan, a devious guru, a false prophet, but you can’t do that, because it’s not true!”

Jude was amazed and not a little amused by this outburst. She would have thought Charles Hilton’s training as a psychotherapist might have given him a little more self-knowledge. She hadn’t made any of the accusations against which he had so vigorously defended himself. If anyone was dubious about the validity of his treatments, then that person had to be Charles himself. His insecurity was so overt, it was almost endearing.

But she didn’t say anything. There was nothing that needed saying. Charles had already said it all.

“Right. Could I see Tamsin then, please?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

He rose from his little area of film set and picked up a bunch of keys from the desk.

“You’re not telling me you keep her locked up, are you, like someone out of a Victorian asylum?”

He was oblivious of the jokiness in her tone and almost screamed, “No of course I don’t keep her locked up!”

Charles Hilton looked at Jude. He saw the smile on her lips and his eyes slipped away from hers. He opened the door of his study.

As she passed through, he put a hand that was a little more than avuncular on the soft curve of her shoulder. Jude gave him a look far more articulate than many novels. Charles Hilton removed his hand.