The Bedlam Detective

FORTY-SEVEN

Sebastian dreamed of Elisabeth.They were at home. One of their past homes. All was well but he was possessed by a certainty that something terrible was going to happen. She was moving about the room, not looking at him, speaking; later he would struggle to remember what she’d said. He knew that this was a dream, and that unless he could work out the secret of how to remain then he’d soon be pulled out of it and back into the waking world. He tried to imagine what lay outside the door, beyond the windows. If he could only populate this place, give it geography, render it all in enough detail to snap it into the real … it was almost as if, by perceiving with sufficient intensity, he might dream her back into life again.

But wherever he moved his attention, the rest began to slip. It was a room on an island in a fog, where Elisabeth walked and spoke, and he would not remember her words.

He could feel the covers of a bed or a divan underneath him. His chest hurt. He knew that he was awake, but he didn’t open his eyes. When he opened his eyes, that would be the end of it.

He heard Sir Owain say, “How’s the head?”

Sebastian gave in.

It was daylight. He was lying flat and looking up at a paneled ceiling. From somewhere to his right, Sir Owain said, “It was touch and go there, rather. You almost stopped breathing twice.”

“You could have killed me,” Sebastian managed to say.

“I could. And yet I feel no conscience about it. Is that significant, do you think?”

Sebastian turned his head to look at him. He could barely keep his head lifted from the pillow. The room had painted wallpaper and heavy, masculine furniture. The bedcover on which he lay had a satin look, but was coarse and scratchy to the touch.

“Here,” Sir Owain said, and put an arm under Sebastian’s shoulders to lift and get him sitting upright. “Let’s get you active. See if we can clear that head for you.”

He turned Sebastian so that his legs swung off the bed. Then he helped him to rise to his feet and supported him walking.

“Let me sit a while,” Sebastian protested.

“Trust me,” Sir Owain said. “I know what you need.”

They emerged from the room and into a wide gallery. This was a part of the house that Sebastian had not seen before. The gallery was formed by vaulted timbers that curved overhead, as if cut by a shipwright. It was painted in red, and its sides were lined with specimen cases and statuary.

Sebastian was helpless. He was like a drunk with a benefactor walking him home. At the end of the gallery they turned around and started back. When they staggered a little on the turn, Sir Owain said, “Forgive me. I’m not the man I used to be.”

Sebastian said, “What do you think this is going to achieve?”

“I’ve an open mind,” said Sir Owain. “But I’ve an idea of what I expect.”

“Where’s Doctor Sibley?”

“Just as dead as he was last night. That was his bed you were lying on. My dear Mister Becker, don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

“I meant to say, what have you done with him?”

“Well, I couldn’t leave an old friend just lying there on the kitchen floor,” Sir Owain said. “There’s no dignity in that. So I cleaned him up, and I put him somewhere fitting. It was a struggle. I had to manage on my own. I could hardly involve Thomas, could I? It wouldn’t be fair. He’s a faithful servant, but that’s far too much to ask of a man’s loyalty.”

Thomas? The chauffeur. Sebastian filled his lungs and yelled the man’s name at the top of his voice.

Sir Owain bore the racket patiently, so loud and so close to his ear. And then he said, “If you expect to get anyone’s attention, you’re wasting your time. I give Thomas his Sundays off. And it’s been some time, now, since I had to let the others go.”

They turned again, and started back. Sir Owain said, “That was a sad day for me. A house of this size, Sebastian-may I call you Sebastian? It takes a certain number of people just to bring it to life.”

As they went along, Sebastian felt his strength returning. Movement forced the sluggish blood around his system. Soon he would be recovered enough to overpower Sir Owain. But better not to try, until he was sure.

At the end of the gallery they went through a curtained opening and across a landing. On the other side of the landing they entered a suite of rooms, where Sir Owain released Sebastian to fall onto a couch. Sir Owain’s exhaustion now seemed to match his own.

“This was Hubert’s study,” Sir Owain said, fetching himself a chair. “Is it just me, or do you share a sense of discomfort at being in here? As if he were still alive. He so valued his privacy.” He set the chair down before Sebastian, and went over to the writing desk. “Well,” he said, “he’s gone and there’s no protecting it now.”

Although not quite ransacked, it had the look of a room that had been thoroughly searched. Every drawer in the writing desk was open. On the floor was a doctor’s bag, also open. Beside that was a medium-sized wooden chest with racks of glass, rubber tubing, and a Bunsen burner in a clip. Sir Owain glanced back and saw where Sebastian was looking.

“That’s the kit that he kept locked away,” Sir Owain said as he returned from the desk with a bound journal in his hands, “and these … these are the notes he was keeping on my treatment. I’ve been reading them. I have to say there are no big surprises.”

He sat and began to leaf through the journal. He was about to speak, but one of the pages caught his attention for a few moments, as if he’d noticed something that hadn’t registered with him before.

Then he remembered himself, and went on, “Did Doctor Sibley tell you how he’d been managing me? There’s a list here of all the drugs he tried. Most of them will cause hallucination in one form or another. It may seem an odd form of treatment to give to a man deemed to be a fantasist, but I’ve been assured that the technique has a growing reputation for treating depressive illness. I used to joke with the good doctor that he was a homeopath at heart. Making me a little mad to cure the greater madness. But I don’t think he saw the humor in it.”

Sebastian said, “I want the telephone.”

“I can imagine you do, which is why I’ve disconnected it. Try to concentrate on what I’m telling you. It concerns you more than you can imagine.”

Sebastian said, “Sir Owain, listen to me. Yours is one of the great minds of our age, but experience has damaged it. Now it’s as dangerous to others as any broken machine. You may imagine you’d be the first person to know this, but believe me. You’ll be the last.”

“You’re wrong, Mister Becker,” Sir Owain said, more seriously than before. “I do know I’m broken. I need to know how I’m broken. And if I cannot trust my own intellect to appraise the damage, then I must devise some other way to compare and assess. Somewhere in this fog of what is real and what is not, I have lost myself. I am desperate to find myself again. And for that I need you.”

“I won’t help you.”

“Your consent is not required.”

“You’re making your situation worse.”

“Not possible,” Sir Owain said. “Believe me. Let me explain what I intend for you here.”

Sebastian started to rise. In an instant he found himself facing his own revolver. He let himself fall back onto the couch.

Despite the gun in his hand, Sir Owain went on as if nothing had happened.

He said, “I start from a theory. When we were deprived of our supplies in the jungle, Somerville and I survived on a grub that we’d seen the Indians eat with safety. They’d lie around in a stupor and be useless for work, but show no ill effects.

“The grub caused vivid dreams. So vivid that I felt as if I were both in that terrible place and somewhere else. I felt that division of body and spirit that the Indians take for granted.

“When I remembered this and put it to Doctor Sibley that it might have been the beginning of some permanent separation, he disagreed. Not least because all the known hallucinogens are derived from plants, and not insects. But he did agree to let me conduct my own study, on the understanding that he’d share credit for any findings.”

Sebastian was only half-listening. Stephen Reed knew where he was. When Sebastian failed to appear and could not be reached by telephone, he’d surely come looking.

Sir Owain said, “But I faced a problem. What was this grub? I knew that it developed in flowering bamboo. But to the untrained eye, one moth larva resembles another. There were no existing studies to guide me, so it was some time before I identified a likely candidate. In the end I landed on Myelobia smerintha, the bamboo grub that the Indians call bicho de taquara. I imported some eggs and bred a small colony of them in my conservatory. The larvae flourished until the glass was broken and the temperature fell. Now they’re all gone.”

“None of this means anything to me,” Sebastian said.

“Well, it ought to,” Sir Owain said. “I fed the last of them to you last night.”

“You did what?”

“Your dessert. Take away the repugnant appearance of the insect and you’re left with the texture and flavor of vanilla cream.”

“As well as drugging me with wine, you fed me worms?”

“Now you’re making me sound like a bad host.”

Sebastian put his hand to his mouth. It was a quick gesture, and it caused Sir Owain to move back a little with the pistol, to be sure of staying out of his reach.

“I can tell you there’s no point in trying to vomit up the active ingredient,” Sir Owain said. “It’s been several hours since the meal. Whatever reaction you’re feeling now is only the beginning.”

“I don’t feel anything.”

“I don’t think that’s quite true. Is it? Your skin is sallow. Your limbs are heavy. Your energy is sapped. You want to run but you can barely rise. I want you to think about it, and tell me. How does the light feel to you? What do I sound like?”

“I’m not playing your stupid game,” Sebastian said. “You’ve poisoned me.”

“Look,” Sir Owain said reasonably. “I admit that I made a mistake and killed my doctor. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing now. I’m guiding you along a path that I’ve followed myself. Only with you I can make reliable observations, whereas before I could only interpret my own suffering.

“Shall I tell you what I felt at this stage? I felt as if I was on the threshold of another world of possibilities. One where there’s a blurring of the line between what we know to be true and what we wish or fear to be true. I sensed the existence of a world of unseen marvels. But when that faded, it left me with the permanent feeling that I could not trust my own world anymore. I see so many things that I cannot believe are there.”

Now he leaned forward.

“If you begin to see the world I see,” he said, “I’ll take that as a strong indication that it has some objective reality. I mourn the loss of your wife. But I can’t deny that it enhances the conditions for my observations.”

Sebastian said, “I’m not your experiment!”

“I’m sorry to hear you say that, Mister Becker,” Sir Owain said. “Because I’m afraid that’s exactly what you are.”

Elsewhere in the house, not too far away, there was a sound of banging.

“There’s someone at the door,” Sir Owain observed. “We get very few visitors here. Can I trust you to stay quiet while I deal with them? No, it isn’t fair to ask you. Of course I can’t.”

He got up from the chair and moved toward the medical bag. As soon as Sir Owain turned away, Sebastian launched himself from the couch, only to find that his confidence in a fast recuperation was misplaced. As the narcotic effect of the wine had worn off, the hallucinogen from the grubs had begun to increase its effect.

His legs might support him now, but his balance was unreliable. He got as far as the door and collided painfully with the jamb. He bounced out onto the landing, where he fell and hit the carpet hard.

The long gallery was to his left. The stairs were to his right. The hallway and the main door were down below. He tried to crawl toward the stairs, but the unsecured rug bunched up underneath him and he did little more than swim in place.

Sir Owain came out and knelt beside him.

“I learned another little trick from the Indians,” Sir Owain said. “They put this on their arrows.” Sebastian felt a sharp jab in the side of his neck, and then Sir Owain left him and went to descend the stairs. One hand held the pistol behind his back. He let something fall from the other as he walked away; it was a lancet, almost certainly the cause of that momentary pain. As he went down the stairs he dropped from Sebastian’s floor-level view like a ship over the horizon.

This was a piece of luck. Sebastian hadn’t expected Stephen Reed to come looking for him so soon. The gun in Sir Owain’s hand could pose a problem. He had to get to the rail and shout a warning. He could do that much.

Except that he couldn’t. The latest addition to his bloodstream cocktail was already having its effect. A sudden paralysis was taking possession of his body, like a fast-spreading blight.

His senses were unaffected. Enhanced, even. Sir Owain would no doubt be interested to know of it. Though he’d failed to reach the rail and could not see into the hallway below, Sebastian could hear every click and tumble of the main door being unlocked down there. The creak of the hinge as it opened. The change in the acoustics of the hallway as its enclosed space was opened to the world outside.

He’d expected to hear Stephen Reed’s voice. But it wasn’t the detective. It was Thomas, Sir Owain’s sometime cook and regular driver.

“I’m sorry to bang on the door, sir,” Sebastian heard him say, “but everywhere’s locked up.”

“I know it is,” Sir Owain’s voice came with an extra helping of irritation. “What do you want?”

“Might I have the use of the car today, sir?”

“For what?”

“Nothing you’d disapprove of, sir. And it’s only for an hour or so.”

“A young lady, is it?”

“Something like that, sir.”

Though he and Thomas Arnot had a combustible history, Sebastian had gathered from Sir Owain’s own words that the driver knew nothing of his master’s current plans or past misdeeds. Though the man might not want to be disloyal, he surely wouldn’t want to be branded a conspirator. Sebastian took a breath to call out to him.…

But he failed to draw in any air. The paralysis that had disabled his limbs was now affecting his entire body.

He could hear Sir Owain saying, “Fine, it’s nothing to me. But I’m not buying your petrol.”

“No, sir.”

Sebastian was suffocating. He’d breathed for his entire life without ever thinking how. Now this simple gift had deserted him.

Sir Owain seemed to take his time resecuring the doors and then climbing back up the stairs. Sebastian could hear every beat of his measured tread. Sir Owain seemed to be slowing down as he ascended, and Sebastian could feel his heart slowing along with him.

“Now,” said Sir Owain, lowering himself to sit on the floor beside Sebastian. “Where was I?”

Almost absently, he leaned over and pressed down on the small of Sebastian’s back. Air was driven from Sebastian’s lungs and, on removal of the pressure, enough fresh air rushed back in for the increasing mental fog to recede a little.

“Schafer’s method of artificial respiration,” Sir Owain said. “A trick from the Amazon. Saved one or two of our number after a drowning. Though little good it did them in the end.”

Continuing from where he’d left off, and seeming to find nothing strange in this situation, Sir Owain said, “If those beasts are a mere projection of my madness, then it means that innocents are dying by my hand. I’m no better than Somerville, in a frenzy, chasing his sister down the street with a knife. I do harm, while convinced that I’m acting for the best.

“But I see them. I hear them. And I know them by the damage they have done to those I loved. If they have some objective reality, and there are two of us who know it … don’t you see? You and I can take them on together, and make all the children safe.”

He pressed down again. Without too much exertion on his own part, Sir Owain was working the bellows of his lungs as much as was needed to keep Sebastian alive, until Sebastian could once again sustain himself.

He said, “It will settle the question once and for all. If there is this invisible world of beasts and wonders, and it occupies the same space as our own, and you can see it too … then my sanity will cease to be the issue.”

Sebastian wanted to tell Sir Owain that no experiment was required. He both was mad, and stood alone in his madness, no question about it.

But he did not yet have the breath to say so.