The Crozier Pharaohs

2

Eccentric Patient

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Out in the hall, but hidden in the shadow cast by the staircase, Laura listened to the exchanges between the caller and the maid.

‘Good afternoon, sir. Are you expected?’ This was the formula which Laura had impressed upon the servants that they were to use unless they knew and recognised the caller. Dame Beatrice’s incursions into cases of murder were ever in Laura’s mind, and precautions, in her watch-dog opinion, were always necessary and had more than once been justified.

The caller, who had removed his hat, although he had not yet crossed the threshold, flourished the headgear and then held it over his heart in the way male Olympic athletes do in salute when they pass in the opening procession in front of the seats of honour. He said, handing her the hat, and stepping inside, ‘The honourable lady of the house, which is she?’

‘I expect you mean Dame Beatrice, sir. Shall I take your stick?’

‘No, no, not Beatrice. Wrong play, wrong play! The lady of the house was called Olivia.’ He gave the maid his hat, but retained the stick.

‘There’s no one of that name here, sir.’

‘Why, then, I pray you, sweet creature,’ he said, ‘tell me your own name, that in my orisons it may be remembered.’

‘My name is Polly, sir.’

‘Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell

Why thy canoniz’d bones, hearséd in death,

Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre

Wherein we saw thee quietly in-urned,

Have oped his ponderous and marble jaws

To cast thee up again.’

‘What name shall I say, sir?’

Instead of answering, the visitor began to carol. He had a resonant, not unpleasing voice. He sang, “O, pretty, pretty, pretty Poll! Without disguise, breathing sighs, doting eyes, my constant heart discover.” ’

Laura decided that it was high time she came forward.

‘All right, Polly,’ she said. She then addressed the visitor. ‘Name, please.’

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, but, in this unenlightened day and age, my contemporaries call me Robin Goodfellow.’

‘And sweet Puck?’ asked Laura sardonically.

‘You jump to erroneous conclusions. My paternal name is Goodfellow. A misguided mother insisted on having me named Robin.’

‘Very well, Mr Goodfellow. Address?’

‘Oh, dear me! I am staying at a hotel in a place called Abbots Crozier, but I forget the name of it.’

‘Do you want to consult Dame Beatrice? You have no appointment, you know.’

‘ “What needs complaints, when she a place has with the race of saints?” ’

‘ “She sees no tears, or any tone of thy deep groan she hears,” ’ returned Laura. ‘Well, if you’ve come all the way from Abbots Crozier, you had better come along to the waiting-room and I will find out whether Dame Beatrice has time to attend to you. Oh, I had better take your walking-stick.’

‘No, I need it.’

‘Not in here,’ said Laura firmly. ‘You should have given it to Polly when she took your hat. You came in the Rants’ car, I think, and we know them, so perhaps Dame Beatrice will make an exception in your favour and see you without an appointment. This way, then.’

Laura had left Dame Beatrice in the library, but when she returned to it after having removed his stick and parked Goodfellow in the waiting-room, she found the library empty, so she went into the consulting-room. Here she found her employer arranging some roses in a glass vase.

‘Name of Goodfellow,’ announced Laura. ‘Staying in a hotel at Abbots Crozier, but doesn’t remember the name of it. Nothing much in that, I suppose. Did the same thing myself once in Paris. Are you willing to see him? He’s either a complete crackpot or else he’s trying to pose as one, but with what object I can’t imagine, I think he’s playing some game. I don’t think the Rant sisters, who seem to have wished him on to us, know a hawk from a handsaw, thanks to a father who wouldn’t let them out of his sight, so what about it?’

‘By all means show him in. We must not disoblige Bryony and Morpeth.’

‘You’ll be careful, won’t you? I think we may have caught a right one this time. Besides, he wanted to cling on to a stick with a heavy knob at the top. I had to take it away from him.’

‘Take it away from him?’

‘Just a slight bit of wrist-work. He seemed a bit surprised. Said he only kept it by him to scotch snakes.’

‘Ah,’ said Dame Beatrice, with her reptilian smile, ‘and the remark aroused your suspicions. Send him in.’

‘I am always seeing angels,’ said the caller.

‘Well, that is better than seeing devils,’ said Dame Beatrice cheerfully.

‘I’m not so sure. I think I would feel more at home with devils. Angels have harps. Twang! Twang! Twang! And all those hallelujahs!’

‘And all that garlic!’ said Dame Beatrice in an absent-minded way.

I beg your pardon?’

‘I was quoting from D.W. Lucas’s and F.J.A. Cruso’s translation of The Frogs of Aristophanes. Do please forgive me. I understand that you are apt at quotations yourself. Please be seated.’

She was accustomed to patients who suffered from delusions, sometimes of grandeur, sometimes of persecution. She was also accustomed to pseudo-patients who had sought a consultation only with the express (although not expressed) intention of murdering her. Time would indicate to which category her present visitor belonged. He had gone into silent communion with himself, it seemed, for, although his lips moved, no sound emerged. She asked solemnly whether it was easy to sing hallelujahs to harp accompaniment and at this he roused himself from his meditations.

‘Well, I suppose organ notes would be better,’ he said, ‘although the Salvation Army do it with tambourines.’

‘I thought it was with brass bands. They have some very fine musicians.’

‘But not harpists,’ he said quickly. ‘Harps of gold. It says so in the carol. “From angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold.” Well, I wish they would go and bend somewhere else. I’m sure I don’t want them twanging at me. Talking of gold, what are your fees?’

‘I have no idea. You must ask my secretary. She will know.’

‘Is that the tall woman who showed me in?’

‘Yes. Her name is Laura Gavin.’

‘Petrarch loved Laura.’

‘So we are told.’

‘She was too young for love.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. There used to be a song. I believe it went, “They said we were too young to love. We were not too young at all.” Something like that.’

‘Angels are ageless and sexless. They tell me they can scarcely be expected to love — not, at any rate, in our sense of the word. Have you ever loved, not one, but many men, passionately, wholeheartedly, spiritually and physically, time and time and time again?’

‘I feel I hardly give that impression,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘but then, of course, I am a psychiatrist, not a nymphomaniac.’

At this the visitor gave a loud whoop, ran to the door, flung it open and called loudly, ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are!’

Laura, who had made it a habit to remain close at hand when Dame Beatrice entertained a more than usually eccentric patient, knocked and came into the room.

‘Ah,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘am I wanted on the telephone?’

‘No. I thought somebody called me.’

‘I called you,’ said Goodfellow, returning to his chair. ‘I have a complaint to make in front of a witness. Why am I restricted to a cushioned chaise when I expected to lie in luxury on a couch? But first tell me something else. Behold! I am Ozymandias, king of kings. Why did you wrest my sceptre from me?’

‘Ozymandias may have had a sceptre,’ said Laura, ‘but it is just as likely that his symbols of royalty were a crook and a flail. None of the three would be allowed in the consulting-room, neither are walking-sticks, umbrellas, a conductor’s baton or a Boy Scout’s staff. I could add to the list, but no doubt you get the drift.’ At a nod from Dame Beatrice, she seated herself between her employer and the patient and flipped open her notebook. Goodfellow looked sadly at Dame Beatrice.

‘But, save his good broadsword, he weapons had none,’ he said plaintively.

‘But you don’t need weapons here,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘There is nothing to be afraid of — except your own sins.’

‘I am not afraid with any amazement. The angels are always talking to me about sins. What do you think?’

‘He that one sin in conscience keeps

When he to quiet goes —’’

‘But I haven’t got twenty mortal foes. You need twenty mortal foes to sleep among. It says so. ’

‘Poetic exaggeration.’

‘I don’t think I’ll stay any longer. I wish you well.’ He rose from his chair.

‘Give our love to the angels, ’ murmured Laura, going to the bell to notify the maid that the visitor was leaving. She accompanied him into the hall, took his hat from Polly, resurrected his heavy walking-stick and escorted him to the front door. She watched him get into the car. The last she heard was his voice raised in song, inspired, no doubt, by the driver’s surname. ‘ “So we’ll rant and we’ll roar, like true British sailors. We’ll rant and we’ll roar all on the high seas.” ’

The woman in the driver’s seat waved to Laura. Laura waved back, closed the door and returned to Dame Beatrice.

‘Funny sort of cuss,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry the Rants have got themselves mixed up with him.’

‘Let us hope it is but a passing phase. If he is staying at a hotel, doubtless he is only a bird of passage. Now, it will take that car almost an hour to get back to Abbots Crozier. Get Morpeth on the telephone. Find out what she knows about our caller.’

‘Caller? Yes, he hardly turned out to be a patient, did he? I wonder what his object was in coming here and talking all that rot?’

‘You do not think that the rather inexperienced sisters sent him to us simply because they thought he was in need of my help?’

‘Could be just that, I suppose, but I think there is more to it than that. I think this Goodfellow has scared them pretty badly and that they are asking help for themselves rather than for him.’

‘An interesting conjecture. Well, find out what Morpeth has to say.’

Morpeth was contrite and apologised several times during the telephone conversation.

‘I told Bryony we ought to have asked you before we sent you this rather awful man. He seems quite strange in the head. Bryony disagreed because she said she thought that, if we told you how crazy he is, you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him. We’ve had an awfully trying time the last few weeks. First there was Susan — you know, the woman who wished herself on us last year as unpaid kennel-maid. She asked for the job and we took her on, but now she keeps wanting us to get rid of poor Sekhmet.’

‘That Labrador you told us about?’

‘Yes, the poor, harmless, friendly creature. We wouldn’t dream of getting rid of her, but Susan won’t give up arguing.’

‘Sack her if she’s a nuisance. After all, it’s your dog, not hers.’

‘She says that, when Sekhmet comes into season, there is always the chance of a mésalliance with one of the Pharaohs, but I don’t see how that would matter. We would have to sell the puppies cheap or even give them away to good homes, that’s all, but Susan says an accidental mating could contaminate the Pharaoh stock. I can’t see how. It might be different if Isis or Nephthys had a litter by a male Labrador, but there’s no chance of that. We’re much too careful. What do you think?’

‘I haven’t a clue, except that I wouldn’t allow Susan to rule the roost.’

‘She isn’t our only trouble. We think we’ve got a prowler.’

‘That isn’t a pleasant thought. What about going to the police?’

‘I don’t think we’ve enough to go on.’

‘I don’t know so much. Those hounds of yours must be pretty valuable. You don’t want somebody poaching one of them and going off with it.’

‘I don’t think there’s much chance of that. We think it’s us he’s spying on and that, when he gets the opportunity, he will do us some harm.’

‘What makes you think so?’

‘He comes and taps on windows and then runs away. We’ve never seen him face to face, only as a shadow in the garden.’

‘What makes you afraid he means mischief?’

‘We think he may be from the unlucky family of those patients who died when our father was still alive. It’s left some nasty feeling in the village and there was a bit of a demonstration at father’s funeral.’

‘I certainly think that for you to go to the police is the answer.’

‘And have my father’s bad luck — because that is all it was — discussed all over again in open court? We’d rather die. Then, as though that wasn’t enough, this madman comes along and insists that we are doctors and must treat him. I’ll say again how terribly sorry we are to have burdened you with him, but he frightened us so much that Bryony said he must be mad and that Dame Beatrice was our only hope. I know we ought to have rung up and asked before Bryony brought him over to you, but — is she willing to treat him? He seemed very ready to go to her.’

‘I should have thought there was somebody nearer to you. Anyway, he didn’t stay long. I saw that Bryony had one of the hounds in the back of the car. Was that a precautionary measure?’

‘Yes, of course. We didn’t trust the man, but nobody would touch either of us while we were under the protection of Osiris.’

Laura rightly took it that Osiris was the guardian hound and not the god in person, although, as she said to Dame Beatrice later, with Morpeth you never knew.

‘Very wise to take him along, ’ she said over the telephone, ‘I suppose this man couldn’t also be your prowler?’

‘Oh, good gracious, no! At least, I do hope not. I’m sure the prowler is a villager who bears us a grudge because of father.’

‘Doctors make mistakes at times, but nobody thinks they intend to harm a patient.’

‘We’re not liked by the villagers. They don’t like the hounds, either.’

‘Well, if your prowler does any more window-tapping, you take my advice and call the police.’

‘What news from the hills?’ asked Dame Beatrice when Laura went back to her. Laura reported the conversation and it turned on to the subject of doctors as murderers. The names of Crippen, Buck Ruxton, Palmer, Pritchard and Lamson came up. Laura also spoke of a French physician born in Lyons, who, later, practised in Paris and was suspected of murdering wealthy women patients for their money or to cash in on life assurances he had taken out in their names.

The evergreen mystery of Charles Bravo’s death in 1877 at The Priory, a house in Balham, came into the conversation, although, as Dame Beatrice pointed out, if Charles Bravo was murdered by the administering of poison — tartar emetic among other things was mentioned — it was unlikely, on the evidence provided, to have been Dr Gully who was the criminal.

‘And, of course, Thomas Neill Cream studied medicine,’ said Laura, ‘and gave unfortunate girls drinks with “white stuff” in them. Then there was the Polish barber-surgeon Klosowski, who called himself George Chapman after he had parted from a young woman of that name. You don’t suppose somebody in the village got a bit fanciful and imaginative and spread it about that the Rants’ father knocked off a patient or two for gain, do you?’

‘I do not think much gain could accrue to him from cottagers. These morbid speculations do not become you and are extremely far-fetched.’

‘Their father seems to have been anything but a poor man when he died, and that doesn’t sound much like a village GP,’ argued Laura.

‘Perhaps the mother left money.’

‘Yes,’ said Laura. ‘We never hear anything about the mother, do we?’

‘She may have died when the girls were very young.’

Laura agreed and the conversation drifted into other channels, but, after supper, as they were settling down to the business of working on Dame Beatrice’s memoirs — a project masterminded in a sense by Laura, since she had suggested it and had insisted that it would be an interesting and valuable addition to the already published volumes of Dame Beatrice’s case notes — Laura asked whether Dame Beatrice had come to any further conclusions with regard to Goodfellow’s visit.

‘Morpeth said on the phone that he made no bones about coming all this way. However, you don’t think he is a case in need of psychiatry, do you? He is playing some game, you think.’

‘Most people are in need of psychiatry of one sort or another. Some people find what they need by attending church, others by confiding in sympathetic friends. Some find it in their work, others in strenuous sport. These things all minister to minds diseased and that means most minds.’

‘Good heavens! Is that why I’ve always been hooked on swimming?’

‘To return to a subject from which we appear to have deviated, I think the reason Mr Goodfellow called is that he was anxious to have a good look at us,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘and possibly, as you would say, to size us up.’

‘But why?’

‘That is the question.’

‘It’s one to which you think you know the answer, isn’t it, though?’

‘No, I do not know the answer. I do know, however, that he is not mentally disturbed in the sense that he would have us believe. What he really has on his mind I cannot say.’

‘You don’t think — I know it’s a very long shot — that the Rants had any reason of their own, except that he scared them, for bringing him here? Bryony, in particular, could be a bit cagey, I think.’

‘What makes you suggest that?’

‘Morpeth admitted that they know you don’t see people — patients, I mean — without an appointment. If he had come on his own and if we had not recognised the car and Bryony in it, you wouldn’t have given him an interview, would you?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Emphatically not, because I should have sent him to the right-about as soon as I heard him talking all that rubbish to Polly at the front door.’

‘Dear me! How high-handed you have become!’

‘I’ll tell you another thing,’ said Laura. ‘This business of a prowler at Crozier Lodge. Do you think he can be in league with that Susan woman who, apparently, works for the Rants for nothing? It was very odd, the way she suddenly walked herself into their lives.’

‘During their father’s lifetime she would have had no place at Crozier Lodge. There were no Pharaohs there then. Bryony told me that, when Dr Rant died, the sisters spent a long time deciding whether or not to stay on at the Lodge. The house and its grounds seemed too large for the two of them. The Pharaohs were a way of justifying their staying on. Whatever they say about her, Susan’s advent must have been a godsend. Your own acquaintance with the Rants began under far more unusual circumstances than did Susan’s, if you remember.’

‘I was a witness to the result of a car accident, that’s all. You know the story. A lorry had pushed the Rants’ car off the road and into a ditch. It happened sufficiently near here for me to give them a chance to telephone a garage from here and give them a cuppa. They were pretty badly shaken up, you know. Returning to this question of a prowler, I’ve told Morpeth that the thing to do is to tell the police.’

‘Or set the hounds on him. He would scarcely be prepared to race half a dozen of them. I wonder that two otherwise unprotected women have not thought of one or other of these alternatives for themselves.’

‘If the prowler is in league with that Susan woman, the hounds wouldn’t be much good. She has probably got them where she wants them by now. After all, she’s the kennel-maid.’

I see no reason why you should suspect her.’

‘I always suspect people who do something for nothing.’

‘But that does not apply to Susan. She is provided with food, with a task which, no doubt, she finds agreeable and, more than all, with the companionship of other women. She may feel a real need for that, don’t you think?’

‘Perhaps. Anyway, I don’t trust her.’

‘But you have never even met her,’ said Dame Beatrice reasonably.

‘I know, but something about that set-up stinks.’

‘The foul odour may not emanate from Susan.’

‘I’d like a chance to size her up, but, as we are never asked to visit Crozier Lodge, I don’t suppose I shall get one.’