The Dark Room (7 page)

Protheroe didn’t press her to go on. He was content to let her tell the story at her own speed, realizing perhaps that because it was so rarely told it was bound to lack
fluency.

‘I had nightmares about it for ages, so Adam packed me off to a hypnotherapist. But that just made everything worse. The man was a quack. He encouraged me to confront what
disturbed me most about the incident and then put it into perspective, but all he actually succeeded in doing was exacerbating every feeling of guilt I had.’ She fell silent again, and this
time her face took on an introspective look as if she were revisiting rooms long closed.

Protheroe was more interested in what she hadn’t said than what she had. He knew the details of the story already, both from what her father had told him over the phone and
from reading the notes made by her psychiatrist. Why hadn’t she mentioned, for example, that she and Russell Landy had been married? Or that the murder of her husband had caused her to
miscarry at thirteen weeks? Why did she talk about being referred to a hypnotherapist when she had, in fact, been admitted to hospital in a state of near starvation, weighing under six stone, and
with very severe depression? He ran his thumb down his jawline and pondered this last thought. She had referred to the therapist as ‘he’, yet the notes he had in his office were written
by a woman.

He waited for another minute or two, then prompted her gently when it became clear she was lost in self-absorption. ‘Did the psychiatrist at Queen Mary’s Hospital help
you at all, Jinx?’

‘You mean the second one, Stephanie Fellowes?’

‘Yes.’

She seemed to find her position uncomfortable and unlocked her arms to reach for the inevitable cigarette. ‘When am I going to be allowed outside?’ she demanded suddenly,
flicking the lighter to the tip and eyeing him through the smoke.

‘The sooner the better. We could go now if you like. I’ve a pretty good arm for leaning on and we can find ourselves a bench away from the madding crowd.’

She smiled faintly. ‘No thank you. I’ll wait till I can manage it alone.’ She nodded towards her bathroom door. ‘I’ve been to the loo a couple of times
and had to crawl most of the way, so I’ll practise in private for a bit. I’m not particularly keen to have you laugh at me.’

‘Why would I want to do that?’

She shrugged. ‘Not in front of me, perhaps, but I’m sure you could work it up into a good story for the golf club.’ She mimicked his lower register. ‘I say,
chaps, have I told you the one about my pet hysteric who drove her car at a concrete pillar, survived by a miracle, then fell flat on her face when she tried to stand up?’

‘Do you always ascribe such base motives to the people who care for you?’

‘Stephanie Fellowes certainly thought so.’
But then I didn’t trust her
. She blew smoke rings into the air. ‘You see, I’m not a willing guinea
pig. I’d rather live with all my fears, depressions and obsessions than have clumsy people in hobnailed boots trampling about in my head.’ She smiled without hostility. ‘I presume
she or my father has told you that I became so depressed I was starving myself?’ She looked at him enquiringly and he nodded. ‘Which one, as a matter of interest? Stephanie or
Adam?’

He showed no hesitation about answering. ‘Both. Stephanie sent me a copy of the notes she took at the time. Your father told me when you first came here.’

‘Have you met him?’

‘No. We spoke on the telephone.’

She nodded. ‘That’s how he does business. Technology, particularly the impersonal fax, was invented for Adam. He knows how intimidating it is to deal with somebody you
never meet. I’d keep it that way if I were you.’

‘Why?’

‘No particular reason.’

‘He seemed pleasant enough, and he’s very concerned for you.’

She smiled to herself, and he wondered if she realized how provocative that smile was. As a character she was fascinating. She was determined to wean him away from her father, but in
the most subtle of fashions – through innuendo rather than fact, through sympathy rather than honesty. And he knew he wasn’t immune. There was something infinitely appealing about the
combination of incisive intellect and physical weakness. Particularly for him, although she couldn’t know that.

‘So concerned that he hasn’t been near me,’ she pointed out.

‘Then phone him and find out why not,’ he suggested.

She shook her head. ‘Adam and I never ask each other personal questions, Dr Protheroe.’

‘Yet you always call him Adam. I assumed that meant you saw each other as equals.’

But that was clearly something she didn’t want to discuss. ‘We were talking about my alleged depression,’ she said abruptly. ‘
Alleged
being the
operative word.’

He abandoned the subject. ‘You wanted to know whether it was Stephanie or Adam who told me you became so depressed that you were starving yourself,’ he reminded her,
‘and I said they both had. Shall we go on from there?’

‘It happened the other way round. The depression developed because I wasn’t eating, so when they took me into hospital and started feeding me I began to feel
better.’

He thought it more likely that her improvement was due to anti-depressants, but he had no intention of arguing about it. ‘Do you know why you weren’t eating?’

‘Yes.’

He waited for a moment. ‘Are you going to tell me?’

‘Maybe. If you tell me what Stephanie put in her notes.’

She would be satisfied with nothing less than the truth, he thought, although whether she would believe that what he told her
was
the truth was another matter altogether.
‘The notes are in my office,’ he said, ‘so I can’t quote her verbatim but I can give you the gist of what she wrote. You were admitted with severe reactive depression,
following the murder of your husband and the loss of your baby. Your symptoms were extreme – in particular, loss of appetite and persistent insomnia. It was clear to Dr Fellowes that you were
very disturbed and that your malnutrition was due not so much to a loss of appetite as a refusal to eat, and she diagnosed you a potential suicide. Your treatment consisted of a combination of drug
and psychotherapy and, while she admits that you were extremely hostile to the psychotherapy, your condition began to improve quite markedly after three to four weeks. As far as I recall you were
discharged fit after six weeks and, although you have consistently refused to have your progress monitored at out-patient attendances, Dr Fellowes regards you as one of her successes.’ He
paused briefly. ‘Or she did until I requested your notes.’

Jinx frowned. ‘I hadn’t realized she thought I was doing it deliberately.’ She took a thoughtful puff of her cigarette. ‘It explains why you’re all
assuming suicide now.
Pardus maculas non deponit
. The leopard doesn’t change his spots,’ she translated idly, her eyes drifting towards the window where a man was wandering
across the lawn. Fair hair, green sweater, brown cords. For a fraction of a second she thought it was Leo, and her heart lurched violently.

‘If you weren’t starving yourself for a reason, then why were you doing it?’

She waited a moment before she answered. ‘Because the quack I saw first used hypnosis to unlock my nightmares, and turned me into a psychotic wreck in the process.’ She
shrugged and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘But a nightmare isn’t so bad. Most of the time you don’t remember details, and the relief of waking always outweighs the fears.’ She
used her fingertips to sweep the arm of the chair, something she would do again and again during the next few minutes. ‘I wasn’t getting very much sleep admittedly, but, other than
that, I was coping pretty well in view of everything that had happened. At which point, enter my father.’ She shook her head. ‘You have to understand that he’d always loathed
Russell, partly because we got married without telling him, but mostly because Russell was twenty years older than I was and had been one of my dons at Oxford. If my father referred to him at all
it was always as “the twisted paedophile”.’ She dwelt on that for a moment. ‘Anyway, about a week after the miscarriage, Adam had an attack of conscience – at least I
assume that’s what it was – and paid this extremely expensive therapist to counsel me through my double bereavement.’ She took out another cigarette. ‘If I hadn’t been
so shocked by it all, I might have realized he was a charlatan, but you don’t think straight in situations like that. Do you know what flooding is?’ She flung the question at him as she
bent to the lighter.

Protheroe was taken by surprise. ‘In psychiatric terms? Well, yes, it’s a drastic method of dealing with fear. You force a patient to confront the thing he’s afraid
of, often without warning and usually with no means of escape. It’s risky and not always successful, but when it works it’s spectacular. It has its place in the treatment of
phobias.’

‘Do you use it here?’

‘No.’

‘Do you use hypnosis?’

He shook his head.

‘Then what
do
you use, Dr Protheroe?’

‘Nothing.’ He smiled at her expression of disbelief. ‘No tricks, anyway, and no short-cuts. We simply concentrate on restoring self-esteem, and most of the people
who come here are halfway to winning the battle before they even walk through the door because they’ve already made up their minds they want to be free of whatever disturbs them.’

‘One of your patients came in yesterday. He wanted to know whether I was on heroin or cocaine, so I presume he’s a drug addict himself. He didn’t strike me as being
halfway to winning anything.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Tall, skinny, long ginger hair.’

He looked pleased. ‘Matthew Cornell. Well, that’s an improvement. At least he’s beginning to notice a world beyond smack, poppers and MDMA.’

‘Is that why he came to my room uninvited, because you encourage your patients to notice each other?’

‘I rely entirely on human nature,’ he told her without a hint of guile. ‘In the end, curiosity usually wins out. You’re our newest resident, therefore
you’re of interest. I’m quite pleased Matthew found the courage to defy the restrictions.’

‘What restrictions?’

‘There’s a huge notice outside your door saying Do Not Disturb.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘You should have looked.’

‘If it’s there, why did Simon Harris ignore it?’

He shrugged. ‘Are you sure he did?’

‘He came in.’

‘Uninvited?’

‘No, he asked me if he should make polite excuses and leave, but I could hardly say I didn’t want to see him when he’d come all this way.’

‘Why not?’

Because no one ever taught me how to say piss off.
‘I won’t be psychoanalysed, Dr Protheroe. I won’t do group therapy. I won’t join in. I won’t
play games.’

‘Is anyone saying you must?’

‘I know how it works.’

‘I wonder if you do.’

‘You were asking me about the hypnotherapist,’ she said, ignoring this. ‘He treated me for a phobia that I didn’t have. All I had were feelings of guilt about
letting Russell down. There was so much blood, and his face was completely raw and pulpy.’ She pressed a hand to her bandaged eye, which had begun to ache. ‘He wanted me to kiss
him,’ she said flatly, mechanically even, ‘but I couldn’t. And then I lost the baby, and there was more blood.’ She paused. ‘All I needed was a little time.’

He let her sit in silence for several minutes, relentlessly sweeping the chair arm and drawing on her cigarette. ‘What did the therapist do?’ he prompted finally.

She looked at him in surprise as if she thought he would have guessed. ‘He put a raw steak on my face while I was in a trance and then woke me. It smelt of blood and dead meat,
and I thought it was Russell come back from the grave for his kiss. It was an awfully long time before I could eat something without being sick.’

‘Good God!’ He was genuinely shocked. ‘Who was this man?’

She stared at him blankly for a moment. ‘I don’t remember his name.’

‘Where was his office?’

But she couldn’t remember that either. ‘Somewhere in London,’ she told him.

‘OK, it doesn’t matter.’

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

‘I’ve no reason not to.’

‘How could I remember something so awful if it never happened?’

He didn’t say anything.

‘You think I’ve invented it,’ she accused him. ‘But why would I want to invent something that never happened?’

Perhaps because nobody’s ever been charged with Russell’s murder, he thought, for her guilt seemed rooted in a far more powerful anguish than her very natural reluctance
to kiss the mutilated face of her dying husband.

Chapter Six

Friday, 24 June, The Vicarage, Littleton Mary, Wiltshire – 11.00 a.m.

THE REVEREND CHARLES
Harris watched from his study window as the white Rolls-Royce – registration number KIN6 – pulled in through the vicarage gates and
parked by the front door. The number plate said it all. By the strategic placing of a yellow-headed screw to break the six and turn it into a G, the word KING screamed out from both ends of the
ostentatious vehicle. Not for the first time, he wondered how Jinx had remained so apparently unaffected by her vulgar family and, not for the first time either, he berated himself for being
uncharitable.