The Private Patient (9 page)

14

Four hours earlier Rhoda Gradwyn had slowly drifted back to consciousness. The first object she saw on opening her eyes was a small circle. It hung suspended in air immediately in front of her, like a floating full moon. Her mind, puzzled but transfixed, tried to make sense of it. It couldn't, she thought, be the moon. It was too solid and unmoving. And then the circle became clear and she saw that it was a wall clock with a wooden frame and a narrow inner rim of brass. Although the hands and numerals were becoming clearer, she couldn't read the time; deciding that it didn't matter, she quickly gave up the attempt. She became aware that she was lying on a bed in an unfamiliar room and that other people were with her, moving like pale shadows on silent feet. And then she remembered. She was to have her scar removed, and they must have prepared her for the operation. She wondered when it would take place.

And then she became aware that something had happened to the left side of her face. She felt a soreness and an aching heaviness, like a thick plaster. It was partly obscuring the edge of her mouth and dragging at the corner of her left eye. Tentatively she raised her hand, uncertain whether she had the power to move, and carefully touched her face. The left cheek was no longer there. Her exploring fingers found only a solid mass, a little rough to the touch and criss-crossed with something that felt like tape. Someone was gently lowering her arm. A reassuring familiar voice said, “I shouldn't touch the dressing for a time.” And then she knew that she was in the recovery room and the two figures taking shape by her bed must be Mr. Chandler-Powell and Sister Holland.

She looked up and tried to form words from her impeded mouth. “How did it go? Are you pleased?”

The words were a croak but Mr. Chandler-Powell seemed to understand. She heard his voice, calm, authoritative, reassuring. “Very well. I hope that in a little time you will be pleased, too. Now you must rest here for a while, and then Sister will wheel you up to your room.”

She lay unmoving as objects solidified round her. How many hours, she wondered, had the operation taken? One hour, two, three? However long, time had been lost to her in a semblance of death. It must be as like death as any human imagining could be, a total annihilation of time. She pondered the difference between this temporary death and sleep. To wake after sleeping, even a deep sleep, was always to be aware that time had passed. The mind grasped at the tatters of waking dreams before they faded beyond recall. She tried to test memory by reliving the previous day. She was sitting in a rain-lashed car, then arriving at the Manor, entering the great hall for the first time, unpacking in her room, talking to Sharon. But that surely had all been on her first visit, over two weeks ago. The recent past began to come back. Yesterday had been different, a pleasant uncomplicated drive, the winter sunlight interspersed with brief and sudden showers. And this time she had brought with her to the Manor some patiently acquired knowledge which she could make use of or could let go. Now, in sleepy contentment, she thought she would let it go as she was letting go of her own past. It couldn't be relived, none of it could be changed. It had done its worst but its power would soon be over.

Closing her eyes and drifting into sleep, she thought of the peaceful night ahead and of the morning which she would never live to see.

15

Seven hours later, back in her bedroom, Rhoda stirred into drowsy wakefulness. She lay for a few seconds, motionless in that brief confusion which attends the sudden awakening from sleep. She was aware of the comfort of the bed and the weight of her head against the raised pillows, of the smell of the air—different from that in her London bedroom—fresh but faintly pungent, more autumnal than wintry, a smell of earth and grass borne to her on the erratic wind. The darkness was absolute. Before finally accepting Sister Holland's advice that she should settle herself for the night, she had asked for the curtains to be pulled back and the lattice window slightly opened; even in winter she disliked sleeping without fresh air. But perhaps it had been unwise. Gazing fixedly at the window, she could see that the room was darker than the night outside and that high constellations were patterning the faintly luminous sky. The wind was gusting more strongly, and she could hear its hiss in the chimney and feel its breath on her right cheek.

Perhaps she should stir herself from this unwonted lassitude and get up to close the window. The effort seemed beyond her. She had declined the offer of a sedative and found it strange, but not worrying, that she should feel this heaviness, this urge to stay where she was, cocooned in warmth and comfort, awaiting the soft boom of the next gust of wind, her eyes fixed on that narrow oblong of starlight. She felt no pain and, putting up her left hand, gently touched the padded dressing and the adhesive tape which secured it. She was used now to the weight and stiffness of the dressing, and would find herself touching it with something like a caress, as if it were becoming as much a part of her as the imagined wound which it covered.

And now, in a lull in the wind, she heard a sound so faint that only the stillness of the room could have made it audible. She sensed rather than heard a presence moving round the sitting room. At first, in her sleepy half-consciousness, she felt no fear, only a vague curiosity. It must be early morning. Perhaps it was seven o'clock and the arrival of her tea. And now there was another sound, no more than a gentle squeak but unmistakable. Someone was closing the bedroom door. Curiosity gave way to the first cold clutch of unease. No one spoke. No light was turned on. She tried to call out, in a cracked voice made ineffectual by the obstructive dressing, “Who are you? What are you doing? Who is it?” There was no reply. And now she knew with certainty that this was no friendly visitor, that she was in the presence of someone or something whose purpose was malignant.

As she lay rigid, the pale figure, white-clad and masked, was at her bedside. Arms moved above her head in a ritual gesture like an obscene parody of a benediction. With an effort she tried to struggle up—the bedclothes seemed suddenly to weigh her down—and stretched out a hand for the bell pull and the lamp. The bell pull wasn't there. Her hand found the light switch and clicked it on, but there was no light. Someone must have hooked the bell pull out of reach and taken the bulb from the lamp. She didn't cry out. All those early years of self-control against betraying fear, against finding relief in shouting and yelling, had inhibited her power to scream. And she knew screaming would be ineffective; the dressing made even speech difficult. She struggled to get out of bed but found herself unable to move.

In the darkness she could vaguely make out the whiteness of the figure, the covered head, the masked face. A hand was passing across the pane of the half-open window—but it was not a human hand. No blood had ever flowed in those boneless veins. The hand, so pinkly white that it might have been severed from the arm, was moving slowly through space on its mysterious purpose. Soundlessly it closed the window latch and, with a gesture delicate and elegant in its controlled motion, it slowly drew the curtain across the window. The darkness in the room intensified, no longer just the shutting out of light, but an occluding thickening of the air which made it difficult to breathe. She told herself that it must be a hallucination conjured from her half-sleeping state, and for one blessed moment she gazed at it, all terror past, waiting for the vision to fade into the surrounding darkness. And then all hope faded.

The figure was at the bedside, looking down on her. She could discern nothing but a white formless shape; the eyes looking into hers might be merciless, but all she could make out was a black slit. She heard words, quietly spoken but she could make no sense of them. With an effort she raised her head from the pillow and tried to croak out a protest. Immediately time was suspended, and in her vortex of terror she was aware only of smell, the faintest smell of starched linen. Out of the darkness, leaning over her, was her father's face. Not as she had remembered him for over thirty years, but the face she had briefly known in early childhood, young, happy, bending over her bed. She lifted her arm to touch the dressing but the arm was too weighty and fell back. She tried to speak, to move. She wanted to say, “Look at me, I've got rid of it.” Her limbs felt encased in iron, but now she managed, trembling, to lift her right hand and touched the dressing over the scar.

She knew that this was death, and with the knowledge came an unsought peace, a letting go. And then the strong hand, skinless and inhuman, closed round her throat, forcing her head back against the pillows, and the apparition flung its weight forward. She wouldn't shut her eyes in the face of death, nor did she struggle. The darkness of the room closed in on her and became the final blackness in which all feeling ceased.

16

At twelve minutes past seven, in the kitchen, Kimberley was becoming anxious. She had been told by Sister Holland that Miss Gradwyn had asked for her early-morning tea tray to be brought up at seven o'clock. That was earlier than the first morning she had been at the Manor, but seven o'clock was the time Sister had told Kim to be ready to make it, and she had set the tray by six-forty-five and placed the teapot on top of the Aga to warm.

And now it was twelve minutes after seven, and no ring. Kim knew that Dean needed her help with the breakfast, which was proving unexpectedly aggravating. Mr. Chandler-Powell had asked for his to be served in his apartment, which was unusual, and Miss Cressett, who usually prepared what she wanted in her own small kitchen and rarely ate a cooked breakfast, had rung to say that she would join the household in the dining room at seven-thirty and had been unusually fussy about the required crispness of the bacon and the freshness of the egg—as if, thought Kim, any egg served at the Manor would be other than free-range and fresh, and Miss Cressett knew that as well as she. An added irritation was the non-appearance of Sharon, whose duty it was to lay the breakfast table and turn on the hotplates. Kim was reluctant to go upstairs and rouse her, in case Miss Gradwyn rang her bell.

Fretting once again over the exact alignment of the cup, saucer and milk jug on the tray, she turned to Dean, her face puckered with anxiety. “Perhaps I ought to take it up. Sister said seven. Perhaps she meant that I needn't wait for the ring, that Miss Gradwyn would expect it promptly at seven.”

Her face, looking like that of a troubled child, induced as always Dean's love and pity tinged with irritation. He moved to the telephone. “Sister, this is Dean. Miss Gradwyn hasn't rung for her tea. Shall we wait or do you want Kim to make it now and take it up?”

The call took less than a minute. Replacing the receiver, Dean said, “You're to take it up. Sister says to knock on her door before you go in. She'll take it in to Miss Gradwyn.”

“I suppose she'll have the Darjeeling as she did before, and the biscuits. Sister didn't say any different.”

Dean, busy at the Aga frying eggs, said shortly, “If she doesn't want the biscuits she'll leave them.”

The kettle boiled quickly and within minutes the tea was made. Dean, as usual, came to the lift with her and, holding the door open, pressed the button so that she had both hands free to carry the tray. Emerging from the lift, Kim saw Sister Holland coming out of her sitting room. She expected the tray to be taken from her, but instead Sister, after a cursory glance, opened the door to Miss Gradwyn's suite, obviously expecting Kim to follow. Perhaps, Kim thought, that wasn't surprising: it wasn't Sister's job to carry early-morning tea to the patients. She was carrying her torch, so it wouldn't in any case have been easy.

The sitting room was in darkness. Sister switched on the light and they moved to the bedroom door, which Sister opened slowly and quietly. This room, too, was in darkness, and there was no sound, not even the soft noises of someone breathing. Miss Gradwyn must be sleeping soundly. Kim thought it was an eerie silence, like entering an empty room. She wasn't usually conscious of the weight of the tray, but now it seemed to grow heavier by the second. She stayed in the open doorway holding it. If Miss Gradwyn was sleeping late, she would have to make another pot later. No good leaving this to get over-stewed and cold.

Sister said, her voice unworried, “If she's still asleep, there's no point in waking her. I'll just check that she's all right.”

She moved to the bed and swept the pale moon of her torch over the supine figure, then switched it to a powerful beam. Then she switched it off, and in the darkness Kim heard her high, urgent voice, which didn't sound like Sister's. She said, “Get back, Kim. Don't come in. Don't look! Don't look!”

But Kim had looked, and for those disorientating seconds before the torchlight went out, she had seen the bizarre image of death: dark hair sprawled on the pillow, the clenched fists raised like those of a boxer, the one open eye and the livid, mottled neck. It wasn't Miss Gradwyn's head—it was nobody's head, a bright-red severed head, a dummy which had nothing to do with anything living. She heard the crash of falling china on the carpet and, stumbling to an easy chair in the sitting room, she leaned over and was violently sick. The stink of her vomit rose to her nostrils and her last thought before she fainted was a new horror: what would Miss Cressett say about the ruined chair?

When she came round she was lying on the bed in her and Dean's bedroom. Dean was there, and behind him Mr. Chandler-Powell and Sister Holland. She lay for a moment with her eyes closed and heard Sister's voice and Mr. Chandler-Powell's reply.

“Didn't you realise, George, that she was pregnant?”

“How the hell should I? I'm not an obstetrician.”

So they knew. She wouldn't have to break the news. All she cared about was the baby. She heard Dean's voice. “You've been asleep after you fainted. Mr. Chandler-Powell carried you here and you were given a sedative. It's nearly lunchtime.”

Mr. Chandler-Powell came forward, and she could feel his cool hands on her pulse.

“How do you feel, Kimberley?”

“I'm all right. Better, thank you.” She sat up quite vigorously and looked at Sister. “Sister, will the baby be all right?”

Sister Holland said, “Don't worry. The baby will be fine. You could have your lunch in here if you prefer, and Dean will stay with you. Miss Cressett, Mrs. Frensham and I will cope in the dining room.”

Kim said, “No, I'm all right. Really. I'll be better working. I want to get back to the kitchen. I want to be with Dean.”

Mr. Chandler-Powell said, “Good girl. We must all get on with our usual routine as far as we can. But there's no hurry. Take things gently. Chief Inspector Whetstone has been here, but apparently he's expecting a special squad from the Metropolitan Police. In the meantime, I've asked everyone not to discuss what happened last night. Do you understand, Kim?”

“Yes, sir, I understand. Miss Gradwyn was murdered, wasn't she?”

“I expect we shall know more when the London squad arrive. If she was, they'll find out who was responsible. Try not to be frightened, Kimberley. You're among friends, as you and Dean always have been, and we shall look after you.”

Kim muttered her thanks. And now they were gone and, sliding out of bed, she moved into the comfort of Dean's strong arms.