The Death Chamber Read online

  ‘Some chance of dinner dates, hot or otherwise,’ Jude had said, beating down the stab of regret for Fenella who had ended their relationship, employing her own brand of hurtful flippancy. (‘Really, Jude, darling, can you see me toting a lover with a white stick and dark glasses, now honestly, can you? In any case, we were never even within hailing distance of the sickness and health stuff, were we?’) He had pretended to agree and not to care, but Fenella’s behaviour had hurt.

  He closed the case, feeling for the lock, and closed his mind to the past at the same time. He had already found that the only way to cope was by not looking back.

  October 1938

  Walter Kane knew there were times when the only way to cope was by not looking back into the past.

  He was not sure, however, if this was going to be possible at Thornbeck. The governing board of Calvary might not know who he was, but Sir Lewis Caradoc certainly would. Walter had not been able to decide if that would be awkward. Still, Caradoc’s letter had been friendly and courteous, although Walter already knew this was an extremely courteous man.

  ‘If you could arrange to arrive in Thornbeck at around midday,’ Caradoc had written, ‘it would be my pleasure to give you lunch at my house. As you are probably aware it’s some years since I held the post of Calvary’s governor, but I still take an interest in it and the present board are kind enough to consult me on administrative decisions. For that reason, if for no other, I should very much like to meet you.’

  Walter, understanding that the lunch was probably an informal preliminary interview, had written back to accept, and Sir Lewis had sent directions on how to find his house. It was a slight surprise when he turned out to live in the old farmhouse Walter had admired from the road.

  ‘Were you thinking I’ve chosen to remain in Calvary’s shadow?’ said Sir Lewis, welcoming him, and Walter, who had not expected quite such perception or directness, said, ‘Yes, I was thinking that. It’s a beautiful house, though.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it? Parts of it are Tudor. It’s much too beautiful for a discussion about the judicial killing of murderers, but we’d better discuss it anyway.’

  It was slightly disconcerting to take a seat in the mellow, low-ceilinged room, and know that the man facing him across the table had lived most of his life among convicted killers. Caradoc must be sixty at least but he had the energy of a man far younger, and his eyes were dark and intelligent. There was no one else present; Walter tried to remember if there was a Lady Caradoc and could not.

  ‘Hanging’s an ugly business, Dr Kane,’ said Sir Lewis. ‘I make no apology for talking about it while we eat, by the way: if you get this job that kind of ugliness will be part of your life.’

  ‘I understand that. And I’m aware that hanging’s an ugly process.’

  ‘It’s squalid and raw.’ Caradoc studied Walter for a moment. ‘And,’ he said softly, ‘whatever your private beliefs, hanging a man is a distressing business.’

  They looked at one another. Then Walter said, ‘You’re thinking of my father, aren’t you, sir?’

  ‘Ah. So you do know what happened to him,’ said Caradoc. ‘I wasn’t sure whether you did.’

  ‘I do know.’

  ‘You can’t have been more than seven when he died. Hardly old enough to have understood.’

  ‘I didn’t understand,’ said Walter. ‘Not then, not properly. But later on I did.’

  ‘Did you know I was Calvary’s governor at the time?’ said Sir Lewis.

  ‘Yes.’ No need to delve into that memory of over twenty years ago: a younger Sir Lewis seated behind a desk and Walter’s mother seated opposite him, her face hidden by a thick veil but the tear marks nonetheless visible.

  ‘Say goodbye to your father, Walter . . .’ That was what she had said as they were taken down the long passages with the cold stone floors. For a moment, he could see his own seven-year-old self, frightened and bewildered, not understanding why he had been brought into a place of clanging doors and turning locks, and of people looking at him with pity.

  ‘Say goodbye, Walter, that’s what we’re here for.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Walter at last. ‘I did know you were at Calvary then.’

  ‘I thought you must.’ Sir Lewis frowned and then said, ‘Dr Kane, you’re young to be a prison doctor, but your qualifications are very good indeed and I think the board will look favourably on your application. There’s no reason why any of them should connect you with your father. You’ve changed your name – it’s only a slight change, but it’s remarkable how different Kane sounds from O’Kane. And it’s not for me to grill you about your work, but there is one question I’d like to ask.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Was it because of your father – because of what he did and because of what happened to him – that you decided to study medicine and applied for the post here?’

  ‘It was partly because of my father, sir. It made me want to – to make lives more bearable for people facing death, or facing a life sentence. There’s still a dignity owing to them, no matter what they might have done.’ He frowned. ‘That sounds a bit high-minded and grand, but it’s what I feel.’

  ‘I understand. Your mother’s dead, I think?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was no need to elaborate; to tell Caradoc that she had died of a broken heart and because she could not face the world any longer. Walter said, ‘I would very much like to have this appointment, Sir Lewis.’

  The smile came again. ‘I would very much like you to have it as well, Walter,’ said Lewis Caradoc.

  ‘He’s very young, of course,’ said Edgar Higneth, Calvary’s governor. ‘I had hoped for an older man. More experienced. More able to deal with the really difficult ones. But the other applicants were quite impossible.’ He mimed the lifting of a glass. ‘One drank, the other was clearly inept. And you can’t have either in a prison of this nature, as you know, Sir Lewis.’

  ‘I think Kane will deal with Calvary’s inmates very well,’ said Lewis. ‘He’s serious about his work and he’s completely honest. They’ll see that and they’ll respect it.’

  ‘Yes. Very well, I’ll back your decision,’ said Higneth. He paused, and then said, ‘It looks as if Kane will have a baptism of fire. You’ve read the newspapers, I take it?’

  ‘The Knaresborough case? Neville Fremlin? Yes, certainly, I have. There doesn’t seem to be much doubt about his guilt.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt at all,’ said Higneth. ‘Five women killed for sure – two stabbed through the base of the skull and two probably strangled. The fifth was too badly decomposed for them to establish how she died. The bodies were all buried in Becks Forest a few miles outside Knaresborough.’

  ‘And one other possible victim, wasn’t there?’ said Lewis.

  ‘Yes, except they haven’t found her body. They’re bringing Fremlin here tomorrow, so I shouldn’t wonder if the newspaper reporters don’t flock here as well. Still, it’ll be over by this time next month.’

  Extract from Talismans of the Mind by C. R. Ingram.

  It’s undeniable that down the centuries, men and women have ceaselessly sought for reassurances to ward off the darknesses of death – charms, spells, formulae. Sometimes the charms have been elaborate and ceremonious – Druidic rituals or the breaking of bread and wine before an altar – and sometimes they have been macabre, as in the theft of the hand of a hanged murderer.

  Answers have been sought in strange places – a round table in a darkened room with a group of grief-stricken people groping for a hand-holding assurance that death is not the end. There have even been men and women who have sought enlightenment within the death cells of the world’s prison-houses – the despair-soaked rooms where the remaining minutes of a life ticked away like tiny hammer blows, all the way to the stroke of eight . . .

  CHAPTER THREE

  Thornbeck, when Georgina reached it, was one of those nice little market towns with which this part of England is sprinkled. It was tucked
into the foothills of an unassuming mountain which the local map disclosed as being Mount Torven. There was a clean-looking main street with bow-fronted shops and a couple of large chain stores specializing in walking boots and camping and climbing equipment. There were also three white-fronted, bow-windowed pubs advertising bar food. None of it was aggressively touristy and at half past five in the afternoon the place was modestly busy with people clambering onto buses or negotiating cars out of parking areas. After the lemming-like migration of London’s rush hour this was restful.

  Caradoc House was on the outskirts of this subdued activity. Georgina, following Vincent Meade’s directions, was not quite sure what she had expected of a place that had been built or purchased with Walter’s bequest, and she had whiled away the drearier parts of the journey by considering the possibilities. In the event, it turned out to be a medium-sized grey-stone house that might originally have belonged to a modestly prosperous businessman, and it was situated on a steep winding little street near to a rather attractive square. Mount Torven reared up behind it. Even on the brightest of summer days the rooms at the back would not get very much light, but if you lived here you probably would not mind because the surroundings were so gorgeous. Georgina liked the house. It faced straight onto the road, but she managed to park at the side, and then walked around to the front. A square brass plate proclaimed it as, ‘The registered headquarters of the Caradoc Society, formed for the pursuit of knowledge of psychic phenomena and the paranormal. Founded in 1917 by Sir Lewis Caradoc.’

  The Caradoc Society might be winding itself down but it appeared to be doing so in a civilized and gentlemanly manner. The door was painted a glossy green, the brass door-knocker was polished. As Georgina reached for the knocker a curtain in one of the downstairs windows twitched, and then the door was opened by a man who was presumably Vincent N. Meade. He was older than he had sounded on the phone – at least sixty and probably a bit more – and well-built in a rather soft, flabby fashion. He wore a dark red velvet jacket, (velvet at half past five in the afternoon?), with a pale pink shirt and a flowing cravat knotted at the neck. Georgina’s inner eye placed him in a sugary pink room furnished with puffy white sofas and tasselled satin cushions.

  Vincent Meade was apparently charmed to meet Georgina – actually Walter Kane’s great-granddaughter, my word, this was a historic day in the Society’s annals. His large soft hands enfolded Georgina’s, and she had to repress the urge to snatch them away from him.

  They were all so pleased she had agreed to make the journey, said Vincent, especially at this time of year, so dreary the autumn he always thought, and no doubt she led a very busy life. And was this the only suitcase she had brought? Then he would carry it upstairs for her there and then – no, he insisted; there were two flights of stairs, and the second one was quite steep. To someone who had had three years of David’s equality (‘You can manage your own cases, can’t you, George? Yes, thought you could,’), this modest chivalry was agreeable.

  The flat was on the second floor, and consisted of an L-shaped room with easy chairs and a coffee table in the larger half, and sink, cooker and fridge in the shorter half. There was a narrow bedroom with a divan and wall cupboards, and a minuscule shower room and loo opening directly off it. It was all perfectly clean and comfortable, although it had the characterless look of a hotel bedroom and Georgina itched to bring the marvellous purple hillside colours into the house, and to put strong green ferns in copper pots to contrast with the white walls and beige carpet.

  ‘I think you’ll find it all right here, Miss Grey,’ said Vincent, setting the case down. ‘It’s very small, but we always hope it’s acceptable to our visitors.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Georgina. ‘I’ll be very comfortable.’

  ‘There’s milk and bread in the kitchen, and the bed’s made up. There’s a radio but no television I’m afraid, on account of being almost smack up against the foothills of Torven, as you might say. It’s only a small mountain, well, the purists would say it’s not really a mountain at all – not high enough, you see – but whether it’s a mountain or a molehill the TV signal’s virtually non-existent.’

  ‘I believe I’d rather have Torven than television anyway,’ said Georgina, glancing through the window at the sweeping scenery. Even on a dark October evening the would-be mountain was a spectacular, velvety sweep of purple and cobalt blue. She would leave the curtains open tonight so she could watch the light changing on Torven’s slopes.

  ‘Would you really? Now I’ll just bring you up a cup of tea – no, it’s no trouble at all, I had the kettle on in readiness for your arrival. I won’t be a minute.’

  He bumbled happily away, and while he was gone Georgina unpacked the few things she had brought with her, hanging her jacket in the wardrobe where it rattled emptily.

  The tea, when it came, was in china cups with lemon as well as milk, and biscuits arranged on a paper doily.

  ‘The Society’s solicitor is expecting us at his office tomorrow morning,’ said Vincent busily pouring out the tea. ‘He’ll see the letters you’ve brought with you, and there are a few of your great-grandfather’s papers that he’ll probably hand over at the same time. Ten o’clock. That won’t be too early after your long drive today?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Georgina was conscious of a twist of pleasurable anticipation. Papers that had been Walter’s. Perhaps letters or photographs . . . She had not realized how much she had been looking forward to reaching back and taking hold of a hand out of the past. She asked Vincent if he had been secretary of the Trust for long.

  ‘I have held the post for forty-one years,’ said Vincent, with a sad brave smile. ‘I came to Thornbeck as a young man of twenty-one, and the Society has been a major part of my life since that day – I have written a great many articles and pamphlets about our work. It’s very sad for me to see it all ending – and seeing this house sold as well. It was bought with the Kane bequest in 1940, you know.’

  ‘Well, no, I didn’t. I don’t actually know very much about any of it,’ said Georgina. ‘I do know my great-grandfather worked at Calvary Gaol in the 1930s, but other than that—’

  ‘Ah, Calvary,’ said Vincent, infusing his voice with a kind of affectionate sadness. ‘Calvary, Miss Grey—’

  ‘Georgina.’

  ‘Calvary, Georgina, has been almost as much a part of my life as this Society. Who knows what happened inside those grim walls in the past?’

  He does like to ham it up, thought Georgina. I wonder if I ought to point out that his cravat is trailing in his tea cup? But Vincent, seeing she had finished her cup of tea, said she would be wanting to unpack and have a rest after the journey. In fact, whatever must she think of him, keeping her talking. It was just that when he began talking about the Society – his life’s work, it had been – he feared he could be a sad bore on the subject.

  It had not occurred to Georgina that anyone outside the pages of Jane Austen used ‘sad’ in quite that context any longer. She said it must have been absorbing work and she would look forward to hearing more about it.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure you’ll be all right here?’ said Vincent, finally getting up to take his leave.

  ‘Quite sure. You’ve been very kind. I’ll see you in the morning,’ said Georgina firmly, in case he felt obliged to ask her out to dinner.

  But he did not. He only said, ‘I usually arrive here about half past nine. Oh, this is a key to the main street door in case you want to have a little look round the town later on, or walk along to the King’s Head for a meal. But there’s eggs and cheese in the fridge, and some tins of soup in the cupboard.’

  Georgina listened to him going down the stairs and out through the main door, and then peered out of the window to watch him walk along the street. There he went – he was re-knotting the cravat as he walked along and glancing in shop windows at his reflection. Still, vanity was not the greatest of the sins. She watched him for a moment and then was annoyed with hers
elf for falling victim to the curtain-twitching syndrome.

  It was half past six. She would have a shower and walk along to the King’s Head for a meal because she was blowed if she was going to spend the whole evening on her own, particularly since she kept imagining David and the ex-business partner watching her, and saying, ‘Oh, poorest George, all on her own in that depressing room for the whole evening, eating tinned soup and bread and cheese.’

  The room was not depressing at all, and Georgina did not in the least mind bread and cheese, but she would still take herself out to dinner.

  Vincent had debated whether to ask Georgina Grey, this great-granddaughter of Walter Kane’s out to dinner. The idea of walking into the King’s Head with her was appealing – a number of the locals were sure to be there and everyone knew Vincent of course, so his appearance would cause a bit of a stir. My word, people would say, there’s Vincent Meade with a lady. Life in the old dog yet, eh?

  But there were two drawbacks to this plan. One was that Miss Grey was younger than Vincent had been expecting – probably around twenty-six or seven – and he did not want those admiring looks to turn into sniggers about ageing gentlemen making fools of themselves with young girls. He was, in fact, ageing gracefully – he fancied he was becoming quite distinguished of late and these days he dressed rather jauntily which helped – and the idea that he might make a fool of himself with any young girl was ridiculous. Still, people could be unkind and jealous.

  The other drawback to inviting Miss Grey to dinner was the presence of the television people who were at the King’s Head looking into the possibility of a programme about the area. People had said it was to be about unusual buildings in England’s north-west and quirky pockets of Britain’s countryside, and hearing this, Vincent had at once realized his own local knowledge might be very useful. He had assembled some details about Calvary – nothing dangerous, nothing that might draw them to that part of Calvary’s history Vincent needed to keep hidden. Facts such as how it had been built in the 1790s, originally as a place to hold prisoners before trial or awaiting execution, but how, after an Act of Parliament in the mid-1800s, the distinction between Gaol and House of Correction had been abolished, and Calvary had consequently housed quite a lot of men serving life sentences. And little bits of local gossip and legend, so it was not too dry. Such as how the old turnkey’s room was reputed to be haunted by a Victorian gaoler who had operated the old Newgate system of forcing prisoners to pay for quite basic services.