“I told you,” he whispered accusingly, taking the part of his alter ego, “there was something you forgot to do.”
“What? What did I forget?”
“Look closely at me. Can’t you see it yet?”
For a moment Redpath was at a loss, then he became aware that his mood and perceptions had undergone a change. He felt a quasi-religious exultation. The air about him appeared to vibrate and sparkle.
“No,” he said urgently. “Not that!”
He straightened up and tried to turn away from the mirror as it dawned on him that the catalogue of the day’s disasters was not yet complete, that in the onrush of dream and drama he had been tricked into forgetting to take his customary dose of Epanutin. His brown suede zipper-up was draped over the back of a chair and, if memory could still be trusted, his emergency supply of phenobarbitone capsules was in one of the pockets. He took one step towards the chair, knowing as he did so that the action was entirely futile, then the electrical storms of an epileptic seizure swept through his brain, erasing, cleansing, relieving him of all the onerous burdens and responsibilities of consciousness. The darkness which flowed around him was both heavy and sweet.
The miracle was a small one—but significant.
The miracle was so small as to be indetectable to anyone else—but its effects were profound, and Redpath was deeply grateful for them.
He awoke to the clean, pewter-coloured light of sanity, knowing who he was, what he was, and what he had to do about it, and the feeling was deeply comforting.
At first he was aware of nothing but a pale grey rectangle, a trapezium of pearly radiance, and for a second he feared it was an extension of his most recent nightmare, then came mental and physical orientation. He was lying on the floor of his room in the house in Raby Street and he could see the coming of dawn beyond the single window. The real world, he knew, was out there waiting for him, and there was nothing to prevent his rejoining it. Its demands might be great, but he was equal to them. He knew himself to be capable of paying his dues in order to regain that most prized of possessions—his peace of mind.
Redpath moved his arms and legs experimentally, in preparation for standing up. There was some stiffness in the muscles but no noticeable degree of pain, meaning that he had experienced only a petit mal which had quickly given way to normal sleep. That was something else for which he could feel grateful. He gripped the end of the bed and pulled himself up to a standing position. The central lamp was still emitting its pink glow, and in the conflict of natural and artificial lights the over-furnished room looked aggressively squalid, like a set design for a play in the Love On The Dole genre.
Redpath placed the back of a hand on his brow and surveyed the room bemusedly, trying to assess the extent of the madness which must have gripped him on the previous day. The entire period seemed remote and shadowy—even the dreadful episode resulting in Leila’s death—and the only explanation which came to mind was that he had experienced a drastic side-effect of Compound 183. That was something the police would have to take into consideration when they looked into his story, and Henry Nevison would have to give corroboratory evidence, even if it spelt out the end of one of his most cherished research projects.
The thought of seeing the police and having his crime recorded and categorised, reduced to the compass of typed A4 sheets in a buff file, suffused Redpath with a longing to get clear of the house and its odd set of inhabitants. He glanced at his watch, saw that the time was 5.33 and tried winding the watch without removing it from his wrist. His fingers kept slipping off the tiny knurled projection and it suddenly came to him that he was deathly cold. He took his suede jacket from the chair, slipped into it and pulled the zip up to his throat, trapping his body’s heat. The sound of the brass teeth meshing together was unnaturally loud.
That’s it, young feller my lad, he thought. You’re free to go.
Really?
In spite of his newly-regained and blessed rationality, Redpath found himself entertaining a suspicion that it was all too straightforward and easy, that he would not simply be able to stroll away and merge safely into the mainstreams of life. The house and its denizens seemed to have a composite personality, and his instincts told him that personality was to some extent deranged, and furthermore that it would be reluctant to let him go free. It might be better to delay his escape bid until there was traffic in the street outside. Surely he would be safer if there were people nearby whose attention he could attract.
Get a grip, man! What are you playing at?
Cursing himself for having yielded to cinema-induced childish fantasies, Redpath went to the bedroom door and opened it. The landing outside was dark and empty.
Of course it’s empty! Who did you expect? Bela Lugosi? Or that kid, Linda Blair from The Exorcist, with her head turned backwards and a nightdress covered with green vomit?
I told you—get a GRIP!
Moving with a curious timidity, Redpath went out onto the landing and paused to listen to the house. There was a faint sound of snoring from the direction of the front room, indicating that Wilbur Tennent was in there and still fast asleep. Reassured by the touch of normality, Redpath walked quietly to the stairs and proceeded down it to the next landing. The door to the master bedroom, the one he believed to be occupied by Betty York, was very slightly ajar and he passed it on tiptoe, fearful of disturbing her. Next on the left was Miss Connie’s door, then he went down three steps to the rear landing where he could see all the way through to the back of the house.
The window at the end was shining with dawn light, and the yellow fleur-de-lis hung motionless at its centre like a watchful bird. Redpath jerked his head back as the pungent odour of cloves wafted into his nostrils and almost as quickly faded away. It was never really there, he thought. Spook smells. Synaesthesia.
He averted his eyes from the partly open door of the bathroom, which was only two paces away from him, and slowly went down the remaining stair to the ground floor. All that was left for him to do now was to go to the double set of front doors, let himself out through them—provided they were not fitted with burglar-proof locks which required a key to operate them from the inside—and walk off through the quiet morning streets in the direction of the Woodstock Road. He was practically free and clear! The notion that he might have to spend some time fumbling with locks, time in which somebody could approach him from behind, prompted Redpath to turn and look back towards the kitchen. Its door was wide open, and in the grey dimness beyond something white stirred feebly in mid-air like a giant moth.
Redpath’s hand flew to his mouth and the white object reacted simultaneously, jolting him into the realization that he was looking at the reflection of his own face in a kitchen mirror. He stood his ground, aware that to run at that precise instant would be to make some kind of dreadful admission. In the pounding seconds which followed he moved slowly to one side, conducting an experiment, and his reflection slid out of sight as the laws of optics demanded, proving that the mirror really was a mirror and that the friendly old rules of physics still held sway. The new angle of reflection brought into view a patch of crimson which he immediately identified as being the cellar door located in the nearer corner of the kitchen. He nodded in satisfaction, turned to walk to the front door, then halted in mid-stride, frowning.