Before Dame Beatrice could answer, the front-door bell pealed and pealed throughout the fine old house.
‘Here we go!’ said Laura. She crossed to the door, opened and closed it quietly, and walked down the hall away from the front door, which one of the maids was preparing to open.
2
Eccentric Patient
« ^ »
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?’