Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [17]
‘What things?’ said Anji brightly.
‘Oh,’ Mrs Hemming waved a vague hand, ‘I’m afraid I don’t recall the details. Impossible things.’
* * *
Dr Chiltern sat at his desk in the sunlight that fell through the windows behind him. The warmth felt good on the back of his neck. He had successfully staved off his migraine last night by resorting to his usual unpalatable remedy, but it was still there, teasing at his nerve endings, biding its time. If only he could get through the day. There was a meeting with the board of governors in the afternoon. And he needed to do what he could for Constance Jane. It was awkward, her being an American, with no close relatives or friends in England.
Perhaps, though, Miss Jane would be all right. She had been overwrought last night – quite overwrought, in fact; he was glad he’d had Smith with him, the fellow seemed to have a calming effect on her – but certainly in her own mind. This morning, the nurse had reported that she was sad but not agitated and had eaten a little breakfast. In Chiltern’s experience, appetite was almost always a good sign.
He turned and looked out of the window. The sanatorium stood on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Behind a Victorian front of limestone-faced brick, it was a rambling, somewhat awkward mansion in a hodgepodge of architectural styles. Chiltern wasn’t certain, but he believed the oldest parts dated back to the sixteenth century. The grounds had been laid out in the eighteenth and retained their spacious formality. He watched the patients, men in lightweight suits and straw hats and women in summer dresses with parasols, stroll and converse under the huge oaks. Some of the trees must be older than the house, he mused.
How civilised it all looked. Chiltern had done his share of work in public institutions, still spent two weekends a month in one in Southwark, and he was unhappily familiar with the squalor and misery too often attendant on the treatment of mental illness. Thank God for these new drugs. It had put an end to the binding and restraint of the poor sufferers, except for the most violent.
Would drugs help Miss Jane? He strongly doubted it. Did she even need help? It had been impossible to talk with her last night, and there was so much he didn’t know. Did she often have these spells, in which another personality took over, outside the setting of a seance? Or was this the first time? If so, perhaps the instances of ‘possession’ were something she could handle and live with. Though the one personality had seemed malicious, and had deliberately set up a fraud with the tambourine, for which Miss Jane, who knew nothing of it, would be blamed.
She didn’t remember... Chiltern put a hand up to his head and massaged his temples. He felt the pain gathering, like a dull, sullen heat. But the malicious personality did remember. For both of them. Or all of them, if you counted the Indian guide, who seemed to have only a partial existence. It was an extraordinary case. Truth to tell, he felt a bit out of his depth. What a piece of luck that Smith had studied hypnosis. The practice was still associated with charlatans and quacks, but Chiltern had long suspected there was something to it. Perhaps even Sebastian...
Oh, what was he thinking? What good would hypnosis do there? Did he expect he’d find the ‘real’ untroubled Sebastian hidden beneath the madness, the man he’d grown up with – ‘Ah,’ he breathed involuntarily, as the pain tightened at the base of his skull. He sat still, eyes shut, taking deep breaths, and it subsided a little. When he opened his eyes, Smith was standing in front of him.
To his extreme embarrassment, Chiltern jumped slightly.
‘I’m very sorry,’ said Smith. ‘I did say your name a couple of times. You must have been deep in thought.’
‘Yes,’ said Chiltern awkwardly. He’d had one of his spells, then, those small trances that periodically robbed him of a few seconds of time. Epilepsy, he had grimly