Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [175]
Shortly before I abandoned the house on Rose Street and returned to Wales, I visited Richmond in Broadmoor, where he was being held preparatory to his transfer to a private facility—the costs of this transfer and all subsequent costs to be assumed by Jane and Dorothea, the chief beneficiaries of his will. An orderly led him into the office where I waited, one belonging to a Dr. Theodore McGuigan, a harried, portly man with a Glaswegian accent, wearing a white smock and braces. When the door opened to admit Richmond, I heard demented laugher and shouts and a scream from off along the corridor. He stood blinking and disheveled, unmindful of my presence . . . of any presence, it appeared. His condition, as far as I could tell, was unchanged, except that his beard was untrimmed and food stains decorated his shirtfront. I asked McGuigan if I might have a moment alone with Richmond, and once the door closed behind him, I perched on the edge of his desk. Richmond stood downcast at the center of the room, his eyes hooded, one hand plucking fitfully at his trouser leg.
“I’ve had a while to think about things,” I said. “Had I been less self-involved, I might have understood what happened long before now. But I believe I’ve finally pieced it together.”
Richmond’s mouth worked, making a glutinous noise.
“That first night when you said that you wanted to learn who funded Christine . . . that was all you wanted to know, wasn’t it? You knew who had murdered her. You were simply looking for a way to shift the blame for her death onto the shoulders of another guilty soul.”
He rubbed the knuckle of his forefinger against his hip.
“You were the masked client. That’s why Christine responded to him as she did to no other man. She may have had some instinctual knowledge that you were the client. And then one night the mask slipped, or else you revealed yourself. What happened next? Did she reject you? Did she threaten you? You’ve told me she was the aggressor, but you’ve lied about so much, I wonder if that was just another lie.”
He shifted his weight from one leg to the other.
“Everything you did, all your attempts to bring her back . . . they were by way of expiation. She did something to infuriate you and you killed her.”
He remained unresponsive.
“Isn’t that right, Christine?”
With a laborious movement, he lifted his head and stared at me with those strangely animated eyes, eyes alive with dartings and glints of light—it was like looking through a crystal into the depths of an inferno, and I tried to imagine what he felt trapped in that terrible place. I had thought I would have no pity for him, but I was wrong. His facial muscles strained, his lips trembled, and a feeble fluting of indrawn breath issued from his throat. Then his head drooped, and once again he appeared oblivious to his surround.
That, I realized, was likely as close to an answer as I would receive and, seeing no point in prolonging this one-sided dialogue, I called in the orderly, who led him back to his cell, there to continue an internal dialogue with his sister.
As he escorted me to the entrance, a short walk attended by the cries and pleadings of the deranged, Dr. McGuigan said, “I’m told that Richmond was engaged in important work.”
“Indeed, he was. But I fear it may never be re-created,” I said. “His machines were destroyed and his notes have gone missing.”
“What a pity. He was a brilliant man.”
We went a few paces in silence and then McGuigan said, “You were there, weren’t you? On the night he was stricken. Can you enlighten me as to what happened?”
“I was in another portion of the house.”
We approached the door and McGuigan spoke again. “Tell me,” he said. “What do you think caused the abnormalities in his eyes?”
“I can be of no assistance to you there,” I said. “I know nothing about them.”
I DID NOT lie to Dr. McGuigan—I know nothing except that I know nothing. It may be that I am like all men