The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [97]
‘And prayer,’ she said. And she rose. ‘Your friend Michael keeps me informed,’ she said. ‘A lovely boy, is Michael. From Liverpool.’
Seaton knew that among British places, his mother approved almost exclusively of Liverpool. He nodded. ‘I’ll be grand in the end, Mum. Just give it a bit of patience.’
He cried after her departure, but didn’t castigate himself for that. It was normal, he thought. It was nothing at all to do with the insanity.
He’d been there eight months when Doctor Malcolm Covey arrived. He’d seen the buds, tentative, breaking through the topsoil in the hospital grounds. Other than the neglected maze, the grounds were tended like punctilious tapestries, Seaton thought. A lot of people with green fingers seemed to be prey to mental instability. Maybe it was just that the mad craved neatness in their chaos.
‘You’re haunted, aren’t you?’ Doctor Covey said.
And Seaton broke his rule and looked at him. He’d seen him, of course. You couldn’t miss him, with his cape and his fedora hat and the blue puff in the white room of his Havana cigar, flagrant against the hospital regulations. But Seaton looked at Malcolm Covey, made eye contact, thinking, This one is different. This one is gifted.
‘There’s a great miasma of self-pity, of victimhood, gathered around you like an aura.’
Seaton said nothing.
‘Or in an image better suited to an Irishman, like the melancholy halo of a martyred saint.’
Seaton laughed. He had to. It felt good. It felt like straps unbuckling on him. ‘Where have you come from?’
‘I read about your case.’
‘And they put a name to me? In this account you read?’
‘Of course they didn’t. This is an ethical profession. But the account was bylined. The author, one of the house chaps here you persistently ignore, is an acquaintance. I offered to consult. Your mother was written to and very kindly consented. Here I am.’
‘Why?’
Covey shifted his considerable weight in his chair. He rolled his cigar in his fingers and then puffed at it. ‘I have some experience of the paranormal. That’s to say, I don’t dismiss its possibilities, its eventualities and repercussions. Not out of hand, I don’t, at least.’
Seaton nodded.
‘What are you thinking, Paul?’
‘That you’re a fierce talker, so you are. For someone paid to listen.’
Covey said, ‘I know something of the history of the Fischer house.’
Seaton hadn’t told them he’d been there.
‘You have a press contact in the Metropolitan Police?’
‘Had. Bob Halliwell.’
‘Exactly. And Detective Sergeant Halliwell made it his business to follow the route taken to the Isle of Wight by your credit card. He talked on the telephone to the proprietor of a shop at Wootton Creek that rents bicycles.’
Covey pronounced ‘bicycles’ like they were machines just invented. God knew what he made of ‘credit cards’ and ‘telephones’, Seaton thought. He looked as though he would be far more comfortable with coffee houses and light opera and horse-drawn carriages. Seaton wondered had Bob, in these inquiries of his, contacted Lucinda.
‘Being the punctilious detective he is, Halliwell concluded that your interest in Pandora Gibson-Hoare put you in the Fischer house over the weekend we’re assuming triggered your breakdown. When he found out where you had been, he told the people here. Why are you laughing?’
Seaton wiped his eyes. ‘Because the Fischer house was once a loony bin. I’d forgotten about that. I’m just thinking it’s ironic, in the circumstances.’
‘You’re mistaken,’ Covey said. ‘It was never used as an asylum. Abandoned by Fischer, it was compulsorily purchased by Hampshire County Council in the spring of 1947. And the original intention was indeed to use it as a facility for the mentally deranged. But that never actually happened. Work was begun on converting the interior of the building, but the contractors met with a series of unforeseen problems and the scheme stalled and was quietly dropped.’
‘What sort of problems? Subsidence? A touch of rising damp?’
Covey studied the tip of his cigar. ‘I don’t know if I ought to tell you.’
Seaton