23

 

 

Painful as the travail of birth, inexorable as the accretion of planets—and seemingly as slow: the fragments of Murray Douglas’ awareness drifted back from the limitless nowhere into which they had scattered. After he had regained consciousness, he was content to stay as he was for long moments, feeling the rough warmth of a blanket around him, the softness of a roll of cloth under his head, and hearing the confusion of noises in which were mingled shouts, the roar of engines and the crackle of flames.

Then someone near him said anxiously. ‘Here he is, doctor. He—he just passed out.’

Heather’s voice.

Another, gruffer, with a trace of Scots accent: ‘I’m not surprised, young woman! I saw him the other day and I was shocked, really shocked, to see how much older he looked than his chronological age.’

Doctor … Dr Cromarty. The name moved sluggishly to the forefront of Murray’s mind, and he forced open his eyes. There was the doctor before him, the collar of a striped pyjama jacket showing above the neck of the sweater he had pulled on when he was called from bed.

Murray said, ‘Are they all right? Did we get them all out?’

In the act of putting on his glasses to commence his examination, Cromarty blinked rapidly several times. ‘Yes, Mr Douglas, the others are all right. Now you just lie still there and let me—’

‘I don’t mean were they burned.’ Murray interrupted. He struggled to get his elbows behind him and force his body off the ground where he was lying. ‘I mean are they all right!’

Cromarty made hushing noises and tried to persuade him to lie flat again. Murray pushed him aside impatiently. ‘For God’s sake!’ he exploded. ‘I’m okay—I only passed out from the smoke and the heat. I—’

‘Your feet,’ Heather whispered. He paused, momentarily at a loss; then he realized she was right and the soles of both his feet indeed felt tender. Nonetheless, the pain was bearable, and so it wasn’t urgent. What counted was those undead he had carried from their beds, pallid and waxy as corpses, victims of whatever evil scheme Delgado and his accomplices had woven around them.

‘The hell with me,’ he grunted, and this time succeeded in ridding himself of Cromarty’s restraining hands. He scrambled up, the blanket falling in a heap. ‘I want to know …’

The words trailed away as he took in the scene. He was not the only casualty to have been laid on this grass verge fringing the drive of Fieldfare House. The headlights of two fire engines and several cars—including his own, which had been pushed away from the house to make a clear way for the firefighters—showed him a ghastly rank of bodies, like an open-air mortuary. Dark-uniformed men were everywhere coming and going.

‘Get that trailer-pump over to the swimming-pool!’ yelled a high excited voice, and then, almost cutting off the last word, there was a rending crash behind the house. Murray jerked his head around and saw a fountain of sparks, bright as a firework, spatter the underside of the pall of stinking smoke now smearing across the sky.

Whatever the key is to this mystery, we won’t find it where the fire has taken hold …

He closed his eyes for a few seconds, drawing on every ounce of self-control. When the crash startled him, he had been about to ask a bewildered question. He fought back to it, remembered what it was, and turned to meet Dr Cromarty’s concerned gaze.

‘Ambulances,’ he said. ‘Why aren’t there any ambulances here?’

‘There’s been an accident on the motorway,’ the doctor muttered. ‘Sixty people hurt in a long-distance bus. But they promised to come as soon as they could.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Murray said with jolting dismay. ‘Well, then—have you looked these people over yet?’

‘Ah—’ Cromarty wiped his face. ‘I only got here a moment ago, I’m afraid. The firemen are trained in first aid, of course, and when they assured me there were no serious burn cases, this young lady insisted I come to examine you because you—’

‘Delgado?’ Murray rapped.

‘They told me he’d had an electric shock,’ Heather said. ‘But he’s not badly hurt and ought to be all right.’

Relieved, Murray swung back to his earlier demand. ‘Doctor, what’s wrong with these people? They aren’t asleep. They’re like vampires. They—hell, don’t let me just talk about them! See for yourself!’

He took the four or five strides needed to bring him level with the nearest of the ‘undead’, and found on the last step that his feet were far worse hurt than he had imagined. He swayed with the stab of pain, and Heather was beside him, putting her arm around to steady him. Cromarty followed, opening his surgical bag one-handed and reaching into it.

‘Here, young woman!’ he rapped, offering a large jar of salve and a packet of dressings. ‘Sit this idiot down on the grass, and put some of that on his burns before he gets dirt in them! I’ll clean him up properly later, but at least this will ease the pain.’

Heather accepted the medicaments silently and helped Murray to sit, then fetched his blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders. Her ministrations were quick and gentle; they hardly distracted Murray from his concentrated staring after Cromarty.

The elderly doctor went down the line of bodies one by one, pausing beside each. Finally he returned to Murray, his face pale and drawn.

‘I don’t know what to make of this,’ he said. ‘But I’m sure of one thing. When you said they weren’t sleeping, you were half right. Those poor folk are in a hypnotic trance.’

‘Are you certain?’ Murray demanded.

‘Absolutely.’ Cromarty gave a bashful cough. ‘My practice here is not the most time-consuming in the world, and I’ve been able to keep up an interest I’ve had ever since I was a student in the medical applications of hypnosis. I’ve used it for many painless deliveries hereabouts, when I could gain the consent of the mother.’

‘I thought—’ Heather, pausing in her application of salve to Murray’s burns, bit her lip.

‘Yes?’

‘Well. … Might they not be drugged?’

‘There’s one young man who exhibits the symptoms of heroin addiction, or I’m an ignoramus,’ Cromarty said. ‘But that’s not significant. I’d stake my reputation on their being in trance.’

‘Can you get them out of it?’ Murray exclaimed.

The doctor shook his greying head, ‘If the induction was skilfully done, they will respond only to a particular stimulus.’

‘They’ll stay like that indefinitely?’ Heather cried.

‘Oh no!’ Cromarty looked shocked. ‘Eventually the trance will merge into normal sleep, and they’ll wake of their own accord. But—’

‘Yes?’ Murray prompted.

‘But there may have been post-hypnotic commands,’ Cromarty said slowly. ‘And unless we can find out what they were the poor folk will carry them out willy-nilly when they wake.’

Murray had seen stage demonstrations of hypnosis often enough before they were regulated by law to realize the implications of Cromarty’s statement. Failure to erase hypnotic commands, could lead to behaviour that appeared insane.

Before he could speak again, another car braked sharply at the entrance to the driveway, and a man in police uniform jumped out and held the door for another in a tweed jacket.

This latter, after brief words with a police constable already present, looked around, recognized Cromarty, and approached him briskly.

‘Morning, doctor!’ he said. ‘Sorry I’m so late on the scene, but they picked the very devil of a night to have this fire here.’

‘When do we get some ambulances?’ Cromarty demanded.

‘Thirteen of the bloody things it took to clear up after our coach-crash—you know about that? But we passed messages to the various hospitals to send a few along as soon as they’ve unloaded. … What in the world is going on here, anyhow?’

‘I was just about to ask Mr Douglas here the same thing.’ Cromarty said with a touch of grimness. ‘Mr Douglas—Chief Inspector Wadeward of the County Constabulary.’

‘Murray Douglas!’ The chief inspector nodded. ‘I heard you were with the company rehearsing here. Saw you in Skeleton a few years ago—a very fine performance you gave … Well?’

Murray licked his lips. Heather had finished her work with a professionally knotted bandage around each of his feet, and was sitting back on her heels gazing up curiously, too exhausted to rise.

‘The whole thing is so complicated I hardly know where to begin,’ Murray prevaricated, trying to order his thoughts.

‘You could begin with the reason why all these people are hypnotized,’ Cromarty growled.

‘Did you say hypnotized?’ Wadeward turned incredulously to glance along the prostrate forms on the grass. ‘I—no, give me some background before I start asking questions, for pity’s sake!’

‘Well, you know why we were supposed to be here?’ Murray suggested.

‘To work up a new play,’ Wadeward said. ‘It was in the local paper—quite a big event, apparently.’

‘Except that that was just a cover story,’ Murray broke in. ‘What the real reason was, I can’t be sure, but I think it had something to do with raising us to a pitch of complete hysteria. And then …’

Triplem.

Concentrape.

The experience contracted for.

No good. At this point his brain started to fill with fog as dense as the smoke now raging skyward like a thundercloud from the inferno at the back of the house.

‘I—uh—I’d better go over it from the beginning,’ he muttered.

With growing astonishment, Cromarty and Wadeward heard about Trois Fois à la Fois, suicide of Jean-Paul Garrigue, the insanity of Léa Martinez, the attempt by Claudette Myrin to kill her baby daughter. At that point Wadeward was already finding silence impossible.

‘But wasn’t something done about this—this maniac?’ he exploded. ‘You can’t just have someone persecuting innocent victims in the name of art, genius or not!’

‘He’s so clever you have to experience his treatment to believe it,’ Murray said. ‘I don’t know how we escaped it—luck, I guess.’

‘No, not luck,’ Heather said firmly. ‘You were too tough a proposition for him, Murray.’

‘Flattering, but not true.’ Murray sighed. ‘Well, from the first evening …’

So: the tape-decks under the beds, the gadgetry over the stage, in room thirteen, hidden in all the TV sets, Delgado’s touchiness on the subject, the unwillingness even of Lester Harkham to pursue the matter after the first day or two; scraps and hints picked up from Valentine’s unguarded conversation earlier tonight, about ‘scanning the rooms’ and ‘basic wipes’ and the matter of spiking canned fruit juice and framing Murray into believing he’d been drinking and—and—and …

With a sober headshake, Wadeward confessed, ‘I simply don’t know what to make of it—do you, doctor? One thing I can do is put out a call for these mysterious “stewards” on suspicion of trafficking in illegal drugs, and perhaps procuring for immoral purposes too. Oh! Sorry, young lady,’ he added to Heather.

‘I think,’ the girl said in a strained voice, not looking directly at him, ‘that they’d have made me do what they wanted if Murray hadn’t prevented them.’

‘But the whole thing’s incredible!’ Cromarty objected. ‘To take the most glaring example, Mr Douglas here thinks patterns of wire on their mattresses were responsible for all these people being hypnotized. But I’ve made a lifetime hobby of the subject, and to me it sounds absurd!’.

The dogmatic certainty in his tone lay on Murray’s mind like a dead weight. He made to voice counter-arguments, and decided to save his breath. Everything he had planned to use for evidence was in the wreckage of the new wing; even if a few of the items were later salvaged, what would they amount to in most people’s view? Some bits of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, better fitting Lester’s theory that Delgado was the dupe of charlatans than his own fantastic proposals.

He put his head in his hands. Alarmed, Cromarty bent to examine him and this time brooked no denial of his intentions. Murray submitted wanly and let his mind go so blank he barely heard Heather’s next words.

‘Instead of wild guessing,’ she was saying to anyone who cared to listen, ‘why not ask Delgado? His fall down the stairs knocked him silly, but he should have recovered by this time. Valentine and the others have probably got clear away, but Delgado’s right over there.’