Stephen Gallagher - The Bedlam Detective

Sebastian said, “Is there a witness? Or any evidence?”

“Evidence enough for an arrest,” Stephen Reed said. “He had some of the girls’ clothing on his cart. The parents have looked at the pieces and identified them.” He tilted one of the unsealed boxes to show the tagged and labeled clothing inside it.

“I came to return this to you,” Sebastian said, and set the moving-picture camera down on the table.

Stephen Reed looked at it. “Did you find anything?”

“A few domestic scenes. And, at the end, a few seconds of an indistinguishable shape, flying toward the picture-taker. The people I consulted did their best, but they’re show folk. A scientific analysis might tell us more.”

The young policeman nodded slowly.

“I see,” he said, turning away. “Well, it’s all academic now. As you say, we have our man.”

Sebastian placed his hand on the younger man’s arm and surprised him with the strength he used to keep him in place. He checked the room behind them and then lowered his voice. “What do you think?”

Stephen Reed hesitated for a while, as if at a door that he knew he might regret opening.

Then he said, “There’s no way that the man we’ve arrested could also have carried out the attack on Evangeline and Grace. At that time he was in the king’s navy, far overseas. Receiving the wounds that have addled his brain.”

“Then perhaps they’re unrelated after all?”

“Evangeline and Grace may not have died, but they were cruelly handled in a similar way. Their hands were tied behind them and bags were placed over their heads. And whether they remember it or not, someone interfered with them. A doctor inspected them and there can be no doubt of it. After the assault they were thrown alive into a gully where gorse bushes broke their fall. They struggled free and made their way back home. They reappeared all scratched and torn and claiming no memory of where they had been.”

“Then what-”

“Both incidents even began with the same childish dare. The one back then, and the one this week. Both pairs of girls made a camp on the moors. Their plan was to sit up to watch …”

“For a beast?” Sebastian said, with a suddenness that surprised even him.

“Our local legend,” Stephen Reed said. “Beasts, and rumors of beasts. But never any proof of beasts. Personally, I’ve never seen a thing on the moor. But then I’ve never been a drinking man.”

“So who do you favor for it?”

“Oh, Mister Becker,” Stephen Reed said. “Given a free choice in a perfect world, we both know who I’m starting to favor for it. Him and his beasts and his trail of the Amazon dead. The problem is, I don’t have a scrap of evidence to offer in support.”

“Where was Sir Owain on that first occasion?”

“All I can establish is that he was in residence at Arnside Hall,” Stephen Reed said. “Fresh back from his South American jaunt but with his memoirs unwritten and his reputation still intact. But why should I worry? The rag-and-bone man did it.”

“It’s time I spoke to your superintendent.”

“Good luck with that,” Stephen Reed said.

The man waxed his mustache. In Sebastian’s book, that was never a good sign. His name was George Hartley and he accepted Sebastian’s credentials at a glance, without seeming to be impressed by them.

“I know the Visitor’s role,” he said. “It’s to protect the business affairs of lunatics. What have you to offer me? I can spare you five minutes.”

“I fear that a wider issue is being overlooked.”

“You think so? Convince me.”

“I have a list of earlier incidents from this area. All of them with some aspect in common with your case.”

“I’ve seen your list. There are no actual murders on it. Whereas for this one I have a culprit, and I have his confession.”

“A confession from an ill-educated man who’s probably yet to grasp, in any meaningful way, that his eagerness to comply with his captors will send him to a hanging.”

“His education has nothing to do with it.”

“There are many similarities between this and the one fully documented case on that paper.”

“And many differences, too.”

“They don’t undo the comparison, or make it any less valid. I think they give a tantalizing picture of a madman’s mental process. The differences make sense if you take them as evidence of an evolving state of mind.”

Sebastian went on to explain. With Evangeline and Grace, their assailant had tied their hands and thrown them alive into a gorse-filled gully on a forlorn part of the moor. He had not killed them, but had surely meant for them to die. It was the action of a man who wanted a certain result, but not to feel responsibility for it. He did not consider himself a murderer. By some peculiar logic, he probably felt that he could avoid guilt by being elsewhere when death finally came.

It was their survival and return that had forced a change in his method the next time. Only luck had saved him from discovery. This time, he’d battered them to be sure. Bagging their heads had saved him from seeing their faces when he did it. He still did not consider himself a murderer. A man who killed when forced to it, perhaps. But in his mind the fault lay with the forces, not with him.

On both occasions, Sir Owain Lancaster had entered the story uninvited and shown his concern for the victims. He was a prominent local figure, and both discoveries had been made on land that was part of his estate. But the fact that he blamed imaginary creatures, and was now under investigation by the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor in Lunacy, must surely call his innocence into question.

George Hartley said, “There’s nothing here I haven’t heard before. What’s your game, Mister Becker? What exactly were you sent here to achieve?”

“I’ll be open with you, sir. My task was to establish whether Sir Owain Lancaster is merely a harmless fantasist or a man capable of expressing his madness by causing suffering in others.”

“And you have not done so. Good day to you, sir.”

Then Sebastian and Stephen Reed took a shortcut up a winding flight of steps behind the Ship Hotel and the Methodist church to the houses above the town, with the intention of calling on Evangeline Bancroft.

She wasn’t at the house. No one was. Stephen Reed looked in the shed, and her bicycle was there.

“Perhaps she’s meeting her mother for lunch,” Sebastian suggested.

“Perhaps,” Stephen Reed said.

They went down to the library. There were four or five browsers, and one reader at the tables. Lydia Bancroft was busy in the restricted section, where the rare editions and the mildly racy subjects kept company on the shelves. She was visibly pleased to see Stephen Reed. Less pleased to see Sebastian. And she had surprising news for them.

“Evangeline’s already gone,” she said.

“Gone where?” Stephen Reed said.

“She took an early train back to London. She asked me to give you this.”

She held out an envelope with Stephen Reed’s name on it. The young policeman hesitated, and then took it. He hooked his little finger under the flap and tore it open to read there and then.

As Stephen Reed moved aside, Sebastian said to Lydia Bancroft, “I’m sorry that I missed her. We had something of great importance to discuss. Can you give me your daughter’s address in London?”

“I’m sorry,” Lydia said. “She specifically asked me not to.”

“The address of her employer, then?”

“That, too. She doesn’t want you contacting her at all, Mister Becker. No one appreciates being misled. Everyone knows who you are now. You’re the special investigator to the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor in Lunacy. You didn’t come here to save children. You came here to harass a decent man with a view to depriving him of his liberty.”