Stephen Gallagher - The Bedlam Detective

Sebastian turned his head to look at him. He could barely keep his head lifted from the pillow. The room had painted wallpaper and heavy, masculine furniture. The bedcover on which he lay had a satin look, but was coarse and scratchy to the touch.

“Here,” Sir Owain said, and put an arm under Sebastian’s shoulders to lift and get him sitting upright. “Let’s get you active. See if we can clear that head for you.”

He turned Sebastian so that his legs swung off the bed. Then he helped him to rise to his feet and supported him walking.

“Let me sit a while,” Sebastian protested.

“Trust me,” Sir Owain said. “I know what you need.”

They emerged from the room and into a wide gallery. This was a part of the house that Sebastian had not seen before. The gallery was formed by vaulted timbers that curved overhead, as if cut by a shipwright. It was painted in red, and its sides were lined with specimen cases and statuary.

Sebastian was helpless. He was like a drunk with a benefactor walking him home. At the end of the gallery they turned around and started back. When they staggered a little on the turn, Sir Owain said, “Forgive me. I’m not the man I used to be.”

Sebastian said, “What do you think this is going to achieve?”

“I’ve an open mind,” said Sir Owain. “But I’ve an idea of what I expect.”

“Where’s Doctor Sibley?”

“Just as dead as he was last night. That was his bed you were lying on. My dear Mister Becker, don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

“I meant to say, what have you done with him?”

“Well, I couldn’t leave an old friend just lying there on the kitchen floor,” Sir Owain said. “There’s no dignity in that. So I cleaned him up, and I put him somewhere fitting. It was a struggle. I had to manage on my own. I could hardly involve Thomas, could I? It wouldn’t be fair. He’s a faithful servant, but that’s far too much to ask of a man’s loyalty.”

Thomas? The chauffeur. Sebastian filled his lungs and yelled the man’s name at the top of his voice.

Sir Owain bore the racket patiently, so loud and so close to his ear. And then he said, “If you expect to get anyone’s attention, you’re wasting your time. I give Thomas his Sundays off. And it’s been some time, now, since I had to let the others go.”

They turned again, and started back. Sir Owain said, “That was a sad day for me. A house of this size, Sebastian-may I call you Sebastian? It takes a certain number of people just to bring it to life.”

As they went along, Sebastian felt his strength returning. Movement forced the sluggish blood around his system. Soon he would be recovered enough to overpower Sir Owain. But better not to try, until he was sure.

At the end of the gallery they went through a curtained opening and across a landing. On the other side of the landing they entered a suite of rooms, where Sir Owain released Sebastian to fall onto a couch. Sir Owain’s exhaustion now seemed to match his own.

“This was Hubert’s study,” Sir Owain said, fetching himself a chair. “Is it just me, or do you share a sense of discomfort at being in here? As if he were still alive. He so valued his privacy.” He set the chair down before Sebastian, and went over to the writing desk. “Well,” he said, “he’s gone and there’s no protecting it now.”

Although not quite ransacked, it had the look of a room that had been thoroughly searched. Every drawer in the writing desk was open. On the floor was a doctor’s bag, also open. Beside that was a medium-sized wooden chest with racks of glass, rubber tubing, and a Bunsen burner in a clip. Sir Owain glanced back and saw where Sebastian was looking.

“That’s the kit that he kept locked away,” Sir Owain said as he returned from the desk with a bound journal in his hands, “and these … these are the notes he was keeping on my treatment. I’ve been reading them. I have to say there are no big surprises.”

He sat and began to leaf through the journal. He was about to speak, but one of the pages caught his attention for a few moments, as if he’d noticed something that hadn’t registered with him before.

Then he remembered himself, and went on, “Did Doctor Sibley tell you how he’d been managing me? There’s a list here of all the drugs he tried. Most of them will cause hallucination in one form or another. It may seem an odd form of treatment to give to a man deemed to be a fantasist, but I’ve been assured that the technique has a growing reputation for treating depressive illness. I used to joke with the good doctor that he was a homeopath at heart. Making me a little mad to cure the greater madness. But I don’t think he saw the humor in it.”

Sebastian said, “I want the telephone.”

“I can imagine you do, which is why I’ve disconnected it. Try to concentrate on what I’m telling you. It concerns you more than you can imagine.”

Sebastian said, “Sir Owain, listen to me. Yours is one of the great minds of our age, but experience has damaged it. Now it’s as dangerous to others as any broken machine. You may imagine you’d be the first person to know this, but believe me. You’ll be the last.”

“You’re wrong, Mister Becker,” Sir Owain said, more seriously than before. “I do know I’m broken. I need to know how I’m broken. And if I cannot trust my own intellect to appraise the damage, then I must devise some other way to compare and assess. Somewhere in this fog of what is real and what is not, I have lost myself. I am desperate to find myself again. And for that I need you.”

“I won’t help you.”

“Your consent is not required.”

“You’re making your situation worse.”

“Not possible,” Sir Owain said. “Believe me. Let me explain what I intend for you here.”

Sebastian started to rise. In an instant he found himself facing his own revolver. He let himself fall back onto the couch.

Despite the gun in his hand, Sir Owain went on as if nothing had happened.

He said, “I start from a theory. When we were deprived of our supplies in the jungle, Somerville and I survived on a grub that we’d seen the Indians eat with safety. They’d lie around in a stupor and be useless for work, but show no ill effects.

“The grub caused vivid dreams. So vivid that I felt as if I were both in that terrible place and somewhere else. I felt that division of body and spirit that the Indians take for granted.

“When I remembered this and put it to Doctor Sibley that it might have been the beginning of some permanent separation, he disagreed. Not least because all the known hallucinogens are derived from plants, and not insects. But he did agree to let me conduct my own study, on the understanding that he’d share credit for any findings.”

Sebastian was only half-listening. Stephen Reed knew where he was. When Sebastian failed to appear and could not be reached by telephone, he’d surely come looking.

Sir Owain said, “But I faced a problem. What was this grub? I knew that it developed in flowering bamboo. But to the untrained eye, one moth larva resembles another. There were no existing studies to guide me, so it was some time before I identified a likely candidate. In the end I landed on Myelobia smerintha , the bamboo grub that the Indians call bicho de taquara . I imported some eggs and bred a small colony of them in my conservatory. The larvae flourished until the glass was broken and the temperature fell. Now they’re all gone.”

“None of this means anything to me,” Sebastian said.

“Well, it ought to,” Sir Owain said. “I fed the last of them to you last night.”

“You did what ?”

“Your dessert. Take away the repugnant appearance of the insect and you’re left with the texture and flavor of vanilla cream.”