The Dobie Paradox: british mystery novel: where nothing is as it seems Read online

  Of course, kids of that age don’t always have very clearly defined personalities. But something had to have been there, inside that slim and shapely little body. Irene Jones’ daughter, after all … Well, Irene had never been lacking in personality, even if her purely physical attributes had been more evident. And the kid had to have been a tough little package, in her way. To be a loner in a girls’ boarding school … It isn’t easy …

  And even if you hated to admit it, Pontin was right. There was nothing to go on and nothing coming up. A blank all along the line. The A-team, blocked and baffled; no apparent way through the impasse. Some new idea or piece of information had to come along from somewhere, some sort of a … breakthrough … and Jackson had a funny feeling about that. A tutorial sort of feeling. No, not tutorial, a tuition … Intuition. That was it. Dobie had to come up with something else, something a bit more … well, with something that no one else had thought of. Because when all was said and done, no one else was likely to.

  Not until another girl got killed. Jackson liked Dobie, but he had a daughter at school himself and he disapproved strongly of murders anyway. So it all came down to what you might call a calculated risk … except that you couldn’t really calculate it. Probably not even Dobie could, not even with his goddam computers. So if he really wanted to take that kind of a chance …

  Jackson put away his notebook, which he hadn’t opened, and got up from the armchair and walked out of the I Room towards his office. The paperwork would be coming in from Central at any moment … And he had an idea at the back of his mind that some time tonight the telephone on his desk would ring …

  Wednesday March 28th

  … All kinds of fun and games today, with the fuzz descending on us like a swarm of locusts seeking whom they may devour and in the process disorganizing all our normal schedules to sometimes amusing effect. What’s it all about, one wonders? … Or no, one doesn’t. It’s obvious. Anyway instead of seeing Popeye today I was taken for an interview with the transcendentalist of Uttar Pradesh, Dr Ram Singh. A change of venue and a very notable change of attitude, but all variety in this damned place is welcome. I got the message quickly enough Popeye is into guilt complexes/anal retention while Ram (as you might expect with a name like that) is into sexual hangups, though of what kind it’s difficult to determine. I was able to oblige him with quite a few.

  Started off by asking me if I’m not a little uptight at the prospect of returning to the big wide world in the near future, getting a little nervous about it, maybe? Oh yes indeed, I tell him, the uptightfulness is terrific. Then he asks me a few rather personal questions about Derya and seems quite interested in the cave dream, which I relate to him without any imaginary embellishments – not that it needs them. Shares my puzzlement, or seems to, at the intrusion of Beverley whatname into the picture, makes copious notes, suggests a source in sexual repressions etc. Yarooo, my lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts. And yet at the same time …

  What it all boils down to is that like everyone else I want out of here, soonest. I wrote another job application this afternoon, tap tap tap on the typewriter, all a waste of time as I suspect. This address is going to put any prospective employer off for a start. Maybe Dobie would let me use his address for that purpose only, at least till I shake the dust, c/o Professor John Dobie would certainly make a better impression than c/o the Headshrinkers, the Nutcase Centre, though (from what they tell me) only marginally. At least he’s well intentioned. But then I suppose they all are, really. That’s the trouble.

  Funnily enough the cop who came round to see me knows Dobie, or says he does. Big bloke with the traditional enormous feet and a very soft voice. Fox, I think the name was. I told him all about Dobie and he said, Yes, but what about earlier in the day? – so that has to be the time they’re interested in. Asked me why we call Raich Carter ‘Popeye’ and I had to admit I didn’t know, unless it’s something to do with all that bicep-building he does; his eyes don’t pop very noticeably. A bit surprising, too, that I couldn’t remember very clearly what it was we were talking about that afternoon – that’s the trouble with these chat-sessions, one seems to merge with another as time goes by and it all becomes a sort of introspective blur, it was just the same at the other place. I suppose it’s because there’s no real contact with reality, with the world outside, to give it a proper context. I tried to explain it that way to the cop but he didn’t write anything down in his notebook so he couldn’t have been very interested. So now I’m writing it down in my notebook though I don’t know that I find it very interesting, either.

  The world outside … It worries me more than a little. Yes, I want out, but what am I going to do once I get out, other than start pushing my overloaded cart through the sand again, straining and puffing away just like before? Who wants to read books? Who wants to write them? What can I do? It’s strange that nobody here seems ever to ask himself that question. We’re all lilies of the field, I suppose, all is provided for us, all our wants supplied from the cradle to the grave, but in that sleep of death what dreams, etc., yes, I know, I know … more about dreams of death than Shakespeare ever did but what’s the use? He never had to ask himself that question, surely?

  ‘What question is that?’

  ‘Well, not exactly a question,’ Dobie said. ‘I wouldn’t call it a question, or not precisely. It’s really more of … Owwww.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that if you pick the teapot up by the handle —’

  ‘I know, but when I do that the handle usually comes off. I don’t know why it is, but … It’s the same with milk jugs. Something to do with static electricity, or so I’ve been told.’

  ‘Then perhaps you’d better let me be mother.’

  Certainly, Dobie thought, Mrs Train’s maternal attributes were once again well in evidence this evening, even more notably so when she reached across the table to reach for the teapot. In this and in certain other respects he found himself reminded whenever he looked at her (or them) of those buxom and begartered chorus-girls of the Naughty Nineties, who supposedly invariably married sprigs of the minor nobility and ended up as pillars of respectability and sturdy devotees of the Anglican Church. Mrs Train, however, would definitely represent the pre-pillar or possibly cater-pillar stage of this process of metamorphosis, in which her male company of the moment would also as of necessity become involved; Dobie, for instance, was finding it difficult in her presence to restrain himself from twirling his moustaches like an accomplished masher, or even a downright knut (Kate, no doubt, would have spelt the word differently), behaviour that seemed from whatever viewpoint to be scarcely appropriate to the plebeian, if comfortable, surroundings of the Tea Gardens at David Lumley’s, that well-established refuge of better-heeled middleclass shoppers fatigued from the never-ending battle at the neighbouring department stores.

  ‘In fact,’ Mrs Train said, with a bohemian flash of her bright blue eyes, ‘it’s very gallant of you to allow me to do the honours. So much more fun, don’t you think, to be doing something? That’s why men are always so chivalrous about driving the car when you’re going shopping. On the way in, that is. They’re not nearly so nice about it on the way back, I can’t think why.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Train, I can only suppose—’

  ‘Jack.’

  ‘Er, pardon?’

  ‘Please call me Jack. I hate unnecessary formalities.’

  ‘Oh yes. Well. Yes, er … Jack … That would be Jacqueline, I take it? You see, I was wondering if—’

  ‘In actual fact my first name is Olwen but my friends always call me Jack. It’s a long story that I think I’d do well to save for later.’

  The implication that this was to be the start of a beautiful friendship was not altogether lost on Dobie, who saw, however, no immediate or tactful means of disabusing her on this account. He sipped tea, slowly and thoughtfully, instead. His mind, naturally inimical to all illogicality, continued perversely to prey upon the matter. Why Jack? Jack th
e Stripper? Jack and the Beanstalk? Certainly there was something about her husband’s emaciated and somewhat careworn appearance that might suggest … Though that was probably an unprofitable, and indeed hardly proper, field for speculation. ‘In fact,’ Mrs Train – or Jack – was saying, ‘I drove myself in to town today. Quite an unexpected treat this is, I promise you.’

  ‘You don’t come to Cardiff very often?’

  ‘I’m not invited very often.’

  ‘Ah. But for shopping, you said? And things like that?’

  ‘Oh, things like that, yes.’

  Difficult, one might have thought, to invest her last two utterances with innuendo of any kind, but Mrs Train had managed it somehow. But then it was also difficult to determine what kind of innuendo. ‘Because,’ Dobie said, floundering rather badly in his attempt to pour more sugar into a bowl that (a) was already full, (b) had a lid on it, ‘I imagine that out there, where you live I mean, it must get rather, well … Boring. Sometimes.’

  ‘You imagine quite correctly.’ She rolled her eyeballs skywards, like a startled horse. ‘Extremely boring. Painfully boring. Though I shouldn’t say so, of course. Things have got a bit more lively lately, with the police descending upon us like a swarm of ants, though I suppose I shouldn’t say that, either, in the circumstances. In some ways annoying, of course – Morris was quite put out by it but at least they’re men, I mean, goodness me.’

  ‘The police are?’

  ‘Well, aren’t they?’

  ‘Not all of them. They have policewomen, too.’

  ‘Oh, we didn’t have any of those this morning.’ Mrs Train made a sweeping motion of her wrist, rejecting an obviously inferior article from the bargain counter. ‘I had a very charming young man. A Sergeant Box. Or Cox.’

  ‘Box. They call him Foxy Boxy.’

  ‘Really? What a very inappropriate nickname. He seemed to me completely without guile.’

  ‘I think maybe some kind of ironic intention—’

  ‘But of course you know all these people, don’t you? That’s why I was so excited by your invitation. Now, I thought, I’ll be able to get all the latest news from the horse’s mouth, er … so to speak. Sergeant Box, I’m afraid, was dumb as an oyster in that respect.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t have got very much out of you either.’

  ‘Indeed no. I wasn’t even there that afternoon. And I’d never met the girl or anyone who … No, I was useless. Quite useless.’

  ‘All the same,’ Dobie said, brushing away unobtrusively (he hoped) at the tablecloth with a folded napkin, ‘I can’t help feeling that in more general terms … I mean, the observer sees most of the game, don’t you think? – and that’s what you are, in a sense. I mean, you’re the only person living at the Centre who doesn’t actually work there, so maybe you can see the wood where the others can only see the trees, and again you’re a woman and almost all the other people there are men, and women are usually better than men at noticing the sort of things I’m talking about.’

  Mrs Train stared at him, for the first time with no discernible accompanying sweep of the eyelashes. ‘I don’t quite know what you are talking about. I don’t have anything to do with the boys in the prison, you know. I’d like to, but Morris won’t allow it. Maybe life would be a little less boring if I could … but I’m not allowed to, Morris says, as I’m not trained in social work or anything like that. Morris can be a little fubsy about these things, I don’t mind telling you. What they call a stickler for regulations.’

  ‘But you meet the members of the staff. The doctors and so on.’

  ‘And a pretty dull lot they are. All they ever talk about are their patients, as they call them. Well, you’ve met them, haven’t you? So you’ll know why that darling Sergeant Boxy came as a pleasant change.’

  Box would be pleased to learn, Dobie thought, that he’d made such a hit. ‘And of course there’s Elspeth.’

  ‘Oh, Elspeth, yes. She’s a sweetie. With such refreshing ideas about life in general and maybe me in particular.’ Mrs Train sighed heavily. ‘She doesn’t like it, of course, being cooped up in that … But there I go again. And it isn’t all that bad. Once you’ve got used to it.’

  Dobie retrieved the napkin from beside his left foot, where he had inadvertently dropped it. Mrs Train, familiar no doubt with the subterfuge and conscious that her own neat ankles would bear any amount of even more detailed examination, smiled at him sweetly. ‘In fact I’m a little concerned,’ Dobie said, ‘about her reaction to this Beverley Sutro business.’

  ‘Her father thinks she’s reacted very well. But then … They went to school together, I know, but they weren’t close friends or even enemies, as far as I can make out.’

  ‘No. But the girl died in her house, she saw me bring the kid’s body in and … what I’m getting at, it has to be very alarming for her, wouldn’t you say? A girl she knew being raped and murdered on a road she has to walk down twice a day, whoever did it still at large, she ought to be scared, surely? And yet she doesn’t seem to be. Not very much.’

  Mrs Train pouted thoughtfully, considering the point. ‘She’s a very self-possessed young lady, that one. And of course her father’s a doctor, she’s perhaps a little more accustomed at least to the idea of illness and death than some other children might be.’ She retrieved a teacup and saucer that, propelled by a careless flirt of Dobie’s retrieved napkin, were on the point of disappearing over the edge of the table. ‘I don’t think you need be too concerned about her, I don’t really. In one way, yes, she misses her mother, certainly, but in another way she’s adapted to the situation very well. Not that it’s easy for her. It isn’t. But in any case, it’s good of you to take an interest.’

  In fact, Dobie’s interest was at that moment centred on the cake tray. Gluttonously, he helped himself to a second slice of chocolate-coated sponge and popped it into his mouth, where it was instantly assailed by hordes of ravening enzymes. This was indeed the second time this week that Dobie had partaken sumptuously of tea and sugary refreshments in female company and if the company on this occasion was distinctively different then so after all were his surroundings. He felt that he was learning, if nothing else, the arts of social adaptability. ‘She said one thing that puzzled me,’ he remarked, showering a spray of saliva-sodden cake crumbs over the tea-tray. ‘Something I wanted to ask you about. In the course of—’

  ‘Well, now,’ Mrs Train said, rather hurriedly. ‘In other respects you might call her an over-imaginative child. I really don’t think you should attach too much weight—’

  ‘She said her father once ticked her off for playing in the wood.’ An absurdly incongruous rhyme entered Dobie’s head seemingly out of nowhere, only to be at once and impatiently dismissed as a total irrelevance. Which it was. My mother said I never should Play with the gypsies in the wood … ‘Or at least, it’s not a wood, or not exactly. An arboretum, I believe it’s called. Those trees in front of the main building …’

  Mrs Train seemed for once to have been slightly taken aback. ‘Yes. That’s right. It’s quite true. She’s not allowed to play there. The boys in the Centre go there sometimes to take exercise and … Oh, it’s silly, of course they wouldn’t harm her in any way. It’s just another of those stupid regulations I told you about.’

  ‘But you see, I wondered how her father knew about it. You can’t really see the wood from their house, or from the offices in the main building, either. Really the only house with a clear view of the arboretum and the avenue is the Director’s. In other words, yours. So there again, I was wondering if—’

  ‘If I told him about it?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Yes. I did. Good Heavens, there’s no mystery about it. Except that I didn’t mention it to Morris, I didn’t see any need to do that because he might have been—’

  ‘Fubsy?’

  ‘Yes. Fubsy. You know what I mean.’

  ‘But you did see Elspeth playing there?’

  ‘Not exactl
y playing, I never said playing. No, just walking through the trees. So all I did was tell … Dr Mighell to have a word with her about it, I mean, the matter didn’t have any importance, none at all.’

  ‘He wasn’t there at the time?’

  ‘Her father, you mean? No, he wasn’t. In my house? Whatever can have given you that idea?’

  ‘Well,’ Dobie said. ‘Something else she said. If we’re to be frank.’

  Mrs Train sighed profoundly. ‘I thought so. That’s the trouble with children. They draw the wrong conclusions. That matter didn’t have any importance, either, though I can understand why she may have thought so.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Dobie said, ‘she was being over-imaginative. Like you said.’

  ‘Well, no. Not over-imaginative, no. Just over-early, if anything, in getting back from school, though I suppose we were at least equally to blame, we just didn’t notice the time. You know how it is … or at least … but the point is it just wasn’t important, is what I’m saying, in the way she may have thought. If I happen to kick over the traces once or twice, as the saying goes, or maybe a little more often, it doesn’t mean … Well, what it means is that I get so bored in that damned place that if I didn’t let off a little surplus steam once in a blue moon I’d probably go stark raving bonkers. That’s what it means. I’m sure,’ Mrs Train said, bringing the eyelashes into play once more and so forcefully as almost to create a refreshing breeze, ‘you can understand that. As a man of the world.’

  This had to be almost the first time in which Dobie had been so regarded and he checked the automatic movement of his hand towards his moustache. It couldn’t, he reflected, after all be very effectively twirled until it had first been disentangled. And possibly disinfected. Comrade Commissar, indeed. Play with the raggle-taggle gypsies O … Anyone might have supposed Dobie’s thoughts at that moment to be also a raggle-taggle, in dire need of disentanglement, and anyone would in that case have supposed correctly. But then Dobie’s brain always worked that way. Mathematicians don’t deal with order. Some kind of order is what they end up with, if they’re lucky. What they deal with is total chaos. ‘We all have to let off steam,’ Dobie said, ‘when we’re under pressure. We just do it in different ways, that’s all.’