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

  However, in response to the demands of all those inky-pinky libs in the Welsh Office the premises had been livened up considerably by a group of youthful architects whose chief aim might well have been to give the Prince of Wales a severe attack of the heebie-jeebies, a great deal of plate-glass, ceramic tile, and cracking concrete having been superimposed upon the original structure to create an effect that grew ever more weird and wonderful as one approached near enough to observe the shiny metal bars that obstructed egress from all those trendy picture windows and the red-brick facings that irresistibly suggested the street perspective of the Odeon Cinema, Clapham, as recalled by Dobie, constructed in 1932 and mercifully pulled down by property developers some twenty years later. Dobie parked his car outside the main entrance and entered the foyer, blinking round him instinctively in search of the box office. There wasn’t one, though there was a sort of reception desk by the far wall with nobody there. Instead, then, Dobie made his way down the well-lit passage opening to his right where a sign said REGISTRY and where other doors to either side of the passage, like that of the registry itself, remained inimically closed. The door immediately beyond the registry bore a plastic plaque that said DR HORATIO CARTER, white lettering on a navy-blue background. Dobie stared at it in mild surprise. He seemed to have lucked out the first time round. He knocked on the door. ‘Come,’ someone – presumably Dr Carter – said. Obediently, Dobie came.

  ‘Ah, hullo again,’ Dr Carter said. ‘Take a chair.’

  Dobie compiled with this instruction also. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘it’s after Nelson.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The Horatio bit.’

  ‘Oh, that. After the footballer, actually. My old grandad was a fanatical admirer of his – named his son after him – my father, that was – and my father just followed the trend, you might say. Great player, of course.’

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘No, no. Horatio Carter.’

  ‘But you said your father was Horatio Carter.’

  ‘Yes. So am I, if it comes to that.’

  ‘What I don’t quite see is how your grandfather comes into it in the first place.’

  Dr Carter began to look rather worried.

  ‘This is a friendly visit, Mr Dobie? I mean, you haven’t come in search of any kind of treatment?’

  ‘Of course not. No. Naturally not. It’s in connection with my friend Mr …’ Dobie paused. The name seemed to have escaped him – only momentarily, of course. Annoying, all the same. ‘Bloke with the ginger beard. You must know him.’

  ‘Adrian Seymour.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Of course I know Adrian,’ Carter said. ‘It’d be surprising if I didn’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why would it be—’

  ‘All right, don’t tell me, I’ve got it,’ Carter said, speaking with great rapidity and ejecting a very small globule of spittle from the side of his mouth. ‘I know him because he has been coming to me for psychiatric treatment – three times a week – for, let’s see, something like six weeks now. Ever since he came here, in fact. That’s why I think I can claim to know him – if anyone does.’

  ‘What do you mean, if anyone does? I do. For instance.’

  ‘Yes, I’m aware of that. A figure of speech, merely.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Never mind. Can we get to the nitty-gritty, Mr Dobie?’

  ‘Oh, certainly.’

  There followed rather a long silence, at the end of which Carter cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps, Mr Dobie, you’d feel a little more comfortable if we went into the inner office. There’s a comfortable couch there where you can lie down and perhaps feel a little more at ease. Sometimes people here encounter a little initial difficulty in giving their ideas free expression—’

  ‘No, no,’ Dobie said. ‘I’m perfectly comfortable in this chair. No, I was waiting. That’s all.’

  ‘Waiting?’

  ‘For you to get to the nitty-gritty. Like you said.’

  ‘Oh. I see. A little misunderstanding. I was waiting for you to get to the nitty-gritty. Whatever that is.’

  ‘Ah. I thought … Silly of me. Ho ho ho.’

  ‘No, no. Ho ho ho. Silly of me.’

  ‘Ho ho ho ho.’

  ‘Ho ho.’

  Another long silence.

  Dobie had stopped laughing but, in order to show that this implied no diminution in the general amicability of his intentions, had continued to display almost the entire register of his lower mandibles in a quizzically macho grin, rather in the manner of Michael Douglas. But not altogether like Michael Douglas. More like Christopher Lee, really, in one of his spirited impersonations of Count Dracula. Carter, disconcerted either by this or by the sudden alarming fixity of Dobie’s gaze, allowed his hand to stray in the direction of that small button at the side of his desk which, on being depressed—

  ‘Ha!’ Dobie said explosively. ‘Got you now.’

  ‘Wock?’ Carter said, sucking his knuckles.

  ‘Got you placed now. You’re the jigger.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘I mean the jogger. Chap who kindly showed me the way last night.’

  ‘That’s right. I remember the occasion distinctly: I’m a little surprised—’

  ‘Showed me the way to whatname’s house. Extremely kind of you. Well, it just goes to show. It’s a small world.’

  ‘Perhaps it would help,’ Carter said, though frankly he was now beginning to doubt that anything would, ‘if I were to describe to you the situation as I presently see it. A brief recap, so to speak. Now then. As a result of your last night’s conversation with Morris Train, some parts of which it’s possible you may recall, Morris asked me to make myself available to you this morning at ten o’clock’ – he glanced at his wristwatch – ‘so that we could discuss the position of Adrian Seymour, who is my patient here and as I understand it a personal friend of yours. Morris also said that you might be prepared to recommend Adrian to certain prospective employers upon his release from the Centre and that therefore I should seek to satisfy you, not of course as to his professional capacities but as to the overall stability and reliability of his personality, bearing in mind the drug-addiction problem to which, as we know, he’s been subject, and certain other psychological traumas arising, we believe, from his exposure to a very difficult and trying domestic situation. And that assurance I believe I can give you. With every confidence.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘In my opinion, Adrian’s reliance upon drugs is to be attributed to his inability to deal with the personal problem that I mentioned and which I’ve discussed with him at considerable length on many occasions. Although in one sense the problem has now disappeared – the woman being dead – the resultant guilt complex, I’ll admit, required a fair amount of detailed investigation and in-depth therapy. The suggestion that he himself killed his wife can be dismissed as ridiculous. There’s nothing in it, nothing whatsoever.’

  Dobie’s attention had not unnaturally begun to wander. Or more exactly, become focused on his immediate surroundings. Carter’s office appeared to be rather smaller than he had originally supposed, and the inner office even smaller, being virtually filled by the couch to which Carter had made allusion – which looked in fact more like a hospital bed, with various ominous-looking metal projections jutting from its base – and by a no less ominous-looking metal machine on a table with wires looped around its frame and by a black swivel chair with a tilted headrest. It could indeed only be called an inner office by courtesy, being screened off from the room where they now sat only by a gunmetal-grey curtain. All quite different from Kate’s cheerfully old-fashioned consulting room. ‘Yes, quite,’ Dobie said. ‘But—’

  ‘And that’s not a mere opinion. It’s been firmly established through hypnotherapy. Despite a certain surface show of aggressiveness, Adrian really possesses a remarkably mild and pacific personality. Indeed one might
almost say that there lies the root of the whole matter. The inability to take positive steps when steps of such a kind are called for. The Hamlet syndrome, in fact.’

  ‘It’s odd you should say—’

  ‘I expect you’d like to know what forms of mental therapy are practised here. Well, I think I may safely say our methods are highly non-eclectic. We’ve found gestalt therapy to work very well where the root problem can be ascribed to acquired rather than to hereditary characteristics, which is the case with Adrian. And of course the drug addiction responds best to chemotherapic treatment, in other words a phased withdrawal. If you wish, our secretary will let you have the printout which gives you his whole medical history since his return to this country and a more general picture of his social and personal background. Needless to say, it’s a confidential document, but in view of Morris Train’s express instructions—’

  Dobie was beginning to feel a little desperate. The porter’s garrulity had been as nothing in comparison with this seemingly interminable flow of garbage. ‘What I’d like to know,’ he said, ‘is about the dreams.’

  ‘The dreams?’

  ‘Yes. The dreams.’

  ‘Ah. The dreams. Well, you know – all that Freudian-interpretation stuff is regarded as a little old hat these days. If that’s what you … We have a number of EEG recordings, however, which may interest you. He’s certainly a highly imaginative feller but clinically speaking one’s always wise to dismiss—’

  ‘He said he’d talked to you about them.’

  ‘So he has, so he has. So many patients seem to think … But we don’t practise psychoanalysis here, not really. Of course everything’s recorded on tape but quite honestly that’s something of a placebo … As long as the patient sees that the spools are turning he seems to be satisfied that we’re taking his problems seriously. And indeed we are. I’ve never discouraged him or anyone else from talking absolutely freely, quite the contrary. And some of his ideas have struck me as being quite … I’ve even suggested that he commit them to paper as he clearly has some sort of literary aptitude. In fact I don’t mind betting … Well, let’s see …’

  He moved the television monitor on the side-table round on its swivel, flicked a practised finger towards one switch on the console and then another. The blank screen turned misty in a quite familiar way, then cleared to show a less familiar image; Dobie, craning his neck a little, could see Adrian Seymour sitting at a small folding table and staring gloomily at a portable typewriter, from the roller of which a sheet of paper protruded. ‘There you go,’ Carter said. ‘Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr Gibbon? I don’t know if creative work has any real value but it has a valuable therapeutic effect, no one disputes it. And music, of course.’

  ‘Music?’

  ‘Good music. Classical music. Not Beethoven, of course, he’s a bit too … disruptive … But lots of Bach and Handel and … and so forth. The kids take to it after a while, you know, even the ones who’ve never heard anything but pop.’ Carter pressed another switch and Seymour disappeared in a puff of smoke, like Mephistopheles or an Arabian djinn. Dobie blinked.

  ‘There’s one of those at the main gate. I mean, the porter chap has one.’

  ‘There’s one in every consulting room if it comes to that. Any time we want to run a spot check on any of the lads … We’re really quite proud of our surveillance system. Time- and energy-conserving, you see. Far better than the old judas window.’

  Dobie was looking around the room. Books on a shelf, a cassette-recorder and microphone tucked away underneath, a green filing cabinet, a built-in clothes locker, everything almost offensively neat and tidy. ‘Very clever how you conceal the camera, too. I really wouldn’t have thought—’

  ‘Oh, there’s no camera in here. Here you’re on the other end of the line, so to speak, we wouldn’t want anyone eavesdropping on our consultancy sessions even by accident. They’re highly confidential, as you can imagine. There are cameras damned near everywhere else, though. I can tell you, we had the security inspectors round only a month ago and they were greatly impressed. Very greatly impressed.’

  ‘But just now you said something about tapes.’

  ‘Tapes?’

  ‘Yes, you said you recorded the—’

  ‘Oh yes, so we do, so we do, and they’re all tabbed and dated and stashed away in my little filing cabinet but they’re not a hell of a lot of practical use, I mean with the best will in the world no one’s got the time to listen to playbacks all day long. I’ve got all I ever need in my little notebook, thank you very much, and any of the other consultants will tell you the same.’

  A somewhat querulous tone seemed to have entered his voice, giving an edge to the flatness of his northern accent. ‘I suppose,’ Dobie said, ‘it must get a little boring here at times. You’re rather far removed, aren’t you, from the bright lights and that sort of thing?’

  ‘True. But I’m not much of a one for that sort of thing anyway. And now that I’ve taken up jogging—’

  ‘And female companionship. It’s pretty much of an all-male community here, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ah well, for that we’ve always got our Miss Daly right next door. We’ll step round there now,’ Carter said, rising from his desk with some alacrity, ‘and see if she can’t let you take a quick look through Adrian’s records. She won’t let you take away the printout, I’m afraid, that’s not permitted, but you can make a note of any information you may need and … It’s all a matter of public record after all.’

  ‘So it is,’ Miss Daly said, ‘in the sense that it all comes through to us from the Central Records Office. But I can’t believe that the CRO would approve of my handing out printouts to all and sundry.’

  Even while staring severely at Dobie she found herself relenting. Well, slightly. There was something inexplicably appealing about the way he was wrinkling his forehead at her, like a basset hound. Even his ears appeared to be drooping mournfully.

  ‘But just this once I’ll see what I can do.’

  Dobie, in fact, often wore just this expression when in the process of succumbing to feminine charm. Perhaps something a little more secretarial in the way of kimono-style silk blouses might have … And there again, it mightn’t. ‘Here you go,’ Miss Daly observed. ‘Seymour, Adrian. That’s your boy.’ She flipped a folder from the filing cabinet and returned to hand it to Dobie. ‘I can’t allow you to take it away, of course. It’s highly confidential information. In fact I don’t remember ever—’

  ‘I can take notes?’

  ‘I suppose so. Sit down here if you like.’

  ‘But surely this is your desk?’

  ‘That’s all right. I’m working at the computer right now.’

  Dobie, thus reassured, sat down at the desk and opened the folder in what he hoped to be a businesslike manner. He didn’t imagine for a moment that taking notes would serve any useful purpose but that, again, had seemed to him a businesslike sort of thing to say at the time; accordingly, he drew a felt-tip pen from his inner pocket with an executive-style flick of the wrist, suggestive of King Arthur whipping Excalibur from the rock, and pulled a notepad (presumably Miss Daly’s) towards him. It was rather a posh notepad with headed paper:

  REHABILITATION CENTRE

  TONGWYNLAIS

  Registrar’s Office

  Under this heading Dobie wrote purposefully:

  Adrian Seymour

  pausing then to regard his handiwork. There. He’d made a note. So far so good, it had to be supposed.

  He opened the folder.

  It contained exactly what he’d expected. Several sheets of printed medical gibberish. Far more in Kate’s line than in his, but in all probability Kate wouldn’t have made very much of it, either. Interspersed with all that impenetrable jargon, however, were a certain number of comments recorded in normal English and a certain number of dates. Seymour, it seemed, had been transferred from the Eljit Mental Hospital, Nicosia, to the Everdene Institute, Gloucester, in Octo
ber last year; had undergone an approved course of treatment for drug and alcohol addiction; and had, on completion of this course, been sent to the Tongwylais Rehabilitation Centre on February 12th last, his release being now, it seemed, dependent upon the production of satisfactory reports as to his psychic condition and overall health by his personal Case Officer. In other words, Dr Horatio Carter. Everything, in short, appeared to be very much as Dobie had supposed.

  Miss Daly had retired to some kind of inner sanctum or Holy of Holies behind a plywood partition – her office was virtually identical to Carter’s but was even more crowded with filing cabinets and other less easily identifiable items of equipment, these necessitating the sinuous and hip-wiggly mode of progress that Dobie had earlier observed – and appeared to be there telephoning someone, or at any rate trying to do so without meeting with much success. The fault, Dobie reflected, probably lay not so much with the system as with the fact that it was a Sunday morning. ‘I know, I know,’ Miss Daly was saying petulantly, ‘but even so …’ Dobie tore off the sheet of notepaper upon which he had seemingly scrawled something and stared at it. Adrian Seymour … Strange. That was Adrian Seymour’s name. Oh well. He put it in his pocket along with his pen and closed the folder and picked it up and, circumnavigating the filing cabinets, found himself at once staring lugubriously down into the V-neck of Miss Daly’s blouse. She had abandoned the telephone and was now staring equally lugubriously down at the monitor screen of a somewhat antiquated computer. ‘Shit, shit, shit,’ Miss Daly said. Then, becoming aware of Dobie’s insignificant presence, raised her eyes to direct at him the malignant gaze of a basilisk disturbed at its breakfast. ‘What is it now?’