Dark Room

In view of a recent MOT certificate on Miss Kingsley's vehicle, which tends to rule out malfunction, and the fact that the chances of hitting the concrete stanchion by accident are virtually nil, it seems clear that she drove her car into it deliberately. Therefore, unless she recovers enough of her memory to give an explanation of the events leading up to the incident, Gregg and Hardy incline to the view that this was a second attempt at suicide after a drinking session in her car. Mr. Adam Kingsley, her father, has offered to pay the costs of the emergency services. Meanwhile Miss Kingsley has been transferred to the Nightingale Clinic, where she is receiving treatment from Dr. Alan Protheroe. Mr. Kingsley's solicitor is pressing for a decision on whether or not we intend to proceed against Miss Kingsley. My view is to do nothing in view of her father's willingness to pick up the tab, her disturbed state of mind, and the fact that she chose such a deserted location. Please advise.

*3*

WEDNESDAY, 22ND JUNE, THE NIGHTINGALE CLINIC,

SALISBURY, WILTSHIRE-8:30 A.M.

How drab reality was. Even the sun shining through her windows was less vivid than her dreams. Perhaps it had something to do with the bandage over her right eye, but she didn't think so. Consciousness itself was leaden and dull, and so restrictive that she felt only a terrible depression. The big bear of a doctor came in as she toyed with her breakfast, told her again that she'd been in an accident, and said the police would like to talk to her. She shrugged. 'I'm not going anywhere.' She would have added that she despised policemen if he'd stayed to listen, but he went away again before she could put the thought into words.

She had no memory of the first police interview at the Odstock Hospital and politely denied ever having met the two uniformed constables who came to her room. She explained that she could not remember the accident, indeed could remember nothing at all since leaving her house and her fiance in London the previous morning. The policemen resembled each other-tall, stolid men with sandy hair and florid complexions, who showed their discomfort at her answers by turning their caps in unison between their fingers. She labeled them Tweedledum and Tweedledee and chuckled silently because they were so much more amusing than her sore head, bandaged eye, and hideously bruised arms. They asked her where she had been going, and she replied that she was on her way to stay with her parents at Hellingdon Hall. 'I have to help my stepmother with wedding preparations,' she explained. 'I'm getting married on the second of July.' She heard herself announce the fact with pleasure, while the voice of cynicism murmured in her brain. Leo will run a mile before he hitches himself to a bald, one-eyed bride. They thanked her and left.

Two hours later, her stepmother dissolved into tears at her bedside, blurted out that the wedding was off, it was Wednesday, the twenty-second of June, Leo had left her for Meg twelve days previously, and she had, to all intents and purposes, driven her car at a concrete pillar four days later in a deliberate attempt to kill herself.

Jinx stared at her ugly, scarred hands. 'Didn't I say good-bye to Leo yesterday?'

'You were unconscious for three days and very confused afterwards. You were in hospital until Friday, and I went to see you, but you didn't know who I was. I've come here twice and you've looked at me, but you didn't want to talk to me. This is the first time you've recognized me. Daddy's that upset about it.' Her mouth wobbled rather pathetically. 'We were so afraid we'd lost you.'

'I've come to stay with you. That's why I'm here. You and I are going to confirm arrangements for the wedding.' If she said it slowly and clearly enough, Betty must believe her. But no, Betty was a fool. Betty had always been a fool. 'The week beginning the fourth of June. It's been in the diary for months.'

Mrs. Kingsley's tears poured down her plump cheeks, scoring tiny pink rivulets in her overpowdered face. 'You've already been, my darling. You came down a fortnight and a half ago, spent the week with Daddy and me, did all the things you were supposed to do, and then went home to find Leo packing his bags. Don't you remember? He's gone to live with Meg. Oh, I could murder him, Jinx, I really could.' She wrung her hands. 'I always told you he wasn't a nice man, but you wouldn't listen. And your father was just as bad. 'He's a Wallader, Elizabeth...' ' She rambled on, her huge chest heaving tragically inside a woolen dress that was far too tight.

The idea that nearly three weeks had passed without her being able to recollect a single day was so far beyond Jinx's comprehension that she fixed her attention on what was real. Red carnations and white lilies in a vase on her bedside table. French windows looking out on a flagstoned terrace, with a carefully tended garden beyond. Television in the corner. Leather armchairs on either side of a coffee table-walnut, she decided, and a walnut dressing table. Bathroom to her left. Door to the corridor on her right. Where had Adam put her this time? Somewhere very expensive, she thought; the Nightingale Clinic, the nurse had told her. In Salisbury. But why Salisbury when she lived in London?

Betty's plaintive wailing broke into her thoughts. '...I wish it hadn't upset you so much, my darling. You've no idea how badly Daddy's taken it all. He sees it as an insult to him, you know. He never thought anyone could make his little girl do something so'-she cast about for a word-'silly.'

'Little girl?' What on earth was Betty talking about? She had never been Adam's little girl-his performing puppet perhaps, never his little girl. She felt very tired suddenly. 'I don't understand.'

'You got drunk and tried to kill yourself, my poor baby. Your car's been written off.' Mrs. Kingsley fished a newspaper photograph out of her handbag and pressed it into her stepdaughter's lap. 'That's what it looked like afterwards. It's a mercy you survived, it really is.' She pointed to the date in the top right-hand corner of the clipping. 'The fourteenth of June, the day after the accident. And today's date'-she pushed forward another newspaper-'there, you see, the twenty-second, a whole week later.'

Jinx examined the picture curiously. The mass of twisted metal, backlit by police arc lights, had the fantastic quality of surrealist art. It was a stark silhouette, and in the distortions of the chassis and the oblique angle from which the photographer had taken his shot, it appeared to portray a gleaming metal gauntlet clasped about the raised sword of the pillar. It was a great picture, she thought, and wondered who had taken it.

'This isn't my car.'

Her stepmother took her hand and stroked it gently. 'Leo's not going to marry you, Jinx. Daddy and I have had to send out notices to everyone saying the wedding's been canceled. He wants to marry Meg instead.'

She watched a tear drip from the powdered chin onto her own upturned palm. 'Meg?' she echoed. 'You mean Meg Harris?' Why would Leo want to marry Meg? Meg was a whore. You whore ... you whore ... YOU WHORE! Some horror-what?-lurched through her mind, and she clamped a hand to her mouth as bile rose in her throat.

'She's been out for what she can get for as long as you've known her, and now she's taken your husband. You were always too trusting, baby. I never liked her.'

Jinx dragged her wide-eyed stare back to her stepmother. That wasn't true. Betty had always adored Meg,