“Yes,” Banks said. “I’m looking for Elizabeth Dale. Is she here, or do you know where I can find her?”
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“Who are you?”
Banks showed her his identification.
The woman raised her eyebrows. “Police? What do you want?”
“I want to talk to Elizabeth Dale,” he repeated. “Is she here or isn’t she?”
“What’s it about?”
“I’m the one who asks the questions,” Banks said, irritated by her brusque, haughty manner. Suddenly, he realized who she must be. “Look, doctor,” he went on, “it’s nothing to do with drugs. It’s about an old friend of hers. I need some information to help solve a murder case, that’s all.”
“Elizabeth’s been here for the past month. She can’t be involved.”
“I’m not saying she is. Will you just let me talk to her?”
The doctor frowned. Banks could see her brain working fast behind her eyes. “All right,” she said finally. “But treat her gently. She’s very fragile. And I insist on being present.”
“I’d rather talk to her alone.” The last thing Banks wanted was this woman watching over the conversation like a lawyer.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“How about if you remained within calling distance? Say, the other end of this room?” The room was certainly large enough to accommodate more than one conversation.
The doctor smiled out of the side of her mouth. “A compromise? All right. Stay here while I fetch Elizabeth. Take a seat.”
But Banks felt restless after being in the car. Instead, he walked around the room looking at the paintings, almost all of which illustrated some intense level of terror: mad eyes staring through a letter-box; a naked man being dragged away from a woman, his features creased in a desperate plea; a forest in which every carefully painted leaf looked like a needle of fire. They sent shivers up his spine. Noticing plenty of pedestal ashtrays around, he lit up. It was warm in the room, so he took off his car-coat and laid it on a chair.
About five minutes later, the doctor returned with another 300
woman. “This is Elizabeth Dale,” she said, introducing them formally, then walked off to the far end of the room, where she sat facing Banks and pretended to read a magazine. Liz took a chair on his left, angled so they could face one another comfortably. The chairs were well-padded, with strong armrests.
“I saw you looking at the paintings,” Elizabeth said. “Quite something, aren’t they?” She had a melodic, hypnotic voice. Banks could easily imagine its persuasive powers. He had a feeling, however, that it would probably become tiresome after a while: whining and wheedling rather than beautiful and soft.
Elizabeth Dale smoothed her long powder-blue skirt over her knees. Her slight frame was lost inside a baggy mauve sweater with two broad white hoops around the middle. If she was Seth’s contemporary, that made her about forty, but her gaunt, waxy face was lined like that of a much older woman, and her black hair, hacked, rather than cut, short was liberally streaked with grey. It was a face that screamed of suffering; eyes that had looked deep inside and seen the horror there. Yet her voice was beautiful. So gentle, so soothing, like a breeze through woods in spring.
“They’re very powerful,” Banks said, feeling his words pathetically inadequate in describing the paintings.
“People see those things here,” Elizabeth said. “Do you know what this place used to be?”
“No.”
“It was a hospital, a fever-hospital, during the typhoid epidemics in the last century. I can hear the patients screaming every night.”
“You mean the place is haunted?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “Maybe it’s me who’s haunted. People go crazy here sometimes. Break windows and try to cut themselves with broken glass. I can hear the typhoid victims screaming every night as they’re burning up and snapping bones in convulsions. I can hear the bones snap.” She clapped her hands. “Crack.
Just like that.”
Then she put her hand over her mouth and laughed.
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Banks noticed the first and second fingers of her right hand were stained yellow with nicotine. She rummaged inside her sweater and pulled out a packet of Embassy Regal and a tarnished silver lighter. Banks took out a cigarette of his own, and she leaned forward to give him a light. The flame was high and he caught a whiff of petrol fumes as he inhaled.
“You know,” Elizabeth went on, “for all that-the ghosts, the screaming, the cold-I’d rather be here than … than out there.” She nodded her head towards the door. “That’s where the real horror is, Mr Banks, out there.”
“I take it you don’t keep up with the world, then. No newspapers, no television?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No. There is a television here, next door. But I don’t watch it. I read books. Old books. Charles Dickens, that’s who I’m reading now. There’s opium-taking in Edwin Drood, did you know that?”
Banks nodded. He had been through a Dickens phase some years ago.
“Have you come about the complaint?” Elizabeth asked.
