away. She felt a strength and power in that arm and, as she looked up at him, a thought entered her mind. She looked back once more towards the grave of her son but this time there were no more tears.
A slight smile flickered briefly at the corners of her mouth.
Again she looked at Mathias.
Oxford
The smell of menthol was strong in the air.
Dr Vernon made loud sucking sounds as he devoured another of the cough sweets.
The office smelt more like a pharmacy now.
Kelly crossed her legs, slipping one shoe off, dangling it by her toes as she waited for Vernon to finish reading the report.
It was her first day back at the Institute since she had returned from France barely thirty-six hours ago. In many ways she had been happy to return. The relationship between Joubert and Lasalle had deteriorated seriously since the appearance of the tatter’s article. The atmosphere had not been a pleasant one to work in and Kelly had decided that it was time to leave them to it. Armed with what she had learnt in France she was more confident about her own research, enjoying a newly-found enthusiasm which came only with a measure of success. However, she was worried about Lasalle. During the past week she had seen him wilt visibly beneath the open hostility displayed by Joubert. Loathe to intervene, Kelly had been a helpless spectator at their confrontations, each more vehement than before. She found it difficult to understand how so many years of friendship could, for Joubert, have been ruined so quickly and for what seemed a relatively minor aberration on Lasalle’s part.
But, the question had plagued her for a while.
Kelly could still not understand why he had reacted so violently to Lasalle’s article. People did have a right to know the facts, there was no disputing that. Joubert seemed not to agree. Despite her desire to return to England, Kelly had been somewhat reluctant about leaving Lasaiie having seen his psychological deterioration over the past seven or eight days. The tranquilizers seemed to be of little help to him, despite the fact that he had upped the dosage from 45mg to 75mg a day. He was in a perpetual daze, a condition doubtless helped by the effect of the drugs. Kelly had felt something akin to pity for him. She hoped he wasn’t becoming unbalanced again.
Nevertheless, she had decided to leave the Metapsychic Centre and had arrived home at around noon nearly two days ago.
Vernon’s call had come within one hour of her return.
It was as if somehow he had been watching her, waiting for the right moment before calling.
She had not been surprised by the call itself, only by the urgency in the Institute Director’s voice as he had asked her to return to work as soon as possible and to present him with a full report on what she had witnessed while working at the Metapsychic Centre.
Not until she had replaced the receiver did she begin to wonder how Vernon had known of her whereabouts.
She had certainly not mentioned her intentions when she left the Institute two weeks earlier.
Now, she sat impatiently, watching him as he leafed through her report. Kelly wondered if she should say something to him. Ask him how he knew where she had been? She bit her tongue for the time being.
There was probably a perfectly reasonable explanation, she told herself, although she wasn’t altogether convinced.
She administered a swift mental rebuke. She was allowing her imagination to run away with her. She was becoming paranoid.
Wasn’t she?
‘Presumably you’ve noted everything which took place at the Metapsychic Centre during your time there?’ Vernon asked, waving the report before him. ‘There’s
nothing you could have left out or forgotten?’
‘I wrote down everything which I felt was relevant to the investigation,’ she told him, a slight trace of anger in her voice. She was becoming annoyed at his patronising tone.
Vernon shifted the menthol sweet to the other side of his mouth and tapped the report with his index finger. He was gazing into empty air.
‘The area of the brain which controls the Astral body also controls emotions and desires,’ he said, abstractedly.
‘Yes,’ Kelly said. ‘But emotions and desires not present in the conscious mind. The Astral body appears to be the alter-ego and, from the material I collected on Grant and Joubert, it can become a tangible force.’
Vernon nodded.
‘It sounded like a form of bi-location at first,’ said Kelly. But I’ve never heard of a bi-locative presence becoming tangible before.’
‘There was an American named Paul Twitchell,’ Vernon explained. ‘In the early sixties he began to teach what he called the Eckankar doctrine. A number of his pupils claimed to have seen him, in solid Astral form, while he was actually miles away.’ Vernon sighed. ‘But, Twitchell was one on his own. This …’ he picked up the report. ‘This is more unusual.’ He paused once again.
‘It would explain many of the problems we have concerning the inner self, even some mental disorders.’ He chewed his bottom lip contemplatively. ‘Are you absolutely sure you’ve left nothing out?’
‘I’m positive,’ Kelly said in exasperation.
‘Kelly, you don’t need me to tell you how important this information is to our work, to …’
She cut him short, infuriated by his treatment of her.
‘I’m not a fool, Doctor Vernon,’ she said. ‘Everything that I saw is noted down in my report, some of the conversations are verbatim.’
He nodded, placatingly, as if trying to calm her down.
‘But there is one thing I’d like to know,’ she told him.
Vernon eyed her warily.
‘How did you know I was at the Metapsychic Centre?’
‘I was in contact with them,’ Vernon said. ‘One of the investigators told me.’
Kelly wasn’t altogether satisfied but she didn’t press the matter. A heavy silence descended, finally broken by the woman.
‘Have you seen anything of John Fraser since he left here?’ she asked.
Vernon shrugged.
‘He came back about a week ago to collect some things.’ His tone abruptly changed, his eyes narrowing. ‘Why do you ask?’
She detected the defensive note in his voice.
‘I was just curious,’ Kelly told him.
‘Fraser has no more business here,’ Vernon said, acidly.
Another long silence punctuated the conversation, the only sound being made by the Institute Director as he crunched up his cough sweet. Kelly eyed him suspiciously. Vernon was usually a calm, unflappable man but, in the last twenty minutes or so, he had revealed another side of his character — one which she had not seen before. His calmness had been replaced by a tetchy impatience, the unflappability giving away to an anxious and defensive demeanour. When he finally spoke again, however, some of the urgency had left his voice.
‘Could what happened to Joubert be duplicated outside laboratory conditions?’
he asked. ‘I mean the Astral projection which he underwent.’
i don’t see why not,’ Kelly told him. ‘He was hypnotised, it was as simple as that. It should be perfectly possible to recreate the condition in another subject.’
Vernon nodded slowly, his grey eyes fixed on a point to one side of Kelly. She did not move. He didn’t speak. Finally, she rose. ‘If that’s all, Doctor …” She allowed the sentence to trail off.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing else.’
‘Could I have my report please?’
Vernon put his hand on the file.
Til keep it for now,’ he said, his eyes fixing her in an uncompromising stare.
She hesitated a moment then nodded, turned and headed for the office door.
