‘I’m sorry, I’m lost. What woman? The woman in the attic or the Café Royale?’
‘When we were leaving the restaurant, Thomas bumped into a gentleman – tall, grey whiskers, medals on his lapel – and that gentleman irritated Thomas by telling him that he was getting a reputation for… Well, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, the gentleman’s wife noticed my necklace and asked me if I’d just had a birthday because peridot is the birthstone for August.’
‘I’ll take your word for it – I have no understanding of such things. You said Dr Lancaster seemed agitated after speaking to this gentleman, the man with the medals. What did he say?’
‘That he’d heard bad things about Thomas, and Thomas was worried about how this would affect this other work he has, for a group of doctors – sponsored work. He tells me it is more profitable, but I don’t know much about it. This is what he blames for having to spend so much time away, but I don’t believe him. Oh, I am frightened, Dr Shivershev. I have married a dangerous man, one who may have done terrible things to the women who owned those clothes.’
‘It’s all right, Mrs Lancaster, I am listening. You are safe here. Please go on.’
I explained how I had come down the stairs and found the hairbrush and what that meant to me, but I kept getting events and explanations in the wrong order so they didn’t make sense. He frequently told me to slow down and to repeat myself. I was aware I was excitable, maybe a little hysterical, but I never got the sense he didn’t believe me. I felt I was doing the right thing by telling him absolutely everything.
‘She put the hairbrush there so I would pick it up, then she pushed me.’
‘You believe this… Mrs Wiggs, the housekeeper, tried to kill you?’
‘Yes! Who else could it be? But that’s not all, Dr Shivershev. There’s more, much, much more. I think the necklace he took from me that night belonged to one of the women whose clothes are in the attic.’
‘Why would your husband be stealing women’s clothes, Mrs Lancaster?’
‘I think he kills them.’
‘You think he murders women for their clothes?’
‘No! Well, not exactly, but yes, perhaps! Not for their clothes, but for something. He keeps their clothes for some reason. I… He goes missing sometimes. Often. He doesn’t come home for days at a time. When he does come home, he is bad-tempered and cruel… He is not…’
‘Not what?’
I just couldn’t bring myself to talk of Thomas’s urges in the bedroom. Dr Shivershev was taking everything down, and I didn’t want that part to be written down and made permanent with ink.
I changed the subject. ‘Have you heard anything of Mabel? It’s just I haven’t—’
Out of nowhere, he stood up and banged his hands down on the desk. I nearly leapt out of the chair. His eyes were wild as he stared down at me. I was so shocked, my cheeks tingled.
‘No, Mrs Lancaster. We had an agreement – you are not to mention that again.’
I shrank like a child. ‘I’m sorry.’ I sat with my hands bunched together and felt small and drained. I was stiff and sore from falling down the stairs and had lost my train of thought.
Dr Shivershev composed himself in seconds and was calm again, as if the eruption had never happened. He picked up his pen and calmly continued.
‘You believe your husband harbours violent impulses towards women?’
‘Yes, that’s correct.’ I nodded. ‘He has a vicious streak. I think him quite capable of terrible things.’
‘And this, er, hairbrush you talk about, can I ask its significance? It is an object of… importance to you?’
‘It belonged to a friend. Mrs Wiggs stole it from me to hurt me, to make me think myself mad.’
‘Nurse Barnard?’
‘Yes.’ I wasn’t sure if I should have said that. I should have lied and said it was my mother’s.
He nodded, as if confirming something he had long suspected, and then he was furiously writing again. I tried to see what he wrote, but it was illegible.
His office had descended into a state of neglect again, with dust on the glass jars and books on the floor. Worried I had lost a little of my currency with my indiscretion over Mabel and then with talk of Aisling, I felt I ought to win his loyalty back. I needed to have at least one person planted firmly on my side.
‘There’s more, Dr Shivershev,’ I said.
‘Go on.’
‘When we argued in the coach, the subject of the argument was you.’
He stopped, put down his pen and looked up. ‘Oh? How so?’
‘My husband didn’t approve of my choice of physician. He’d picked one for me himself, but I disobeyed him and found you. He doesn’t appear to like you very much.’
‘What exactly did he say?’
I had him now; his eyes were fixed on me. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms, as if creating a barrier to the words he already knew I would unleash.
‘He disapproves of you because you are Jewish, and, he said, because you are known to seek out the company of women of… immoral earnings.’
To his credit, Dr Shivershev remained expressionless, but I knew this had rattled him, for how could it not?
‘Why do I get the feeling I’m being drawn into something, Mrs Lancaster?’
‘He tore the necklace from my throat and hit me – you would have seen the bruises on my face that day in the Ten Bells. You must have seen them, surely?’
He said nothing, of course. I was not meant to mention the Ten Bells.
‘He does other things too. He is unpredictable. I will tell you one last thing, but you must promise not to write it down.’
He
