There's a lesson in this for me: plan your work. I started with a vague concept, and it ended being both different and weaker. The plot lost momentum, characters started to act in ways I didn't intend at first, and this caused problems. With some planning, there's something here. Without it, it's an unstructured mess.
Presented for your enjoyment, the final part of In the House of Reason. I hope you enjoy.
In the House of Reason
Part Four
When Father Nichol first came to the village, young Goodall said, my pen scratching notes rapidly, he was an outcast and an outsider. He came from another parish not too far away, and whispers had been heard that he was not an earthly man. Some suggestion of scandal had followed, too, but rumour had ever had a habit of running away with itself, until the story and the reality were entirely divorced from each other. Rumour also had a habit of following outsiders even when it was not deserved. As a Catholic coming into an establishment village, Father Nichol was always a potential social pariah.
Mr Goodall, for all his faults, was an inclusive man with a wide range of eclectic interests, and he welcomed the Catholic priest into the village, even holding an afternoon tea party in welcome. It was not too much of an expense, Mr Goodall had said. Hospitality goes a long way. Once Mr Goodall had welcomed Father Nichol into the community, he seemed to gain a little acceptance. People would tip their hat in the street, or pass the time of day with the man, but this did nothing to reduce the impression people got that Father Nichol was distinctly odd. More than once Father Nichol denounced people in the street for what he perceived to be ungodly acts, whether he had borne witness to them or not. Some began to avoid him.
The housekeeper, Mrs Jones, did little to help matters. When she went to the shop she would spend her time gossiping about her work in low voices, passing scandal from home to market. At first, she would often find Father Nichol slumped in his chair, asleep, when she arrived to complete her tasks on a morning, letting herself in with a key left for her. She suspected drink and wasted no time in telling others of her suspicions while denouncing the evils of whiskey, brandy and all other drink she could think of, normally over a gin in the village pub. When she could not discern the ready smell of alcohol after a while, she paid more attention to his surroundings.
Mrs Jones left the house spotless. She was proud of her work and would tell anyone who listened, presumably in an attempt to find more gainful and stimulating employment than cleaning up after a man many believed to be out of the ordinary. Even the bookshelves, decrepit and tattered as they were, were organised and tidy, but she began to notice the regularity with which she had to reorganise and tidy the books. It was as though Father Nichol went through them in a frenzy when she was not there, pulling books out and only replacing them roughly to try to hide what he had been doing. Quite why he would do this, Mrs Jones did not know, but she started to pay more attention to the books being pulled from the shelves. When Father Nichol wasn’t looking she would check titles and contents, but not understanding the finer points of theology would quickly replace the books in confusion. This changed when she found Father Nichol asleep one morning just before the fallout with old Mr Goodall.
It was Father Nichol’s custom to sleep in his chair rather than in his bed. Normally, he would simply be asleep there, but when Mrs Jones came in that morning she found he had fallen asleep reading. A book lay splayed on the floor beside the chair in which the priest slept, a page still marked. What she saw made her heart leap to her throat, for it was discussing demons, exorcisms and the dark rites of the Catholic Church. That morning, she did not wake Father Nichol as she normally did, but tidied quietly around him and let herself back out without him stirring. She quickly made a beeline for the village pub where, over a large gin, she regaled the regulars of the story. Whispers of the occult quickly started to go around the village and people who ordinarily would cross the road when seeing Father Nichol instead began to turn around and walk the other way to avoid him. The taint of the supernatural was too much for the ordinary people.
“We are establishment people,” young Goodall explained as I took the notes. “Many had sympathy for Father Nichol and his treatment until this rumour went around. Mrs Jones may be a gossip, but she is an honest gossip and few had ever had any reason to doubt her.”
“How do you know this story?” I asked, my pen flying over the page. I knew I had asked the question before, but now Goodall was in his flow I felt there was more chance of him disclosing the source of his knowledge.
“My father and sister’s letters,” Goodall said.
“Did they approve of Father Nichol?” I asked.
Goodall stroked his moustache with two fingers. “I would not say approve,” he said. “To understand my father’s reaction you need to know what he was doing and how people saw him. It is perhaps why Father Nichol and my father became friends.”
Old Mr Goodall, he told me, was a man of eclectic interests. One of the big jobs that had to be done after his death was removing the articles of his various interests. There was a model Da Vinci flying machine created when Mr Goodall had gone through a period of manic invention. A butterfly collection had been left unfinished and gathering dust. Notebooks half-filled containing indecipherable handwriting were burned. Canvases covered in amateurish sketches were removed. A camera and its plates were briefly examined before being discarded. Mr Goodall spent little time on any of his pursuits and interests, with him finding that they were unable to sustain him for any great period of time.
Only his children maintained his interest. Young William Goodall had to take a moment as he spoke to me, and the impression of an angry man melted away. It is a mistake many make, to confuse anger and care; what Goodall seemed to have was care: for his father’s memory, for his sister, for his childhood home. My pen stalled as I watched him struggle for words for a few seconds. I softened my face into an expression of pity and sympathy.
“What you have to understand,” Goodall said eventually, “is that my sister is delicate.”
“I had heard something.”
Anger flared for the briefest of moments again in Goodall’s features. “Whatever that man has told you, you may forget. His idea of delicate is not what a man of reason would think, and for the most part whatever we have been in this house, it has normally been a house of reason, and thought, and logic. If my father drifted into superstition it was only out of love.”
“Is this why you are so keen to protect your sister?”
Goodall nodded. “Yes. It is… an open secret in the village. They know that for all she can be normal, there is something wrong with her and it is necessary to keep her safe and protected. Rumour would ruin her.”
“Ruin? Do you mean…?” I left the question hanging. I was not nervous about broaching the subject; I was simply sensitive to how Goodall may react if it was put into words.
“Nothing like that,” he said. “Not until Father Nichol came, anyway.”
“He was indiscreet?”
“In his way. I suppose it comes down to my father, but what my father did was from love.”
The family was establishment and orthodox, almost strictly so. The reason old Mr Goodall never went to St Luke’s was because he was a Church of England man, attending every Sunday without fail. Vicars came and went, but he was a stalwart of the Church. It amazed young Goodall that Father Nichol could think that his father was a Catholic and that somehow his wishes had been circumvented when he got a plot in the churchyard and a Church of England funeral. This was just another example of Father Nichol’s failure in the realms of reality.
The only place where Mr Goodall was not orthodox was when it came to his daughter. Young Mr Goodall had grown up happy and balanced, even after the death of his mother. As a young man he went to Cambridge, then went into practice as a London solicitor. He married, started a family, and settled down as a scion of the Goodall family, successful and well-off, having no real need of his father’s support as he went through life but always grateful of his presence. Olivia, on the other hand, had no such fortune. As a child she had fallen ill and become pale and sickly throughout her youth. Illness seemed to haunt her in both body and mind. As she matured she seemed to become imbalanced, being sweet much of the time but occasionally ill-tempered and violent. There was an illness present that stopped her from being a normal young lady.
This was a cause of great pain to Mr Goodall. For all the pride he took in her, he lived in constant fear of not being able to protect her. He feared that she would be known as mad. For that reason, he limited the amount she could leave the house. He swore the servants to secrecy, for all the good it would do, knowing how they did like to gossip. He knew that the secret of Olivia’s rages was dependant upon keeping the staff’s loyalty, and he knew that before long the story of her mad spells would be out in the village. So he took it upon himself to find a cure and find a solution.
“Did he ever consult a doctor?” I asked, breaking in. “In London I hear there are marvellous men who can put a mind at ease.”
“He did, but the local quacks could do very little, and he was loath to send my sister away from him,” Goodall said. His shoulders were slumped and he no longer looked like he had any anger. “I offered her a place to stay, but my father feared the rumours of a young woman being sent away to London. It’s a fine place for a man, but for a woman… People in places like this think London is the home to all kinds of immorality.”
“So what did your father do, when medicine could not help him?”
Goodall fixed me again with his eye. “I do not say this lightly, Doctor Kincaid, but in a house where reason has always been king the step my father took was remarkable. It led to a fall-out with the Church of England and I have no doubt that it led to my father’s closeness with Father Nichol. My father turned to spiritualism.”
There was no obvious reason for the distemper in Olivia’s spirit. She did blame herself for her mother’s death and she had melancholy fits alongside her rages. But when medicine seemingly failed old Mr Goodall began to read widely, looking at spirits and ghosts. He became convinced that Olivia harboured the ghost of his deceased wife, that the spirit of the dead woman had passed into her daughter at birth, and that the cause of his daughter’s unhappiness was two warring souls. He was encouraged in his belief by Father Nichol, who told old Mr Goodall about the worlds of spirits and demons. Gradually, Mr Goodall’s belief in the rational world eroded. His letters to his son became more erratic, speaking more of worlds beyond the physical plane than of events taking place in reality. What started as an interest became an obsession.
Young Goodall wrote regularly, imploring his father to see sense. Olivia’s problems were in her mind, not in her soul. She needed help and she needed to go to London. The room in his house was still ready for her, and rumours be damned. She needed to be away from Halfhill House and the malign influence of Father Nichol. Her letters spoke of how the priest would take her away and counsel her in quiet rooms, how she felt she could not escape. Her father did not know; neither, thankfully, did the servants. Their wagging tongues, had they known, would have ruined Olivia and the Goodall name, all because of the actions of one deluded priest.
It was the stresses of looking after her father, of keeping secrets, and fear of the priest that caused Olivia’s rages to become more common. Her letters to her brother intimated as much. As their regularity increased, the harder it became to keep things secret. The harder it became to keep servants happy; once Olivia had thrown a full tea tray across a room at a serving girl the village open secret began to be discussed. Even as a robust man, old Mr Goodall finally felt the effects of his daughter’s illness. Pleas from Goodall to his father to let him help still fell on deaf ears, but letters from Halfhill House became more reasoned. As those letters became more reasoned, Olivia’s letters became more concerned; it was clear that old Mr Goodall was feeling the stresses of his mistakes.
“He was shouting for my mother at night.” Goodall’s face had fallen. “He muttered and shouted and screamed. At times my sister thought he was back in the Crimea in his mind. Back in the war, and in the hospital. I started to make my arrangements to pause my business in London and come back here to help.”
“You did not arrange to bring your own family.” I made it a statement, but Goodall understood the question I was implying.
“I did not want my family to see my father like he was. I did not want to put my children in harm’s way. My sister, I could manage in my own house. My wife is a capable woman, and has been a good friend to Olivia, and she would ensure that my children came to no harm. Besides, in a less stressful place Olivia would find the chance to be herself, away from anyone who would cause her any suffering.”
It could hardly be said that at last the full picture was forming in my mind; I had been working on the investigation for less than a day and I still had one key witness to speak to, but I had an idea of how things had played out over the summer. I felt disgust for Father Nichol and resolved to find somewhere else to stay overnight, if I needed to. All would depend on the final witness, even though I still had to finish this statement. I glanced at my notes for a final time, pitying the secretary who would ensure they were legible.
I saw no need to make further inquiries into the cause of Mr Goodall’s death once I had a death certificate; all that remained was to establish the veracity of Father Nichol’s account so I could dismiss his concerns.
“Can you tell me what happened the night your father died?” I asked.
He had been ill for some time. The situation with Olivia and the fall-out with Father Nichol over his move away from spiritual beliefs had taken its toll, and at long last his mind and body had given out. The last days were spent in bed, slowly drifting. Young Goodall had travelled down from London, alone, to be with his father when he died. That Father Nichol was told of events was no doubt down to one of the servants, who still had a soft spot for the priest. When young Goodall found out of his admittance, he flew into a rage of his own.
“I am not proud of it. I do not claim to be a calm man, but Nichol brings out the worst of me. I came from here to where my father rested, to find Nichol with an arm around my sister, her trying to pull away, and it took all the strength I could muster to not raise a fist to him.”
I nodded, understanding. The more I learned of the priest, the more vile he became. “Nobody could blame you for defending your sister.”
“I said some things in anger. He is not welcome here, Doctor Kincaid,” he added. “He is not welcome here. This is not a place for him. If I did not trust the house staff I would not even have allowed him to remain here while I spoke with you. I still hope that he has left before you go, so I do not have to see him.”
“I will be as brief as I can.” What had promised to be a difficult interview had become much more amenable. “I do not think I have anything further for you, other than to ask whether you are satisfied with the death certificate finding your father died of a fever brought on by his advanced years?”
“Quite satisfied.”
I stowed my notes away and leaned across the desk to shake young Goodall’s hand. It was a much warmer handshake than I would have expected just an hour ago. “I do need to speak with your sister before I leave, but I will be as brief as I can be.”
Goodall’s hand stiffened for a moment, and then relaxed in my grasp. He gave me a weak smile. “I will see what can be done now. I have not seen Olivia this morning, and I hope you understand that if she cannot be interviewed on this day I have no wish to press this additional stress on her. She has been quite improved while we have made our preparations to move to London, and revisiting this pain may send her out of temper.”
“I will not cause her any great stress,” I said, letting go of Goodall’s hand. “You have my word.”
“In that case…” Goodall stood, and motioned for me to leave the study. “I shall ask the house staff to find her. Sometimes she may be found in the gardens on a lunchtime. She finds solace in them.”
“The gardens?” I asked. I found myself stiffening, and saw that Goodall had had the same realisation.
“Where is Father Nichol?” Goodall asked. The silence hung between us for a moment, and then we both rushed for the door.
* * *
The priest was nowhere to be found near the waiting cab. Goodall grasped me in panic, and I could see the concern writ large across his features. He suddenly looked like a wild man, far from the rational man who had been so composed in his interview with me. Whatever he was, he was a man of passion and cares, his sister among them.
“Where is he?”
“I do not know,” I said. I too was looking around, Goodall’s panic infecting me. “Shout. Call your sister. Perhaps he has simply begun the walk back to his vicarage.”
“I hope you’re right.” Goodall rushed away, lurching around the side of the house before re-emerging to run to the other end of the building.
The silence was broken by a scream.
“Olivia.” Goodall had gone white. He had aged ten years, lines deepening on his face with worry. After a moment where he lost all composure and certainty, he took off in the direction of the scream, running as fast as he could. I had at least fifteen years on the young man, and I struggled to keep up through a rose garden and kitchen garden, before they gave way to lawns and woods.
Father Nichol stood over Olivia just inside a small copse of trees, his arms wide, his cassock flapping so he looked like a dread bird. She was unconscious; a trickle of blood at her pale temple very red against her skin. Only the rise and fall of her breast gave a hint that she was alive. I looked around wildly for the instrument used to strike her as Goodall lurched off his feet to tackle the priest around the waist.
"What are you doing?” Goodall raised a fist and sank it down into Father Nichol’s face. Knuckles connected with the priest’s face with a sharp crack. “What are you doing?”
I knelt down and put two fingers to Olivia’s throat, checking for a pulse. Two beats later, I lifted my hand from her neck and stood up to see Goodall dragging Father Nichol from the ground. A cut was blossoming across the priest’s face, and he wore a curious expression, halfway between fear and rapture.
“She must be cleansed!”
Goodall raised his hand again; he was a stronger man than he looked, dragging Father Nichol in one hand while threatening him with the other. “She doesn’t need cleansing or exorcising. She needs help!”
“This is help. Her soul is tainted with the damned. Her father had it and now she is afflicted.”
Before I could stop him, Goodall had punched Father Nichol again, this time in the nose. Blood burst out. The priest’s eyes crossed and as his head rolled back became unfocussed. “She doesn’t need you and your evil superstitions!”
“Goodall, your sister!” I knelt back down as Olivia moved her head. Goodall released the priest, who dropped to his knees before slumping backwards, half-conscious. “She’s coming round.”
“What happened?” I could see that Goodall was resisting the urge to shake her awake, as though she was coming round from a long sleep. “Olivia, what happened?”
“Give her space.”
“She needs to have her soul cleansed so she is not corrupted. She needs to be with me!” Father Nichol slurred his words; I found myself impressed by Goodall’s strength. As Goodall knelt by his sister, I stood to make way. A few feet away, Father Nichol tried to stand and I moved quickly to push him back onto his backside.
“You have some explaining to do, Father.”
“She is afflicted by demons.”
“The only demon she has to deal with is you.”
Three servants had come to see what the disturbance was all about, and it was with their help that we managed to take Olivia back to the house. She was groggy, but no more so than Father Nichol, who was frogmarched between myself and another servant. Whatever respectability he had was dissolved. There was a madness behind the chaos. I could see now the danger that he posed; I could see how his twisted view had turned his mind until he believed in the unbelievable, and could influence people with his own certainty.
“Get the constabulary,” Goodall ordered as we crossed the threshold. “I want this man arrested before he can leave. Lock the doors.”
I nodded my agreement as the servants laid Olivia on a couch. She was coming around, gradually, but she was gazing round in panic. I moved others away from her to give her space to recover and come to terms with the shock she had suffered. When I spoke, it was with a soft voice.
“I am Doctor Kincaid, and I am here to help.”
“You can help my head?” She spoke with a whisper.
“Yes.” I looked at the cut on her temple. It was not too serious, having grazed without any real depth. What couldn’t be doubted was that whatever Father Nichol had used, he had hit her hard. She would feel the aftereffects for several days. “I’m a qualified doctor. I’m also a coroner. I came to help.”
“What was the meaning of that, Nichol?” Behind me, Goodall had got to grips with Father Nichol again.
“She must be exorcised. The devil lives within her.” His speech was still slurred. I eased myself between the two men again. The priest flopped bonelessly onto a spare seat, his legs giving way.
“Goodall, he’s not well,” I said. I had no intention of excusing the priest’s actions, but if Goodall was a man of reason he would see that what he said about his sister could also be true of his adversary.
“He’s not fit to be a man of the Church.”
“I do not disagree.” I took Goodall aside. “I will write my report. It is essential that we understand him and I will ask for him to be detained in an asylum for observation. Your sister…” I hesitated. “Your sister should go with you.”
* * *
There is little else to report.
Father Nichol found himself defrocked. Previous scandal had seen him moved from parish to parish and eventually even the Catholic Church found him too much trouble. His obsession with the darker elements of his own personal faith alienated too many from him, and when he needed allies he had none. He faced secular justice for his assault on Olivia Goodall, and last I heard he was spending his time in gaol.
Olivia Goodall is living in London with her brother. He stayed in touch and from what he tells me, they are happy. She is no longer subject to her rages, having seen a doctor able to reconcile her with her unwarranted guilt.
As for myself, I continue as a coroner. This was an unusual case, but I trust I will have many more in the days to come.
Mr Goodall, for all his faults, was an inclusive man with a wide range of eclectic interests, and he welcomed the Catholic priest into the village, even holding an afternoon tea party in welcome. It was not too much of an expense, Mr Goodall had said. Hospitality goes a long way. Once Mr Goodall had welcomed Father Nichol into the community, he seemed to gain a little acceptance. People would tip their hat in the street, or pass the time of day with the man, but this did nothing to reduce the impression people got that Father Nichol was distinctly odd. More than once Father Nichol denounced people in the street for what he perceived to be ungodly acts, whether he had borne witness to them or not. Some began to avoid him.
The housekeeper, Mrs Jones, did little to help matters. When she went to the shop she would spend her time gossiping about her work in low voices, passing scandal from home to market. At first, she would often find Father Nichol slumped in his chair, asleep, when she arrived to complete her tasks on a morning, letting herself in with a key left for her. She suspected drink and wasted no time in telling others of her suspicions while denouncing the evils of whiskey, brandy and all other drink she could think of, normally over a gin in the village pub. When she could not discern the ready smell of alcohol after a while, she paid more attention to his surroundings.
Mrs Jones left the house spotless. She was proud of her work and would tell anyone who listened, presumably in an attempt to find more gainful and stimulating employment than cleaning up after a man many believed to be out of the ordinary. Even the bookshelves, decrepit and tattered as they were, were organised and tidy, but she began to notice the regularity with which she had to reorganise and tidy the books. It was as though Father Nichol went through them in a frenzy when she was not there, pulling books out and only replacing them roughly to try to hide what he had been doing. Quite why he would do this, Mrs Jones did not know, but she started to pay more attention to the books being pulled from the shelves. When Father Nichol wasn’t looking she would check titles and contents, but not understanding the finer points of theology would quickly replace the books in confusion. This changed when she found Father Nichol asleep one morning just before the fallout with old Mr Goodall.
It was Father Nichol’s custom to sleep in his chair rather than in his bed. Normally, he would simply be asleep there, but when Mrs Jones came in that morning she found he had fallen asleep reading. A book lay splayed on the floor beside the chair in which the priest slept, a page still marked. What she saw made her heart leap to her throat, for it was discussing demons, exorcisms and the dark rites of the Catholic Church. That morning, she did not wake Father Nichol as she normally did, but tidied quietly around him and let herself back out without him stirring. She quickly made a beeline for the village pub where, over a large gin, she regaled the regulars of the story. Whispers of the occult quickly started to go around the village and people who ordinarily would cross the road when seeing Father Nichol instead began to turn around and walk the other way to avoid him. The taint of the supernatural was too much for the ordinary people.
“We are establishment people,” young Goodall explained as I took the notes. “Many had sympathy for Father Nichol and his treatment until this rumour went around. Mrs Jones may be a gossip, but she is an honest gossip and few had ever had any reason to doubt her.”
“How do you know this story?” I asked, my pen flying over the page. I knew I had asked the question before, but now Goodall was in his flow I felt there was more chance of him disclosing the source of his knowledge.
“My father and sister’s letters,” Goodall said.
“Did they approve of Father Nichol?” I asked.
Goodall stroked his moustache with two fingers. “I would not say approve,” he said. “To understand my father’s reaction you need to know what he was doing and how people saw him. It is perhaps why Father Nichol and my father became friends.”
Old Mr Goodall, he told me, was a man of eclectic interests. One of the big jobs that had to be done after his death was removing the articles of his various interests. There was a model Da Vinci flying machine created when Mr Goodall had gone through a period of manic invention. A butterfly collection had been left unfinished and gathering dust. Notebooks half-filled containing indecipherable handwriting were burned. Canvases covered in amateurish sketches were removed. A camera and its plates were briefly examined before being discarded. Mr Goodall spent little time on any of his pursuits and interests, with him finding that they were unable to sustain him for any great period of time.
Only his children maintained his interest. Young William Goodall had to take a moment as he spoke to me, and the impression of an angry man melted away. It is a mistake many make, to confuse anger and care; what Goodall seemed to have was care: for his father’s memory, for his sister, for his childhood home. My pen stalled as I watched him struggle for words for a few seconds. I softened my face into an expression of pity and sympathy.
“What you have to understand,” Goodall said eventually, “is that my sister is delicate.”
“I had heard something.”
Anger flared for the briefest of moments again in Goodall’s features. “Whatever that man has told you, you may forget. His idea of delicate is not what a man of reason would think, and for the most part whatever we have been in this house, it has normally been a house of reason, and thought, and logic. If my father drifted into superstition it was only out of love.”
“Is this why you are so keen to protect your sister?”
Goodall nodded. “Yes. It is… an open secret in the village. They know that for all she can be normal, there is something wrong with her and it is necessary to keep her safe and protected. Rumour would ruin her.”
“Ruin? Do you mean…?” I left the question hanging. I was not nervous about broaching the subject; I was simply sensitive to how Goodall may react if it was put into words.
“Nothing like that,” he said. “Not until Father Nichol came, anyway.”
“He was indiscreet?”
“In his way. I suppose it comes down to my father, but what my father did was from love.”
The family was establishment and orthodox, almost strictly so. The reason old Mr Goodall never went to St Luke’s was because he was a Church of England man, attending every Sunday without fail. Vicars came and went, but he was a stalwart of the Church. It amazed young Goodall that Father Nichol could think that his father was a Catholic and that somehow his wishes had been circumvented when he got a plot in the churchyard and a Church of England funeral. This was just another example of Father Nichol’s failure in the realms of reality.
The only place where Mr Goodall was not orthodox was when it came to his daughter. Young Mr Goodall had grown up happy and balanced, even after the death of his mother. As a young man he went to Cambridge, then went into practice as a London solicitor. He married, started a family, and settled down as a scion of the Goodall family, successful and well-off, having no real need of his father’s support as he went through life but always grateful of his presence. Olivia, on the other hand, had no such fortune. As a child she had fallen ill and become pale and sickly throughout her youth. Illness seemed to haunt her in both body and mind. As she matured she seemed to become imbalanced, being sweet much of the time but occasionally ill-tempered and violent. There was an illness present that stopped her from being a normal young lady.
This was a cause of great pain to Mr Goodall. For all the pride he took in her, he lived in constant fear of not being able to protect her. He feared that she would be known as mad. For that reason, he limited the amount she could leave the house. He swore the servants to secrecy, for all the good it would do, knowing how they did like to gossip. He knew that the secret of Olivia’s rages was dependant upon keeping the staff’s loyalty, and he knew that before long the story of her mad spells would be out in the village. So he took it upon himself to find a cure and find a solution.
“Did he ever consult a doctor?” I asked, breaking in. “In London I hear there are marvellous men who can put a mind at ease.”
“He did, but the local quacks could do very little, and he was loath to send my sister away from him,” Goodall said. His shoulders were slumped and he no longer looked like he had any anger. “I offered her a place to stay, but my father feared the rumours of a young woman being sent away to London. It’s a fine place for a man, but for a woman… People in places like this think London is the home to all kinds of immorality.”
“So what did your father do, when medicine could not help him?”
Goodall fixed me again with his eye. “I do not say this lightly, Doctor Kincaid, but in a house where reason has always been king the step my father took was remarkable. It led to a fall-out with the Church of England and I have no doubt that it led to my father’s closeness with Father Nichol. My father turned to spiritualism.”
There was no obvious reason for the distemper in Olivia’s spirit. She did blame herself for her mother’s death and she had melancholy fits alongside her rages. But when medicine seemingly failed old Mr Goodall began to read widely, looking at spirits and ghosts. He became convinced that Olivia harboured the ghost of his deceased wife, that the spirit of the dead woman had passed into her daughter at birth, and that the cause of his daughter’s unhappiness was two warring souls. He was encouraged in his belief by Father Nichol, who told old Mr Goodall about the worlds of spirits and demons. Gradually, Mr Goodall’s belief in the rational world eroded. His letters to his son became more erratic, speaking more of worlds beyond the physical plane than of events taking place in reality. What started as an interest became an obsession.
Young Goodall wrote regularly, imploring his father to see sense. Olivia’s problems were in her mind, not in her soul. She needed help and she needed to go to London. The room in his house was still ready for her, and rumours be damned. She needed to be away from Halfhill House and the malign influence of Father Nichol. Her letters spoke of how the priest would take her away and counsel her in quiet rooms, how she felt she could not escape. Her father did not know; neither, thankfully, did the servants. Their wagging tongues, had they known, would have ruined Olivia and the Goodall name, all because of the actions of one deluded priest.
It was the stresses of looking after her father, of keeping secrets, and fear of the priest that caused Olivia’s rages to become more common. Her letters to her brother intimated as much. As their regularity increased, the harder it became to keep things secret. The harder it became to keep servants happy; once Olivia had thrown a full tea tray across a room at a serving girl the village open secret began to be discussed. Even as a robust man, old Mr Goodall finally felt the effects of his daughter’s illness. Pleas from Goodall to his father to let him help still fell on deaf ears, but letters from Halfhill House became more reasoned. As those letters became more reasoned, Olivia’s letters became more concerned; it was clear that old Mr Goodall was feeling the stresses of his mistakes.
“He was shouting for my mother at night.” Goodall’s face had fallen. “He muttered and shouted and screamed. At times my sister thought he was back in the Crimea in his mind. Back in the war, and in the hospital. I started to make my arrangements to pause my business in London and come back here to help.”
“You did not arrange to bring your own family.” I made it a statement, but Goodall understood the question I was implying.
“I did not want my family to see my father like he was. I did not want to put my children in harm’s way. My sister, I could manage in my own house. My wife is a capable woman, and has been a good friend to Olivia, and she would ensure that my children came to no harm. Besides, in a less stressful place Olivia would find the chance to be herself, away from anyone who would cause her any suffering.”
It could hardly be said that at last the full picture was forming in my mind; I had been working on the investigation for less than a day and I still had one key witness to speak to, but I had an idea of how things had played out over the summer. I felt disgust for Father Nichol and resolved to find somewhere else to stay overnight, if I needed to. All would depend on the final witness, even though I still had to finish this statement. I glanced at my notes for a final time, pitying the secretary who would ensure they were legible.
I saw no need to make further inquiries into the cause of Mr Goodall’s death once I had a death certificate; all that remained was to establish the veracity of Father Nichol’s account so I could dismiss his concerns.
“Can you tell me what happened the night your father died?” I asked.
He had been ill for some time. The situation with Olivia and the fall-out with Father Nichol over his move away from spiritual beliefs had taken its toll, and at long last his mind and body had given out. The last days were spent in bed, slowly drifting. Young Goodall had travelled down from London, alone, to be with his father when he died. That Father Nichol was told of events was no doubt down to one of the servants, who still had a soft spot for the priest. When young Goodall found out of his admittance, he flew into a rage of his own.
“I am not proud of it. I do not claim to be a calm man, but Nichol brings out the worst of me. I came from here to where my father rested, to find Nichol with an arm around my sister, her trying to pull away, and it took all the strength I could muster to not raise a fist to him.”
I nodded, understanding. The more I learned of the priest, the more vile he became. “Nobody could blame you for defending your sister.”
“I said some things in anger. He is not welcome here, Doctor Kincaid,” he added. “He is not welcome here. This is not a place for him. If I did not trust the house staff I would not even have allowed him to remain here while I spoke with you. I still hope that he has left before you go, so I do not have to see him.”
“I will be as brief as I can.” What had promised to be a difficult interview had become much more amenable. “I do not think I have anything further for you, other than to ask whether you are satisfied with the death certificate finding your father died of a fever brought on by his advanced years?”
“Quite satisfied.”
I stowed my notes away and leaned across the desk to shake young Goodall’s hand. It was a much warmer handshake than I would have expected just an hour ago. “I do need to speak with your sister before I leave, but I will be as brief as I can be.”
Goodall’s hand stiffened for a moment, and then relaxed in my grasp. He gave me a weak smile. “I will see what can be done now. I have not seen Olivia this morning, and I hope you understand that if she cannot be interviewed on this day I have no wish to press this additional stress on her. She has been quite improved while we have made our preparations to move to London, and revisiting this pain may send her out of temper.”
“I will not cause her any great stress,” I said, letting go of Goodall’s hand. “You have my word.”
“In that case…” Goodall stood, and motioned for me to leave the study. “I shall ask the house staff to find her. Sometimes she may be found in the gardens on a lunchtime. She finds solace in them.”
“The gardens?” I asked. I found myself stiffening, and saw that Goodall had had the same realisation.
“Where is Father Nichol?” Goodall asked. The silence hung between us for a moment, and then we both rushed for the door.
* * *
The priest was nowhere to be found near the waiting cab. Goodall grasped me in panic, and I could see the concern writ large across his features. He suddenly looked like a wild man, far from the rational man who had been so composed in his interview with me. Whatever he was, he was a man of passion and cares, his sister among them.
“Where is he?”
“I do not know,” I said. I too was looking around, Goodall’s panic infecting me. “Shout. Call your sister. Perhaps he has simply begun the walk back to his vicarage.”
“I hope you’re right.” Goodall rushed away, lurching around the side of the house before re-emerging to run to the other end of the building.
The silence was broken by a scream.
“Olivia.” Goodall had gone white. He had aged ten years, lines deepening on his face with worry. After a moment where he lost all composure and certainty, he took off in the direction of the scream, running as fast as he could. I had at least fifteen years on the young man, and I struggled to keep up through a rose garden and kitchen garden, before they gave way to lawns and woods.
Father Nichol stood over Olivia just inside a small copse of trees, his arms wide, his cassock flapping so he looked like a dread bird. She was unconscious; a trickle of blood at her pale temple very red against her skin. Only the rise and fall of her breast gave a hint that she was alive. I looked around wildly for the instrument used to strike her as Goodall lurched off his feet to tackle the priest around the waist.
"What are you doing?” Goodall raised a fist and sank it down into Father Nichol’s face. Knuckles connected with the priest’s face with a sharp crack. “What are you doing?”
I knelt down and put two fingers to Olivia’s throat, checking for a pulse. Two beats later, I lifted my hand from her neck and stood up to see Goodall dragging Father Nichol from the ground. A cut was blossoming across the priest’s face, and he wore a curious expression, halfway between fear and rapture.
“She must be cleansed!”
Goodall raised his hand again; he was a stronger man than he looked, dragging Father Nichol in one hand while threatening him with the other. “She doesn’t need cleansing or exorcising. She needs help!”
“This is help. Her soul is tainted with the damned. Her father had it and now she is afflicted.”
Before I could stop him, Goodall had punched Father Nichol again, this time in the nose. Blood burst out. The priest’s eyes crossed and as his head rolled back became unfocussed. “She doesn’t need you and your evil superstitions!”
“Goodall, your sister!” I knelt back down as Olivia moved her head. Goodall released the priest, who dropped to his knees before slumping backwards, half-conscious. “She’s coming round.”
“What happened?” I could see that Goodall was resisting the urge to shake her awake, as though she was coming round from a long sleep. “Olivia, what happened?”
“Give her space.”
“She needs to have her soul cleansed so she is not corrupted. She needs to be with me!” Father Nichol slurred his words; I found myself impressed by Goodall’s strength. As Goodall knelt by his sister, I stood to make way. A few feet away, Father Nichol tried to stand and I moved quickly to push him back onto his backside.
“You have some explaining to do, Father.”
“She is afflicted by demons.”
“The only demon she has to deal with is you.”
Three servants had come to see what the disturbance was all about, and it was with their help that we managed to take Olivia back to the house. She was groggy, but no more so than Father Nichol, who was frogmarched between myself and another servant. Whatever respectability he had was dissolved. There was a madness behind the chaos. I could see now the danger that he posed; I could see how his twisted view had turned his mind until he believed in the unbelievable, and could influence people with his own certainty.
“Get the constabulary,” Goodall ordered as we crossed the threshold. “I want this man arrested before he can leave. Lock the doors.”
I nodded my agreement as the servants laid Olivia on a couch. She was coming around, gradually, but she was gazing round in panic. I moved others away from her to give her space to recover and come to terms with the shock she had suffered. When I spoke, it was with a soft voice.
“I am Doctor Kincaid, and I am here to help.”
“You can help my head?” She spoke with a whisper.
“Yes.” I looked at the cut on her temple. It was not too serious, having grazed without any real depth. What couldn’t be doubted was that whatever Father Nichol had used, he had hit her hard. She would feel the aftereffects for several days. “I’m a qualified doctor. I’m also a coroner. I came to help.”
“What was the meaning of that, Nichol?” Behind me, Goodall had got to grips with Father Nichol again.
“She must be exorcised. The devil lives within her.” His speech was still slurred. I eased myself between the two men again. The priest flopped bonelessly onto a spare seat, his legs giving way.
“Goodall, he’s not well,” I said. I had no intention of excusing the priest’s actions, but if Goodall was a man of reason he would see that what he said about his sister could also be true of his adversary.
“He’s not fit to be a man of the Church.”
“I do not disagree.” I took Goodall aside. “I will write my report. It is essential that we understand him and I will ask for him to be detained in an asylum for observation. Your sister…” I hesitated. “Your sister should go with you.”
* * *
There is little else to report.
Father Nichol found himself defrocked. Previous scandal had seen him moved from parish to parish and eventually even the Catholic Church found him too much trouble. His obsession with the darker elements of his own personal faith alienated too many from him, and when he needed allies he had none. He faced secular justice for his assault on Olivia Goodall, and last I heard he was spending his time in gaol.
Olivia Goodall is living in London with her brother. He stayed in touch and from what he tells me, they are happy. She is no longer subject to her rages, having seen a doctor able to reconcile her with her unwarranted guilt.
As for myself, I continue as a coroner. This was an unusual case, but I trust I will have many more in the days to come.
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