“Were you successful?”
“Unfortunately, no. There is apparently nothing to spare. People or pounds. So we’ll just have to make do.” Stephens motioned to a path that wound around the grounds. “Shall we take a stroll?”
Stephens took a puff on his pipe as they walked and said, “Imogen came to the Institute one day.”
“So she specifically came here? Why?”
“She had heard of us, she said. There aren’t many institutions that do what we do, Mr. Oliver. And our reputation is broad enough to have reached London. Indeed, I think that’s how Molly’s mother ended up here. Anyway, your wife said that a friend had spoken to her about us.”
“I see.”
“Imogen was troubled. She had, I think, a case of severe depression and she also suffered from undue anxiety. I met with her in my office. I gave her some aspirin to take, along with some meditative breathing exercises, and told her to take a holiday if she could while she was here. The sea air, that sort of thing, take her mind off things. I mean, she certainly wasn’t a candidate for Dr. Foyle’s procedures or anything. Completely in charge of her mental faculties. She just seemed... lost.”
Oliver looked out to the Channel. “Do you usually see people who just walk in the door?”
“No — never, in fact. But your wife, well, she intrigued me. Remarkable for intelligence. But, if you don’t mind my saying so, she clearly had her demons.”
“And she jumped off a cliff somewhere around here, you mentioned?”
“Not somewhere,” said Stephens surprisingly. He pointed with his pipe to a spot on the coast where the land rose high. “There.”
Oliver looked where he was indicating and inwardly shuddered.
“We had several who saw her go up to that very spot. One person even tried to talk her down. But failed.”
“Is that person still here?” said Oliver quickly.
“Yes, it was Dr. Foyle, actually. In fact, I have asked him to meet with you tonight to discuss it.”
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t make the connection with the name until Dr. Stephens mentioned it,” said Foyle, as he and Oliver sat in the doctor’s office. It was in the evening after a sparse dinner, and both men looked tired and strained.
“That’s all right. But what can you tell me about that day?”
Foyle lit up a cigarette and offered one to Oliver, who declined.
“I actually never smoked until I got here.”
“I can understand that,” said Oliver.
Foyle picked a flake of tobacco off his tongue and sat forward, his long back bowed. “I had just finished a difficult surgery and was taking a walk, just to unwind a bit. I was heading up to the cliff — I like the view from there — when I saw her. There were several other people about, a nurse or two and a gardener. And a patient getting some air with her attendant. But I was the closest because she and I were heading to the same spot, apparently.”
“What drew your attention to her?”
“I didn’t recognize her, for one thing. And she was walking with such purpose. I’ve been dealing with mental issues for quite a while now. And I just read something in her body language that set off warning bells in my head. So I called out to her.”
“What did she do?”
“She didn’t stop, not at first. She walked right up to the edge of the cliff and then turned to look at me. She seemed coolly defiant, I guess you could say. I drew a bit closer and asked her who she was.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she was a ‘conscientious objector.’ ‘To what?’ I asked her. ‘You’re a woman, you’re not going to be called up to fight.’”
“And her response?”
“She said she wasn’t objecting to the war, although she said she had very good grounds to do so. She said she was objecting to her... existence.”
Oliver’s expression became pained.
Foyle noted this. “Yes, quite. Not what you wanted to hear, I know.” He paused and puffed thoughtfully on his cigarette before resuming. “I told her that I was medically trained in helping people like her and if she would come to my office I would do whatever I could to assist her.”
“And?”
“And she thanked me, most graciously and most eloquently. But she said she was beyond redemption. That was the word she used, ‘redemption.’ Do you know what she meant by that?”
Oliver shrugged and slowly shook his head.
“And then she told me that if, let me think, right, she said if Iggy ever asked, that I should tell him he was the most wonderful thing her life had ever discovered. Quite an interesting way to phrase it. I assume that ‘Iggy’ was referring to you, Ignatius?”
“Yes, it was her pet name for me.”
“She added that if there was any way she could have managed it, she would have gone back to him, or you, as it were. But she never found a way to do so that seemed... equitable, yes, that was the word she used.” Foyle stopped and drew in a deep breath. “And then before I could say another word, or take a step toward her, she turned and... jumped. By the time I got to the edge, she had already reached the water.” He paused and then added, “I will carry the guilt to my grave that I did nothing to stop her.”
“Please don’t. If not there, she would have simply chosen another time, another place. When her mind was made up, well...”
“Yes, she did strike me as being quite formidable in that way.”
“Thank you, Dr. Foyle. Thank you very much.”
Oliver went back outside, walked right to the cliff’s edge, and looked down more than two hundred feet to where the frothing, rocky Channel was but one fatal step away.
He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the salty air. In that motion he tried to imagine absorbing the last bits of Imogen’s life as she stood here, making perhaps the most difficult decision a person could make. Or maybe the simplest — he didn’t know, really.
He could see, in her state of mind, how she could have jumped out into nothing, plummeting down, perhaps just staring out at the sky, her very last glimpse of light and life. And then hitting the water and rocks below at such violent velocity that her end would have come before her mind ever had a chance to tell her it was over and done.
Yes, he could see how anyone might do that, given the right circumstances.
Even me, without my Imogen.
But then Oliver took a symbolic step back when the images of Molly and Charlie entered his mind. It was simply a question of being needed, really. Imogen apparently thought that he could get along perfectly well without her. Oh, how she had overestimated him.
But with Molly and Charlie there was no question.
They need me. Imogen chose death. I must choose life. And, truth be known, I need them.
Oliver turned around to find Foyle standing rigidly only a few feet away.
“I didn’t see you there,” said Oliver.
“I just followed along, at a discreet distance.”
Oliver looked back at the cliff for a moment. “You weren’t thinking that...?”
“I was just making sure, that’s all. You see, I didn’t want to commit the same blunder twice. Once was already far too much.”
The men stared across the short distance at each other.
“I appreciate that,” said Oliver.
“I have some prewar Armagnac back in my quarters, if you’re so inclined. Roman grapes, Celtic barrels, and Moorish stills. I find it soothes most of life’s ills, at least for an hour or two. And what more can anyone reasonably expect during times like these?”
The men walked back to the Institute together.