Chapter Eight: Doctor Baldwin

Of all the days to begin at a new school this one was probably the most inappropriate. As Amanda filed into the modern glass building that was the assembly hall with the other kids, she could not help but notice some of them staring at her, probably having seen her alight from her father’s car at the school gates. Even a few of the teachers, sitting in their tall chairs aligned along the stage at the front, seemed to be staring at her intently.
She felt discomfited and dowdy in her uniform, consisting of a dark blue skirt, neat black shoes and a sweatshirt with the school’s logo on it, her hair scrubbed of purple dye and tied back in a neat ponytail. Everyone looked alike in their uniforms but the students she thought, quite a few of them boarders, gave off a whiff of wealthy superiority and an overbearing conventionality. She was sure she would not get on with any of them.
But as she sat next to a blonde girl, who had an inane grin on her face, and awaited the opening speech of the headmistress, these observations were swamped by an impatience to get through the day and discover the outcome of her father’s telephone call to Dr Baldwin. She decided, just at the moment the headmistress moved to the lectern, that at lunch she would call her dad using her mobile, but she still had to sit through the assembly and the classes to come with as much stoicism as she could muster. The day was going to drag on as if time itself had lead weights tied to its ankles.
Other then an excruciating moment in her tutorial class when she had to stand up and introduce herself, the morning was on the whole uneventful. The maths lesson after the tutorial seemed to last forever and her mind wandered to such an extent that it was noticed by the badly dressed runt of a teacher, who showed her up in front of everybody else.
At last the lunch break came around and before going to the canteen she went to the edge of the playing fields near the dormitory building and made her phone call. An eternity elapsed, the hum of traffic from the M25 motorway audible above the ring tones, before her father answered, but when he did he had some good news.
He had rung Dr Timothy Baldwin and the man had seemed genuinely enthusiastic about taking on their case, having a prior interest in Ashbury Manor. He had uncovered a surprising and rather unsettling piece of information concerning a former resident and would reveal it when they met.
Her feelings of tension eased by the telephone call, Amanda walked into the hubbub of the canteen. Waiting in line to get served, she surveyed the tables at which teenagers communicated with each other in loud voices and decided that she would sit at the table nearest the exit. The two girls sitting there, one of them overweight and morosely munching through an enormous crisp packet, the other thin as a rack with long brown hair, looking around her with a bored expression and picking at a meagre plate of salad, had the appearance of the school outsiders. They at least might hold hidden depths unlike the collection of rich kids all huddled together in their cliques.
The skinny girl was a fan of Blood Moon, and there was naturally an awed silence at first when she sat at their table, but after a while the ice was broken. Amanda did most of the talking describing the life of a daughter of a rock star and how it was not as glamorous or as exiting as the two girls probably thought.
Before the bell went, marking the return to the tedium of the classroom, Amanda promised to get the autograph of her father for the girls, feeling pride in her dad’s achievements.

They were going to be late for their meeting as the main road from Weybridge, were the Sir Giles Maurice School was situated, to Walton-on-Thames, had become an almost stationary line of motor cars, bumper to bumper, caused by major road works on the old Walton Bridge across the Thames. Amanda found it difficult to contain her impatience and her dad’s attempt at small talk was met with grunts of acknowledgement or one word answers, as she stared distractedly at the tree lined streets or the back of a four by four with two bored children making faces at her. When finally they reached the busy junction near Walton Bridge her dad said something which did catch her attention.
“I got a call today from an American friend of Moonbeam’s. Soon after I had an employee on the phone from Darkcore Records enquiring about the whereabouts of Lucius. I told both of them the same thing. Moonbeam and Lucius, separately mind you, had departed from the party and as yet had not returned. Moonbeam’s friend found it very strange. And so I am going to have to notify the police about their disappearance in a week’s time, otherwise people are going to get suspicious. It goes without saying I am not going to mention your account of events.”
“I see what you mean, but are we still going to use the services of Dr Baldwin?”
“Yeah, of course, but I still think what you need is a good psychiatrist,” Jonathan said, laughing.
“Dad, don’t even joke about it.”
The BMW swung into Mansion Road, off Abbey Street, a road consisting of an assortment of detached and terraced housing, a block of low rise flats, a private nursery and a pub, that made a leafy crescent shape near the river. Jonathan parked with difficulty between two expensive cars outside number sixty seven, a small terraced house at the end of the row, next to a narrow unkempt alley and opposite a small factory building that was now a garage.
Opening the rusty iron gate with a screech they walked through the tiny weed infested garden along the path to the front door and rang the bell, noticing the gloom made by the overhanging branches of an ancient, almost dead, oak tree in the grounds of the flats on the other side of the alley.
The figure that unbolted the door immediately on hearing the bell, did not at first sight seem to have the look of cool headed expertise an authority on the supernatural should have and Amanda could tell that her father felt the same, when he took a step backwards in surprise. Dr Baldwin’s dishevelled greasy hair was like strands of burnt spaghetti on top of a stretched stubbly pale face, whose eyes were covered by clunky spectacles with thick lenses. A fading chequered shirt, hanging half out of his stained baggy trousers secured with a tattered leather belt, was too large for his skeletal torso as were his cotton trousers. To compliment his dirty unkemptness, an off putting odour of stale sweat wafted from his body probably contributing to the backward step of Jonathan. But his voice when he introduced himself was low and expressive, overflowing with upper-class confidence, or affected pomposity.
They followed him down the hall, stepping over makeshift electrical equipment stacked against the walls, bristling with fan like aerials and peculiar dials. Dr Baldwin told them while they climbing a short flight of stairs to the second floor, that they where devices for the detection of mysterious phenomena in haunted houses.
His study was what Amanda had been expecting. Lined with bookcases containing the oldest books that she had ever seen, the dimly lit room had a steel filing cabinet with a spider plant trailing its sagging leaves down its sides and a bulky wooden desk containing many draws. The desk was scattered with ancient looking tomes, type written papers and scribbled notes, subsuming the computer, rather out of place amongst all the arcania. Taped to the wall, next to the window overlooking the gnarled, ivy infested oak, was a tatty poster depicting the Cabalistic Tree of Life, the only adornment on the few spaces of wall that were not covered by bookcases.
Indicating Amanda and her father should sit down on the two stiff wooden chairs aligned in front of his desk, Doctor Baldwin made himself comfortable in a swivel chair and stared at them with an uncomfortable intensity, his two hands, elbows lying on the desk, making a triangular shape.
“I am glad you approached me first,” he said at last, speaking directly to Jonathan and ignoring Amanda. “I would have found it difficult to get to know you otherwise, but as you probably realise my real interest is Ashbury Manor.”
Amanda, moving uncomfortable in her chair, felt irritated she was being ignored by Dr Baldwin; after-all it was she who had experienced the peculiar horrors of the Manor in the first place. But for now she decided to keep quite.
“I have to admit I have come to see you more on behalf of my daughter then myself,” Jonathan replied. “She thinks the disappearance of my partner, Samantha and my friend Lucius has something to do with occult forces connected with the Manor. I suppose it’s my fault really, Amanda has not had the most conventional upbringing and…”
“Mr Blake I am not a psychiatrist. If you believe your daughter is mentally ill then go elsewhere. As for myself I have spent years delving into the unknown and I can tell you this, although most instances of the supernatural are utter hokum, a tiny minority of the cases I have dealt with suggest powers that go beyond the mundane and ordinary. The little research I have managed to undertake into the matter of Ashbury Manor has made me think this particular case will prove to be extremely interesting.”
He turned to Amanda and attempted an encouraging smile but failed. “Now my young lady let me hear your story. I am all ears.”
She told Dr Baldwin everything, and noticing the nodding of his head and the focused intense look of interest on his face, was glad someone was taking her seriously. At the same time he wrote rapidly in a notepad as he listened and this heartened her even more. At the end of her tale her estimation of the Doctor had changed. There was still something creepy about his demeanour but his single-minded earnestness encouraged her.
“It must sound completely nuts to you, Dr Baldwin, but it is true. I, I mean we, are going to need your help desperately,” she said.
Now that she had finished her long story, Dr Baldwin seemed stunned, if not a little unnerved.
“It certainly is fantastic but for the time being I am going to believe you. There is too much here that coincides with my own findings for you to have made it all up. I really want to investigate this case further, but does your father believe you? I am going to need his permission before I can commence this investigation.”
“I just don’t know if I believe her or not,” Jonathan said, shrugging his shoulders. “If Amanda has done something terrible and is covering for herself by telling this absurd story, then it is a very long-winded way of going about it. On the other hand she might have hallucinated it all and rather then a so-called psychic investigator encouraging her further in her fantasies, what she really needs is a good shrink.”
“That is one explanation. It is a possibility that your daughter has imagined it, but if that is the case then I will uncover her mental instability in my on-going investigation and then you can approach a psychiatrist. But I have something that might convince you of the veracity of Amanda’s story.”
Taking a dirty brown leather journal with a faded clasp from a draw, Dr Baldwin flourished it above his head and spoke in an authoritative tone of voice.
“This is the diary of Dr Samuel Boswell, whose tragic downfall I assume you are both acquainted with. I found it only a week ago in the attic of the old asylum, now a private residential home, where the unfortunate gentleman was incarcerated long ago. It is a grisly account of obsession, and bloody suicide. According to this diary, the once respectable Victorian doctor was the father of his own daughter’s child! Driven by unholy desire, which he claimed was not only inspired by his lustful nature but by the eye on one of the mirrors, he had forced himself whilst drunk on the helpless girl, resulting in her pregnancy.”
After a pause for dramatic emphasis he continued.
“Furthermore the death of Sarah Boswell was not murder but suicide. Because of the terrible shame resulting from any discovery of his incestuous actions, he kept her locked in her bedroom, allowing her downstairs only for meals. While confined to her room, a virtual prisoner, Sarah had complained of the fearful affect the mirror in her room was having on her. The eye, the one at the top of the looking-glass, gave the impression of constantly staring at her, conferring a feeling of utmost terror. At the same time she saw things, misshapen entities crawling and slithering in the mirror, that were driving her to insanity. One night Dr Boswell noticed a surgical knife had been taken from his medical bag. Fearing the worst he raced to his daughter’s room and found her dead, her chest stabbed by her own hands. He was in time to see the body of his daughter dragged by a giant tendril that he describes in his diary as ‘as a vine or creeper’ into the looking-glass.”
“This of course could be the rantings of a guilt-ridden madman, but it corresponds to the ‘haunting’ that Amanda experienced on her first night at Ashbury Manor,” the doctor said, concluding his theatrical speech.
“So how are you going to help us, Dr Baldwin,” Amanda said.
“Well basically I am, with your help, going to attempt to solve the riddle of Ashbury Manor. The solution lies partly with the Order of the Arboreal Orb as you rightfully concluded, but you won’t find them listed in any published encyclopaedia or online. Now it is a helpful coincidence I have a little prior knowledge. It was I that helped the police in convicting the serial killer Charles Marlowe, who claimed to be connected to the cult. I had access to his unpublished writings and these revealed he was fascinated with the 16^th century occultist George Browne. At the time of the investigation I came across a small note of Marlowe’s that asserted he had discovered the lost writings of the Elizabethan mage. I took little notice of it, but since I have moved to Walton it has taken on extra significance. The key to the secret of Ashbury Manor lies in those lost writings, uncovered in the Nineteen Twenties by Sir William Barrett. But there location only adds to our problems.”
“This is totally nuts,” said Jonathan, shaking his head resignedly.
Doctor Baldwin having arisen from his chair while speaking now stood at the window, contemplatively gazing into space.
“Do you fancy a spot of grave robbing,” he then said in a calm voice.

Lying in her bed that night, unable to sleep, Amanda thought about the meeting with Doctor Baldwin. At the moment the eccentric scholar suggested desecrating the resting place of the dead, it was all too much for her father. He had angrily stood up, took hold of her hand and pulled her to the door.
Somehow the doctor had managed to persuade her father to stay a bit longer and swiftly explained that the writings of George Browne had been buried with Sir William Barrett. Using the legal channels to get the body exhumed would be a complete waste of time and so the only means of retrieving the book was to open up the grave illegally. It was an action he was reluctant to undertake but if they wished to take the investigation further it had to be done and he needed their help to dig up the coffin.
She had argued bitterly with her father in the car on the way home, pleading with him to agree with Doctor Timothy Baldwin’s plan, but he was determined not to be an accessory to a criminal act. Imagine if they were caught. He told her then that the content of horror and the occult in his lyrics and stage act was a pose and he had never taken the supernatural seriously. He was now deeply concerned what such influences where having on his daughter.
Amanda had not lost control but had instead lapsed into a sulky silence. She had her own plans; it was obvious her father could not be relied upon or persuaded to aid her, so she would have to act on her own. She was convinced Doctor Baldwin had the determination to uncover the secret and there was no reason, as long as she kept her dad from finding out, why she shouldn’t offer her help.
The chorus of frogs and abundant insect life coming from the garden had now reached the level of her bedroom, but although uncanny the sound was strangely soothing and Amanda drifted off to sleep. This time she did not have the nightmares that had plagued her the night before, as if her alter-ego had moved into a region that existed beyond her dream perceptions.