The Complete Short Stories полностью

The mounting atmosphere of unease and uncertainty was distracted for a few days by the news of several natural disasters. A landslip in northern Peru immolated a thousand villagers. In Yugoslavia an earthquake shattered a provincial capital. Icebergs sank a supertanker in the Atlantic. The question asked tentatively by a New York newspaper, DOES GOD EXIST? Faith Assembly casts doubt on Deity was relegated to a back page.

Three weeks before Christmas, war broke out between Israel and Egypt. The Chinese invaded Nepal, reclaiming territory which they had only recently ceded while under the spell of what they termed a ‘neo-colonialist’ machination. A week later revolution in Italy, backed by the church and military, ousted the previous liberal regime. Industrial output began to revive in the United States and Europe. Russian missile-firing submarines were detected on manoeuvres in the North Atlantic. On Christmas Eve the world’s seismographs recorded a gigantic explosion in the area of the Gobi Desert, and Peking Radio announced the successful testing of a 100-megaton hydrogen bomb. Christmas decorations had at last appeared in the streets, the familiar figures of Santa Claus and his reindeer hung over a thousand department-stores. Carol festivals were held before open congregations in a hundred cathedrals.

In all this festivity few people heeded the publication of what was described by a spokesman of the United Faith Assembly as one of the most far-reaching and revolutionary religious statements ever made, the Christmas encyclical entitled God is Dead…

A ¹discharged ²Broadmoor ³patient ⁴compiles ⁵‘Notes ⁶Towards ⁷a ⁸Mental ⁹Breakdown’ ¹⁰, recalling ¹¹his ¹²wjfe’s ¹³murder ¹⁴, his ¹⁵trial ¹⁶and ¹⁷exoneration ¹⁸.

The use of the indefinite article encapsulates all the ambiguities that surround the undiscovered document, Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown, of which this 18-word synopsis is the only surviving fragment. Deceptively candid and straightforward, the synopsis is clearly an important clue in our understanding of the events that led to the tragic death of Judith Loughlin in her hotel bedroom at Gatwick Airport. There is no doubt that the role of the still unidentified author was a central one. The self-effacing ‘A’ must be regarded not merely as an overt attempt at evasion but, on the unconscious level, as an early intimation of the author’s desire to proclaim his guilt.

There is no evidence that the patient was discharged. Recent inspection of the in-patients’ records at Springfield Hospital (cf. footnote 3) indicates that Dr Robert Loughlin has been in continuous detention in the Unit of Criminal Psychopathy since his committal at Kingston Crown Court on 18 May 1975. Only one visitor has called, a former colleague at the London Clinic, the neurologist Dr James Douglas, honorary secretary of the Royal College of Physicians Flying Club. It is possible that he may have given Dr Loughlin, with his obsessional interest in manpowered flight, the illusion that he had flown from the hospital on Douglas’s back. Alternatively, ‘discharged’ may be a screen memory of the revolver shot that wounded the Gatwick security guard.

Unconfirmed. Dr Loughlin had at no time in his ten-year career been either a patient or a member of the staff at Broadmoor Hospital. The reference to Broadmoor must therefore be taken as an indirect admission of the author’s criminal motives or a confused plea of diminished responsibility on the grounds of temporary madness. Yet nothing suggests that Dr Loughlin considered himself either guilty of his wife’s death or at any time insane. From the remaining documents — tape-recordings made in Suite B17 of the Inn on the Park Hotel (part of the floor occupied by the millionaire aviation pioneer Howard Hughes and his entourage during a visit to London) and cine-films taken of the runways at an abandoned USAAF base near Mildenhall — it is clear that Dr Loughlin believed he was taking part in a ritual of profound spiritual significance that would release his wife forever from the tragedy of her inoperable cancer. Indeed, the inspiration for this strange psychodrama may have come from the former Broadmoor laboratory technician and amateur dramatics coach, Leonora Carrington, whom Loughlin met at Elstree Flying Club, and with whom he had a brief but significant affair.