The Good Doctor (2 page)

— Prologue —

1910: Portland, Maine

The slide show is over
.
A small electric light buzzes over the lectern and sends a ghostly blue pallor over the faces in the front row.

“That, my friends,” the doctor says, “is the sum of the pictures I have to show you tonight. Blame the railway company for mislaying the rest.”

A ripple of unforced laughter stirs the audience. He is amazed not for the first time at how remarkably easy it is for a famous man to elicit any emotion, from shock to sympathy to mirth. The worry that nagged him before, the sense of a malign, watching presence, has faded. The feeling first emerged with the sound of laboured breathing, a wounded animal in the darkness. The rasp is still present but the lecture's obvious success demystifies the sufferer. Medical terms, like bronchitis and emphysema, devoid of the poetry of vengeance or moral judgment, have come into the doctor's mind. His nerves are soothed.

Florence leaves the projector and takes her seat by his side.

“I have touched upon the dreadful hardships of those who trap inland upon the Labrador during the winter, and pursue the fishery in summer. I've talked of the diseases of malnourishment, the children who are stillborn who might have been saved. But one question remains and it's a central one, a question that corresponds to one debt I intent to pay, and that I never tire of paying.”

The silence is impressive. He senses they are turning upon his hook, open-mouthed and helpless like pilchards. “When did it all start for me, a lowly, humble intern learning his skills in London's East End?” A barely audible murmur sweeps through the audience. No one has asked him anything of the kind, but this is the crux of the story, the moment when those who had come to see a Great Man might get that glimpse into the workings of his soul, see what differentiates him from the crowd and garner some speck of insight into how they might turn the knowledge to their advantage.

“It was nearly thirty years ago, late, very late at night. It was early fall and I was trudging through the normally blackened East End streets. Tired and worn down by the sights and smells of poverty, haunted by the knowledge I had just delivered a new babe to a family with no means of support in the smallest and dingiest corner of a city slum. In an open space between the streets, I noticed a tent rising improbably beneath the autumn moon, its canvas yellow with burning lamps, Arabesque with spires and dune-like dips.”

Someone suppresses a cough, and the doctor again hears the laboured breathing again, yes, surely the early signs of emphysema. The sound arises as the most touching kind of faith now. The poor man, who should be at home, has come to be inspired.

“Despite my tiredness, the idle curiosity of youth drew me toward the entrance. Once inside I instantly breathed the pure, fresh air of faith. Although hundreds of eyes fixed on him, the man on the podium commanded my attention like an osprey catching the shimmer of a tail fin far below. He gave a nod of recognition, and a special kind of challenge glistened in his eyes. What did he say that night to claim my energies for the unsentimental service of good?”

The lectern light flickers for a moment and buzzes louder as though about to blow. The doctor feels his legs shift and wonders if his concentration might fail, but as the filament dims and then brightens again, he realizes the wavering light has merely focused the audience's interest, capturing its attention more securely in its hypnotic pull. “In truth,” he continues, “I hardly remember. But the energy and the sincerity emanating from the man I would later come to know as D. L. Moody, the great evangelist, was palpable. And his message was timeless. It was simply this: come follow me. Forget the pomp and sham of religion, the hollow ceremonials. Come to the poorest and hungriest places on earth and once there lend your talents to the service of humanity.”

Save for the soft buzz of the light and a mouse-like scratching from a pencil at the far end of the front row from someone apparently taking notes, the silence hangs like a pall. The doctor's practice is to announce his appearances only a day or two in advance so that word of mouth might spread through the hotel reception, bar, and restaurant in time to gather up interest, but newspaper reporters, should they get wind of the event, will be unlikely to have time to read up too much on the subject. By the time their scanty reports appear, he is usually long gone.

The intensity of the man's writing—his pencil now scurrying across the paper as though the mouse senses food—gives the doctor a momentary pang of fear. But this is not the quarter from which the challenge will arise.

“My friends, I will conclude here. You will notice that my secretary has at her feet a donation box.” Florence nods, turns on her seat, and switches on the wall light, revealing a sea of blinking eyes, crumpled suits, and bristling fur from ladies' coats and stoles. “Please do not feel compelled. The hotel generously donated space, so we do not need to cover our costs. The box is for cash which goes straight to work in our mission. We do not accept cheques because we respect the anonymity of our donors. Please be governed merely by yourselves.” He gives a slight cough and feels heat under his moustache as he nods; a modest shadow of a bow to let them know it's over. “Meanwhile, I would be delighted to mingle and answer individually any questions you might have.”

It's rather a scruffy ending and he notes, as he will remember later, that this part of the presentation needs more work. But the fault is about to be covered. A single clap, loud and obliging, announces a tumult of applause ready to break.

“One question, sir,” says the wheezing man. The coming applause is suspended.

Terribly thin, with deeply sunken eyes and cheekbones jutting like doorknobs from either side of his skull, the man could be anywhere from thirty to fifty years old. He stands up with some difficulty. Through thick pebble glasses his eyes remain upon the doctor. A stick on each side supports his skeletal frame.

“Of course,” the doctor replies with a genial laugh. He hasn't yet sensed catastrophe but does wonder why he's addressed as “sir” rather than “doctor.”

“You say you accept only cash?”

“Yes.” He will remember later the numb feeling in his lips as he spoke the word, and how an unreal sensation flooded through his body, weakening his knees. The spectre of vengeance has returned.

“But last year when in New York there was no such rule. In fact, the audience was expressly told to make out cheques to the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen.”

The hush of the audience, a balm a moment ago, feels suddenly like a slap. Men and women in the front turn and crane their necks to get a view of the stranger. Someone makes a tut-tut sound, aimed, the doctor realizes, at the heckler, not at himself, but he catches at least one set of middle-aged eyes narrowing suspiciously in his direction, too. The infernal scratching of the reporter's pencil becomes louder and more frantic. The mouse has found its food.

“That was when the association was new to this kind of fundraising, my dear friend. There have been concerns expressed since that donors prefer the cloak of . . .” He tries to think of a word other than “anonymity”; repetition can sound desperate. His feet have begun to move in agitation, soles scraping against the wooden flooring. Time has run out. “. . . anonymity.”

“My dear friend,” the stranger echoes with obvious, brazen sarcasm. “I have met Dr. Grenfell, and I would like to inform all those trusting people gathered here that he doesn't stand like you, talk like you, or even very much look like you.”

A small series of gasps makes its way through the audience. The lectern light buzzes again and dims. It's no longer a hypnotic means of focus, more an urgent twitch of horror. Only the challenger's pebble glasses shine with resolution.

“I am Grenfell,” the doctor says.

He will afterwards find it difficult to understand how this simple claim—so natural if it had only been the truth—manages to meet the air with such a cringing sense of guilt. With input from Florence, he will eventually decide that the more plausible reaction from an innocent man would have been confusion, a shake of the head, and something more along the lines of, “This is absurd, my good man.” The immediate and literal claim that he is who he pretends to be is in itself suspicious. It suggests that he has been expecting the charge.

The murmur among those present swiftly turns hostile. The doctor's shoulders have become hunched, and he looks toward the auditorium's high windows and the long brass-hooked poles, which served to adjust the open-closed angle—improbable odds for an escape, he thinks, but tempting.

“Okay, we can settle this,” calls the reporter, suddenly flushed with excitement, and holding his pencil point up in front of his face. “What are the names of the dogs you killed on the ice off St. Anthony?”

“Moody, Watch, and Spy,” the doctor replies. There's another murmur from the crowd. For a moment he can't tell whether it is because he has proved his claim or because the sudden willingness to play-act the stage magician digs him more fatally into the hole of the imposter. A couple of jeers in his direction give him the answer.

“Anyone could know that just by reading Dr. Grenfell's book,” says a portly man in evening dress. The newspaperman just smiles. This is more than he could possibly have hoped for. Suddenly the room seems more arena than auditorium.

“Gentlemen, ladies, please.” Florence's voice calms the doctor. Standing, she throws a different kind of hush—almost a kind of awe—upon the gathering. Even the newspaperman looks up at her with a kind of respect. Like a watermark in bonded paper, secretaries give a sense of institutional verity to a lecture. They are not expected to make any sound, and if they do it denotes a real crisis. “This is not a circus. Dr. Grenfell has come to you to discuss serious matters.”

The doctor becomes aware that with fingers smoothing his moustache, covering the twitch of his lips, he might indeed now seem like a picture of baffled innocence. Though ashamed Florence has intervened, he knows she might have saved him, at least for as long as it will take him to escape the building.

And so it proves. She picks up the collection box in one hand and takes the doctor's arm with another. Audibly enough for those in the front row, she says, “Come, Doctor, you are looking pale and there is a car outside that will take you to your hotel.”

The audience, now upon its feet and spilling the aisles, parts to their approach like a reluctant sea. Miraculously enough, no one follows them into the corridor. They move together through the empty hallway like museum statues come to life and trying not to be noticed. Only as the elevator cage opens to them does the doctor sense movement from behind.

The bellhop closes the cage. The floor drops suddenly, and the doctor blinks from the belated flash of the reporter's camera. The bellhop, a spotted youth with ginger hair poking out from beneath his cap, chews gum and stares, aware in some animal way that the middle-aged couple is no longer important enough to merit attention. Once the elevator compartment jolts to a stop, he hauls back the cage and the empty foyer opens to them. The reception clerk scribbles in his book, not looking up. Florence and the doctor make their way through to the revolving door, and in a moment they are outside breathing the crisp, salty air.

— Chapter One —

1940: Springfield, Massachusetts

T
he hiss of late summer
encircles
Judy as she steps from the car. Shiny leaves on the overhanging boughs struggle against the breeze, gaining brief succour from one another's touch.

Letting the cigarette butt drop from her fingers, she skewers it into the gravel with the point of her shoe. The windows of the doctor's house, a reflection of dark foliate movement, grow suddenly austere. Judy hopes she isn't being watched. The metal gate pings open to her touch, and she hugs her satchel closer to her chest as though for protection. Trotting toward the black door, she picks up the cool brass knocker, wraps twice, and then steps back. Some late roses, their blooms darkening, climb up the trellis by the side of the front door. A falling petal touches the fur of her collar and lands by her feet with a
pat
. A young woman opens the door. She wears no uniform, but something in the way she stands aside and gestures Judy through—distraction in the eyes, tightness in the lips—labels her a maid, not a relative. Halfway down the hallway she catches up and overtakes Judy.

“Here,” she says, coming to a recess. She stoops and knocks at the door.

A voice answers, but Judy does not hear the speaker's word. The young woman opens the door halfway and peers in.

“Miss Agar is here.”

Judy hears the flap of paper. The maid steps from the doorway.

“You should go in.”

Judy enters.

The man in the chair seems spryer than Judy imagined. She heard he wasn't well. He takes off his glasses, folds over the newspaper on his lap—she catches the headline:
Air Raids on London
—lays glasses and newspaper on the coffee table. Despite her protests, he stands. The hand she takes is pink, warm, and padded. Something alive dances behind his eyes, but she can't decide on the phrasing. Is it a twinkle or a glint; the warmth of flame or the sparkle of ice? Later, she tells herself, plenty of time for purple prose. Secure the interview first.

“Thank you so much for agreeing to speak to me.” She folds herself into the proffered chair. As he returns to his seat, she's struck both by the view through the Georgian windows—impressive undulating garden, some elms and a huge copper beech nodding slightly in the wind—and by the fact that the seating arrangement has given her sole possession of it. The doctor faces the rather dim inward corner of the room where shade-loving plants spread their spindly leaves. It seems incongruous somehow that he has chosen to look away from the sun; the lines around his eyes are reptilian, suggesting a history of quick and nervous movements, and of energy drawn from sunlight. Laying her satchel at her side, she fingers the buckle, waiting out the formalities. Her eyes lock for a moment on a silver tray, a half-full decanter, and a trio of glasses on the table. This seems out of place too.

“I'm flattered to be asked,” he says, crossing his legs, and sliding his hand over the tweed of his trousers—an old flirt, she thinks. It makes sense, somehow. “And surprised. It's not often an obscure MD like myself is the subject of newspaper speculation.”

Surprised. Does he mean it? Or is he playing with her? She smiles. “
Periodical
speculation.”

“Ah.” He claps his hand on his thigh. “A world of difference, I'm sure.”

“Well, we're not into sensationalism, so . . .” So what? The end of her sentence dangles. To hide her embarrassment she reaches once more for the satchel, opens the buckle, and slides out her notebook. She was hoping that the distinction between newspaper and magazine, especially one with a reputation as toothless and benign as
Polar Adventures
, would make less threatening the area into which she must soon trespass. But the hanging clock on the wall next to the barometer might already be ticking through layers of misunderstanding. What if he just isn't the man? There was always that chance her sources were mistaken.

“And this is a special subject . . .” she falters.

“The age of adventure!”

She looks up to see the doctor's eyes wide with dramatic irony.

“Quite,” she echoes, “the age of adventure.”

“
Polar Adventures
of Boston. How large is your distribution?”

“We have subscribers all over North America.”

He nods sagely to show he's impressed. She suspects subterfuge. “All those people interested in polar exploration?”

“The title
Polar Adventures
is misleading. We don't only cover adventures on or near the poles, but also adventures anywhere between the poles, which of course means pretty much anywhere.”

“Ah, that explains it!”

“In this case, we are delving into the era of adventure and missionary zeal,” she says, trying to press on now. “That's the subject of the main article.”

“The ‘main article'?” he asks. She wonders if she sees a smile playing in the corners of his lips.

“Yes, this is in the nature of a sidebar.”

His face remains questioning. Her pencil hovers over the blank sheet before her.

“You lived through the period of time . . . personally knew the kinds of men who travelled and returned to the lecture circuit, and there was that one occasion—”

“Tell me, Miss Agar,” he breaks in, sliding his fingers into a steeple on his chest. She's surprised at the force of the interruption; it wasn't rude, and, in truth, she's relieved, but he's stopped her dead. “Are you, yourself, the author of this main article?”

“No. The editor himself plans on doing the piece.”

“Ah,” he said. “Then both you and I are but minor characters.”

She returns his conspiratorial smile, tries to give him a hint of sympathy and fellow feeling. He's very close, it seems, to admitting he is the man. “Yes, indeed. We're interested in the allure of the lecture tour, bringing colour, stories of good works, into the lives of Americans—”

“Who is the subject of the main article?” The interruption once more has the weight of such calm authority, it demands a straight and immediate answer.

“Sir Wilfred Grenfell,” she says, her shoulders sinking guiltily.

“And you say your editor plans on doing the piece. Has he secured an interview with the good doctor?”

“He is hoping, but Sir Wilfred is not in the best of health.”

“So I hear.”

“You keep in touch with Sir Wilfred?”

The smile again, dry and ironic. “No,” he says.

“And yet you have, in many ways, lived parallel lives.” A tingle goes through her and she jockeys forward in her chair. “You trained together in London, and you have retired practically next door.”

“Next door?” he asks, whimsy coming into his eyes.

“Vermont and Massachusetts are adjacent states.”

“Ha, Americans and their sense of distance!”

“And between that time and now . . .”

“Yes?” An innocent tilt of the head.

“In between, there was . . . that incident in Portland.”

“The incident, yes.”

At last, a clear admission.

“A practical joke, perhaps?”

Her pencil aches to start writing, but she holds off. It's forbidden to record an interviewee's mere echo of a question. He smiles slowly and she has a sudden sense that he knows this rule and is way ahead of her. “
Was
it a joke?” she asks. Yes or no would be something.

“Tell me,” he says reaching to the coffee table and taking up his spectacles. His free hand dips into his trouser pocket, pulling out a white handkerchief. He begins to polish up the lenses. “From the photographs you have seen, do you think I look like Grenfell?”

“A little, yes.”

“So a random audience assembling in a hotel in Portland, Maine, might easily let themselves be deceived.”

He breathes hard on the lenses and continues rubbing.

“But someone gave you away.”

“Yes.”

“Bad luck for you,” she ventures.

He slides his glasses back on.

“So it wasn't just a joke, then?”

He gives the merest shrug and leans forward, reaching for the decanter. “You don't mind if I indulge, do you?”

She tries to keep her eyes from glancing at the clock. It's 10:40 a.m. He catches her eye and smiles as the pale liquid sloshes into a glass. “Will you have one?”

“It's—”

“A little early I know, and it's whisky, not sherry.” He lays down the decanter. “Grenfell had his pipe. I never smoked. Although, of course, I had to learn so I could convince people I was him.”

Picking up the glass, he sinks back slowly into the leather.

The tingle returns. She's on the verge of something bigger than she had hoped for. For one mute moment her lips mouth the air. Finally the question forces itself into words.

“You mean it wasn't the first time?”

The old doctor gives a sudden laugh and holds up his glass as though for a toast. “Well now, you're the first person who has ever asked.” His smile turns rueful. “It was the last, though. We couldn't risk it again.” He takes a sip and sighs, pleasure mingling with sadness. “Let me tell you how it all came about.”