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“He didn’t have one,” Carr said. “That’s why he went to America. When we were chatting at the party, he wondered, speculatively, what would happen if we could engineer a communicable virus that ‘ate’ malaria parasites but didn’t harm humans—or a communicable virus that would kill mosquitoes but not humans. If that was even possible; and if it would be possible to spread such a thing worldwide. A virus that would starve if it had no parasites to feed on, or mosquitoes, so in a way, would be self-eliminating after doing its job.”
“Sound like it would be worthwhile and would explain why he was both at Detrick and then at Los Alamos,” Hawkins said.
Carr leaned over the table, his nose pointed at Letty: “Here’s the thing. When Lionel returned from Bangladesh, he was rather severely depressed. My wife has had depressive episodes, so I recognize the symptoms. Lionel’s mind wouldn’t stop working but was caught up in cycles that he couldn’t repress. I believe he consulted with somebody in America about medication.”
Letty: “Depression…that could lead to self-harm.”
Carr nodded: “If he has really vanished, that would be my thought. My fear. A man intent on harming himself wouldn’t be too worried about who knew he was gone. And a polite man—Lionel is polite—would clean out the refrigerator, so no other poor soul would have to clean up the mess.”
“But he took his clothes,” Hawkins said.
Carr leaned back: “Yes. That’s difficult to explain, if he was intent on self-harm. A person intent on suicide might not be fully rational about anything…take some clothes in case you don’t do it.”
They talked for a while longer, ate burgers, and Carr agreed to forward to both Letty and Hawkins the emails he’d received from Scott. “It’s a dreadful violation of privacy, though the emails don’t contain anything especially private, especially personal, that you don’t already know.”
“We appreciate that, and will treat them as confidential,” Letty said.
—
Carr had toreturn to the hospital, and Hawkins said they should check on the second person on their list, Magda Rice, who had a shop within walking distance and was also expecting them.
“Interesting that all the people we want to interview live here in Oxford,” Letty said, as they wound their way through the crowded streets.
“Most of Scott’s adult life in England was here, his social life,” Hawkins said. “He came from York, which is up north. His mother died while he was in medical school. I believe he is estranged from his father, but I don’t know why. His parents were divorced; perhaps he took his mother’s side.”
A cyclist clipped close to Letty’s shoulder, Hawkins saw him coming and caught her arm and pulled her closer; the cyclist got by and Letty said “Thanks,” and Hawkins kept a hand on her perhaps longer than was necessary; not that it felt uncomfortable.
Rice’s shop was an easy amble from the Ashmolean, a tiny closet-sized space on Cornmarket Street that smelled of a nostril-tingling incense. Not exactly a head shop, but it was over in that direction, with tarot cards, astrology books, crystals, a shelf of natural herbal supplements. A beaded curtain separated the front and back rooms.
Rice was a short cheery woman with curly red hair, a complexion that was pink and nearly transparent, with an upturned nose and large, curious blue eyes. After introductions, she took them behind the bead curtain to a table with four chairs, and said, “I’ll have to run out if customers come in…would you like iced tea?”
They would, and she poured it from a glass pitcher that she took from a refrigerator that had a poster advertising an “ayahuasca retreat” in Peru.
“Did you do that?” Hawkins asked, nodding at the poster.
“Yep. I had the contents of my stomach coming out from both ends, and the experience was distinctly disappointing. Low-rent LSD, is what it was,” she said. “I do like the poster—the jungle, the birds, and so on. I get a better high from the poster than I did from the shit they fed us.”
Letty told her about Scott’s disappearance, and she said, “God, I hope he’s all right. When he was last here, he worried me. He tends to have dark views of humanity, but he was darker than ever when he got back from Bangladesh.”
“If he was planning to hurt himself, would you expect him to give you some sort of signal?” Letty asked. “Some kind of summing-up, a reflection on whatever your relationship was?”
She thought about that, and then said, “I hadn’t considered that, but now that you bring it up…yes. Definitely. We were long-term lovers, you know.”
“I’d wondered,” Hawkins said. “The people who sent us to you seemed to hint at that.”
“Oh, yes, it was quite sexual,” Rice said. “Though, I have to say, that except with me, I don’t think Lionel was especially sexual. But with me, he was like a teenager getting his first lay. Better for me than anything I get from my husband.”
Letty: “You’re married?”
“Yes, but I don’t let him live with me,” Rice said. “Rather a rough man—not violent, you know, but he’s a builder. Rough edge to his tongue, as well as his hands. All about keeping his building crews in line. That’s not for me, not all the time. Lionel was a welcome change.”
“Do you have any clue why Lionel would voluntarily disappear?” Hawkins asked. He told her about the condition of Scott’s house.
She looked down into her lap as she shook her head: “No. There was that darkness. But…Wait.”
She stood up, stepped through the beaded curtain, and returned with a small wooden box. She touched a light switch, and the room went dim, with the only light filtering through the bead curtain. Rice sat down and opened the box. Inside was a deck of oversized cards, wrapped in a piece of heavy silk.
“Let me ask the cards,” she said.
