She jerked awake in sudden shock. It was her wedding night! Even if she went on lying here, she must not fall asleep, for soon Leonard would come, her husband. She must stay awake for him … welcome him. She mustn’t—mustn’t— seem indifferent or reluctant, for that would be so spinsterish….
Mustn’t be spinsterish…. Mustn’t be spinsterish…. The words seemed to cling like spiders in Ellen’s brain as she dropped into a brief, uneasy sleep … and they were still ringing in her ears when she woke … or rather half-woke; for though she was conscious of movement, of something happening, she was still too dazed with sleep to open her eyes. Mustn’t be spinsterish … mustn’t be spinsterish…. If it had not been for the relentless beating of these words on her half-conscious mind, Ellen might have screamed aloud, so queer was the sensation of strong arms coming tightly round her … of hands fumbling beneath her shoulders … in the small of her back…. The quick male breath was near her face, but she felt no spark of response; only terror … mounting, clutching terror … which she must not show … must not show … for it was spinsterish … spinsterish. Pretend to be asleep—anything—to hide this awful, abnormal, fear.
And perhaps, after all, it was only a dream … perhaps she was asleep still … for she was being lifted from the bed now, just as one is lifted in dreams. That’s what the hands had been doing—feeling for a balanced grip on her body. Dream? Reality? She was still so dizzy, so stupid, from all that champagne, it was hard to tell. But whichever it was, she must lie quite still … show no sign of waking, for the moment she woke Leonard would see the revulsion, the terror, in her eyes … would feel it in her movements.
Yes; she was being lifted up; and it came to Ellen that Leonard must be lifting her in order to lay her properly in the bed—she had been sprawled on top of the covers, she remembered, when she fell asleep. Yes, that’s what he must be doing … so gently, too, as if he feared to wake her.
But why should the gentle movements seem to be edging her softly over some dreadful, quiet borderline … like the borderline of a dream as it slides over into nightmare … a nightmare from which there will be no waking?
An old maid’s fear of sex? Could it be this which so numbed her brain, so paralysed her body …? And he so gentle still, laying her down so softly, arranging her limbs so carefully in the flexed attitude of sleep … softly pulling the covers up over her….
Far too many covers for this summer night, and too much over her … right over her face, in fact; yet Ellen dared not move to push them down, for then he would know that she was awake … would see her reluctance … her terrible, abnormal fears. She must lie still, feigning sleep, and hope that he would go away.
Dimly, she heard Leonard moving around the room. Rustlings … scrapings … little bumps. Was he preparing for bed? Or would he go downstairs? Had he, she wondered a minute later, already gone? For the sounds had ceased.
It was several minutes before Ellen ventured to open her eyes; and when she did she opened them on a blackness so absolute that it could be no natural night that caused it. She tried to move her limbs within the smothering folds of blanket, but there was obstruction everywhere—above, below, on every side.
Her childhood nightmare had come true at last. She was locked in the old chest.
CHAPTER XXIII
JUST A BOYISH prank again? Had Leonard, with tasteless schoolboy buffoonery, chosen to renew his boyhood teasing, and to stage this parody of the old Mistletoe Bough story on this, the most appropriate evening of her life? Would he, any minute now, return to unlock the chest, lift the great lid, and release her with some off-hand jibe: “There! That’ll teach you to fall into a drunken sleep on your wedding night!” Something like that?
But in that case, he would need to come soon. For it was stifling in here already, and the air must grow steadily worse, hour by hour. How long did it take to suffocate in a chest this size—full of blankets, too? Minutes? Hours? Even days? The unhappy bride of the original story had been discovered years later—she might, for all Ellen could remember of the story—have died from hunger, not suffocation at all. Perhaps, even, it was just as old wives’ tale that you could be suffocated by this sort of means. A healthy human body is very tough; it might well be that such incarceration would cause no more than discomfort.
Ellen stirred a little within the few centimetres possible to her. The physical sensations so far were trivial. She was cramped, and terribly hot, but by no means breathless. Of course, even a great heavy oak chest like this must have cracks somewhere. The craftsmen who made it were doubtless far more skilled and careful than their counterparts today, but they wouldn’t have made it airtight in any scientific sense; hang it all, the thing wasn’t a laboratory vacuum!
Did Leonard think it was? Did he think she would suffocate, lying here? And was that what he intended?
For the first time, Ellen faced fully the implications of her situation. Either it was a peculiarly unpleasant joke, or else Leonard meant to kill her. But why? Why? Was it all in some way connected with the headlong haste with which he had married her?
If she was the heiress to millions of pounds, it would all make sense; you read of such things. But Ellen wasn’t the heiress to anything at all—unless you counted this ramshackle old house, which seemed likely to cost far more in repairs than it would ever bring in in rent. Or unless you counted that phantom two thousand pounds, which didn’t even exist outside Cousin Laura’s imagination.
Or did it? The sudden, unpremeditated query shocked Ellen into temporary forgetfulness of her situation; she lay as if stupefied while doubt crystallised into a strange certainty; and then the implications began to sweep over her almost faster than her brain could grasp them.
Suppose it was true that Cousin Laura really was the well-off woman she imagined herself to be—suppose that that cheque represented real money? Well, even so, it didn’t constitute a motive for murder. Two thousand pounds was a nice sum to possess, of course; but no one would risk the penalties of murder for it. Besides, all the rest of Cousin Laura’s money—if it existed at all, a great deal more than Ellen’s two thousand pounds—was to go to Leonard anyway. If anyone was to get murdered for it, then he should be the one.
Ellen became aware that there was something superficial about these calculations. Something far more fundamental, far more shattering to all her previous assumptions, was hovering on the edge of her consciousness, waiting for her to grasp its significance.
Yes. If Cousin Laura really possessed two thousand pounds to give away, and hence a comfortable income in her own right, then Leonard must know it. He claimed to have taken full charge of her affairs for years; he claimed to have used this position to practise a kindly deception on her, to save her pride.
But suppose he was lying? Suppose the exact opposite was the truth: that as an accountant he was a failure, had always been a failure, and depended on an allowance from his stepmother for his support? Suppose that she was the one who, to save his pride, did not divulge the truth?
But he wasn’t a failure, surely. He worked terribly hard and had lots of clients—or so he said. Suddenly, and for the first time, Ellen realised that there was not the smallest evidence that he spoke the truth. He worked on his own, not for any firm; no one but himself was in a position to know how much work, if any, he did. And on how many occasions, Ellen remembered now, had she been vaguely surprised to find him at leisure on weekdays … whole mornings and afternoons, whenever it suited him….?
A man of Leonard’s degree of vanity and self-importance would hate to confess to so humiliating a fact as that he had failed at his profession and was supported by his old stepmother; and, once lies began to be told to hide these facts, how easy to tell a few more, and let it be thought not merely that he was earning his own living, but that he was supporting the old lady as well. What a splendid antidote—or should one call it revenge?—for the recurrent humiliation of receiving her monthly cheques! And what sympathy and admiration such lying gen
erosity could win him from Ellen—or, indeed, from anyone he chose to tell about it; in strict confidence, of course, and with oh-such-understandable anxiety that the poor old lady should never come to hear of it. Above all it was Ellen’s sympathy and admiration he sought; but evidently he had not been able to resist telling Melissa, too. Indeed, it was perfectly safe for him to tell any number of kindly, well-disposed people, all in confidence; for which of them would ever be so cruel, so careless of the old lady’s feelings, as to let the story get round to her? She, of course—apart from her kindly silence about the allowance to Leonard—might talk freely about her finances, but that would not matter, for the whole crux of Leonard’s story of his own generosity was that she thought she was a well-off woman. There was no reason to fear that anyone to whom he had told the story would ever discover the truth—until, of course, the old lady died.
Even then, he must have calculated, he would still be safe, since all her money was to be left to himself. What must have thrown all his calculations awry must have been his stepmother’s recent decision to make Ellen’s father her executor—Ellen herself to take over should Mr Fortescue die or become incapacitated first. This it must have been that threw Leonard into the state of anxiety and panic that had so puzzled Ellen; for he realised now that at his stepmother’s death—which could not be very many months distant, and which might be almost any day—the whole situation would be laid bare to Ellen as well as to her father. For there was no doubt at all that Ellen would see the papers which her father, as executor, would have to deal with. She would have to remind him of them, find them for him when he left them about, perhaps explain the bits he couldn’t be bothered to read properly…. This it must have been that had decided Leonard to bring about at top speed the marriage which otherwise he might have postponed indefinitely; for up till now it had suited him very well to have Ellen vaguely earmarked as his property; to have a right to make his accustomed demands on her for sympathy and attention, but not have the responsibilities of a husband. But this was an emergency. Only as son-in-law, on the spot, could he hope to get power of attorney over Mr Fortescue’s affairs; or, if this failed, at least to take over Ellen’s usual task of supervising the old man’s correspondence.
Every other scheme he had already tried, without success. Ellen recalled now his almost blatant attempts to revive the old bitterness within the family—hoping, she realised now, that if the two old people did not actually meet, his stepmother might never get around to putting into practice her intention of asking her former husband to be her executor. It must have been Leonard who had put that old, bitter letter among his stepmother’s papers, deliberately to remind her of old hatreds. And when it mysteriously disappeared—for Ellen herself had burnt it—had he been thrown into guilty panic as to who had taken it, and why? And was it he, in search of it, who had been roaming round the house that night a week or two ago? The loss of the letter could not have been so very important to his plans, since his stepmother had already seen it; but perhaps he felt irrationally uneasy—almost superstitious—about its disappearance. Rather as a burglar might feel if, having decided on a certain address for his enterprises that night, he should open a telephone book in a public call-box and find that address ringed round in pencil.
Perhaps, also, that same night he had been searching Father’s room, and his pockets, in terror lest the old man had already received some document that would give everything away. It must have been Leonard, then, who had sat on the edge of Ellen’s bed that night, hastily sorting through papers and letters collected in the darkness of Mr Fortescue’s room next door. He must have felt it safer to dodge for a minute into the empty, already lighted room with its easy access to the garden, than to risk attracting attention by switching a light on somewhere else to examine his finds. Leonard, too, it must have been moving heavily, furtively, down the sixteen steps of the attic stairs, carrying some cumbersome load of boxes of old papers to examine at his leisure.
Then all those anxious, hurried trips “on business”. Had he been frantically trying to get power of attorney over his stepmother’s affairs? Desperately interviewing her doctors—her lawyers—the nursing-home staff—to find out how many people knew how much about her finances … whether any of them actually knew about her allowance to him. Did the income tax people know? Had they—or the bank—ever told anyone? A thousand possibilities must have battered at his frightened mind.
Thus, at last, had he been driven into marrying Ellen in panic haste. But why did he have to kill her as well?
The two thousand pounds. Ellen recalled Leonard’s strange behaviour when she had shown it to him this afternoon. Now it seemed strange no longer, but wholly understandable. For if the cheque really did represent real money, then it could only be a matter of days before Cousin Laura began asking Ellen why the money had not been withdrawn … and then all possibility of keeping the secret would be at an end. Ellen would know that all these years Leonard had been practising a viciously underhand and malicious deception, falsely humiliating his kind old stepmother in the eyes of those she loved best in order to hide his own real humiliation, and to win acclaim for a spurious generosity. That Ellen, of all people, should learn the truth about all this, would be a disaster he could not contemplate … and there was now only one way to avert it.
With quiet certainty, Ellen understood now why she had to be killed; just as the heiress to a million pounds would understand. It was to save Leonard’s pride. For no grasping, money-mad desperado could want and need a million-pound legacy more than Leonard wanted and needed his lost pride. If she lived, he knew that all her respect for him must vanish for ever, would change, irrevocably, to a pitying revulsion; a lasting contempt. Rather than face this, he would kill her—kill her quietly, in her heavy, intoxicated sleep (or so he thought, and so her recent pretence must have convinced him). Kill her now, before she could learn of his malignant and contemptible deceit—the more contemptible, somehow, for the fact that he had nowhere actually infringed the law—his loathsome behaviour carried no penalty. Once she was dead, she would never know.
Well, of course she wouldn’t…. Just for one second, in the blackness of the chest, Ellen seemed to see again the grey panic on his face, hear the crazy shrillness of his voice as only a few hours ago he had screamed at Melissa in sudden superstitious terror: “How can the dead see …? How can they know …?”
Ellen shivered a little among the stifling blankets, and closed her eyes more tightly to shut out the utter blackness, If she was right about all this, then she would stay here, in this chest, till she was dead. The lid would never open now; nor would Leonard’s hard voice mock her as she struggled out—assuring her that he’d “only been joking”…. That she must “learn to take a joke….” That she “mustn’t be so touchy….”
Suddenly, as she lay there trapped in the darkness, unable to move or even to cry out, Ellen was aware of a freedom such as she had never known. It was like birds bursting into song in the darkness…. Like a great sun rising on a new’ a brilliant world.
The long struggle to love Leonard was over.
CHAPTER XXIV
SO STRANGE, SO intoxicating was this utterly inappropriate sense of freedom, that for a minute Ellen felt almost lightheaded; so much so, that when the curious smell began to seep through the joints of the great chest she thought, for one absurd second, that it must be the smell of freedom … a smell that she had not smelt for months, for years….
Not since she used to smoke, in fact. Occasionally smoked, anyway, and someone had given her that fiddly little petrol lighter that was for ever coming unscrewed and oozing petrol on to things. Those were the days when she was working away from home, of course. Father would never have tolerated a woman smoking in his household … and anyway, Ellen had really been quite glad to give it up … it was a silly, extravagant habit.
The petrol lighter. Petrol. The smell was growing stronger…. More urgent. It was seeping in not just through the joints, surely �
�� the very wood must be saturated with the stuff, gradually soaking through.
Slowly, and with a curious absence of shock, Ellen began to grasp the situation. The chest—perhaps the whole room—must be soaked in petrol; and there could be only one reason.
Somewhere—perhaps only a few inches away from her head—a candle must be burning. Burning quickly or slowly … a tall candle or a short one … the flame creeping quietly, inevitably, lower and lower until it should lick the pool of petrol at its base…. It might happen this very second, or it might not happen for hours…. Not until some unknown arrangements had been made … some alibi established. In her mind’s eye, Ellen looked first at the tiny stub of candle, already flickering into its final pool of wax … and then she looked at the tall, fat handsome candle, brand new, that would burn for hours, far into the deep silence of the night.
It was then that Ellen began to scream.
It was futile, of course, for no one could possibly hear her from downstairs … not through this muffling case of blankets … surrounded by solid oak … with the door of the room shut as well, and then the whole length of two flights of stairs. Frantically, Ellen tried to tap on the wood, but the blankets were everywhere … she could not move her hand enough to get any force into it … it was like the feeble, boneless struggles of a dream…. If only someone would come upstairs … and if only she could get some of these blankets off her face—shift them to the side somehow, get her mouth clear to cry out really loudly …
And in that very moment Ellen did hear someone coming upstairs. Footsteps on the landing below … lots of footsteps … thumping, thudding, clattering … and a growing confusion of voices. Melissa’s voice above all the others, clear and decisive, drowning completely Ellen’s muffled screams:
“But it’s ridiculous! She can’t have disappeared! Leonard, are you sure she’s not in her room? Cousin Laura said she’d gone up to lie down.”
Seven Lean Years Page 19
