by Packer, Vin
Since my visit to the crazy doctor, mother lets me see Moly, but we prefer to go to Moly’s. Mrs. Kent is too up in the clouds over Roddy Sawyer to care, and Dr. Kent doesn’t even know his shoes are tied. At school it is difficult, but we both agree we like putting it over on everybody! Raynor and Gretchen are trying to have children, but L.L. tells Rob to wait. Glorious, glorious is our pretend, and our new Palace of Torture!
— from the diary of Mary Drew Edlin
FEBRUARY, 1956
It was midnight with a slice of saffron moon cut into the sky’s blackness, and a wind stirring the branches of beech and of the old yews and limes, near the Kent home.
Martha, her hair loosened and at her shoulders, watched the night from her bedroom window. She hugged the white sheet she had wrapped around her body, and in the window’s reflection, the candle behind her on the night table flicked its tongue of light, danced and wavered.
Mary Drew stood by the bed, pulling the covers back to expose the mattress. She was dressed in Tony’s red wool jacket that came just above the knees of the black wool slacks she wore. On her feet were riding boots.
“I’m almost ready,” she said.
Martha nodded, her back still turned.
Mary Drew reached in the slit pocket of the jacket and took out the neckties, four of them, all belonging to Tony. She had sneaked them into the flap of her overnight case. She kicked the covers and sheets of the bed into a corner of the room; then she straightened.
She said, “Gretchen, come forth!”
Slowly, Martha turned, walked with her eyes lowered until she reached Mary Drew.
“It is the night not-of-the-full moon,” Mary Drew said. “There can be no madness now, Gretchen.”
“My love for him is not mad,” Martha answered.
“Sane enough to suffer for him?”
“This is a world of pain,” said Martha, “and if I feel the pain, it can only sharpen the sense of pleasure.”
Mary Drew’s reserve broke slightly; her face softened, and she whispered, “Oh, what a good line!”
“I wrote it in the fly-leaf of my history book this morning, so as not to forget,” Martha said. “Come on!”
“Sorry.”
Mary Drew became serious again, raising her hand and pointing at the bed. “This is the Palace of Torture. Here you will know pain because you will want to know it. Do not enter it unless you are willing to die to know it. You must want to know it that much to enter there!”
“I must enter there.”
“For whom?”
“For Raynor.”
“Then quickly,” Mary Drew said.
She stood aside. She watched while the other girl walked across to the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. Then the girl bowed her head. “This is the Palace of Torture. These are the words: Tomb, dungeon, fire, blood, agony, flogging, chains.”
“Have you chosen your word?”
Martha said, “Yes.”
“Speak it.”
“Blood.”
Mary Drew sucked in her breath. She seemed to hesitate. Martha did not look at her, but remained sitting there with her head bowed. Mary Drew reached into her pocket, then crossed to the girl.
“You have chosen wisely,” she said. “You have chosen blood. The grave’s mouth hungers for blood.”
“Then give me the means,” said Martha.
Mary Drew pressed a small object into her hands. Martha doubled her hands into fists and held her wrists up. “Tie these.” She stretched out her ankles, “and these.”
After Mary Drew had knotted the neckties about Martha’s wrists and arms, she walked away from her, went to the window, turned her back and looked at the night.
“I am Raynor,” she said, “I am Raynor now.” She removed her coat with trancelike movements, her back still turned to Martha.
“Yes,” Martha said, “you are.” She held her tied wrists under the sheet.
“I can come to you,” Mary Drew said.
“Yes,” Martha said, “when it is time.”
“There is a candle in your dungeon. I can see that from the road, looking up at your window. I cannot come until you blow it out. I come only by darkness.”
“Are you afraid for me?”
“Oh, God, oh God I” Mary Drew lowered her head, sighing. “Hurry!”
“Yes,” Martha said, “soon.”
“No, now. Now!” Mary Drew clasped her hands to gether, holding them tightly as though they were locked that way, “Gretchen — now!” “Do you know my pain?”
“This is the real Palace of Torture,” Mary Drew answered, “my safety here in the road, watching the candle flicker where you are.”
“I will stop it soon.”
“Make it dark!” Mary Drew cried.
Then it was. Mary Drew rushed across the room. Falling to her knees, she put her face in Martha’s lap, her hands felt the sheet wrapped around the girl, and as they touched the dampness, she began to cry. Her hands worked the knots on Martha’s wrists loose. Martha dropped the small, sharp, silver razor blade to the rug.
“This is my blood, Raynor,” she said.
Mary Drew touched its wet dampness on the sheet with her mouth, until Martha put her hands down and lifted the girl up and brought her tear-washed face to her lips and kissed it slowly, gently, moving her lips across its softness with a certain tenderness, until she found her mouth. Then in their power they toppled back on the stripped-down mattress.
• • •
At one-thirty, Martha said, “Asleep?” “I almost was.” “Put on a light.”
She waited until the sudden brightness hurt her eyes. Then she sat up. “Oh dear, blood on the mattress.”
“I’ll remake the bed,” Martha said. “Hand me your robe.”
“I’d better put my sheet in the bag in the closet, with the others.”
“I’ll do that,” said Edlin.
She struggled into the yellow-towel robe and Martha stretched, yawned and stood up, reaching out for her striped nightgown. While she was putting it over her head she said, “I suppose I ought to wash first. The cut on my thigh’s still going.”
“They never stop, razor cuts. They start up again at the most improbable times too.” Mary Drew picked up the bloody sheet and dragged it across toward the closet. “Last week the one on my arm opened up on the coach, on our way to see Belinda.”
“What’s she like?”
“Belinda? Oh, she’s crazy, I’d say.”
“Do you suppose she misses the family?”
“Oh, she’d miss the farm much more. They’re all like her there. They take care of each other, you know. The brighter ones teach the dumber ones how to dress and wash and everything. They behave just like little mothers. Belinda’s little mother is a moron. They say she could learn a traded has that much I.Q., but I shouldn’t like to imagine what trade it would be.”
“It must be odd,” Martha said, “to live in your own little world.” She opened the door to the bedroom, “Coast is clear, I guess. I won’t be a minute.”
It was nearly two when the pair decided to roam. They often roamed when Mary Drew spent the night at the Kents. They stayed on the property, wandering about between the old yews and limes, listening to the eerie night noises of the nuthatches and tree creepers and playing pretend until their eyes were sleep-swollen and their bodies limp from restlessness.
That night they sat on the white iron bench by the garden, looking off toward the shadowy limes surrounding the big house, and up at the single bed-light showing in Martha’s room on second.
“I wish my family were like yours,” said Mary Drew.
“Oh?”
“I do. Mine would be out after us with guns.”
“Mine too, if they heard.”
“Of course, but they don’t.”
“Has your mother said anything lately?”
“Oh, Moly, not to me. Not since the crazy doctor told her to leave us the hell alone. But she does carry on at fath
er. I hear her.”
“And what has he had to say lately for an answer?”
“This and that. It shocks him, I think.”
“Really?”
“Oh, he’s awfully peeved with Philip Craig. He thinks we’ve been there before, or that I have, at any rate. I’m sure he thinks that old drunk has taken advantage of me.”
Martha giggled.
“Moly?” Mary Drew said, “Remember the night we were running from Craig’s place, after he found us?”
“Oh, God, I’ll never forget that! Nor the look on his face. I bet he imagined he was having delirium tremens.”
“Not that, exactly, I mean, when we were running.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“It was as though we were running away from everything. It was queer, wasn’t it, that neither of us thought to grab our coats. We just ran like that. And then, in the cold,” Mary Drew frowned, “and yet, it wasn’t cold, if you know what I mean. We weren’t cold. Remember how we walked after we got out of sight of his place. We simply walked along, as though it were summer.”
“It felt like summer, Druid. It was so odd!”
“I’ve never had such a night. It was as though we were protected, as though we were really apart. I felt we were special.”
“I did too.”
“I know you did. We both sensed it.” They sat on the white iron bench musing over this awhile, looking at the garden in the moonlight without really seeing it. A green woodpecker mocked them from the branches of a lime, and a cloud thread suddenly crossed the slice of moon and passed on, swallowed up by the overwhelming blackness of the sky. They wore their coats, but they were unbuttoned for the cool wind to nudge near their skin. Off on the road, even traffic had seemed to succumb to the night’s command of silence.
Finally Martha turned and faced Mary Drew. “Want to pretend we’re L.L. and Rob now?”
“Oh, yes!”
“I’ve never thought of you in any other way than solemnly, sacredly, Rob.” “Nor have I of you.”
“Sometimes I fear that I shall fear for you no more.”
“Sometimes,” Mary Drew answered, “I wonder if we’re not like leaves that have been tossed by some warm wind of heaven, far from the tree of others’ living, to rustle in our own special sky.”
Martha took her hand, held it, studied it, her eyes fastened to it. “That’s a very good line,” she said in a hushed voice. “I’m sure that’s exactly how Rob would talk.”
“Their love is more profound than any other,” Mary Drew answered. “They’re different from Raynor and Gretchen. I feel that, do you?”
“They’re poetic,” Martha said, “ethereal. I do so understand them. They’re lost from each other and to each other, and oh, God, sometimes when we pretend we’re them, I feel myself crying for them with real, true tears. They break my heart.”
Mary Drew said, “Mine also.”
They sat pressed together side by side, momentarily. Then Mary Drew plucked Martha’s clinging hands from her arm, held them and said, “L.L., whatever it is that makes us fear tonight must be love’s other name.”
“You’re trembling, Rob.”
“I can’t help myself. I can feel you all through me.”
“Rob, don’t think of leaving, don’t think of death. They’re the same for us.”
“L.L.!”, was all Mary Drew said. Her lips came close to Martha’s and again, “L.L.!” until she was saying muffled and husky words that groped and faltered, and then were silenced in a darkness of warm hair.
Both girls trembled then.
They moved, and found each other’s eyes again, burning away the night between their faces.
“Oh, Martha!” Mary Drew said, and Martha’s face twitched as though a slap had stung it.
“Don’t,” she said.
Mary Drew sighed and turned her face away. “Sometimes,” she answered, “it’s hard to pretend them.”
Martha was quiet for a long moment while Mary Drew waited for the girl to make some sound. When finally Martha spoke, Mary Drew heard the new tone with bitter disappointment.
She said, “Look!”
“What?”
“Look up on the third floor!” Martha said. “There’s a light in the Crow’s Nest, and see who’s there, by the draperies!”
“Duck down!” Mary Drew pulled the girl’s hand, “Hurry!”
“No,” Martha said. “We don’t have to. She’s not looking for us. She’s closing them, naturally, so no one can see in.”
“Looks like Mr. Sawyer’s going to paint the fence again,” Mary Drew snickered.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cross-examination of Mrs. William Kent by Crown Prosecutor Baird on the first day of the trial
AUGUST 25, 1956
Q. When this friendship between the two girls started it was just a happy relationship between two young girls?
A. Yes.
Q. You and Dr. Kent were pleased that Martha had a friend?
A. Yes.
Q. And the Edlins were also pleased?
A. In the beginning, yes.
Q. And later?
A. Mrs. Edlin was worried about the intensity of the friendship.
Q. Were you, Mrs. Kent?
A. I thought it would pass. I felt sorry for Mary Drew. She was polite and well-behaved, and she seemed to be happy when she visited Martha.
Q. And not happy at home?
A. She was very jealous of her older half-brother. She told of fights with her mother, because ner mother favored him.
Q. Rightly or wrongly she gave you this impression and you believed her more than you believed Mrs. Edlin?
A. I had no discussion about that particular matter with Mrs. Edlin, but I felt that Mrs. Edlin was a bit high-strung.
Q. The girls wrote novels together and discussed them?
A. Yes.
Q. And they wrote diaries?
A. Mary Drew did.
Q. Did Martha?
A. No.
Q. Could it be possible that Martha did keep a diary without your knowledge?
A. I suppose it could be possible.
Q. And that later on, the diary was lost?
A. I really don’t know.
Q. But it might be possible?
A. Yes, it might be.
Q. Now, Mrs. Kent … have you examined the Edlin girl’s diary?
A. Yes.
Q. There is reference to a Palace of Torture, in a February entry. I’ll read the specific entry, in part:
“Another glorious night at Holy’s. We visited the Palace of Torture! It was so gruesome and beautiful!”
Do you recollect that entry?
A. Yes. I do not know what it means.
Q. Later on in the same entry there is mention made of their roaming about the property. “Again we roamed,” is the wording. Was that unknown to you?
A. Entirely unknown to me.
Q. And to Dr. Kent?
A. Yes.
Q. On the night the girls visited Trumpet Head and returned without their coats, was that unknown to you?
A. No.
Q. To Dr. Kent?
A. Yes. I did not want to worry him.
Q. Were you worried, Mrs, Kent?
A. I believed the girls were upset by their principal reporting their close relationship to the families. I believed it was a reaction to that incident.
Q. Did their scratches worry you, or their being without coats?
A. Yes.
Q. But you did not tell Dr. Kent?
A. No.
Q. You felt you were better able to handle it than he was?
A. Dr. Kent had so many worries.
Q. And you did not?
A. I did too, of course, but — Yes, I did too.
Q. To get back to that night in February, Mrs. Kent. There is reference to an episode at 2:30 in the morning, a reference to “Mr. Sawyer painting the fence again.” Do you remember that?
A. I remember the entry.
&n
bsp; Q. What, in your own words, Mrs. Kent, took place.
A. I believe that is a reference to the night Mr. Sawyer was ill. Mr. Sawyer is a former student of my husband’s. He has been staying with us, on the third floor of our home, for over a year. On this particular night he had an ulcer attack. He was in great pain. He had gone downstairs to get a glass of milk. I had awakened upon hearing him, and I had gone to see what was the matter. I had accompanied him back up to the third floor to be positive he would be all right. While I was pouring him brandy, I heard a disturbance on the stairs outside. I opened the door and found the girls there. When I asked them to go to their room, to Martha’s room, Martha answered, ‘We’ve found you out for certain this time.’ I criticized her for her rudeness and threatened to telephone Mary Drew’s parents and send her home. Then both girls went back to the second floor. I was distressed that Martha had behaved so vulgarly.
Q. Did you tell Dr. Kent about this episode!
A. Yes.
Q. In another entry, Mary Drew records:
“Now it is all out! Dr. and Mrs. Kent are going to get a divorce, and Mrs. Kent is going to America with Roddy Sawyer.”
Is that correct?
A. Must I answer the question?
Q. I am trying to determine whether or not Mary Drew Edlin is deluded, as the psychiatrist claims, or whether she speaks the truth.
A. I am going to divorce Dr. Kent.
Q. And marry Mr. Sawyer?
A. My future plans are uncertain.
Q. But it was as a result of that evening in February, that you decided to speak to your husband about your feelings for Mr. Sawyer.
A. Yes.
Q. And did you at one time consider going to America with Mr. Sawyer?
A. Yes.
Q. And taking Martha?
A. Yes.
Q. Mary Drew records in her diary: “I am also going along.” Was any slight mention made of that possibility?
A. None. She had that idea, both she and Martha, but I told them it was out of the question. I told them that very emphatically!
Q. Did you think they believed that it was out of the question?
A. I did. For one thing, I made it quite clear that Mrs. Edlin would never grant permission for such a thing. For another, I explained that it would be impossible for me to afford.
