The Girl Who Couldn't Read

by John Harding

  She stood brushing the snow off her coat. I stared at her. It was deathly silent, that special kind of silence when it snows, every sound muffled. At last she must have felt my eyes upon her, because her hand stopped mid-movement and she looked up at me.

  ‘Dr Gargery, what is it? You look so strange.’

  I didn’t say anything. I was thinking how tantalising was the small hint of flesh that I could just make out above the collar of her coat. I was remembering how white and smooth was the skin hidden beneath that collar. I was relishing the thought of that silky white ribbon.

  ‘Dr Gargery,’ she said again. ‘What’s the matter? Why are you looking at me in that way?’

  I said nothing. I took a step toward her. Her face was all alarmed now.

  ‘Dr Gargery, why don’t you speak? You look so very peculiar. What are you doing? I don’t like it. Please, sir, take me back to the hospital now; you’re frightening me.’

  There were only a few feet between us. I took another step. She began backing off, taking a step back every time I took another forward, until, although she didn’t know it, she was almost touching a tree behind her. Of a sudden I took three swift paces and she retreated and came up against the tree. I reached out my hands and seized her by the lapels of her coat, ripping them apart, scattering buttons around us like shrapnel.

  ‘No!’

  She opened her mouth to scream, which of course I could not allow. I let go the coat and seized her by the throat to keep her quiet. She was too shocked to say anything anyway. Her lips moved soundlessly, mouthing what she thought was my name. I got my thumbs into her throat and squeezed with all my might. Her eyes began to pop out the way their eyes always do. She sank to her knees. I applied more pressure and she somehow managed to release a half-strangled squawk and I whispered, not unkindly, ‘Keep calm, my dear, for I have to tell you everything is all right. Very soon now, in less than a minute, less than half a minute in fact, you will be with your beloved John Shepherd for ever.’

  A great shudder went through her body, and then it became limp. I was shaking myself, as you do in these situations. I must have drifted off somewhere and came to with the awareness of her dead weight pulling on my wrists. My hands were still clasped around her neck. I let go and she fell forward against my legs. I took a step back and she collapsed onto the thin carpet of snow. I felt hot and sweaty and took out my handkerchief and wiped my brow.

  She had fallen with her head on one side. Her face was purple and contorted. I hate that and avoided looking at it. I bent down and felt around the back of her neck, where the white ribbon was tied. I calmed myself with deep breaths until my hands had stopped trembling and I was able to undo the knot. I slipped off the ribbon and put it in my pocket. It was just a piece of ribbon, nothing to connect it with her. I wanted to have something of her, to remind me of that moment when I held her fragile life in the whim of my fingers.

  More myself now, I began to think what I must do. I looked all around. Everything was quiet, and I was reassured that no one had witnessed what I’d done. I walked back to the edge of the wood and peered out between the trees. It would soon be dark. I needed to hurry. I returned to what had been Caroline Adams and was now a piece of dead meat. I could not leave her here where she would be in plain sight if anyone came into the wood. I bent down and took up the reticule, whose strings were still looped around her wrist. I rifled through the contents. There was my letter. I slipped it in my pocket. I helped myself to the small wad of dollar bills; she had no need of them now. There were a few coins, which I did not bother with, and a little notebook that I thought might contain information that would identify her, so I took that as well. It was too dark now to be able to read it here. After making sure there were no other papers in the reticule, I closed it and left it tied to her wrist.

  Squatting on my haunches, I got my arms beneath her, lifted her and staggered to my feet. She was a tall woman, heavier than most, but I had that almost superhuman strength that always comes at such times. I carried her to the far side of the copse and out of it, staggering as my feet sank into the snow. I trudged on for forty or fifty yards and then the snow grew deeper still. I realised there was some sort of dip in the ground here. I let her drop and then fell to my knees and began scooping out snow, working furiously until I’d made the hollow some couple of feet deep. I rolled the body into it and then began heaping snow back over her. With the help of the snow falling from the sky she was soon completely covered. Thanks to the depression I had made, there was no telltale mound; the surface was smooth and level.

  I backed away. I took off my jacket and, walking backwards, drew it from side to side across the trail of my footprints, more or less erasing them. It was probably an unnecessary precaution, because falling snow was covering them fast anyway, but it meant that even should my footprints from the building to the little wood remain, no one would be able to track them further. Once I cleared the other side of the wood, I put my jacket back on and made my way as fast as I could toward the building.

  By now it was near enough dark and, with the sky full of snow, there was neither moon nor stars. I had just reached the back of the hospital when I heard voices, coming from the direction of the front door. I made my way along the side of the building and peeped around the corner. The visitors were leaving and were walking up the drive toward the river to get the boat. I had a sudden moment of panic at the thought of the boat. Would Caroline Adams be missed when she did not return with the rest of the passengers? Then I relaxed. There was no one who would be making the journey back on the boat but those who came on it. The trip itself was so short it was unlikely Miss Adams would have had time on the way out to strike up an acquaintance with another visitor who might notice her absence going back. She had told me herself she had no family to miss her. I was pretty sure I was safe.

  I looked out across the grounds at the way I had come, the few feet nearest the house now illuminated from the lights within. Snow continued to fall. Caroline Adams would rest concealed within her icy cocoon until the spring melt. And by that time I intended to be well away from here, several hundred miles out west.

  I hadn’t time now to stand here ruminating on all this. Jane Dove! I hadn’t thought about her for a single moment in the past hour. My heart sank and even the triumph of having the interfering Miss Adams out of the way was deflated at the thought that Jane might have been found out, our deception discovered, and that in all likelihood I was about to be summarily dismissed and sent on my way into who knew what danger. I hurried inside.

  My clothes were a mess, of course; I was pretty soaked through. I went up to my room where there was a fire lit ready for my evening there. I took off my jacket and pants and draped them over chairs as close to the fire as I dared, to dry them. I put on Shepherd’s spare pair of pants. I took my letter to Caroline Adams from the jacket pocket, read it through with a grim satisfaction and then consigned it to the flames.

  Then I had a look in the notebook. There were a few addresses, mostly female names, which I thought most likely to be those of old school friends. There were several drafts of letters to Shepherd, all violently crossed out and unfinished. I would have liked to read them, but there was no time now. The following pages were blank and I was in the act of throwing the book into the fire when a couple of pieces of paper fell out. I picked them up. A used rail ticket from Columbus bearing yesterday’s date. She had evidently travelled overnight. There was a ticket for the left-luggage office at the city railroad depot, which brought a smile to my face. It almost certainly meant she had only arrived this morning, checked her baggage and come straight out to the island. She had not booked into a lodging house or hotel, where she might have confided her plans to someone, or where she would be missed when she didn’t return that evening.

  The other item was a small square of folded paper which, when I opened it out, proved to be the front page of a newspaper. The headline read: ‘CONVICTED KILLER AMONG DEAD IN RAIL DISASTER’. Underne
ath, the subheading said: ‘Accident Saves State Executioner A Job’. And below that there was the police photograph of me, taken soon after my arrest, with my hair sticking up wildly and my eyes staring madly out at the camera. I understood now why Caroline Adams had thought she’d seen me before. The photograph was simply not a good enough likeness for her to remember why. There was also a picture of me as Othello, in blackface, so no possibility of recognition there. As well as the lurid headline and opening story about me, the article contained details of the possible causes of the accident and a list of those identified as dead or injured. It was dated a few days after the accident. It struck me that the late Miss Adams had been more interested in this list than in the sensational headlines and, having reassured herself that Shepherd was not among the dead, had probably not looked at it again since, hence her failure to work out why I seemed familiar. Besides, why would she connect me with a dead man? It wasn’t something you would naturally do.

  I ripped the notebook to pieces and threw them into the fire. The left-luggage ticket I kept. When I finally left the island and made my run for it, I might find something of use to me there. If I were ever in a position where it might incriminate me by connecting me with the murdered woman, I could swallow it in a moment. I was about to throw the newspaper cutting into the flames too, but something stayed my hand, some unaccustomed foolish sentimentality, if you will; I realised it was all I had of the old me, that picture as the Moor and that horrid police photograph. Of course I had a new identity now, as John Shepherd, and soon, before the winter was over and the snow had melted and revealed my latest misdeed to the world, I would have to have another still. But for now, I discovered I wasn’t quite ready to relinquish my past completely; I could not bring myself to say goodbye to my former self just yet.

  Even as I did so, I told myself I was being a fool. This little piece of paper could have me hanged. I knew I should listen to this voice, but I didn’t. I folded the clipping and looked about for somewhere to hide it. I didn’t dare risk a drawer or the pocket of my spare pants. I had a fear of someone poking about in my room and when I now asked myself why, the answer that came was O’Reilly. She and I had become enemies over the matter of Jane Dove and I would not have put it past her to search through my things. Casting about, my eye lighted upon Moral Treatment lying on my bedside table. I slipped the cutting between its pages. I liked the idea of its being in there, with the book right out in the open. It was the last place anyone would look.

  I looked out the window. It was dark now, but in the light spilling out from the building I could see the snow still fell, the air almost solid with it. The paths that had been cleared earlier were already covered by a fresh layer I reckoned must be several inches deep. The branches of the trees hung heavy with snow. I was reassured that Caroline Adams would sleep soundly in her bed until spring.

  I turned to the fire and was watching the final pieces of paper blacken and crumble into ash when the bell for dinner went. My jacket was almost dry now. I put it on and hurried downstairs to the staff dining room, where I found Morgan already seated and sipping a glass of red wine.

  ‘Ah, Shepherd, there you are,’ he said with a smile. ‘Let me get you a glass of wine.’ He poured it and handed it to me as I sat down.

  I hardly dared ask about Jane Dove. I knew Morgan well enough by now to understand that his good humour did not mean that I was safe. It would be just like him to play cat and mouse with me before delivering the killer blow.

  When he said nothing, I began to convince myself that this was in fact the case and that he was just teasing me, keeping me in suspense to prolong the torture. In the end I could stand it no longer. I cleared my throat nervously. ‘How did it go, the, um, the reading with Jane Dove?’

  ‘Oh that,’ he said, as he picked up his knife and fork and began sawing at a piece of meat on his plate. ‘I have to hand it to you. She reads extremely well.’ He paused in his dissection of the meat and looked up at me. ‘I enjoyed it immensely. Especially the pieces from Hamlet.’

  My hand shook so violently wine spilled from my glass and dripped onto the white tablecloth. I had never taught Jane Dove anything from Hamlet; it was not something she had learned.

  21

  I lay awake half the night; when I did sleep I restlessed, tossing and turning, troubled by a succession of dreams in which the face of Caroline Adams loomed before me, the skin purple, the eyes popping out. Another time I awoke bathed in sweat after I felt my hands upon the clammy, pimpled neck of a plucked chicken which, when I looked at it, turned into the face of my Aunt Martha, who surely merited such a fate since she never intervened to prevent the violent excesses of my uncle and his vicious belt. But curiously, when morning finally came, with the sun shining bright, the thing that concerned me was neither the unfortunate Miss Adams, nor anything like that, but Jane Dove. The fact that she had read Hamlet to Morgan meant she had been fooling us – well, me, really – all along, simply pretending she could not read. I wondered what else she might be simulating and why she should want to do so. There was some mystery here and I meant to get to the bottom of it. I liked this girl immensely. I was attracted by her gangly good looks, her dark haunting eyes, her graceful neck; but none of that mattered. I would not be made a fool of; I would not be used.

  As soon as I could escape my duties I went to her room. She was sitting at the window, staring out at the wintry landscape. Great Expectations was near to hand and I wondered if she had been reading it and had hurriedly put it down when she heard my knock. She smiled brightly at me. ‘Look at the snow!’ she said. ‘Is it not wonderful?’

  I gave a cursory nod and she suddenly looked anxious. ‘Oh, sir, did I not pass the test?’

  ‘Oh yes, you passed all right. You passed a little too well.’

  She was puzzled now. ‘I don’t understand. How could I do too well?’

  ‘You and I must have a serious conversation. I have tried my level best to help you. I have lifted you out of the tedious indignities of this place and you in return have taken advantage of me and deceived me.’

  Her face fell. ‘What do you mean? What is it you accuse me of?’

  ‘Dr Morgan tells me you read Hamlet to him. How is that possible when you have not learned it?’

  She began to laugh.

  ‘What …?’

  ‘I did learn it, from you, when you read it to me and acted it out. I could not help but remember some of it. “To be or not to be that is the question.” It just stuck in my mind.’

  ‘Dr Morgan said you read it to him. How did you know which piece was the soliloquy if you could not read the words?’

  ‘That is not the way it happened. When I had finished Great Expectationing, Dr Morgan asked me to read something else. I desperated, as you can well imagine, for I had no other pieces prepared and thought I was redhanded. The only other book in the room was the Shakespeare and he picked it up and handed it to me and told me to read something from it. My heart was beating as if it was going to burst, I can tell you, as I expected to be found out, but then I saw a chance, a small glimmer of hope. I opened it at random, because, as you say, I could not tell one page from another, but he had sat down opposite me. I lifted the book so all he could see was the cover. I gave him some speeches from Hamlet and a bit of Macbeth. I am sure I didn’t get them quite right, because I was only remembering what I’d heard and had not learned them as we did the Dickens. But he didn’t seem to notice. To tell you true, sir, I do not think Dr Morgan familiars much with Shakespeare.’

  I shook my head in admiration at the resourcefulness of her improvisation and also at the sheer audacity of it. To think Morgan had considered this girl an imbecile. She had run rings around him, the silly old fool. I smiled. ‘That was very quick-thinking of you. I’m sorry I doubted you.’

  She ignored that and looked out the window again, avoiding my eyes. ‘Sir, I have a request to make of you.’

  ‘A request? What is it?’

  ‘I s
hould like to go skating.’

  ‘Skating!’

  She turned to me, eyes gleaming. ‘It possibles, sir, really it does. Eva has skates she will lend me the use of and although it is true there is no lake, there is a pond at the back of the house and a couple of the garden boys have cleared the snow from it for Eva and she has been skating there. Please, sir, please let me.’

  I was about to say no automatically, because I could imagine what Morgan would think of the idea, but then I thought, Why not? Where’s the harm in it? Besides, I didn’t need to ask Morgan’s permission. He’d given me a free hand with my experiment, more or less. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I will get up an hour early tomorrow morning and you can have your skate before breakfast.’

  I was beginning to think ahead now, to ready myself for my departure, which would have to be before the snow melted and revealed Caroline Adams’s body. On counting the money I’d taken from her purse, I found it to amount to sixty dollars. With what I could pry out of Morgan by way of salary I would have a pretty good stake to finance my flight west. I looked more and more to the future and the new life I envisaged for myself because my existence in the hospital now was underscored by a vague feeling of dread. I worried that Miss Adams might be missed and that she might have told someone where she was going. Every time I was near a window with a view of the river, I could not help looking anxiously out across the black water expecting any moment to see a boat full of police heading toward the island. Of course I had lived for years with that kind of fear, but this time was somehow different. It was having had the noose practically around my neck that had done it. Before, I had convinced myself I was invincible; now I knew it wasn’t so. I was not fool enough to think the train wreck had been the work of providence protecting me, or even of the devil, looking after his own. I knew it was pure blind luck, a royal flush in the first deal, such an extraordinary piece of good fortune that I could not help feeling I must have used up all my reservoir of that substance and was now due no more.