Staring back at him, Helena smiled and nodded down. They dropped as if the floor had opened up over a huge chasm. They tumbled downward from the warm, comfortable environment of Charles’s drawing room, falling through the floor, through the ceiling of the room below and downward. The speed of their fall increased with every room they passed through. Helena looked at Charles as they hurtled through each of the rooms his expression had lost its mocking, quizzical air. It had been replaced by first by fear and then that had changed to an enormous grin. Looking at her he mouthed,
“Trying to scare me? I’ve always loved a roller coaster. You’ll need to try a bit harder than this.” Ignoring him, Helena slowed their descent, halting them at ceiling level of a large room.
Gesturing to the room below them, she asked him,
“What for you would be hell? Repetition? Boredom? Unrelenting labour? Or do you fear pain, unremitting pain? Perhaps you think, believe, that you could cope. Convinced that nothing would defeat you. In your arrogance do you imagine that whatever was to happen to you it would be no more than a brief sojourn, that the cream will always rise to the top, that genius will out and you will become in the blink of an eye, chief helper to Satan?”
Smiling, with pity in her eyes, she again gestured to the scene in the room below.
“Charles darling, this little bit of hell is mine. Four rooms; able to hold as many as I want, for as long as I want, doing whatever I want. This room I enjoy visiting.”
Charles looked down at the people in the room, one group in each corner. The group below him consisted of a man in a legal wig, a policeman, a person whose features were obscured by a hood and a man who looked like a judge. The policeman was led to a large wooden gibbet that backed onto one of the walls that formed the corner by the hooded executioner. He was led up the steps of the gallows to the platform, was stood under the noose and the noose was then lowered over his head.
“You have disgraced the uniform that you should wear with pride. Corruption in any form is reprehensible; the worse kind of corruption is to cause a fellow human being to die by perjuring yourself and entreating others to do likewise. This must surely be considered murder of the cruellest kind. The only sentence I am allowed by law to pass for premeditated murder is death. Death by hanging. Hangman, carry out the sentence!”
The hangman tightened the noose that was around the policeman’s neck. The policeman who was terrified, having soiled himself while the judge had been speaking to him. The hangman then stepped to one side of the gibbet; he reached up and pulled a lever and a trapdoor in the floor of the platform, shot open under the feet of the policeman. The policeman’s body dropped like a stone jerking to a stop when he reached the full extent of the rope. A loud snap vibrated around the room and the policeman’s head flew off allowing his still twitching body to fall into the pit. The head flew sideways, landing away from the hole his body had dropped into and rolled to the side of the platform staring at the judge’s bench. His eyes were still blinking.
Helena leaned over to Charles and whispered in excitement.
“The head was my idea, I made the rope too long so it pulls his head off. Keep watching.”
The policeman lay at the bottom of the pit that the trapdoor opened into, blood flowing from the jagged wound around his neck. The judge and the lawyer peered into the pit, shuddered and looked away. The judge returned to his seat. The lawyer sat down in his chair and stared ahead of him and the executioner leaned against the gibbet, appearing to be deep in thought.
“Pay close attention,” said Helena, “you’ll love the next part.”
Charles stared down at the tableau below him. The judge, lawyer and executioner were frozen in the positions they had assumed at the end of the scene. As he continued to watch, first one hand and then a second reached up out of the pit grasped the edge of the opening and pulled the headless body up onto the floor of the gallows. The hands blindly reached across towards the edge of the wooden floor grasped the head by the hair and placed it back onto the bodies’ neck. The now recognisable policeman rolled his head from side to side and took his position back in the makeshift dock. Moments later the same scene began to be replayed as it had been before.
“Prometheus’ punishment was nothing by comparison to this. He only had his liver eaten once each day by an eagle. His punishment ended after some years when Heracles killed the eagle and freed Prometheus. This punishment will continue for all eternity. Do you understand Charles? I don’t need to explain, do I?”
Ashen faced, Charles stared at the makeshift courtroom and gallows.
“Does it hurt him? Does he remember?”
“Of course it hurts. What would be the point if it didn’t? Does he remember? Yes, he remembers every agonising detail. Every repetition reinforces the memory. Each time the memory is a little clearer a little more vivid, as of course is the expectation of what is to come. He will spend the remainder of eternity with the terror he is experiencing increasing, over and over again. He will be less able to cope with the pain, though unable to do anything other than repeat that experience time and again. The other actors in the tableau become more vengeful as he will not, cannot, die. So his suffering increases. The other actors are also encouraged to add new dimensions to his punishment to heighten his pain and terror. They’re having a tremendous time.”
Charles turned his head and looked with wonder at Helena,
“Why? There must be a why. You would have to be even more damaged than it appears, to do this for fun, without reason. So,” he said pausing for effect,
“Why?”
Helena looked at Charles with indifference.
“I showed this to you as an illustration, as a warning. Your opinion of me is irrelevant. That you realise the seriousness of our agreement and are aware that it is binding until completion is important. You now need to consider how we can persuade your granddaughter to help us, so that we can help her.” Then without warning, Helena changed her mind and answered his question in a flat matter of fact voice,
“I was framed, set up by the detective you saw hanged. I didn’t do what he said I had done. I didn’t kill her ladyship, her son did and I was engaged to him. He paid the detective to frame me.”
“Where’s the son?”
A bitter smile crossed her face, making it appear that she was in pain as she said,
“You don’t want to know.”
For a brief moment, Charles considered asking again but thought better of it and asked instead,
“So you’re innocent?”
Helena stopped in her tracks, turned around and looked at Charles. Hesitating, she considered what she should say.
“No, not innocent of everything, just that death. It wasn’t that I didn’t deserve to be executed, just not that time. I’ll leave you now to consider how you are going to overcome your problem. Please don’t let me down.”
Chapter 19
Jemima waited for the shop to close. Her patience frazzled by the long afternoon of espresso and tedium. She watched as Bacchus left and went across the road to the pub to meet the pretty vicar. She watched as the town, over a period of a couple of hours stopped being a hive of commercial and retail activity and became a calmer more relaxed social hub for the genteel geriatrics.
The coffee shop she had adopted as her headquarters had combined a minimalist modern look that drew in the trendy younger clientele combined with drawing room furniture, leather Chesterfield sofas and enormous wing-backed chairs that appealed to the more mature customer. Swivelling around in her seat she looked at the artwork produced by local artists, some quite reasonable, that lined the walls; titles and prices on small pasteboard cards under each picture. The rubber plants positioned around the room created smaller private areas and afforded her the opportunity to watch the Ben Sanderson's shop undisturbed.
The Library, Ben's bookshop/coffee shop, was the meeting place for the über chic yummy mummy's who dropped in after the school run to meet and gossip. Later the
clientele changed to a combination of sprightly pensioners and teenagers from the local public and state schools. Its appeal was its laid back and bohemian philosophy that gave The Library an edge over the competition. It had the added advantage of adopting the American coffee shop, bookshop, and library approach. It encouraged a read before you buy culture. Its manager was her target.
Jemima stared at The Library, hoping for Ben to emerge. When he didn’t, she resumed thinking about Felicities burning question. Why was Bacchus, Sanderson’s main heir? Main, apart from the shop and a few quid to the cripple, Ben. All of the obvious reason’s had been thought through in minute detail. Relation? No evidence had been found anywhere to support any connection, no matter how tenuous. Work colleague? Wrong profession and no indication that either of them had ever worked in the others field or had any connection to it. Friend of the family? Again Thrasher had found nothing to indicate that the families had known each other. So why Bacchus?
To Felicity; answering that question was vital. Jemima’s knowledge of Ernest Sanderson and his alleged persecution of the Cortez was based entirely on comments gleaned from Felicity. That both her grandfather Charles and then her sister had allowed one man to be such an inconvenience struck Jemima as suspicious. She had spent a good part of the afternoon, while staring at the shop across the road, wondering why he had been allowed that degree of power. Was this attempted industrial espionage or misplaced filial devotion? His brother Jonas, a celebrated and, she had been told, revered research chemist, had a heart attack and died? So what? Why would a family tragedy escalate to such an extent that it obsessed a successful businessman for forty years and has left her sociopathic sister panicking over the repercussions of a bequest? To Jemima the question that needed answering was; why was her sister dangerously preoccupied with everything Sanderson and now Bacchus?
Jemima finished her fifth double espresso and thought about ordering another. Deciding against a sixth espresso, she was more wired than was safe. She rose, paid her bill and walked across the high street towards The Library.
Her plan formed that afternoon subsequent to her telephone conversation with Felicity; had been to wait for him to leave the shop, follow him home or wherever he went and then find a way to affect an introduction. As the coffee shop was showing every sign of closing and Ben was still in the book shop and showing no signs of leaving she decided that she had to revert to plan B. Muttering to herself as she left the coffee shop and walked towards the bookshop,
“Plan B. I didn’t have a plan A.”
Decision made she strode up to the impressive oak and glass front door of The Library and turned the large brass handle. The door creaked, as it swung open. Pushing against the weight of the door she opened it to its fullest extent and called,
“Hello, hello anyone there?” and then,
“HELLO,” at the top of her voice.
Nothing.
Her customary assertiveness deserted her as she stood on the doorstep wondering what to do next.
With mounting frustration and irritation she mumbled to herself,
“You, my friend; need a lesson in security.”
Jemima walked into the middle of the shop threw her jacket onto a leather sofa and walked behind the long zinc counter and began making herself a large cup of Darjeeling tea. Still no one came to investigate. She punched the cost of the tea into the cash register and put her money in the drawer along with the other thousand pounds or so already in it and slammed it shut.
Nothing.
Taking her tea she went across to a sofa, placed her tea on the coffee table in front of it and walked over to the bookshelves.
“Medical textbooks, they should be nice and heavy.” She muttered to herself as she took down a stack from the shelf, walked over to the zinc counter struggling with their weight and dropped them. The noise from the dropped textbooks bouncing off the metal counter onto the floor was biblical. You would have had to be dead not to have heard the cacophony of sound they produced as they slammed onto the floor.
Nothing.
Resigned to waiting; Jemima sat on the sofa, picked up her tea and settled back with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Sipping the tea, the book on her lap unopened, Jemima savoured the musky spiciness of what was considered to be the champagne of teas and studied the room.
The zinc counter faced the main entrance and extended two-thirds of the length of the room and was centred to mirror the large double doors and expansive windows stretching across the front of the building. Either side of the counter and extending around each side of the room to the windows in the form of square brackets; there were floor to ceiling book shelves with ladders on runners that allowed access to the upper shelves that stretched twenty feet from the floor. This floor concerned itself with fiction and some non-fiction textbooks. The remainder of the non-fiction was on the first floor. Downstairs the fiction ranged from the classics to cutting edge literary fiction, from crime to science fiction and historical fiction to a new and imaginative section reserved for showcasing the talents of local writers. The textbooks were medical and nursing.
The faint sound of laughter and the gentle clomp of footsteps interrupted her examination of her surroundings. Standing; she walked behind the counter and helped herself to a second cup of Darjeeling tea and rang the money into the cash register. The sharp bang of the cash register opening had the desired effect. A frightened girl’s voice asked,
“Ben did you lock the front doors before we went up to the office?”
“I can’t remember. Let’s go and have a look and see what the noise was. It’ll be nothing.”
“Are you mad? The shop could be full of armed robbers emptying the cash register and...”
Exasperation flaring, Ben interrupted.
“Don’t worry we’ll be fine.”
“How in god’s name will blind optimism stop us getting killed or worse...?”
The voice that answered shocked them both into silence.
“Because, he listened. Ben was right when he identified the sound that startled you as a cash register having an amount rung into it, the drawer opening and then closing. If I were the robber you supposed that I was, I would have felt for the release under the drawer taken the money and left the drawer open. No noise. If I was burgling the shop I wouldn’t have stayed for a chat once you heard my bungling attempts to take the money, I would be halfway to London by now.” Jemima paused for a moment to let them come down the stairs and into the shop.
Remaining behind the counter while they descended into the body of the shop, she studied them with interest. The girl was a well-bred, dim teenager, who she thought acerbically, would marry a banker called Rupert and live in the shires with two point four children and Labradors. Ben was tall and gangly with surfer dude blonde hair, bead necklace and bracelet, bookish glasses, a single crutch and a curious expression on his face.
“Tea, coffee?” Jemima asked Ben, smiling at him and ignoring the girl.
“Macchiato please,” he replied continuing to stare with open interest at Jemima.
“I’ll see you tomorrow ‘Rand,” he said to his companion. “This might take a while.”
“I doubt it.” she said, shrugged and walked out of the double doors without a backward glance.
Continuing to stare at Jemima, he limped to a brown leather chesterfield sofa in front of the windows and perched on the edge of the cushion.
“We haven’t been introduced. I’m Ben, and you are?”
“Jemima. You can’t find a good book at this time of the afternoon anywhere can you?”
“That’s why you’re here?”
“No.”
She carried the tray of drinks with panache, twirling it around her head and body as she crossed the polished wooden floor to the sofas. Placing the tray on a low table, she stepped back and held her hands palm up at her sides in a gesture of voila. Ben applauded and then gestured for her to sit down and enjoy her tea.
“Good books are easy t
o find if you know where to look and what to look for.” Ben said smiling.
“You know what’s good and where to find it?” She asked, teasing him.
Ben considered her question for a moment. He realised that he was being teased, but this time he didn’t mind. Usually, he would have reacted, snarling at the tormentor as he walked away. With Jemima he wanted his answer to be right, correct, whatever she wanted to hear. It was important; crucial. He looked up and gave her a big open, apologetic smile.
“Sorry, I drifted away.” Breathing a sigh of relief, he was thankful he had avoided looking like a complete fool. He had scared off so many girls with his vehemence, which had been mistaken for fierceness, but was only his inadequate grasp of social niceties. Calm down, be yourself. He had spent much of his childhood getting it wrong. Never quite understanding the expected responses. Alienating himself from his classmates by his misreading of social situations and reacting explosively at the inevitable cruelty that children display to the different. The combination of a leg that refused to cooperate and an inability to read people had guaranteed he’d had a lonely childhood.
“I know what I think is good. I’m lucky,” he said gesturing to the bookshelves,
“I can always find what I want. Knowing what you want is more difficult than knowing where to find it. Once you recognise that, you will know where it will be. Sorry, way too philosophical. I think too much, analyse everything to death and scare people away by being such a geek. Welcome to my world.” He said the last part with a welcoming flourish of his hands. Continuing without waiting for, or expecting a response, he said,
“For years, all through school and college I blamed the leg. The world sees a deformity of a leg or arm and expects the rest of the person to be deformed. Spastic leg equals spastic. Withered arm, misshapen personality. That’s bollocks, but it took me a long time to realise it. Now, with the help of friends, dad until he died and my brother, I’ve been shown that not everyone is taking the piss, most people see the person, not the disability and those that just see a cripple aren’t the people I want to be around. Sorry. Lecture over.”
Bacchus and Sanderson (Deceased) Page 14
