Whispers Through the Pines

by Lynne Wilding

  ‘So, you see, I can’t leave. There’s a mystery here, and Sarah and those faces are part of it. Somehow, I’ve become involved in it, too, and I must see it through.’

  ‘Even though you might risk your sanity to do so?’

  She shook her head vehemently. ‘I don’t believe I will. For a while I thought I might be going nuts, it was all so weird, but Marcus has helped me see and understand a lot of things, about myself, even about Sarah.’

  Shit! Marcus was a bit touched in the head, too, the thought came to him. Who really knew with bloody psychologists? ‘Jess, I’m truly worried about you, you know.’ This was true, but he was also worried about himself and what people might think. A doctor’s reputation rested to a certain extent on respectability, and if people knew that his wife was—what? Off the beam, not quite all there?—it would not only harm his work here, but also his future plans, his geriatrics complex. Building and running that would assure him a fine career path and a guaranteed income for life. Why couldn’t Jessica see that? Because she was too wrapped up and affected by her own problems, problems she herself had made.

  ‘I know you’re worried about me, and I appreciate that, but…’

  ‘No matter what I say, you intend to stay.’

  ‘Yes,’ her chin lifted determinedly, ‘until the mystery is solved.’

  His features took on a familiar sulkiness. ‘So, you don’t care what I think or how I feel about all this…craziness?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ But then her chin set in a stubborn line. ‘Simon, I’d hoped you’d understand and support me as I work my way through this.’

  Her note of reproach pricked his conscience. ‘Damn it, Jess, I’m trying,’ he shot back angrily. He knew that most of his anger stemmed from the fact that he could no longer influence her as he had done in times past. Frustrated at the turn their conversation had taken, he shot another baleful look at the painting, grabbed his attaché case and called over his shoulder as he left, ‘I’ll have breakfast at the hospital.’

  Jessica stamped her foot in exasperation. This was becoming a habit with Simon lately. Whenever he wasn’t coming out on top in a discussion he’d retreat, usually to his matron friend. It gave her some satisfaction to shoot a parting retort at him. ‘Do! No doubt Matron Levinski will personally cook bacon and eggs for you.’

  Sarah, hovering in the alcove between the bathroom and the large bedroom, had listened unashamedly to the couple argue. The man, Simon, could become a problem with his mealy-mouthed behaviour and his cynicism. He was slyly fighting her revelations to Jessica every inch of the way, and she’d not stand for it. Her own goal was too important.

  And she didn’t like that he was giving Jessica certain potions. Whatever they were, they made it harder to get into her subject’s head and exert her will over Jessica’s comatose body at night. Doing so was taking all her strength and leaving her much depleted.

  Should she do something about Simon?

  She could. There were ways. She had done so in the past. However, back then it had been for very different reasons. Then it had been for justice, and vengeance. Simon, she perceived, was a weak, selfish man and, though he had some fondness for his wife, his first thoughts were always for himself. His character flaws were unattractive, but certainly not killing offences.

  Sarah remembered Elijah and how she had made him pay for what he’d done to her. And the others, Dowd and McLean. They too had been dealt with to her satisfaction—

  ‘I tell you, Rupert, it don’t make no sense, Elijah drownin’ like he did,’ Thomas Dowd muttered in the half-darkened barracks a week after the drowning. ‘I heard that when he washed up on the rocks, the look on his face scared the bejesus out of them that found ’im. He looked terrified.’

  McLean shrugged his shoulders as he took off his tunic and scratched heartily under his armpits. ‘Elijah isn’t the first man to fall out of one of them lighters. An’ he couldn’t swim, like most of us. The commandant’s satisfied, so I dunno what yer on about.’ He filled his pipe, lit it and sat on the bottom bunk opposite Dowd. ‘An’ who cares anyway? He was a bully an’ a bastard, to be sure.’

  ‘Aye, he was that,’ Dowd agreed. He watched McLean deal two hands of cards onto the blanket. One hand picked up his cards, while the other rose to the back of his neck to rub under his lank hair. ‘There be a strange draught around here tonight, I be feelin’ chilled to the bone.’ His furtive glance roamed about the poorly lit barracks. Illumination consisted of a few measly candles in wall brackets and the occasional candle on an army chest, all of which cast eerie shadows onto the walls. ‘It’s jus’, ye know,’ he whispered as he wiped his sweating forehead, ‘her curse. Rupert, do ye think…?’

  ‘Are ye daft? Shut up, Tom,’ McLean hissed and bunched up a fist as if to strike him.

  Dowd backed away. ‘Awright, awright.’

  McLean gave him a withering look. ‘What’re ye gonna bet? Let’s play cards, matey, an’ fergit about Elijah and…you know.’

  Approximately one hour later, with just a single candle to give them light, they were still playing. Rupert McLean had won everything of value off Dowd. His pile of winnings consisted of several coins, a pewter dish with fancy engraving on it, a small silver box which contained a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, and a fine woollen blanket that several other soldiers had envied, especially on wintry nights.

  ‘Yer uncommonly lucky tonight, ain’t ye?’ Dowd grumbled. ‘Ye’ve damned well cleaned me out.’

  ‘Stop yer whingin’, Tom, I can’t abide poor losers.’

  ‘And ye rarely lose, that’s true, ain’t it?’ Dowd complained sourly.

  Mildly interested by Thomas’ level of animosity, Sarah lay on the top bunk looking down at the men and the card game. Other groups of soldiers were similarily engaged. A couple of men lay flat out on their bunks, one was reading a book and others were talking, telling stories to each other with accompanying ribald laughter.

  Sarah saw Thomas Dowd’s anger increasing. His skin had gone a ruddy colour and he was breathing hard. The man was a humourless creature at the best of times and, reputedly, had a bad temper. As well, in the Stewart’s kitchen she had heard the gossip about McLean. He had come to Norfolk with a reputation for being sharp with cards, but Dowd’s eyesight wasn’t quick enough to catch him cheating. She could see Rupert dealing from the bottom of the deck every other game, and that he kept an extra card or two up his sleeve to increase his chance of winning.

  Perhaps she should assist Dowd, make him aware of Rupert’s dishonesty…

  It was a simple matter to ease a card out of Rupert’s sleeve and let it flutter to the floor. Even Dowd’s myopic gaze could hardly fail to see that, she thought.

  ‘By Christ, man, yer cheating! I knew ye were,’ Dowd’s temper rose to the boil as he saw the extra ace on the wooden floor. ‘It come out of yer sleeve, ye cheatin’ bastard, I seen it.’

  Rupert gave an embarrassed laugh, for he could see other men beginning to take notice. ‘Steady on, matey. I think yer mistaken as to where it come from.’

  ‘Are ye callin’ me a liar?’ Dowd’s voice rose as he stood up from the bunk and grabbed a handful of McLean’s undershirt.

  Within seconds the fist fight was on. McLean had the advantage because he was taller and had a longer reach, but Dowd, stockier and less fit, was so enraged that he tore into McLean with every ounce of strength he had.

  The fight drew other soldiers. Sarah saw them cluster in a rough circle around the combatants, yelling obscenities and encouragement with equal vigour. Within minutes it became clear that McLean was the fitter, better fighter. He punched Dowd squarely in the nose, and blood spurted from it as the crunch of bone on bone told all he’d broken Dowd’s nose.

  Dowd, bloodied and bruised, screamed incoherently at his opponent. And then his right hand dropped to his boot, where he pulled out a thin-bladed knife. ‘I’ll cut ye, I will, cut ye bad.’

  Kill him, Thomas, kill him! He’s a cheat and a lia
r, and he’s made a fool of you! Sarah projected the idea in his head. You can do it, Thomas. Do it. Show them all that no one betters Thomas Dowd! She continued to goad him mentally as she watched Rupert back away.

  ‘Now, matey, there’s no need for knives,’ Rupert muttered. ‘Yer can have it all back.’

  ‘Not good enough, I be wantin’ a piece out of you, McLean. It’ll serve as a reminder not to go cheatin’ the others.’

  Sarah moved to a higher position; she sat on one of the exposed roof beams, to watch the proceedings. Kill him, Thomas. Kill him! she continued to chant into his thoughts.

  Thomas lunged but Rupert, being fitter, evaded the smaller man. However, in a move whose swiftness made half the onlookers gasp with admiration, Thomas pirouetted about and lunged again, catching Rupert in the back. Rupert screamed with pain as he fell to his knees. In an instant Dowd was upon him and, in a blood lust, stabbed again and again until Rupert moved no more.

  Covered in blood, the knife still in his hands, Dowd got up, still panting from his exertions. He stared at those around him. ‘He…’ he gasped, ‘asked fer it, and, by God, I give it to him, the rotten cheat,’ and for good measure, he kicked the lifeless Rupert in the ribs.

  Hearing a noise at the barracks door, the uniformed throng moved aside as four soldiers, bayonets at the ready, charged in and caught the tail end of the melee. Within minutes, Dowd, now beginning to blubber because he realised the seriousness of what he had done, was fettered and led away. Four men were requisitioned to remove the body, the remaining soldiers were ordered to their bunks, and the candles were snuffed out.

  In the farthest corner of the barracks, a young man with barely a stubble on his rosy cheeks, who’d stood at the edge of the crowd to watch the fight, wept self-pityingly into his blanket. After several minutes, a soldier close by cuffed Timothy Cavanagh across the head and told him to shut up.

  The commandant decided to make an example of Dowd.

  Had Dowd killed a felon in much the same way as he had disposed of McLean, he would have received a mild reprimand and that’s all. But military law and the commandant’s personal beliefs on discipline refused to countenance a soldier murdering another soldier, whether cheating was involved or not, and so the military tribunal voted that Dowd pay the highest penalty, forfeiture of his life.

  Sarah watched the hangman place the noose around Dowd and position the knot at the side of his neck. That positioning, she’d learned while on Norfolk was significant, for it made the difference as to whether a man’s neck snapped cleanly as the trapdoor opened or whether he died a slow, agonising death by strangulation. For her the best part came just before the trapdoor lever was pulled. She stood in front of him and allowed him to see her so he would know who had helped to put him in this position.

  ‘I told you, Dowd,’ she whispered, a triumphant smile widening her full lips as the look of horror, similar to Elijah’s, spread over his features. He began to blubber like a madman, ‘revenge will be mine unto eternity’.

  Nan Duncan and Marcus stood on the back verandah on either side of the painting, their gaze glued to the faces which now dominated the original Anson Bay picture.

  ‘I wonder what the fourth one is going to look like?’ Nan voiced her thoughts out loud.

  ‘The first three are a tough-looking crew,’ Marcus said. ‘They look like hardened campaigners. Probably served in India, too; look how dark their skin tone is.’

  ‘They could have got those tans in Sydney or Norfolk,’ Jessica argued mildly, for no particular reason other than to see how he answered.

  ‘Maybe, but none of them are young. The first one, we reckon that’s Elijah, he’s probably in his middle thirties. Dowd is younger, but the third face has to be almost as old as Elijah. So, assuming they were drafted in their teens, they possibly served in several countries around the world.’

  ‘What do you think about the quality of the painting? The faces, I mean?’ Jessica asked Nan because she knew she had a strong interest in paintings as well as her pottery.

  ‘I think they’re extraordinarily good. Not pretty, of course, but the brush-strokes, the expressions, the look in the eyes, they’re so intense, so real looking,’ Nan pronounced. ‘Whoever’s responsible is or has been a talented portrait painter.’

  ‘It’s interesting,’ Jessica went on as she brought out the sketch she had done of Sarah, ‘there doesn’t appear to be anyone else who could have painted those faces but me and yet, look at the sketch of Sarah, then look at the painting. The styles are quite different.’

  Marcus took Sarah’s sketch from her and after, finding a couple of thumbtacks on her work table, pinned it over the fourth, unfinished face for comparison. ‘You’re right,’ Marcus agreed, after studying the difference in the strokes, the way the artists had captured the contours of each face. Even to an amatuer such as himself, the faces and the sketch of Sarah appeared to have been done by two separate artists.

  ‘You see, the type of work I do, landscape painting, mostly in water colours or acrylics, is very different from those faces. It takes a special talent to capture those expressions well enough and have them come across that perfectly. If only we knew who they were,’ Jessica continued, wistfully. At times she was consumed by curiosity to know all their identities and what roles they had played in Sarah O’Riley’s life.

  ‘I should get some answers on my e-mail soon. My historian friend in Sydney has e-mailed that he’s putting together a historical portfolio on the names I gave him.’

  She suddenly shivered. ‘Those men, do you think they hurt Sarah?’

  Marcus shrugged. ‘I don’t know, yet. Could be,’ he winked at her, trying to lighten her sombre mood, ‘she hurt them!’

  Jessica would have the last word. ‘If so, then I’m sure they deserved it.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  In Simon’s office at the hospital, Sue listened as he related the latest instalment in the mental decline of Jessica. She was hard-pressed not to show an ounce of delight as he regaled her with his wife’s explanation of seeing the spirit of this Sarah O’Riley. Seeing ghostly visages, hearing voices, faces being painted mysteriously with no memory of having done them—all were symptoms of a deranged mind as far as she was concerned. She sensed that Simon was at the end of his rope, he’d had enough and wanted some stability in his life. This she would provide when the time was right.

  ‘I can’t seem to get through to her any more,’ he complained, his tone bitter. ‘She’s put up this mental wall, and it’s worse than when we lost Damian. Then it was as if her mind was in a far-away place and didn’t want to come back, but this is different.’ He paused to think about what he wanted to say. ‘She’s determined to see the mystery—as she calls it—through and anything I say just doesn’t count.’

  ‘Yes, well, she is going through a difficult time, and so are you, Simon.’ Sue sympathised through her tone of voice and the expression in her eyes. Oh, it was child’s play to convince Simon of her sincerity! ‘It’s obvious that you’re doing all you can, but sometimes, even with the best will in the world, when a person becomes mentally unfit, there’s little the spouse can do about it.’

  He agreed with a nod of his head. ‘Marcus is coming in this morning. He said something about wanting to try a different approach with Jess. I don’t know. I’m losing confidence in what he’s doing ’cause I can’t see any improvement in her.’

  ‘Why not wait and hear what he suggests?’ she advised. Then, cunningly, knowing his long-term ambitions, she planted an idea in his head. ‘You do realise that if Jessica is deemed to be mentally unstable or committed to a sanitorium for treatment for an indefinite period of time, you’d have to assume control of her affairs.’

  He gave her a sharp look. ‘I hadn’t thought about that. She has a considerable portfolio of investments, you know. You’re right, I guess I would.’ Then his shoulders slumped forward in a defeated manner. ‘I’m hoping it won’t come to that but…’

  �
��Of course,’ she put in quickly, ‘we all are. But it is best to be prepared for the worst. Just in case, it might be wise to speak to a solicitor.’

  ‘Yes, I will. And look, I’ll write this script for a different tranquilliser, the strongest on the market.’ He looked at Sue. ‘Will you get it filled for me?’

  ‘I’d be happy to.’

  If she had been actively planning this campaign to wean Simon away from Jessica, things couldn’t be going better. He was becoming frustrated and despondent and, she guessed, a little impatient, both with Jessica and Marcus. Very soon she would plant the idea that Marcus should be replaced by a proper psychiatrist, one she would choose, and with the right kind of inducement, subtlely made of course, she was sure the psychiatrist would come up with a diagnosis that would put Jessica Pearce completely out of the picture. Once that was accomplished, her influence over Simon would multiply tenfold.

  ‘Simon, you were going to show me the plans for this geriatrics complex of yours, remember?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ his tone became enthusiastic. He reached behind him to a filing cabinet and opened the middle drawer. ‘I’ve just received the revised plan, which has been approved by the local council. It’ll be all systems go once I return to Perth.’ He spread the blueprint across his desk and began to point various aspects out to her.

  ‘It really is a wonderful concept,’ she enthused, though understanding architects’ detailed drawings was somewhat beyond her. ‘You seem to have thought of everything.’

  He nodded. ‘This complex is going to revolutionise geriatric accommodation and care in the twenty-first century. You know, people are retiring earlier, people don’t have the same family back-up as was available fifty years ago, so the idea of starting off with self-care apartments of resort-style luxury, then including hostel accommodation and, later on, full care, but on a scale not previously envisaged, is going to be a huge selling point.’