Sleep, Pale Sister

by Joanne Harris

  ‘Very surprised, sir,’ said Merle neutrally. ‘She said she hadn’t had any word of it from the lady.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ I put my head in my hands to hide the capering grin I could feel aching to show itself behind my slack features. ‘I should never have left her! I should have gone with her, whatever the doctor said. I should have known.’

  ‘Sir?’

  I looked up at him wild-eyed. ‘This is not the first time my wife has suffered…lapses,’ I told him dully. ‘My friend the nerve doctor, Dr Russell, examined her not ten days ago. She is a victim of…hysteria, believes herself persecuted.’ I allowed my face to warp and twitch as if I were close to tears. ‘My God,’ I cried in an impassioned tone, ‘why did I let her go?’ I stood up abruptly and seized Merle’s arm. ‘You must find her, sergeant,’ I pleaded. ‘There’s no knowing where she thinks she is going. Anything…’ My voice cracked obligingly. ‘Anything might happen to her.’

  And then I was crying, really crying, tears streaking down my face, choking me. I shook with great, hysterical sobs, releasing grief and poisoned laughter in alternate gusts. But as I wept, my face in my hands, I could not help being conscious of a kind of glee, a cold, mechanical capering in the chambers of my heart, and a knowledge that my grief—if grief there was—was not for Effie, or for anyone else I could think of.

  57

  It wasn’t till after seven that I decided to pay my delayed visit to Henry; I caught a cab to the High Street and walked up from the cemetery to Cromwell Square. I passed a group of children singing carols—among them a girl of about twelve who radiated an unearthly, crystalline beauty: I slipped a wink to the pretty child and a sixpence each to her friends—after all, now I could afford it—and, whistling, I made my way towards the Chester household.

  He answered my knock almost at once, as if he had been expecting callers. From his expression I guessed that I was far from welcome but, after a furtive glance across the street, he ushered me in. I saw no sign of the housekeeper and presumed she was out. All the better: it would make my dealings with Henry the easier.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Henry,’ I said cheerfully. ‘The house is looking very festive tonight. Then again,’ I added winningly, ‘we do have quite a lot to celebrate, don’t we?’

  He looked sharply at me. ‘Do we?’

  I raised my eyebrows quizzically. ‘Come, come, Henry, don’t be coy,’ I said. ‘We both know what I mean. Let’s say that this Christmas we have both managed to contrive a solution to certain…embarrassments, shall we say? Yours, I believe, were marital, whereas mine are merely financial. We shall deal very well together.’

  Henry was no fool: he was beginning to understand. Last night had seen him fuddled with guilt and chloral, but tonight he had a cooler head than I would have given him credit for, and he merely stared at me in that haughty way of his.

  ‘I don’t think we shall, Harper,’ he said coolly. ‘In fact, I doubt whether we shall even meet very often at all. Now, I was rather busy…’

  ‘Not too busy, surely, for an old friend to share a Christmas drink?’ I said with a smile. ‘Mine’s a brandy, if you please. I never discuss business with a dry throat.’

  Henry didn’t move, so I helped myself from a nearby decanter. ‘Won’t you join me?’ I offered sweetly.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked, through gritted teeth.

  ‘Want?’ I said aggrievedly. ‘Why assume that I want anything? I fear you have misunderstood me, Henry: I would never be vulgar enough to ask for anything…If, of course, you were to offer—in the name of our friendship—let us say a mere three hundred pounds to pay off my creditors—a Christmas bonus, so to speak—I wouldn’t think of refusing.’

  His eyes were narrow with hatred and understanding. ‘You can’t blackmail me! You were a part of it too. I’d rub your face right in it.’

  ‘Queen’s evidence, dear chap,’ I said lightly. ‘Besides, I have friends who’d lie for me if needs be. Have you?’

  I let that sink in for a while. Then, downing the brandy in one gulp, I said: ‘Why not simply join in the Christmas spirit a little? One good turn deserves another. Think about it. What’s three hundred to a man like you? Isn’t it worth it, if only to see the back of me?’

  Henry was silent for a minute. Then he turned on me, his expression ugly. ‘Stay here,’ he ordered, spun on his heels and left.

  He came back a few minutes later with a small metal box which he thrust into my hands as if he wanted to hurt them.

  ‘Take it, you wretch. The money’s there.’ He paused, his lips thin to the point of invisibility. ‘I should never have trusted you,’ he said softly. ‘You planned this from the start, didn’t you? You never had any intention of helping anyone but yourself. Get out of my sight! I don’t want to see you ever again.’

  ‘Of course you don’t, dear chap,’ I said gaily, pocketing the box. ‘But who’s to say you won’t? Life, after all, is variety. I daresay we may meet again…at an exhibition, or a club…or in a cemetery, who knows? It would be a pity to lose touch, wouldn’t it? I know my way out. Merry Christmas!’

  Half an hour later I was at one of my favourite haunts in the Haymarket, the precious box carefully hidden in my inner pocket, drinking fine brandy in front of a warm fire and eating chestnuts boiled in cider from the hand of a fifteen-year-old charmer with hair like sable and a mouth like a slashed peach.

  I never did have much time for guilt. Henry’s discomfiture had put me in a good mood, and between that and the girl and the box of banknotes I admit that any lingering thoughts of Effie had long ceased to disturb me. There were other, more pressing things on my mind.

  I drank to the future.

  58

  When he had gone, I paced the hall in a delirium of fury. Oh, I had been prettily duped; I saw it all now. Everything he had said about my art…the hours spent in my house, drinking my brandy, looking at my wife…all that time he’d been waiting for the moment to trip me, laughing behind his hands at my bumbling, ignorant kindness. Damn him! In the heat of my fury I could almost have confessed the whole sorry affair to the police for the satisfaction of seeing him hang…But I would have my revenge; not now, when I had to remain calm, when I had to seem in control if I was to deal with the police. But I would.

  I made my way to my room and a little chloral diluted in brandy sank my rage to the sea-bed: numbness came quickly and I was able to sit in my winged armchair, forcing my trembling hands to be still, and wait.

  But the night was full of sounds: here the sharp crack of a log in the hearth, there the whisper of bubbles in the gas-jet, so like the light uneven breathing of a sleeping child…I sat close to the fire and listened, and it seemed to me that behind the normal creakings and whisperings of an old house in winter I could hear something else, a sequence of sounds which finally resolved themselves in my torpid brain as the sounds of someone moving quietly from room to room around me. At first I dismissed it (the caress of a woman’s skirts against the silk wallpaper) because it was impossible for anyone to have entered the house without a key and I had locked the door as soon as Harper left (the padding of light feet on the thick pile of the carpet, the creaking of a leather armchair as she rested there awhile). I poured myself another glass of brandy-and-chloral (a tiny sound of china from the parlour as she tasted the cake—she always had an especial liking for chocolate cake).

  Suddenly I could bear it no longer. I leaped to my feet, throwing the door open, reflecting a long ladder of light from my room into the passageway. No-one. The parlour door was ajar—had I left it that way? I couldn’t remember. Compelled by a bleak desire far stronger than fear, I pushed it, allowing it to swing gently open. For a moment I saw her: a girl of leaves with her leaf-cat in her arms, their eyes like mirrors reflecting me, my face pinprick-small in the wells of their pupils…then nothing. Nothing but the reflection of a weeping-willow etched in white against the darkness of a window.

  There was no girl. There had never been a girl. I qui
ckly scanned the room: the cake was untouched, the china as I had left it, the folds of the curtain mathematically precise. Not a breath of wind disturbed the candle-flames, not a shadow fell against the wall. Not the slightest scent of lilac. And yet there was something…I frowned, trying to place the change: the cushions were unruffled, the ornaments untouched, the tree…

  I froze.

  Under the tree, a small triangle of torn wrapping-paper lay on the carpet. Just one. Stupidly, I tried to think where it could have come from. Taking two clumsy steps forward I saw that the topmost present—the peach silk wrap—had slipped from the pile and fallen to one side. Automatically, I bent to straighten it and I saw that the string had been cut and the parcel loosened so that folds of silk and lace showed through the stiff brown wrapping.

  The sense of what I had seen refused to connect with any part of my rational mind and while a part of me gibbered and cried, another simply stared calmly at the opened present as a great blankness settled over me. Maybe it was the chloral, but my mind was infinitely slow, moving from the wrap, to the torn paper, to the cut string, back to the wrap with imbecile detachment. There was a huge silence all around as I stood there alone with the wrap in my hands, the torn paper slipping from it and falling with dreamlike slowness to a floor miles below me. The silk in my hands was hypnotic; I could see into it with inhuman accuracy, testing the weft and warp of it, delving the intricacies of scrolled lace, of spirals within spirals…The wrap seemed to fill the whole world so that there was no room for thought, simply awareness, infinite awareness, infinite contemplation…

  From my abyss, I realized that I was laughing.

  59

  It’s amazing, isn’t it, how money disappears? I paid my debts, the ones I could not delay paying, though by no means the whole, and for a few days I began to define the style of living to which I thought I might like to become accustomed. I ate well, drank only the best. As for women, there were more than I could clearly remember, all beauties, all delightfully eager to see the colour of dear Henry’s money. Don’t think I wasn’t grateful to him: I made sure I drank to his health every time I opened a new bottle, and when Beggar Maid ran at Newmarket I made sure I put ten pounds on her—I won too, at fifteen to one. It seemed as if I couldn’t lose at anything.

  Not that I didn’t keep a close watch on events from my little hotbed of debauchery. Effie Chester’s disappearance was reported in The Times with the possibility of foul play mentioned—it seemed that she had set off on the morning of Christmas Eve to visit her mother in Cranbourn Alley and had never arrived. The lady was ‘of frail and nervous disposition’ and police were concerned for her safety. I reckoned Henry had played his part well enough; the paper described him as ‘distraught’. But he was unstable, I knew that: chloral and religion in equal quantities had upset the equilibrium of his free will and I guessed that, after the first few weeks of subterfuge, he would very likely sink into a kind of stupid despondency and imagine all kinds of retribution to be heading his way.

  I felt that there was a chance of his eventually giving himself in to the police in an ecstasy of remorse—at which time, of course, there would be no more tarts for poor Jack. I supposed that Fanny had intended that from the beginning, though I couldn’t think why. The only logical reason was that she intended Henry to be arrested and ruined—but I still couldn’t understand why she had chosen such an unpredictable method of arranging it. I was safe enough in any case. The chilly reception from the ingrates at Crook Street had convinced me that I had no further obligation towards them; if Henry tried to accuse me I would tell the truth—as much of it as was needed. Let Fanny explain her own motives and answer the possible kidnapping charge; let Effie explain about Marta. I was well rid of them both. No-one could accuse me of anything more than adultery or possibly blackmail and any attempt to produce the supposed corpse was doomed to ridicule; the ‘corpse’ was at this very moment wandering through Fanny’s house with dyed hair and a bellyful of laudanum.

  Fanny! I admit she was still an enigma to me; I’d have liked to pay her a visit, if only to learn what she was doing. But I wasn’t eager to meet that bitch Marta again, or ever. So instead I decided to pay another visit to Henry.

  It must have been…let me see…about 30 December. Henry had had nearly a week to deal with his various affairs and I had almost run out of money. So I ambled over to his house and asked to see him. The housekeeper looked down her nose and told me Mr Chester wasn’t at home. Not at home to me, most likely, I thought, and told her I would wait. Well, she ushered me into the parlour and I waited. After a while I grew restless and began to look around: the parlour was still decorated for Christmas and under the tree were a number of parcels, still waiting to be unwrapped by a girl who would never come home. A poignant touch, that, I thought appreciatively—the police would have liked it. Additionally, Henry had covered all the paintings on the wall with dust-covers: the effect was disturbing and I wondered why he had done it. I idled in the parlour for nearly two hours until I realized that the housekeeper was right: Mr Chester wasn’t at home.

  I rang the bell for brandy and when she came up with the tray I slipped her a guinea and gave my most winning smile.

  ‘Now, Mrs…I’m afraid I don’t know your surname.’ I don’t suppose anyone had called her ‘Mrs’ anything for years and she bridled.

  ‘Gaunt, sir, but Mr and Mrs Chester—’

  ‘Mrs Gaunt.’ The smile was at its most charming. ‘I am, as you recall, an old friend of Mr Chester. I am aware of the distress he must be suffering at the moment—’

  ‘Oh sir,’ she broke in, dabbing her eyes, ‘the poor young lady! We’re so worried some man—’ she broke off, visibly moved. I tried not to chuckle.

  ‘Quite,’ I said soothingly. ‘But if—God preserve us—the worst has happened,’ I continued piously, ‘then our thoughts must be with the living. Mr Chester needs friends to help him through this. I am aware that he may have instructed you to turn away, or otherwise misinform visitors’—I looked at her reproachfully—‘but you and I both know, Mrs Gaunt, that for his own good…’

  ‘Oh yes, sir,’ she agreed. ‘I know. Poor Mr Chester; he won’t eat, he hardly sleeps, he spends hours in that studio of his, or just walking about the cemetery. He was that fond of the young lady, sir, that he won’t have her mentioned…and you can see that he’s covered up all of his lovely pictures of her: can’t bear to look at them, he says.’

  ‘So you don’t know where he is today?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘But you won’t prevent me from giving him what comfort I can if I call again?’

  ‘Oh, sir!’ Her reproach was apparent. ‘If I’d known, sir…but there are people, you know, who wouldn’t be…’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Bless you, sir.’

  I grinned. ‘I’ll just leave a message, shall I? Then I’ll go. Maybe it would be better if you didn’t mention I was here.’

  ‘All right, sir.’ She was mystified, but game.

  ‘I’ll let myself out, Mrs Gaunt.’

  When she had disappeared again I opened the parlour door and made my way quietly to Henry’s room. From my pocket I took out Effie’s brooch—the one she had left on the bedstand that night—and pinned it to his pillow. It gleamed in the semi-darkness. Above the bed I saw another shrouded picture and divested it of its shroud. Now Effie floated above the bed like a pale succubus. Henry would sleep well tonight…

  When I left Cromwell Square I made my way to Henry’s studio. The light was failing—it was already late afternoon—and by the time I arrived it was dark. The studio was in a block of apartments and Henry’s was on the second floor. The outer door was open, the stairs poorly lit by a single sputtering gas-jet. I had to hold tightly to the banisters to avoid falling on the uneven steps. When I reached the door marked chester it was locked.

  I swore. That was that, then. But, as I turned to leave, a sudden curiosity grasped me, a desire to see the inside
of that studio, and maybe to leave another calling-card. I inspected the lock; it looked simple enough. A couple of turns of a small-bladed pocket-knife and it clicked open; I lifted the latch and pushed the door. It was dark in the studio; for a few minutes I fumbled with the gas-jet in almost complete obscurity. I could hear the sound of paper crunching beneath my feet as I moved, but could not see the cause. Then, as the light flared, I was able to look around at the room.

  My first thought was that I had broken into the wrong studio. I knew Henry to be a meticulously, almost obsessively tidy person: the last time I had been here there had been framed canvasses hung on the walls, unframed canvasses in a large file to the left of the room, a trunk filled with costumes and properties at the back, a few chairs and a table pushed against the wall. Now a manic disorder reigned. The paintings had been torn from the walls—in some cases taking paper and plaster with them—and stacked higgledy-piggledy in front of the fire. Unframed paintings were strewn across the floor in all directions, like a hand of spilled cards. And everywhere, on every available piece of floor or surface, there were sketches, crumpled, torn or whole, sketches on parchment or canvas or wrapping-paper—some breathtaking. I never knew Henry had such talent. The fireplace was choked with them, half-charred, pitiful remnants, and I spent some minutes on my hands and knees exploring the carnage, turning the pictures in my hands, trying to find some reason for the mutilations.

  After a while my head began to spin. There were so many pictures of her, pictures in watercolour, in chalks, in pencils, oils, tempera: outlines of unspeakable purity, studies of eyes, lips, cheekbones, hair…profiles, full-face, three-quarter profiles…all stark and poignant and true. I’d been wrong about Henry all these years: the wan decadence of his paintings, the contrived symbolism of all those earlier works had hidden the bleak, almost Oriental purity of his vision. Each stroke of pen or pencil was exquisite: cruelty and tenderness subtly merged…and these masterpieces, every one, discarded with who can guess what rage and love, every one an infanticide…I couldn’t understand it.