“Wonderful!” I said at once, picking up the cue that she was to be flattered but glad I was still able to speak the truth. “I was so grateful, Francie.”
“Poor Alice! Very well, I shall be as kind to you as Nick is—darling Nick, trying to include you in everything in order to make you feel useful! So sweet of him!”
Nicholas edged casually to the right in order to put the table between them. The study had four focal points. If one stood in the doorway, the small round table stacked with papers and books lay straight ahead in the middle of the room; to the left was the window which overlooked Egg Street; to the right was the fireplace, and on the far wall, beyond the table, was the desk with the crucifix hanging above it. At that moment the three of us were forming a distorted triangle. I was hovering between the door and the fireplace, Francie was standing with her back to the window, and Nicholas, shifting around by the table, was veering towards his desk.
Idly he said to Francie: “So what’s all this about an inspired plan?”
“My dear, I’ve been so clever and no one’s suspected a thing! I did think for one frightful moment that Lewis suspected during our conversation at the Rectory last Monday night—he asked why I had always confided in both of you about Harry’s violence—but no, it was all right, I soon realised he hadn’t a clue what was going on. Of course I shouldn’t have gone to the Rectory at all that night, but I simply couldn’t contain myself any longer! And with Harry away and Lewis under doctor’s orders to go to bed early, I thought I’d be absolutely safe if I arrived at ten-thirty, but—”
“It was bad luck I was away that night. But Francie, tell me now what you didn’t tell Lewis. Why did you, in fact, confide in both of us about Harry’s behaviour?”
“Because once the police found out that you and I intended to marry, your evidence would be suspect.”
There was a pause before Nicholas said colourlessly: “Evidence?”
“Yes, although you had to know how unbearable my marriage was—although you had to know I was available for you to love—I needed another witness, an impartial witness that I was being driven beyond endurance.”
I saw the muscles harden in Nicholas’s face as he struggled to keep his expression neutral. He said: “I’m not sure I understand you.” But I knew he did. I thought I did too, but I didn’t want to. I was aware of my heart thumping unnaturally fast.
“Well, you see, it was like this,” said Francie cosily, leather skirt riding up over her plump black-stockinged thighs as she sat down on the window-seat. “I’ve known for a long time that we were made for each other, and I realised right away that the real problem was not that you were married; I was sure I would eventually get the chance to show you that your marriage was a sham—and it was a sham, wasn’t it? You and Rosalind spent most of the time apart.”
“And once I was divorced—”
“Divorce would produce a tricky situation, I realised that, but I knew you’d be all right if Rosalind was the guilty party and you went through the motions of trying to save the marriage—you’d win everyone’s sympathy, even the stodgiest of the trustees. However, the really tricky phase would be when—”
“—remarriage was on the cards.”
“Exactly! I knew the trustees and a lot of other people wouldn’t approve of you marrying a divorcée. But if you were to marry a blameless widow whose husband had horribly wronged her …” She smiled at him roguishly as she allowed the sentence to fade away.
Nicholas’s pallor now had a greyish tinge. I found I had backed away until I was leaning against the doorframe. I felt I might pass out.
“Oh, don’t worry, darling!” exclaimed Francie, springing to her feet again as she at last sensed his horror. “I’d never do anything which would jeopardize your ministry here, and that’s why I decided from the start that I had to be a widow instead of a divorcée! Of course it’ll be a teeny bit awkward when the police arrest me, but I’ll be the wronged heroine, won’t I—the good Christian woman vilely brutalized by her wicked atheist husband—and everyone will want to drench me in sympathy and forgiveness and understanding, not least the judge and jury! After all, I’ve been so brilliantly plausible! How skilfully I’ve built up my chilling portrait of a marital monster! How cleverly I’ve played the role of the battered wife! Well, I would, wouldn’t I? I’ve heard it all so many times before during my years as a Befriender, and so I was able to put my experience to the best possible use! I was amazing!”
Nicholas somehow managed to say: “Amazing. So when did you decide the time was finally right to—”
“Kill Harry? Well, I originally planned to do it in the new year after the children had gone back to school—I didn’t want to spoil their Christmas—but as soon as I had lunch with Rosalind this week I knew I had to act without delay. After all, she was rejecting you—you’d need me! So when Harry woke up jet-lagged this morning after that long flight home from Hong Kong … Well, it was all so simple. He was sitting at the kitchen table in a bleary-eyed stupor as I was in the middle of preparing lunch—which made things so much easier, because I already had a knife in my hand. I came up behind him and I stabbed him and stabbed him and stabbed him. Actually I think I cut his throat. I can’t quite remember. (That bit was rather traumatic.) Anyway when he was dead I changed into clean clothes and came straight over here. I didn’t bother to call the police—they can wait because it’s an open-and-shut case, nothing much for them to do, and with the right counsel I know I can get off scot-free. Must have the right counsel, though—a QC—the best money can buy—but that’s all right, I’ll have plenty of money now Harry’s dead … Alice dear, why are you looking at me like that? In fact why are you here at all? You should have gone back to the kitchen, you know, instead of lingering on out of curiosity. Curiosity,” said Francie sadly, “killed the cat. Did no one ever teach you that when you were little?”
I felt as if I were welded to the doorframe. Something had happened to my lungs. I could barely breathe.
“Never mind Alice for the moment, Francie,” said Nicholas, murdering the pause so swiftly that it was almost stillborn. “Tell me how you feel now about Harry.”
Francie was immediately diverted. Having advanced several paces towards me she now turned back to him and began to move around the table to his side, but Nicholas didn’t wait for her. He too was on the move, keeping the table between them. For a moment he was close to me and I felt safe, but as Francie continued to advance he moved on. When she finally stopped she had her back to the fireplace, he was standing opposite her with his back to the window and nothing separated her from me except a few feet of polished floorboards.
But Francie had temporarily forgotten me. “I feel pure joy!” she was declaring exuberantly. “I can’t tell you how much I hated that man! He was always so horrible to me, but I’ve triumphed over him in the end, haven’t I? Vengeance is mine, said the Devil, I will repay!”
I shuddered as I heard the famous quotation perverted, but Nicholas just said: “You’ve certainly shown great ingenuity, Francie.” I saw him edge fractionally closer to his desk again even though she herself was no longer moving. Casually he added: “But I’m troubled by the haziness of your memory. Are you sure he was dead when you left?”
“There was blood all over the kitchen table! But darling, I knew you might find it hard to believe I’d been quite so resolute and brave, so I’ve brought the proof with me.” Hurrying to the handbag which she had abandoned on the window-seat she whipped out a nine-inch-long butcher’s knife, its blade dark with gore. “Here you are!” she said gaily to Nicholas. “Take it! I don’t need it any more … or do I?” She paused, her brow furrowed in thought, the knife still clasped daintily between her thumb and forefinger. “Darling, it’s just occurred to me—what are we going to do about Alice? She wasn’t part of my plan at all.”
“Why don’t we take a moment to discuss that in private?” said Nicholas at once. “Alice, go to the bedsit, would you, and tell Lewis that lunch
will be a little late today.”
I knew I was being told to phone the police, but before I could escape Francie altered her clasp on the knife and ordered me to stay where I was. “There’s something here I need to sort out,” she said, brow still furrowed, right hand now wrapped around the knife’s handle so tightly that the knife seemed to be growing out of her fist. “Alice dear—” She took a step towards me. I tried to move but my legs wouldn’t work. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Nicholas reach his desk but I couldn’t think why he wanted to be there. He and I were now on opposite sides of the room but Francie was almost within lunging distance of me and the knife was still thrusting obscenely from her palm.
“Of course I know you’re in love with him,” she was musing, “but why is he suddenly taking you everywhere with him and insisting that you’re present at even the most private of conversations?”
A voice said: “I’ve no idea.” It was my voice but I failed to recognise it. I suddenly saw that over by the desk Nicholas was unhooking his crucifix from the wall.
“Rosalind warned me about you!” said Francie sharply. “I remember now—she said there was something odd going on, but let me tell you this: if you think you can get him you’re wrong.” With a shock I realised that her voice too had become almost unrecognisable. I felt as if the scene had suddenly shifted into a different gear. “I’m getting him, I’m having him, he’s mine!” Her eyes were now like black holes. Her face was skull-like. The familiar bone-structure was dissolving into an alien mask. She was breathing hard through her bared teeth in a steady, rhythmic hiss.
“Francie!” said Nicholas loudly, but she took no notice. She had begun to raise the knife. “Francie, look at me! Francie, in the name of Jesus Christ—”
I was finally forgotten. She spun to face him as if he’d cracked a whip, and as the hissing stopped I saw a change come over him. It was as if a curtain came down over his horror, his enormous tension and his fear for my safety. Holding the crucifix casually in his hands he appeared to relax, although I felt sure this was an illusion created by the sudden onset of a willed stillness. I sensed the narrowing of his concentration as he focused on Francie. His fine eyes were brilliantly clear.
Suddenly he smiled. He was very laid back now. In fact he was enchanting—in the most literal sense of the word; he was weaving an enchantment, spinning a web which would ensnare her. She was being invited to look into those remarkable eyes, which at that moment had no expression other than a peculiarly intense interest, and to read into them whatever message she chose to see there. He was luring her on to believe he would do anything she wanted if she would do anything he wanted—and once she knuckled under to his will she would be trapped. De-willed and de-skilled she would be no better than a robot which could be programmed in any way he chose.
For a second as revulsion overwhelmed my fascination I thought I was witnessing the corrupt act of the wonder worker, but then I realised I was witnessing hypnosis used not for self-aggrandisement but for healing. Nicholas was struggling to beat back deadly symptoms in a woman who was horribly sick, and as soon as I understood this I became aware of the crucifix as he unobtrusively transferred it to his right hand.
“You’re going to keep looking at me, Francie, aren’t you,” he was saying, and he spoke so warmly, so delightfully, so sensibly that Francie became recognisable again as she gazed at him in rapture. “You’re going to keep looking at me and you’re going to forget Alice, aren’t you, because I want you to forget Alice and you want to forget Alice and we both want to forget Alice—we want there to be just the two of us, don’t we?”
Francie was starry-eyed and excited. She was herself once more. The hissing, alien presence had now vanished. “Oh yes, darling, yes, yes, yes—”
“Okay, you’re going to forget Alice is here and when I click my fingers you’ll have forgotten her, you won’t be able to see her any more, she’ll have gone away. You do believe I can do that, don’t you? Of course you do. So now I’m going to click my fingers”—he clicked them—“and there you are, Alice has disappeared, your wish is my command and she’s gone, no need to worry about her any more, I’ve taken care of her, she’s no longer a threat to us, and it’s just you and me now, just you and me, and that’s what you want, isn’t it? Okay, fine. Now Francie, there’s one more thing you have to do to please me: you have to put down that knife. I’m going to count to five and when I say ‘five’ you’re going to put down the knife, put it down on the table. Got that? Okay, good, I’m going to start counting. One—two—”
I was just thinking, awash with relief, that everything was going to be all right when without warning everything went very, very wrong. Francie’s identity began to disintegrate again, this time far more violently. The hissing returned but at once deteriorated into groaning. She was still rooted to the spot but she was shaking violently, and the knife remained wedged in her clenched hand.
“Right,” said Nicholas swiftly, breaking off the countdown, “I can see this is too difficult for you, I can see we’re losing touch, but hold on to the fact that I’m on your side, Francie—hold on to the fact that I’m fighting for you against—”
Francie’s identity was abruptly wiped out. It was as if a drowning swimmer had finally been pulled beneath the surface of shark-infested waters after a prolonged struggle to survive.
The next moment her vocal cords were making a noise like an animal having its throat cut.
Nicholas dumped the attempt to communicate with her, dumped the hypnosis, raised the crucifix aloft and shouted: “In the name of—”
But he was cut off. A voice which sounded male bellowed: “I hate you, hate you, hate you—I want to kill you, kill you, kill you—”
“In the name of Jesus Christ, Satan, I—”
This didn’t work. The voice screamed louder than ever: “Kill, kill, kill—”
In a flash Nicholas had changed tack. “Spirit of murder, spirit of hatred, spirit of anger, spirit of lust—”
This didn’t work either. The voice yelled loud enough to hurt my eardrums: “KILL, KILL, KILL—” but Nicholas yelled even louder: “—and all other unclean spirits, leave this woman, go back where you came from and IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST NEVER RETURN!”
The thing using Francie’s body raised the knife and rushed forward bent on butchering him.
IV
It was all over even before I could shriek in terror.
Nicholas moved the crucifix to parry the blow from the knife but the slash never came. Francie—the thing—or things—whatever—came to a dead halt as if slammed by a tremendous force. For one long moment she was paralysed, arm raised, knife poised, fist clenched, head thrown back. Then as her eyes rolled upwards in their sockets she gave a long howl and fell to the floor in a convulsion.
V
The convulsion probably only lasted a few seconds but at the time it seemed never-ending. When at last she lay still I thought she was dead. She had let go of the knife as she fell to the floor, and Nicholas, glancing at that long, smeared blade as he knelt beside her, said to me abruptly: “Fetch a roll of paper towel and a clean dish-cloth.”
The contrast between the prosaic request and the grossly abnormal behavior I had just witnessed was so great that at first I couldn’t think where to find what he wanted, and when I did reach the kitchen I couldn’t remember why I was there. Closing my eyes I took several deep gulps of air as if I hoped that oxygen would kick-start my brain.
A stench greeted me on my return to the study, and I found that Francie had not only urinated but defecated. Instantly I wished my memory would go on the blink again, but I knew this was a fact I was going to remember.
“Thanks,” said Nicholas, taking the paper towel and the dish-cloth from my hands. Tearing off a strip of the towel he used it to pick up the knife which he then wrapped in the clean dish-cloth. It didn’t occur to me until long afterwards that he was taking such care with the knife because it was an alleged murder weapon.
&
nbsp; “Is she dead?” I finally managed to ask.
“No, just asleep. They always sleep afterwards.”
“Was it an epileptic fit?”
“More or less.”
“How much more,” I said shakily, “and how much less?”
“Well, the episode could certainly be described as a fit. But I don’t think she’s now going to start suffering from epilepsy.” He stood up and put the wrapped knife in a drawer of his desk before reaching for the phone. As he dialled the numbers he said without looking at me: “I don’t know how I can even begin to apologise for recruiting you as a witness to that particular scene.”
“I’m okay,” I said automatically without having the slightest idea whether or not this was true. “But I need to understand what happened. Then I won’t feel so—so—”
“Yes. Just a moment.” He turned his attention to the phone. “Val, it’s me. Look, Francie’s just behaved like a paranoid schizophrenic and tried to kill me—she’s now out cold after a seizure. Can you—” He broke off, then merely added a second later: “Thanks,” and hung up. “She’ll organise an ambulance,” he said, “and come straight over.” He tapped some keys on his computer and when Francie’s phone number flashed on the screen he started to dial again, but although he waited for a long time, no one answered. Replacing the receiver he squatted down to take another look at Francie but there was no change; she was still so deeply unconscious that she scarcely seemed to be breathing.
Straightening his back he turned to face me. “All right, let me try to offer you some kind of explanation,” he said, “but it’s not easy because when all’s said and done this condition is a mystery—it’s part of the mystery of consciousness and the mystery of personality. One day the scientists will uncover the mechanics involved but just uncovering the cerebral processes won’t explain why these things happen and what triggers them. A lot of mental health is a mystery. Mental illness isn’t as clear-cut as lay people think, and often diagnosis isn’t easy. There’s also a problem with language.”
The Wonder Worker Page 60
