Obscure meanderings filled her mind. The form etched faintly into the purple-black appeared to shift, to change position as though transferring the weight of a body from one foot to the other. Eleanor’s breath quickened and though her fright was growing into a tight thorny ball within, she was finding it increasingly difficult to keep her eyes from closing again as the herbal concoction that the doctor had prescribed took a firmer grip over her consciousness.
The doorbell rang. Pump slept in an alcoholic haze in the cellar. He stirred at the noise but, failing an attempt to raise himself to a sitting position, fell onto his back and tittered before plunging into a bottomless sleep.
Florence – still awake after clearing and cleaning the aftermath of the party – ran to the front door. The clanging bell was insistent and it had been obvious to her that the butler was not going to answer. Upon opening the door a fraction the identity of the person that merged with the night was unknown but when the visitor stepped forward from the darkness of the porch and said, ‘Miss Florence?’ she opened the door wide.
‘What are you doing here at this time of night?’ she whispered, trying to sound annoyed but failing, with a grin on her pert face.
‘I have returned on my snow-white charger from over gale-lashed mountains, storm-rent forests and torrents to steal more of your exquisite kisses and to take my fill of your passionate embraces, my lady,’ gushed Mr. String and he gave a theatrical bow.
He stepped into the hall without invitation and puckered his lips the best that he was able over his prominent teeth, advancing upon Florence with stick arms outstretched and his sparkling eyes tightly shut.
‘If you don’t mind,’ she said, curtailing his amorous ways with her hand, ‘Mr. William Stubb will be back soon. Leave be.’ She spoke seriously but spoilt the effect by giggling. ‘You are a one, Beany,’ she added.
‘Come now my princess, my pearl, my beauty. We will go straight away to my glittering palace in the sky. Besides which I want to show you my bric-a-brac.’ His eyebrows twitched in unison and he laughed heartily. He pulled Florence gently to the door.
‘No, wait. How long will we be? Mr. William has had to go out on urgent business so I have to look after Mrs. Stubb, you know.’
‘Ah, that is so. I do hear that her offspring is due to arrive into this mad turmoil of life’s rich tapestry in three weeks’ time.’
‘No, this morning. It’s early.’
‘Oh – I see.’ Mr. String appeared disappointed.
‘In about four hours, I believe.’
‘So there it is.’ His long face brightened. ‘Time is ours for the asking. You, my dearest, will be back in the twinkling of an eye. Come, I have my magical carriage awaiting us outside.’
Florence was convinced. ‘You’ve borrowed the new-fangled machine again from Barrister Leggit?’ she said excitedly. ‘Alright Beany but wait a moment.’
She fetched her coat from the cloakroom and ran back into the hallway to Mr. String who was tapping an arm and staring at the ornately coved ceiling. He bowed again to an invisible audience and with a jolly, ‘Farewell, mortals,’ to his own reflection in the wall mirror, shut the front door behind them. They skipped down the snow-mottled gravel drive to the open gates like children playing truant.
Eleanor was trying to catch her breath that had become sharp and shallow. Pains that felt as though they were ripping her flesh rent through her body yet she remembered enough to know that the final contractions of labour were still to come. Through watering eyes she saw the shadow figure move to the end of the four poster bed, by the ottoman. Still she could not recognize the identity of the shape cut from the fabric of the night.
She was petrified with fear. ‘Who is it? What do you want?’ she wailed. There was a guttural chuckle, a disembodied voice as an answer. Eleanor howled and covered her sight. ‘Please leave me be, whoever you are. Go away, get out of my chamber,’ she whined in between gasps, as the pains spreading their tendrils through her loins became even more insistent. When the shadow swung from one side of the room to the other, she flinched and began to gabble a prayer of appeasement to the horrid moving shadow; but rather than dissolve the shape into nothingness it stimulated more laughter. Eleanor’s face creased in horror and her head, with hair loose and tangled, bobbed from one side to the other in an attempt to identify the unknown spectre that had felt it right to visit her. Was this some sort of punishment from a phantom guardian of the crypts?
An urgent, whispered voice, insistent and an opiate to her already drugged and ill brain; it was difficult to make out any of the words as dark and frightening as bats but the more she listened, the more those syllables became pleasant sounds, as beautiful as butterflies.
She began to doze as they floated and flitted and stroked her jagged fear. She was succumbing. ‘No,’ she cried weakly. She was not going to be fooled into sleep by an evil demon. If the creature wanted her soul, her tangled thoughts told herself, it would have to work harder than that.
It was then that the throbbing in her womb ceased temporarily and she found herself more awake than she had felt that evening. The deep velvet voice stopped as well, as if the cessation of pain was a signal; and Eleanor moaned in relief.
It began again straightway: the whisper rising to a mutter seeming harsher, more insistent. As she felt pains returning in waves, blood pounding her temples and sleep pulling her from awareness, Eleanor realized she could understand what was being said.
‘Why did you kill Theodore?’ the ethereal voice demanded. She stiffened her whole body so much that she pulled the muscles in the calves of her legs, already sore from bed cramps, and in the back of her neck. She sobbed fitfully. What retribution was to befall her? Her throat was sealed and she swallowed spasmodically as the voice demanded again, ‘Why did you kill Theodore?’
Her emotions were in turmoil and with her bewilderment they swung from one extreme to the other like the pendulum of a clock: at the one moment fright gripping her while weeping and wailing from her pains, then in the next instant laughing, wide-eyed and bewildered. She heard an utterance, a querulous whine but realized that it was she who had spoken. She continued, ‘I’m sorry. Queen Eleanor didn’t mean to kill him. It was all a dreadful mistake. Cockroaches aren’t meant to die. We wanted to frighten him, that was all.’
‘But he did die. You killed him, you and your husband.’
‘Yes we did. No we didn’t. I don’t know, at least, I didn’t – it was William. It was his idea. Yes, he did it, he murdered Theodore.’
‘How did he kill Theodore?’ the disembodied voice asked as the speaker covered himself totally within the folds of the night.
‘Yes, that’s right. William killed him.’ Eleanor felt dopey and listless. Was this some dreadful nightmare? She was sure she was feverish. To prove the point she felt her brow. ‘He murdered Theodore,’ she said in a singsong voice. She saw a child on a swing. The child wore a pony tail tied with a ribbon and was swinging from the bow of a beech tree and she sang to the bluest of skies. Eleanor asked of the image of her past self, ‘How did you kill Theodore?’ As the memory faded she explained, ‘Eleanor killed Theodore. Brood gave her some rat poison but she didn’t use that. Oh, no. She poisoned him with arsenic because she hated him, every part of his filthy shell. She wanted him to die in agony because … because he stole Alastair, gave wrong commands to the spiders; she was glad when he did go. Then Alastair returned, here within me, safe and warm and protected.’ She smiled into the darkness: she cried bitterly then did both at the same time. She tried to pick up the shattered pieces of her senses and put them together but was dazed and muddled.
‘Eleanor, you owe Theodore everything. What did you use? Tell me again.’
Eleanor moaned and gasped, ‘Arsenic. It was a painful death, wasn’t it. Wasn’t it?’ She listened for a reply. The wind breathed through the trees, their bare branches groping to the heavens in the hope of catching the bright stars. She listened intently and gasped as contractio
ns were becoming prominent with positive pulses, stronger by the moment.
The demon had departed and returned to his lair in the depths of a red hell. She had beaten him. Her soul was safe; Alastair was safe.
‘Your baby,’ rumbled the voice. Eleanor twitched and screamed and began to pant rhythmically. Her baby; the demon must not have her baby. Don’t let the monster know it is winning. Laugh in its bloated, devilish face. Laugh…
Eleanor laughed in a way she had never laughed before. She threw back her head and with her mouth open wide emitted a piercing gale of derision, tears flowing down her cheeks, along the creases that her face made as pain came and went and came, then she cried out, ‘Leave my baby, leave my baby, leave baby!’ and she cackled almost insanely.
The doctor stood on the doorstep of the moon-lit manor house. He looked nervously at his watch. He had wanted to be back earlier but to administer words of comfort to a woman who had been made a widow within the hour could not have been rushed. He rang the bell. Florence appeared beside him and gave a furtive wave to Mr. String in his borrowed motor car, passing the gates on his way along the dark lane. ‘Good evening Dr. Snippet; or I should say good morning,’ she said cheerfully.
‘Ah, my dear, hello. I have come to deliver a child. It is Mrs. Eleanor, you know.’
‘I’ve this minute thought I would tell you to come.’ Her lie passed without comment or suspicion. ‘I think it won’t be long now.’ She produced a key and opened the door.
Once in the hallway, they stood facing each other to glean an explanation as to the screams interspersed with a croaky laughter that came echoing from upstairs.
‘My goodness gracious, she’s started,’ the doctor said and he moved quickly up the stairs, clutching his brown calf hide bag. He made his way to Eleanor’s bedroom and was followed shortly by Florence who held a trimmed lamp. The radiance chased the dirty shadows away and as they fled they took with them the ghosts of the night. The doctor gasped in surprise and the maid muffled a cry by smothering her mouth with a hand.
Eleanor had bandaged herself with the bed covers; they had become bound tightly about her. Though screaming in agony, still she laughed, her previously clear complexion a blotched and wrinkled face of a clown. Beads of blood sat along scratches in her cheeks that had been made with her own fingernails. Her hair was a dishevelled mess.
‘Clean linen, hot water. Plenty of it and hurry,’ Dr. Snippet demanded.
CHAPTER 18
The Missing Body
STUBB WAS PLEASED. It had been a successful transaction with Mr. Nuckle. It was arranged that the body of Theodore was to be collected the following night. He walked briskly along the dark Stutter Lane past shuttered windows and snowy lawns, on his way to Daisytrail Lane via the village green.
Upon entering the manor house he found it in silence. One of the drawing room doors was ajar. Florence and the doctor were seated by the fire, a fresh log of ash burning within it, and they spoke in conspiring tones. They did not hear Stubb enter, so engrossed were they in their conversation. A creeping feeling that something was amiss: ‘Doctor, my wife,’ Stubb blurted out.
Florence stood hurriedly and looked embarrassed. Stubb ignored her and the doctor rose from his armchair.
‘Where have you been?’ he demanded, his usual mild manner replaced with annoyance.
Stubb clicked his tongue. ‘I … I had urgent business to attend to,’ he said.
‘Urgent enough to leave your wife as she gave birth to your son?’
Stubb looked bemused for a moment and then he smiled and it widened the more. ‘A son, you say – wonderful, wonderful, that is wonderful!’ He gave a shout of glee and could not help but chuckle whereupon, seeing Florence’s surprise, he contained himself and said to her, ‘I think you had better go. You should be in your room at this time anyway.’
Stubb sat opposite the doctor in his father’s favourite wingback armchair after dragging it nearer the fire guard. He spoke in a confidential way. ‘Dr. Snippet, I trust my wife is safe and well.’
‘As well as can be expected,’ came the quick reply. The doctor looked grim. ‘I have placed her under light sedation. She has been through much more than any other young woman in her position. Time heals, they say. Let us hope that is so.’
‘What are you saying? What do you mean?’
‘I mean, Mr. Stubb, that something or someone has frightened Mrs. Eleanor out of her wits, to such a degree that the birth of the child was brought on even more prematurely by her acute fright. When I arrived here, the woman was half out of her mind. You know yourself that your wife has had a record of mentality upsets and on that score she is very delicate.’
‘What can be done?’
Dr. Snippet gave a drawn-out sigh and looked to the coloured tufts of carpet as he spoke. ‘With the terrible scare that she has undoubtedly encountered, coupled with the fact that it was a difficult birth, I can only suggest that you pray.’ He looked up from the floor to fix his attention onto William Stubb. ‘And you had urgent business to attend to,’ he said with an unusual bitterness.
Stubb could not hide his guilt. He knew that he should have waited until the next day to see Nuckle but to live in a house that contained a dead and murdered body had been unthinkable. ‘How was I to know she was going to give birth while I was away?’ he muttered feebly. ‘What could have frightened her?’
‘I have no idea. Your maid tells me she heard nothing out of the ordinary and that your wife was sleeping soundly until the final labour pains came. I arrived then.’
‘She is going to be alright isn’t she; she’s going to be well…’
‘As I have said, Mr. Stubb, I cannot say. All we can do is wait and see the outcome. She has suffered a condition that we call eclampsia. Violent convulsions and so forth. Being of a nervous and, may I say, unstable type of person to begin with, her physical and mental state is somewhat worrying.’ Stubb lowered his head and covered his brow with his hands. The doctor continued, ‘Now if you will excuse me, I must go. I have other calls to make tonight but I will return in the morning’s light to check her progress.’ He stood. ‘She will not awaken until then and I would not disturb her,’ and he added firmly, ‘I insist upon that. Goodnight to you.’
‘Goodnight,’ murmured Stubb, deep in thought.
Once Dr. Snippet had departed, Stubb poured himself a drink and sat back in the armchair with a mournful expression haunting his features. He slowly sipped from a glass of whisky. A terrible fright, the doctor had said. But what could have frightened her? Or whom? As he stared at the flames of the fire, he cursed himself for not being with her. Then impulsively he stood up and placed the unfinished alcohol upon the side table. He must visit Eleanor despite the doctor’s advice. He was also keen to see his newborn son; to see them for a few moments surely could do no harm.
He tiptoed up the stairs, trying to calm his excited breathing at the prospect of seeing his child. He paced along the paneled corridor, past a stunted suit of armour and the morbid portraits, and stood outside their bedroom door. The baby inside would be a strange being; a small and fragile thing, almost as a doll, he knew. A paternal desire took hold but then, with his neck muscles stiffening, the dark thought that there was no hope of the child being his came to mind; he decided that to see another’s offspring from his wife would be too painful an experience. He would heed the words of Dr. Snippet and leave Eleanor and the child to sleep.
A hasty decision came to mind: he would take a look at the body of Theodore. Why, he could not say, for the idea repulsed him yet some inner pressure urged him on. He went to the spare bedroom where he and Mr. String had laid the dead man. Lighting the oil lamp that stood by the door, he entered. The bright flame licked the walls and ceiling clean of the dark and spread an orange light over the bed.
Stubb gaped. He put his head to one side and laughed although he did not know why. This nervous reaction was broken by a shriek and he nearly dropped the lamp. In a blind panic he ran out of the roo
m and tripped over a chair that stood in the corridor. The lamp spluttered and he righted it, leaving it on the carpet. He stood up, panting hoarsely, his throat drying.
Brood had returned to his ramshackle shed some time before, breathless after walking in the night chill and wind. He was becoming worried. Determined to sleep, he lay on his bedding but still his mind refused to relinquish its consciousness. He walked four paces the length of the shed before his vision fell upon the stiff body that lay on sacking. As though willing it to move, Brood held his gaze to it for a full minute.
He reached for his spade. He would bury the body that night. Sleep would not be accessible until then.
Stubb was frantic with worry. Surely it was not possible to lose a body? He began to search each room, pulling open wardrobe doors and even cupboards, the ottomans and large oak boxes. He stood in the box room after exhaustive investigations, and after a fruitless search in the chest with the theatrical costumes within, he was unsure as to where to look next.
An idea came to him. He walked hurriedly along to the main bathroom but the place was empty, a dripping tap there marking the seconds. Cursing and moaning, he ran down to the hallway to continue his search. Once he had made his way through the lobby and into the kitchen, he found the maid.
Florence was content with the progression of her romance and a contented happiness kept sleep from her. She hummed a jaunty tune while waiting for the kettle to boil on the range. She looked up without expression as Stubb bustled in. ‘Is there anything the matter, sir?’ she enquired.
‘Nothing,’ Stubb snapped but then, making a sudden and hasty decision, exclaimed loudly, ‘Yes, a problem. I want you to take the baby to Dr. Snippet’s house. Wrap it up well or whatever you have to do. Give it a sweet pacifier.’
The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb Page 10
