by David Pirie
What followed was, as it turned out, the most difficult task of the night, for I had to hoist myself up and work my way headfirst through the window in one reckless move. The blanket and my clothes offered some protection but, despite this, the window was so narrow that, as I thrust myself forward, I felt tiny slivers of glass raking my shoulders and arms. One long piece that I must have missed pierced my coat and I was forced to push myself on recklessly without even calculating my fall. And then I was past the point of balance, plunging forward.
As I fell, the blanket moved aside and my naked feet raked excruciatingly against the splinters. Then I was tumbling forward on to wet ground and my right leg hit something hard with an agonising impact. It was the edge of the coal scuttle and I had to roll away from it, cursing my stupidity for letting the thing land here in the first place.
I lay there, feeling blood on my feet and shoulder, finally concluding that, though my leg was badly bruised, no bones were broken. And at last I was out of that foul place. In fact, as I sat up to look at my wounds, I knew I had been lucky. If my head, rather than my leg, had connected with the edge of the coal scuttle, my opponent could well have returned to find my corpse on the grass.
That thought drove me to my feet and, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, I took stock of my surroundings. I was, as I had long suspected, standing beside a small cottage in open country in early dawn. The garden around me was unkempt and overgrown with some larger trees at the bottom by a dilapidated stone wall. Past the garden there seemed, from what I could make out, to be a field and, beside it, a track led away through a wood. Turning to one side, I saw this track ran on round the front of the house. Heaven alone knew what county I was in, the land looked far from rich and I could see no other houses, though of course much was masked by trees and it was not yet full light.
Something had already caught my eye beyond the nearest corner of the field and I clambered down though the thickets and out of the garden. There, descending a bank, I was soon, as I had suspected, on the edge of a stream. It was muddy but otherwise quite clean and, caring nothing for the cold, I lay down on the lowest bank and lapped the water. Then I poured it over my head and neck, wanting only to rid myself of the stench of that cottage.
Once my thirst was quenched and I felt clean in myself, I turned my attention to my wounds. I was cold and shivering now but it was not frosty and — removing my coat and trousers — I washed the blood away, though I took great care not to get the clothes wet. Last of all I cleaned myself up and examined the bandage on my left leg. It was still tightly applied and though acutely painful, the wound had been too high to affect my movement. What an irony it was, I thought, that I owed my life to the ambition of Cream’s cruelty. A less evil man would merely have tortured and killed me in a conventional way, but he wanted to go further.
By now my feet were ice cold and I put my coat on, thanking God for it as I moved back from the field into the garden. There was still no sign of anyone or anything as I came back to the window but I had thought of a use for that blanket and also made a decision. I tugged the blanket away from the frame, making quite sure all the glass was gone from it. Then I got down on my knees to study the ground and picked out the most lethal dagger of glass I could find. Finally I moved through the trees at the bottom of the garden till I was quite invisible from the house. Here, I wrapped the cloth around my feet as some protection from the cold.
It would have to be taken off when I walked. But I had no intention of walking. Until this moment, all my energy had been expended on my escape from the cottage and his power. Now that was partially achieved, I recognised for the first time what was truly motivating me: and that was to kill him. I have to own that no thoughts of courts or justice or authority even entered my mind. I wanted only to strike out against the depraved criminal who had humiliated me and who had already, for sport, destroyed the one person in this world that might have made me whole. I had not, and still have not, the slightest moral compunction about the feelings I had in that garden as I watched the dawn. No doubt if men take the law into their own hands it is an evil. But, after all that had happened, I felt that I was acting in defence of my whole being. And even if Dr Bell had been there to caution me, I would have asked him how it could ever be moral for me to let such a man live when we had absolute proof of his deeds and an opportunity to prevent further deaths by ridding the world of him for good.
It seemed certain my enemy would be here within a few hours, and would come by the road I had seen. There was no reason for him to walk through fields and woods and, in any case, the neatness of his attire told me the road was the only way he had ever come. It also seemed probable he would arrive sometime around mid-morning. No doubt at this moment he was sleeping peacefully in some local inn and would then return to kill me in the way he had promised.
The only question was how to surprise him. The interior of the cottage offered little hope in such a struggle, so now I examined its exterior. In front of me was a plain one-storey dwelling with a porch entrance. I knew the inner door of the porch was locked and no doubt the outer one was also secure. I considered trying to clamber up on to the porch roof and fall on him as he unlocked the door, but it would be hard to keep silent and there was a chance he would glance up and see me.
On balance it seemed more profitable to surprise him before he reached the door and saw the broken window beyond it. Taking my blanket, therefore, I walked back to the cottage and past the door. The path to the front, a little grassy track, began at the porch and moved round the side. The road, when I came to it on the other side of the place, turned out to be a dusty yet broad way, presumably linking to other farms and villages in the area, even though no other habitation was visible. Beyond it, woods sloped up to the horizon. The cottage had, as I suspected, no door facing the road at all and only one high window on this side masked by dark material. The whole place had a very grim aspect and, for the first time, I started to wonder what sort of a man or woman would live here without even the slightest effort to make it more cheerful.
But this was a distraction and I turned back to thinking about my plan. The opposite end of the building was dense with hawthorn so, unless you were determined on a real walk, there seemed no way of reaching the cottage’s door from the road except this path, hence the place’s total privacy. I could be quite certain, therefore, it was the way he would use, which meant he would not see the broken window until he reached the back of the house and its garden.
All my attention was now centred on a clump of bushes beside the path. These were thick and, because of the angle of the building’s roof, I was sure they saw little sun so I would be well hidden. And so, after again taking stock of the road in what was now almost full daylight, I returned to the garden and crawled into that clump of bushes from behind. Soon, moving slowly forward, I was crouched a few feet from the cottage and only inches from the path and I was sure there was no way I could be seen.
I felt elated that I was ready for him. Unless he came down that grass track on all fours, he could not observe me and there was nothing to make him suspect. The dagger of glass in my hand had not been chosen carelessly. It was so sharp that it had cut part of the thick blanket to ribbons. Judging my opponent’s height, I knew with one lunge it could sever his femoral artery below the groin. Of course I would hope to do more and my second blow would be to the aorta, but I had to be quite clear about the first for in effect that one blow, properly executed, would be enough, whatever happened later. No doubt it would topple him instantly, and perhaps put him at my mercy, but I was not relying on any of that. The more important point was that in this isolated place Cream would die from loss of blood within a relatively short time. And, if the glass went as deep as I intended, there would be nothing anyone could do to help him, whether he was here in this godforsaken garden or surrounded by surgeons in a London teaching hospital.
I had confidence in this plan, my only anxiety was his route. Suppose he was wary and tr
amped across country to get here? But then why should he? I was sure he believed I had taken the drug and he had said he would be here this morning. I put the glass down carefully, I did not want to exhaust myself unnecessarily. And I waited.
Some hours went by and the sun came up, so that I was relatively warm as I lay there. I do not think I slept or dozed, I was too intent on my quarry for that, but I did have many rambling and discursive thoughts. Of course I thought of my lost love Elsbeth and of how much I wanted to avenge her for his imbecilic crime. I thought of the torture I had just endured, and how I must never put myself in such a position again. For some reason, my mind went to my father who was still incarcerated in a bleak mental institution in Scotland. And then I found myself reflecting on the Morlands and hoping, with every ounce of my will, Cream had not harmed them. But always, throughout these reveries, I kept returning to what it would be like to plunge my weapon into the evil thing who brought me here. For now I could hardly think of Cream as a man. The days when we discoursed and drank merrily together seemed like something out of a different life. It was my history and I remembered it, yet it was as if it had happened to someone else I once knew.
And then I heard the cart. Of course I could not see it but it was coming from the direction I expected, that is from the other side of the cottage downhill through the wood, which seemed the most likely route to civilisation. The creaking of its wheels got closer, and I could hear the horses’ hoofs on the ground. Their clatter was louder and louder. Finally I could tell it was here by the cottage and then, I was sure, only a few feet away from me on the road. Would it pass? No, it stopped, and someone got down. I braced myself, every nerve stretched, waiting for him.
BEHIND THE DOOR
For a time nothing happened. My nerves were so taut I could hardly breathe.
Then someone was walking along the path, I saw a shadow, then boots. They stopped. Just out of reach. A blow now would only wound. Had he somehow guessed? I braced myself.
A voice came. ‘Well, I can’t see nobody. Yes, old Lucas always keeps himself to himself but it’s odd. No sign of him.’ It was not his voice.
Another voice from further away. ‘Well, you’ve no call to go poking your nose in or he’ll cut it off for you. They say he’s a bag of gold or two.’
The feet now turned and walked away back to the road. ‘Aye, well he’d do anything for money,’ their owner replied. ‘But it’s strange, for though he don’t like company you usually see him peering from his path here. But it’s weeks now. Well, let’s be gettin’.’
At this I heard the noise of someone climbing back into the cart. Then there was a crack of a whip and the vehicle moved on. Could he still be lurking somewhere? In order to deceive me, had Cream perhaps instructed them to say nothing of him? But then, I reflected, he would never use the service of such gossips as these and the conversation seemed quite genuine. This could only mean it was a false alarm: two curious local men passing by.
My palms were sweating so much that I had to lay my weapon down and wipe them on the bushes. The man, Lucas, they talked of would be the tenant of the cottage and Cream was his visitor. Doubtless if the man would do anything for money he had been given money to keep away, which is why his neighbours pondered his absence.
I felt a great sense of disappointment but I geared myself to wait. And wait I did. The hours went by, the light softened. I listened to the birds and once I was sure I saw a mouse scurrying into some hole in the side of the house but otherwise there was nothing at all. Not a single other vehicle even passed. And at last I saw that the shadows were lengthening and knew, in my heart, he had eluded me again. For now, at least, he was not coming back here.
I felt very stiff and was more than ever conscious of my pain and my hunger. Was it possible, I was thinking, as I started to crawl back away from the path, that he had known? That he had seen through me and was playing another of his games? Perhaps he was even watching me now and would suddenly tire of my antics and pounce.
I stared round but soon some sense returned and I realised none of that could be true. There was no way he would ever have risked my escape or allowed me a weapon, for I still clutched my glass dagger. And, even if he were here, he would hardly have waited all day to attack me from behind.
No, his absence must be to do with something else. Perhaps he had become wary of appearing here, because of the kind of gossip I had overheard? Or he had been detained by some other business? Whatever the reason, I felt utter dejection. It seemed as if fate itself would never let me close with him. Here, for once in five long years, I had had the advantage and the opportunity, only to see it melt away.
There could be no sense in lingering here further and, as I emerged from my shelter, I registered that the temperature was dropping. From the sun there was still an hour of daylight but despite the blanket my feet were already cold, and it seemed I had a desperate journey to make, most of which would be at night. Thanks to my blood lust, I had thrown away the chance of undertaking it in less challenging conditions.
I came round to the back of the cottage again, wondering what Cream had done with Lucas’s things, for surely the man had not removed all his clothes. As I was passing the porch, it occurred to me to wonder if they might be in the space between the two doors. I put my weight against the outer one. To my amazement, it swung open.
Now I cursed my stupidity for not doing so before. I had been so preoccupied by my plan I had just allowed myself to assume it was locked. But as I stepped into the shadows, the stench was indescribable, making me recoil in disgust. It was the smell of rotting flesh and its source was obvious as soon as I looked down.
The body of the man was already putrescent, with dark patches of peeling skin. There was a great hole in his skull which was almost certainly the blow that killed him, and he lay in a little pool of dried blood. On a quick reckoning the body must have been dead for a week at least and I felt certain his murder preceded my arrival.
I was ashamed now by the feebleness of my deductions about the missing Lucas. Cream had evidently selected this place for its isolation, but of course he would never have bothered to come to an arrangement with the tenant even in the event that such an arrangement were possible. He had simply disposed of him.
Yet there was more to it than that, for as I stared at the wretched underfed corpse below me, I thought of the gossip I had overheard from the roadside. Lucas ‘kept himself to himself’, they had said. So the man must have a reputation as a recluse, which would have suited Cream admirably. It gave him the opportunity to do away with the tenant and use the cottage for his own purposes. And had not one of the voices mentioned ‘a bag of gold or two’? Little wonder there were two stout oak doors. Cream must surely have heard of this miser and his hoard. Perhaps he had seen the chance of procuring some assets while he was torturing me.
That must be what lay behind the tapping of the walls I had overheard as he moved around. But from his remarks he had found nothing. And I was sure I knew why. Cream might know many things but he could have little awareness of the eccentricities of English village life. The gold that was the talk of this community might possibly exist but it seemed much more probable it did not. A strange reclusive man who fears and dislikes his neighbours, and who jealously guards his privacy while living in miserable squalor, is often presumed to be sitting on a hoard. But it is much more likely he is suffering from some mental sickness. Little wonder Cream’s harvest had been poor.
I took some grim satisfaction from this, as I knelt down, blocking my nose with my sleeve to examine the body more closely. Then I heard the clatter of a vehicle on the road.
My heart raced, could it be him? Had I lost my advantage? My first instinct was to dart back out but I now saw the feet of the body below me were clad in brown boots of a size that looked close to my own. I had no idea whether Cream was in that carriage, I had been wrong enough times, but if I needed to get away, here was my one chance.
I bent down and pulled at
the boots but the feet were stiff as planks so I was reduced to fumbling with their laces. The sound of the conveyance was louder now. Finally I got one boot off and then another. I took the socks with them and at that moment I noticed something lying by Lucas’s feet and snatched it up. It was my wallet, and sure enough inside were several of my visiting cards though no money.
Could this be the true reason why Cream had not returned? Perhaps he had decided from the beginning it would be amusing to see me hanged for murder? The laudanum would help the case against me and even the locked inner door would prove no legal defence if he had left a key concealed inside. But there was no time to search further, for to my horror the sound of the cart had stopped. It was at the other side of the house.
Quickly, carrying the boots and wallet, I moved back out and through the rough grass, dreading I would lose the advantage. It was still lighter than I would have liked and I could hear voices. However, I reached the thicker vegetation at the bottom of the garden and turned to take stock.
Three men moved slowly along the side of the house. Cream was not among them. The man in the lead was not in uniform but he had an official bearing, making me sure this was a party from the local constabulary. ‘Lucas,’ he called out as they came round the back. ‘Are you there? We do not wish to disturb you but we have had word all may not be well.’
I thought now only of flight. Thankfully there was no need to move through the field beside the cottage where I would have been observed at once. A line of scrub oaks stretched away before me, and I could go that way so — still carrying the boots — I ran off quickly, keeping low.
Almost as soon as I left that overgrown garden, I had to ford the stream, though at a lower point than where I had bathed earlier. After that I hurried on barefoot, wishing only to put some distance between me and them. Even so I heard a cry. Someone must have found the body. Of course they would not be sure whether the felon was in the house and soon there was loud banging. They were trying to force that inner door.
