Amabel stopped dead and stared at him. He came hesitantly forward into the light and she could see that he was a tall dark man of about thirty. His face was very pale and drawn as if he had been ill. About him there was also a faintly grubby and dishevelled air as if he had recently been through a period of great emotion.
‘What is it?’ said Amabel, standing her ground before his advance.
He continued his way towards her unsteadily and almost fell. ‘What is it?’ she repeated, steadying him.
‘I strangled her,’ he said in a hoarse voice. ‘I’ve strangled her.’ Amabel recoiled.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I won’t strangle you. I don’t strangle everybody.’ He stared in her face and even gave a dry laugh. ‘I don’t strangle little girls.’
Amabel turned to run but he caught her arm.
‘No, don’t go. Oh, please don’t go. I’m trying to confess. Properly, this time, to someone in the outside world. This is outside, isn’t it?’
‘Outside what?’ gasped Amabel.
‘Just outside. Free. Like other people, you know.’
Amabel tried to release her arm, but she moved it gently so that perhaps he would not notice.
‘I held out a long while against strangling her, you know. I tried not to do it. I didn’t want to, but she made me. I’ve been sitting up there in the dark for hours now, wondering what to do.’
Amabel had her arm free now and felt braver. She took a small step backward and then another. He followed her out into the road. Once in the street lights she felt braver still.
‘It’s no good asking me,’ she said. I’m frightened. You’ve frightened me.’
‘It is frightening. Even when you try to forget it, even when you have forgotten, you’re still frightened. And you never forget you’ve been frightened,’ he added, ‘that’s the other thing. You won’t forget you’ve been frightened.’
‘No,’ said Amabel, beginning to tremble. ‘I won’t.’
‘I love you,’ he muttered.
‘You can’t,’ cried a fearful Amabel. ‘You’ve only just met me.’ Her legs refused to run.
‘No, not you,’ he said from his dream. ‘Why don’t you run away? You want to. Why don’t you?’
‘I can’t,’ gasped Amabel. ‘My legs won’t move.’
‘What, you too?’ He sounded amused. ‘It happens to everybody.’
Then he seemed to make up his mind. ‘Come on. Lean on me and I’ll lean on you. We’ll go to the police station together. You can show me the way.’
So, supporting each other, they started to walk down the road. They hadn’t gone very far when there was the first lick of flame from the house behind them.
‘The house is burning, is burning,’ cried Amabel, tugging at his arm to halt him.
‘Is it?’ he said indifferently. ‘About time. I began to think it never would.’
‘Did you do it?’
‘Do what?’ he asked, trying to move on.
They were still standing there struggling with each other when Jordan and Detective Abel came round the corner.
Jordan knew Amabel, and Abel, although he had never met the man, knew at once who he was.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’ – And so have the whole city police force, he might have added.
They were interrupted by the arrival of a fire engine and a police car summoned by Charlotte’s parents who were not in a state of crisis, not having a nightmare, had not had their vision of their own characters shot through, but were wide awake householders with a nose for smoke and a keen feeling for the preservation of property. They were standing in their garden watching.
A policeman got out of his car and ran rapidly up towards the house. The firemen followed smartly with their equipment.
So Detective Abel was not, as he had expected to be, the first policeman on the scene in the last act.
He put the man and Amabel in the police car and followed Jordan towards the house.
‘There’s a woman in there,’ cried Jordan to the fireman in charge. ‘And perhaps two.’
The fire had spread rapidly from the ground floor, up the stairs to the flat above. The curtains were already burning at Nell’s window. The haze seemed to welcome the fire.
‘I’m going in there,’ cried Jordan, plunging forward.
‘No,’ said Abel, holding him back. He was watching the firemen at work. ‘Let them. They’re professionals and better at it than you.’
‘I must get to Nell.’
Abel said nothing. He looked sombre. Perhaps he was wondering what there was of Nell left to get. He had caught something of the confession that the man in the car was now repeating monotonously over and over again as if he could not tell it often enough. – Obliterated, was a word he kept using. Obliterated. Blotted out. Effaced. Destroyed.
They waited, standing side by side. ‘Good. It’s raining,’ said Abel, putting up his hand. ‘That ought to help.’
This time it was Jordan’s turn to be silent. He hardly even heard that Abel spoke. His eyes were on the house. One of the firemen was carrying something down the ladder. Once again Jordan tried to rush forward and once more Abel held him back.
‘Hang on,’ Abel said.
‘Got the old woman out,’ said the leading fireman. ‘She’s breathing. The ambulance is on its way.’
Slowly Jordan went over and looked down at the figure stretched out on the grass. His eyes were so full of smoke and tears, his heart so full of thoughts of Nell that he hardly saw her. She looked like a bag of old skin, with white hair and stained puffy cheeks.
‘I didn’t know Mrs Richier was so old,’ he said sadly.
Abel led him away.
‘Where’s Nell?’ Jordan asked in despair. ‘Why don’t they find her?’
‘I think you must prepare yourself for the fact that she may not be there to be found,’ said Abel slowly.
‘Where is she then?’ cried Jordan.
‘I don’t know. I just know that she may be gone.’
Then the cry began to be heard that there was another woman found.
‘Another woman,’ called the fire chief to the two men. Then he came over and said in a sick voice: ‘ She’s been strangled.’
‘You had better go over and look,’ said Abel. ‘She will have to be identified.’
Blindly Jordan stumbled across to look. He stared.
‘That’s Mrs Richier! I remember her now.’ He felt bewildered. ‘Two old women?’
He rushed back across the grass to where the other woman lay, wrapped in a rug but almost unattended.
The face was old and swollen and the hair without natural colour. He looked at it with mounting horror. He picked up a hand. The face was old but the hand was warm and young. Nell’s hand.
‘Nell,’ he cried, hardly knowing what he was saying. ‘Nell, my darling, wake up and come alive again.’
Over a week passed before he saw Nell again. Then he visited her in Amabel’s house where she was staying till she found a new place to live.
She lay in a big chair, feeling weak, and staring up at him. Her skin was still stained and blotchy where Mrs Richier had dyed it, but the pads had been removed from her cheeks. Her hair was white but already the colour was growing back. She had been pushed prematurely into old age but time paradoxically would restore her to youth.
She smiled at Jordan but otherwise looked unhappy.
‘How’s Amabel?’ asked Jordan nervously; he felt curiously shy.
‘Back on form.’ She looked away. ‘She’s so young. She can put things behind her. I can’t. I behaved so wrongly.’ She looked back at Jordan in appeal. ‘But I didn’t use drugs improperly on him. In a way I helped him. But I wanted to hurt and frighten him.’
‘Don’t dwell on it, Nell.’ He was reflecting that Robert Lang was an unstable man who had attacked his wife more than once. He himself had seen the bruises on Louise’s throat.
‘No, that’s bad advice. I must
dwell on it. As I look back I feel that I must have been mad. Can you have a little temporary madness that then clears away for ever, Jordan?’ She was almost crying.
Jordan took her hand and held it without answering.
‘You understand, I was convinced that he knew all about Louise’s disappearance. At first I just wanted to know. I just wanted to dig out the knowledge he had hidden inside him. That’s why I kept him there. But afterwards, as I began to get more and more suspicious of him, I wanted to punish him. That was it really, Jordan, I wanted to punish him.’ She was openly weeping now. ‘ I wanted to contrive pain for him. Can you imagine me like that? You didn’t know that Nell, did you? I felt like the wicked witch.’
‘I’ve always thought that the witch was wicked because she lived alone so much,’ said Jordan, pressing Nell’s hand gently. ‘She couldn’t support her loneliness. And that was your trouble, my poor Nell. When you were alone after Louise had gone, you began to be afraid. I don’t know quite what of – everyone has their own set of private fears.’
‘I was afraid of growing old and plain and being unloved,’ whispered Nell. ‘Louise was always the pretty one. I was never as pretty as Louise.’ At last, almost without knowing it, she had unburdened herself of the secret envy which had sat on her shoulders since she was a little girl. She felt much easier at once.
‘Prettier, much prettier,’ Jordan said. ‘But I understand. Do you see now that you were really punishing your brother-in-law for taking Louise away from you and turning you into a witch? He was weak and wicked and frightened, and you became strong and wicked and frightened. You affected each other. Although you were the stronger personality, you changed the more. But in the end he set you free, Nell, which you couldn’t do for him. I think he did it deliberately.’ He smiled at her. ‘You’ve turned back into my Nell again, now.’
‘I wish I could believe that.’
‘You were a witch with him. You could never be a witch with me. I’m not the sort of person who makes witches.’ And it was true, there was a goodness and a quietness about Jordan that brought peace.
Nell held on to his hand as if she believed him. She did believe him. There was one more worry on her mind, though.
‘Jordan, what do you think Mrs Richier meant to do with me after she had disguised me with her cosmetics?’ It was a thought that had haunted her.
Jordan shrugged. ‘It’s all such a fantasy. Being Mrs Richier, perhaps she had some plan, some means, of smuggling you out of the country. Or perhaps she just meant to kill you and hope you’d remain unidentified. Anyway, she’s dead.’
‘And so is Louise. That’s the one sure thing.’
Jordan took her hand. ‘Nell. Nell, darling.’
‘It’s no good. I’ve done things that alter me, make me a different person. The Nell you knew is dead, she killed herself.’
‘Nell, come back to life.’
‘You asked me that once before,’ she smiled. ‘I would do it for you, Jordan, if I could.’
‘Don’t do it for me, do it for someone else.’
She looked in query.
‘Well, there’s a boy I met last week who wants to learn to speak.’
‘Would that be so wonderful for him? Don’t you think he might not be better without taking it up again? He thought so once.’
‘Nell, this boy wants to learn to speak,’ he persisted gently. ‘He’s been on the outside looking in and doesn’t like it. Now he wants to join us.’
‘Are we worth joining? Look at Mrs Richier and her son. Look at me.’
‘It’s for him to choose.’ He spoke with decision, making it a declaration. ‘He has a right to ask for help.’
There was a very long pause until Nell finally said: ‘Yes. If I can help him I ought to do so.’ She started to cry. Jordan held out his arms and she rested her poor dyed head against him while he dried her tears.
‘Not Nell alone any more,’ he said. ‘Never Nell alone any more.’
Copyright
First published 1966 by Michael Joseph
This edition published 2015 by Bello
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Copyright © Jennie Melville, 1966
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