“You might call it that,” Lyon answered. He turned away, unable to continue looking at the little man who was going to tear down their house in order to build as many condominium units as he could legally squeeze onto the property. He felt rage. They, whoever they were, were taking everything without reason. His wife, their home, all they possessed. He wanted to fight, to take physical action of any sort that would relieve some of the pain and frustration.
He had left and taken the lantern with him. The darkness, with its attendant fears, was worse than his menacing presence. Bea stretched the chain that held her fast to the wall to its fullest extent, and felt her way along the dank walls. She could feel along three walls of the crypt, but the fourth, which contained the entrance, was out of reach.
She moved her hand lightly across the sarcophagus that held the food and water supplies. Her hand closed over a water container, and she raised it to her lips and drank greedily until water spilled out the side of her mouth and ran in a thin rivulet across her chin and down her neck.
She worked her way back through the darkness to her pallet and sat down. The chain clanked on the floor by her side. Her limbs felt leaden, her shoulders slumped forward, and she wanted to cry.
She realized with a start that she wanted her captor to return. She actually yearned for contact, stimuli, any conversation, no matter how dire. Anything that would give relief from the darkness that surrounded her.
She wasn’t sure if it was an hour or a day later when she heard sounds at the door.
He slipped the padlock in his back pocket and forced back the heavy hasp on the grillework. As always, the heavy grille before the crypt door was hard to move on its ancient hinges. He applied both hands and pushed it back against the stonework and slowly opened the arched interior door.
As the door cracked open, it cast a swatch of light across the stone floor. He heard the chain rustle. There was a sigh from his prisoner. He gave a tight smile and turned for a final look at the graveyard.
The plot was empty as always. Only once during his many visits to the place had he discovered a visitor, an old lady busily making grave rubbings from some of the older stones. She had soon left and had not returned.
The church that had once served this place of the dead had burned down thirty years ago, and the rural inhabitants, sparse in number with the demise of farming in Connecticut, had not seen fit to rebuild their house of worship. The cemetery was now unused and forlorn, a very suitable place for his purposes.
He slipped inside the crypt. The Coleman lantern was immediately inside the door and available to him as he stepped inside, but out of her reach. He gave the lantern a few pumps and lit the wick.
If he was going to rape her, this would be his last opportunity. He would savor the moment.
She was sitting on the floor with her knees drawn to her chin. The bright glow was too strong, and she shielded her eyes.
Thoughts of sexual attack fled. She looked god-awful. Her face was already gaunt. Her eyes were sunken surrounded by dark rims of fatigue. She reminded him of a raccoon he had once seen caged in front of a gas station along a highway in South Carolina.
“Please let me go,” she said.
“Your husband has the instructions. If he comes across as told, you’ll be out of here in a week.”
“A week!” She pulled her knees closer to her chin and seemed to shrink in size. “I can’t live in here a week.”
“That’s up to you, lady.” He turned and went back outside for the containers of water he had piled along the wall. He placed them alongside the remaining food.
“I’ll see that you get money and I won’t help the police come after you.”
“Yah, you got to be kidding.”
“I am very serious.”
“Well, so am I. Your husband gets the letters with your location when I get my stamps.”
“We don’t have that kind of money.”
“He’s got lots of friends. You’re not the spunky lady I saw prancing around the statehouse, are you?”
“No.”
“I’m glad you’re humble. It’s good for the character.”
“You’re a sadistic son of a bitch,” she said in a low voice.
“Now, Senator Wentworth, don’t get me angry or I’ll cut your water supply in half.”
“You’re sweet.”
“Now listen to me, little lady. And you had better listen good. I have researched this thing very thoroughly. The human body can sustain itself for up to three months without food, and less than three days without water. You have a week’s water here if you ration yourself to a pint a day. You have food for nearly that time. If you don’t make a pig of yourself. Do you understand?”
“Will you leave me the lantern?”
He hadn’t planned to. He mentally calculated what possible ways she could use it, except for its intended purpose. “Why not? There’s only a few hours of fuel left, so you had best conserve it.” He tossed down a package of book matches next to the lantern. “Remember, you have a week.” He knew it should be only five days, but he wasn’t going to tell her that and make it easy for her. “Take it easy now,” he said and left.
He closed the double doors to the tomb and relocked the padlock. He stripped off the rubber gloves he had been wearing and stuffed them into his back pocket. He walked down the hill to the van parked on the country road by the gates to the cemetery.
He slid into the seat of the van and flipped open the glove compartment. The letter, written a week before the kidnapping, was addressed and stamped. He lifted it gingerly from its resting place by grasping the edges. It was addressed to Lyon Wentworth, RFD, Murphysville, Connecticut, and did not contain a return address. The typed instructions inside located the cemetery and vault. He had dropped the portable typewriter into the depths of Bantam Lake. The letter would be mailed tomorrow in Atlanta, just before he caught indirect flights to London.
He estimated that the letter would arrive in Connecticut two or three days after mailing. By the time Wentworth got it, either he would have already mailed the stamps to London or he wasn’t going to. No matter, it was a risk he had taken into consideration. He felt that the odds were heavily favorable that Wentworth would come up with the necessary money one way or the other.
That bastard would get his wife back either way, but he wouldn’t know that until the last possible moment.
He flipped the envelope onto the passenger’s seat next to the ski mask. He threw the van in gear.
The ski mask!
He turned off the ignition and pounded the steering wheel in frustration. How could it have happened? He had planned everything so carefully. All had gone exactly as planned, and now for this to have happened.…
He had gone into the crypt the last time without wearing the mask.
She had seen him full face by the light of the Coleman lantern!
He turned and looked through the rusted fence up the hill toward the crypt at the apex of a small rise. She was now securely chained and locked inside, and yet, once released, she would be able to identify him.
Everything for nothing! It had all come apart.
He left the van and stood by the gates as the wind ruffled his chair. Of course he would have to kill her.
The only weapon he had with him was a small pocket penknife. It would be a messy and bloody affair, one that would give him nightmares during the plush days ahead.
That would not be necessary.
He turned and looked back inside the van. The letter telling of her location, the one he intended to mail in Atlanta, still nestled on the seat. He reached inside and crumpled it as he brought it toward him.
He ripped the letter into two dozen pieces, threw them in the air, and watched the breeze blow them out over the meadow.
She would die, of course, but then, that was the way it had to be.
He got back inside the van and restarted the engine. There was plenty of time to catch the flight to Atlanta. After all, he had planned it all so
carefully.
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About the Author
Richard Forrest (1932–2005) was an American mystery author. Born in New Jersey, he served in the US Army, wrote plays, and sold insurance before he began writing mystery fiction. His debut, Who Killed Mr. Garland’s Mistress (1974), was an Edgar Award finalist. He remains best known for his ten novels starring Lyon and Bea Wentworth, a husband-and-wife sleuthing team introduced in A Child’s Garden of Death (1975).
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1980 by Richard Forrest
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3787-7
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