by Anna Willett
Chapter Nineteen
Her hair was the colour of champagne. When she moved, the light from the dusty windows picked out flecks of platinum. Arthur found himself lost in the way her pale head dipped as she stood before him.
“Professor Howell, I know my essay’s due tomorrow, but...” Her hand, like an elegant bird, twisted the corner of the notebook she held close to her chest. “Well, this is difficult to talk about…”
Arthur leaned against the podium, shuffling papers that were already neatly piled. They’d had three similar conversations last semester; he knew where this was going. He wanted her to stop talking. He wanted her to walk out of his room. But more than anything, he wanted to feel her hair on his skin. He recalled the sensation: like silk, slippery and cool.
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure it is, but to keep giving you extensions…” He couldn’t bring himself to look into her eyes for fear she’d see his desperation. “It’s not fair on the other students, I...”
“Oh, no. Of course. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s just you’re so kind and I’m…” Her voice like honey broke and with it his resolve.
He couldn’t stop himself. He didn’t try. His arms were around her and her head was against his shoulder. The other times, she’d come to him in his office. The first time had been innocent, her crying and him firmly seated on the other side of his desk. He’d handed her a box of tissues and watched with a galloping heartbeat as she plucked out a Kleenex between delicate fingers.
He could remember the moment when her visits stopped being innocent and became like a drug. She hadn’t cried that time, but tears lined the rims of her dark blue eyes. She touched his hand, at first holding it then clutching it to her chest. He could feel the rise and fall of her breathing, the curve of her breast warm and firm beneath his hand.
He was forty-five, still a young man, but Christy was half his age. Christy. Her name tasted like silver on his tongue. Still holding his hand to her breast, she kissed him. Not on the lips, but the neck. Her mouth was warm and soft against his skin. Her breath sent a shudder through his limbs.
There were no windows in his office. No prying eyes to see him push her skirt up and kiss the flesh on her pale thigh as she moaned and cradled his head. Afterwards, he’d promised her anything – anything she wanted as she’d cried and talked about going to the Chancellor.
He loathed what he’d become, but like an addict, he couldn’t stop. Each time she came to him, he’d wanted her to use him; he wanted to use her while hating her and himself. And yet even now, holding her in the lecture theatre, he wanted her.
“I don’t want an extension.” When she spoke, she turned her head so her breath caressed his neck. “I keep thinking about the things I let you do to me and…”
Arthur pulled back, but she clung to him. “Do to you?” His voice was shaking. “I only… I thought you wanted…” His mind was spinning. “Christy, please.”
Her hand travelled up his spine. “I need to pass this unit, but with everything that’s happened between us, I can’t settle on my studies. You have to do this for me. You have to, Arthur.” Her soft tone changed to something almost threatening.
He’d known all along, at least on some level that it would come to this. She didn’t want him. She’d never wanted him. He was only a means to an end, a desperate middle-aged man reduced to a shuddering mess in her hands.
She was pulling away now, smiling. “I really care about you, Arthur, but I can’t pass this unit without your help.”
In that moment he saw her clearly. She was beautiful and sensual, her face and body clean and fresh. All the things he’d craved, but she was also hard and cold – manipulative. And worse than seeing her for what she truly was he saw himself through her eyes: pathetic, lascivious, and grubby, an old man pawing at her firm young body like a sex-starved animal.
He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t bear to see himself reflected in her eyes. “Get out.” He choked out the words.
When she didn’t move, he grabbed her arm and dragged her to the exit blinded by his tears and shame.
“Let go of me.” Her voice more like broken glass than honey now, she shrieked and twisted in his grasp. Her blouse ripped and she stumbled forward.
“Arthur.” Lynette Marshal, the assistant to the Head of English, stood in the doorway. “What’s happened?” Her eyes shifted from Arthur’s face to the girl now sobbing and clutching her blouse.
The memory so clear and painful melted into a haze of sound and voices. His left hand was numb; pins and needles jabbed at his skin. He tried to lift his head, but a shaft of pain snaked across his skull. Hangovers were often painful, but this was beyond any headache he’d ever experienced. Opening his eyes, the dazzling light made him wince and with the movement came nausea.
Arthur turned his head and a rush of liquid spewed over his lips, pooling on the floor beside his face. Images of Christy swarmed his fevered brain. The pain and longing felt fresh and raw as her features morphed into a different countenance, a kinder face, yet still as beautiful.
“Belle?” The word sounded hollow like a faint cry, spiralling out of a deep well.
As his vision cleared somewhat, Arthur recognised a ceiling above him, a circular light fitting, and the sounds of female voices. No stranger to waking on the floor and with dark spots in his memory, he tried to sit up. The movement caused a firestorm of pain in the back of his head.
The voices became clearer. Belle’s usually warm tone sounded high and frightened. He didn’t recognise the other voice, but the unmistakable anger added urgency to his need to move.
Groping for something to steady himself, he felt a tug on his wrists. The feeling was returning to his hands, but something was obstructing their movement. He yanked at the bindings and managed to pull free.
“You stabbed me. You fucking stabbed me.” The words were clear even to Arthur’s ringing ears. A woman was shrieking with disbelief and anger. Not Belle, but another woman.
Arthur sat up. Holding his head in his hands as though it might topple off his shoulders, he scrambled to his knees.
* * *
The room was used as a study. A desk sat beneath a crowded pin-board. To the right of it, bookshelves sagged under the weight of countless books and journals. But what drew Joan’s attention was the items pinned to the board and the walls.
Pictures of Belle Hammer, at least thirty of them clipped from magazines and newspapers. Some printed on copy paper, all images of the author in various poses.
“What the heck?” Joan turned off the torch and slipped it into her pocket.
She took a step into the room and stood closer to the desk. Unlike the rest of the house, this space was messy and overcrowded. Judging by the worn office chair, the half-empty coffee mug, and the pair of slippers under the desk, this was where Arthur spent his time.
Joan tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. This room, like the rest of the property, told a story. But what Joan couldn’t decide was if the story was tragic or threatening. Did it have anything to do with what she’d thought she’d noticed at Belle’s house?
Reaching out a hand, she touched one of the photographs. Belle smiling, almost shyly, as she stood in a bookshop doorway. The walls around the shop were decorated with colourful graffiti art. The shot was most likely taken in a laneway in Melbourne or at least set up to look that way. It was the sort of picture that belonged on the back of a book jacket. Another image, obviously cut from a glossy magazine, showed Belle leaning against her car. Joan scratched her chin and looked down at the desk.
The author’s books were stacked to the left of an aging computer. Looking over her shoulder, she noticed another set of the same books on the middle shelf of the bookcase. The spines were a different colour, but definitely the same novels.
She scratched her chin. Belle was a talented and beautiful woman. Joan could understand why men might be fascinated by her, but this was on a different level. The collection of pictures and books was bordering on ob
session. The idea of Arthur Howell being obsessed with his neighbour was more than a little unsettling. But was he dangerous? What had Rena said about Arthur? Joan tutted, wishing she’d let the woman finish her gossipy tale.
She had no idea how or if any of what she was seeing mattered. As unlikely as it seemed, Arthur might just be a fan. Belle probably had thousands of fans that were just as obsessed as Arthur. And... he could have gone out with friends or called a taxi and gone into Mandurah. There were at least a dozen reasons why the man wasn’t at home. The front door was unlocked. It was a small detail, but one that niggled at her reasoning.
Everything she’d seen that evening could have a reasonable explanation, but so many oddities surrounding one woman didn’t sit right with Joan’s rational mind. Or my mind’s not what it used to be. There was no time to ponder the possibility of a dwindling mental capacity. She’d come looking for Guy’s phone number. She’d gone as far as entering, if not breaking, so she might as well go ahead and search the study.
One thing she remembered from her conversation with Rena was that Arthur was a retired lecturer. There were very few personal items in the house, but plenty of books. Joan frowned and surveyed the shelves on the left wall. A man like Arthur valued the written word. If, like her, he was old-school about not trusting all his contacts to a mobile phone, he’d have an address book.
She nodded to herself and started with the desk drawers. Apart from a packet of envelopes, some push-pins, and an out-of-date coupon for ten percent off window awnings, the top drawer was empty. The second revealed nothing more interesting than a slip of stamps that were yellowed and peeling off the sticky backed paper.
Wondering if she’d misjudged not only Arthur’s way of thinking but her own powers of deduction, Joan pulled open the bottom drawer and smiled.
“There you go, Roger.” She slipped back into conversation with her deceased husband. “This is more like it.”
But what she’d thought was an address book turned out to be more of a journal. Pages and pages of handwritten notes in large, tightly-packed cursive. Without her reading glasses, Joan held the book at arm’s length to read Arthur’s writing.
Squinting slightly, the words came into focus. Not a journal as such, but poetry. She was no expert, but the words and sentiments were sad and lovely at the same time. The sonnets expressed a gentle longing so at odds with her suspicions about Arthur being dangerous that a flush of shame crept up Joan’s neck. Reading on, she found the feelings he articulated mirrored her own yearning in a way that was painful and mesmerising at the same time. Wanting to keep reading but having difficulty drawing breath, Joan closed the book and dropped it back into the drawer. She was the one in the wrong, reading Arthur’s deepest thoughts and emotions, snooping around the man’s house.
The air in the unheated house should have been freezing, but Joan felt suffocated. She left the study and closed the door, eager to escape the building and shrug off the feeling of dejection that seemed to cling to every wall and piece of furniture.
Once outside, she gulped in the cold, clean air and hurried down the porch steps. “Damn.” The suddenness of her voice in the dark startled a roosting bird that fluttered up from a clump of trees. Without stopping she pulled open the car door and slid behind the wheel while the cantankerous bird shrieked out an angry litany.
“Now what?” She touched the keychain that dangled from the ignition. It was getting late. She should call it a night and go home. Hadn’t she already gone above and beyond?
She turned the key and flicked on the headlights, noticing the way the beam washed any trace of colour from the ramshackle building. It occurred to her that Arthur might be on his way home and the easiest, most straightforward step would be to leave him a note.
She shook her head, annoyed that she hadn’t had the idea sooner, then reached over to open the glovebox. “Probably easier than entering the poor man’s house and going through his...”
The words dried up in her mouth. Joan’s shoulders dropped and all thoughts of notes and Arthur Howell slipped from her mind. In the eighteen months since losing Roger, she must have opened the glovebox at least a handful of times. How was it possible that she’d never noticed the open packet of Larimax Throat Lozenges? It’s not possible. But even as the familiar scent, both sweet and sharp filled the car, she still doubted her own eyes.
The smell of the lozenges was strong, almost too strong for an old packet. Joan reached out her hand and touched the package, half expecting it to vanish like the mist that surrounded the car. The packet, like everything in the car, felt icy. She held the lozenges up, turning the package under the interior light. Nothing supernatural about a half-eaten packet of lozenges. She gave a chuckle that was unconvincing and dry.
“If this is your idea of a sign…” She couldn’t quite find the words to finish the sentence.
She held the lozenges close to her nose and closed her eyes, drinking in the familiar aroma of eucalyptus and honey. They were probably under the little pouch of tissues and the yellowing box of Band-Aids. Nothing mystical or otherworldly, just an old packet of throat lozenges jostled to the front of the glovebox on Arthur’s bumpy driveway. But the world wasn’t always that straightforward. She’d seen more than a few strange things over her sixty-four years. Not the least of them a healthy man dying in his sleep without making enough noise to wake his wife.
It didn’t mean anything. She’d been reading too much into everything that had happened tonight. And what a crazy night it had been. She meant to put the lozenges back where she found them but couldn’t bring herself to part with the little packet. Somehow holding the Larimax was like crossing time. Roger’s hand would have held these throat lozenges, his fingers, like hers, around the packet.
Instead of putting the package back in the glovebox, Joan slipped it into her pocket. She flicked the headlights to high beam and put the car in reverse. Time for the craziness to end.
Chapter Twenty
Her hands closed around the frames. Belle grasped the spectacles with such urgency that she almost knocked them off her lap. Still holding the knife at arm’s length, she somehow managed to get the frames in place. She thought she heard someone call her name, but when her vision returned all she saw was Georgia.
Unmoving, directly in front of Belle, stood Georgia. Her hands dangled in front of her body, palms out and coated with blood. The girl’s expressionless eyes were fixed on Belle. Black smudges of mascara-lined her lower lids.
Belle’s chest constricted, forcing her to breathe in short gasps. Her throat burned from where the carer had tried to choke her and the knife in her hand felt heavy, making her arm shudder under the weight.
“Please, just go. Just get out of my house.” Her voice was an unrecognisable croak.
Georgia’s expression remained blank as her head moved from side to side. The way she stood, her arms slack and splashed with blood, and her passive stare, reminded Belle of a TV show about zombies. Creatures with no soul that never stopped coming even if you stabbed or shot them. That’s what the girl looked like, a soulless zombie.
When she spoke, her voice was flat and matter-of-fact. “I’m not leaving. There’s no point. You took my life away.” She took a step closer and Belle, using both hands now, waved the knife in front of her.
“All I’ve got is a crappy job at the care agency. The only good thing that came out of that was overhearing the director talking to your husband.” She held her hands up and turned the palms in, staring at the blood. “Until I heard that call, I was almost ready to let it go. You were hurt.” She shrugged. “That was enough until I heard Janice setting up a carer to come and look after you.”
The girl was approaching, still shuffling, still zombie-like. Belle could see the bloody stain spreading from the girl’s left shoulder, the dark patch blossoming on her uniform shirt.
Belle pulled one hand off the knife and tried to back up, but the wheelchair was against the far wall, leaving her nowhere to go.
“So you do work for the agency.” Belle wanted to keep her talking, but part of her, maybe the writer in her, needed to know how Georgia came to be in her home.
The girl nodded and a spark of interest flickered in her lifeless gaze. “Janice isn’t very good at keeping things confidential. She couldn’t wait to talk about our one and only celebrity client.” As she spoke, Georgia rubbed her bloody palms on the front of her pants. “When she went on her lunch break, I snuck into her office. She’d jotted down the booking on a notepad.” She gave a huff. “Stupid cow hadn’t even bothered to put the details into the database.”
“That’s how you knew my address.” Belle could see Georgia liked talking about how clever she was at figuring things out, so she tried to keep the conversation going. “That’s how you knew I’d be expecting a caregiver. You knew I’d let you in the house.”
Georgia nodded. She was more animated now, the swing between blank and excited was almost as frightening as the way the girl’s gaze shifted between her bloody hands and Belle’s face. It occurred to her that Georgia’s mental state wasn’t the result of the accident. No matter how much she’d lost when her dancing career ended, this level of mood swings and erratic behaviour stemmed from something deeper. Belle was starting to realise the girl had a serious mental illness.
“I knew you’d be alone. I met Lea a few times.” Georgia took a step closer, seemingly oblivious to the knife Belle held. “She was okay, but sort of fat and sloppy. Bounding along on two good legs while I’m sitting behind the desk like a cripple.” Her voice kicked up a notch. “That’s not fair… I mean, I didn’t plan on… on, you know.”
Killing her? Belle wanted to scream the words, but instead remained silent. At least while Georgia was talking she wasn’t attacking her. By playing for time, Belle might get a chance to get to the bathroom and lock herself in.
