‘I pray all the time for Mrs Lidgey, sir. I don’t think there is much more I can do.’ Beth frowned.
‘Oh, but there is. What I’m about to tell you is in the strictest confidence. No one else knows about Gabriella, it would cause untold distress to my mother if people started to gossip about her. You see, my mother blames herself for Gabriella’s death. She’s never really come to terms with it. No matter how I try to reassure her, she believes her fall down the stairs was a punishment for Gabriella’s sudden end and she’ll be punished again after she dies. I’m worried her obsession is getting out of control. You may have noticed that she’s been upsetting Sally with her violent moods and she often takes me to task.’
‘But it’s the vicar who’d be best at comforting her,’ Beth said. ‘He should make sure she understands that if she accepts the Lord then all her sins will be forgiven and she’ll spend eternity in heaven.’
‘I’m afraid Mrs Lidgey doesn’t trust the Reverend Mountebank.’ Marcus peered all round again, praying that they would not be interrupted by the dreaded sound of his mother’s bell summoning him to her bedside. She had taken a sudden exception to Beth, insisting he go to her when Sally was out of the house.
‘Let me tell you a little tale. A few years ago I knew a kind old gentleman who was dying. His family sent for his son in India. It became obvious that sadly the old gentleman would die before his son arrived. As he lay on his deathbed he kept crying out for his son. Eventually a young man in the room could stand it no longer and he knelt beside the old gentleman’s bed and said, “Father, it’s me. I’ve come home.”’ Marcus was satisfied Beth was gazing at him from wide emotional eyes. ‘And do you know, all the old gentleman’s moaning and wrestling ceased and he died shortly afterwards with a smile on his face.’
‘That’s a wonderful story, sir.’ Beth gave a breathy sigh, so enraptured by the story she had forgotten there was a reason for it being told.
She had taken the bait. All he had to do now was to get her to agree to his plan. A plan that would, with luck and perseverance, send his mother off her head and he could have her committed to an asylum, or better still it might lead to her death from a seizure. At the least, it would give her a fright. She so richly deserved to be made miserable.
‘I’m going to ask you, Beth, to do a similar thing for my mother. Although, thank God, she is not near the end of her life, she needs comfort and of a sort only you can give.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Beth, my dear, if you were here at night you would hear my mother calling out for Gabriella. You have a soft quiet voice. I want you to speak to my mother, concealed of course, as if you were Gabriella. If she believes Gabriella has come back and forgiven her then she’ll rest easy and will sleep better. I’m sure of it. I’ll tell you exactly what to say and coach you on how to say it.’
Totally astonished at his request, Beth could only stare at him.
‘Will you help, Beth?’ he prompted with a coercive smile.
‘I… I don’t know.’ Beth swallowed nervously. ‘It sounds a bit wrong to me.’
‘I know it’s a deception but it will be done with the very best of intentions. Please don’t say no, Beth. It would mean so much to me to see my mother at peace.’
‘I meant it’ll be like calling up a spirit.’
‘No, it won’t.’ Marcus put authority into his voice and reached forward and took her hand. ‘You can’t really let Mrs Lidgey go on suffering, can you? Can you, Beth?’
Beth was more confused over this than by her troubles with Sally. ‘I’d like to help, sir, bu—’
‘Good girl, I knew I could rely on you. Come back this evening at seven o’clock. It will give us plenty of time before Sally arrives to take up her duties.’
He squeezed her hand and Beth experienced a series of tiny hot tingles shooting up her arm.
When he had gone, she found her coordination had almost left her and the last of her work was performed clumsily. She knocked the cup on Mr Lidgey’s coffee tray and it fell to the floor and broke into several pieces. She would get a severe scolding from Sally over the accident but somehow she didn’t care – Mr Lidgey would not mind at all.
Chapter Thirty-Six
At six thirty, Marcus went to Eleanor’s room. She took off her spectacles and put down the book she was reading. ‘Good heavens, what have I done to deserve this honour?’ she said acidly. ‘What have you got there?’
Marcus tossed a bottle of pills on the bed. ‘The painkillers Dr Richardson prescribed. He’ll think it odd if I don’t get the new pills he wanted you to have. Why don’t you take the lot?’
Returning her spectacles to her nose, Eleanor read the label. ‘Pass me some water.’
‘You’ve got a glassful beside you.’
‘I want some fresh water. Is it too much to ask?’
‘Yes. I’m busy. Don’t ring for me,’ he said at the door. ‘I’m doing something really important.’
‘Marcus, you worm, I want something to eat. Fetch me something at once.’
‘You’ll just have to stay hungry. Sally can see to you when she comes back.’ He left the bedroom door ajar.
His face a cold expressionless mask, he walked slowly down the stairs to wait for the pills to take their course. Eleanor always ill-advisedly took a double dose of whatever she was prescribed and these particular pills, when taken without due care, apparently produced a hallucinatory effect. Very useful when Beth began to pretend she was Gabriella.
Seven o’clock chimed on the clock in the hall. Two more minutes passed. Beth was late. Unusual for her. He paced the passageway. Peered out of the window beside the front door. Please, please, any minute now she would come into view. Fumbling in his pockets he produced his cigarette and lighter.
While his head was bent over to light the cigarette, the sound of someone in the kitchen made him jerk and he hastily dropped his lighter.
Wiping away the sweat which had broken out on his forehead, he ran to the kitchen.
‘Beth, at last— What are you doing here?’ His disappointment made his insides feel as though they were contorting into knots.
‘I’ve sent her home.’ Sally tilted her head to the side. ‘I was unnecessarily sharp with her this afternoon and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Beth’s such a sweet soul, an innocent. She doesn’t deserve to be made unhappy, so I encouraged Russell to go the pub tonight and I made my way to her house to say I was sorry.
‘I met her on her way here. She couldn’t look me in the eye and lie about where she was going. I asked her if her mother knew where she was off to and, of course, she said no. I told her if that was the case then it wasn’t right and she should go home at once. She didn’t argue for long, she’s too pure-hearted for that.’
Trembling visibly, Marcus was tongue-tied.
Sally began to advance on him. ‘So, Marcus, why did you want Beth to come here in secret? Your mother and I were talking about the pair of you this afternoon. She doesn’t reckon you’re after the girl’s body. I was glad to hear it. What other way were you planning to corrupt the poor girl?’
Sally was moving closer and closer to him. Marcus remained at a loss for words. His plan was in ribbons and he couldn’t think lucidly. Except for how foolish he was. Foolish to think anything he had schemed would succeed. How could he have thought for a second he could rid himself of his mother? And why did he destroy Joanna’s letter of resignation? And telephone her mother in the hope she could remove Luke Vigus from the scene? All he had accomplished was to pressure an innocent young girl into doing something she would have no part in if she knew the truth. He had wanted to make Beth an accessory to murder. Unforgivable. He deserved to have Sally here now mocking him.
He couldn’t breathe and ripped the tie from his neck, tore at his collar buttons. Panic was reaching down to his bowels. He was afraid he’d go mad, never get a grip on himself again.
Sally was a breath away from him. ‘You miss me, don’t you?
I’ve heard you tossing and turning at night. Not in your nightmares but because you need a woman. You need me, don’t you, Marcus?’
‘Get away from me,’ he hissed wretchedly.
‘No. Why should I? You used me when it suited you and now it’s my turn. I’ve been missing the times we had together. Russell doesn’t do the extra things you showed me. If you don’t fill me with pleasure tonight, I’ll go straight to Beth’s father and tell him I stopped you seducing her. You’d be finished here then, Marcus. Finished everywhere.’
Blood filled his face. He couldn’t breathe, he was going to die. ‘Don’t… please…’
‘You hurt me once, but you’re just a little boy inside, aren’t you? I see it all now. A mother’s boy, trying to break free from that horrid old woman upstairs, but you can’t, can you?’ Sally slid her palms up over his chest, ran a fingertip along the contour of his chin. ‘I know what you like, Marcus. I know how you like to be touched, where you like to be kissed. We’re going upstairs now and you are never going to forget the next hour or so.’
He lay awake for hours after Sally left his room. Violated, in anguish. His head ached so acutely he felt like banging it again and again into the wall until he reached blessed oblivion. Another woman had degraded him and he had timidly allowed it to happen. He had called Luke Vigus worthless, but that was the label he deserved himself. He was pathetic. Hopeless. His life was completely hopeless.
Finally he got off the bed and put on his nightshirt. He had drawn two prescriptions of his mother’s new pills. Creeping to the bathroom, he filled his tooth glass with water and carried it to the bed. There was only one way out for him now.
He tipped all the pills into his hand.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Marcus must have dozed off while lingering over his last thoughts, his final prayer, for he was awakened by shuffling and sighing. Someone was moving towards the bed. Sally was coming back. Before it was too late, he lifted his hand to bolt down the pills.
A sharp knock on his hand sent the pills scattering in all directions.
‘Not yet, my son. I haven’t finished with you yet.’
He was so frightened at seeing his mother wielding one of her walking sticks at him he spilled the water over the bed. ‘Mama!’
‘I heard you with Sally. She’s a woman who knows her own mind. You’re the sweepings of a man, Marcus.’
‘H-how did you get in here?’
She hobbled the last few inches to the bed and flopped down on it. ‘It was agony but I decided to come to you as you refuse to come to me. Take off that wet nightshirt.’ She was reaching for him.
A vision of the aversion of Joanna’s face if she saw him like this, loathing him for his weakness, his terrible shame, was more than he could bear.
Screaming in despair, he lashed out at his mother.
She crashed to the floor. Lay in a heap on the rug, her negligee spreading out from her legs like the petals of a fading flower.
Huddled against the headboard, Marcus stared down at her in the lantern light, terrified she would get up and come after him again.
Sally pounded into the room on bare feet. ‘God in heaven what’s happened?’ Falling to her knees she picked up her mistress’s hand. It was warm and limp. ‘Mrs Lidgey? Mrs Lidgey?’
Filled with fear, Marcus edged nearer to the scene on his bedroom floor.
Sally glanced anxiously at him. ‘She’s not moving. What happened here? What’s she doing out of bed? I didn’t hear her ring. Marcus? For goodness’ sake, say something!’
Realising he was in shock, Sally sighed and gently shook Eleanor. ‘Mrs Lidgey. Wake up.’ There was no response.
Apprehensively, she felt about the woman’s head and discovered a large lump, wet with blood, where she had struck the heavy carved leg of the bed in the fall. Sally put her head gingerly on Eleanor’s chest. ‘I can hear a faint heartbeat.’
‘No!’ Marcus howled in despair.
‘I’m sorry, Marcus. She’s badly hurt. Go downstairs and ring for the doctor.’
Sally saw the pills scattered on the mat beside Eleanor’s flung-out arm. Lifting up the bedspread and looking underneath the bed she picked out more pills in the dim light. ‘What’s been going on?’
She noticed Marcus’s wet nightshirt and the wet bedcovers. ‘You were going to kill yourself. That’s it, isn’t it? She’s your mother and somehow she must have known and came in to stop you, but fell over. Oh, Marcus, why? Because of me? Because of my threats? I was angry with you. I would never have said anything to Beth’s parents. Come on, pull yourself together,’ she pleaded, ‘and ring for the doctor.’
‘I can’t.’ He wept feebly. ‘I’m scared.’
‘All right, I’ll do it. Get some blankets and cover your mother. Keep her warm.’
Eleanor raised her head and Marcus held his breath in terror. ‘M-Marcus…’ A long rattling moan escaped Eleanor’s lips and her head fell back with a thud.
Marcus gave a strangled cry, hardly daring to hope it was the last sound his mother would ever make.
Sally froze for a moment then pressed two fingers to Eleanor’s neck, searching for a pulse. ‘I… I can’t feel anything.’
After a while, Marcus croaked, ‘Mama?’
Eleanor was motionless.
He stepped away from the bed and stood behind Sally. ‘Listen to her heart again.’
Sally did so and shook her head when she looked up at him. ‘Nothing. I’m sorry. She’s dead.’
‘Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?’
There was no life in the hand Sally was holding. She lowered it to the floor. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’
Marcus hurled himself out of the room and leaning on the banister of the landing let out a peculiar howl. Freedom at last and more by way of an accident than by murderous design.
Sally mistook his whoop of triumph and the tears he wept for intolerable grief. ‘I’m so sorry, Marcus. I know things weren’t easy between you both lately but I know you adored each other. I’ll phone for the doctor. Before he gets here I’ll change your bed linen. You get dressed. No one will ever have to know that you were thinking of taking your own life.’ She hesitated. ‘You won’t do anything silly while I’m downstairs, will you?’
He shook his head, drying his eyes. ‘I… I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.’
When Sally was downstairs he returned to his room, skirted the inert figure on the floor and picked up the lantern. He was afraid, but he had to make sure his mother was really dead and not playing a cruel trick on him.
In the glow of the light he saw her eyes wide and staring, slightly rolled upwards. Her face was waxy and a little contorted. He prodded her. Lifted up her hand and let it fall. It hit the floor with a hard knock. She was dead. Thank God, she was dead!
Before Sally got back, he picked up Eleanor’s body and carried it to her room. Laid her on the bed, closed her eyes and folded her hands on her chest. He fetched a bedspread from the linen cupboard and covered her neatly up to the waist. He would get Sally to comb her hair, make her look her best. He knew he should not have moved Eleanor – but a grieving son could not be expected to behave sensibly in the face of tragedy. It would be easy to play the part expected of him until after the evil old woman’s funeral.
By lashing out in fear he had accidentally killed his mother. It didn’t matter how. She was dead and at long last he was free. He recalled from the back of his mind that he had killed Mardie Dawes and gained the truth about Jessie Vigus’s disappearance and had done nothing to remove suspicion from her son. It did not horrify him. He felt no shame. He had done a good thing. They were bad women and deserved violent deaths. The world was better off without them, and Joanna would be better off without Luke Vigus; pray something would happen to separate her from that no-good wretch.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The school was closed until after Eleanor’s funeral. This new tragedy, added to the death of Molly and Mardie Dawes and the mysterious disa
ppearance of Jessie Vigus, caused a sullen gloom and sense of unease to permeate the village.
Jo now found herself, since her first banns had been read in church, the subject of sympathy from some who greeted her when she went to the schoolhouse each day to offer Marcus comfort and friendship. She was also called a brave soul or a fool for ‘taking on the Vigus young ’uns’.
After leaving the schoolhouse on the third day following Eleanor’s death, instead of going home Jo went to Heather Cottage. Mercy was there, drinking her sister’s bitter-strong tea. Irene fetched another cup.
‘You’re very welcome, my luvver. ’Tis good to see you, though you’re looking peaky. Sure you’re eating enough? Have a slice of hevva cake. You need building up. Keane’s out, so we women can enjoy a natter.’
‘Had any word from Luke yet?’ Mercy asked bluntly.
‘Yes,’ Jo said, swallowing a mouthful of Irene’s delicious homemade cake. ‘I’m expecting Luke back today. When I leave here I’m hoping to persuade Rex to come to Cardhu with me to welcome him.’
‘Hardly likely from what I hear,’ Mercy muttered.
‘He’ll come round,’ Jo said, only half-confidently. ‘Irene, I’m here to invite you and Mr Trevail to my wedding. There will be a small reception at Cardhu afterwards. You’ve always been kind to me and I’m hoping you’ll set aside your feelings about Luke and wish us well. I believe in Luke totally, and when the village sees how committed he is to our marriage and future that we’ll be able to live at Cardhu contentedly. If not, it will be Rex and Marylyn who will suffer.’ She added tartly, ‘People have had a lot to say about Molly’s misery.’
Irene coloured. ‘We’d be delighted to come. Like I said to Keane the other day, you’re giving up everything and taking on a lot, but you can’t help who you fall in love with. Good luck to you is what I say, Jo.’
Listening to the Quiet Page 31