by C F Dunn
I rose to do as she asked but, as I did so, she suddenly said, in a voice stronger than she had used all afternoon, “This is the last time we shall meet, Emma. The next will be at my grave. Look after him; he’s worth the sacrifices you will surely have to make.” Her voice faltered and her eyes closed again and for a moment I thought that she had stopped breathing. Then I saw the steady rhythm of her chest as she inhaled, small but distinct, and I breathed again also.
“Goodbye, Ellen,” I said softly, and went to find Matthew.
CHAPTER
11
A Matter of Time
We were both quiet on the way home as the sun set. Amber clouds lit the horizon with the promise of more snow. When I chanced to catch his eye, Matthew did not return the look, his expression indecipherable.
That night he slipped from my bed when he thought I slept, and went downstairs. Through the thickness of the walls I heard a faint click as the door of his study closed behind him.
I was still alone when I woke and, although he had said nothing untoward the evening before, a deep unease settled over me when he didn’t appear after breakfast. I knocked on his study door but received no answer, and poked my head around the frame to check. The first flakes of snow beat soundlessly against the window and the room felt cold. I went instead to the joining door between the Barn and the main house, hoping Henry would know where Matthew had gone.
Pat looked up from a delicate piece of patchwork she was assembling on the family table, her eyes refocusing over the tops of her glasses.
“Henry and Matthew are at the lab this morning. Didn’t Matthew tell you he was going?”
“I was asleep – he probably didn’t want to wake me. It doesn’t matter, Pat. Thanks.”
Feeling forlorn, I declined her offer of a cup of tea, and went back to my bedroom, but it, too, felt chill and I sat on the edge of my bed swinging my feet, malcontent. I should have been elated: Ellen was dying, but I found no joy in her imminent death, no more than I did in Nanna’s.
My heel caught against something and I swung off and bent down to peer underneath the high bed frame. My travel bag resided where I had left it and, unzipping it, I pulled from its depths the matt black book concealed there. I held it in my hand, deciding what to do with it and thinking murderous thoughts about the giver. It wasn’t a hard choice and at least it offered an antidote to boredom. Tucking the book under my arm, I sought the solace of Matthew’s study.
The fire bit eagerly into the wood as it caught the dry timber, bleeding warmth into the room. Outside, snow fell more heavily, beating frantic time to the Prokofiev I had selected as if orchestrated for it. I crammed my legs in the chair by the fire and opened the cat-black book wishing I had more self-discipline to resist its dubious appeal.
Staahl’s distorted view of the world became clear from the way he wrote. He had unstitched texts from the last six centuries, many of which were familiar to me, and imposed upon them a warped logic that echoed the demons of his mind. I recognized the vein of corrupted thoughts he whispered to me that night in the atrium as he stole my blood. I shuddered, threw the book on the floor in disgust and in rejection of everything he stood for, and chewed disconsolately on my cross.
A sudden draught lifted the soft hair at the nape of my neck and my skin prickled.
“I thought I might find you in his study.” Maggie stood in the open doorway, her severe mode of dress in stark contrast with the shocking pallor of her skin. She came into the room when I didn’t respond, quietly shutting the door behind her. She leaned against the frame. “My grandfather isn’t here.”
“I know,” I said, surly at her for pointing it out and wondering how she could make such a simple statement sound so sinister. Her long-fingered hand slowly stroked the wood of the panelling.
“You like being in here, don’t you? It’s where you are closest to him, surrounded by his things. Do you feel more in control of him when you’re here? Or do you gain gratification from being near to the objects he has touched?”
Both rattled and irritated by her intrusive insinuations, I had no desire to be drawn into a conversation. “I’m not in the mood to be psychoanalysed by you, Maggie. I’m not one of your patients.”
She walked over to the mantelpiece and stared appreciatively at a statue of a stallion made of polished bronze, so lifelike I could almost see its flanks flinch under her fingers as she ran her hand along its back. “You have a strained relationship with your father, don’t you? I wonder whether it has made forming relationships with men more difficult. Or do you find older men more attractive? Perhaps you find their greater experience reassuring – seek security in their dominance. Do you like being dominated, Dr D’Eresby?”
“I’ve had enough of this,” I snarled, standing abruptly to leave the room. I had almost reached the door when she called after me.
“Have you noticed that my grandfather doesn’t keep any clocks in the house? Not one. Tick-tock, tick-tock, no clock. Would you like to know why?” I stopped and she saw my quickening interest. “Yes, of course you would. He doesn’t keep clocks because he doesn’t want to mark the passing of time. The only timepiece he has is the watch his wife gave him on their wedding day. You must have seen it; he always wears it to remind him of her. He cannot bear to be parted from her, even now, even after so much time.” She cocked her head on one side. “What an interesting choice of music: discordant, so ill at ease with itself. How apt for someone who has never really belonged.”
Blast the woman – whom did she mean? Matthew, me – or did she refer to someone else? She listened seconds longer then picked up one of a matching pair of simple jade-green vases of great antiquity that sat at either end of the mantelshelf. It crossed my mind that she would drop it and blame the breakage on me, but she put it back carefully where it belonged.
“My grandfather has such exquisite taste in the objects with which he surrounds himself. Do you like them? Do you touch them, caress them, when you are alone? You can tell me, I won’t be shocked. There is nothing I haven’t heard over the years and I promise I won’t say a word.” She held an elongated finger to her lips, her voice silky like a scarf being drawn too tight around a throat.
I remembered what Ellen had said about her embedded hatred and saw the truth of it. “Is there a point to any of this, Maggie?”
Her movements measured, almost stately, she bent swiftly to the floor and retrieved the book I had flung there. “You seem to have dropped your book. What a shame. I hoped you might find it stimulating – such an interesting subject by a fascinating man.” Her hand rested ghost-like against the cover and she tapped her fingers, once. “Of course, he told me all about you.”
I felt my eyes widen involuntarily. She knew him – she knew Staahl. My guts cramped, leaving me leaden inside.
Maggie’s face cracked into a hard smile. “Ah, I see that you understand now,” she said softly. “It took you a little longer than I expected. A little slow on the uptake, aren’t you? Professor Staahl and I have had many conversations over the last few months since he became my patient. I was really quite pleased when his case was assigned to me. It gave me the opportunity to get to know you better through him, to have some insight into why you are pursuing my grandfather.” An edge had crept into her voice, slicing through the numb fug her words had woven. “Professor Staahl has been surprisingly enlightening, with the sort of clarity the delusional often have. He has a quite… unique mind, but then you already know that, don’t you?”
My throat contracted into a tight band and, through teeth clenched in an attempt to keep calm, I forced out words that I had hoped I would never have to say again.
“What do you want?”
Carefully placing the book on the chair as if it were an object of great value, she wandered past me towards Matthew’s desk at the far end of the room. She trailed her fingers over the surface of the cittern as she passed, the strings resonating eerily long after she reached his desk, touching lightly first on
e photograph frame, then another, until her hand rested on the picture of Ellen and Henry. She picked it up, smiling fondly. “Ellen is like a mother to me,” she said, as if I cared at that moment. “She is like my mother should have been.”
“What do you want, Maggie?” I asked again, frustration and unease vying for domination.
She continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “When the crash took my sister, it took my mothers as well – both of them – my good mother and my bad mother. Monica left me. She didn’t want to be with me because I was bad and I caused the crash. I killed my sister and she couldn’t stand being near me any more.” She expressed no sadness, more an acceptance of her culpability.
“You didn’t cause the accident. She didn’t leave because of you. You were only a little girl and not responsible for any of it.”
Without warning, her arch control dissolved into a rictus of spite. “What do you know? You worm your way into our lives where you don’t belong. You insinuate yourself between my grandfather and his wife. You are nothing to him, don’t you understand? He will always love my grandmother, he will always save her. No one wants you here.” Touching the photograph of Ellen, as if she could conjure her from the surface of the print, she became completely calm again. “When you are gone, he will love her again and everything will be as it was.”
I faced her squarely with more bravado than I felt. “I’m not going anywhere, Maggie. I’m sorry if you find that difficult to accept, but I didn’t know that Ellen was still alive when I met Matthew, and I have no intention of coming between them now. He loves Ellen and he won’t abandon her, but nor will I leave Matthew. I will wait for him, whether you accept that or not.”
She replaced the photograph on the desk. “What do you want from him? His money? I don’t expect you earn much and he is very wealthy. What did you plan? To hook him before somebody else does, or… is it something else?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She picked up the letter-opener and her eyes followed her thumb as she ran it down the silver edge. “Monsters,” she hissed. “Outcasts. Torture. Kort told me all about your research; it’s what he found so inviting about you. It is why he feels such an affinity with you – like minds, like tastes. Is that why you are here, so that you can indulge your obsession through my grandfather’s deviation from the norm?”
I looked at her in horror. “What have you said to Staahl, Maggie? What have you told him about Matthew?”
A sneer distorted her mouth and she drew herself upright until she stood haughty and aloof above me. “Told him? About my grandfather? What sort of fool do you take me for? I might be surrounded by the insane, but don’t imagine for one moment that I am deceived by their madness any more than I am taken in by you. Staahl saw through your façade – he knew what you wanted, the games you were playing that night. He went too far of course, but that is to be expected of a man of his predilections. I understand why you need my grandfather – you need him to justify your actions that night, that much is clear. What I don’t understand is how you’ve deluded him into believing you care about him…”
My temper flared with the obscenity of her misrepresentation, my voice rising with fury. “Is that what Staahl told you? And you believed him? Or is it because that’s what you want to believe because you can’t possibly acknowledge that Matthew loves me for any other reason than he does?” A sudden gust of wind catapulted snow against the windows, rattling ice like impatient claws on the glass.
“No!” Her voice rose shrill, contempt twisting words as they came slewing from her mouth, following the bitter corkscrew of her mind. “He only loves Ellen. There will never be anyone else, only her.”
“For goodness’ sake, Maggie, Ellen’s an old woman and she will die one day – she has to. She can’t live forever.”
She raised the letter-opener like a dagger and I hastily backed away. “No!” she screeched. “No – he’ll save her, he always saves her. There’s no room for you here. You’re an aberration, a scheming whore. He will see you for wh…” The door slammed open, cutting her short.
“What’s going on?” Matthew’s voice, sharp with authority, broke through her incoherent ramblings. Snow fell from his jacket as he rapidly placed himself between us.
Maggie pointed the letter-opener at me, shaking uncontrollably. “She’s stealing Ellen’s place. She’s not what she seems – he says so. He’s told me, he knows her. He knows what she wants.”
Matthew lowered his voice, dampening her hysteria. “Nobody has taken Ellen’s place, Maggie. Everything is fine – Ellen’s fine.”
Standing behind Matthew in the doorway, Henry’s unease stretched across his face. He moved unobtrusively until he was by Maggie’s side and, putting his hand on her arm, reached for the knife.
She wrenched roughly away and took a pace forward, glaring at me around Matthew. “Why did you let her come? Why didn’t you stop her? Tell her to go away and then Ellen can come back.”
Matthew spoke to me without taking his eyes from her. “How long has she been like this?”
“About twenty minutes. She’s ill, Matthew, she needs help.”
Maggie’s lips pulled into a sneer. “She’s ill; she needs help,” she mimicked, like the spiteful mocking of a teenage girl.
Henry took her by the elbow. “Come with me, love, you need to rest.”
She threw his hand off with more force than he obviously expected, jabbing the letter-opener in my direction. “Get rid of her!”
“Margaret!” She halted and looked for the first time at her grandfather directly.
“Margaret, Ellen is dying; she will not come back.”
I caught my breath – so he knew. Ellen must have decided to tell him after all, and that explained why he had been so quiet on the way back from Valmont.
Maggie’s face crumpled and a low moan escaped from between her lips, becoming a denial. “No-o, no, no, no.” She fell against Matthew and became a little girl again. “You can save her – say you will save her.”
He removed the knife from her now limp hand, and held her upright as she threatened to collapse. “I can’t help her any more, Maggie. Ellen has come to the end of her life; you have to let her go.” I couldn’t see Matthew’s face, but I could hear the resignation in his voice.
Henry took her weight from him, fraught, deeply drawn lines around his eyes betraying the shock he felt as his daughter plummeted towards despair.
“I’ll take you to see Ellen when you’ve had a rest, when the snow’s stopped. She’d like to see you.” He steered her in a line towards the door, and she appeared shrunken now that the anger had gone, a pitiful shade of what she had been.
Matthew dragged a hand across his face and put the letter-opener back on the desk where it belonged.
“What will happen to her?” I asked.
“She didn’t hurt you?”
“No, I’m fine. What will happen to her, Matthew?”
“Henry will sedate her, then we’ll see how she is once she’s had a rest. She’s been overworking recently.” He didn’t say what I knew he must be thinking: that my presence in the house had pushed her beyond the boundary of wisdom into the emotional wilderness where she now wandered.
“I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault, Emma. She’s been unstable for a long time but she has always refused help. Perhaps this is the best thing that could have happened, if it enables her to get what she needs.” He spoke softly. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said again, a little shakily this time, “and I meant I’m sorry that this has happened to you and to Henry – to all the family – it’s traumatic. You know about Ellen?”
“Yes, Charles DaCruz told me. How did you find out?”
“Ellen told me yesterday, but she didn’t want you to know and Dr DaCruz was not supposed to have told you either.”
He shook his head, drops of water from the melted snow in his hair catching the lig
ht. “He didn’t in so many words. He wanted me to know that she has myocardiopathy. It’s a disorder of the heart muscle and it’s untreatable – he didn’t need to tell me she’s dying. Why did she tell you and not me?”
“Ellen thinks that you will try to save her again and she doesn’t want that – she wants to die.”
“Oh.” He remained quiet for a second. “There’s nothing I can do to help her; I have to let her go as well. I’m not sure how easy it’s going to be, not after all this time.” He looked so sad at this thing that lay beyond his control, after so many years of cheating death.
I laid my hand on his forearm, feeling the tension working the muscles under his clothes. “I don’t think it can be. Even when death’s expected it still comes as a shock; we just have to get through it somehow.”
“We?”
“I know I’ve only met her once and I’m not trying to say that her death will mean very much to me in emotional terms, but it will to you and to your family, and I wasn’t going to let you go through that alone. Unless you’d rather?” I was careful to let it sound as if I wanted him to have a choice but, in reality, I didn’t know what I would say if he said he’d rather grieve alone.
He put his hand over mine. “Would it be selfish to want you with me?”
I leaned my face against his chest, and mildly chided him, “Where else would I want to be, silly?” And I felt him relax a little.
Resting his chin on the top of my head, he put his arms around me and rocked us. Suddenly, his body stiffened and he released me. “What the hell’s this?” He snatched the black book from where it lay on the chair and held it up, his eyes igniting. “Did you get this?” I shook my head. “Did Maggie give it to you?” He didn’t wait for an answer – he didn’t need to, he saw it in my face. “What did she think she would achieve with this filth?” He hurled the book into the fire and the flames leapt greedily, the pages curling in the fierce heat. “Damn it to hell, if I had known…”