Now things looked very different.
“Mrs Black … ” the old man said.
“I do not believe I have had the pleasure, sir,” I said, relying on my poise to get me through whatever was happening.
“You do not need to know my name,” he said slowly, “but if it would help, please call me Mr Brown.”
“Mr Brown,” I said, “charmed, I’m sure.”
“I regret … that you had to endure all of that,” he said, not looking at me. He continued to stare at his cigarette, and at the case folders. He looked deep in thought, squinting through smoke.
“May I, sir?” Campbell said.
Mr Brown waved him off with the merest shake of his head.
“What …?” I looked at both of them. Mr Campbell seemed to have lost much of his confidence.
Mr Brown turned back, and almost faced me; his cigarette still seemed more interesting.
I said, “I demand to know what on Earth is going on. Am I arrested, or am I not?”
He said, nodding, “Oh, yes. You are indeed arrested. You have been charged with Wilful Murder. It is quite official.” He looked tired, having said all that.
“Then … Why am I still — ?”
“Mrs Black,” he interrupted, and now he looked me in the eye. His eyes were not good to see. They were cold, like the space between the stars. He said, “I am here to provide you with a choice, of sorts.”
Campbell shifted in his seat, uneasy. I wondered how much I really wanted to know about this choice, but I said nothing. It seemed wise to wait, even though Mr Brown was not someone to be rushed.
He said, “I am assuming that you do not relish the prospect of imprisonment.”
“You assume correctly.”
He nodded slowly. “I can make certain that you do go to prison, and that you stay there for the term of your natural life. Do you understand me? I can make certain that this nonsense fingerprint evidence is accepted. I have an authority, of a sort.”
“Go on.” I was hardly breathing anymore, and it was not because of the smoke.
“I have read two of your novels, in translation, I should mention, prior to going on. Or, more precisely, I had them read to me, aloud.”
He could not have surprised me more by hitting me in the head with a brick. I stared.
“Yes. I quite enjoyed The Star Twins. Eliza Paine, on the other hand, I thought was … ” He looked bothered for a moment. “Weak.” He made a dismissive movement with his cigarette hand, and leaned back to suck on the thing again.
I did not know what to say to this, but experience has shown that the best thing to say on receiving bad reviews is to say, “Thank you, sir.”
“You seem quite entranced by the possibilities of the new physics.”
“I would say intrigued, certainly … ” I wished someone would explain what was happening.
He stared at me, looking like an artist who thinks there is something wrong with his painting but cannot spot the flaw. I knew the feeling. “I wonder if you are who we need, though … ”
We? “I wish I could tell you.”
“You have blundered into a larger game,” he rasped. “High stakes.”
Campbell took a deep breath.
Brown went on. “I, and the people I represent, know that you did not kill the priest.”
“Oh … ” I said, impressing even myself with my sharp dialogue in a pinch.
“The priest, however … The priest was involved with some people, and in some things in which he should not have been involved.”
“The demonology?”
“Amongst other things, yes. My people were watching him.”
“How did he know things about my father and my husband? Was it through the deadworld?”
“This is what attracted our interest. He found your father there. He was looking for something else at the time. He recognised your father, and he saw — it was hard not to notice — that your father carried a terrible burden of guilt.”
I made a helpless sound. Then, thinking about what Mr Brown was saying, I asked, “You’re speaking about my father in the — ”
“Past tense. Yes. My apologies. My sincerest apologies, and condolences. Father William eliminated your father’s spirit — ”
“Pardon?”
Mr Brown nodded and leaned towards me. “Father William used your father’s soul to consecrate his cellar.”
Blinking in shock, I tried to stand. “I beg your — ”
Brown said, “I have no reason to lie.”
“He killed my father … again?”
“Your father was filled with a foul corruption of the spirit. It was eating at him, like cancer. Taking his soul was almost a kindness, and the balance of probability suggests that the priest presented it as exactly that. ‘Here, Sir Gustav, allow me to absolve your sins …’”
“Good God.” I could hardly speak. Mr Campbell provided his handkerchief again. The phrase, “foul corruption” resonated through my mind. I remembered Gordon telling me that the cellar was filling with a “foul energy”.
“Mrs Black, there are laws against the living tampering with the spirits of the dead like this,” he went on in the silence of my shock.
“My father …?”
“This priest, he was a problem. We watched him for many years. He developed a network of associates over time, people who assisted him with his occult studies.”
“Years? He was …for years?”
“Once it became clear to him that his life was not moving in the right direction. Whereas, he knew, your life was going rather well. You dressed as you liked, you earned considerable money writing your shameful books, you espoused alarmingly liberal views, you did not behave like a proper lady of means.”
I did not know what to say to this.
“In his eyes, you were unworthy. You were not a good Christian. You were neither humble nor pious. You were not a good example to others.”
There were some things I could say about this, but they were not polite. I sat and kept my mouth shut. Rarely, however, had it been so hard to do so.
Mr Brown went on. “Do not take offence, Mrs Black. I only report the priest’s feelings. You were not the only one about whom he felt this way; you were merely close at hand. You lived under his nose. You had everything handed to you, whereas he was losing everything. His outrage was profound.”
“My Aunt Julia said the note-sender — Father William — hated me so much he could strangle me with his bare hands,” I said, once I finished wiping my face. I felt cold all over.
Mr Brown nodded. “It did not help that you attacked him physically, humiliated him in his own church.”
I was beginning to see how it must have been with him. “He killed my father? When …?”
He did not answer me. He said, “Compose yourself, Mrs Black. There is something which we need you to consider.”
I nodded, wiping my nose. “And if I do not cooperate, I go to prison?”
“You have a satisfactory grasp of the situation, I see. Good.” He sat back and lit another of his disgusting cigarettes.
“My God, must you smoke those ghastly things?” I could contain my feelings no longer.
He surprised me by not getting angry. He said, “It rather seems I must.”
Mr Campbell said, “It’s getting late, sir. Could we …?”
Brown nodded. “Of course. I am keeping you from your dinner. My apologies. I did not expect Carmody’s questioning to take so long.”
I was tired, and in a great deal of pain, and not all of it from the chair. I could see how this was going to play out. I simply could not believe that it was happening to me. “You have something nasty you want me to do for you. Why don’t you just tell me what it is?”
He managed a smile. His teeth were orange from smoking. He said, his breath vile, “Mrs Black, we want you to die.”
34
I nearly choked from laughing. Mr Campbell pounded my back, as if that might help. It was hard, s
uddenly, to breathe — and I wanted to breathe. I wanted to keep breathing. It took a long time to recover from the laughing-choking fit, but when I was all right again, Mr Brown still sat there, still exhaling his bitter black smoke into the cramped room. He looked unmoved. At length I straightened up. Then I remembered what he had said to me, and I felt another fit of hacking laughter trying to kick me. This time I managed to control it.
Mr Brown said, “When you are ready, you will be transported back to the city and placed in the police lock-up — ”
I was staring. “But I haven’t decided yet!”
“It is a regrettable fact of life, Mrs Black, that we rarely have sufficient time to decide things — ”
“I am not going to prison! I refuse!” In hindsight, this strikes me as amusing, but it is what I said.
Mr Brown sucked on his cigarette with glacial patience. He looked at the burning tip as if it might contain ancient wisdom in which he was only slightly interested. When he resumed, it was as if I had not made any foolish outbursts. Somehow this was worse than being rebuked. He said, “During your stay in the lock-up, you will experience a sense of profound shame. Though the policemen on duty will have taken your tie, your shoelaces, the braces holding up your trousers and anything else with which they deem you might try to hurt yourself, you will still have sheets on your bunk.”
I wanted to protest, but I was too horrified to speak.
Mr Campbell said, “It will be all right, Mrs Black. It will.”
How does he know that? I wondered.
Mr Brown continued. “In the morning, quite early, a routine check on your cell will show that you have hanged yourself with your sheet, from the bars of your high window. It will be a clumsy job, and in fact more of a prolonged strangulation. But you will be dead.”
It was hard to breathe again.
“When your body is removed from the lock-up, it will be taken elsewhere, by people of mine. They will monitor your condition.”
At last I found my voice. “I will not commit suicide. Not for you, not for anyone!” My voice was hoarse.
He sucked the last of his cigarette and lit a fresh one from the smouldering end. He took his time. I felt like I might be sick at any moment. He said, at last, “You will not commit suicide, Mrs Black. One of my people will see to the arrangements. There will be an injection of a certain drug. She will arrange the knot in the sheet. She will supervise your transport away from the lock-up, and she will propagate the news of your death to appropriate newspapers.”
“At this point, Mr Brown,” I managed to say, “I would rather take my chances with the legal system.” Mr Campbell, after all, had insisted he could get the fingerprint evidence dismissed. I still did not have a satisfactory alibi for the night in question, but I could see a faint gleam of hope there.
“Allow me to complete my offer, Mrs Black. There is not a great deal more.”
I looked at Mr Campbell. He nodded encouragingly and moved to hold my hand, presumably for my moral support. I did not let him. Somehow he knew what was happening here, and he had not warned me about it.
Mr Brown continued. “My people will not take you to the city mortuary but to a certain warehouse in the city. There you will be cared for by the best medical practitioners in the country, particularly once you return to life.”
“I don’t stay dead?”
“You will be merely visiting the deadworld.”
“Visiting? But … I …?”
“You will be in the state for no more than one day.”
I was confused. I was far more than confused.
“A day is the best we can achieve. After that … ” He did not finish. He didn’t need to finish that thought.
“I need time to think. Good God … ”
Mr Brown consulted his pocketwatch. It looked different. He touched things on the inside of the lid; when he closed it, he ran his narrow, orange-stained fingers around the edge, and it sealed itself, leaving no discernible crack or seam. I stared as he slipped it back into its pocket.
I was feeling very much the way I felt that night in the cellar, when Gordon told me we were at a point where different worlds made contact. How many worlds were there? I wondered — and only later did I realise the unintended irony of the thought, about my current work in progress.
Before he could speak again, I voiced the one concern that was dominating all others. “You said you would be telling the newspapers about my death.”
“This is for the benefit of certain individuals and organisations who monitor these things, Mrs Black. It is important that they believe certain things.”
“But you also said I will be coming back to life … ”
“If all goes to plan, we shall issue a correction. You would not be the first person whose obituary appeared prematurely.”
I thought about this. Certain individuals and organisations?
I remembered what Gordon had said that night, his wild speculation that Father and Antony might have been involved in espionage. This present business certainly had that sort of a ring about it — in a way.
“And your people can guarantee that I will completely recover from being dead?”
“If all goes to plan, then yes.”
“You have done things like this before? Smuggling people into the deadworld to do jobs for you?”
“It is what we do, Mrs Black.”
“In that case … ” I frowned, trying to think it all through. “Why pick me? I’m merely a strange female author who offends people.”
“You have a unique connection with Father William.”
“And you’re trying to catch him.”
“He has hidden himself away.”
“But you think I can find him where all your chaps have failed?”
“It is hard to overstate how much he hates you. In fact, all you have to do, once you encounter him, is simply get him to talk. That’s it. Talk to him. It’s all we ask.”
“I need to ask him some questions of my own …”
“If all goes to plan, you will have that opportunity.”
If all goes to plan … I knew about plans. I knew that battle plans did not survive first contact with the enemy. I looked at my lawyer. “What should I do?”
Mr Campbell looked thoughtful. He said to Mr Brown: “What happens to the charges against my client in the event she succeeds and is revivified?”
“All charges will be dropped, of course, we will make sure of it. Your client may resume her life here.”
If, that is, the locals will have me back, I thought. How long could I stand being called “Murderer” behind my back — or perhaps even right to my face?
Then I thought about those days I spent sitting out on the beach, watching the wind-tossed waves, the circling pelicans far above, the surfing dolphins, the huddled seagulls all facing into the breeze. I thought about the times I spent sitting by the estuary, upwind from the fish canneries, watching terns diving for fish, and pelicans joining the crowds of seagulls begging picnic food from me. The whole area had a feeling of peace and tranquillity about it that was hard to convey without looking and sounding foolish. It was something that, as soon as I arrived here for the first time, just to look at property, I had felt in my bones. Immediately I felt relaxed in a way that I had never felt back home, or even up in Perth. There was simply something about being by the sea, taking the air, which was good for me. And at this moment it seemed like it had been a long while since I had taken the time to really enjoy these things.
If I did manage to get out of this predicament — I laughed inside at the very thought; I knew I wasn’t getting out of this one — I would make more time to enjoy things.
But then I thought: what if, in the deadworld, I learned things about the past that I could not simply shrug off? Father William had made contact with the spirit of my father, and my father had told him terrible things. One had to presume that those terrible things concerned the truth about my husband’s real life, the one in which
I did not appear. I did not know if I could bear to learn such things. My love for Antony — love that I continued to feel, even now, after all this time — had always been a consuming passion. After his loss, I had not considered the notion of remarrying, and knew I never would. There would be no more men like him, as long as I lived. Had he, though, been playing the part of my husband in an elaborate theatrical production, in which I was a dupe? Everything I had learned in the past week appeared to say exactly this. It was a difficult thing to face, let alone to accept. If I did accept it, what did that make me? How much of a fool could I have been? I have always wanted, even as a child, to be taken seriously. Partly this was exacerbated by the mere fact of my gender: women were not often regarded as serious-minded people. Only men were considered capable of rational thought and decisions. I had had to resort to elaborate means and threaten legal action simply in order to establish a bank account.
I would not take it well, therefore, if I learned I had indeed been a fool all this time.
Mr Brown sat waiting for me. I would far rather face the modern horror of dentistry, with all its probes and picks and its hand-cranked mechanical drills than go to the deadworld. Even the prospect of meeting Julia again did not improve matters. However, I compared this to a lifetime spent in prison, breaking rocks or whatever women had to do for hard labour in these enlightened times. Earlier I had glibly imagined myself a prison novelist, with all that lovely free time in which to write turgid novels of incarceration and intolerance. What if prison, in fact, offered no chance to write? What if it meant my career, such as it was, would be finished? Could I tolerate that? Worse, could I tolerate never knowing the truth about my husband and my father?
I said to Mr Brown: “I’ll do it.”
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