‘But why’s it still going on?’ demanded Trudi. ‘What interest am I to anyone now that you know the bank and know the number and know the name and have got the money?’
Her voice was zooming to a hysterical shriek but it wasn’t this that made Ashburton sit up, alert as a hare scenting danger in a summer meadow.
‘What do you mean?’ he said quietly. ‘Who’s got which money?’
‘You have! The money from the Blair account. The two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It was in the bank, then it wasn’t. It was you who got it, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Ashburton. ‘It was us.’
He regarded her steadily for a while, then he began to laugh. It was not a pleasant sound.
‘I wish I could make up my mind about you,’ he said. ‘Idiot or consummate actress? Which is it, Mrs Adamson? Do you really not know? Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, you say! Do you think this is all about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds! That was your husband’s working fund, that was for day-to-day expenses and for the odd emergency, that was his small change!’
‘Small change?’ echoed Trudi. It was finally coming home to her that in whatever direction she looked in human cruelty and human greed, there were no limits that her puny mind could reach.
‘What do you mean, small change?’ she went on, her voice echoing shrilly in her skull like a mouse-squeak in a tomb.
At last Ashburton seemed to lose patience.
‘For God’s sake, Mrs Adamson, will you drag it out for ever? Do you imagine that your ingenious husband, who married you to further his criminal career and almost certainly killed your father for the same reason, was going to retire with peanuts! His personal pension fund that he contrived to syphon out of the Schiller organization and that we suspect you know the location of amounted to just over twelve million pounds! Twelve million pounds!’
2
She had been wrong before when she thought she had hit bottom.
Now here they were at last, the real depths. There was no lower deep waiting to receive her now. She was sunk beyond all hope of recovery, but also beyond all fear of any further fall. It shamed her that money should at last have been the key that opened the full truth to her, but she saw now that it had been money, Trent’s money, Schiller’s money, that had woven for her that warm, luxurious nest where she had drowsed all those years, thinking herself safe from the dawn knock or the evening frost.
How kind they had been, how unconsciously kind, those greedy calculating men who had withheld from her the money which should legitimately have been hers after Trent’s death. With it, she would surely have simply contrived to build herself another cosy refuge from the outside world. Without it, she had been forced into life, into feeling, into decision. Not kind, but cruel! How cruel they had been!
But how right in their calculations! Had there been money available, any money from whatever source, to buy back her old oblivion, she would surely have gone scurrying towards it and taken them with her.
Was the disease cured even now? Twelve million pounds! It had taken the size of the sum to persuade her finally of Trent’s involvement in her father’s death. What had seemed impossible, unthinkable, had suddenly become an unavoidable truth when she at last realized the rewards Trent had been playing for. What that told her about Trent was horrifying. What perhaps it told her about herself was horrendous. All that money, doubly stolen, the filthy profits of misery, pain and degradation, how would she have acted if indeed she had known where Trent had put it, if she had in fact discovered the secret of access to it? Janet had urged her to dip her hand into the Eric Blair account while she had had the chance and perhaps on that second visit to the cash point she might have done so. Would she then have been able to resist taking a tiny, unmissable slice off twelve million? A little spoonful of interest? Surely whatever the stench that arose from the main deposit, the interest was clean?
It was nice to have a moral problem to wrestle with. It took her mind off her other much more concrete problems as she lay there in the dark, waiting.
It was a long wait. Ashburton had left her, presumably to confer with Usher. Perhaps he was taking his time in order to build up her fear. Or perhaps Usher needed the time to heat up the instruments of persuasion.
It suddenly occurred to her that before he left, Ashburton had made no attempt to retie her wrists, yet all this time she had been lying here, she had never thought to try the bonds about her ankles!
A huge self-contempt welled up in her, drowning for a moment the despair and horror which the little solicitor must have recognized as incapacitating beyond any physical restraint. So she must have appeared to Trent, passive beyond his requirements, not moving except at his gesture or command.
Yet this was not her nature. Surely if the past months had taught her anything, they had taught her that?
Her fingers scrabbled at the cord which bound her ankles, but it was too late. The door opened and Ashburton was in the room.
‘Bothering you, are they?’ he said sympathetically. ‘Here, let’s have them off.’
His little fingers worked more dextrously at the knots than her own had managed and in a couple of seconds her feet were free.
‘That better? Good. Come through into the kitchen for a moment, please, Mrs Adamson.’
She stood up and almost collapsed against the bed. Her left leg had gone quite dead without her being aware.
‘Touch of cramp? Here, lean on me,’ said Ashburton solicitously. Solicitously! Well, he should be solicitous, shouldn’t he? she thought madly as she limped through the doorway on his arm like a dowager making what might be her last entrance.
They went down the narrow passage and into the kitchen. She stopped on the threshold. Usher was sitting at the bare wooden table drinking from a mug. He scowled at her from under lowering brows and she felt a pang of fear, sharp as heartburn. At the same time she smelt coffee, and her fear had to give way to a strong lust for a taste of the pungent liquid.
‘I expect you’d like a cup of coffee?’ said Ashburton. ‘Mr Usher, please.’
‘There’s only one mug,’ growled Usher. Ashburton turned the blank of his spectacles on him and after a moment he rose ungraciously, went across to the old marble sink, flung the dregs of his coffee into it and refilled it from the percolator Trudi had recognized on her first visit. Once again she wondered whether it was sentiment or taste that had made Trent bring it. At least she knew now it could hardly have been economy!
That thought made her grimace a smile.
Ashburton said, ‘Feeling better now?’
He sat her down on the creaky wooden chair. Usher returned with the coffee, which he banged down before her like a disgruntled waitress. She seized it in both hands and even though the liquid was thick, black and very hot, she drank deep.
Ashburton sat opposite her. Usher returned to the sink and leaned up against it, regarding her with a cold speculation far worse than hate. The solicitor glanced towards him and said in a low voice, vibrant with concern, ‘Please, Mrs Adamson. Tell us what you know. It will be best for everyone.’
‘I don’t know anything,’ she said. ‘Most of all I don’t know how much they need to pay a man like you to behave like this!’
He smiled. ‘I see your problem. No, I wouldn’t get so physically involved for a mere honorarium, certainly not. But you haven’t quite understood how things stand. You see, Mrs Adamson, things are falling apart. True, to start with, I was working closely with Dr Werner and, by chain of authority, with the shadowy men in whose eyes the Schiller organization is but a small subsidiary of a huge business empire. They have grown impatient, or distrustful, I fear, and are taking a hand themselves. The shattering of the mirrors at Class-Glass was one of their ploys, I would guess. That was what persuaded Mr Usher and I to start working for ourselves. You see, they know about us, but we know very little about them, which makes us expendable. So, like Trent before us, we’ve decided to get out with our own pension f
und!’
Trudi felt very cold. She drank more coffee and tried not to think of the pain which must inevitably begin.
Ashburton said, The positive side of this is that I am in a position to make firm offers without reference to any other party. Believe me, Mrs Adamson, I’d be most grateful for any help you can give us. I mean, ask yourself seriously what you would do with all that money? Wouldn’t half a million satisfy all your foreseeable needs? We could easily spare you half a million. Properly invested, it would give you an income of around fifty thousand per annum. A good-looking widow with that kind of money could really enjoy herself, Mrs Adamson.’
‘I can’t help you,’ she said.
‘A million. We could go to a million. You’d have your pick of life’s good things with a million. All the pleasures of the high life, if that’s what you wanted. Or perhaps a little hideaway somewhere, a place to be at peace in, safe from the trials and tribulations of this harsh world, perhaps that would be more to your taste.’
‘I don’t know, Mr Ashburton,’ she said. ‘I’ve grown quite fond of the trials and tribulations of this harsh world in the last few months.’
‘Have you now? Well, be that as it may. You’re an intelligent woman, despite all your efforts to appear retarded, and you must be aware that there’s a negative side to my offer.’
Trudi glanced towards Usher and nodded.
‘Quite right, my dear,’ said Ashburton. ‘Mr Usher has some rather brutal ideas about persuasion. I’m a much more patient and reasonable man, however, and after a free and frank discussion, you’ll be glad to hear that my point of view prevailed.’
‘I’ll tell you in a minute if I’m glad,’ said Trudi.
‘Quite simply, I think we can achieve the desired end of your cooperation just by locking you up till you change your mind.’
‘You mean, starve it out of me? Whatever it is, I mean.’
‘Something like that, my dear.’
Trudi’s mind was racing. If Ashburton really meant he was just going to lock her up and wait for hunger or thirst to break her will, that at least would give her time. To do what, she could not yet imagine. But there must be people out looking for her by now. Jan and James, to name but two. And they both knew about Well Cottage, Jan because she had been here, James because she had told him. There was no reason, of course, why they should look here to start with, but as time went by and they got more worried …
Just how much time had gone by? she wondered.
She glanced at her watch. It had stopped at ten thirty, presumably at the time she had been attacked. Ashburton caught her glance and said, ‘I see you’ve decided to spin matters out, Mrs Adamson. Very well.’
He leaned towards her and knocked on the table, three short raps, one long, the Morse V-for-Victory, the opening bar of Beethoven’s Fifth.
‘When you feel like talking, knock like that. It’s best to have an agreed signal so we shouldn’t have our hopes raised by an indiscriminate banging. Try it.’
‘I don’t think I’ll be needing it,’ said Trudi. ‘I know nothing, Mr Ashburton. Nothing.’
‘We’ll see. Mr Usher?’
Desperately she drained her mug. She was going to need every drop of sustenance she could get.
She stood up and began to walk towards the door.
‘Mrs Adamson,’ said the solicitor gently.
She halted and looked back at him.
‘Yes?’
‘Not that way.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve misunderstood me, I think. It’s not the bedroom we are going to lock you in.’
He smiled as he spoke and glanced to his right. She turned her head to follow the gaze.
Usher had moved from the sink to stand beside the tall upright freezer which had housed Gerhardt Jünger’s dreadful corpse. His hand was on the handle. As she watched he pulled and the door swung slowly open.
For a second her mind anticipated another corpse, but the freezer was completely empty, and in that same second, its gleaming white emptiness was suddenly the source of far greater horror than any contents, no matter how grisly, could have been.
‘No!’ she screamed. But Ashburton had her left arm, and Usher was by her side grasping her right, and she felt herself lifted bodily off the ground and thrust into the freezer before she could scream a second denial.
‘Remember. Dah-dah-dah-DUH!’ said Ashburton.
And the door slammed shut, and gleaming white became pitch black.
She was screaming now, not words, but long high ululations of terror. She flung herself against the door and beat at it with her fists but there was not the slightest movement. Desperately she tried to pull herself together, to calm her trembling body and crash her free-wheeling mind back into the gears of logical thought.
But her efforts were in vain, or at best counterproductive. For the sub-zero temperature was ready to shake her with cold if she managed to control her fear, and all that her reason could tell her was that she was likely to suffocate before she actually froze to death.
But it was the dark that was worst of all. Never before had her eyes known a darkness so complete that no amount of blinking and straining could etch a visible shape in it. Her hands traced out shelf supports, corners, the interior light holder, but to her sight she was in total eclipse.
She slumped down till she was wedged in her narrow coffin. Her mind was trying to move away from the certainty of death to any hypothesis which involved life, but all she could come up with was that here at least corruption would be held at bay for a little while longer than usual. What was the recommended use-by period for fresh frozen humans?
I’m making jokes! she realized. I’m freezing, suffocating, panicking, and I’m making jokes. That’s something to be proud of, perhaps.
She essayed a laugh, drew in a long draught of freezing air, tried to gauge its oxygen content, decided it didn’t much matter as it was taking the lining off her lungs anyway and let it out in what wasn’t a bad effort at a chuckle, all things considered.
I think, she told herself, I think I might bear all things if only I could see the sky again. Just once more. All I have to do is knock. Dah-dah-dah-DUH! Then I’ll be out in the kitchen. And if I can get across to the sink and pull back that old scrap of curtain, I must surely get a glimpse (oh what I would give for a glimpse!) of that starry infinity, that airy openness. Suddenly all trace of her old terror had vanished. How easily could death be borne if it merely meant being sucked into that turbulent calm, that crowded emptiness!
But to die in this constricting box, this sterile coffin …
There was nothing to gain by staying in here.
She freed one arm, raised it to knock.
But there was something to lose by going out, wasn’t there?
She tried to remember what it was, could not; raised her arm again to knock, could not. Was it act of will or simple physical incapacity? She did not know. Somewhere inside she was beginning to feel warm. It was, of course, illusion; the mind’s response to the extremity of cold which in the end kills kindly, anaesthetizing the nerve endings it sinks its teeth into. Perhaps it was not going to be so bad after all. Perhaps before the blackness outside seeped completely into her being, this freezing airless tomb would be transformed into just such a snug and warm little nest as she had spent the best part of her life in. Perhaps …
Light erupted before and behind her. She spilled out on to the kitchen flags. Ashburton stooped over her, spectacles shining like flying saucers.
She opened her mouth, could not speak, tried again, failed again.
‘Yes?’ he cried. ‘Yes?’
She managed a mutter.
‘Louder!’ he insisted. ‘I can’t hear.’
She drew in a breath. It did not sear her lungs. Flexibility was returned to the muscles of her mouth.
She spoke.
‘I didn’t knock,’ she said. ‘I didn’t knock.’
He hit her then, a swinging punch to the
side of her head. She rolled with it, but could not roll away from the sickening pain of it. She curled into a foetal ball but that brought no protection from the foot which drove viciously into the base of her spine, setting her rolling again. But there was no chance of evasion and, having moved from threats to violence, the little solicitor seemed to have lost all control. He followed her round the room stamping and kicking, his teeth bared as he gasped with the effort and sweat smearing the gleaming blanks of his glasses. She tried to get to her feet but her right knee had gone and her leg folded under her. In any case, the effort was futile for she found she had collapsed against the legs of Usher, who had just come through the kitchen door.
He looked down at her without any discernible emotion and said to Ashburton, ‘I was right. There’s a car down the lane.’
‘Hell. Who?’
‘I couldn’t see anyone. Might be nothing. Farmer up early to milk his sheep or something. But we ought to be ready.’
What readiness consisted of was easy to see. He pulled a large automatic out of an arm holster. Trudi looked up at Ashburton and saw him produce a smaller version of the same. She felt approval. Little men shouldn’t carry big guns.
Death of a Dormouse Page 25