Dovecote

by Oleson, Anne Britting;

  Stokes tucked the walking stick under his arm. He lifted the oil lantern and raised the wick; the light brightened and the lantern began to smoke. He glanced over at her and smiled. “Have to set the stage, as it were.”

  “Money,” she replied quickly. “You need money, I have money. Let’s talk.”

  Stokes shook his head. The lantern cast a larger circle of light, wavering in the dimness of the dovecote. He was not wearing the red windcheater today; probably, Gwynn thought nonsensically, that coat was far too easily recognizable.

  “Too far along for that.” He straightened. “You’re too far along for that. Too depressed. Alone in a village where you know no one, can’t talk to anyone about your split with your boyfriend.”

  “How much do you need?” she persisted desperately.

  “Thinking too much on your husband, you have been,” Stokes continued, sighting along the blackthorn as though along a gun barrel. “And the coincidence of your great-aunt’s husband. How they both hanged themselves.” He turned slowly to face her, still sighting along the stick. “Suicides run in families, you know. Something about suggestibility. How the impossible becomes possible if people near and dear to us do it first.” His sudden jerking upward of the stick suggested the kick of a gun, but now he was pointing the stick at the noose, which swayed above Gwynn’s head.

  IN A MOMENT of screaming clarity she saw it. She saw the young Gwynn cast one last look at the swaying shadow that was Tommy Chelton, then, without checking for life, turn and walk out of the dovecote, careful to leave the door open.

  Saw her walk slowly back to the cottage and seat herself in the wing-backed chair.

  Saw her watch the hands of the clock on the bookcase move slowly: a quarter hour, a half, one hour, two.

  Only then did she stand, go to the back garden, smudge some dirt on her hands and knees—and rush through the side gate and down to the road, crying for help. Gwynn Chelton’s tears came easily. They were tears of relief.

  “NO,” SHE OBJECTED sharply.

  “You know,” Stokes kept on, “I felt so sorry for you, Gwynn. I offered to help you, to keep you company, to listen if you wanted to talk, but you kept pushing me away. I told people in the village how worried I was about you. I told people in the pub how depressed you seemed, and how you wouldn’t let me help.”

  “No.” She gripped the seat harder, measuring the distance between the chair and the door. She could make out the vague outline of light, where the door fit imperfectly, even closed.

  “And the more you repeat something to people, the more they believe the truth of it.”

  “It won’t do you any good,” she protested, her voice rising. “My will—”

  “You have no other relatives, Gwynn. I’m the only one left.” Now he approached, leaned forward to look into her eyes. “And even if you’ve left everything you own to charity, the fact that you’re a suicide supports my arguments about the balance of mind.”

  Stokes’ eyes were black holes in his face. In her fear, she watched him fade into Tommy Chelton and then back to himself again.

  “I’m not,” she ground out, “a suicide.”

  Again he shrugged. He tapped the shaft of the stick against his other palm. “You will be.” He glanced up at the rope swinging from the rafter, and smiled that sickly smile once more.

  Gwynn’s eyes flickered to the door and back. Keep him talking, she repeated to herself. Stall for time. Star will come. She desperately hoped that was true. Suddenly she started to her feet, but just as quickly, Stokes shoved her back onto the seat roughly.

  “No, you don’t,” he said.

  “You’re crazy,” she repeated. “I’m not depressed. I’m not suggestible. I’m not going to hang myself.”

  “It’s not a problem.” Stokes tapped the stick against his palm a few more times, measuring its heft; then he took a few steps to his left, looking up at the rope. “A little rap on the head, and I help you up.” He turned, paced the other way, always keeping between her and the door. He frowned. “I don’t think you’d be that heavy.”

  “No,” she said again, more shrilly. She could not keep her voice under control. She ran her eyes over him, looking at his legs, wondering if she could trip him, knock him down, get past him. She had to take him by surprise. There had to be a way. “Even if you did that, an autopsy”—she blinked, took a breath—“an autopsy would show bruising. It would be investigated. And any investigation would lead right back to you.”

  Follow the money, Giles had said.

  She froze.

  “A rap on the head,” she whispered.

  “Like the one I—I mean, you—gave Trevelyan, who asked one question too many.” He nodded. “You’re a smart one, you are. But of course, remorse at your killing the old man is also weighing on your conscience. Adding to your depression. I tried to cover for you as best I could with the police, but they were too clever for me, and I had to tell them all about your violent tendencies. Sad.” He sucked gently on the stub of his cigarette, and the end glowed red. “And if, when you kicked over the chair you stood on to reach the noose, it tipped your lantern into the hay—well, there wouldn’t be much left of you to autopsy once the fire brigade put out the blaze. A devil of a time getting up here to put it out, they’ll have.”

  Stokes had it all planned. He had thought about this for a long time. That was obvious. And she—she hadn’t considered the possibility at all; who would? Gwynn closed her eyes. She knew who had: Giles Trevelyan. And then Colin. They had both warned her, and she’d disregarded them.

  “Don’t.” She gripped the seat of the chair tighter, watching Stokes pace. The rope above her head swung gently in the movement of air beneath the bowed roof. How many feet to the door? Could she make it? She would have to dodge him and wrest open the latch—and then what? Outrun him, back through the wood to the cottage, back into the street. Her mind clicked over to that familiar clarity beyond panic. She was in better shape than he. She’d be faster, through the trees. Could she lock herself inside the cottage? Could she phone the police? It’s my cousin. He’s trying to kill me. He’s already killed our great-aunt. It sounded far-fetched—would they believe her? Would they come?

  She took a deep breath, waiting as he passed before her in his pacing, then leapt up and ran for it.

  Stokes whirled and lurched, swinging the blackthorn. It caught her above the ear. The dimness exploded in shards of glitter, streaks of fire. For the second time, Gwynn found herself face down in the dirt, this time with a mouthful of blood. She lay there, winded, defeated.

  Then she heard the dog bark.

  Gwynn scrambled to her feet dizzily. Stokes’ arm went around her throat, and he dragged her backward. She heard the stick clatter as he threw it aside. She couldn’t see, and there was a roaring in her ears, growing louder. Louder. Desperately she grabbed his arm with both hands and twisted, then bit his wrist. He hit her again, and she staggered but remained on her feet. His arm tightened around her throat, and she kicked backward, as hard as she could. She felt her foot connect with the chair, and there was a sudden sharp smell of oil. Shards of glass crushed under her shoes.

  She twisted again, but his grip was strong, and she felt the dizziness moving from her head along into her arms, her legs. No air. She coughed. Smoke? She couldn’t tell. Behind her ear Stokes coughed sharply and swore, but he sounded far away and he was receding and it was getting warmer and smokier and she couldn’t stand up much longer—

  “Gwynn! Go—run!” The voice was high and reedy. Martin. She couldn’t see him.

  But she could smell the smoke more clearly now, the mustiness of it as it burned the moldy straw on the floor, creeping toward the empty wooden cages that lined the walls. One last effort: she thrust both elbows backward, then slammed her head back into Stokes’ face. The arm around her throat loosened, and she fell away from him, toward the floor where flames rushed up at her face.

  “Martin!” she croaked frantically, back into the whi
rling smoke.

  “Go!” Martin shouted again. “I’m right behind you—go!”

  Coughing, she crawled across the burning floor toward the door. She couldn’t see it—with her head throbbing and her eyes streaming, she was confused, disoriented. Something tore at her ankle, and she fell sideways, rolling through the licking flames, and she felt her hair catch fire. She threw her hands up, beating at her scalp. She heard Stokes shout something—his grip tightened on her ankle and he was pulling her back where the flames grew higher, the sound of their ravenousness growing to a roar. She twisted, but could not break his grip.

  “Martin!” she screamed.

  Then there he was, Martin, encircled by flames, his white hair haloed in a rage of red and orange, his arms lifting the chair over his head and bringing it down again over Stokes’ back. There was a grunt, and Gwynn was free, scrabbling away from Stokes and the flames, but not before she saw Martin Scott tumble back with the force of his swing, backward into the roar of the engulfing inferno.

  53

  HER HANDS WERE bandaged tightly, looking like nothing more than two large Q-tips at the ends of her arms. Gwynn held them up before her and examined them; she couldn’t quite understand how they were attached. Her throat was raw and burning when she tried to speak; when she turned her head on the pillow, it made an odd scratchy sound. And the pain. Her head hurt. Her hands hurt. Her eyes hurt. Her lungs hurt, and she couldn’t take a deep-enough breath.

  A sound escaped her. It might have been a sob, had she been able to manage that much—but she couldn’t. Not now. Not yet.

  “Hospital,” she heard someone say. “You’re fine now. Safe.”

  She knew the voice from somewhere. She couldn’t remember where.

  “Trust me,” the voice said, and then she knew who it was.

  She closed her eyes again.

  HE WAS STILL there when she opened them later—she had no idea how much later. Only a single light burned in the room, but low, away from her eyes, and she was grateful. He sat still and silent in a chair off to one side, his hands folded in his lap, his gray eyes steady on her. He looked worn, lines etched into his brow; his hair looked grayer than before, but it could have just been the effect of the low light.

  He looks like hell, Martin had said that day beside the estuary.

  Martin. She had a sudden vision of the old man in a nimbus of fire.

  “Colin,” she tried to say, but her voice only came out of her raw throat as a rasp. She tried again, forcing the sound so it hurt. “Colin.”

  Wordlessly he stood to pour her a small cup of water; this he held to her lips, and she took a gulp, surprised to realize that this was the thing she really needed.

  “Slow,” he said quietly. “Slow.”

  He set the cup on the bedside table and resumed his seat. Too far to reach. Almost too far to see.

  “Martin,” she ground out.

  Colin looked away, off to the side, as though trying to conjure a vision. Of the old man? Then he lowered his eyes. “Gone.”

  Her eyes filled, and the tears burned. “He saved me.” The chair, held over his head in his frail arms. His precarious balance. His falling away, into the blaze.

  Colin shook his head. “You tried to save him. Star had to pull you away from the fire. You kept screaming, trying to get back in to him.”

  “Stokes,” she said through the agonizing tears, which she couldn’t stop. “He—”

  “Dead, too.” Colin cut her off, his voice steely.

  The sobbing now wracked her, and only added to the pain in her chest, in her throat, in her head. But she couldn’t control it. “He tried to kill me, Colin. He tried—” The rope was swinging over her head, the rope that recalled her husband’s blood-suffused face, six years ago. “He wanted it to look like suicide. He wanted it to look like Richard’s.”

  Colin’s throat was working. She could see the movement of his Adam’s apple in the dim light. “But Martin—”

  “How did he even get there? How?” The old man, his stick left behind in the garden.

  “No one knows, Gwynn.”

  “He hit Stokes with a chair. He knocked him away from me, told me to run. If it hadn’t been for Martin, I’d be dead.” Her hands useless, she covered her eyes with her arm, crying into the crook of her elbow. “Martin saved me. He couldn’t save Gwynn Chelton, so he saved me.”

  “Did he?” Colin asked roughly. “Are you saved now, Gwynn?”

  But she couldn’t answer him, she was crying so hard.

  HER DRUGGED NIGHT was filled with nightmares. She saw Martin engulfed in a ball of fire. She felt herself tumbling across the rough ground of the clearing in which the dovecote had stood, as the roof of the old building collapsed into flames behind her. Star was pulling at her jeans, claws dug into the ground. She heard herself screaming, and was shaken awake by a nurse.

  “Hush, now,” the woman soothed, adjusting the IV. “Hush. No need to scream like that, love. You’re safe now. Safe.”

  Gwynn didn’t feel safe. Not yet.

  In the night, the one person who did not visit her was her great-aunt.

  Epilogue

  December

  “IT’S COLD,” GWYNN said, wrapping her arms around her chest and stomping her feet in her boots. Beside her, Star drew herself to attention and sat, her black nose in the air.

  “Yes,” Colin said. He stood nearby, at the edge of the clearing, but not close enough to touch. His own hands were shoved into his pockets. His gray eyes roved over the charred remains of the dovecote, fallen in on itself in a blackened heap. Then he lifted his gaze to the skeletal arms of the trees. The air was still acrid with the ghost of smoke.

  Gwynn held the pale pink rose between her stiff scarred fingers, having stripped the thorns from its stem as she’d made her way along the woods path to the clearing. She lifted the flower to her nose now and breathed deep its delicate scent. Just the one rose, a surprise bloom in early December, amongst the brambles which no longer protected the cottage. Perhaps one rose was enough.

  “I miss him,” she whispered.

  This time Colin did not speak, but only nodded.

  “And her.”

  There was nothing here now, nothing of the fear and anger she’d felt on the first day, and on the last. No sound of cooing birds, no sobbing in the distance.

  Slowly Gwynn stepped forward, knelt in the damp leaves, and laid the rose among them. As she knelt, her head bent, she felt the first snowflake touch her cheek. A second caught itself on her lashes and melted there.

  Colin took a step nearer, reached out a hand. After a moment, she took it and rose stiffly from the ground. The pink bloom at her feet was a tiny blaze of color against the winter browns, a kind of reminder. She looked on it for a moment longer, then lifted her eyes.

  Overhead, a single dove flew across the clearing under the gray sky and disappeared into the trees.

  Star stood.

  “Let’s go back,” Colin said. Gwynn nodded.

  Anne Britting Oleson lives in the mountains of central Maine with her family. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Church of St. Materiana (Moon Pie Press, 2007) and The Beauty of It (Sheltering Pines Press, 2010). She is a founding member of Simply Not Done, a women’s reading, writing, and teaching cooperative.