Seven Years

by Peter Robinson

  I was beginning to feel way out of my depth. I must have looked it, too, for Miss Scott leaned forward, patted my hand and said, “Poor Mr. Aitcheson.”

  “Please explain,” I said. My tongue felt thick and furry in my mouth.

  “I was going to say that he must have sent the book to remind me of what we’d done together,” Miss Scott went on. “Not literally, you understand. Nobody strangled anyone with their own hair, if I remember my ‘Porphyria’ correctly. But you get the idea. I owed him, and he was reminding me of it. We’d made a bargain, and the time was close for payback. Pity I never saw the bloody inscription.”

  “What had you done together? You owed him? Payback? For what? Why?”

  “Barnes helped me murder my husband. Well, not with the actual murder, I don’t think he had the guts for that, so I did it myself, but with the cover up afterwards.”

  “Why are you telling—”

  “Shh. You wanted to hear the story. My husband didn’t drown, Mr. Aitcheson. He was already dead. That was Barnes. Well, Barnes didn’t really drown, either, but he faked the drowning, and as far as everyone was concerned, he was my husband, and he went for his swim every morning, regular as clockwork. One morning he simply didn’t come back. The currents were strong, the sea unpredictable. I was in a small cafe in the village at the time. The perfect alibi. You see, Barnes resembled George to a certain extent, and we were in Cornwall, among strangers, a long way from home, in a rented cottage rather remote from the nearest village. Nobody knew George there, and Barnes made sure he never got especially close to any of the locals. We were very anti-social. We might have gone abroad, but I’m sure they would have asked more questions over there. It was relatively easy in Cornwall. A pile of clothes on the beach. My real husband’s, by the way, in case they tested for DNA, which they didn’t. Body washed out to sea. Barnes swam to a cave, actually, and made his escape in a small boat he’d previously moored there in a cave for that very purpose.”

  By this point I was having serious difficulty speaking. Not only that, but my head was throbbing, I felt sick and dizzy and my knees were trembling. I was also starting to have trouble breathing. It was getting difficult to cling on to what little consciousness I had left.

  “It won’t be long now,” Miss Scott said. “This benzodiazepine is fairly quick acting. Then I’ll figure out what to do with you.”

  I could only gape, my mouth wide open.

  “It worked a treat,” she said. “The only problem is that if you don’t want to create a stir and have too many questions asked, then you have to wait seven years before the legal declaration of death. Before you can inherit and cash in the insurance policy. If I’d made too much of a fuss too soon, they might have thought I had done it for the money. Which I had, of course.”

  “But why?” I gasped. “You were rich already.”

  “My husband was rich, Mr. Aitcheson. That’s a different thing. George was a workaholic, and luckily the object of his addiction was making money. Unfortunately for me, though, he liked to hang on to it. He was tight as a… well, you can fill in the blank yourself. I had to negotiate for every bloody penny I got. That’s why I had to keep on working. Lucky for me I liked my job. After… when it was over down in Cornwall… all I had to do was keep my cool, and I could do that. All in all, it was rather a lot of money, and well worth waiting for. I didn’t mind teaching for seven more years when I knew what was coming to me after that. I was only twenty-six at the time, which means I’m only thirty-three now. Plenty of time ahead of me for fun. And as I had a job and a steady income, it would have looked bad if I’d gone for the money sooner. It wasn’t as if I needed it. But Barnes and I never got along well after… well, after the deed. Guilt, perhaps. Thieves falling out. The need for secrecy. Whatever the reasons, we agreed to go our separate ways. I told him to come back for his share in seven years, but little did he realize that I had no intention of giving him anything. Anyway, when the seven years were almost up, just before the start of term, he began hounding me for his share. I’d heard from him occasionally over the years. A cryptic postcard here, a hang-up phone call there. I imagine that book was one of his many salvos to keep me on edge. I thank you for bringing it to my intention. Not that it matters any more. I was a little shaken by his other messages and threats of exposure, however. I suppose I acted erratically under the pressure. Drank too much and so on. Naturally, they noticed at school and gave me the sack. But it didn’t matter, did it? I had a fortune to inherit.” She leaned towards me, resembling nothing more than a pale blob through a fisheye lens. “How are you feeling, Mr. Aitcheson?”

  And that was the point at which I wasn’t feeling anything anymore. It was as if someone suddenly turned off a switch in my brain.

  When I regained consciousness it took me a while to get oriented and work out where I was, where I’d been, and why, but it all came back eventually, bit by bit. I was in a cellar, I realized first of all, lying on the hard concrete floor trussed up like a turkey ready for the oven. And I was here because Miss Scott had drugged my tea. She had done that because I was asking too many questions about a disturbing inscription in the flyleaf of a book, and she was afraid that if she let me go I would press the matter to a point where it would cause serious problems for her. Perhaps I would talk to the police, for example, or the people at Linford School. In other words, she needed to get me out of the picture, remove me from the scene, probably by murder, as it appeared she had done that before, though I was still vague about the details.

  I tried to move, but I was well and truly tied up. Various bones and muscles ached as well as my head, and I realized that she had probably dragged rather than carried me down the wooden cellar steps. I was definitely too old for this sort of thing; whether I had ever been young enough was a moot point, but I was certainly too old now. I tried to move again and stiffened with pain. I thought my left ankle might be broken.

  I also realized that I was in a house surrounded by woods and a high wall, miles from the nearest village, and I couldn’t expect any help to come my way. That was one of my most depressing thoughts as I heard Miss Scott moving about upstairs, no doubt preparing whatever it was she needed to bring about my demise. A bath full of acid, perhaps? Or a wood-chopping machine in the garden? I could try telling her I would let the matter drop, that I didn’t really find the Browning quotes and the tone of the inscription frightening or interesting, but I doubted that she would believe me. It was too late for that now. I only had my profession to blame for my ultra-sensitivity to the use of language. Most people would probably have shrugged it off as a bit of a laugh and let it go by.

  I thought of Alice Langham and my vain hopes that we would somehow become friends, perhaps even more. I had led a lonely existence for some years, and it now looked very much as if I was going to die a lonely death, too. I had lied to Miss Scott about nobody else knowing what I was up to. Alice knew where I was going, and she thought the inscription as disturbing as I did, so perhaps when she didn’t hear from me in a few days, she would call the police. Even if they came here, it would no doubt be too late by then. I hoped she didn’t decide to come here by herself. I couldn’t bear the thought of her getting killed, too, just because of my stupid curiosity. Not that I would be around to feel sad or guilty.

  Perhaps, if I got the chance, I could let Miss Scott know that I wasn’t the only one interested in her. In which case she would probably kill me quickly, withdraw all her money from the bank and take the next flight to some tax-free island paradise with no extradition treaty, if such a place existed. Otherwise, she could probably just lie her way out of it all. After all, she had succeeded in murder before.

  Whichever way I looked at things, there didn’t seem much hope for me.

  Then I heard the doorbell ring upstairs.

  All I could hear was a distant rumble of voices. I couldn’t distinguish a word that was being said, nor who was saying it
. Footsteps passed overhead and disappeared into one of the rooms above me. I could still hear the voices, but less distinctly now. I assumed that Miss Scott was one of them, and I had a terrible feeling that Barnes was the other. She must have phoned him while I was out cold and asked him to come and help her get rid of me. I knew they had an unusual relationship from what she had told me before I passed out, but I also got the impression that despite Barnes’s taunts and threats, she could manipulate him. And even if it cost her a fraction of her fortune, getting me properly disposed of was probably worth it.

  Don’t let me give you the impression that these thoughts passing through my foggy brain left me feeling calm and unruffled. They didn’t. I was terrified, and I never stopped struggling against my bonds, only succeeding in drawing them tighter around my wrists and ankles. Just in case the visitor wasn’t Barnes, I even tried to yell out, but nothing got through the gag stuffed in my mouth and held there with my own tie. I tried banging my feet against the floor, but it made no noise and only hurt my damaged ankle. I could find no other way to attract attention, so in the end I simply lay there limp and defeated. There was nothing to do but await my inevitable fate.

  After a while, things went quiet and I couldn’t really tell whether the visitor had left. I was drifting in and out of consciousness. Then I heard another noise from upstairs. This time it sounded like a table or a lamp being knocked over. There was a rumbling sound, then the noise of glass or pottery breaking, someone jumping up and down on the floor above. Then I thought I heard a scream. Were Barnes and Miss Scott fighting?

  Whatever was happening, it seemed to go on for a long time, then there was silence again. I heard footsteps above me, almost certainly just one pair, and I couldn’t tell whether it was Miss Scott or Barnes who had survived the fight. I wasn’t even sure which of them I hoped had won. I didn’t think it mattered. Either or both would probably want to kill me.

  The footsteps receded—upstairs, I thought—and then everything went silent again. Was nobody coming for me? Was I just going to be abandoned to die here of starvation? Left to rot? What if he’d killed her and was just going to leave? Would her weekly cleaning lady find me before I expired? I had no idea.

  More footsteps, back on the main floor again. I tried to shout again, but I don’t think I produced much noise. All I knew was that I would rather Barnes or Miss Scott kill me here and now than starve to death.

  Then the cellar door opened and someone turned on the light.

  My breath caught in my throat as I turned slowly and painfully to get a view of who was coming down the stairs. Whether it was Miss Scott or Barnes, I knew I was doomed either way.

  But it wasn’t either of them; it was Alice Langham stumbling down towards me, holding on to the railing to stop herself from falling. Her blouse and jacket were torn, her hair disheveled, and there was blood smeared on her face and all down her front. Her tights were ripped, too, and she had scratches, cuts and blood on her legs. One shoe was missing.

  When she reached the ground, Alice staggered towards me. I couldn’t read the expression on her face because of all the blood and her wide eyes, but for one terrifying moment I thought I had misjudged everything, everyone, and had the irrational idea that Alice was party to whatever evil had been going on here.

  But she fell to her knees beside me and started fumbling with the ropes at my ankles and wrists. I noticed that some of her fingernails were bloody and torn and realized how hard and painful it must be for her to unfasten the tight ropes. But she managed it. Then she removed my tie from my mouth and pulled out the wadded rag Miss Scott had used as a gag.

  When Alice had finally finished and I could sit up and rub the circulation back into my hands, I reached up and touched her cheek and she fell forward into my arms. We stayed like that for some time, a tender tableau, Alice sobbing gently against my chest as I stroked the back of her head and muttered reassuring nonsense in her ear. I don’t know which one of us moved first, but it was Alice who said, “We should get out of here. I don’t know how long she’ll be out. And who knows whether Barnes will turn up?”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “I hit her with the poker.”

  I was still dizzy, and it took me a little time to regain my sense of balance, but we hobbled and limped our way back upstairs and found Miss Scott still unconscious beside the fireplace in the sitting room, blood matting the side of her head. I found a slow, steady pulse, so she was still alive, but I guessed she would be out for a long time. The place was a wreck, furniture knocked over, the teapot broken in the hearth, a canteen of cutlery scattered about the place, some of the knives red with blood, stained on the carpet and sheepskin rug, a few paintings hanging loose at strange angles on the wall.

  “It must have been a hell of a fight,” I said to Alice.

  She just nodded and winced as she did so.

  Then I picked up the telephone to call the police and an ambulance.

  We waited outside for the police, sitting on the top step. It was a mild evening, the sky a burnt orange streaked with long grey wisps of cloud. The rain had stopped and the drying brown and lemon leaves rustled in the breeze. I was grateful to be out in the fresh air again. We both sat silently and breathed in deep for a while. I held Alice’s hand, which was shaking as much as mine. Then I asked her why she had come to Miss Scott’s house and what had happened upstairs.

  “I asked to see you,” she said. “I’d noticed your car when I arrived. The same one I saw parked outside school earlier today. She tried to tell me you weren’t here, that she had two cars. We talked, argued. Then she admitted you’d been here but said you’d started feeling ill and had to lie down.”

  “That bit’s partly true,” I said, remembering the sweet strong tea, no doubt masking the taste of whatever drugs she had added. Benzodiazepine, she had said.

  “I was more than suspicious by then, so told her I wanted to go up and see you. She asked me if I fancied a drink first. I said no. Things were pretty tense between us, but I didn’t expect what happened next. I stood up and said I wanted to go upstairs and see if you were all right now. She came at me with the poker. Luckily I managed to dodge the blow and it smashed a lamp or a vase or something. We struggled, she dropped the poker. I used my knee on her. I don’t really remember what happened after that except I’ve never been in such a fight before. It seemed to go on forever.” She shook her head. “I think I got to the point where I didn’t care how much I hurt her as long as she stopped trying to hurt me.”

  “It was a fight for your life,” I said, squeezing her hand. She winced at the pain. “Sorry. She’d have killed you, too.”

  “How could she hope to get away with two murders just like that?”

  “She’d gotten away with murder before. She was desperate. Her plan was unravelling. But what made you come here? We thought Miss Scott was Barnes’s victim, didn’t we?”

  “First off, it was just a feeling. You know, like you hear about in those American cop shows. Something stinks, or feels ‘hinky.’ Is that the right word? Something felt not quite right, anyway, and I was getting more anxious. It was gnawing away at me all the time I was trying to concentrate on teaching my class. I couldn’t stop thinking about you and Barnes and Marguerite Scott. After class, I got back on my computer and looked up everything I could find about her husband’s disappearance. There wasn’t very much, and most of what was there was there because he was a fairly important player in the financial field. Sort of famous. He has his own Wikipedia page, at any rate. He was forty-five at the time of his death, probably about twenty years older than his wife.”

  I was in my early fifties, having retired early. “Forty-five’s not old,” I said.

  “As that’s my age, I would have to agree with you. But I said ‘older,’ not old. Anyway, one thing that leaped out at me was the date of his disappearance. September 28, 2010. That was seven years f
rom the time Marguerite Scott came back from lunch drunk and got her marching orders. I can’t prove it, but I’m sure she’d been out with Barnes. Anyway, I knew already that her husband’s body had never been found, that he was supposed to have drowned, and I also knew that it takes seven years before an official declaration of death can be issued in absentia. That made me think. The inscription, Marguerite Scott’s erratic behavior around that date, her cold and distant manner. I was starting to think by then that I must have misread the whole business, got it backwards, and that Barnes wasn’t about to harm Miss Scott but was somehow her accomplice, and perhaps the point of the inscription was to remind her that she really did like killing, or really had killed, not that he was going to kill her. That was when I decided to follow you out here.”

  “And I’m glad you did,” I said.

  “I know it wasn’t very logical thinking. I mean, the police can’t have suspected anything back in 2010, or they would gave questioned her more thoroughly. Besides, she was in a cafe with lots of other people when her husband drowned. Lots of people saw her. She had the ideal alibi.”

  “Only it wasn’t her husband who drowned,” I said. “It was Barnes. And he didn’t die.”

  Alice needed a few stitches here and there and some tape around her ribs, while I had my ankle set, which meant I had to walk with a stick for a while. Fortunately for me, Marguerite Scott had dragged me down the cellar steps head first rather than feet, so except for a few bruises around my lower back, I was otherwise in fairly decent shape for a man my age, the doctor said.

  A few days after our ordeal, the forensic team dug up two bodies on Marguerite Scott’s property. One belonged to her husband, George Scott, who, as I had explained to Alice and the police already, had never made it to Cornwall for the holiday on which he supposedly drowned. The other body, far fresher, was Barnes Corrigan, who had been dead only since the end of September, not so long after he had sent the Browning to Marguerite Scott. Both had their throats cut.