Death in a Desert Land

by Andrew Wilson

  I blew out the candles, picked up the box of matches, and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. I edged my way across the courtyard, stretching a hand out before me as I did so. I tried to keep my breath quiet and steady, even though the primitive instinct of fear did everything in its power to close up my throat. I felt my chest beginning to tighten. Was there someone watching me in the dark? The old terror of the Gunman—that nightmare I had had since childhood, the sense of an omen of ill fortune—threatened to return. I remembered how the specter of that figure had frightened me as a girl and how later, driven to the edge of despair by Archie’s infidelity, I had thought it had stolen into my husband’s body. How easy it was for someone you loved to turn against you; a face that you had once gazed upon with adoration became possessed by something else entirely, something unfamiliar and strange. I was certain there was someone in the house who had donned a mask of respectability but who, in effect, was the embodiment of evil.

  I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to put such thoughts out of my head. I walked slowly and as inconspicuously as I could down towards the shed, making sure that I kept to the pockets of darkness not illuminated by the stars. I came to settle on a pile of sandbags hidden behind the store, from where I would be able to hear anyone trying to open the door of the shed. I thought of Katharine inside the wooden shack. I hoped that she had followed my instructions and had drunk the strong coffee which would keep her senses primed for any signs of an intruder. I didn’t need such a stimulant; despite my deep breaths and my repeated mantra to calm down, my heartbeat was already racing.

  I tried to make out the constellations, tracing imaginary lines in the sky in an attempt to bring some kind of order to the seemingly random pattern of stars. I loved the names that populated the celestial sphere, made up of mythological characters, animals, and objects, and as I tried to pick them out of the sky—where was Hercules?—I wondered how many people had sat here before me looking up at the heavens, unable to sleep or driven from their beds by thoughts of their own mortality. We were all so small, so insignificant; the thought was a well-worn one, something of a cliché, but still there was a reason why throughout history many of us, when gazing up at the stars, had pondered the nature of it all. We were all the same, I thought. Despite culture, background, status, and sex, each of us wept, each of us laughed, each of us, if cut or shot, would bleed; indeed, in the end, each of us would die. If this was the case, what was the point in me trying to prevent the death of Katharine Woolley? After all, I knew that the woman—whom I had only met quite recently—would die one day. The answer was that I believed in the sanctity of life; it was, I felt, something supremely important. Yes, I would do anything in my power to stop this murderer.

  Just then I heard someone approaching. I dared not peek out from my hiding place behind the shed, but the sound of footsteps was unmistakable. I clasped my handbag closer to my chest and tried to ignore the rasp of my own quickening breath. The person approached the front of the shed and stopped. Then I heard the faint sound of a padlock spring open and the creak of a door. I knew that I would have to act. I eased myself slowly forwards and felt my way towards the front of the shed. My steps were slow and as soft as I could make them. As I turned the corner I noticed a dark shape surrounded by the frame of the open door. The figure’s back was turned to me, but there was no uncertainty that it was a man and that he was raising his hand. I had not a moment to lose.

  I moved quickly and took out a match and lit it. Although my fingers were trembling, I knew I had only one chance at this. I concentrated as I pressed down with the match onto the box. The touch, I knew, had to be firm and yet somehow graceful, a difficult combination to master when one was trying to prevent a murder.

  As I struck the match a spark turned into a flame and the figure turned round. I lifted up the match and the small light was enough to illuminate the frightened face of a boy. Cecil.

  “Stay away,” he said, swinging around to look at me.

  “He’s got a gun!” shouted Katharine from inside the shed.

  “Shut your mouth,” he hissed, turning back towards Mrs. Woolley. “You’ve done enough damage as it is.”

  I had to think quickly. “Cecil, is this something you really want to do?” I said in as calm and as soothing a voice as I could manage. “What would your uncle say? Or your poor parents?”

  “Don’t you dare speak of them,” he said as he continued to point the gun towards Katharine. “They have nothing to do with this. She’s the one that has got to pay for what she did. For what she did to Sarah.”

  “How do you know for certain it was Mrs. Woolley?” I asked, conscious that my match would only burn for another few seconds. I knew that I could light another one, but in those moments of darkness that would inevitably follow, I had to acknowledge that anything could happen. Cecil might panic; he could shoot into the shed or fire the gun into the night. I or Katharine, or both of us, might get injured—or worse.

  “Everyone knows it was her,” said Cecil. “We all saw her. Her hands were covered in Sarah’s blood.”

  I took a step forwards. “Now, why don’t you put the gun down and we can—”

  “Don’t come any closer,” he said, spitting the words out. “I warn you.” As he swung round towards me I noticed that his hand was shaking from the way the glinting metal of the gun trembled in the starlight.

  “I know that you were very fond of Sarah,” I said, the match singeing the ends of my fingers. “It’s terribly sad that she—” As the flame neared the end of the matchstick, the sensation of burning was too much and I had to drop it.

  “That she was murdered by . . . by this . . .” said Cecil, his voice trailing off in disgust.

  The sky may have been full of stars, but the loss of the light from the match seemed to plunge the scene into darkness. It took a moment or two before my eyes adjusted to the night. I quickly tried to light another match, but this time my fingers felt clumsy. I saw a spark, but it died as soon as it came alive. Then the second flared up too quickly, burning itself out in a moment. By the time I had successfully lit a third match, Cecil had moved inside the shed to stand over Katharine, who was cowering in the corner of the mattress.

  “Please . . . please, no,” she begged. “I swear to you I had nothing to do with—”

  Cecil leant forwards and placed the gun on Katharine’s right temple. Although it was obvious that the boy was nervous—the revolver continued to shake in his grasp—he would still kill her if he pulled the trigger. I had to act. With my free hand I unzipped my handbag, placed it on the floor, and took out the syringe. I moved quietly and stealthily toward the boy, ready to plunge the syringe into his back. But just as I was about to reach out, he turned towards me.

  “What the . . . ,” he said, as if he could not believe what he was seeing. He grabbed my wrist with his left hand and twisted my fingers, forcing me to drop the syringe and the box of matches. Again the match extinguished itself, again I felt the ends of my fingers burn, but this was nothing compared to the pain I felt in my other arm as Cecil forced my hand around my back.

  “Are you in this together?” he spat. “Is that what this is all about?”

  It was my turn then to feel the unmistakable cold caress of the gun against my temple. Fear closed up my throat, preventing me from speaking.

  “If that’s the case, I should finish you both off,” he said, pressing the revolver harder into my skin. “Two sad old maids, jealous of our youth. Was that it?”

  At thirty-eight years of age, I was far from old, but I knew in Cecil’s eyes I was like an ancient relic. In that moment I thought of all the things I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t want to die, not yet. I would never see Rosalind grow up, never see her children. And what about my books? After a rather dry spell, when I had suffered from that awful paucity of ideas, now I found that inspiration came easily. I had so many stories swirling about my head that I wanted to tell. One bullet dislodged by Cecil McRae would be the e
nd of all of that—the end of me.

  I took a deep breath, and although every cell in my body was telling me to fight back, to struggle, to do anything to stay alive, I closed my eyes and forced myself to relax. Perhaps if I went as lifeless as a dead fish, the boy might loosen his hold on me. I imagined myself as a child in my mother’s arms. I was safe at my family home, Ashfield, in Torquay. Nothing could harm me. However, as soon as I opened my eyes, I realized the real danger which faced me. Was I experiencing my very last moments?

  Just then, as I felt Cecil tighten his grip on me, I heard an almighty high-pitched scream. Katharine jumped up from the mattress and bore down on Cecil. She tried to stab the boy—she must have found the syringe on the floor—but as she reached out, Cecil grabbed her hand to stop her. In doing so, he had no choice but to free me and I fell back and away from him. Somewhere on the floor lay the box of matches that I had dropped. I moved across the ground like a crab, stretching out my hands in the hope of finding the box.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” said Cecil as he bent back Katharine’s fingers, forcing the syringe from her hand. “I’ll take that.”

  “Agatha, help me,” gasped Katharine, the pain audible in her voice.

  “What’s in here?” he asked. “What’s in the syringe? Tell me!”

  “Don’t hurt her,” I said. “It’s a strong sedative, I promise, nothing more.”

  “If that’s all it is, then I’m sure Mrs. Woolley here wouldn’t mind a little something to ease her misery,” he said. “I’ve always wondered about a gunshot wound to the head. How much pain you would feel. They say it’s more or less instantaneous, but you must feel something. Although I don’t like to think of it, I’m sure Sarah felt pain in the moments before her death.”

  As I made another large circular movement with my right arm, I felt the familiar rattle of the matches in their box on the ground. I grabbed it and, despite my shaking hands, managed to light one. Cecil had bent over Katharine: in one hand he held the gun, which he pointed at her chest; in another he brandished the syringe. It seemed as though Katharine’s fate was sealed.

  “You know Miss Archer was really quite taken with you,” I said.

  There was no response from Cecil.

  “Yes, she told me that she liked you but that she was too shy to tell you,” I continued.

  “I—I don’t believe you,” the boy replied.

  “Oh, no, it is true,” Katharine managed to say, understanding what I was up to. “The girl more or less said as much to me, too.”

  “She had to pretend to be cruel to you because she didn’t want you to know the truth,” I said as I used a match to light a candle. The soft light cast its amber glow across the enclosed space of the shed, sending amorphous shadows across the walls.

  “The truth?” His voice was soft now, gentle almost, and he lowered the gun slightly.

  “That she loved you,” I replied.

  “Then why did she go and spoil it all, then?” said Cecil, the anger rising within him once more as he addressed Katharine. He aimed the revolver squarely at Mrs. Woolley’s throat, his finger on the trigger.

  “Cecil, I don’t think Sarah would have wanted you to do this,” I said.

  “And what makes you such an expert all of a sudden?”

  “She came from a Christian family, didn’t she? Surely that must count for something. She wouldn’t want you to suffer.”

  “Suffer?” he said, blinking as if seeing the gun in his hands for the first time.

  “I’m not talking of the sweet—or not-so-sweet—hereafter, I’m afraid,” I said. “No, I was referring to the here and now. As soon as that gun goes off, you’re going to have everybody from the camp running from their beds to find out what has happened. Your uncle will see what you’ve done. I believe he’s tried his very best to give you some stability since the deaths of your parents. And then it’s a question of the police. You’ll almost certainly be put to death for your actions. Is it worth all of that?”

  In that moment Cecil looked like a confused child who had just woken up from a nightmare.

  “If you put that gun down, I’m sure we can all agree that this was nothing but a boyish mistake,” I said. “We needn’t mention it ever again.”

  He looked from me to Mrs. Woolley. “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yes, quite certain. Aren’t we, Katharine?”

  Mrs. Woolley reluctantly nodded her head, but I could tell that she did not believe it for a second. She knew that as soon as the revolver was out of his hands we would raise the alarm and he would have to face the consequences of his actions.

  “And if you felt like it, you could even help us find the real murderer of Miss Archer,” I suggested.

  He paused for a moment before he raised the gun again.

  “It wasn’t me, I tell you,” whispered Katharine, trying not to show her fear. “It wasn’t . . .”

  I had tried everything I could, but it looked as though Cecil was determined to take his revenge on Mrs. Woolley. If I did anything to stop him, I knew he would not hesitate to turn the gun on me. I prepared myself for the very worst. I could not bring myself to witness the death of Katharine at such close quarters, and so I closed my eyes. I took the coward’s way out.

  However, instead of the click of the trigger and the blast from the gun, I heard Cecil’s soft whimper. I opened my eyes to see the boy, now red in the face, throw the revolver and the syringe across the shed towards the door.

  “Damn it!” he shouted as he stood up straight. “I’m pathetic. My father always said so and so did Sarah. They were right. I’m weak-willed. I can’t even kill the person who murdered the girl I loved.” He kicked the mattress and turned to go, but as he was about to leave the shed, he bent down and picked up the gun, hit the door with his fist, and disappeared into the night.

  My immediate instinct was to run into Katharine’s arms. We didn’t say anything but just stood there silently as we replayed the terrible events of the last few minutes in our minds.

  Finally Katharine stood back, looked at me, and in a low voice said, “Do you think . . . ?” I knew from her inference what she meant: whether Cecil might take his own life.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “He may do so. He’s in an awful state. I’ll go back to the house and see if I can find his uncle.”

  “Don’t leave me,” she said. “I’m not sure whether I could stand it.”

  “I’ll only be a few moments. And then I promise I’ll come back and I’ll stay with you.”

  “You won’t lock me in, will you?”

  “I think it’s best, if only for your own safety,” I said. “You never know: Cecil might be lurking outside, waiting for me to leave.”

  Katharine looked at me with an expression of utter misery. “I just don’t understand. How long can this go on? I don’t think I will be able to endure it.” She raised her hand to her head. “Everything feels so . . . I don’t know. I can’t explain.”

  “You can tell me,” I said gently.

  “I’m scared, Agatha. Even more frightened than before. Not so much for my own life. After what happened, I feel that could be taken from me at any moment. It might come as a blessed relief.”

  “Don’t say that,” I said, placing a hand on her arm.

  “What happens if they put me away? I’d rather be hanged or shot than spend my life in some kind of institution. I’ve seen what goes on in those places.”

  “I’m sure it’s not going to come to that.”

  “Maybe it’s best if I confess to the crime.” The look of mania that had frightened me so had returned to her eyes. “Yes, I could tell the authorities that I had taken a rock and smashed it over Miss Archer’s head. That I relished the sound of the stone hitting her skull. That I did it over and over until she was dead. Would that do it? Would that convince them? They’d take me away, I would be sentenced without so much as a hearing, and put to death in some primitive, utterly barbaric manner.”

  “Don’t talk li
ke that,” I said quite firmly. “Now, listen. I’m going to leave you for a moment or two. I’m going to lock the door. I will go and find Lawrence McRae and tell him what has just happened. Then I’m going to come straight back here with some extra blankets. I can sleep on the floor, next to your mattress. And then, in the morning, we will clear all of this up. Also, I have every expectation that my friend John Davison—he works in a division in the Foreign Office . . .” I thought it best to keep details vague. “Anyway, I think he’ll soon turn up with the police. He’s got a good head on his shoulders. He is the kind of man who can see clearly through a difficult situation. He’ll make sure nothing untoward happens to you.”

  Katharine did not respond, but as I walked towards the door, I saw that her eyes were beginning to dart around the walls of the shed. She watched the shadows cast by the candle with a mix of fascination and fear. Had this later incident with Cecil finally pushed her over the edge?

  I turned the key that Cecil had left in the padlock, then pocketed it. Pausing by the door, I listened for signs of the boy. With the light from a candle, I made my way back to the house and across the courtyard until I reached Lawrence McRae’s room. I knocked on the door and a moment or two later heard the sound of the architect stirring from his bed.

  “Who is it?” he said from behind the door.

  “It’s Mrs. Christie,” I said.

  “Is there something the matter?” he asked as he opened the door, fastening a paisley-patterned dressing gown around him.

  “It’s your nephew, I’m afraid,” I said. I took a deep breath before I explained what I had witnessed in the shed. “I fear Cecil may do something . . . stupid. He took off with the gun, you see.”

  “Yes, you were right to come and tell me,” he said. I turned my back as he quickly put on some clothes. “As you might have guessed, he’s not been right since the death of his parents.”

  “What happened to them?” I asked.

  McRae did not answer. Instead he picked up a flashlight and asked, “Where did you say he went?”