Bodies from the Library 2. Группа авторов

didn’t say anything.’

      ‘Goodness, how late it is! I must get home. Would you like me to get you something to eat before I go?’

      ‘No, no,’ he said, almost violently. Even he could not accept kindness from her, could not share with her such a meal as this. The last supper, he thought: she and Judas.

      The last supper. He knew, then, didn’t he?—deep in his consciousness he had known all along—that he was sending her out to die.

      The waiting was terrible—terrible. He began to be afraid that the tension would bring on one of those ever more frequent black-outs, of not coming to in time to make his ’phone calls. And indeed he did lapse into some sort of uneasy dream, returning fully to awareness only a few minutes before midnight—ill, exhausted, as though instead of lolling there a prey to nightmares, he had been through some tremendous effort …

      Coming to full awareness—to a sudden full realisation of what he had done.

      Save her, he thought—I must have been mad, I must save her, must save her!

      Telephone her flat, then? To the police? But it was almost twelve, wouldn’t that make him too late to catch the television people? On the other hand … With his mind split three ways, he stumbled over to the telephone.

      And the telephone was dead.

      Panic hit him like a hurricane, whirled him into the familiar darkness, only one thought clear in his mind. Time’s running out. I must ring the press, ring the television people, I must tell them about it before it becomes known, before there is any normal way for me to have found out.

      But the telephone was dead. The office, he thought: the office flat! I can use the ’phone there. Not waiting for the lift, he fled down the single flight of stairs. The church clock boomed the hour as with a trembling hand he thrust the key into the lock. He flung open the door and tumbled into the flat.

      And she was waiting for him there.

      The uplifted arm, the plunge of the keen blade that seemed to flash down and into his heart, as though through a sheet of shining water. He gave one shrill rabbit-scream of pain; and she was down on her knees, bending over him, sniffing at the blood that spurted through the slit nylon, snuffling like a pig after truffles. ‘The smell! The smell! More of it, I must have more!’ But she dropped the raised hand.

      ‘No, no, I mustn’t!’ She muttered and mumbled. ‘Only one stab. Self-defence …’ His head rolled helplessly as she forced on to it the dark nylon wig. Muttering … Echoes of the gruesome mutterings of the telephone voice. ‘Can’t call them till he dies. So die, can’t you?—die!’ She scrambled up, perched on the edge of a chair, leaning over him, her eyes fixed on his face. Her voice relaxed into something more nearly human. ‘But you’ll die—No Face, the maniac murderer with his nearly human thirst for the smell of death! Oh, you signed your death warrant, didn’t you?—the day you published that first article. Mad am I? Well, helpless lunatic I may be, but I got you into my power from that hour on. Watched you, got on to your tricks in the churches … Didn’t you ever think, poor deluded fool, that it was all a bit too slick and easy? Picking me up there—so naïve and trusting! And the confessional! I suppose that poor wretch still believes he heard the confession of a killer who would kill again. A trap for you—a trap! All laid on by the pitiful lunatic with his terrible childhood experiences. Terrible, it wasn’t terrible, it was wonderful, I hated them, I hated them for doing it all in front of me, their child—fighting each other with knives, fighting to the death. I wanted the smell of it again, the smell of their death in my nostrils. And again and again. But I needed a fall guy—the police were getting close, even if they didn’t yet know it. And who more suitable than you, who had spilt out your lies to the world. Mad, was I?—who was up to all your shifts and contrivances, playing you along, selling you to the police. Watching over me?—they were watching you with your precious scryings and seeings. The murderer’s voice ringing you up!—who knew that?—they knew only that you told them he rang you up. Do you think they believed you? I believed you: after all it was I who rang you. And all the disguises here, right down to the sheets of sheer plastic: this is one of your own wigs, they’ll find plenty of clues in that. They thought you might even not know it yourself, I described the blackouts, how you’d come to exhausted, strange dreams … I didn’t mention the little doses in all those warm drinks I used to bring you, kind, caring Delphine! But of course, all that was after the double killing …’

      His ears were closed now, deaf for ever. His eyes were sightless for ever, staring blindly up at the animal face that could turn in a moment so charming and sweet—snout out-thrust at the savoured memory of that spilling of blood after which she had written SURFEIT. But, dead or alive, she needed an audience now. She gloated on. ‘Oh, the two of them—didn’t I have you all on a merry-go-round that time? Ringing you in my No Face voice—waiting till you called me; begging you to come. Not replacing the receiver so that your own telephone was disconnected, you had to ring the police from a call-box. And you played right into my hands; for what other reason had I chosen a foggy night?—driving around “not knowing what you were doing”, getting yourself lost. They thought you’d rung up from the call-box outside my flats, got in through the window and away again before they could arrive there. From then on—oh, you were for it, Mr Hawke! No clues, nothing to pin on you yet; but now they knew. They let me stay and spy on you in the flat, I was safe while mobs of people were coming in and out; but they watched you, night and day. It was wearisome, no more killings for those three hungry months, but I’d had a good deal from the double killing, I could last. Till the time came—I had to get more. Not that you’ve provided me with a lot, but once you’ve gone and the police relax, break up all this elaborate operation—then I can safely begin again. What a laugh!—took you in completely, didn’t I?—with the scrying act! You—drinking it all in, the final warning that I would be killed tonight. Murdered, slaughtered, by the maniac psychopath—and you let me go home to it! But I didn’t go home, you see: I just came here. I knew how your mind would work, I knew you’d never warn the police, you’d rather get your triumph with the media—and I’d quietly disconnected your telephone, you’d have to come down here to do it. And you came.’ Calm now, calmed by the assuaging of the long unsatisfied craving, she leaned over and sniffed long and ecstatically at the thickened seeping of the blood around the wound; rose and, re-settling her features into those of a sick and terrified girl, went across, already weeping, to the telephone. ‘Oh, Mr Tomm! Oh, it’s so dreadful! He came at me with the knife …’

      And so now, here he was, trying to get through to them, to the circle sitting there in the darkness with their touching hands. Screaming, silently screaming. ‘Listen to me, listen! Tell them, warn them, implore them to believe in me! They’ve got it all wrong. Yes, I cheated sometimes, but I had the Gift, I had it, and here I am now to prove it to you, speaking to you … Tell them I wasn’t the killer, tell them it’s all going to begin again!’

      But they would not hear him. Heard only the sweet, familiar piping. ‘Very happy. Yes, he’s happy now, he’s met them all on the Other Side, his sins are forgiven him. All peace and joy on the Other Side, sunshine and flowers everywhere, just sunshine and flowers …’

      Sunshine and flowers; and no one to believe in his warning—this very night, it’s all going to begin again.

       CHRISTIANNA BRAND

      Mary Lewis, née Milne, was born in Malaya in 1907, the daughter of a tea planter. She wrote under the pen names Mary Brand, Mary Roland, Mary Ann Ashe, China Thompson, Annabel Jones and, the one as which she is best known, Christianna Brand, which joined her mother’s first name to her grandmother’s maiden name.

      After several happy years at school at a convent in Berkshire, Brand was told she would have to leave by her father, who had been declared bankrupt. At the age of seventeen, she found herself ‘literally penniless’ and with no training whatsoever for earning her own livelihood. She moved to London where, known by her friends as ‘Quif’, she drifted from one job to another, eventually becoming a