Menfreya in the Morning (36 page)

“Fanny,” I said, “what has happened to you? Let’s get out of this place.”

“We’ll get out of it in our own good tune. Hell be waiting for us. We’ll be with him … the two of us … safe and sound.”

“You’re not being sensible, Fanny. Do you remember how you used to tell me to be sensible. I’m going to try and open that trap door.”

“You’ll hurt yourself, lovey. I told you it can only be opened from the outside.”

“I don’t think you’re right, Fanny.”

“I am. I made sure. I didn’t want anything to go wrong.1*

“Fanny! Fanny! What are you saying?”

I sat down on the cold step beside her. This companion of my youth, this beloved nurse, this woman to whom I had always turned for comfort had become a stranger.

“Fanny,” I said gently, “let’s try and understand what this is all about. Let’s sort it out, shall we?”

“There’s nothing to sort out, my pet.”

I stared into the darkness and wondered how much water there was down there, how much truth there was hi this Story of smugglers and excise men. I thought of Menfreya *—my parents-in-law resting till tea, which they would probably take in their own rooms. Bevil would return. Perhaps for dinner? Perhaps after. But surely I should be missed by dinnertime! When I didn’t appear they would send a maid to my room to see if I wanted anything sent up. I should not be there; then they would grow a little anxious. Dinner at eight—high tide at eight-thirty. They would never be in’ time.

But I couldnt believe in death. Not death at Fanny’s hands. In fact I couldn’t believe this was really happening to me. It was like one of those fantastic nightmares which used to haunt my childhood.

I walked to the top of the steps and tried to push open the door. It was unyielding. Of course, it hadn’t been opened for years. It was bound to be difficult. I didn’t believe this story of spring locks.

I could not accept Fanny as a murderess. I sat down beside her. I thought: It must be four o’clock. How soon before the water starts coming in? Slowly at first, and then … the flood. Four hours … to wait for death.

I couldn’t accept it.

“Fanny,” I said, “I want to understand what this means. I want to talk to you.”

She said: “You’re frightened, are you?”

“I don’t want to die, Fanny.”

“Lor* bless you, there’s nothing to worry about. Billy talked to me about death by drowning. He said it was the easiest way out. Billy will be there waiting for me … and I couldn’t leave you behind, could I? I couldn’t—not with all them that were trying to hurt you. I didn’t want you to die like your stepmother. Drowning’s better. ‘It’s easy,* I said to myself. You see, they wanted you out of the way … the two of them. They couldn’t fool me. He was never the

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one for you. I warned you against him. He was too fond of the women … just as Billy was too fond of the sea. I’d have liked Billy to take a nice comfortable job ashore. He wouldn’t. Not him. You see he couldn’t leave it alone. It’s the same thing. With Billy the sea, and with him … women. And since she came … with her wicked ways … I knew I couldn’t leave you … I knew her. She was going to get him; and now she’s carrying the child, she’s desperate. She’d got the stuff for her complexion just like your stepmother … but that poor lady killed herself with it … she was going to kill you.”

“Oh, Fanny, do you believe that?”

“I believe what I see, and I was frightened for you. I used to lie awake and my head would go funny … dizzy like with the worry of it. And then Billy came for me, and I said to myself I can’t leave her. It would be different if he was different, if she wasn’t there. I daren’t go and leave her. You see, when I lost my little ‘un you were my baby. I couldn’t leave you, could I? I’ll take you to Billy with me, and we’ll all be together.” “Fanny, you stopped the clock.”

“I wanted you warned. You remember how upset you were when your stepmother died? You said, ‘She wasn’t warned.’ So I warned you. I stopped the clock.” “And then you sent that note to Hamforth’s.” “Yes, I did. I wanted you to be ready, you see, I didn’t want you to have too big a shock.” “So you took the note you’d sent.”

“I thought that was best. She laid it down on the table there in the hall, and I found it and took it away. It was best that way.”

I was silent. I thought: She is mad. My dear Fanny is mad. She is going to commit suicide and kill me because she lovea me.

I felt hysterically weak. I stood up and began pounding against the trap door.

“There,” she soothed. “There’s nothing you can do. Can’t open it from down here. They fixed that when they used to get the excise men down here. Jem told me all about it You’ll only hurt your poor hands. Don’t you fret. There’s nothing to be done but wait. There’s going to be a gale. A gale and a spring tide. It’ll be easier that way.”

I was frightened. To be sitting here with Fanny had seemed in a way cozy, so that I could not altogether believe in her wild plan.

She was so calm, so certain, sitting patiently waiting for the end. I could not imagine how it would come. The water would rush in through the grating, I guessed, and then what would happen to us? Would it come as high as the top steps? I remembered that I had heard it said that the gardens and kitchens were often flooded at high tide. This was spring tide, a gale was blowing—and we were underground.

I guessed it to be about six o’clock. No one would have missed us yet. High tide would have come and gone before they did.

And here was I shut in a cellar with a madwoman.

I had accepted the truth. Until now she had been only Fanny—dear, familiar, comfortable Fanny. Now she was the woman who wanted to kill me.

“I must get out,” I cried suddenly. “I must get out.”

I stood up and pushed with all my might against the trap door. It was useless. It did not move. Was she indeed right with her talk of spring locks?

The grating! I thought. Was it possible to find a way through that. I had a vision of myself climbing the cellar walls to the grating, forcing it up in some way.

I started down the steps and plunged knee-deep hi water.

Fanny was startled out of reverie.

“What are you doing, you foolish girl! Now you’re wet through. A nice cold you’ll be getting, and we have to stay here in our damp clothes.”

“Fanny,” I cried hysterically. “What is that going to matter?”

“Colds can lead to congestion of the lungs, and that’s no joke.”

“Let’s get out of here. I need dry things …**

“You’re shivering, dearie. Don’t you fret. We’ll soon be with him and past all trouble.”

“Fanny, please listen to me. We’ve got to get out of here, We’ve got to get out…”

“There, ducky,” she said, “don’t you fret. Fanny’s here.”

I sat down helplessly beside her, and she put an arm about me.

“Don’t be frightened. It’s only the wind you hear. By folly, there’s going to be a storm tonight”

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The candle was lost. We had dropped it into the water. I heard the plop as it fell and the feeble flame was extinguished.

I had lost all sense of time. I felt as though I had been for hours in this dark, damp place.

I was gradually beginning to understand that I was, in truth, facing death, that the woman beside me meant to murder me; she and I would die together, and the last words I should hear from her would be a heartfelt endearment

I’m going mad, I told myself. This can’t be true.

I heard the crash of the waves against the rocks. Hie tide was coming in … the spring tide.

High tide at eight-thirtyl I thought What was it now? Seven? Later?

I stood up. I would try again. I began to shout for help. I hammered on the stone which shut us down.

Fanny’s voice was dreamy. “You remember how I used to read you stories to send you to sleep? You remember Aladdin and his wonderful lamp? Do you remember how the wicked magician shut him in the cave … This is tike it.”

“Fanny, this isn’t a cave. It’s a cellar below sea level, and the tide is coming in.”

“It all came right for Aladdin. It’s all coming right for you.**

“They’ll miss us at the house, Fanny. They’ll look for us.”

“They won’t look here.”

I was silent She was right What could possibly lead them here?

“And even if they knew we were here,” went on Fanny, “they’d be hard put to it to get across if the sea’s anything like as wild as it sounds.”

“I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”

I began to shout for help. It was foolish. Who could hear me?

Then I heard the water spilling over onto the grating and falling into the cellar.

The tide was almost upon us,

I had dragged Fanny to the topmost step. I had turned my back to the grating. I was standing up hammering ineffectually on the trap door.

Fanny was still. I sensed a certain ecstasy.

At any moment now we should be swept from the steps.

This was death. And only now that I stood face to face with it did I know how desperately I wanted to live. I was calling out without knowing what I called. I realized that it was “Bevil! Bevil!”

Here I was trapped with the water rising. A picture of the Christian Martyr flashed into my mind. I remembered that calm face; the hands which were bound at the wrists, palm to palm in prayer, the wooden stake to which she was bound, and the water up to her waist as she awaited the rise of the tide.

With such serenity was poor simple Fanny facing death.

There was a crash as the heavy waves pounded in; the water came tumbling through the grating. I closed my eyes and waited. I was on the top step, but the water was washing about my ankles. In a few minutes the grating would be covered by the sea, and then … the end,

I put my hands over my face.

“Soon now, my love,” whispered Fanny.

“No,” I cried. I hammered on the trap door. “Bevil!” I cried. “Bevil.”

Then, miraculously, Bevil’s arms were about me. There was a faint light above me.

I heard his ejaculation: “Good God!”

And I was not sure what happened next

I was lying on a bed, and Bevil was beside me. “Hello,” said Bevil, smiling.

I was puzzled. One moment I had been in the horror of the flooded cellar; the next I was in bed. “You look as if you’re … pleased to see me,” I said. “I am,” he answered.

I was in the house on the island. Outside the storm was raging; the tide was receding but the kitchen was flooded. I could hear voices from below.

Bevil was still at my bedside.

I called to him and he took my hand.

“Hello,” he said. “All right now.”

“What happened?”

“You were in that cellar. It must be years since it was IJpened. But rest now. You’ve had a shock.”

**I want to know, Bevil. The tide was rising, wasn’t it?”

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“In a short time the place would have been completely flooded. Thank God we were in time—but only just.”

“The spring tide …”

“Now you’re not supposed to talk.”

“I can’t rest until I know. How did you get there, Bevil?”

“I came looking for you.”

“But why .. . why …T

“Good God, you don’t imagine I’d let you get lost, do you?**

“But how did you know?”

“Never mind now. I’m here. I found you. And you’re safe.”

“Bevil, you’re glad?”

He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it passionately. No words could have told me more than that quick gesture. It was enough to set me at rest I closed my eyes.

It was some hours later when they recovered Fanny’s body. They had tried to save her but it was impossible.

When they had opened the trap door she had been with me. They had distinctly seen her. She had slipped, they said, and disappeared; but I knew that she had not wanted to be brought out of the cellar alive.

My poor, loving Fanny! When, I wondered, had the mad-ness started to canker her brain? Was it with those early tragedies—the loss of husband and child? Poor Fanny, the gentle murderess who bad killed for love. I had heard of murder for gain, for jealousy, before, ‘but never for love.

And how had Bevil come in time? Because he had not intended to let the matter of the undertaker pass. He was going to find out who sent it; he wanted to know why. He had questioned Hamforth and come to the conclusion that, if he could find the letter, he would have a piece of tangible evidence in his hands, and he would not rest until he knew who had written it

Jessica remembered seeing Fanny in the hall when she was talking to Hamforth, so Bevil sent for Fanny, who could not be found.

And where was I? Bevil wanted to know. It was soon discovered that I, too, was missing.

Bevil, Jessica and William Lister had sat in the library talking over the affair of the undertaker.

Why, they asked each other, had Fanny done such a thing?

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For they were certain it was Fanny, since it seemed very possible that she had taken the letter. And why should she want to if not to prevent its being traced to her? And why should Fanny write such a letter?

Jessica supplied the information that Fanny had been visiting Jem Tomrit and that Mrs. Henniker, bis daughter, was uneasy about it. The old man talked constantly of the past, since he had had that scare seeing ghosts on the island, and it wasn’t good for him. She had always believed that Jem could live to a hundred as far as his body was concerned; it was his conscience that was worrying her—and him—for it wouldn’t let him sleep at night lately. He talked too—wandering in his mind—and had said that he and his mates had murdered some excise men by locking them in the underground cellar and letting them drown.

Bevil said: “We’re going to see Jem Tomrit”

So they did, and Bevil made him talk. Fanny had been asking questions about the house on the island; again and again he had told her the story of the murdered excise men who had been lured into the cellar and left to drown.

“We’re going to the island … gale or no gale,” said Bevil.