Pretty Lady (13 page)

There wasn't much in the airline bag, but it weighed his arm down so heavily it might have been filled with stones. Slowly, he drew it up and rummaged in it. If he ate a few more biscuits, they might help to keep him awake. And it would make the bag lighter, too.

Mouth full, he closed his eyes for a moment against the dizziness. He was dizzy now, even when standing upright, not just when he bent over. (
‘Time to go to bed, Denny. Look at you – you're dead on your feet.'
) But there was no bed to go to – bed was a long, long way off – there was only the cold hard concrete of the pavement at his feet. He felt himself imperceptibly sliding towards it and opened his eyes with an effort

More biscuit. He crammed it into his mouth. It wasn't working as well as he thought it would. Maybe he was too tired. But it wasn't terribly late. Maybe he was coming down with 'flu, or something. Mum would know. Mum could take his temperature and tell him just what was the matter with him. Mum would take care of him – give him something to make him better. Mum would always take care of him. But Mum was a long way away, too.

The faster he got to Merelda and carried out his promise to her, the sooner he could get home to Mum. He pushed himself away from the kiosk, and tried to tidy his airline bag in the dim light from the old-fashioned street lamp. His fingers curled around some loose pieces of chalk at the bottom of the bag and he pulled them out to look at them. There weren't many left. Tomorrow he must try to find Rembrandt again and see if he could get some more. Rembrandt had lots of chalks that were wearing low – too low to use properly.

One of the chalk pieces stayed in his hand as he re-zipped the bag. His fingers curled around it, finding reassurance in the smooth powdery feel of it. He squinted down at it, but it seemed to blur and dissolve before his eyes, although he could still feel it in his hand. His hand was blurred, too.

He blinked hard, two or three times, and the world cleared and came into focus again. He was all right. To prove it, he tried a few experimental strokes with the chalk against the building. The colour was right – it was the last of his tawny-gold chalks – the lines curved recognizably into the curl and sweep of Merelda's hair. Absently, he sketched in the outline of her profile.

Merelda. He had to get to her. Help her. And then, maybe – the street ahead of him dipped and swirled – she could help him. He'd never felt quite so awful before. His vision began to blur again.

He moved slowly, pushing himself away from the building and carefully circling round the telephone kiosk, watching as his feet automatically took up the tempo of his long, loping stride. They were doing it by themselves, because he wasn't concentrating enough to direct them. He was only watching them, in case they blurred and dissolved, like the rest of the world, and let him slide down sprawling on to the pavement. Everything felt so strange, looked so strange – he was beginning to be afraid.

Voices carried to him on the clear night air. Two girls were coming towards him. As he looked up, he could see them clearly, recognize them. They were old friends. Once, maybe a long time ago now, they had all played together. Then they'd gone off to school, the way most of the other children did, and he hadn't seen them again. Not until now.

Beaming, he raised his hand in greeting, and hurried towards them. ‘Hello. How are –?'

They crossed the street. Looking back nervously over their shoulders, they walked faster and faster, until they were almost running.

He had started after them, but now he stopped. Maybe they didn't remember him. Maybe it was all longer ago than he'd thought – that happened sometimes. He seemed to remember people better than they remembered him. Especially girls. It was something to do with the way time got all muddled. (
‘Don't bother your head about it, Denny.'
)

They had reached the far corner now, and looked back at him one last time. Hopefully, he waved to them. But that made them really run – he could hear their pounding footsteps long after they were out of sight.

He turned slowly – the world was wavering around him again – to continue his journey. Steadying himself against a wall, he got as far as the turning before the dizziness forced him to stop and rest for a moment.

He wished he'd never started out now, he wasn't getting any better. But he'd gone too far to turn back. He was closer to Merelda's than to home. He had to go on. Then Merelda would help him.

He pushed himself away from the wall, sighted carefully at the spot across the road he must reach, and started forward.

From a great distance, he heard a squealing of brakes, and a furious voice shouting, ‘Why don't you watch where you're going?' It was all a long way off and could have nothing to do with him.

He gained the opposite pavement and headed for the river, intent upon his purpose. Merelda was waiting.

Upstairs, Vera screamed just once. Forgetting the stranger at the door, Sheila whirled and dashed upstairs, only vaguely aware that he was right behind her.

She stopped in the doorway and he pushed past her into the room. ‘Aunt Vera!' she gasped. Polly was lying, fully dressed, on the bed. Vera was pulling at her and slapping her face with light brisk slaps.

‘Ambulance!' Vera snapped, not looking up. Sheila stood there frozen, staring.

‘Telephone?' the man asked.

‘Downstairs!' He bolted for the door, pushing Sheila aside.

‘Aunt Vera, what is it?'

‘I knew something was wrong,' Vera said grimly. ‘But I didn't think she'd be fool enough to try this. Go and make some black coffee – strong.'

They were the last words Vera addressed to her directly. Sheila hesitated a moment, not wanting to realize what was happening – what had happened – then turned and fled for the kitchen.

Waiting for the coffee to perk, Sheila hovered between the kitchen and the bottom of the stairs. The man had ordered the ambulance and returned to Vera. She could hear Vera giving him directions.

Strange, how reluctant she had been to have Vera come back to the house with her, and now there was no one she would rather have had here. Aunt Vera had come into her own in a crisis. Vera, in her element; Vera, doing her thing – for her own family, this time.

The ambulance arrived just as the percolator began to gurgle. Sheila led the stretcher-bearers upstairs. Aunt Vera stood aside as they lifted Mum on to the stretcher. Mum, looking so marble-cold already, only the rasping agonized breaths to show that she was still there, that they mustn't stop hoping yet.

‘I'll go with them,' Vera said to the stranger standing by the dressing-table. He was looking down at the carpet, then he stooped and picked something up. He straightened with it, holding it out to Vera.

‘Do you know what she's taken?' he asked.

‘I do that,' Vera said grimly. ‘I've seen her prescription for those many a time.' Her gaze moved to the cup on the dressing-table. ‘She'll have taken them in the cocoa, I suppose.'

The man sniffed at the cup, dipped a finger into the dregs at the bottom, and tasted it with the tip of his tongue. ‘That's it,' he said. ‘Loaded with the stuff. Any idea how much she could have taken?'

‘She got the prescription re-filled tonight.' Sheila fought for control of her shaking voice. ‘She had a full bottle.'

‘And Lord knows how many capsules saved from other bottles,' Vera said. ‘I knew she wasn't taking them properly. She wasn't fooling me.'

‘She's going to be all right, isn't she?' Mum had to be. Anything else was unthinkable. Sheila watched Vera anxiously, something deep within her mind warring with a surfacing realization that was even more unthinkable. Unconsciously, she fought against the knowledge.

‘We'll do everything we can.' Vera turned to follow the stretcher out of the room. ‘There's no guarantee.'

But something else was without a guarantee. Something to do with the pills and the cocoa. Why had Mum bothered to take all those capsules apart, when she'd known she was going to take them? Wouldn't it have been easier to have swallowed them whole? Why go to all that bother?

‘Have you seen this note?' The man was holding it out to her. ‘It's addressed to you.'

She took it, glancing at the few straggling lines which suddenly conveyed to her what the words themselves did not.

‘Oh, God – Denny!' She dashed across the hall, into the empty room and stood staring down at the cocoa dregs in the bottom of his empty cup. Half-way down the stairs,

Vera halted and came back.

It wasn't necessary for the man to test those dregs, tasting lightly with the tip of his tongue, as he had done in Mum's room. She
knew.
Before he even nodded agreement, she
knew.

It was why the capsules had been emptied, the powder carefully mixed into the cocoa. So that poor, innocent Denny would drink unsuspectingly.
She was going to take him with her.

‘Where
is
he?' the man asked urgently. ‘Where's Denny?'

‘Oh, God! – I don't know!' Fighting for control, she saw the expression on Vera's face – and, in a curious way, that helped. It crystallized the anguished despair into a cold fury, through which she could think.

‘He's gone out. Somewhere. I don't know where.' That was why the house was alight, with the brightness and movement which had drawn this helpful stranger to their door. ‘We came home and found him gone. We've been out looking for him, but we didn't find him.' Because they had been looking for him in the wrong places? Looking to see him walking along the pavement, when he might already have slumped down into some shadows to sleep – and die?

‘Oh, God –!' The hysteria was slipping out of control again. ‘We've
got
to find him. He can't be just left to die out there.' She rushed wildly to the window, opening it and leaning out. The whole bleak, enormous world was outside – and he could be anywhere in it. ‘We've got to find him. We need help. Call the police!'

‘It's all right.' The man patted her shoulder as he turned away to go downstairs to the telephone again. ‘I
am
the police.'

Other police had come and gone, greeting Peter jocularly as they entered, asking him if he couldn't keep away from work – even when he was off duty and in plain clothes. She had watched their grins and his embarrassment as he had tried to explain, in an off-hand way, that he'd met Mrs O'Magnon coming along the road earlier in the evening and something about her manner had – well, he'd been uneasy and thought it would do no harm to walk past the house and check that everything was all right. (Funny, the way men hated to admit to intuition, even when they called it a hunch.) Only then the other policemen had glanced at her and stopped grinning. There was nothing funny about it now.

Peter was still here with her, firmly identified now as Denny's friend, ‘Constable Pete', often spoken of, never met. He was helpful and friendly, trying to shield her from the others. It was impossible in a house that size, of course. She'd overheard most of what they'd been saying.

Some of the others hadn't been so nice. Pleasant enough, but remote. Of necessity, armoured in their uniforms against the people they had to meet and deal with in their job. They'd taken away the cups and Mum's note. They'd started the search for Denny. They'd tried to be kind, to keep their voices low, but some words just leaped into your ears.

Words like ‘murder', ‘diminished responsibility', ‘manslaughter'. It was hard to realize that they were talking about Mum and Denny. That they were taking it so calmly, that they'd seen it all before.

This, then, was what Officialdom meant when it released long reports about most murders being committed within families. It meant the endless strain of one person looking after another, without hope of relief or recovery, through age and illness, until they couldn't go on any more. Until one of them had to die – or both of them. It meant Mum and Denny.

It meant, too, the ones who stood by and let it happen. Too accustomed to the situation to notice the gradual changes, too stupid to be able to read the signs of growing desperation. Like herself. And it meant the others – not so close – who could see that something was increasingly wrong, but believed that what eventually happened would be for the best. Like Vera.

She'd seen the look in Vera's eyes. (
May God forgive you for it, Vera O'Magnon – I can't.
) The look that said,

‘
Maybe it's all for the best
,' when they knew Denny had drunk that drugged cocoa before he left the house – and disappeared.

Vera would let it happen. She wouldn't push the search for Denny. She was hoping they wouldn't find him until it was too late. Because he wasn't ‘right', because she felt he reflected on the precious family honour, because it would ‘make things easier', she would let him die. He was out there, lost and alone, not knowing what was happening to him. But Vera would rather they didn't find him. She'd let him crawl into the bushes and die like some animal – and then she'd call it ‘
God's mercy
'.

‘I can't just sit here!' Sheila stood up. ‘I've got to go out. Look for him. He
must
be somewhere near here.'

The young policewoman got up, too, and moved forward, but Peter shook his head. ‘It's all right,' he said, ‘I've been thinking the same thing myself. You stay here to take messages or in case he comes back. We can go out and look.'

Sheila started towards him, then stopped. ‘Look
where?
' The enormity of the task overwhelmed her, even as she knew she'd gladly walk her feet down to the ankles just to have the illusion of actively doing something. ‘He could be anywhere.'