The Silver Chain (31 page)

Did the two men undress me together? Peel my winter clothes off, layer by layer revealing inch by inch of my bare body? Did they reach out to run a finger over my cheek, shoulder, trace the curve of my breast, run up inside my thigh? Did they grow hard looking at me, dare the other to make a macho remark about the sleep of the innocent, or did they deny the bulge in their trousers?

My hands slide between my knees, up the soft inside of my thighs as the fantasy takes hold. Was that chocolate cup doped to knock me out? Or the
Glühwein
we drank back here? If so it’s had a medicinal effect. I haven’t felt this clear-headed for years.

Did they have their way, the two of them exploring me with tongues and fingers, and other parts, forced to be stealthy so as not to wake me, both so horny as they tasted the Sleeping Beauty in front of the fire?

Or was Dickson dismissed to his quarters or down to the lass who lives by the lake so that Gustav could drink in the sight of me? Did he glance about for prying eyes, check I was still sleeping, then lay me down on this Moroccan divan, open me up carefully and gently, ease his hardness inside, feel my warm softness closing round?

My head falls back as my fingers accompany my thoughts, push urgently inside the space that’s so empty, so ready to consume. I remember Gustav’s deep, dark eyes penetrating mine.

The solitary satisfaction is too petty, too brief, and it swiftly evaporates. I compose myself, bat away the lingering frustration, pull my hair away from my hot face and secure it in a tall tight bun on top of my head. I swathe myself in an embroidered shawl shot with green and gold threads that’s been left at the foot of the bed. I feel like a gypsy flamenco dancer as I pad through the open door to investigate.

I’m nearly knocked backwards by the dazzling light from the glass-walled corridor leading to the main salon. Someone has lit a fire, which is burning merrily. On the other side of that space, down another corridor, I follow the smell of coffee into a pine kitchen lined with sociable leather banquettes and bristling with stalactites of copper cooking utensils. I lean against the warm blue and white tiled wood burner as I fall hungrily upon the plates of pastries and fruit.

The quietness in the chalet solidifies as mist and fog closes in. I must find my clothes and handbag and the wherewithal to make my escape. Far below I can see the oblong of swimming pool, steam still curling into the air to repel the cold.

When I’m sure Dickson is out, I slip off the negligee, wrap a huge towel around me and limp down the stairs to plunge into the glittering water. The room is like a sauna, but I swim out through the glass doors into the garden kicking all the stiffness and stickiness away, the warm water steaming around me as the dark grey fog drops down like a thick curtain.

The mountains have disappeared. I can just about make out their majestic, strong outline, forming a guard around the valley and the lake. I lie on my back in the water, the tip of my nose freezing, the rest of me warm as a bath. The chalet looks down at me, so many unexplored balconies and rooms. Just as I turn onto my front to swim back into the house I fancy a shadow crosses behind one of the huge windows. Surely a cloud reflected, or a big bird flapping home through the fog.

Suddenly I feel an urgency to get out of the pool. Get out of here. It’s all so beautiful, so warm, so luxurious, and yet it’s all so alien. It’s not mine. This slice of potential heaven belongs to him. And to her. Never will it belong to me, and in any case I don’t want it.

I realise when I get back up to the salon that the ministrations of Gustav and Dickson last night combined with the cooling effect of the swimming pool this morning have made the swelling in my ankle go down. I’m left with a dull ache but can easily have a good snoop around before I leave. I slip on the negligee and shawl and come to the foot of a wide wooden staircase, lit by the glass dome above and ringed by a wooden gallery. I’ve never been able to resist a staircase ascending into the unknown. Just as I couldn’t resist the lure of the stone staircase in that Venetian convent, flanked by its ecstatic saints.

The gallery opens at the far end over the salon with its carved fireplace still burning with sweet-smelling pine logs. This chalet is like a stage set. You could be having a
tête à tête
with one person and someone else could eavesdrop from above, or burst into an aria.

I decide to retrieve my camera. I may as well conduct my own little travelogue, otherwise Polly will never believe my story when I take her through every detail. But near the top of the main stairs I notice an alcove leading to another, narrower set spiralling up to another floor. Something, or someone, is driving me on to explore.

Unlike the other locked doors, the one at the top of the spiral is fashioned from studded iron like a prison cell. It swings open. I step inside a long thin room which presumably extends the width of the house. It looks like a theatrical props store room. There is a brass bed in the corner hung about with tapestries, a couple of free-standing fringed lamps and a dressing table, but it all looks staged rather than cosy. Instead of a wardrobe there are garments hanging from the kind of metal rail you’d find in the stock room of a retail store.

Margot ran a boutique, didn’t she? Fashion. And accessories.

There is no other furniture. The other three walls are simply mirrored, with chrome barres bolted on as if for dance exercises. There are no generous windows embracing the valley below. Only a few skylights set into the pitched ceiling which is also mirrored. When I flick on the switches, intermittently placed black chandeliers send out a dappled, swaying light answered by a low red glow from the standard lamps by the bed.

I pad across the bare wooden floor, aware of the creak of the boards and the goosebumps rising sharply on my skin as the cold permeates. I wonder why Dickson hasn’t bothered to put on any heating up here. I shiver in my flimsy nightdress. I’m Goldilocks tiptoeing round the house of the Three Bears.

Despite the bone-crunching cold there’s the eerie sense in this room that someone has just got up and left. I notice a head-shaped dent in one of the pillows on the brass bed. The sheets and old-fashioned eiderdown are flung back and crumpled. Above the bed is a row of hooks from which various whips hang. I recognise the long black whip the dominatrix used on Crystal in the video. It makes my little nun’s whip look like a stick of candy floss.

Even more intriguingly, on the dressing table are several oversized bottles of perfume and a scattering of lipsticks and mascara. Crumpled rolls of cotton wool are smeared with lipstick and face powder. I limp over to look more closely. The bottles are all different sizes, but one of the perfumes is the same one as I wear: Eternity.

I half expect to find the portrait of Dorian Gray propped up against the wall. Except that I still don’t know what Margot looks like.

Ghostly fingers tiptoe up my spine as I spin round, looking for other clues. Why haven’t they emptied this room? Is the house so big that they forgot about it? Is this the room Gustav intends me to clear? Is he preserving it like a shrine, make-up and whips and all? Or keeping it for when Margot returns?

On the brass bed various items of underwear are splayed out, arranged like a taped crime-scene figure, outlining where the body was found.

There is a black basque, unlaced. I shuffle over and finger it as if it might bite. It looks hard and shiny like the carapace of a scorpion but when I touch it I realise it’s made of very thin latex. I hold it against myself in front of the mirror. It seems to mould itself round my contours.

The house is so silent. I shiver, and try to put the basque down, but it seems stuck to me. I glance at my face in the mirror. My expression shocks me. I am smiling, my teeth glinting in the half light, and my eyes are half closed, strips of green like a cat. My tongue whips across my lower lip. I feel horny, a kind of sick, sudden uncoiling.

I’ve never worn anything as daring as this. Surely a quick try-on won’t hurt?

The flimsy negligee and shawl slither lifelessly to the floor. My white breasts fall heavily forwards, nipples shrinking sharply in the cold, and I shiver with pleasure. The cold makes me super-sensitive all over. Puckers up my skin. Goosebumped and tense, every touch is as sharp as a scratch, every lick of air a smack. I fit the two cups over my breasts, hooking the corset tightly round my ribs to keep it in place. Even though it fits like a glove, I lace it tightly as well. Now I can hardly breathe. My breasts ooze over the rigid whalebone top, puffing in an effort to gain oxygen. The reflection in the mirror is very white, and very still. While the real me is fidgeting to get used to the tightness of the garment, my reflection is simply staring.

And then it hits me, as if I didn’t already know. I saw this same basque in the video. The dominatrix whipping Crystal was wearing it. Margot’s skin has been sealed inside it, just like mine is, and now it’s trying to squeeze the life out of me. I’m the challenger. I must be more voluptuous than Margot was because the basque is too tight. If she wore this contraption while entertaining her guests and clients no wonder she was permanently hyped up and hungry for trouble.

There are other aromas. Surely Gustav didn’t sleep in here last night? Is that why the bed is rumpled? Would he sleep in the bed of a woman he claims to loathe?

But the stark image that rises as I stare at the bed is of the two of them clinched together. Margot and Gustav making the beast with two backs, her thighs open, gripping him like a lioness, riding on top of him. Her back is to me. I’m guessing she had long black hair. Or maybe she always wore that leather mask when having sex. But Gustav’s long legs are kicking out underneath her as she straddles him, as she brandishes the long black riding crop above her head and smacks it down onto whatever part of him she can reach, whipping him into a frenzy.

Jealousy stabs so hard that I clutch my side in pain. Each time I take a breath, my breasts heave and my nipples prod at the tight seam of the corset. My movements have slowed down, as if I’m wading through molasses. I stand there in the swaying fractured light, watching my nipples flip over the edge and stiffen as they meet the cold air. I lick my finger and rub each one, making them wet and cold with saliva. As I start to pinch them my body sets up an answering, heavy pulse. The corset squeezes the breath out of me until my ears sing.

He’ll be back soon. I should unlace myself. But before I do, why not use these clothes to test him, once and for all? Why not see if Gustav has been telling the truth? See if it’s true that he wants her erased from this house and from his life?

I start to spin about in front of the mirror, lurching on my weakened ankle until I am dizzy. I come to rest in a raunchy pose. The corset squeezes me like a fist. This is no fancy dress. This is the uniform of a professional whore trained to give and withstand pain.

My hair is still pinned into the kind of severe cornet that Crystal would favour. My face is dead white, my lips colourless and my eyes are hard and staring. The corset makes me look war-like, yet debauched. Gustav’s warrior princess. Let’s pile it on. I pick up a thick leather dog collar studded with spikes, and buckle that round my neck.

His reaction when he sees me will be the proof I need. This is my one chance to get rid of Margot for good. Replace her with my own irresistible self. I allow myself to preen in the alien outfit. Big breasts, waist pulled in unnaturally tiny. Face deathly pale. What would Crystal say? What would cousin Polly say if she could see me cavorting like a burlesque dancer in another woman’s bedroom?

I am naked beneath the basque, my nipples dark red and sparking painfully with the cold, my white thighs pressed together in fake modesty. I look like Rapunzel, the prostitute staring out of the photographs of the Parisian brothel.

The wind rattles the window above me. I prowl about the room looking for more fetish gear. When I move I swivel my hips stiffly, all the natural suppleness reined in. I pull on a pair of elbow-length lace opera gloves. And there’s another pair of long rubber gloves arranged on the bed. Not gloves. It’s a pair of black leggings.

I have to roll these on like stockings. The stranger in the mirror looks like me but moves and acts like someone else. Now I can’t get them off. They are stuck fast. My own nervous sweat makes a kind of glue. Too late I realise she would have used talcum powder or Vaseline or something to stop them sticking. The rubber squeaks and pinches, forming a kind of membrane.

Instead of shedding my skin, I am acquiring a new one. What does that make me? A snake? A chameleon? A butterfly regressing into its chrysalis? The reincarnation of Margot?

The crotch of the trousers is cut out. At the back, my buttocks are totally exposed. Like wearing skin-tight cowboy chaps. I continue to stamp around the room because moving is easier. The front and back openings of the trousers are linked by a rubber thong which runs like chicken wire between the two and starts to chafe me.

Now I am a mannequin in a specialist magazine. I’m the conquering dominatrix.

I touch myself down there and flinch. It’s sensitive as a scald. The squeezed lips are turning a livid dark pink while the rubber twangs at the little hairs.

Why didn’t I go the full Hollywood wax? Polly swears by its clean nakedness.

One more item to go. A pair of patent thigh boots are practically doing the can-can to attract my attention. I pull these on over the leggings with great difficulty. My ankle protests as I try the teetering heels, but I ignore it. Walking is virtually a sex act in itself. I try tripping along like a geisha, then loping mannishly with splayed legs. Whichever way I walk the tight thong shaves away at me. There is no slack. Each time it cuts, the string slices into the soft groove.

The window rattles again. I have no idea what the time is. The chalet seems shrouded in permanent semi-darkness today. The cold air on my breasts and shoulders is a mean contrast with the salty sweat steaming up inside the rubber.

One thing missing. I root through the make-up scattered all over the dressing table, paint on some grey glittering eye shadow then choose a dark purple lipstick the colour of a bruise. I twist back the black lid, the lipstick’s knob-head emerging crudely.