Something Wicked (32 page)

She lay quiet for a moment and tried to make sense of what had happened. The last thing she remembered was struggling with Harry Lestern in the cabin of the launch. He must be the murderer, but why had he not killed her there and then? Of course! He wanted to hurt Edward – hadn’t he said as much? She had nothing to do with Edward’s investigation, at least as far as Harry would be aware, so she was no threat to him. But Edward might have told him – or Harry could easily have discovered – that they loved one another and even that they were engaged to be married. He hadn’t killed her because he wanted to use her against Edward. That idea gave her hope. For whatever reason, Harry needed her alive. But what if he forgot her, or abandoned her, or was killed by Edward before he discovered where she was? She tried not to terrify herself. She had to stay calm and work out a way – if not of escape, then to call attention to herself.

It was so dark and airless that she decided she must be in an underground room and the idea made her flesh creep. Again she told herself to stay calm. Panic was her chief enemy, after Harry of course. If there was a way into this dungeon, there must be a way out and – now that she had loosened the gag – she could scream. She tentatively tried a cry for help but it sounded so weak that she gave up. She must conserve her voice until she heard someone outside.

She strained to hear voices, anything at all, but there was nothing. Where had Harry taken her? She had no idea how long she had been unconscious but guessed it wasn’t long, or she would have been even colder. She imagined Edward’s consternation when he returned to the stands and could not find her. As soon as he missed her he would institute a search. The idea gave her comfort. It was odd how visualizing his face made her feel calmer and even warmer. She loved him and she trusted him to find her. If he did find her and if he still wanted to marry her, she would even if she had to do so from a wheelchair. She managed a fleeting smile. But what if Harry did not tell anybody where she was? What if he left her to die? He was mad, quite mad, of that she was convinced. And she was buried alive. Would that drive her mad?

She shivered and, with a great effort of will, stopped herself weeping. Where was Basil when she needed him? He was a big dog. He wouldn’t have allowed his mistress to be kidnapped by a madman. But he was miles away at Mersham Castle and had probably forgotten all about her. She closed her eyes and tried to listen. There must surely be some sound which would give her a clue as to where she was imprisoned. Why had her cry for help sounded so weak? There was no echo and the walls were thick and damp. Was she in a cellar? She had an idea. Moving her feet experimentally against the wall, she sensed that it was curved but she couldn’t be sure of it. She lay still and listened intently. There was another reason why her voice had failed to carry – why had she not heard it before? – the cold, rippling sound of water. Of course! She was on the river!

This small victory over her panic made her feel less hopeless. Even here in this coffin, she was still part of that sunlit world outside. She told herself she must be quite close to where she had been kidnapped. She was now even more certain that she had not been unconscious for long. For one thing, she was not yet hungry although she was thirsty – perhaps the after-effects of whatever drug Harry had given her. And her bladder was not yet uncomfortable. She must be on the river quite near to Edward and that conviction gave her hope.

She relaxed and even slept for a moment or two. She was aroused by the wetness and the chill. Was it wetter than before? Suddenly, she shivered. Yes, it was cold but that was not why she had shivered. There was a definite pool of water beneath her which had not been there before. The river! Was it tidal? She did not know but there must be some sort of ebb and flow. What if . . .? She could hardly bear to think about it. What if her prison was flooded? She had heard of people drowning in just a few inches of water. What if she slowly drowned in this horrible dark hole? What if this dank dungeon was some sort of well? And what if . . .what if it were to be her tomb? She shuddered and despair gripped her.

Again, she rubbed her face against the wall and the pain, as she had hoped, made her stop frightening herself. She remembered how, in Spain, she had discovered that the reality of pain was not as bad as the fear of it. She must stay calm, she told herself for the twentieth time. She must use her intelligence. She must not panic. The sound of a small rodent scuttling across the floor broke in on her consciousness. She stiffened. She had a phobia about rats. She had seen too many disgusting rats feeding off corpses when she was in Spain and it had always been her particular fear to be in the same room with one and not be able to escape. She shuddered, imagining its damp nose on her flesh. Her two worst fears – to be trapped in an underground tomb with rats for company – it was almost too perfect a revenge. If only Major Stille had been alive to savour the joke.

She tried to control her fear by telling herself that an English water rat would be quite different from the disgustingly fat, fearless predators she had come across in the trenches. She made herself think of Ratty in
The Wind in the Willows
– ‘messing about on the river’. Was that what she was doing? She stiffened. Oh God! She felt wet fur against her ear. She tried to shake her head but she could hardly move. She wanted desperately to stretch but the ropes that bound her would not give way – in fact, perhaps because of the wet, they seemed tighter than ever. Every joint, every bone in her body was telling her that her blood had stopped flowing. She remembered reading somewhere that, if one was tied up for a long time, the pain became excruciating and then, at last, the pain gave way to numbness and that was the time to worry.

It was only then that she started screaming.

She must have lost consciousness again. An age seemed to have passed but it might only have been a few minutes. She wished she could see her watch but there was absolutely no light even if she had been able to loosen her arms. She was so cold and the pain in her arms and legs was almost unbearable. She felt she must die soon. She must have slipped into unconsciousness once more because, when she came to, she noted – with a detached, almost scientific interest – that her fingers were quite numb and she could not move or feel them. A languor overcame her. Nothing seemed to hurt now – except the cold – and she knew this was dangerous. She struggled to keep awake. She had not known that cold could hurt so much. She tried to imagine blazing fires or Spain in high summer but it seemed only to make it worse.

She told herself she must hang on. She knew they would come looking for her and if she was unconscious . . . unable to call out, they might never find her. She tried to roll on to her other side but there did not seem to be room even to do this and she sank back in despair. She managed a smile. To think that she had been fearful of dying from tuberculosis! Anything would be preferable than to die this way. To see the light, to breathe fresh air, to be warm! She would give five years of her life – no, ten – to die in the open air. She wondered what the doctor would say about her predicament. She imagined Dr Tomlinson telling Edward in his rather pompous voice, as though she was not there, that the treatment for TB did not involve being frozen and half-drowned in a concrete dungeon.

She screamed again but, to her own ears, her cries seemed even weaker and she doubted they could penetrate the thick walls that entombed her. When she stopped screaming she lay still, ready to welcome death as the only practical escape from her suffering.

16

As Roderick Black moored the
Hornet
against the stone wall, Guy jumped out and helped Edward to scramble after him. It took only a few minutes to search the Temple. There was no one on the roof – just the Janus statue lying forlornly on its side waiting to be lifted back on to its pedestal. Edward was beginning to think that Verity was either imprisoned in the untamed part of the island or, more likely, somewhere else altogether when Mr Black remembered the cellar.

Guy bounded down the steps only to find the door locked.

‘We’ll have to break it down. No one uses the cellar. It floods from time to time so it can’t even be used as a storeroom,’ Roderick Black said. He saw Edward’s look and added rather sheepishly that – when he and Stille had decided to make the island their poste restante – they had explored it thoroughly.

‘Look at the keyhole,’ Guy called excitedly. ‘There’s oil on it. Someone has opened the door very recently.’

They looked round for something to use as a battering ram and chose the bench on which Edward had first sat contemplating the beauty of the temple and its mysterious statue. They swung it several times against the door and, on the third attempt, the lock split open and Guy pushed his way through.

‘Nothing here,’ he called. ‘Wait a minute, there seems to be another door at the back.’

‘Verity, are you there?’ Edward shouted, his voice cracking with anxiety. There was no answer so Guy rattled the door and shouted. Seizing the remains of the bench, he swung it against the door which opened but not very far. Something seemed to be wedged against it. As Guy pushed his way in, Edward held his breath. He had invested so much in his hunch that Harry had brought her here. What if he was wrong? Where would they look next?

With a cry of excitement, which quickly turned to dismay, Guy bent over something on the floor. ‘She’s here but she’s hardly breathing. Quickly, out of the way, you two. I’ll carry her into the open.’

Edward’s stomach lurched as he saw Verity for the first time. She was wet, deathly pale, and the ropes which bound her were cruelly tight. ‘Is there a knife on the
Hornet
?’ he asked. ‘We need to cut her free.’

‘There may be,’ Roderick Black called as he ran to the launch. He returned triumphantly with a penknife and a picnic rug and Guy started sawing at the ropes. It seemed to take an unconscionable time to cut through them but at last one and then the others fell away.

‘We must massage her legs and arms and then wrap her in the rug,’ Edward said.

‘She’s not looking good,’ Guy said with some alarm. ‘She’s very cold – and look at her face. It seems to have been rubbed raw. What a swine that man must have been to leave her to rot in a place like this.’

Edward was unable to say anything as he rubbed the weals left by the ropes. As her blood began to flow, the pain was so acute that it roused Verity from her stupor. Her eyelids fluttered and then her eyes opened.

She saw Edward’s anxious face leaning over her and smiled. ‘I knew you’d come for me,’ she whispered.

‘I would have killed him without any hesitation, if that’s what you mean.’

‘But did you hate him?’

‘We were friends once. He could have been the best of us but he lacked something . . .’

‘Moral fibre?’ Kay laughed. She and Edward were having a cigarette outside Verity’s hospital room.

‘Yes, that certainly,’ he answered gravely. ‘But it was more that he was reckless to the point of madness. It was almost as if he wanted to risk and die risking. He was a gambler forever raising the stakes and his bluff was never called. He told me once that he found it all too easy. He was terminally bored.’

‘He had read a lot. Do you remember the night of the Phyllis Court dance? He kept quoting bits of Shakespeare in my ear. It was one of the things that put me off.’

Edward smiled. ‘Yes, Verity doesn’t like it when I quote Shakespeare at her.’ He hesitated. ‘Did you . . .? I mean – if you don’t mind my asking – did you . . .?’

‘Did I sleep with him?’ Kay grinned at him. ‘No, I didn’t. He asked me to. He said he had a private place, a grotto . . . Oh! I wonder if he meant Temple Island? Anyway, he went a little too fast, even for me. Were the Happy Valley women rather . . . how shall I put it? – rather more willing . . .?’

‘I think they were. Harry always had it too easy. His charm was legendary but perhaps it had worn a little thin lately. Maybe he wasn’t quite the Lothario he had once been.’

They were silent for a minute or two as they dragged on their cigarettes. Edward was exhausted – ‘done in’ as he put it to Kay – but he absolutely refused to go back to Turton House until Verity was given the all clear and then it would only be for a night. He hated the place now and would either return to London or stay in a hotel close to the hospital.

‘So Helen Moody won Wimbledon,’ he said in an effort to make conversation.

‘Yes, for the eighth time! I think I may give up. She beat Helen Jacobs 6–4, 6–0. I ask you! What hope is there for ordinary mortals?’

‘That was what Harry never had – something to aim for. He could have been good at so many things but he could never settle on any particular one. He wasn’t a fool, not by any means, but . . .’ Edward hesitated, trying to find a way of summing up what had gone so wrong for his friend. ‘He liked Walt Whitman,’ he said at last. ‘If he were ever to have a gravestone, I think I would put on it that two-line poem of his.

‘Only he never did find what he was looking for,’ Kay said wryly.

‘No, he never did,’ Edward agreed.

The doctor came out of Verity’s room and looked disapprovingly at their cigarettes which they hurriedly extinguished.

‘How is she?’ Edward demanded.

‘As well as can be expected. She’s asking for you.’ Without a word, Edward pushed past him. ‘Just five minutes,’ the doctor called after him.

One morning, two months later, Edward went to pick Verity up from the clinic. While he waited for her to finish packing, he had a quick word with Leonard Bladon. He wanted to find out whether she was better or whether he was going to have to console her as she faced long months in a Swiss sanatorium. To his dismay, the doctor was tight-lipped.

‘She’s better, Corinth, no doubt about it, but only the X-rays will show if the lesions have healed. I’m afraid you’ll just have to wait and see. Her incarceration on Temple Island should have killed her but,’ Dr Bladon rubbed his chin as though puzzled by the vagaries of nature, ‘she doesn’t seem to have suffered any long-term ill effects. No one would prescribe being almost killed in an aeroplane or drowned in the Thames for someone with TB but there we are . . .! Miss Browne is not a normal patient. She’s rather tougher than she looks.’