The Dark on the Other Side Page 4

  In the end, with a resource she had thought long forgotten, she had used the heel of a shoe and a nail file.

  The whole performance had been ridiculous, of course. She could see that now. Gordon must have known about the bolt. If he had not wanted her to have it, he could have had it removed. But he had never said a word about it. Yet someone must have oiled it, because its surface shone as brightly as it had when she took it out of its plastic cover, and it had slid back without a sound.

  Gradually her pounding heart slowed, as no noise came from the next room. She pushed the door open wider and looked in.

  His room was the twin of hers in size and shape, except that the high windows on the south wall were French doors, leading out onto a stone-balustraded balcony. They had breakfasted there, on summer mornings, in the first year of their marriage… The furnishings, of course, were quite different. Gordon had had her room redone. His still contained the furniture his grandfather had selected-heavy, dark mahogany, with the unique sheen produced by decades of well-trained housemaids. It was a somber room on dark days, with its dark maroon hangings and heavy carpeting of the same shade. Now the afternoon sun flooded the room, making the deep pile of the carpet glow like aged Burgundy, reflecting blindingly from the tall pier mirrors in their gilt frames. Another of Grandpa’s vanities, those mirrors. Gordon looked a lot like him, according to the family pictures.

  Tiptoeing, in stockinged feet, she ventured cautiously into the room, casting a frustrated glance at the door that opened into the hall. She wished there were some way of locking it, so she would have warning if anyone came. But the smooth dark surface of the door was unmarred by bolt or chain. She turned to look at the back of the door by which she had entered the room. No-no bolt there either. So, he had never had one put on.

  Why had she supposed that he would? Because she had done so. That was illogical. She knew what he would say if anyone asked him-any one of those few who knew what had happened on That Night. Barring his door to her would have been a symbolic thrusting away, a rejection of need and a denial of trust.

  She crossed the room. Carefully, touching only the ornate brass knob so that no smudge would mar the gleaming wood, she pulled open the top drawer of the dresser. Handkerchiefs, neat, plain, pure white, without even a monogram. She put out her hand and then drew it back, biting her lip. Damn Haworth and his neatness. It would be impossible to touch anything without leaving a sign of disturbance. The corners of the folded handkerchiefs might have been aligned with a ruler. And damn Gordon, too. He was a fanatic about neatness, he had trained Haworth, and he would be the first to notice the slightest irregularity.

  More drawers. Pajamas, neatly folded. Coiled belts, looking like flat, curled snakes. Leather boxes, containing studs, cuff links, and his grand-father’s ornate rings-one of the old gentleman’s habits that Gordon had not emulated. More underwear. Nothing else. Nothing else visible.

  She would have to risk it. Her lower lip caught between her teeth, she turned back to the top drawer and delicately lifted a pile of handkerchiefs. There was nothing underneath except the immaculate lining of the drawer. Her hands began to shake as she returned the handkerchiefs to their place and went to the next pile.

  Still nothing.

  It was hard to control her hands, they shook so. The silence of the room was unnatural; her ears rang with it. No-it wasn’t her ears, it was a fly, trapped against one of the windows. Stupid insect. There was an open window within a few inches of its frantic lunges against the glass. For a long moment Linda stood perfectly still, staring at the small, frantic black dot. The buzzing droned in her ears. She turned back to her self-appointed chore with an abruptness that swept a pajama jacket out of alignment. What was under it?

  Nothing. Nothing except the lining of the drawer.

  Gradually her movements became quicker, jerkier. She shoved at the last drawer of the dresser, turned, before it had stopped moving, toward the tall bureau.

  Sweaters. Folded neatly, encased in plastic bags. Nothing under the sweaters. Scarves. Nothing…

  Slowly, like a creeping stain, the yellow path of sunlight from the window moved across the rug. As its warmth brushed her arm, Linda flinched and jerked around. It was late, dangerously late. How much longer before the conference ended, before Gordon came up to dress for dinner?

  It didn’t matter. She had finished the search. There was nothing here, and she ought to have known there would be nothing. Only her desperate desire for something concrete, some proof that might affect an unprejudiced mind, had driven her to what she knew would be a wasted search. It was his study she ought to investigate. His study, or…

  The sunlight seemed brighter; it hurt her eyes. Her breathing was so uneven, it caught at her throat in sharp gasps. Nerves. She was getting upset. And that was bad, because tonight she had to be perfect. Calm, and composed, and…She needed something to calm her nerves.

  Gordon’s study, or-the other place. The most likely place, and the one room that she could not risk searching. Because the secretary had arranged with the servants to clean it himself, and there was no conceivable reason why she should need to enter Jack Briggs’s private quarters. If anyone found her there-if he found her…

  A long shiver ran through her body. Dropping the last scarf back into the drawer, she turned and ran across the room, on soft stockinged feet. The bottle, the comforting, reliable bottle in the bottom drawer of her dressing table…

  She closed the door and shot the bolt into place-leaving behind the marks of her feet imprinted as clearly in velvety pile as in snow, and two drawers standing open, spilling out their contents onto the floor.

  Chapter 3

  I

  WHEN LINDA WOKE, IT WAS GETTING DARK OUTSIDE. The high windows were gray oblongs; the dim light within the room reduced furniture and hangings to unfamiliar menaces.

  She sat up, brushing the strands of hair back from her face. Her mouth was horribly dry. She reached for the glass of water on the bedside table and swallowed it down, so grateful for the relief to parched membranes that she hardly noticed its stale taste. Still fuzzy with sleep, she didn’t think about the time until her half-closed eyes lit on the illumined dial of the clock.

  She jumped up from the bed and stood swaying dizzily as the sluggish blood moved down from her head. Late. It was very late. She had meant to take extra time over her dressing, to apply makeup with extra care. She had hoped to speak privately with Andrea before the others joined them.

  Where the hell was that stupid maid?

  She groped for the buzzer and jabbed it impatiently. She had just found the light switch when the door burst open. Dazzled, Linda blinked at her maid.

  “You’re supposed to knock,” she said angrily. “And why did you let me sleep so long? You know I’m late.”

  Anna’s mouth drooped open another inch. She was silent for a moment, as if trying to decide which criticism to answer first.

  “But, madam, you’ve told me time and again not to bother you unless you ring. And this time, the bell-it sounded sort of frantic, and I thought maybe you’d hurt yourself or something-”

  “Oh, shut up,” Linda said. The very reasonableness of the girl’s defense infuriated her. “Straighten up this mess. Find me something to wear.”

  With a murmured “Yes, madam,” Anna picked up the shoes Linda had left in the middle of the floor and carried them to the dressing room.

  From where she stood, Linda could see the far wall of the dressing room, which was one huge mirror, polished to shining perfection. Out of its depths, another Anna advanced briskly to meet the one who was entering the room. The identical twin figures were an uncanny sight; but Linda paid no attention to that, or to the expression on the mirrored face, which had relaxed when Anna thought herself no longer under observation. Part of the bedroom was reflected in the mirror, and it was, as she had said, a mess. She had thrown herself down on the bed without turning back the spread; the satin surface was wrinkled and ugly, with a dar
k spot near the pillow where her mouth had rested. Her gardening clothes, which she had changed before lunch, lay in crumpled heaps on the floor. Beside the bed, as if fallen from a nerveless hand, was an empty bottle.

  Linda gaped at it in vague surprise. Had she really finished the whole bottle? Surely this one had been almost full when she took it out of the drawer.

  She shoved it aside with her foot, wrinkling her nose at the sour reek of spilled liquor. Her tweed skirt was twisted and her right stocking marred by a run. There were stains on the front of her blouse.

  “Run my bath,” she called, tugging at the zipper of the skirt.

  Anna appeared in the doorway.

  “But, madam, it’s late-”

  “Whose fault is that?” Linda asked pettishly. “Oh, for God’s sake, I’ll make it a shower then. Get my clothes out. The black culotte thing, stockings, the gold sandals-and hurry up, damn you.”

  She moved toward the bathroom, shedding clothes as she went, watching with malicious satisfaction as Anna stooped to pick up each item. Anna grunted when she bent over. She was too fat, that was her trouble. Linda gave the right hand tap a vicious twist and stepped under a spray of water that felt as if it had been refrigerated.

  The treatment was drastic, but effective; she knew, from past experience, how effective. When she came out of the bathroom, she felt fairly human again, and by the time she was seated at the dressing table, with Anna’s nimble fingers working at her hair, she was able to be cunning.

  “I’m sorry I spoke to you as I did,” she said, watching Anna’s face in the mirror. “I’m always cross when I sleep in the afternoon. It was my own fault that I was late.”

  The sullen pink face did not change, nor the pale eyes move from their work.

  “That’s quite all right, madam,” Anna said.

  So much for that. There was no use trying to influence the girl now; she knew too much.

  When Linda went down, she knew that she looked as good as skilled grooming and expensive clothes could make her look. But the black outfit had not, perhaps, been a wise choice. She liked the freedom of the wide black trousers, so full that they resembled a skirt except when the wearer was in motion; but the bodice left her arms and throat bare, and seemed to show more bone than flesh. She had had to send Anna to bore a new hole in the belt, and when it was buckled tightly it gathered the dress in unbecoming folds around the waist. I’m too thin, she thought, and then: Pathos; I’m appealing to his sense of pity. Nice. And it probably won’t work, either.

  The others were already assembled in the drawing room, not in the library this time. Gordon did seem to get a perverse pleasure from Andrea’s company; he loved baiting her. But he would never admit her into his sanctum.

  As she went down the hall, Linda knew she was walking faster than usual, almost running. Something pulled at her like a magnet acting on a lode-stone. She had felt it that morning, sensing his presence even before she saw him. Tonight the tug was even stronger. That was all it was so far, nothing reasoned or desired, only a blind, mindless need. Like a fish on a line, she thought angrily, and shoved at the hangings over the doorway.

  Andrea had already arrived. Sprawled with her usual lack of grace in an armchair near the fire, she raised a fat hand in greeting, and Linda saw her suddenly, not as the familiar friend, but as she must have appeared to a stranger, even one as tolerant and sophisticated as Michael Collins.

  She was a very ugly old woman. Her ugliness was not the distinguished plainness some homely girls acquire in old age; it was plain, unvarnished, positive ugliness, strengthened by cultivated sloppiness. Her wrinkled face was overlaid with a thick coating of powder; her lipstick, applied in a wide slash without the aid of a mirror, always left smears on cigarettes and glasses. Her hair was another, clashing, shade of red, worn in a frizzy halo. Her dresses looked like the sort of thing that might be worn by a gypsy fortuneteller at a fair. Tonight, in honor of the occasion, she had added a few more yards of beads to the collection around her neck, and changed her long, full calico skirts for a magenta taffeta one of the same style. Long brass earrings dangled from her ears. In her left hand she held a jade cigarette holder.

  I hate her, Linda thought. Fat, ugly old woman…

  She knew a moment of despair so absolute that it felt like death. What had possessed her to ask Andrea to dinner? Some unformed idea of help, of support? But it wouldn’t work that way. Andrea’s weight would be on the other side of the scales, pushing them down, against her.

  “Hello, Andrea,” she said. “I hope the trip was successful.”

  “Darling girl,” Andrea said effusively. She waved the cigarette holder, endangering her mop of hair. “Yes, I was just telling the boys about it. It was nasty, but I managed.”

  “A case of demonic possession,” Gordon explained solemnly. “By-Beelzebub, was it, Andrea? Or Belial?”

  “Oh, you nasty skeptic,” Andrea said. She grinned at Gordon. The effect was hideous-white, unnaturally perfect teeth framed in smeary scarlet lipstick. “You know I’m never sure who it is. I just reel off a list of names and tell them all to get the hell out of the patient. It has to be one of the bunch.”

  Linda glanced at Michael. His expression was just what she had expected it to be-incredulity and amusement covered by a thin glaze of polite interest.

  “Andrea, you are too much,” she said irritably. “You sound like a charlatan.”

  “The fakers are the ones who bother with fancy words,” said Andrea, flicking the ash off her cigarette. It landed on the Aubusson carpet, and she smeared it around with her foot. “I tell it like it is.”

  “Tell me,” Michael said, leaning forward, “how do you go about exorcising an evil spirit? I know the Roman Church has a ritual for that purpose, but I don’t imagine you-”

  “No, I’ve got my own methods,” Andrea said complacently. “Not that the other isn’t effective enough. But it has to be performed by an ordained priest.”

  “That’s right. I’d forgotten.”

  “You’ve studied the subject? Mm-hm. But you don’t believe.”

  “No.”

  Reading their faces, Linda leaned back with a feeling of relief. Andrea’s judgments of people were quick and violent-like or dislike, immediate and instinctive. Apparently she approved of Michael Collins. She grinned at him and he grinned back, remarking,

  “At this point I’m supposed to say, ‘Not that I haven’t seen things, strange things, that were hard to explain by the normal laws of nature.’ But I can’t say that. I’ve never had the faintest flash of clairvoyance, nor seen a ghost.”

  “Never had the feeling that you’d been somewhere before, done the same thing at another time?”

  “Déjà vu? Of course. Everyone has had that experience. It’s easily explained in terms of subconscious resemblances, forgotten memories, without resorting to theories of precognition or reincarnation.”

  “Touché,” said Gordon softly, from the depths of his chair.

  Andrea turned on him with a metallic jangle of jewelry.

  “Touché, hell. Skeptics always drag that one out. They have an answer for everything-if you let them throw out half the evidence. I can quote you, offhand, a dozen cases of genuine precognition. Impressions of a scene, a house, a face-recorded and witnessed-which appeared at a later time.”

  It was the old familiar ground; they had been over it a dozen times, arguing in a perfectly good-humored way, which still made Linda queasy and nervous. Gordon was leading Andrea on again, not only for his own amusement but to entertain his guest. But now the conversation took an unexpected twist.

  “Precognition, telepathy, clairvoyance,” Michael said. “Aren’t we wandering a bit from the track? ESP is one thing; demons are another. Or so it seems to me.”

  The room was brightly lit. One of Gordon’s phobias was a dislike of darkness. There was no reason why Linda should have had the impression of something pale and shapeless stirring in a shadowy corner. There were no shadows; a
nd the movement was only that of Jack Briggs, shifting in his chair. He was so quiet most of the time that his infrequent movements were startling.

  “Your assumption is correct,” he said in a precise, lisping voice, “if we accept your definitions of normal and extranormal. But there is a single consistent hypothesis which accounts both for what you call clairvoyance, and for-demons.”

  Andrea gave him a queer look of mingled respect and hostility.

  “That’s right,” she said reluctantly. “Look here, Mr. Collins, do you believe in God?”

  Michael was silent. Andrea chuckled. Her laugh was not the dry cackle her appearance led one to expect, but a high-pitched, childish giggle.

  “Funny,” she said drily. “That question really gets people these days. They’ll answer impertinent questions about their sex life and their emotional hang-ups, just to prove they’re modern, emancipated intellectuals. But ask ’ em about God and they squirm like a spinster when you mention virginity.”

  “Touché yourself,” Michael said good-humoredly. “No, I was speechless out of ignorance, not embarrassment. I just don’t know. That’s as honest an answer as I can give.”

  Andrea nodded. Her face was grave, and not without a certain dignity.

  “Fair enough. Let’s avoid the embarrassing word, then. Do you believe in the existence of Good?”

  “Philosophically, theologically, or historically?”

  “Cut that out.”

  “All right,” Michael said resignedly. “But you’ll accuse me of equivocating again. Sometimes I do believe. Sometimes I have serious doubts.”

  Gordon leaned forward.

  “No one who has studied history can believe in a benevolent creator,” he said.

  Michael looked at him curiously. Andrea ignored him.

  “All right, Mr. Collins,” she said. “You’ve already answered the next question, but I’ll put it anyhow. Do you believe in the existence of Evil?”