D. Mitchell - The King of Terrors

David Lambert-Chide’s face became a twisted mask of loathing. ‘If you love him, as you say, then you’ll walk away from here and never see him again.’

‘I can’t do that,’ she said.

‘No? Would you rather it was me that broke the news to him that his sweet little angel is a thieving whore? Or shall I simply call in the police? You have a choice. Think yourself lucky I don’t hand you straight over. As it is I’m giving you a head start before I get the law down here.’

She blinked hard, her breath coming in sharp little gasps, her chest heaving. She bit at her lower lip as she went over what he’d said. ‘We can be very happy, your father and I. I have waited so long, so long, to find a person like him, to love so truly, so honestly. I truly love him. It is no sham. I didn’t know who he was when I met him. I fell in love with the man, not his money.’ She yanked her arm free, rubbing the point of contact, but made no attempt to move away. ‘Don’t do this to him. It will hurt him badly. It could destroy him.’

‘Every cloud and all that…’ he returned with a poisonous grin.

‘That’s an awful thing to say, David.’

‘I want you out of here tonight. You do not speak to him, do you understand? If you do not do as I tell you I shall call in the police and inform the old man without a moment’s hesitation.’ He smoothed down his jacket, picked at a speck of cotton clinging to the dark material of his sleeve. ‘Goodbye, Evelyn, or whatever your real name is. I don’t want to see you ever again. Consider your mirror well and truly cracked.’

David Lambert-Chide remembered it all as plain as if it happened only hours ago; remembered how he turned his back on the young woman, heard his footsteps echoing down the long hall, and he firmly believed their paths might never cross, except perhaps in court. She’d only taken a few things, the most valuable being the Cartier brooch. She could have taken more — his father had been very generous with his cash — but she didn’t, and he supposed she attached some foolish sentimental importance to it. He’d secretly taken a number of other, far more valuable items from the house, some of his mother’s fine jewels and a couple of his father’s prized Rossetti’s, telling the police and his distraught father that they had been taken by Evelyn and possible accomplices. It served two purposes, he thought; to turn his father even more against the wretched woman, and to sell on privately to fund his own interests. Beyond that he never gave the woman called Evelyn Carter a second thought. The missing valuables didn’t have the desired effect on his father, however; the old fool pined for the woman like a lovesick teenager in the strangulating throes of first love. The last name on his lips, as he lay paralyzed down one side by the heart attack that was to finish him, was not his son’s or that of his former wife, but Evelyn. He hated her all the more for that.

As he peered now into that beautiful young face with its taught, unblemished skin, he still found it hard to believe all those years had intervened. Here she was, as young as if time had all along been standing still, in sharp contrast to his aged and desiccated self. As he gazed upon her now it was as if he had been transported back to 1939. He could almost smell the tang of newly-mown grass as the grounds were being prepared for the marquee; could almost see his father ordering people around, supervising the many staff that buzzed all over the place like flies around jam; almost feel his father’s renewed vitality, his lust for life that the presence of the young woman had brought to him.

‘I took her for a cheap opportunist, Gareth,’ he said. ‘Men in our position attract them like a cloud of pretty little butterflies; butterflies with stings in their tails. She was a shop girl working in a London store when father happened upon her. He fell for her, and then he was led like a meek little donkey on a halter by his foolish emotions. It had always been a failing of his. I thought I’d seen the back of her for good.’

Erica seemed to be shrugging off the effects of the drug. Gareth noticed her head was steadier, her eyes better able to focus. ‘You can’t believe Erica and Evelyn are the same woman, surely?’ said Gareth incredulously. ‘That’s nonsense.’ But he still had hold of the photo album, and the likeness of Erica to Evelyn was uncanny.

Lambert-Chide gently stroked Erica’s hair with a bony index finger and she flinched as if touched by a firebrand. ‘But we met again, didn’t we? Thirty-odd years later. Purely by accident. I was attending some tiresome function or other and, to my complete astonishment, who did I see dressed as a simple maid sweeping a hotel carpet? You didn’t recognize me at first, did you? But I knew you. Of course, I thought the resemblance to Evelyn truly remarkable, but could not possibly think you were the one and the same person. That, as you say, Gareth, is nonsense. Yet there was fear in her eyes when she looked at me, the same fear as I beheld standing by the window that day back in 1939. Yes, Erica — or Evelyn Carter or Beth Heaney, whichever you prefer as you have had so many over the years — it was the fear in your eyes that gave you away. Here before me was a woman who should have been approaching the age of sixty, but instead looking as fresh and as young as she did back in 1939. A woman who did not age, at least not in the conventional sense.

‘She did not waste time — she tried to make a bolt for it, to disappear again that very night. But I’d already arranged to have her — how shall I put this? — to have her escorted to a safe place.’

Erica’s hand went to her mouth and she wiped away the moisture there, squeezing her eyes closed as if to force away the dregs of the drug. ‘You’re a contemptible man, David,’ she said.

‘Really? That’s not very sporting or grateful of you, especially after all I have given you.’ He let him arm swing lazily to point out Gareth.

Tremain came over, a little concerned about Lambert-Chide allowing himself to get too close to the woman and Gareth. He waved him away. ‘She is as harmless as a little kitten, Randall,’ he assured.

‘It was rape,’ she said. She sounded as if she’d been drinking and Gareth could see how desperate she was to gain control of her body.

‘That’s not quite right, is it? I mean, artificial insemination isn’t technically rape, is it, Randall?’ The man gave a loose shrug in response.

‘You see, Gareth, Evelyn — you don’t mind me calling you Evelyn, do you? — Evelyn became central to Project Gilgamesh. Are you familiar with Gilgamesh, Gareth?’ He admitted he wasn’t which appeared to please Lambert-Chide. ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest-surviving pieces of literature, from Mesopotamia. It is a poem, and tells the tale of the friendship between Gilgamesh and a wild man created by the gods named Enkidu. Gilgamesh is distraught at Enkidu’s death, which prompts him to carry out a long and perilous search for the secret of immortality. Just as we sought it. As we seek it. My company’s Project Gilgamesh was necessarily a secret, and Evelyn was central to it. In fact she was, in essence, the project itself — with her we aimed to find the answer to life without end, to extend human longevity, to end death from old age and disease.’

‘Kept prisoner, treated little better than a lump of meat, stuck with needles, cut open, raped, for two years,’ said Erica. ‘All in the name of company profit. And the plan remains exactly the same. Personally, I’d rather die,’ she said, her throat dry and painful.

‘That isn’t an option, I’m afraid, Evelyn. We need you very much alive. Gene technology and understanding has moved on in leaps and bounds since the 1970’s, and personally I don’t have much time left to me. I need results fast. I’m determined to find the key that turns off aging and reverses it very soon, even if it means I have to take you apart piece by beautiful piece until I do.’