Reginald Hill: Death of a Dormouse

She tailed away, embarrassed.

Trudi said brightly, ‘I’m sure Trent made other arrangements. I haven’t looked through his papers yet. Everything will be sorted out eventually, you’ll see. Have some more whisky. You’ll stay the night, of course?’

She tried to make it sound like a casual invitation rather than a plea. This talk of money, or the lack of it, had sent a chill of unease through her which she hadn’t felt before.

‘Of course. You mustn’t be alone …’

‘Don’t let that bother you,’ said Trudi coldly. ‘Please yourself whether you go or stay. It’s not as if we were ever friends or anything … you needn’t feel …’

To her horror she realized she was weeping unrestrainedly, and there were tears too on the perfect skin of Astrid’s cheeks. Now the younger woman took the older in her arms and they wept together. Then they drank some more whisky and wept some more.

When Trudi at last went to bed, she was slightly drunk and the springs of grief felt dried up. She felt as if she had undergone some cleansing, cathartic experience and she would wake in the morning light, calm and resolved and able to cope boldly with the new life that stretched before her.

Instead she woke into a drowning darkness. Gasping for breath, she scrabbled for the bedside lamp, missed it, caught it, knocked it to the floor. Sobbing in panic, she half fell, half crawled out of bed and staggered across the suddenly alien room, crashing into pieces of furniture she could not identify, towards the thick-draped window.

Light! She had to have light! She reached the curtains, flung them apart. Light filtered in, turgid, grey, scarcely able to put an edge on the luxuriant foliage of the neglected garden, but for a moment refreshing and soothing to her desperate soul.

Then she saw him, halfway down the garden, concealed at first by stillness but, once spotted, unmistakable, a solid living presence amidst this rampant vegetation, his face raised towards her window, pale, death-pale in the cloud-strained luminescence from a wild night sky.

She screamed: ‘Trent!’

She tried to raise the window. It was locked. Her strengthless fingers wrestled with the catch. All the time she could hear her voice as though emanating from some separate electronic source in the ceiling screaming, ‘Trent! Trent! Trent!’

The catch moved. But suddenly there was light in the room, bouncing back off the glass and turning the light beyond the window into perfect darkness.

She turned. Astrid stood in the doorway, her hand on the light switch, her face amazed.

‘Trudi, was gibt’s ? What are you doing?’

‘It’s Trent: he’s there in the garden. I can see him! I can see him!’

The other woman moved swiftly across the room. Even at this juncture her slim athleticism seemed a reproach to Trudi’s neglected dumpiness. Grasping the window frame, she thrust it upwards and leaned out into the dark night air.

‘See Trudi, there is nothing. There is nobody. See!’

Trudi looked. The trees moved in a gusty breeze, the shrubbery rustled and the long grass on the uncut lawn rippled like the sea. But of any human figure there was no sign.

‘I saw him!’ she insisted. ‘I saw him!’

‘Keep looking, Trudi,’ said Astrid peremptorily. ‘Strain your eyes. Soon you will see anything your mind wants you to see!’

It was true. As she looked the shifting trees and shrubs began to take strange shapes, living, threatening, but none of them human.

Shaken, she turned away from the window.

‘Oh, Astrid,’ she said. ‘I was so certain. I was so certain.’

‘Yes, I know, I know,’ said the Austrian gently. ‘Now you must sleep. Come to bed, come to bed. No, liebchen , do not be afraid. I will not leave you.’

She helped Trudi into bed, then started to slip off her own clothes. She was still fully dressed.

‘I too have been restless, not able to sleep,’ she said. ‘I sat downstairs, listening to the radio. Perhaps it is I who disturbed you. I’m sorry, but now you will sleep. Now you will be safe.’

Stripped to bra and pants, she switched off the light and got into bed beside Trudi whose body tensed at the thought of contact. But Astrid lay quietly on her own side of the bed with a safe space between them. And eventually Trudi fell asleep.

Trudi woke the next day to broad daylight and the certainty that something inside her was dead. She must have given an impression of normality for she observed Astrid slowly relax as the morning wore on. The Austrian woman said she would have to go that evening, but meanwhile she offered her services in getting things sorted out. Trudi agreed, for it was easier than not agreeing.

Swiftly and efficiently, Astrid went through Trent’s papers, discovered the name of the solicitor who had arranged the lease on the house, rang him up, made an appointment for that afternoon. Trudi gave thanks, but felt no gratitude. It all seemed to her mere charade, shadow activities in a shadow world.

The solicitor, who was called Ashburton, was almost a parody of his profession. Small, sharp-nosed, birdlike of movement and voice, he wore a disproportionately large pair of spectacles whose round blanks reflected light like Perseus’s shield. He looked to be close to retiring age, but he seemed efficient enough, taking charge of the papers Astrid gave him and assuring Trudi he would put everything in train instantly.

Trudi thanked him indifferently, shook his hand indifferently, and later kissed and thanked Astrid with the same massive indifference. Only for a brief moment, as the little red car turned out of the drive and Astrid raised her arm beside the fluttering pennant in a gesture of farewell, did Trudi feel something stir in that vast ocean of indifference. Then it was still again.

She went back into the house, sat unmoving for four hours, then rose and went to bed.

Up to the funeral her nights had been dreamless, or at least when she woke up from her unrefreshing sleep she could remember no dreams.

Now instantly she was in the living room of their luxurious flat in Vienna. Trent was standing by the window, gazing out towards the distant view of the great plant-house in the Schönbrunn gardens. She knew he was dead. He slowly turned and reached out his hands to her and she knew if she took them they would be chill and stiff and clammy. He began to move forward with slow dragging steps and she fled to their bedroom, slamming the heavy oak door and turning the key. But she knew it could be no barrier to that relentless pursuer and she crouched helpless on the bed as the slow footsteps approached and the handle began to turn.

She awoke in terror, lay in a straining silence, then slowly wrapped the pain-dulling gauze of her waking indifference around her once more.

This rapidly became the pattern of her existence. Waking, she was safe, but dead. She stayed in or went out as the fancy took her. Outside she felt invisible, anonymous. Inside she sat and watched flickering images on the television screen, drank whisky, ate next to nothing, then went to bed to the only real experience left to her.

One day, Mr Ashburton’s secretary rang and asked her if she could come to see him that afternoon at three o’clock. She said yes, but didn’t go. Ashburton himself rang. She listened to him twittering about wills, pensions, insurance policies – or rather the lack of these things. ‘… just over four thousand in your husband’s current account … nine months’ lease on the house but when this runs out … case for compensation …’

She said thank you and put the phone down.

She could have told him Trent was rich, had always been rich, was not the kind of man to be anything but rich. Everything she had wanted she had had, except that there was not really anything she wanted, except to be safe …