Diane Setterfield - The Thirteenth Tale

"Better… " she said weakly.

Slowly I returned to my chair.

"I thought you said something about a wolf," I began.

"Yes. That black beast that gnaws at my bones whenever he gets a chance. He loiters in corners and behind doors most of the time, because he's afraid of these." She indicated the white pills on the table beside her. "But they don't last forever. It's nearly twelve and they are wearing off. He is sniffing at my neck. By half past he will be digging his teeth and claws in. Until one, when I can take another tablet and he will have to return to his corner. We are always clockwatching, he and

I. He pounces five minutes earlier every day. But I cannot take my tablets five minutes earlier. That stays the same." "But surely the doctor-" "Of course. Once a week, or once every ten days, he adjusts the dose. Only never quite enough. He does not want to be the one to kill me, you see. And so when it comes, it must be the wolf that finishes me off."

She looked at me, very matter-of-fact, then relented.

"The pills are here, look. And the glass of water. If I wanted to, I could put an end to it myself. Whenever I chose. So do not feel sorry for me. I have chosen this way because I have things to do."

I nodded. "All right."

"So. Let's get on and do them, shall we? Where were we?"

"The doctor's wife. In the music room. With the violin."

And we continued our work.

Charlie wasn't used to dealing with problems.

He had problems. Plenty of them-holes in the roof, cracked windowpanes, pigeons moldering away in the attic rooms-but he ignored them. Or perhaps was so far removed from the world that he just didn't notice them. When the water penetration got too bad he just closed up a room and started using another one. The house was big enough, after all. One wonders whether in his slow-moving mind he realized that other people actively maintained their homes. But then, dilapidation was his natural environment. He felt at home in it.

Still, a doctor's wife apparently dead in the music room was a problem he couldn't ignore. If it had been one of us… But an outsider. That was another matter. Something had to be done, although he had no notion of what that something might be, and he stared, stricken, at the doctor's wife as she put her hand to her throbbing head and moaned. He might be stupid, but he knew what this meant. Calamity was coming.

The Missus sent John-the-dig for the doctor and in due course the doctor arrived. And it seemed for a while that premonitions of disaster were ill-founded, for it was found that the doctor's wife was not badly hurt at all, barely even concussed. She refused a tot of brandy, accepted tea and after a short while was as right as rain. "It was a woman," she said. "A woman in white."

"Nonsense," said the Missus, at once reassuring and dismissive. "There is no woman in white in the house."

Tears glittered in Mrs. Maudsley's brown eyes, but she was adamant. "Yes, a woman, slightly built, there on the chaise longue. She heard the piano and rose up and-"

"Did you see her for long?" Dr. Maudsley asked.

"No, it was just for a moment."

"Well then, you see? It cannot be," the Missus interrupted her, and though her voice was sympathetic it was also firm. "There is no woman in white. You must have seen a ghost." And then for the first time, John-the-dig's voice was heard. "They do say that the house is haunted."

For a moment the assembled group looked at the broken violin abandoned on the floor, and considered the lump that was forming on Mrs. Maudsley's temple, but before anyone had time to respond to the theory, Isabelle appeared in the doorway. Slim and willowy, she was wearing a pale lemon dress; her haphazard topknot was unkempt and her eyes, though beautiful, were wild.

"Could this be the person you saw?" the doctor asked his wife.

Mrs. Maudsley measured Isabelle against the picture in her mind. How many shades separate white from pale yellow? Where exactly is the borderline between slight and slim? How might a blow to the head affect a person's memory? She wavered, then, seeing the emerald eyes and finding an exact match in her memory, decided.

"Yes. This is the person."

The Missus and John-the-dig avoided exchanging a glance.

From that moment, forgetting his wife, it was Isabelle the doctor attended to. He looked at her closely, kindly, with worry in the back of his eyes while he asked her question after question. When she refused to answer he was unrattled, but when she was bothered to reply-by turns arch, impatient, nonsensical-he listened carefully, nodding as he made notes in his doctor's pad. Taking her wrist to measure her pulse, he noted with alarm the cuts and scars that marked the inside of her forearm.

"Does she do this herself?"

Reluctantly honest, the Missus murmured, "Yes," and the doctor pressed his lips into a worried line.

"May I have a word with you, sir?" he asked, turning to Charlie. Charlie looked blankly at him, but the doctor took him by the elbow- "The library, perhaps?"-and led him firmly out of the room.

In the drawing room the Missus and the doctor's wife waited and pretended not to pay any attention to the sounds that came from the library. There was the hum not of voices but of a single voice, calm and measured. When it stopped, we heard "No" and again "No!" in Charlie's raised voice, and then again the low tones of the doctor. They were gone for some time, and we heard Charlie's protestations over and over before the door opened and the doctor came out, looking serious and shaken. Behind him, there was a great howl of despair and impotence, but the doctor only winced and pulled the door closed behind him.

"I'll make the arrangements with the asylum," he told the Missus. "Leave the transport to me. Will two o'clock be all right?"

Baffled, she nodded her head, and the doctor's wife rose to leave.

At two o'clock three men came to the house, and they led Isabelle out to a brougham in the drive. She submitted herself to them like a lamb, settled obediently in the seat, never even looked out as the horses trotted slowly down the drive, toward the lodge gates.

The twins, unconcerned, were drawing circles with their toes in the gravel of the drive.

Charlie stood on the steps watching the brougham as it grew smaller and smaller. He had the air of a child whose favorite toy is being taken away, and who cannot believe-not quite, not yet-that it is really happening.

From the hall the Missus and John-the-dig watched him anxiously, waiting for the realization to dawn. The car reached the lodge gates and disappeared through them. Charlie continued to stare at the open gates for three, four, five seconds.

Then his mouth opened. A wide circle, twitching and trembling, that revealed his quivering tongue, the fleshy redness of his throat, stringsof spittle across a dark cavity. Mesmerized we watched, waiting for the awful noise to emerge from the gaping, juddering mouth, but the sound was not ready to come. For long seconds it built up, accumulating inside him until his whole body seemed full of pent-up sound. At long last he fell to his knees on the steps and the cry emerged from him. It was not the elephantine bellow we were expecting, but a damp, nasal snort.

The girls looked up from their toe circles for a moment, then returned impassively to them. John-the-dig tightened his lips and turned away, heading back to the garden and work. There was nothing for him to do here. The Missus went to Charlie, placed a consoling hand on his shoulder and attempted to persuade him into the house, but he was deaf to her words and only snuffled and squeaked like a thwarted schoolboy.

And that was that.

That was that? The words were a curiously understated endnote to the disappearance of Miss Winter's mother. It was clear that Miss Winter didn't think much of Isabelle's abilities as a parent; indeed the word mother seemed absent from her lexicon. Perhaps it was understandable; from what I could see, Isabelle was the least maternal of women. But who was I to judge other people's relations with their mothers?