Marlena was sitting very still, unable to believe her ears. This couldn’t be serious, surely? It just couldn’t be.
‘Stop it,’ she instructed. ‘I realize you are making some sort of joke. A very bad joke under the circumstances, but a joke all the same. It’s not funny though, so just—’
‘I’m not joking.’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous!’ Marlena spoke with a lot more certainty and authority than she actually felt.
‘Please don’t call me ridiculous.’
The familiar voice no longer sounded the way it usually did. There was steel in it.
Marlena felt a chill run down her spine. Was this for real? The eyes staring at her across the room were cold as ice, their gaze unblinking and full of hatred.
She glanced desperately around the room, looking for her phone. Stupidly she’d left it on the table in the hall when she’d hobbled out there to open the front door. The horrible thought occurred to her that even if it were here by her side it was highly unlikely that she would be allowed to make a call. She thought she would try though. Maybe she could get out into the communal lobby, picking up her phone on the way, and even if she wasn’t given time to use it, perhaps someone might hear her if she shouted for help.
Grabbing a crutch, which she waved at her visitor in as threatening a manner as she could muster, she launched herself on one leg across the room, heading for the hallway.
She didn’t make it.
Her visitor moved towards her in an almost leisurely fashion. An extended foot cracked into the front of her one good leg, tripping her with easy efficiency.
Marlena crashed to the floor, the crutch flying out of her grasp. Her head collided with the corner of the sideboard, cutting open her forehead. Blood gushed from the wound, but Marlena seemed more concerned that her elaborate blonde wig had been knocked to one side, revealing a head bearing only a scant growth of wispy grey hair. Nobody ever saw Marlena without her wig. She tugged at it with one hand. It was an automatic response. Her attacker leaned forward, pulled the wig off entirely, and tossed it carelessly aside.
‘Don’t, please don’t,’ she begged.
Marlena knew what she must look like. A pathetic, bald old woman pleading as much for the last vestiges of her pride as for any other kind of mercy.
‘It’s an improvement,’ said her attacker, as if reading her mind. ‘You don’t look like a drag queen any more. I really thought you would have a little more hair, though.’
Marlena’s humiliation was almost as great as her fear. She realized she was crying. Tears mixed with blood ran down her face. Angry at this loss of dignity, she struggled to push herself upright. Her limbs refused to obey her. What little strength she possessed had disappeared. She knew now that she would not escape, yet still she couldn’t stop trying. By force of will she managed to get on one knee, and was groping for support from the sideboard in order to pull herself upright when the punch came.
A fist hit her straight in the face, smashing her nose. Just like Michelle, she thought, as she fell back to the ground, blood and goo from her shattered nose now mingling with the blood from her injured head.
Again she tried to rise to her feet. But this time her attacker had no need to intervene. She quickly collapsed, her head spinning alarmingly. With surprising clarity, she realized that this was not due to the blow she had taken to the head.
She slumped, spreadeagled on the ground, a blubbering wreck. Though her mind remained lucid, her limbs failed to respond when she tried to move. It was as if her body no longer belonged to her. She remembered the taste of the champagne. Drier than usual, she’d said. She of all people should have detected that there’d been something wrong with it, something added. But perhaps she had merely tasted what she expected to taste.
She looked up into the eyes of her attacker and saw only emptiness. No compassion, obviously. No pity. But it was worse than that. There really was nothing there but emptiness.
It was at that moment that she knew for certain she was going to die. But even as the awful fear gripped her, she could not possibly have guessed how. Not then. Not yet.
She tried to speak. It was hard to get the words out. Her attacker kicked her in the ribs. Casually. For the hell of it, she thought. She tried to scream but no sound came. Then a second kick, this one totally winding her.
She managed to gasp just one word.
‘Why?’ she asked.
Her attacker crouched down over her, smiling. The most terrifying smile she had ever seen.
‘Don’t you know?’
Marlena shook her head, her poor bloodied, almost bald head. She hadn’t the faintest idea.
‘Well, I think everyone has the right to know why they are going to die, don’t you?’
The voice was mild, almost conversational. The story it then related came as a total shock. For several minutes the voice wafted over her, reminding her of something she had done many years ago.
Her attacker, it seemed, had been the victim of her actions. Unwitting actions, she wanted to explain. She had been stupid, reckless and irresponsible. But she’d meant no harm. In her panic, she hadn’t stopped to think about the hurt she’d inflicted. Her attacker had not come here to listen to her explanation, her pleas for forgiveness. The drug she’d been given made it impossible for her to speak. Her mind remained clear though. She realized that what was happening to her was revenge. The ultimate act of revenge. She saw now that one of the hands which rested lightly, almost gently, on her upper body, held a knife with a long, slightly curved blade.
‘You should prepare yourself to say goodbye, darling,’ said her attacker, placing a heavily sarcastic inflection on the term of endearment Marlena always used so freely. ‘But it will be a prolonged goodbye, so take your time.’
A terrible shudder ran through Marlena’s body. She so wished she could lose consciousness now. Just slip away.
Her attacker used the knife to cut a strip of material from the hem of the silk blouse she was wearing, forced open her mouth, slotted the strip of material between her teeth and tied it tightly in a knot behind her head.
‘There, we don’t want you making a noise and disturbing the neighbours, do we?’
The voice was soft and all the more menacing for it. Marlena, half-choking on the makeshift gag, virtually incapable of movement, could do nothing but stare in wide-eyed horror as the devil loomed over her and, using the knife again to cut into the fabric, tore her skirt and undergarments from her body.
‘I will discover thy skirts upon thy face. I will show the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame,’ said her attacker, hissing out the words. ‘I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as gazing stock.’
Marlena’s eyes had become fixed only on the shimmering point of the knife, which was directed at her lower abdomen.
She was sure by then that she knew what was about to happen.
Yet when her legs were thrust apart and the vicious blade entered her there, brutally invading her most intimate parts, the sense of shock as the steel sliced through her flesh and thrust upwards deep into her inner being, was every bit as overwhelming as the physical agony. And that was unspeakable.
The drug which had been added to Marlena’s champagne is sometimes used to lessen pain in childbirth. It could do little to combat the terrible suffering she endured at the hands of her assailant before death finally claimed her.
Thirteen
It was the Sampford House caretaker who found Marlena’s body.
Paddy Morgan, a tiny sinewy man who in his youth had been a national hunt jockey until a bad fall in his first Irish National put paid to a promising future, had been in the habit of calling on Marlena every morning since she’d been injured. He took her a newspaper, along with any other necessities she required: milk for her tea, the occasional loaf of bread or whatever small snack she might request.