The irony of her position was not lost upon Anna. Under normal circumstances all she need do was phone the police. That was unthinkable, of course. What she must do was to get rid of the woman, as quickly as possible, and the only way to do that was to scare the creature into leaving.
“Anna, the last thing on my mind right now is a lost ring. No more beating about the bush. I insist you tell me what’s put you in such a dither. Is it about Carter?”
“Why do you think that?”
“What else could it be, for Pete’s sake?”
“All right, yes, it’s about Carter. It’s just — it’s not easy to know where to start — to make you understand...”
“You were unhappy with Carter. You had a fight.”
“A dreadful row.” Anna, formulating a plan, looked toward the window facing the lake. “I always go for a stroll along the shore after breakfast. It’ll be easier to talk there, out in the open.”
The other woman rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh of exasperation. “Whatever you say.”
They carried the dishes into the kitchen. Anna said: “It’ll be chilly by the water. You’ll need a coat.”
“My shawl will suffice.”
“I think not. You can borrow one of my coats.”
Upstairs, her heart pounding, Anna flung open the solid oak closet door. “Help yourself. Pick out something warm.”
As the other woman stepped into the closet Anna shoved her forward, slammed the door shut, and turned the key in the lock, provoking a startled cry of protest.
Anna leaned heavily against the door, as if its lock might not withstand the expected assault from within; instead, that first cry was followed by a long moment of silence.
Anna cried: “You’re not Maureen. I know who you are.”
“Are you mad, Anna? What’s come over you? Let me out.”
“You’re Prudence. What did you do to Maureen?”
“Stop playing games, girl. Open this door at once.”
“Not until you tell me the truth.”
“You’re behaving like a child. I won’t tell you anything until you open this door.”
“Why did you come? To talk me into going back with you? Then what? Kill me? Bury me out there on some mountain? Is that what happened to Maureen?”
The knob rattled violently, causing Anna to press her body even more firmly against the door. “You’d better start talking before you run out of air.”
“I came here to help you, Anna.”
“Ha!”
“It’s the truth, I swear it. You’re weak, Anna. You were always a crybaby. Boo-hooing in all those letters. Caught in a trap, you said. Can’t get out. Can’t get free. Anna, I was going to set you free. I thought Carter would be here. I had a plan. I can prove it if you’ll only open this door and let me out.”
Anna’s brain was working feverishly. “I can hear you perfectly well from in there. You tell me the truth or I’ll go away and leave you in there. Nobody will come near this place. You can pound on the door till your knuckles are raw, nobody will hear you.”
A longer silence ensued, and then in a wheedling tone of entreaty: “All right, Anna, you win. I’ll tell you everything if you just open the door a crack. I won’t hurt you. You need me, Anna. We need each other. We have to plan things before Carter comes back.”
“Carter’s not coming back.”
“Then why did you send for me?”
“I sent for Maureen, not for you.”
“Maureen wouldn’t have helped you. Maureen was sick and tired of your endless bellyaching. She said so. She felt sorry for Carter. I’m not like Maureen. I’m not afraid to do what has to be done. Please, Anna, open the door.”
“Maureen’s dead, isn’t she?”
“I can explain that. Just let me out.”
“You stay put. I’ll be right back.”
Anna moved swiftly from the room and down the stairs to Carter’s study. Bellyaching, indeed. As if Maureen would ever say such a thing. But had she been overconfident in taking it for granted that Maureen would help her? Prudence, on the other hand, would have no choice. And Anna knew she couldn’t do it alone. It had been struggle enough dragging Carter’s corpulent body down into the cellar. She couldn’t possibly have hauled it back up here and out into the garden and buried it.
In the study she unlocked Carter’s desk and took out the revolver, somehow surprised that it wasn’t still warm to the touch. The sight of it brought back all too vividly the events of that awful night. Carter screaming that he was leaving her, that he’d had enough. The wave of panic and hysteria. The gun suddenly in her hand, exploding. And then the frightening sense of helplessness, the desperate need for someone to take charge, tell her what to do. Someone she loved and trusted more than anyone else in the world: Maureen.
She was not about to open that closet door without the gun to protect her. Prudence was insane, even Maureen had hinted at that. But Prudence would be obliged to help her. Anna was aware of a bitter acid taste in her mouth, a taste of bile, recalling the wave of nausea as she’d looked down at Carter’s oozing body. Her mouth was sour with that same nasty taste. As she turned to leave the room she saw the Pueblo jar on the library table by the window. A piece of candy would take that nasty taste away. One little piece of candy wouldn’t kill her.
Dropping the gun, she quickly snatched out the perforated stopper and plunged her hand deep into the bowl of the jar. She would never know which came first, the biting sting as she jerked her hand free, or that flashing glimpse of something unspeakably hideous, the lightning-swift movement of something cordlike and alive. Anna fainted.
Once the rattler’s venom enters the bloodstream, variable factors govern the progressive symptoms leading to death. By the time Anna had regained consciousness, paralysis had already invaded her limbs. Coma would ensue. From a distance the weakening sound of a fist hammering upon unyielding wood seemed to echo the faltering rhythm of those dying heartbeats.
Copyright © 2006 Donald Olson
Cagebird
by Margaret Lawrence
A historian with a doctorate in medieval drama, Margaret Lawrence has taught at several colleges in the Midwest. Her works of fiction include 1996’s Hearts and Bones, the first in a mystery series set in Revolutionary War-era Maine, which won nominations for the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards for best novel.
My name is Harriet Burge. On the twenty-sixth of October of the year 1883, I discovered the body of Mrs. Elizabeth Logan hanging by a curtain cord from a ceiling hook in the after-cabin of the American brig China Star, a square-rigger bound for Singapore and Hong Kong.
Mrs. Logan was but nineteen, and had married our captain, Dayton Logan, three years earlier in Maine. In my experience, unless they are besotted or bewitched, beautiful girls of sixteen do not wed sea captains of near fifty.
But Eliza was not beautiful, nor was her character striking. In fact, she had seemed to me a young woman of limited possibilities — conventional, soft-spoken, made for narrow horizons. And as Logan was said to have money, I presumed to judge them both.
I knew I was sadly mistaken from the moment I glimpsed her hanging there, with the heavy dark-green cord from the door curtains looped around her long thin neck. In death’s release, she had become breathtakingly lovely, quite transfigured. This, I thought, was the woman Logan had seen and desired, perhaps even loved. Her black hair hung loose
In addition to the ceiling hook through which the green cord was looped, there were several others, and from them hung intricate wickerwork cages of tiny, bright-eyed songbirds, hopping and twittering. When the Star called at Palermo on its way to Suez, and thence to Singapore and Hong Kong, an Italian bird-vendor had come aboard to show his wares, and Dayton Logan had bought several for his wife — finches, canaries, song sparrows.