I consider the facts: I trust all my digitals over any of my dial clocks. My bedside clock is my number-one timepiece, followed by my digital wristwatch. However, my bedside clock now says 8:08 and I’ve not yet heard the longcase in the hall strike the hour. If it were to strike in time with my digital wristwatch I’d be more inclined to trust those two than my number-one clock.
7:56 a.m. (by my digital wristwatch)
The longcase in the hall has just struck but my wristwatch is still a few minutes off eight so I’m no closer to knowing the correct time. I’m going to stay here awhile longer until I can get my bearings on the day.
9:55 a.m. (by my digital wristwatch)
I hear the start of Monday’s bell-ringing practice at the church, even though my digital wristwatch isn’t yet at ten. Apart from Michael’s irregular visits and the rare encounters I have with strangers coming to the door, all of whom I invariably check the time with, this Monday ten o’clock practice is about my only weekly time reference. It’s not very accurate, though. I’ve learned that they are in no way reliable. They do not normally start on time and it can be up to a quarter past ten before I hear their first peal. But rarely, if ever, do they start early, and because my wristwatch hasn’t yet reached ten, I suspect that this is the faulty one. I don’t know which is worse, trying to work out the time or trying not to think about Vivien. Did I really kill her? I’m not at all sure anymore that I actually did it. I don’t feel as if that was something I did last night.
I’m dreading the rest of today. I can feel its full weight on me now, pinning me to the bed, urging me not to participate in it any further. I’d like to freeze time right here and now. I’d be quite happy to be left alone, in eternal timelessness, comforted by the relief that I’ll never have to partake in the immediate future.
I wonder grimly how long it will be before I start to smell her. It’s a maddening thing to have entered my mind because now that it’s there I cannot dispel it, and because it’s there I can already smell her.
12:24 p.m. (by my bedside clock)
I think I’ve just heard a small cry, but I can’t be certain. I’m up, out of bed, pulling my dressing-gown cord round my middle to take the sudden chill off my spine. I move over to my door, which is closed. As I put my hand on the door handle I hear it again. A small, distant cry. I freeze. If I open this door, I face a dilemma. I will not be able to ignore the cries and will be forced to make a difficult choice: Should I go to her aid, or should I leave her and live with the knowledge that I could have helped her? It would be like killing someone twice. I couldn’t bear it. However, if I don’t open the door and block up the gaps around the edges I might not be able to hear any distant disturbing noises. I could sit and watch the plaster crumble and the creeper invade the room and concentrate on the pains in my joints. Then I would never be sure that the cries I might have heard were real or not.
The thudding of my heart is so strong that it’s making me rock slightly where I stand, back and forth, back and forth. I turn the handle and pull the door open by a hand’s width. And then I hear it. Scratching. Unmistakable desperate scratching, like a dog at a door. Now another cry, this time more of a whimper. Simon! He’s in the kitchen. I am instantly relieved, elated, even; I feel so thrilled I could almost giggle, like being in an accident that, just at the last moment, didn’t happen. But what do I do with Simon? I’d forgotten him, the dog that wasn’t going to last long. He’s lasted longer than Vivien herself. But surely he can’t survive independently of her—he can’t even walk. The quietest dog in the world is making noises he’s never made before. He’s probably hungry, I think. He’s not been fed today. I open my door and pad quietly along the landing and down the stairs, so as not to wake the dead, my bed socks soft against the wood.
When I open the kitchen door, Simon looks up at me biddably, as if he knows his owner is gone and I am his only hope. I spot a little piddle in front of the fridge, as if it has leaked in the night. His bottom wiggles in an attempt to wag his stumpy tail, as if he’s sure this will please me. I don’t want to hear his noises. I just want to shut him up. I open the fridge door and see only Cheddar cheese and poisoned milk. I put the cheese onto the floor in front of him, then remember the cereal in the store cupboard. I tip a heap of Shreddies onto the cheese and Simon looks at it. I leave him and shut the door behind me, then go back to my bedroom and lock myself in, relieved, as if I’d been holding my breath the entire time.
I know that nothing is going to happen if I stay here in my room all day. I must make a plan. I need to find someone else to discover her body. I need to think of a way to get someone to the house and then up to her room so they can sound the alarm and set the deceased-person engine in motion.
Chapter 21
Pranksters and a Second Dose
2:11 p.m. (by my digital wristwatch)
I’ve been standing, quite still, in the middle of the landing for the last fifteen minutes, and I’m just beginning to feel the effects of a draft, level with the skirting board, that drags itself east to west from the floor-to-ceiling arched window to the stairs. Before that—for the previous eight and a half minutes—I was pacing a rectangular path round the landing. For each of the long sides I tread the length of the same floorboard, while the short ends of the rectangle line up the door frames on opposite walls of the landing. I go anticlockwise and I can actually feel that it’s the wrong way, against the normal movement of all timepieces and even against time itself—so going that way helps me to feel that I am struggling against the problem, rather than being swept up by it and riding with it.
I have been collaborating with myself, working through my options, boxing them up, assembling and assessing them, ordering, grading, cataloging, tabulating and selecting, trying to see the most succinct path through the maze. I have found that the pacing helps me Create—to come up with new ideas—and the standing very still is necessary to Evaluate. Over and over I have strained for a way to get someone else to the house to check on Vivien. I’ve even considered flooding it or setting fire to the loggia so that Michael or anyone in the south lodges might see it, anything that would allow someone else to deal with the problem of Vivien. But I’ve not come up with anything that doesn’t bring with it an extremely unattractive consequence further down the line, one that I know I couldn’t bear—too many people with too many questions.
To my dismay, I’ve determined by this systematic process of assimilation and disqualification that no one is likely to come to the house for weeks, and the idea of waiting here and thinking of her festering down the corridor may send me quite mad. I know the only feasible option is to investigate Vivien myself but it’s as I’m finally mustering the courage to do so that I hear the urgent pounding of the brass door knocker—thud, thud, thud—as if in a last-minute answer to my pleas. The noise grates on me, as it used to Maud, all the way up my spine—it’s quite unnecessary to bang it so violently when a more than adequate noise is achieved with a good grip on the goat’s horns and a rattle from side to side—yet for the first time in my life I welcome it with unexpected delight. I hurry down the stairs. Perhaps they’ll also have the correct time.
My excitement is shattered when I pull back the door. There’s no one there. A beautiful day dances on the fresh leaves of the beech hedge to my left and there’s a hum of activity over the area where a once-ornamental pond has been lost in the undergrowth. I feel betrayed by hope.