Thoughts had begun to run out of Gwendolen's head, leaving it almost empty. Stephen Reeves appeared fleetingly before vanishing down a long road where those thoughts ran and where in the distance, on the edge of something indefinable, she could make out misty shapes who might or might not be Papa and Mama. Gradually they too faded and slipped overthat edge where Stephen had gone. She was alone in the worldbut there was nothing unusual in that. She had always been alone. And now, as something rumbled and murmured inside the place where thoughts had been, she knew she was goingout of the world alone. For no reason, with no particular desire, she told her hands and her arms to move, but they no longer obeyed her and she was too tired to tell them again. She breathed very slowly, in and out, in and after a long time out, in again very lightly and out on a long rattling sigh. If there had been watchers they would have waited for the next inhalation and when none came, have risen from their chairs, closed her eyes, and drawn the sheet up over her face.
Bright moonlight poured into the bedroom. When she camet o bed Gwendolen had been too ill and too tired to draw the curtains, and in the four hours that had passed, an almost fullmoon had mounted into the clear sky. Because of the positionof the large double bed and the height and width of the window,the moon between the half-open curtains spread a paleband across the bedclothes, a stripe of whiteness, leaving herface in the dark. Earlier than usual, the lights in Mr. Singh's house had gone out and the fairy light tree was also indarkness.
To his dismay Mix found himself trembling as he came into the bedroom, not from the temperature but from fear. Ye twhat was there to be afraid of? This time the ghost hadn't even made him shiver. All the doors downstairs were locked and, where this was possible, bolted. He and she were alone. The ghost was upstairs of course but Mix had felt and still felt that Reggie approved of what he was about to do. And, mystifyingly, the pain in his back had gone. He had taken no more ibuprofen, yet it was gone. He'd be all right now.
As he approached the bed a black shape uncurled itself andreared up, arching its back. The green eyes seemed larger andbrighter than usual.
"I'll kill you too," said Mix.
He made a lunge for Otto who eluded his grasp with ease, hissed like a snake, and leapt for the open door and the stairs. The woman on the bed was perfectly still. Do it quickly, hesaid to himself, do it now. Don't look at her. Just do it. Her head was on one pillow and there was another beside her, athird up-ended against the bedhead. He took hold of the upendedpillow in both trembling hands and turning his headaway, pressed it down on her face as hard as he could.
She didn't move. There was to be no struggle. She remained utterly still. He held his hands there and they steadied while hecounted to a hundred, two hundred… At five hundred he let his hands relax and as they did so his fingers touched the skin of her neck. It was icy cold. He had never before touched such an old person-his grandmother had died at seventy-and he wondered if all of them were as cold as that, the heat in theblood, the warm life, cooling gradually with age.
He put the pillow back where he had found it and pulled thebedclothes off her body. It surprised him to see that she wasfully dressed. Maybe she always went to bed like that, nevertook her clothes off. He stripped the top sheet out from under the coverlet and blanket and began to roll the body up in it. By now he had some experience of this soh of thing, he was lessfearful and less clumsy. The trembling that he couldn't accountfor had entirely ceased. He felt very calm and resigned. He hadhad to do it. Before he wound the end of the sheet around herhead and face he made himself look. Her wide-open eyes remindedhim of Danila's. But Danila's had been young and clear, her body warm to touch.These eyes, rheumy, clouded,lay in a nest of wrinkles. And this old woman was ice-cold.
She was much heavier than Danila and it took him a longtime to drag her up the stairs to the top, the body bumping on every step. He expected renewed back pain but there was none.Once the body was inside his flat and he had had a drink, afairly stiff gin, he went back to her bedroom and tidied the bed, making it look as he thought she might have made it, in a rather slovenly way. Her shoes, which she must have kicked off before lying down, he put into the cupboard to join the jumblea lready there. He was going to tell those who inquired that she had decided to go away and convalesce, leaving everything the way she would if she had really gone.
All the time he was dragging her upstairs he was thinking hemight injure his back again, but he was quite free of pain. And somehow he knew he would continue to be unless it came on later, as it had done last time. At the trial of Timothy Evans, Reggie had made the court believe he couldn't have killed Evans's wife because his back was too bad for him to lift her. I won't be going near any court, Mix told himself resolutely. I got rid of her to keep myself out of court.
He went downstairs and drew back the bolts on the front door in case Ma Winthrop or Ma Fordyce decided to come every early in the morning and thought it was funny the door being bolted. He didn't want anyone thinking anything was funny. This house was a dreadful place at night, such a place as shouldn't be allowed to exist, he thought. Living here for long would drive you mad. You'd feel it was moldering away and slowly rotting around you, the wood and the hangings and the ancient carpets disintegrating hour by hour, minute by minute. If you stood still and listened you could almost hear it, tiny drippings and droppings, moths chewing, flakes falling, splinters, rust, and mildew turning to dust. Why had he ever thoughthe wanted to live here? Why had he spent all that money on making a small part of the house fit to live in?
Returning to the stairs, he saw Otto above him sitting on the first landing. Had she fed the cat? She would always do that before she went to bed and would have done so before she left in the morning on this journey she was supposed to be going on. He went back to look in case one of those two old women checked and found it funny the cat's plate being empty. Either Otto had eaten it or none had been put down. Mix opened a can and filled the plate.
"I'd put poison in it if I'd got any," he said aloud.
Otto came down the stairs, Mix aimed a kick at him, but the cat sprang, raking claws down his bare ankle. Mix cried out, reached for his leg, and brought his hand away covered in blood. He cursed, peering through the moonlit dark for that shape and those eyes, but Otto had disappeared, leaving the food uneaten.
Mix followed, dripping blood. The moonlight came in everywhere it could find an uncurtained window or a crack between door and jamb, scattering spots and lines of white light. The landing windows let it in and it seeped through her bedroom door, which he had left ajar. Above him he saw Otto padding up the tiled flight. At the top, without hesitation, moving through a big square of moonlight, the cat turned left along the passage. When Mix got up there he was nowhere to be seen. Like some witch's familiar, he had disappeared into the ghost's abode. There Mix was too frightened to follow him.
He thought of searching once more for Gwendolen's sleeping pills but he was afraid. Such fear was irrational, he knew, as was the horrible fantasy he had of sleeping for too long and deeply until he awoke blearily to find police in the flat, thef ront door kicked in and Ma Fordyce unwrapping the bundle in which was Gwendolen's body. He must stay alert, lie down,and rest but not sleep. He had things to do in the morning that couldn't wait.