He unwrapped the slip of paper and opened the cardboard box. There was a small glass bottle inside, stopped with a cork. The paper had a handwritten message. He sat down beside the fire so that the light from the nearest gas mantle fell on the words. He read:
My darling Dennis – We agreed a transaction, and here is what I promised you. As money does not interest me, and because you have suddenly become special to me, I have in fact trebled the amount we agreed.
This bottle you have found contains a tincture I formulated myself. I should like you to drink about half of the mixture, and spread the remainder of it across the parts of your body you and I no doubt consider most sensual. There is nothing for you to worry about: the mixture is a light alcohol distillation, much diluted, with some special herbs and a few secrets I learned from my dear husband. You will adore what this tincture will do to you, and what it will do for me.
As soon as you have read this, apply the mixture as I have described, then take to your bed in the way I asked. There you will wait for tomorrow to come, because tomorrow is when we shall both atchieve what we most desire.
Louisa
The tincture had a sharp taste, but there was so little of it in the bottle that a mouthful was easily consumed. It left hardly any aftertaste. Discovering the package and the note had made him feel somehow observed in that room, and therefore self-conscious. He drank only half the contents and did not follow the second part of Louisa’s instructions. He pushed back the cork and placed the bottle on the bedside table. He put his wristwatch beside it, with the face visible. It was now a few minutes before midnight.
He was still not sleepy and wished there was a tv in the room. It was warm now and he lay on top of the bedclothes, his dressing gown open, his back propped against pillows. He turned off the gas light above his bed, and lay waiting for sleep. He heard the calendar wheel of his wristwatch click to the next date, as midnight passed.
Suddenly, Louisa was there. He thought he must have drifted off, because he had not heard her open the door. But there was no mistaking her presence in the room.
“It is midnight,” she said. “Tomorrow is today! Let us atchieve!”
She was standing between him and the open fire, which had become the only source of light in the room. He could see the radiance of the fire through the material of what she was wearing – it was some kind of nightgown or shift, made of diaphanous white fabric. He could see the silhouetted shape of her legs, then as she hurried towards him, heading for the side of his bed, he glimpsed the rest of her. The gown barely covered her.
She seized the bottle, shook it.
“You have not used it all,” she said, and waved it at him in mock scolding.
“I drank most of it,” O’Leary said, amazed and thrilled by her arrival. He was acutely aware of lying exposed before her, even in the half-light. He sensed her perfume, could make out her loosened hair falling about her face, watched her quick hands as she pulled the cork from the bottle. The gown was falling carelessly from her shoulder, revealing one of her breasts. He yearned to have her.
“It must be on you too,” she said, and immediately turned over the bottle and sprinkled it across his naked legs, chest and groin.
O’Leary took a sharp intake of breath, because the liquid stung as it landed on him. It was not unpleasant. He was already aroused.
“Louisa ...”
“No. Say nothing.”
She clambered up on to the bed, straddled him, raised her gown to her waist and squatted across his body. He reached up to take her breasts in his hands, groping and caressing her beneath the gown, while she found him and eased him into her.
What followed was unhurried.
For most of the time O’Leary had his eyes closed, his senses sated by the physicality of the woman and the fragrances of their lovemaking. But towards the end, while his heart was racing and his breath was rasping in his throat, Louisa suddenly yelled.
“Is he there?” she gasped. “Can you see him?”
O’Leary opened his eyes. The logs had shifted in the grate, bright flames were darting. Across the room, back from the bed and close to the glowing fire, stood the figure of a man. He was young, tall, erect. He held an ebony cane. He was wearing grey trousers and a dark frock coat. His hair was short, tousled, black. He had long sideburns and a goatee beard. He was glaring angrily at O’Leary, and raised his cane.
“Is François there?” she cried again. Her back was turned away from the apparition. O’Leary could say nothing, terrified by the sudden manifestation, but knowing he was at the very moment of climax. “Can you see him?” she said again. “That is what haunts me!”
Their lovemaking came rushing to an end. O’Leary felt the familiar increase of tension, the exciting suspense, the release, but it was more intense than ever he had known it, a voiding, an emptying, a draining, a flow from a deeper source. Where their bodies pressed together, where the tincture had fallen, he felt an almost electrical discharge of energy. Louisa was twisting herself against him, pressing and moving herself deliberately against those parts. O’Leary continued to ejaculate, beyond passion, beyond sexual union, a decanting of himself into her.
From the other side of the room came a man’s voice, hollow, dismissive, loudly filling the small room: “Adieu, monsieur le prestidigitateur!”
And Louise whispered, “Au revoir, mon brave.”
O’Leary’s consciousness began to fade and the apparition of the dead husband drifted away. Louisa’s bodily weight slumped down hotly across him, moist with perspiration, soft and shaking with her climax. Her long hair tangled wetly about him, covering his face and chest. He could not breathe, he was in fearful dark, his senses dying.
He heard her shout, “This house to let, on s’occupé encore une fois, François, mon chéri. I am occupied again.”
Then there was silence, a muting blackness.
The elderly Volvo lurched across the ruts of the unmade lane, throwing up mud whenever its wheels spun as it momentarily sought traction. The thaw had set in during the night. Pools of water lay everywhere, and on each side of the lane the ditches were full. The driver, Rick, struggled with the steering wheel, nervous of accidentally sliding to one side or the other. White clouds moved slowly overhead in a sky of wan sunlight.
He came to the gates of the house, but almost passed them by. Since his last visit, a mass of ivy and other creeping plants had grown across the twisted railings. Rick briefly thought that this was not the right place, that it was another entrance, perhaps one that led to an abandoned or derelict house, but he squinted across at the satnav, where confirmation of his destination was shown. He slammed on the brakes immediately, causing the painted trailer behind the Volvo to skid on the muddy surface, swinging around to the side.
He left the car where it had halted and pushed open the gate. He walked up the waterlogged drive, stepping over several fallen small branches. On each side of the drive the bushes and plants were overgrown and drooping, with weeds springing up all over the surface of the driveway. To one side, what looked as if it had once been a lawn with surrounding flowerbeds was a riot of tumultuous weeds, mostly bare and brown in the winter air.
The house, which he could see ahead, did not look ruinous, but it was clearly in need of urgent repair work. Some of the bricks were loose, with many gaps in the mortar, the painted doors and window frames were peeling, and several slates were missing from the roof. The windows were dull, as if they had not been washed in years. One was broken and had been roughly repaired with cardboard.