CatchuponAWarmPlace!
A WARM PLACE – PRELUDE
A WARM PLACE
A WARM PLACE 2
A WARM PLACE 3
Table of Contents
ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN
ELEVEN TWELVE THIRTEEN FOURTEEN FIFTEEN SIXTEEN SEVENTEEN EIGHTEEN NINETEEN TWENTY TWENTY-ONE TWENTY-TWO TWENTY-THREE EPILOGUE
OTHER TITLES ABOUT ME
ONE
I was alone.
Alone was nothing new to me. I had been alone a lot of times in my life. But this time, it felt different.
I was alone and I was thinking of chemotherapy.
Carefully stalking a deer through a snowbound, heavily-wooded hinterland somewhere in northern Kansas, or maybe even southern Nebraska now, I wasn’t sure, I tried to make as little noise as possible, and keep my mind from drifting too far.
But that got difficult, I was learning, when you spent too long in hard isolation.
Icy trees surrounded me in all directions and I was careful to keep the deer in my sights, my rifle at the ready. I wasn’t too keen on my odds of bagging this deer, but I was kind of desperate right now because my food was really low.
As in, I had like a meal left low.
But chemotherapy kept creeping into my brains the same way I was creeping up on this deer, trying to ignore it all: the cold, the hunger, the encroaching darkness and storm. I knew a storm was on the way and I’d have to get in soon.
I was thinking about how, in some cases of extra bad cancer, they sometimes tried something desperate: double chemo. But they weren’t supposed to because it carried all sorts of crazy risks, but it had a better chance of wiping out the cancer.
That was what I was doing right now, though to be completely honest, I wasn’t sure exactly what the risks of what I was doing entailed.
I mean, some were obvious.
That I could starve to death, or freeze to death, or get mauled by an animal, or killed by another human looking to rob me, or worse.
But that was just a fact of life nowadays. Those risks were risks I had faced, endured, and ultimately triumphed over time and time
again over the past year and a half, ever since I’d decided to set out into this new, frozen, post-apocalyptic wasteland on my own. I was used to being by myself, I was used to wandering for long stretches of time alone.
This, however, was different.
Abruptly, the opportunity to make the shot appeared and I knew it was now or never. I froze, took aim, and fired.
And missed.
Just barely, I saw some of the deer’s fur fly off in a puff, but I had missed. The deer took off in an instant, vanishing from sight into the trees, galloping away to safety. I let out a long, heavy sigh of disappointment as I lowered the rifle, my breath appearing on the air in a haze.
Well, shit.
There went food for the next few days.
I looked around, knowing that I was either going to have to find manmade shelter of some kind, or a cave, or make some sort of really miserable lean-to, because I’d lost my tent to a scrap with a pair of wolves three days ago. It had been shredded all to hell.
My bow had also gone during that battle, snapped into pieces after my big ass fell on it. Not that it mattered quite as much, as I was out of arrows at that point anyway. I’d been doing some hard living over the past month, and my supply level reflected that.
Finally, I saw what appeared to be a lone structure up ahead, barely visible through the trees and the dim gray fading light.
I set off, and as I began walking, it started to snow.
I glanced up, a little startled. That always freaked me out a little bit, the way it could just begin to snow in perfect silence. Sometimes it was obvious, mostly through the winds, and I knew that some kind of storm was coming, but sometimes I’d wait three hours for it to actually manifest, and then just abruptly, big fat snowflakes were falling out of the sky in all directions, not a sound to be heard. It was oddly creepy.
In some vague way, it reminded me of spiders, and how they were perfectly silent.
You only noticed them when you saw them or, God forbid, felt them.
Spiders largely dying out as a result of this apocalypse, or at least dying out on the surface and in a lot of buildings, was one of the things I put under ‘benefits of Armageddon’. Yeah, I know, I know, they’re crucial to the ecosystem and they aren’t inherently evil or anything, but I fucking hated them and the world was fucked anyway, right?
As I headed through the falling snow, picking up the pace, my body already most of the way to numb thanks to all the time I’d spent outdoors today, I kept thinking.
It had been three months since I’d helped bring Pine Lake back from the brink of death, since I’d gotten shot and damn near gotten myself killed.
I had healed up and settled nicely into my new home. Honestly, the motel room at Pine Lake was the closest I’d ever come to a home since I began wandering, and it had felt nice. The first month was good.
Lindsay moved in with us, and they got a second bed, really more of a mattress they put in the corner, where she and Delilah tended to sleep. They had definitely become a couple, though it hadn’t stopped either of them from having sex with me regularly. Delilah more than Lindsay, I think she was intimidated by me, though she at least didn’t seem threatened by me. So that was nice. Elizabeth reallyliked me, and we’d spent a lot of time together.
The same was true of Megan.
Lisa wasn’t sure how to feel about us. She’d been awkward in the days following my recovery, but finally, after some hot sex and then some more hot sex, she’d eventually settled into a casual relationship where she tended to jump me once or maybe twice a week if she was feeling really up to it. The same thing had happened with Melanie.
God, I loved fucking that woman. And that was my life for the next month, and it was really fucking good.
I helped out. I built things. I hunted. I protected people. I harvested and gathered and salvaged from the countryside and the dead part of the city.
I had great sex with the women in my life.
All the while, living in fear of the wanderlust bug.
It left me alone for a solid month, but near the end of that month, I felt the first tickles of that urge. That intense desire. That lust to wander, to just get out and be free and explore uncharted lands. Meet new people, see new places, do new things.
Test myself against the untamed wild.
For two weeks, I ignored it, but it got worse. During the third week, I began trying things, going out camping or staying up at the hunting lodge with the hunters. It helped, but only a little. The fourth and final week was the worst.
I felt anxious and irritable and sometimes like I couldn’t breathe.
I felt somehow caught.
It didn’t occur to me until Elizabeth gave birth that I was waiting for some event to transpire, something to somehow give me the go ahead to make a decision.
That event was it.
I ended up talking with the women about the problem, listening to suggestions, bouncing ideas off each other, and ultimately, this was what I had come up with.
I would leave, I would head north, into deep isolation, and then I would come back after, at most, two months.
That was about one month ago.
I didn’t want to just do what I normally did, although that was what I had done during the first week. I was exuberant and blissful as I hit the highway and headed north. I ran into a caravan of people, traders and travelers who seemed on the level, heading south. I spent the night with them and had amazing sex with the forty-two-year old platinum blonde who used to be a schoolteacher after being a model and now ran this group.
She could suck dick like few others I’d run into.
I pointed them towards Pine Lake and told them they’d find kind people and good trading there, then I’d gone on my merry way.
Shortly after leaving the caravan I began to feel guilty for feeling so good. I was practically high I felt so damned good.
I ran into a few more traders, and finally I stopped at a small simple encampment that seemed kind of like a way-station for travelers along the highway. It was built into the remains of a partially collapsed warehouse of some kind, and half a dozen people maintained it. Now it served as an inn. I’d spent the night and after flirting, took one of them to bed. She had been pretty hardcore, had a scar down one side of her face, and more on her body when I’d gotten her clothes off. She had muscles, and short brown hair, and she fucked rough.
It was a good night, and she was the last chick I’d hooked up with.
The next morning, I’d gathered my things, ate breakfast, made a few trades, and then I’d struck off in an almost totally random direction, into the nearest woods.
I was out here to burn out this need to wander, and after thinking on it for awhile, I had decided that the best way to do it was to go into total isolation.
And it had worked.
I had yet to see a single human being, let alone speak with one, since leaving that way-station.
Three solid weeks.
It was the longest I’d gone without human contact.
“Here we are,” I muttered as I reached the structure. It was some old, very old cabin, something that looked like it had been built a century ago. It had a chimney, it was dark, and it looked intact. Those were the only three things I actually cared about at the moment.
“Let’s make sure we’re safe,” I murmured.
I had learned that for whatever reason, talking out loud helped offset the...negative aspects of the isolation.
I walked around the exterior of the building, checking for threats and to see if it was as intact as it looked. The windows, I
saw, were boarded over, but this looked to have been done a long time ago. Perhaps even before Armageddon. I didn’t see any people around, nor any wolves or bears or cougars. I thought I was far enough north that they might be a problem. Or mountain lions. Or were those the same thing?
Shit, I didn’t know.
I walked up to the front door and knocked on it firmly a few times.
“Is anyone in there?” I asked. Waited. Nothing. I knocked again, harder. “Is anyone in there?” I asked louder.
Still nothing. The place felt like a mausoleum.
I tried the handle. It turned, and the door opened when I pushed. It was dark inside, the thin twilight not nearly enough to help me see. With a sigh, I reached onto my belt and detached the miniature lantern there. It was solar-powered and really useful. I’d found it on a dead man a week ago, probably just someone like me, way out in the middle of nowhere. He’d been mauled to death by wolves, I assumed, and left to freeze in a lot of blood.
The kill had looked old, months at least.
It occurred to me that this would be an extremely lonely and miserable place to die.
The light came on and seemed to fill the interior of the singleroom structure. I quickly played it across the inside, finding myself looking at hardly anything. There was a mattress on the floor, no bedding or pillows. A single chair. A fireplace. A toilet and sink off in one corner. I saw the remains of some cabinets that had no doubt been chopped up for firewood, and the scattered remnants of other random stuff on the wooden floor.
It was empty of life, at least.
I got inside, closed and locked the door to the best of my ability, then set my shit down on the floor beside the mattress with a loud groan. I was tired. It had been a long damn day, even though it really hadn’t, it just felt like it.
It was December now. Actually, by my count, and I could be wrong, we were nearing the beginning of 2039.
As if that meant anything anymore.
The only thing it meant to me was that at this point I was another year older, (my birthday was in November, oh what a birthday Megan and Delilah and the others had made it), and that the days were shorter than ever.
I thinkwe were past the equinox, which meant that technically the days were beginning to get longer now, but that wouldn’t matter practically to me for at least another few months. It got dark at five fucking PM and that sucked shit.
Plus, it was winter.
Although it was winter all the time now, it still did actually get generally colder and more miserable during this time of year. Blizzards and snowstorms and absolutely bleak frozen days seemed more common during winter. Like today. It had to be below zero.
I saw that there was still a bit of burning fuel left by the fireplace, so I arranged it all as best I could and got a fire going. I sat there for a few minutes, not thinking of much at all. In fact, I considered that a luxury. As that warm washed over me and took me momentarily to heaven, it was like my brain and all my worries and anxieties and bad feelings were put on hold. It was really nice, and I now looked forward to it immensely.
But soon enough, the bad thoughts began leaking back in, so I got back to work.
First thing was first: I went back outside while there was still daylight left, though not much of it, and quickly began gathering up enough firewood to last me the night. It took me fifteen minutes and by the time I headed back inside, the last of the light was totally gone, and darkness swallowed the world with a gloomy absolution.
Stacking the wood a safe distance from the fireplace, I then set my thermos beside the fire so that it could heat my last meal that I had on me.
Tomorrow was going to be an…
Interesting day. If not a desperate one.
In the past, I’d gone for about two days at a stretch without any food, just water, and it fucking sucked. I knew I could go a lot longer, the problem was, hunger fucked with you. It fucked with your ability to focus and concentrate, it made you weak as it sapped
your strength, made decision-making difficult. So it tipped the odds out of my favor, the longer I went without food. Once the thermos was in place, I began the process of methodically searching the cabin over.
I wondered who it had belonged to and why it was out here. Maybe some old miner or factory worker had it built, or built it himself, way back in the day so he could just fuck off and be by himself when he wanted to. Maybe there was a nice pond or river nearby, good hunting, (though that wasn’t my experience right now, that deer was the first I’d seen in days). Maybe he’d retired out here. I’d heard enough of those ‘disappear into the mountains when I get old’ stories and fantasies. I wondered how long it had been since this place had seen a human.
There wasn’t anything worthwhile in the cabin. Nothing tucked away or hidden or shoved up under something. Nothing in the roof or ceiling, as far as I could tell.
The place didn’t even have a closet.
With a heavy sigh, I made my bed, wanting to get the physical labor out of the way as quickly as possible. I was exhausted, but I knew I’d stay up for a few hours more, then wake with dawn’s first light. Hopefully earlier, so I could get a jump on the day’s chores. I put my pack down for a pillow and got out my thermal blanket.
With that done, I took off my boots and sat down in front of the fire after dragging the chair over. And there I just sat for awhile. It felt good to sit, and to know I didn’t have to get up if I didn’t want to for at least an hour or so. Unless there was some kind of emergency.
But I felt fear creeping over me.
This was the worst part of the day. The absolute worst. This was the part of the day where night came on and I was winding down and the loneliness set in.
I wasn’t normally a lonely person. I mean, yeah, sometimes I missed people. Sometimes I missed my family. Sometimes I missed some of the women I’d slept with who made an impression. I missed Mary. I hoped she was okay, wherever she was now.
But after the first week in absolute isolation, the loneliness had reallystarted to settle in.
It had caught me off-guard, and after a few days it was so bad that it made me want to go home. I’d actually almost seriously considered heading back to Pine Lake. I knew enough to figure out how to get back, between the basic cardinal directions and a map I had of the larger area and my knowledge of a few highways, I knew I could do it.
But I’d held out.
I’d been a little skeptical at first, wondering if maybe this intense loneliness was a thing that would fade, if it was some anomaly. But it wasn’t. After another few days, I realized that it came on at night, usually around bedtime. I’d lie in bed, whatever bed was that night, and miss Megan and Delilah and Elizabeth terribly.
Sometimes I’d missed them so horribly it hurt and I damn near wanted to cry.
Crying wasn’t exactly easy for me.
But as bitter and miserable and wretchedly lonely those feelings were, in a way, I actually relished them intensely. Because it meant something. It meant this was working.
TWO
Dinner was okay.
All that remained of my food was what was left of the rabbit and vegetable stew I’d made about four days ago now.
I ate it slowly, but it still seemed gone too quickly, and I was still starving when I finished up. I washed out the thermos and left it to dry, and then I sat on the floor and closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind.
Things were a little more serious now that I was actually tapped out for food.
This place obviously hadn’t done well for those super-seeds, or I’d just been unlucky. There was some wildlife around, but not a whole lot. If I was willing to hang out in one location for a little while, I could probably cobble together some rabbit or squirrel snares, but I wasn’t and even if I was, this place wasn’t a good place for it.
No, I couldn’t afford to indulge in my wallowing any longer. I had to get sharp. Honestly, it concerned me that I’d let it get this bad. It was a sign that perhaps I was letting this go on for too long. On the other hand, it could also just be a sign of bad luck. I still had about a month to go out here, maximum. I know I’d been walking for almost a month now but this wasn’t like before, when we were heading towards Pine Lake.
Then, we’d been making fairly consistent, straightforward, and intentional progress. I hadn’t been progressing towards anything. I’d been wandering aimlessly, slowly, indulging in whatever caught my fancy. If I found a cool house in the middle of nowhere, I might spend two days there just fucking about.
If pressed, with some luck, I could probably be back in a week. So I had another three weeks out here to figure my shit out before I started heading back home. Although to be honest, that two month window was the desired minimum. We worked it out that if I found a particularly desirable situation, I could extend it another
month, but after three months, I had better come home. But for right now, I really needed to get my shit together and actually wake up tomorrow focused. I needed to get more food. Tomorrow. I’d been kind of letting myself go recently, mainly in terms of discipline, but also physically. I hadn’t been washing as much and I hadn’t shaved all month. I was beginning to get one of those big beards I hated so much. I think that was part of what was making me lose my focus, oddly enough.
For whatever reason, I just felt better after a shave, or even a buzz.
And, as it so happened, I did have an electric razor. It was battery powered, but I knew it still had a charge left in it.
After sitting there for another few minutes, I finally got up and then made myself pull my boots and coat back on, grab my pot, go back outside, pack it with snow, and set it to boil. I’d decided to forgo washing tonight but all at once I decided fuck that.
It was time to get serious again.
I stripped naked and spent ten minutes buzzing my beard off and then, after considering it for just a moment, buzzing all my hair off as well. What I was left with was a few centimeters a dark stubble across my jaw and cheeks and head. I always thought I looked better this way, but I think it was just some part of me reacting to the fact that I almost certainly looked more intimidating this way. Some part of me liked that.
I also ended up trimming down my armpits and my pubes. I figured if I was gonna want women to do it, I should too if it was something they liked.
And most of the women I’d come across told me that they at least liked the pubes trimmed.
By the time I was done, the bottle of water I’d pulled out and set by the fire was warm. I used it to wash myself head to toe, using up most of the sliver of bar soap I had left. After that I dried off and then washed my clothes as best I could with the water leftover and set them to dry by the fire. Those acts alone made me feel better than I had felt in days, maybe even the past week or two. So that was a good start.
I waited for the snow to melt and boil and purify, then set it to cool. Once it had, I refilled my bottles and ended up filling the thermos as well, to keep any water from going to waste. By then, I was starting to feel truly tired. But I wasn’t done, not yet. I pulled out my gun cleaning kit and set about disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling my rifle and my pistol. I’d brought both of them with me for the journey, and even out of it and depressed, (I could admit it when I was depressed nowadays), I knew enough to keep them in decent shape.
Once that was done, I made sure they were loaded and ready for action.
I made one final sweep of the perimeter, ensuring I was as safe as I was going to get, and then set the pistol near my backpack.
Finally, with wind now shrieking high and loud outside, cold air leaking into the cabin from a dozen different areas, I tended to the fire, making sure it would burn for as long as possible, and then I climbed into bed beneath the thermal blanket.
I began getting situated, trying to get comfortable, but before I knew it, I was out.
I awoke from a nightmare the following morning.
It was intense, vivid, and left me panting, sitting bolt upright on the mattress.
When I opened my eyes, I saw the first hints of dawn peeking through the boards over the windows. It was only after I’d looked around and ensured that everything was the same that I realized I’d grabbed the pistol.
Sighing softly, I set it back down and willed myself to relax. I felt for those good feelings I’d been experiencing last night, and surprisingly, found them.
Standing up, I rekindled the fire, which was just embers, tossing the last of the wood in there, and then quickly washed up with the bottle I’d left out, using only the rag this time around. After drying, I pulled my clothes back on, then grabbed my pistol and unlocked the
front door. Opening it up, I cautiously peered out, ready for anything.
But there was nothing out there, or at least that’s how it appeared at first glance.
I took my time, checking the outside, the immediate area, and arrived back at the front door fairly sure there were no wolves, no bears, no human predators lurking somewhere nearby. My stomach growled but I ignored it.
No breakfast. Not today.
I set some snow to boil and did some exercise to help wake myself up, and because I really should keep in the habit. I’d been better about it over the past few months, but pretty bad about it over the past few weeks. I ran through a number of sit-ups and push-ups, basic stuff, and then once I had replaced the water, I gathered up my stuff.
Today, the goal was food. Somehow, someway, food.
Most likely shoot and kill a rabbit or a deer, but I’d settle for something that came from those super-seeds.
Once all my stuff was packed up, and I’d double-checked to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind, I killed what was left of the fire and stepped outside.
The sun was up over the horizon now, though it was still early morning, and the air was crisp and chill, but not terribly so.
It felt like a good day.
I set off.
I found myself thinking of the women in my life as I headed northwest, stalking game through the woods.
My relationship with Delilah had hardly changed at all. She still liked me, she still liked fucking me, and she found my company pleasant. I was glad that hooking up with Lindsay hadn’t changed that, but I also had the idea that they were still navigating that
particular relationship. Delilah seemed pretty sure, but I think Lindsay was cautious.
Hooking up with your best friend had to be a bit nervewracking, I imagined.
My relationship with Elizabeth had changed somewhat. I think she was preparing herself for the notion that I was not going to be her new husband. I felt bad about that, but I always tried to be honest with her, and she took it well, I think. I told her that so long as we were around each other, she could count on me, I would comfort her, protect her, take care of her as much as I could, but at the end of the day, I wasn’t ready to be a father, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to ever do that. She said she understood, and I think she did, and Delilah and Lindsay had only leaned into their role as caretakers, so I felt like I’d left her and her child in good hands.
Megan was… Complicated.
We’d fought more, during the last month. She seemed at times irritable and aggressive, and sometimes her jealousy would resurface, but not for long. Maybe it was shallow, but all it would take was for Delilah to take her to bed for the night to get her to calm back down. But I think she saw Delilah the same way I saw Delilah: a very good, very attractive casual fuck friend. It was different with us.
In pretty much every way that mattered, Megan and I had begun dating.
I was honestly cool with that. I liked her. A lot. I liked her intensity, her cavalier attitude, her skill, her bravery, her effectiveness and willingness to work, and work hard. And I liked how she fucked.
That girl could fuck.
Obviously I didn’t like the aggression, the standoffish attitude, the jealousy, the mood swings, but I mean, everyone has their shit days.
I know I did.
I was willing to put up with her BS if she was willing to put up with my BS, and so far, it was working.
But I think the fact that I was going to leave for two months, after the great few months we’d had together, freaked her out.
Because as far as I knew, she hadn’t gotten serious with anyone since the apocalypse. Or at least not as effectively as she had with me.
She was scared of losing me, and that turned into occasionally ugly fights.
Our last meeting had been bittersweet, but mostly sweet. We’d had sex, spent the night together, had sex in the morning, eaten breakfast, took a walk around town, and she had cried when we’d said goodbye. Only it wasn’t goodbye, not really. Just ‘see you later’, more accurately. Because I was coming back.
I’d promised that.
I had promised that even if I didn’t think it was going to work out, I would come back and tell them personally, and we’d all have a proper goodbye.
Because I didn’t just cheap out like that. Ghosting people is fucked, and no one should do it. More people should have the guts to just say goodbye.
As I continued making my way through the woods, nice and easy, hunting, looking for tracks or trails or any other signs that wildlife had been through here recently, I found my mind turning, inevitably, to sex.
I hadn’t been laid in three weeks.
That was basically a lifetime after getting used to having sex with three women every day, and three others on a semi-regular basis.
I never truly thought I would be so lucky, but that was the situation I left behind.
And it stillwasn’t enough to derail the fucking wanderlust bug!
But the thing was, I had stopped jacking off a week ago. I’m not sure why, but I just did. I think at some point I decided I’d just rather have a woman. Consequently, I was horny. So horny. It felt like I walked around with a hard-on half of every day. I couldn’t even remember being this aroused during puberty or the worst parts of high school.
And I felt like I was an unusually horny person.
I found myself fantasizing about women off and on for hours out of every day. First about the women I’d left back at Pine Lake, and then about the more memorable women I’d met along the way. Mary, obviously. The woman I’d left her with. When I had left the small settlement we’d made a home in after I’d found my car and upheld my end of the deal, I was uncomfortable leaving her alone. She was… Vulnerable.
And I was fond of her.
Ultimately, I managed to find a hot, older, badass woman who was bisexual, trustworthy, and super into the notion of trading protection for sex with Mary. I got them set up nice before heading out. But there were other women before her. A thirty-nine-year-old dark-haired businesswoman who really had a thing for anal. A college girl who had done gymnastics most of her life and was so flexible. A goddamned racecar driver.
She’d been a really fun fuck.
Then I found myself thinking of the women I’d always wanted but could never have. Girls I’d gone to school with, celebrities, hot coworkers.
Teachers.
Fuck sake, I bet there wasn’t a dude alive who didn’t have a crush on a teacher.
I had some hot teachers, and they left impressions. I always had a thing for teachers. That caravan leader had really pushed some buttons for me.
But mostly what I found myself thinking of was what the others had told me before leaving. In their own way, they’d all told me that I should indulge while I was out here. Delilah wanted me to just fuck any hot, willing chick I found, because fucking felt good and was fun, and she really liked me, and she wanted me to feel good and have fun. Also, she was of the opinion that I was amazing at sex, and so she wanted other women to feel good and have fun too.
Honestly, Delilah’s simple views on sex really appealed to me.
Elizabeth had said something similar, just a bit more shy and subdued.
Megan had told me to have fun, but made me promise to come back to her. Because while Delilah was happy where she was, and Elizabeth had no interest in wandering if she didn’t have to, Megan told me, in no uncertain terms, that if I really couldn’t get past this wanderlust problem, she wanted to come with me.
She wanted to wander with me.
That was as close to a marriage proposal as I’d ever gotten. Okay, that wasn’t quite true. Elizabeth had straight up told me she’d marry me if I’d let her, but that required sticking around.
But this was the closest I’d ever been to having someone telling me they wanted to be in my life, and stay in my life, even through hardships and difficulties.
And that…
I was a little concerned about that.
Because on some level, there was comfort in the notion that my relationships were temporary. That I knew, and the women knew, I was going to leave, and they always ended up parting ways from me. Megan was different. I could just tell that.
I think it scared me because it was something different, but also because I could see it actually working out between us. I mean, nothing was set in stone, our relationship might blow up like a nuke, but it might not.
I could actually see her as my wife.
Inasmuch as I believed in marriage anymore.
That was another part of what this hard isolation and long journey was: ruminating on my new relationships.
Though another part, on the opposite end of the spectrum, was something that was extremely self-indulgent, and selfish, and perhaps a little absurd.
I wanted at least one other regular fuck friend living with me, one really submissive one. Two would be ideal. Because Elizabeth and Delilah were fairly submissive, especially Delilah, and I’d found that I liked that.
A lot.
And I wanted more, not just from them, but from someone else. Yeah, I know, selfish.
But I’d rescued two women from capture, saved a pregnant woman’s life, and then had a major helping in saving the survivors of a burned-down town. More people definitely would’ve died without me, maybe a lot more.
If I could find a few hot women totally down with being my subservient sluts on a daily basis, then would that be so bad?
Delilah sure thought not. She’d encouraged me to bring back at least one new ‘playmate’, as she had put it, if I could.
I intended to.
And these were the thoughts that were going through my head when I noticed someone walking through the trees maybe fifty yards out.
I stopped, raised the scope, and took a good look at the person. She was walking with her right side to me, and I suddenly found myself staring at the most attractive woman I had ever seen in my entire life.
THREE
For just a few seconds, I felt my brain just...overload. With lust.
Seriously. In those scant few seconds I was aware that, even though I was basically blinded by lust because I hadn’t seen another human, let alone another woman, for three weeks, nor gotten laid for that long, nor had jacked it for the past week, she still was the most attractive woman I had ever seen in the flesh.
Or, at the very least, the most attractive woman I had ever seen in the flesh since the snowfall began.
For a few seconds, I just stared at her.
She was tall, I got that much right away. Probably six foot, just a few inches shorter than me. She was brunette. I saw her holding a cap bunched in one gloved fist. She had just shy of shoulder-length chestnut brown hair that was down and messy. She was extremely pale, and when I caught a glimpse of her eyes, I could tell, even from here, that they were very blue. And even though she had layers on, I immediately got the impression that she was curvy as fuck.
Some semblance of sanity returned to me and I started to feel like a psycho pervert or something, spying on her in the woods, when she suddenly looked back. A look of fear came over her achingly beautiful face and then she was sprinting away.
I at first thought she’d seen me and panicked, which would be a totally reasonable reaction. I was pointing a fucking gun at her, though only to investigate her. I didn’t have binoculars. But when I saw dark movement, low to the ground, coming after her, I realized she had a wholly different reason to flee in terror.
Time to kill two birds with one stone.
With a fluidity and grace that I had almost thought had left me in the past three weeks, I aimed and fired, popping out a shot and perfectly catching the wolf in the skull as it dashed between two trees. Now thatwas a good shot.
A fucking great shot, with all the trees between us and it moving so fast.
Though I gotta be honest, part of that was luck.
She stopped running as she heard my gunshot, looked back over her shoulder at the now dead wolf, then began hunting for me. I slung my rifle and started walking slowly and calmly towards her. She saw me and I saw her tense up, but she didn’t run.
“Are you okay!?” I called.
She was staring at me intently, shading her eyes from the sun. “Yeah!”
Oh God even her voice was sexy as fuck.
“Mind if I walk over!?”
She paused. “No, I don’t mind!”
I picked up the pace. I didn’t want to scare her off. If I could talk this woman into having sex with me even once, I think I could die happy. I knew that was a stupid thought, honestly probably a downright disrespectful one to the other women in my life, but right now I was almost delirious, practically high by how goddamned turned on I was by this woman.
And again, I have to emphasize, it wasn’t just because of the isolation.
Sure, that was magnifying it, but I would be reacting this way even if I’d had my dick sucked and fucked half an hour ago.
I was positive that I’d just stumbled across a former actress or supermodel or porn star. Something. She had Hollywood written all over her, even now with no makeup and messy hair, she was an absolute stunner.
God I hoped she didn’t have a boyfriend.
Or at the very least she was in an open relationship.
The closer I got, the more obvious her beauty was. I realized I was right as I came nearer: she was tall. And curvy. Damn.
Her coat bulged at the chest.
I cleared my head, forcing myself to just calm the fuck down. I didn’t want to scare her off. But shit, this was my first human contact in three weeks. I hoped that I hadn’t forgotten how to have a damned conversation.
I stopped a respectable distance from her.
“That was a reallygood shot,” she said, and she was staring at me intensely. Was she afraid? I didn’t think so. She didn’t look scared. She looked… Excited?
Aroused?
Please, please aroused.
“Thanks,” I replied.
“You a hunter?” she asked after a few seconds of silence passed between us with us just staring at each other. Maybe she was as starved for physical attention as I was right now, although I had a very, very hard time believing that.
“Technically,” I replied. “I was, uh, just passing through when I saw you and the wolf.”
“You going somewhere specific?” she asked. Was that hope in her voice? Hope for what? That I wasn’t going any specific? That I’d go home with her?
“Not really,” I replied.
“You looking for a place to stay?” she asked, and from the way she shifted her stance, the way she cocked her hips and put her chest out a little, the smile that grew on her face, I knew. I just knew. I almost, and I’m not exaggerating, it was a near thing, fell to my knees and screamed my thanks to a God I didn’t believe in.
Because she was trying to seduce me.
That wasn’t arrogance, I had seen it often enough, and I could just tell.
Now, I thought as I got myself under control, for the next difficult part: roll the dice and hopethat this was not a trap. Because it would be a perfect trap.
She lures me in by the dick, whoever she has waiting for her back home kills me and robs my corpse.
It had happened before, and I’d been lucky to escape.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind a place to stay,” I replied.
Now she put her hands on her hips. Oh those big hips. I tried not to let it show how absolutely in lust with this woman I was, but I
doubted I was doing a good job. The only thing was, she seemed to be pretty lusty towards me too.
Damn that felt good.
She could be faking it, hell, I thought she was an actress, but I didn’t know. Maybe that was just hope.
I wanted to find out.
“Well, I live nearby with a friend of mine. My name’s Lara. Are you alone?” she asked.
“I’m alone. My name’s Chris,” I replied, hoping, praying really that her friend was another woman, but I’d settle for a guy she wasn’t involved with.
She pursed her lips. “You can obviously shoot.” She began walking towards me. “But how are you with skinning, cleaning, that kinda stuff?”
“Great,” I replied.
“Hmm.” She smiled, coming to stand before me. Yeah, she was damn near as tall as I was. “You seem confident.”
“I am,” I replied. “I’ve spent most of this apocalypse out here in the wilderness at this point.”
“That’s impressive,” she said. She crossed her arms suddenly, under her breasts, pressing them up. I got the feeling it was something she did when she was trying to get what she wanted, though the effect was somewhat lost with a heavy coat on.
I could imagine what it’d be like if she had on a low-cut t-shirt or a tanktop.
“So I’ll level with you,” she said. “My friend and I are kind of in a bind. Neither of us are very good at hunting. She’s better at it than I am-”
Oh thank God. She.
“-but you’re clearly better at this stuff. We’re running low on food. Maybe we could work out some kind of deal? You hang around for a little while, hunt us up a nice stockpile until you bored,” here she smirked, as if saying like that’s gonna happen, “and you can move on.”
“What do I get in return?” I asked.
“Besides a roof over your head?” she replied.
“Yeah.”
She looked into my eyes for a long, long moment, still smirking that seductive smirk of hers. This woman clearly knew exactly how attractive she was.
“Well, why don’t you come back to the house, meet Susan, and...I’m absolutely positive that we’ll be able to work something out,” she suggested.
“All right, show me the way,” I said. “But let me grab that wolf first.”
“Don’t be too long,” she said, and turned around.
As she walked away, I got a pretty decent look at her big ass in the snow pants she was wearing and oh my God…
I think I was in love.
Okay, that was bullshit.
I was in lust. Head over heels in lust and I was so fucking in lust that I didn’t even feel bad about the other women in my life. I could easily imagine all of them, even Megan, were they here, whispering frantically to me: Youneedtofuckherassoonaspossible! I hurried off to grab the dead wolf.
“So, um, where you from?” I asked.
We’d been walking north, through the woods, in silence for a few minutes now, and I decided it was time to at least try and make some conversation.
I needed the practice.
“California,” she said. Knew it. “You?”
“Florida.”
“Oh wow. That must’ve been wild. How’d you end up here?...wherever here is. I think we’re in Nebraska?”
“I think so, too. They evaced us out of Miami when it got really bad. Stayed at a refugee camp for a bit, but I ended up in a small town in northern Florida. Stayed there for like a year before deciding I wanted to get out and just...travel.”
“Holy shit for real?” she asked, looking at me with something like awe. “In all this?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I mean, the world was ending. Had ended. Or changed irrevocably at least. As far as I could tell, there was no changing that. So I might as well. I’ve been wandering ever since. Worked my way up here.”
“That’s so...crazy. And brave,” she murmured, looking down and fiddling with her coat.
“Maybe closer to stupid,” I replied.
She laughed. “I don’t know. Me and Susan have been wandering for awhile...she’s my best friend. We’ve been friends forever. We ended up out here...after a lot of bullshit.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I’ll get into sometime later.”
“All right.” Something occurred to me. “What were you doing out here by yourself?”
She looked up suddenly and from the way she blushed and the guilty look on her face, I could tell the question had caught her offguard.
“I was just...uh...foraging. Some plants still grow around here,” she replied, not quite meeting my eyes.
Huh. So she was lying about something.
“Okay,” I said, letting it drop.
Up ahead, I could see a structure through the trees. A house built into a clearing. As we came into the clearing, the door opened up and a woman stepped out.
She was holding a pistol.
“Lara!” she snapped, and I could immediately tell who was in charge of this relationship.
And, despite the pistol and the steely gaze this woman had, I felt a lot of comfort settle over me, because all at once Lara’s story seemed much more concrete. It was still possible she was acting, or lying, or whatever, but seeing this woman, who had to be Susan, made everything sort of snap into place. If this was a trap, they would’ve just shot me at this point, while I was still on approach to the house. Easiest way to do it.
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Chapter VII. The Fly in the Amber
At the door of the big block of buildings which formed the CroftThornton Institute, Inspector Flamborough made inquiries from the porter and obtained a guide through the labyrinth of stairs and corridors.
“This is Dr. Markfield's laboratory, sir,” their pilot finally informed them as he knocked on a door. “Two gentlemen to see you, sir,” he announced, standing aside to allow Sir Clinton and the Inspector to enter.
As they walked into the laboratory, Trevor Markfield came towards them from one of the benches at which he had been occupied. His face betrayed his slight surprise at finding two strangers before him.
“What can I do for you!” he inquired politely, but without any needless effusiveness.
Flamborough, in response to an almost imperceptible gesture from his superior, stepped to the front.
“This is Sir Clinton Driffield, the Chief Constable, Dr. Markfield. I'm Inspector Flamborough. We've called to see if you could give us some expert assistance in a case.”
Markfield, after a glance at a water-bath on which a flask was being heated, led the way to a little office which adjoined the laboratory and closed the door behind the party.
“We shall be more private here,” he said, inviting them with a gesture to take chairs. “One of my assistants will be back shortly, and I take it that your business is likely to be confidential.”
The Inspector agreed with a nod.
“It's a poisoning case and we'll need some help in detecting the poison.”
“That's a bit vague,” Markfield commented with a smile. “There are so many kinds of poisons, you know. If it's arsenic or anything of that sort, a first-year student could spot it for you; but if it's one of the organic lot, it'll be a stiff business most likely.”
“It looks like one of the mydriatic alkaloids,” Sir Clinton put in. “Atropine, or something akin to it. The eye-pupils of the body were dilated.”
Markfield considered for a moment.
“I've done some alkaloid work in my time,” he explained, “but I suppose in a case of this kind you ought to have the best man. Some of the alkaloids are the very devil to spot when you've only a small quantity. I'd like the fee for the case, of course,” he added with a faint smile, “but the truth is that Dr. Silverdale, my chief, is an alkaloid specialist. He's worked on them for years, and he could give me points all along the line. I'll take you along to his room now.”
He rose from his chair, but a gesture from Flamborough arrested him.
“I'm afraid that would hardly do, Dr. Markfield. As a matter of fact, it's Mrs. Silverdale's death that we're inquiring into!”
Markfield could not repress an exclamation at the Inspector's statement.
“Mrs. Silverdale? You don't mean to say that anything's happened to her? Good God! I knew the girl quite well. Nobody could have a grudge against her.”
He glanced from one official to the other, as though doubting his ears.
“Wait a bit,” he added, after a moment's pause. “Perhaps I've taken you up wrong. Do you mean Yvonne Silverdale?”
“Yes,” the Inspector confirmed.
Markfield's face showed a struggle between incredulity and belief.
“But that girl hadn't an enemy in the world, man,” he broke out at last. “The thing's clean impossible.”
“I've just seen her body,” said the Inspector curtly.
The blunt statement seemed to have its effect.
“Well, if that's so, you can count on me for any work you want me to do. I'm quite willing to take it on.”
“That's very satisfactory, Dr Markfield,” Sir Clinton interposed. “Now, perhaps you could give us help in another line as well. You seem to have been a friend of Mrs. Silverdale's. Could you tell us anything about her—anything you think might be useful to us?”
A fresh thought seemed to pass through Markfield's mind and a faint suggestion of distrust appeared on his face.
“Well, I'm ready to answer any questions you care to put,” he said, though there seemed to be a certain reluctance in his voice.
Sir Clinton's attitude indicated that it was the turn of the Inspector. Flamborough pulled out his notebook.
“First of all, then, Dr. Markfield, could you tell us when you first became acquainted with Mrs. Silverdale?”
“Shortly after she and her husband came to Westerhaven. That's about three years ago, roughly.”
“You knew her fairly well?”
“I used to see her at dances and so forth. Lately, I've seen less of her. She picked up other friends, naturally; and I don't dance much nowadays.”
“She danced a good deal, I understand. Can you tell me any particular people who associated with her frequently in recent times?”
“I daresay I could give you a list of several. Young Hassendean was one. She used him as a kind of dancing-partner, from all I heard; but I go out so little nowadays that I can't speak from much direct knowledge on the point.”
“What sort of person was Mrs. Silverdale, in your judgment?”
Markfield took a little time to consider this question.
“She was French, you know,” he replied. “I always found her very bright. Some people called her frivolous. She was out to enjoy herself, of course. Naturally she was a bit out of place in a backwater like this. She got some people's backs up, I believe. Women didn't like her being so smartly-dressed and all that.”
“Have you any reason to suppose that she took drugs?”
Markfield listened to this question with obvious amazement.
“Drugs? No. She'd never touch drugs. Who's been putting that lie around?”
Flamborough tactfully disregarded this question.
“Then from what you know of her, you would say that suicide would be improbable in her case?”
“Quite, I should say.”
“She had no worries that you know of, no domestic troubles, for instance?”
Markfield's eyes narrowed slightly at the question.
“Hardly my business to discuss another man's affairs, is it?” he demanded, obviously annoyed by the Inspector's query. “I don't think I'm called upon to repeat the tittle-tattle of the town.”
“You mean you don't know anything personally?”
“I mean I'm not inclined to gossip about the domestic affairs of a colleague. If you're so keen on them, you can go and ask him direct.”
It was quite evident that Markfield had strong views on the subject of what he called “tittle-tattle”; and the Inspector realised that nothing would be gained by pursuing the matter. At the same time, he was amused to see that Markfield, by his loyalty to his colleague, had betrayed the very thing which he was trying to conceal. It was obvious that things had not gone smoothly in the Silverdale household, or Markfield would have had no reason for burking the question.
“You mentioned young Hassendean's name,” Flamborough continued. “You know that he's been murdered, of course?”
“I saw it in the paper this morning. He's no great loss,” Markfield said brutally. “We had him here in the Institute, and a more useless pup you'd be hard put to it to find.”
“What sort of person was he?” the Inspector inquired.
“One of these bumptious brats who think they ought to have everything they want, just for the asking. He'd a very bad swelled head. Herring-gutted, too, I should judge. He used to bore me with a lot of romantic drivel until I sat on him hard once or twice. I couldn't stand him.”
It was evident that young Hassendean had rasped Markfield's nerves badly
“Had anyone a grudge against him, do you think?”
“I shouldn't be surprised, knowing him as I did. He would have put a saint's back up with his bounce and impertinence. But if you mean a grudge big enough to lead to murder, I can't say. I saw as
little of him as possible even in working hours, and I had no interest in his private affairs.”
It was quite evident that nothing of real value was to be elicited along this line. The Inspector abandoned the subject of young Hassendean's personality and turned to a fresh field.
“Young Hassendean smoked cigarettes, didn't he?”
“I've seen him smoking them.”
“Is this his holder, by any chance?”
Flamborough produced the fly-in-amber holder as he spoke and laid it on the table. As he did so, he glanced at Markfield's face and was surprised to see the swift change of expression on it. A flash of amazement followed by something that looked like dismay, crossed his features; then, almost instantaneously, he composed himself, and only a faint trace of misgiving showed in his eyes.
“No, that isn't young Hassendean's holder,” he answered.
“You recognise it?”
Markfield bent forward to inspect the article, but it was evident that he knew it well.
“Do I need to answer these questions of yours?” he demanded, uncomfortably.
“You'll have that question put to you at the inquest when you're on your oath,” said the Inspector sharply. “You may as well answer now and save trouble.”
Markfield stared for a moment longer at the fly in the amber.
“Where did you pick this thing up?” he demanded, without answering the Inspector's question.
But Flamborough saw that he had got on the track of something definite at last, and was not inclined to be put off.
“That's our business, sir,” he said brusquely. “You recognise the thing, obviously. Whose is it? It's no use trying to shield anyone. The thing's too conspicuous; and if you don't tell us about it, someone else will. But it doesn't look well to find you trying to throw dust in our eyes.”
Markfield could not help seeing that the Inspector attached special importance to the holder; and he evidently recognised that further shuffling was out of the question.
“I'm not going to identify it for you,” he said. “You've let slip that it's an important clue; and I don't know it well enough to make assertions about it. I'll send for a man now who'll be able to swear definitely, one way or another. That's all I see my way to do for you.”
He put his hand on a bell-push and they waited in silence until a boy came in answer to the summons.
“Send Gilling to me at once,” Markfield ordered.
Then, when the boy had withdrawn, he turned to the two officials again.
“Gilling is our head mechanic. You can question him about it. He's an intelligent man.”
In a few minutes the mechanic appeared at the door.
“You wanted me, sir?” he asked.
Markfield introduced the Inspector with a gesture, and Flamborough put his questions.
“You've seen this thing before?”
The mechanic came forward to the table and examined the holder carefully.
“Yes, sir. I made it myself.”
“You're quite sure of that?”
“No mistake about it. I know my own work.”
“Tell us what you know about it,” the Inspector demanded. The mechanic thought for a moment or two.
“It was about three months ago, sir. If you want it, I can look up the exact date in my workshop notebook where I keep a record of each day's work. I made two of them for Dr. Silverdale at that time.”
Flamborough shot a glance at Markfield's downcast face. It was pretty obvious now who was being shielded; and the Inspector remembered how Markfield had fenced in the matter of the domestic troubles of the Silverdales.
“Tell us exactly what happened then,” Flamborough encouraged the mechanic.
“Dr Silverdale came to me one morning with some bits of stuff in his hand—amber-looking, same as this holder. He told me he'd been manufacturing some new stuff—a condensate like Bakelite. He wanted me to see if it could be filed and turned and so on. I remember his showing me the fly, there. He'd put it into the stuff as a
joke—a fly to prove that the thing was genuine amber, and take people in when he showed the stuff to them. The condensate stuff was in sticks, two of them, about six inches long by an inch thick, so he suggested that I'd better make two cigarette-holders and see if the thing would stand being worked on a lathe without splitting or cracking. So I made the two holders for him. I remember the trouble I had to steer clear of the fly while I was shaping the thing.”
“And what happened to the holders after that?”
“Dr. Silverdale used the one with no fly in it for a bit and kept the other one for show Then he lost the plain one—he's always leaving his holders about the place on the benches—and he took to using the one with the fly in it. He's been smoking with it for a month or more, now. I remember just last week asking him whether it was wearing well, when he came into the workshop with it in his mouth.”
“Have another good look at it,” Flamborough suggested. “I want to be sure there's no mistake.”
Gilling examined the holder once more.
“That's the one I made, sir. I could swear to it.”
He hesitated a moment as if wishing to ask a question; but Flamborough, having got his information, dismissed the mechanic without more ado. When the man had gone, he turned back to Markfield.
“I don't quite like your way of doing things, Dr. Markfield. You might have given us the information at once without all this shuffling, for I could see at a glance you had recognised this cigarette-holder. If you're trying to shield your colleague from a reasonable investigation, I'll take the liberty of reminding you that one can become an accessory after the fact as well as before it.”
Markfield's face grew stormy as he listened to the Inspector's warning.
“I'd have a look at the law on slander, if I were you, Inspector, before you start flinging accusations about. If you remember the facts, it'll help. I've only seen this holder at a distance when Dr Silverdale was using it. I've never had a good look at it until you produced it. Naturally, although I had very little doubt about whose it was, still I wasn't going to assert that it was Silverdale's. But I got you a man who could identify it properly. What more do you want?”
Flamborough's face showed that he found this defence quite unsatisfactory. Markfield's obvious fencing with him at the start had left its impression on his mind.
“Well, when you do this analysis for us, remember that you'll have to testify about it in the witness-box,” he said, bluntly. “We can't have any qualifications and fine distinctions then, you know.”
“I'll be quite prepared to stand over any results I get,” Markfield asserted with equal bluntness. “But I don't guarantee to find a poison if it isn't there, of course.”
“There is something there, according to the doctor,” Flamborough declared. “Now I think I'd like to see Dr. Silverdale, if you can tell us where to find him.”
Markfield's temper was evidently still ruffled, and he was obviously glad to be rid of the Inspector. He conducted them along a passage, pointed out a door, and then took leave of them in the curtest fashion.
They entered the room which had been shown to them; and while Flamborough was explaining who they were, Sir Clinton had leisure to examine Silverdale. He saw an alert, athletic man with a friendly manner, who looked rather younger than his thirty-five years. Whatever Silverdale's domestic troubles might have been, he showed few outward signs of them. When they disturbed him, he had been sitting before a delicate balance; and as he rose, he slid the glass front down in order to protect the instrument. Apart from his surroundings, it would have been difficult to determine his profession; for he had an open-air skin which certainly did not suggest the laboratory. He carried himself well, and only a yellow stain of picric acid on the right-hand side of his old tweed laboratory jacket detracted from his spruceness and betrayed the chemist.
“I've been expecting you, Inspector Flamborough,” he said, as soon as he realised who his visitors were. “This has been a dreadful business last night. It was a bolt from the blue to me when I got home this morning.”
He paused, and looked inquiringly at the Inspector.
“Have you any notion why that unfortunate maid of mine was murdered? It's a complete mystery to me. A dreadful business.”
Flamborough exchanged a glance with the Chief Constable. As Silverdale had ignored his wife's death, it seemed to the Inspector that the news of it might be broken to him later, when the other case had been dealt with. Silverdale, of course, could hardly have picked up any hint about the affairs at the bungalow, since a knowledge of them was still confined to the police and Dr. Ringwood.
“We're rather at a loss at present,” Flamborough admitted frankly. “As things stand, it looks rather like a case of a detected burglar who killed the woman when she disturbed him at his work. Had you any stock of valuables on your premises which might have attracted gentry of that sort?”
Silverdale shook his head.
“My wife had a certain amount of jewellery, but I don't think any burglar would have found it worth while to go the length of murder for the sake of it.”
“Where did Mrs. Silverdale keep her jewellery?”
“I rather think it's kept in one of the drawers of an old chest-ofdrawers in her room—the drawer that the man broke into. But she may have other things elsewhere. We had different rooms, you know; and I never troubled to find out where she put things in her own room.”
“I suppose you couldn't give us a list of your wife's jewellery?”
“No, I really don't know what she has. I could tell you one or two things, of course; but I couldn't guarantee to remember them all.”
Flamborough switched off to a fresh line.
“This maid of yours was reliable? I mean, she couldn't have been a confederate of the burglar by any chance?”
Silverdale shook his head.
“Quite out of the question, I should say. That maid had been with us ever since we were married; and before that she'd been in service with an aunt of mine who died. She'd always had a good character, and she was old enough not to do anything silly.”
“An old family retainer? I see, sir And you never had any friction with her, I suppose?”
“Certainly not.”
Flamborough returned to his earlier line of inquiry.
“You can't think of anything else a burglar might have had his eye on in your house, sir? Apart from the jewellery, I mean.”
Silverdale seemed taken aback by the question.
“I don't quite understand, I'm afraid. What could a burglar want except jewellery or plate? And he might take all the plate I keep away with him and not be much the richer.”
Flamborough seemed unable to think of any fresh question to put on that particular subject. His face took on a new expression.
“I'm afraid we've got worse news for you, sir,” he began, and in a few sentences he put Silverdale in possession of the barest outline of the bungalow tragedy. Sir Clinton, watching the manner in which the bereaved husband received the news, had to confess to himself that he could make nothing of what he saw. Silverdale's manner and words were just what might have been expected in the circumstances.
Flamborough allowed a decent interval to elapse before he came directly to business once more.
“Now, Dr. Silverdale, I'm sorry I've got to ask some awkward questions; but I'm sure you'll give us your best help in clearing up this affair. I hate to worry you—I'm sure you understand that—but it's essential that we should get certain information at the earliest possible moment. That's my excuse.”
Before Silverdale could reply, the door of the laboratory opened, and a slim, graceful girl came into the room. At the sight of the two strangers, she halted shyly. Sir Clinton caught a gleam in Silverdale's expression as he turned towards the girl: a touch of something difficult to define.
“Just a moment, Miss Deepcar, please. I'm engaged just now.”
“I only came to tell you that I'd taken that mixed melting-point. It's hyoscine picrate, as you thought it was.”
“Thanks,” Silverdale returned. “I'll come round to your room in a few minutes. Please wait for me.”
Something in the brief exchange of information seemed to have attracted Sir Clinton's attention. He glanced at the girl as she turned to leave the room; then he appeared to re-concentrate his mind upon Flamborough's questions.
“Now, Dr Silverdale,” Flamborough went on, “this is a very nasty business, and I don't mind admitting that we're in the dark just now. Can you think of anything which might connect the deaths of the maid and Mrs. Silverdale?”
Silverdale stared at the floor for a time, as though turning possibilities over in his mind.
“I can't imagine how there could be any connection whatever,” he said at last.
Flamborough decided to approach the most awkward part of his subject. It was impossible to tell from his manner what was coming next, but it was clear that he had something important to ask.
“Now, Dr. Silverdale, I want to be as tactful as I can; but if I go over the score, I hope you'll take the will for the deed.”
“Oh, you can be as blunt as you like,” Silverdale retorted, with the first signs of impatience which he had shown. “Ask what you choose.”
“Thanks,” the Inspector answered with apparent relief. “Then I'll come straight to the point. What precisely were the relations existing between Mrs. Silverdale and young Hassendean?”
Silverdale's face paled slightly and his lips tightened as this blunt response to his offer fell on his ears. He seemed to consider his reply carefully.
“I suppose you mean: ‘Was she unfaithful to me with young Hassendean?’ Then my answer would be: ‘So far as my information goes, no.’ She flirted with the young cub certainly; and they behaved, to my mind, very injudiciously; but to the best of my knowledge it went no further than that. I'd have brought them up with a round turn if they'd given me cause.”
“That's your candid opinion?” the Inspector demanded. “You're keeping back nothing?”
“Why, man, I'd have given . . .” Silverdale broke out. Then he stopped short in mid-sentence. “It's my candid opinion, as you put it,” he ended tamely
Flamborough, it seemed, had extracted the information he wanted. He left the subject and took up a fresh one.
“Do you recall anything important which happened in the year 1925?”
“Yes, I left London and took up my post here.”
“You were married in 1923, weren't you?”
“Yes.”
“Had your wife any relations in this country? She was French, wasn't she?”
“She had a brother, Octave Renard, who was in business in London. Still is, as a matter of fact. An old aunt is the only other relation I know of.”
“Before you left London, had you any difficulties with Mrs. Silverdale—I mean anything like young Hassendean?”
“Nothing that came to my notice,” Silverdale answered, after consulting his memory.
“Can you recall any friend of yours or of hers who had the initial B? Either in the Christian name or the surname, I mean. It might be either a man or a woman.”
This question evidently surprised Silverdale.
“The initial B?” he repeated. “No. I can't recall anyone to fit that.”
He seemed to be running over a list of people in his mind, but at the end of half-a-minute he shook his head decidedly.
“No. I can't think of anyone with that initial.”
Flamborough's face betrayed his dissatisfaction. He had evidently built some hopes on getting the information.
“Now, another point, Dr. Silverdale. Have you any reason to suppose that Mrs. Silverdale was addicted to drugs?”
This time, Silverdale's surprise at the question was quite unfeigned:
“Drugs? Of course not! Unless you count cocktails as drugs. What on earth put that into your mind?”
The Inspector rather shamefacedly abandoned this line of inquiry, and turned to something else.
“I'd like to hear anything you can tell me about young Hassendean, sir. He worked here in the Institute, didn't he?”
“That depends a good deal on what precise meaning you attach to the word ‘work,’ Inspector. He certainly loafed about the premises, but he did as little as he could.”
“Well,” said Flamborough, impatiently, “can you tell me anything else about him? Everyone I've interviewed yet has told me he was
idle. I'd rather have something more to the point.”
Silverdale thought for a moment or two.
“He was a nuisance from the start. When he came here first— some three years ago—he spent his time hanging round one of the girl-assistants: Miss Hailsham. He interfered with her work, and I had to speak to him about it several times. Then she got engaged to him. Some time after, my wife took him up, and he broke off his engagement to Miss Hailsham—possibly to please my wife. I remember it made things rather unpleasant here when the engagement was broken, because Miss Hailsham took it rather badly. She'd every reason to do so, though she wasn't losing much, it seemed to me.”
Inspector Flamborough pricked up his ears at this information.
“Is this Miss Hailsham still an assistant here?” he asked.
“Yes,” Silverdale explained. “She's one of my private assistants. I have several girls who do routine work; but Miss Hailsham and Miss Deepcar—the girl who came in here a moment ago—are a shade better than the usual run.”
“Could you make an excuse to let me have a look at Miss Hailsham?” Flamborough inquired.
“She's not here to-day,” Silverdale answered. “Off with a sore throat, or something of that sort. But if you'll come back another time, I can take you to her room if you wish. You can pose as a visitor whom I'm showing round, if you don't want to appear officially.”
“Very good, sir. I'll drop in some other day. Now, another point, if you don't mind. Mrs. Silverdale wore a signet ring. Can you tell me anything about it? Did she get it from you or did she buy it herself?”
“I didn't make her a present of it,” Silverdale answered promptly. “I believe she got it made by some jeweller or other. I remember a few years ago she took it into her head to seal all her letters—some passing fad in the crowd she used to associate with, I suppose. But once she started doing it, she kept it up. I think she must have got the signet ring made for that purpose.”
Inspector Flamborough nodded thoughtfully as though he attached some importance to this information. Then, in a casual tone he inquired:
“You weren't at home last night, of course? Where were you?”
“I was——”
Suddenly a thought seemed to cross Silverdale's mind and he halted abruptly in his sentence. Then he amended his statement most obviously.
“I spent the night working here.”
Inspector Flamborough noted the words in his pocket-book with marked deliberation. Then he looked round the room and seemed dissatisfied with something. As though to give himself time to think before asking another question, he moved over to the window and gazed down thoughtfully into the main thoroughfare below Whatever his reflections may have been, the result of them was singularly feeble. He turned back to Silverdale and put a final question:
“I suppose you can't think of any other point that might help us to throw light on this business, sir?”
Silverdale shook his head decidedly.
“I'm quite in the dark about it all.”
The Inspector looked him up and down deliberately for a moment.
“Well, in that case, sir, I don't think we need take up any more of your time. I'll remove the police from your house. It's been disinfected already by the sanitary people, so you can go back there any time you choose, now. Thanks for the help you've given us.”
Flamborough did not speak to Sir Clinton until they had put the length of a corridor between themselves and Silverdale's laboratory.
“I think I'll drop in and see Dr. Markfield again, sir,” he explained. “I'm not at all satisfied about some things.”
“Do so, Inspector. I quite agree with you!”
“I'll make an excuse about the arrangements for this analysis. Not that I'll lay much stress on Markfield's results when we get them, sir. He's made a bad impression on me over that evidence he gave us before. People shouldn't equivocate in a murder case merely to shield their friends. We've troubles enough without that sort of thing.”
“Well, handle him tactfully, Inspector, or he may turn stubborn. If he takes refuge in ‘I don't remember,’ or anything of that sort, you'll not get much out of him.” Sir Clinton observed.
“I shan't frighten him,” Flamborough assured him, as they approached Markfield's room.
As they entered, Markfield looked up in surprise at seeing them once more.
“It's just occurred to me that I forgot to make arrangements about handing that stuff over to you for analysis,” Flamborough said, as he went forward. “It'll be in sealed jars, of course; and I'd prefer to hand it over to you personally. I suppose I could always get hold of you either here or at your house?”
“You'd better come here. My housekeeper's away just now nursing some relation who's down with 'flu, and my house is empty except when I happen to be at home myself. You'll find me here between nine in the morning and six at night—except for lunch-time, of course. I generally clear out of here at six and dine down town.”
“I suppose you have a long enough day of it,” the Inspector said in a casual tone. “You don't come back here and work in the evening?”
“Sometimes, if there's something interesting that brings me back. But I haven't done that for weeks past.”
“This place is shut up at night, isn't it? I mean, you don't keep a porter or a watchman on the premises?”
“No. But each of the seniors has a private key, of course. I can get in any time I wish. It's the same at the Research Station.”
The Inspector seemed to be struck by an idea.
“Any valuable stuff on the premises, by any chance?”
“Nothing a thief could make much out of. There's a thousand or fifteen hundred pounds worth of platinum, dishes, electrodes, and so forth, in the safe. I believe the man on the beat is supposed to give special attention to the place and notify anything suspicious immediately; but I've never known anything of the sort to happen.”
“Rather a difficult position for our men if the staff can come and go freely at night,” the Inspector pointed out. “If a constable sees a light in the window, what's he to make of it? Does Dr. Silverdale work late often?”
“I really couldn't tell you.”
“You don't see much of him privately, sir?”
“Very little,” Markfield answered. “Only when I run across him by accident down town, like last night.”
“You met him, did you?”
“Hardly even that. I happened to drop into the Grosvenor for dinner after I left here. I can't get meals at home just now unless I cook 'em myself. As I was finishing my coffee, Silverdale came into the dining-room with Miss Deepcar and took a table in the window recess. I didn't disturb them, and I don't think they noticed me.”
“Then they were just beginning dinner when you left the place? What time was that, can you tell me?”
Markfield looked suspiciously at the Inspector.
“You're trying to get me to say something that you want to use against—well, someone else, shall we say? I don't care about it, frankly. But since you could get the information from the waiter who served them, there's no harm done. I went to the Grosvenor at 6.35 or thereabouts. I was going down to the Research Station afterwards to pick up some notes, so I dined early that night. Silverdale and Miss Deepcar came in just as I was finishing dinner—that would be about a quarter past seven or thereby. I expect they were going on to some show afterwards.”
“Was she in evening dress?”
“Ask me another. I never can tell whether a girl's in evening dress or not, nowadays, with these new fashions.”
Inspector Flamborough closed his notebook and took his leave, followed by Sir Clinton. When they reached the street again and had got into the waiting car, the Chief Constable turned to his subordinate.
“You collected a lot of interesting information that time.”
“I noticed you left it all to me, sir; but I think I got one or two things worth having. It's a bit disconnected; and it'll take some thinking before it's straightened out.”
“What's your main inference, as things stand?” Sir Clinton inquired.
“Well, sir, it's a bit early yet. But I've been wondering about one thing, certainly.”
“And that is?”
“And that is whether Peeping Tom's name wasn't Thomasina,” Flamborough announced gravely.
“There are two sexes, of course,” Sir Clinton admitted with equal gravity. “And inquisitiveness is supposed to be more strongly
developed in the female than in the male. The next thing will be to consider whether Mr. Justice shouldn't be rechristened Justitia. One ought to take all possibilities into account.”
