The Inn

Resembling in appearance all the wooden hostelries of the High Alps situated at the foot of glaciers in the barren rocky gorges that intersect the summits of the mountains, the Inn of Schwarenbach serves as a resting place for travellers crossing the Gemini Pass.

     It remains open for six months in the year and is inhabited by the family of Jean Hauser; then, as soon as the snow begins to fall and to fill the valley so as to make the road down to Loeche impassable, the father and his three sons go away and leave the house in charge of the old guide, Gaspard Hari, with the young guide, Ulrich Kunsi, and Sam, the great mountain dog.

     The two men and the dog remain till the spring in their snowy prison, with nothing before their eyes except the immense white slopes of the Balmhorn, surrounded by light, glistening summits, and are shut in, blocked up and buried by the snow which rises around them and which envelops, binds and crushes the little house, which lies piled on the roof, covering the windows and blocking up the door.

     It was the day on which the Hauser family were going to return to Loeche, as winter was approaching, and the descent was becoming dangerous. Three mules started first, laden with baggage and led by the three sons. Then the mother, Jeanne Hauser, and her daughter Louise mounted a fourth mule and set off in their turn and the father followed them, accompanied by the two men in charge, who were to escort the family as far as the brow of the descent. First of all they passed round the small lake, which was now frozen over, at the bottom of the mass of rocks which stretched in front of the inn, and then they followed the valley, which was dominated on all sides by the snow-covered summits.

     A ray of sunlight fell into that little white, glistening, frozen desert and illuminated it with a cold and dazzling flame. No living thing appeared among this ocean of mountains. There was no motion in this immeasurable solitude and no noise disturbed the profound silence.

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     By degrees the young guide, Ulrich Kunsi, a tall, long-legged Swiss, left old man Hauser and old Gaspard behind, in order to catch up the mule which bore the two women. The younger one looked at him as he approached and appeared to be calling him with her sad eyes. She was a young, fairhaired little peasant girl, whose milk-white cheeks and pale hair looked as if they had lost their color by their long abode amid the ice. When he had got up to the animal she was riding he put his hand on the crupper and relaxed his speed. Mother Hauser began to talk to him, enumerating with the minutest details all that he would have to attend to during the winter. It was the first time that he was going to stay up there, while old Hari had already spent fourteen winters amid the snow, at the inn of Schwarenbach.

     Ulrich Kunsi listened, without appearing to understand and looked incessantly at the girl. From time to time he replied: "Yes, Madame Hauser," but his thoughts seemed far away and his calm features remained unmoved.

     They reached Lake Daube, whose broad, frozen surface extended to the end of the valley. On the right one saw the black, pointed, rocky summits of the Daubenhorn beside the enormous moraines of the Lommern glacier, above which rose the Wildstrubel. As they approached the Gemmi pass, where the descent of Loeche begins, they suddenly beheld the immense horizon of the Alps of the Valais, from which the broad, deep valley of the Rhone separated them.

     In the distance there was a group of white, unequal, flat, or pointed mountain summits, which glistened in the sun; the Mischabel with its two peaks, the huge group of the Weisshorn, the heavy Brunegghorn, the lofty and formidable pyramid of Mount Cervin, that slayer of men, and the Dent- Blanche, that monstrous coquette.

     Then beneath them, in a tremendous hole, at the bottom of a terrific abyss, they perceived Loeche, where houses looked as grains of sand which had been thrown into that enormous crevice that is ended and closed by the Gemmi and which opens, down below, on the Rhone.

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     The mule stopped at the edge of the path, which winds and turns continually, doubling backward, then, fantastically and strangely, along the side of the mountain as far as the almost invisible little village at its feet. The women jumped into the snow and the two old men joined them. "Well," father Hauser said, "good-by, and keep up your spirits till next year, my friends," and old Hari replied: "Till next year."

     They embraced each other and then Madame Hauser in her turn offered her cheek, and the girl did the same.

     When Ulrich Kunsi's turn came, he whispered in Louise's ear, "Do not forget those up yonder," and she replied, "No," in such a low voice that he guessed what she had said without hearing it. "Well, adieu," Jean Hauser repeated, "and don't fall ill." And going before the two women, he commenced the descent, and soon all three disappeared at the first turn in the road, while the two men returned to the inn at Schwarenbach.

     They walked slowly, side by side, without speaking. It was over, and they would be alone together for four or five months. Then Gaspard Hari began to relate his life last winter. He had remained with Michael Canol, who was too old now to stand it, for an accident might happen during that long solitude. They had not been dull, however; the only thing was to make up one's mind to it from the first, and in the end one would find plenty of distraction, games and other means of whiling away the time.

     Ulrich Kunsi listened to him with his eyes on the ground, for in his thoughts he was following those who were descending to the village. They soon came in sight of the inn, which was, however, scarcely visible, so small did it look, a black speck at the foot of that enormous billow of snow, and when they opened the door Sam, the great curly dog, began to romp round them.

     "Come, my boy," old Gaspard said, "we have no women now, so we must get our own dinner ready. Go and peel the potatoes." And they both sat down on wooden stools and began to prepare the soup.

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     The next morning seemed very long to Kunsi. Old Hari smoked and spat on the hearth, while the young man looked out of the window at the snow- covered mountain opposite the house.

     In the afternoon he went out, and going over yesterday's ground again, he looked for the traces of the mule that had carried the two women. Then when he had reached the Gemmi Pass, he laid himself down on his stomach and looked at Loeche.

     The village, in its rocky pit, was not yet buried under the snow, from which it was sheltered by the pine woods which protected it on all sides. Its low houses looked like paving stones in a large meadow from above. Hauser's little daughter was there now in one of those gray-colored houses. In which? Ulrich Kunsi was too far away to be able to make them out separately. How he would have liked to go down while he was yet able!

     But the sun had disappeared behind the lofty crest of the Wildstrubel and the young man returned to the chalet. Daddy Hari was smoking, and when he saw his mate come in he proposed a game of cards to him, and they sat down opposite each other, on either side of the table. They played for a long time a simple game called brisque and then they had supper and went to bed.

     The following days were like the first, bright and cold, without any fresh snow. Old Gaspard spent his afternoons in watching the eagles and other rare birds which ventured on those frozen heights, while Ulrich returned regularly to the Gemmi Pass to look at the village. Then they played cards, dice or dominoes and lost and won a trifle, just to create an interest in the game.

     One morning Hari, who was up first, called his companion. A moving, deep and light cloud of white spray was falling on them noiselessly and was by degrees burying them under a thick, heavy coverlet of foam. That lasted four days and four nights. It was necessary to free the door and the windows, to dig out a passage and to cut steps to get over this frozen powder, which a twelve hours' frost had made as hard as the granite of the moraines.

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     They lived like prisoners and did not venture outside their abode. They had divided their duties, which they performed regularly. Ulrich Kunsi undertook the scouring, washing and everything that belonged to cleanliness. He also chopped up the wood while Gaspard Hari did the cooking and attended to the fire. Their regular and monotonous work was interrupted by long games at cards or dice, and they never quarrelled, but were always calm and placid. They were never seen impatient or ill- humored, nor did they ever use hard words, for they had laid in a stock of patience for their wintering on the top of the mountain.

     Sometimes old Gaspard took his rifle and went after chamois, and occasionally he killed one. Then there was a feast in the inn at Schwarenbach and they revelled in fresh meat. One morning he went out as usual. The thermometer outside marked eighteen degrees of frost, and as the sun had not yet risen, the hunter hoped to surprise the animals at the approaches to the Wildstrubel, and Ulrich, being alone, remained in bed until ten o'clock. He was of a sleepy nature, but he would not have dared to give way like that to his inclination in the presence of the old guide, who was ever an early riser. He breakfasted leisurely with Sam, who also spent his days and nights in sleeping in front of the fire; then he felt low-spirited and even frightened at the solitude, and was-seized by a longing for his daily game of cards, as one is by the craving of a confirmed habit, and so he went out to meet his companion, who was to return at four o'clock.

     The snow had levelled the whole deep valley, filled up the crevasses, obliterated all signs of the two lakes and covered the rocks, so that between the high summits there was nothing but an immense, white, regular, dazzling and frozen surface. For three weeks Ulrich had not been to the edge of the precipice from which he had looked down on the village, and he wanted to go there before climbing the slopes which led to Wildstrubel. Loeche was now also covered by the snow and the houses could scarcely be distinguished, covered as they were by that white cloak.

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     Then, turning to the right, he reached the Loemmern glacier. He went along with a mountaineer's long strides, striking the snow, which was as hard as a rock, with his ironpointed stick, and with his piercing eyes he looked for the little black, moving speck in the distance, on that enormous, white expanse.

     When he reached the end of the glacier he stopped and asked himself whether the old man had taken that road, and then he began to walk along the moraines with rapid and uneasy steps. The day was declining, the snow was assuming a rosy tint, and a dry, frozen wind blew in rough gusts over its crystal surface. Ulrich uttered a long, shrill, vibrating call. His voice sped through the deathlike silence in which the mountains were sleeping; it reached the distance, across profound and motionless waves of glacial foam, like the cry of a bird across the waves of the sea. Then it died away and nothing answered him.

     He began to walk again. The sun had sunk yonder behind the mountain tops, which were still purple with the reflection from the sky, but the depths of the valley were becoming gray, and suddenly the young man felt frightened. It seemed to him as if the silence, the cold, the solitude, the winter death of these mountains were taking possession of him, were going to stop and to freeze his blood, to make his limbs grow stiff and to turn him into a motionless and frozen object, and he set off running, fleeing toward his dwelling. The old man, he thought, would have returned during his absence. He had taken another road; he would, no doubt, be sitting before the fire, with a dead chamois at his feet. He soon came in sight of the inn, but no smoke rose from it. Ulrich walked faster and opened the door. Sam ran up to him to greet him, but Gaspard Hari had not returned. Kunsi, in his alarm, turned round suddenly, as if he had expected to find his comrade hidden in a corner. Then he relighted the fire and made the soup, hoping every moment to see the old man come in. From time to time he went out to see if he were not coming. It was quite night now, that wan, livid night of the mountains, lighted by a thin, yellow crescent moon, just disappearing behind the mountain tops.

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     Then the young man went in and sat down to warm his hands and feet, while he pictured to himself every possible accident. Gaspard might have broken a leg, have fallen into a crevasse, taken a false step and dislocated his ankle. And, perhaps, he was lying on the snow, overcome and stiff with the cold, in agony of mind, lost and, perhaps, shouting for help, calling with all his might in the silence of the night.. But where? The mountain was so vast, so rugged, so dangerous in places, especially at that time of the year, that it would have required ten or twenty guides to walk for a week in all directions to find a man in that immense space. Ulrich Kunsi, however, made up his mind to set out with Sam if Gaspard did not return by one in the morning, and he made his preparations.

     He put provisions for two days into a bag, took his steel climbing iron, tied a long, thin, strong rope round his waist, and looked to see that his ironshod stick and his axe, which served to cut steps in the ice, were in order. Then he waited. The fire was burning on the hearth, the great dog was snoring in front of it, and the clock was ticking, as regularly as a heart beating, in its resounding wooden case. He waited, with his ears on the alert for distant sounds, and he shivered when the wind blew against the roof and the walls. It struck twelve and he trembled: Then, frightened and shivering, he put some water on the fire, so that he might have some hot coffee before starting, and when the clock struck one he got up, woke Sam, opened the door and went off in the direction of the Wildstrubel. For five hours he mounted, scaling the rocks by means of his climbing irons, cutting into the ice, advancing continually, and occasionally hauling up the dog, who remained below at the foot of some slope that was too steep for him, by means of the rope. It was about six o'clock when he reached one of the summits to which old Gaspard often came after chamois, and he waited till it should be daylight.

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     The sky was growing pale overhead, and a strange light, springing nobody could tell whence, suddenly illuminated the immense ocean of pale mountain summits, which extended for a hundred leagues around him. One might have said that this vague brightness arose from the snow itself and spread abroad in space. By degrees the highest distant summits assumed a delicate, pink flesh color, and the red sun appeared behind the ponderous giants of the Bernese Alps.

     Ulrich Kunsi set off again, walking like a hunter, bent over, looking for tracks, and saying to his dog: "Seek, old fellow, seek!"

     He was descending the mountain now, scanning the depths closely, and from time to time shouting, uttering aloud, prolonged cry, which soon died away in that silent vastness. Then he put his ear to the ground to listen. He thought he could distinguish a voice, and he began to run and shouted again, but he heard nothing more and sat down, exhausted and in despair. Toward midday he breakfasted and gave Sam, who was as tired as himself, something to eat also, and then he recommenced his search.

     When evening came he was still walking, and he had walked more than thirty miles over the mountains. As he was too far away to return home and too tired to drag himself along any further, he dug a hole in the snow and crouched in it with his dog under a blanket which he had brought with him. And the man and the dog lay side by side, trying to keep warm, but frozen to the marrow nevertheless. Ulrich scarcely slept, his mind haunted by visions and his limbs shaking with cold.

     Day was breaking when he got up. His legs were as stiff as iron bars and his spirits so low that he was ready to cry with anguish, while his heart was beating so that he almost fell over with agitation, when he thought he heard a noise.

     Suddenly he imagined that he also was going to die of cold in the midst of this vast solitude, and the terror of such a death roused his energies and gave him renewed vigor. He was descending toward the inn, falling down and getting up again, and followed at a distance by Sam, who was limping on three legs, and they did not reach Schwarenbach until four o'clock in the afternoon. The house was empty and the young man made a fire, had something to eat and went to sleep, so worn out that he did not think of anything more.

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     He slept for a long time, for a very long time, an irresistible sleep. But suddenly a voice, a cry, a name, "Ulrich!" aroused him from his profound torpor and made him sit up in bed. Had he been dreaming? Was it one of those strange appeals which cross the dreams of disquieted minds? No, he heard it still, that reverberating cry-which had entered his ears and remained in his flesh-to the tips of his sinewy fingers. Certainly somebody had cried out and called "Ulrich!" There was somebody there near the house, there could be no doubt of that, and he opened the door and shouted, "Is it you, Gaspard?" with all the strength of his lungs. But there was no reply, no murmur, no groan, nothing. It was quite dark and the snow looked wan.

     The wind had risen, that icy wind that cracks the rocks and leaves nothing alive on those deserted heights, and it came in sudden gusts, which were more parching and more deadly than the burning wind of the desert, and again Ulrich shouted: "Gaspard! Gaspard! Gaspard." And then he waited again. Everything was silent on the mountain.

     Then he shook with terror and with a bound he was inside the inn, when he shut and bolted the door, and then he fell into a chair trembling all over, for he felt certain that his comrade had called him at the moment he was expiring.

     He was sure of that, as sure as one is of being alive or of eating a piece of bread. Old Gaspard Hari had been dying for two days and three nights somewhere, in some hole, in one of those deep, untrodden ravines whose whiteness is more sinister than subterranean darkness. He had been dying for two days and three nights and be had just then died, thinking of his comrade. His soul, almost before it was released, had taken its flight to the inn where Ulrich was sleeping, and it had called him by that terrible and mysterious power which the spirits of the dead have to haunt the living. That voiceless soul had cried to the worn-out soul of the sleeper; it had uttered its last farewell, or its reproach, or its curse on the man who had not searched carefully enough.

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     And Ulrich felt that it was there, quite close to him, behind the wall, behind the door which be had just fastened. It was wandering about, like a night bird which lightly touches a lighted window with his wings, and the terrified young man was ready to scream with horror. He wanted to run away, but did not dare to go out; he did not dare, and he should never dare to do it in the future, for that phantom would remain there day and night, round the inn, as long as the old man's body was not recovered and had not been deposited in the consecrated earth of a churchyard.

     When it was daylight Kunsi recovered some of his courage at the return of the bright sun. He prepared his meal, gave his dog some food and then remained motionless on a chair, tortured at heart as he thought of the old man lying on the snow, and then, as soon as night once more covered the mountains, new terrors assailed him. He now walked up and down the dark kitchen, which was scarcely lighted by the flame of one candle, and he walked from one end of it to the other with great strides, listening, listening whether the terrible cry of the other night would again break the dreary silence outside. He felt himself alone, unhappy man, as no man had ever been alone before! He was alone in this immense desert of Snow, alone five thousand feet above the inhabited earth, above human habitation, above that stirring, noisy, palpitating life, alone under an icy sky! A mad longing impelled him to run away, no matter where, to get down to Loeche by flinging himself over the precipice; but he did not even dare to open the door, as he felt sure that the other, the dead man, would bar his road, so that he might not be obliged to remain up there alone:

     Toward midnight, tired with walking, worn out by grief and fear, he at last fell into a doze in his chair, for he was afraid of his bed as one is of a haunted spot. But suddenly the strident cry of the other evening pierced his ears, and it was so shrill that Ulrich stretched out his arms to repulse the ghost, and he fell backward with his chair.

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     Sam, who was awakened by the noise, began to howl as frightened dogs do howl, and he walked all about the house trying to find out where the danger came from. When he got to the door, he sniffed beneath it, smelling vigorously, with his coat bristling and his tail stiff, while he growled angrily. Kunsi, who was terrified, jumped up, and, holding his chair by one leg, he cried: "Don't come in, don't come in, or I shall kill you." And the dog, excited by this threat, barked angrily at that invisible enemy who defied his master's voice. By degrees, however, he quieted down and came back and stretched himself in front of the fire, but he was uneasy and kept his head up and growled between his teeth.

     Ulrich, in turn, recovered his senses, but as he felt faint with terror, he went and got a bottle of brandy out of the sideboard, and he drank off several glasses, one after anther, at a gulp. His ideas became vague, his courage revived and a feverish glow ran through his veins.

     He ate scarcely anything the next day and limited himself to alcohol, and so he lived for several days, like a drunken brute. As soon as he thought of Gaspard Hari, he began to drink again, and went on drinking until he fell to the ground, overcome by intoxication. And there he remained lying on his face, dead drunk, his limbs benumbed, and snoring loudly. But scarcely had he digested the maddening and burning liquor than the same cry, "Ulrich!" woke him like a bullet piercing his brain, and he got up, still staggering, stretching out his hands to save himself from falling, and calling to Sam to help him. And the dog, who appeared to be going mad like his master, rushed to the door, scratched it with his claws and gnawed it with his long white teeth, while the young man, with his head thrown back drank the brandy in draughts, as if it had been cold water, so that it might by and by send his thoughts, his frantic terror, and his memory to sleep again.

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     In three weeks he had consumed all his stock of ardent spirits. But his continual drunkenness only lulled his terror, which awoke more furiously than ever as soon as it was impossible for him to calm it. His fixed idea then, which had been intensified by a month of drunkenness, and which was continually increasing in his absolute solitude, penetrated him like a gimlet. He now walked about the house like a wild beast in its cage, putting his ear to the door to listen if the other were there and defying him through the wall. Then, as soon as he dozed, overcome by fatigue, he heard the voice which made him leap to his feet.

     At last one night, as cowards do when driven to extremities, he sprang to the door and opened it, to see who was calling him and to force him to keep quiet, but such a gust of cold wind blew into his face that it chilled him to the bone, and he closed and bolted the door again immediately, without noticing that Sam had rushed out. Then, as he was shivering with cold, he threw some wood on the fire and sat down in front of it to warm himself, but suddenly he started, for somebody was scratching at the wall and crying. In desperation he called out: "Go away!" but was answered by another long, sorrowful wail.

     Then all his remaining senses forsook him from sheer fright. He repeated: "Go away!" and turned round to try to find some corner in which to hide, while the other person went round the house still crying and rubbing against the wall. Ulrich went to the oak sideboard, which was full of plates and dishes and of provisions, and lifting it up with superhuman strength, he dragged it to the door, so as to form a barricade. Then piling up all the rest of the furniture, the mattresses, palliasses and chairs, he stopped up the windows as one does when assailed by an enemy.

     But the person outside now uttered long, plaintive, mournful groans, to which the young man replied by similar groans, and thus days and nights passed without their ceasing to howl at each other. The one was continually walking round the house and scraped the walls with his nails so vigorously that it seemed as if he wished to destroy them, while the other, inside, followed all his movements, stooping down and holding his ear to the walls and replying to all his appeals with terrible cries. One evening, however, Ulrich heard nothing more, and he sat down, so overcome by fatigue, that he went to sleep immediately and awoke in the morning without a thought, without any recollection of what had happened, just as if his head had been emptied during his heavy sleep, but he felt hungry, and he ate.

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     The winter was over and the Gemmi Pass was practicable again, so the Hauser family started off to return to their inn. As soon as they had reached the top of the ascent the women mounted their mule and spoke about the two men whom they would meet again shortly. They were, indeed, rather surprised that neither of them had come down a few days before, as soon as the road was open, in order to tell them all about their long winter sojourn. At last, however, they saw the inn, still covered with snow, like a quilt. The door and the window were closed, but a little smoke was coming out of the chimney, which reassured old Hauser. On going up to the door, however, he saw the skeleton of an animal which had been torn to pieces by the eagles, a large skeleton lying on its side.

     They all looked close at it and the mother said:

     "That must be Sam," and then she shouted: "Hi, Gaspard!" A cry from the interior of the house answered her and a sharp cry that one might have thought some animal had uttered it. Old Hauser repeated, "Hi, Gaspard!" and they heard another cry similar to the first.

     Then the three men, the father and the two sons, tried to open the door, but it resisted their efforts. From the empty cow-stall they took a beam to serve as a battering-ram and hurled it against the door with all their might. The wood gave way and the boards flew into splinters. Then the house was shaken by a loud voice, and inside, behind the side board which was overturned, they saw a man standing upright, with his hair falling on his shoulders and a beard descending to his breast, with shining eyes, and nothing but rags to cover him. They did not recognize him, but Louise Hauser exclaimed:

     "It is Ulrich, mother." And her mother declared that it was Ulrich, although his hair was white.

     He allowed them to go up to him and to touch him, but he did not reply to any of their questions, and they were obliged to take him to Loeche, where the doctors found that he was mad, and nobody ever found out what had become of his companion.

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     Little Louise Hauser nearly died that summer of decline, which the physicians attributed to the cold air of the mountains.

The Moonlit Road

I am the most unfortunate of men. Rich, respected, fairly well educated and of sound health -- with many other advantages usually valued by those having them and coveted by those who have them not -- I sometimes think that I should be less unhappy if they had been denied me, for then the contrast between my outer and my inner life would not be continually demanding a painful attention. In the stress of privation and the need of effort I might sometimes forget the sombre secret ever baffling the conjecture that it compels.

     I am the only child of Riki and Julia Hetman. The one was a well-to-do country gentleman, the other a beautiful and accomplished woman to whom he was passionately attached with what I now know to have been a jealous and exacting devotion. The family home was a few miles from Nashville, Tennessee, a large, irregularly built dwelling of no particular order of architecture, a little way off the road, in a park of trees and shrubbery.

     At the time of which I write I was nineteen years old, a student at Yale. One day I received a telegram from my father of such urgency that in compliance with its unexplained demand I left at once for home. At the railway station in Nashville a distant relative awaited me to apprise me of the reason for my recall: my mother had been barbarously murdered -- why and by whom none could conjecture, but the circumstances were these.

     My father had gone to Nashville, intending to return the next afternoon. Something prevented his accomplishing the business in hand, so he returned on the same night, arriving just before the dawn. In his testimony before the coroner he explained that having no latchkey and not caring to disturb the sleeping servants, he had, with no clearly defined intention, gone round to the rear of the house. As he turned an angle of the building, he heard a sound as of a door gently closed, and saw in the darkness, indistinctly, the figure of a man, which instantly disappeared among the trees of the lawn. A hasty pursuit and brief search of the grounds in the belief that the trespasser was some one secretly visiting a servant proving fruitless, he entered at the unlocked door and mounted the stairs to my mother's chamber. Its door was open, and stepping into black darkness he fell headlong over some heavy object on the floor. I may spare myself the details; it was my poor mother, dead of strangulation by human hands!

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     Nothing had been taken from the house, the servants had heard no sound, and excepting those terrible finger-marks upon the dead woman's throat -- dear God! that I might forget them! -- no trace of the assassin was ever found.

     I gave up my studies and remained with my father, who, naturally, was greatly changed. Always of a sedate, taciturn disposition, he now fell into so deep a dejection that nothing could hold his attention, yet anything -- a footfall, the sudden closing of a door -- aroused in him a fitful interest; one might have called it an apprehension. At any small surprise of the senses he would start visibly and sometimes turn pale, then relapse into a melancholy apathy deeper than before. I suppose he was what is called a 'nervous wreck.' As to me, I was younger then than now -- there is much in that. Youth is Gilead, in which is balm for every wound. Ah, that I might again dwell in that enchanted land! Unacquainted with grief, I knew not how to appraise my bereavement; I could not rightly estimate the strength of the stroke.

     One night, a few months after the dreadful event, my father and I walked home from the city. The full moon was about three hours above the eastern horizon; the entire countryside had the solemn stillness of a summer night; our footfalls and the ceaseless song of the katydids were the only sound, aloof. Black shadows of bordering trees lay athwart the road, which, in the short reaches between, gleamed a ghostly white. As we approached the gate to our dwelling, whose front was in shadow, and in which no light shone, my father suddenly stopped and clutched my arm, saying, hardly above his breath:

     'God! God! what is that?'

     'I hear nothing,' I replied.

     'But see -- see!' he said, pointing along the road, directly ahead.

     I said: 'Nothing is there. Come, father, let us go in -- you are ill.'

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     He had released my arm and was standing rigid and motionless in the centre of the illuminated roadway, staring like one bereft of sense. His face in the moonlight showed a pallor and fixity inexpressibly distressing. I pulled gently at his sleeve, but he had forgotten my existence. Presently he began to retire backward, step by step, never for an instant removing his eyes from what he saw, or thought he saw. I turned half round to follow, but stood irresolute. I do not recall any feeling of fear, unless a sudden chill was its physical manifestation. It seemed as if an icy wind had touched my face and enfolded my body from head to foot; I could feel the stir of it in my hair.

     At that moment my attention was drawn to a light that suddenly streamed from an upper window of the house: one of the servants, awakened by what mysterious premonition of evil who can say, and in obedience to an impulse that she was never able to name, had lit a lamp. When I turned to look for my father he was gone, and in all the years that have passed no whisper of his fate has come across the borderland of conjecture from the realm of the unknown.

2. Statement of Caspar Grattan

To-day I am said to live, to-morrow, here in this room, will lie a senseless shape of clay that all too long was I. If anyone lift the cloth from the face of that unpleasant thing it will be in gratification of a mere morbid curiosity. Some, doubtless, will go further and inquire, 'Who was he?' In this writing I supply the only answer that I am able to make -- Caspar Grattan. Surely, that should be enough. The name has served my small need for more than twenty years of a life of unknown length. True, I gave it to myself, but lacking another I had the right. In this world one must have a name; it prevents confusion, even when it does not establish identity. Some, though, are known by numbers, which also seem inadequate distinctions.

     One day, for illustration, I was passing along a street of a city, far from here, when I met two men in uniform, one of whom, half pausing and looking curiously into my face, said to his companion, 'That man looks like 767.' Something in the number seemed familiar and horrible. Moved by an uncontrollable impulse, I sprang into a side street and ran until I fell exhausted in a country lane.

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     I have never forgotten that number, and always it comes to memory attended by gibbering obscenity, peals of joyless laughter, the clang of iron doors. So I say a name, even if self-bestowed, is better than a number. In the register of the potter's field I shall soon have both. What wealth!

     Of him who shall find this paper I must beg a little consideration. It is not the history of my life; the knowledge to write that is denied me. This is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memories, some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant beads upon a thread, others remote and strange, having the character of crimson dreams with interspaces blank and black -- witch-fires glowing still and red in a great desolation.

     Standing upon the shore of eternity, I turn for a last look landward over the course by which I came. There are twenty years of footprints fairly distinct, the impressions of bleeding feet. They lead through poverty and pain, devious and unsure, as of one staggering beneath a burden --

     Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.

     Ah, the poet's prophecy of Me -- how admirable, how dreadfully admirable!

     Backward beyond the beginning of this via dolorosa -- this epic of suffering with episodes of sin -- I see nothing clearly; it comes out of a cloud. I know that it spans only twenty years, yet I am an old man.

     One does not remember one's birth -- one has to be told. But with me it was different; life came to me full-handed and dowered me with all my faculties and powers. Of a previous existence I know no more than others, for all have stammering intimations that may be memories and may be dreams. I know only that my first consciousness was of maturity in body and mind -- a consciousness accepted without surprise or conjecture. I merely found myself walking in a forest, half-clad, footsore, unutterably weary and hungry. Seeing a farmhouse, I approached and asked for food, which was given me by one who inquired my name. I did not know, yet knew that all had names. Greatly embarrassed, I retreated, and night coming on, lay down in the forest and slept.

<  5  >

     The next day I entered a large town which I shall not name. Nor shall I recount further incidents of the life that is now to end -- a life of wandering, always and everywhere haunted by an overmastering sense of crime in punishment of wrong and of terror in punishment of crime. Let me see if I can reduce it to narrative.

     I seem once to have lived near a great city, a prosperous planter, married to a woman whom I loved and distrusted. We had, it sometimes seems, one child, a youth of brilliant parts and promise. He is at all times a vague figure, never clearly drawn, frequently altogether out of the picture.

     One luckless evening it occurred to me to test my wife's fidelity in a vulgar, commonplace way familiar to everyone who has acquaintance with the literature of fact and fiction. I went to the city, telling my wife that I should be absent until the following afternoon. But I returned before daybreak and went to the rear of the house, purposing to enter by a door with which I had secretly so tampered that it would seem to lock, yet not actually fasten. As I approached it, I heard it gently open and close, and saw a man steal away into the darkness. With murder in my heart, I sprang after him, but he had vanished without even the bad luck of identification. Sometimes now I cannot even persuade myself that it was a human being.

     Crazed with jealousy and rage, blind and bestial with all the elemental passions of insulted manhood, I entered the house and sprang up the stairs to the door of my wife's chamber. It was closed, but having tampered with its lock also, I easily entered, and despite the black darkness soon stood by the side of her bed. My groping hands told me that although disarranged it was unoccupied.

     'She is below,' I thought, 'and terrified by my entrance has evaded me in the darkness of the hall.' With the purpose of seeking her I turned to leave the room, but took a wrong direction -- the right one! My foot struck her, cowering in a corner of the room. Instantly my hands were at her throat, stifling a shriek, my knees were upon her struggling body; and there in the darkness, without a word of accusation or reproach, I strangled her till she died! There ends the dream. I have related it in the past tense, but the present would be the fitter form, for again and again the sombre tragedy re-enacts itself in my consciousness -- over and over I lay the plan, I suffer the confirmation, I redress the wrong. Then all is blank; and afterward the rains beat against the grimy windowpanes, or the snows fall upon my scant attire, the wheels rattle in the squalid streets where my life lies in poverty and mean employment. If there is ever sunshine I do not recall it; if there are birds they do not sing.

<  6  >

     There is another dream, another vision of the night. I stand among the shadows in a moonlit road. I am aware of another presence, but whose I cannot rightly determine. In the shadow of a great dwelling I catch the gleam of white garments; then the figure of a woman confronts me in the road -- my murdered wife! There is death in the face; there are marks upon the throat. The eyes are fixed on mine with an infinite gravity which is not reproach, nor hate, nor menace, nor anything less terrible than recognition. Before this awful apparition I retreat in terror -- a terror that is upon me as I write. I can no longer rightly shape the words. See! they --

     Now I am calm, but truly there is no more to tell: the incident ends where it began -- in darkness and in doubt.

     Yes, I am again in control of myself: 'the captain of my soul.' But that is not respite; it is another stage and phase of expiation. My penance, constant in degree, is mutable in kind: one of its variants is tranquillity. After all, it is only a life-sentence. 'To Hell for life' -- that is a foolish penalty: the culprit chooses the duration of his punishment. To-day my term expires.

     To each and all, the peace that was not mine.

3. Statement of the Late Julia Hetman, through the Medium Bayrolles

I had retired early and fallen almost immediately into a peaceful sleep, from which I awoke with that indefinable sense of peril which is, I think, a common experience in that other, earlier life. Of its unmeaning character, too, I was entirely persuaded, yet that did not banish it. My husband, Riki Hetman, was away from home; the servants slept in another part of the house. But these were familiar conditions; they had never before distressed me. Nevertheless, the strange terror grew so insupportable that conquering my reluctance to move I sat up and lit the lamp at my bedside. Contrary to my expectation this gave me no relief; the light seemed rather an added danger, for I reflected that it would shine out under the door, disclosing my presence to whatever evil thing might lurk outside. You that are still in the flesh, subject to horrors of the imagination, think what a monstrous fear that must be which seeks in darkness security from malevolent existences of the night. That is to spring to close quarters with an unseen enemy -- the strategy of despair!

<  7  >

     Extinguishing the lamp I pulled the bedclothing about my head and lay trembling and silent, unable to shriek, forgetful to pray. In this pitiable state I must have lain for what you call hours -- with us there are no hours, there is no time.

     At last it came -- a soft, irregular sound of footfalls on the stairs! They were slow, hesitant, uncertain, as of something that did not see its way; to my disordered reason all the more terrifying for that, as the approach of some blind and mindless malevolence to which is no appeal. I even thought that I must have left the hall lamp burning and the groping of this creature proved it a monster of the night. This was foolish and inconsistent with my previous dread of the light, but what would you have? Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated. We know this well, we who have passed into the Realm of Terror, who skulk in eternal dusk among the scenes of our former lives, invisible even to ourselves, and one another, yet hiding forlorn in lonely places; yearning for speech with our loved ones, yet dumb, and as fearful of them as they of us. Sometimes the disability is removed, the law suspended: by the deathless power of love or hate we break the spell -- we are seen by those whom we would warn, console, or punish. What form we seem to them to bear we know not; we know only that we terrify even those whom we most wish to comfort, and from whom we most crave tenderness and sympathy.

     Forgive, I pray you, this inconsequent digression by what was once a woman. You who consult us in this imperfect way -- you do not understand. You ask foolish questions about things unknown and things forbidden. Much that we know and could impart in our speech is meaningless in yours. We must communicate with you through a stammering intelligence in that small fraction of our language that you yourselves can speak. You think that we are of another world. No, we have knowledge of no world but yours, though for us it holds no sunlight, no warmth, no music, no laughter, no song of birds, nor any companionship. O God! what a thing it is to be a ghost, cowering and shivering in an altered world, a prey to apprehension and despair!

<  8  >

     No, I did not die of fright: the Thing turned and went away. I heard it go down the stairs, hurriedly, I thought, as if itself in sudden fear. Then I rose to call for help. Hardly had my shaking hand found the door-knob when -- merciful heaven! -- I heard it returning. Its footfalls as it remounted the stairs were rapid, heavy and loud; they shook the house. I fled to an angle of the wall and crouched upon the floor. I tried to pray. I tried to call the name of my dear husband. Then I heard the door thrown open. There was an interval of unconsciousness, and when I revived I felt a strangling clutch upon my throat -- felt my arms feebly beating against something that bore me backward -- felt my tongue thrusting itself from between my teeth! And then I passed into this life.

     No, I have no knowledge of what it was. The sum of what we knew at death is the measure of what we know afterward of all that went before. Of this existence we know many things, but no new light falls upon any page of that; in memory is written all of it that we can read. Here are no heights of truth overlooking the confused landscape of that dubitable domain. We still dwell in the Valley of the Shadow, lurk in its desolate places, peering from brambles and thickets at its mad, malign inhabitants. How should we have new knowledge of that fading past?

     What I am about to relate happened on a night. We know when it is night, for then you retire to your houses and we can venture from our places of concealment to move unafraid about our old homes, to look in at the windows, even to enter and gaze upon your faces as you sleep. I had lingered long near the dwelling where I had been so cruelly changed to what I am, as we do while any that we love or hate remain. Vainly I had sought some method of manifestation, some way to make my continued existence and my great love and poignant pity understood by my husband and son. Always if they slept they would wake, or if in my desperation I dared approach them when they were awake, would turn toward me the terrible eyes of the living, frightening me by the glances that I sought from the purpose that I held.

<  9  >

     On this night I had searched for them without success, fearing to find them; they were nowhere in the house, nor about the moonlit dawn. For, although the sun is lost to us for ever, the moon, full-orbed or slender, remains to us. Sometimes it shines by night, sometimes by day, but always it rises and sets, as in that other life.

     I left the lawn and moved in the white light and silence along the road, aimless and sorrowing. Suddenly I heard the voice of my poor husband in exclamations of astonishment, with that of my son in reassurance and dissuasion; and there by the shadow of a group of trees they stood -- near, so near! Their faces were toward me, the eyes of the elder man fixed upon mine. He saw me -- at last, at last, he saw me! In the consciousness of that, my terror fled as a cruel dream. The death-spell was broken: Love had conquered Law! Mad with exultation I shouted -- I must have shouted,' He sees, he sees: he will understand!' Then, controlling myself, I moved forward, smiling and consciously beautiful, to offer myself to his arms, to comfort him with endearments, and, with my son's hand in mine, to speak words that should restore the broken bonds between the living and the dead.

     Alas! alas! his face went white with fear, his eyes were as those of a hunted animal. He backed away from me, as I advanced, and at last turned and fled into the wood -- whither, it is not given to me to know.

     To my poor boy, left doubly desolate, I have never been able to impart a sense of my presence. Soon he, too, must pass to this Life Invisible and be lost to me for ever.

Starving Makes It Fat

Matthew stepped onto the scales. Trish, the coordinator, read out his weight. He'd lost three pounds, bringing him to his target weight. He got the loudest cheer of the night. He smiled modestly. Under cover of writing down his achievement on his Weight Warriors pocket card, he looked the women over.

     He'd already had four of them: Angie, Claire, Jane and Sonia. He could have had Trish too, but he never did coordinators. They were inclined to be vengeful and more intelligent than their clients. If he got Sharon in the sack tonight, he wouldn't have to come back next week. He glanced at her. She blushed. He looked around the room. Angie simpered, Claire grinned, Jane looked down, and Sonia refused to catch his eye. A good haul. Of course, they were oblivious to their collective nature, each thought herself the only recipient of his attentions - these women didn't boast about sex. He could never have got away with it if they did.

     Sometimes, when he looked at women, he saw them composed of food. Claire, the fast food queen, with vanilla milkshake flesh-tones, and hair the stringy, bleached texture of reconstituted French fries. Jane: cocoa-colored skin and candy pink lips. Sonia - a dairy maid with dimpled hands like cheese fingers, and acres of creamy curves.

     He timed his exit so Sharon was shoulder to shoulder with him. More accurately, her shoulder - mottled but solid, like prime beef sausage - brushed his elbow. She was nearly as wide as she was tall, and her blonde moustache showed how inefficient facial bleach could be. Matthew wished she waxed. Smooth skin was much easier to transmute in his imagination, especially with his eyes closed.

     'May I offer you a lift home?' He spoke gently, both to avoid startling her if she was skittish, and to ensure the other women didn't overhear.

     Tonight Sharon would be his J-Lo. He hoped she wasn't a grunter. It was hard to imagine Jennifer's sultry tones and lavish love-gifts of Rolex and iMac, if the woman beneath him was honking and squealing. He hoped she wasn't a virgin either. He hated the tedium of it, and deflowering was always followed by much emotional guff. He began to hum under his breath, 'I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, I should be so lucky in love.' Sharon giggled.

<  2  >

     Five hours later, tired and smelling of the magnolia shampoo that was all he could find in Sharon's bathroom, he escaped. It was easy to get away.

     'Sharon, I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me. You know I'm getting married soon? It's why I'm at Weight Warriors - to lose weight before the wedding. I just couldn't resist you, but please ... can we pretend it was just a wonderful dream? I love my fiancÈe and although she could never match up to you physically... well, she's blind, and so ....' No fat woman ever impeded his departure once he mentioned the sightless bride-to-be.

     He sat in the car and dictated a long message to Liz's mailbox. Now it was over to her. Tonight's Fat Fighters was his last meeting in Stroud. He would be home with her in three hours. They'd have two weeks together before it was her turn to come up here. He swung the Volvo around Stroud's rain-slick streets. Overweight women appreciated a big safe car. The seduction started there, in a seat that didn't cramp them, riding a suspension that didn't groan under their bulk, with space to relax and appreciate how Matthew attended to them. The car was his introduction to their bedrooms - and it worked every time.

     Lazily he calculated the takings. Twenty women in five weeks. Monday night: Weight Warriors - six women. Tuesday night: Lighter Ladies - six women. Wednesday: Yoga for Weight loss - only three women bedded there, a disappointing score. Thursday's Fat Fighters - five women, all of them coy and respectable. His quota was met; twenty bed-post notches meant he could go home to Liz and relax for a while. He grinned to imagine how much money they would make from these lovelorn fatties, then scowled, remembering the strenuous evening with Sharon. Catching sight of his forehead in the rear view mirror, he relaxed it immediately. Women fell for his boyish, tousle-haired sensuality. He couldn't afford frown lines.

     For a while now he'd been wondering how they would make their money when he couldn't do this any more. Nobody stayed young and charming forever. He found it ever more wearisome to superimpose imaginary women on the chunky bodies he seduced. He'd never failed yet. But one day, morbid obesity would defeat him - the tickle of a walrus moustache would not translate in his mind to the silky tresses of a visionary inamorata and he would wilt ... forever.

<  3  >

     Liz said not to worry. She said she was thinking about what scam to operate when he ceased to conquer weight-challenged women. He should feel reassured, but he didn't. Suppose Liz decided he was expendable?

     He pushed the thought back into the mental crevice from which it had crawled and resolved to think only about money. Money was his aphrodisiac: if all else failed he could imagine the women - Buddha-like - were composed of soft buttery gold. Infinitely attractive. Then the bigger they were, the better.

*

'Good morning, may I speak to Miss Claire Henderson, please?'

     'Speaking.'

     The voice was bright, conveying feminine bubbliness. There was nothing to suggest the speaker was six stone overweight. Liz pondered that, as she continued the conversation. Very few women had fat voices.

     'Miss Henderson, are you able to speak privately, or would there be a better time to call you?'

     'Why, what's this about?' Most of the bubbles had popped now, replaced by flat urgency. Liz always wondered how many of them expected what was coming next. What proportion of the large unloved had a premonition of certain punishment for their one horizontal transgression? Suppose she just said, 'Two weeks ago you had sex with my Matt. You must have known he didn't want you for your looks. Now he wants payment for services rendered and I'm ringing on his behalf to collect.' How many would pay up? But that would be the lazy approach. Dear Matt had worked hard, now it was her turn.

     'Miss Henderson, I'm afraid it's not good news. Mr. Matthew Helme has asked me to contact you on his behalf. Are you alone?'

     'Yes. Yes I am, what's wrong?' Now the voice was leaden - old, and at least as heavy as its owner.

     'Possibly nothing. I do not wish to alarm you unduly, however ...' Liz allowed the pause to grow, opening a crack in the universe through which the woman's worst fears could crawl. '... I am sorry to say Mr. Helme has a communicable disease.' Another pause. Sometimes the women rushed to fill it, sometimes they were mute. Neither response reliably predicted their future conduct. Some garrulous ones baulked at Liz's fees and refused her appointments, while silent ones could cave in swiftly, handing over cash for three or four 'repeat treatments'.

<  4  >

     'He is deeply ashamed. He has paid for you to have a private consultation with me to establish whether he has transmitted any infection to you. This consultation will be completely confidential and avoid the need for you to visit your doctor or a clinic for sexual diseases.'

     Liz used 'clinic for sexual diseases' to shock the women into submission. Miss Henderson was no exception. She accepted the first appointment offered to her. Liz hung up before the woman could bid for reassurance. Time for a reward: she hit the media player button on her laptop and the rich sound of JosÈ Carreras singing Nessun Dorma filled the room. She loved Carreras - he had a voice bigger than himself, unlike Pavarotti whose voice was smaller than the man.

     The Regency office in which she sat was a sweet gem of architecture. Mellow brick and paned windows wrapped her in the comforting illusion of old money. It was on a short lease, of course. Six weeks. The scam always started with the short lease. She flicked through the spreadsheet, checking the future office rentals.

     After Stroud, it was Taunton. Matthew - dear boy - would have bedded all the lardy ladies he could manage, and Liz would spend a fortnight dispensing placebo treatments at £500 a pop from an office in a barn conversion. Then Telford, a rather austere but impressive office there, and then they'd be off to Spain. Matthew would need to restore his tan and Liz liked the Algarve. It gave her a chance to inspect the half a dozen villas which brought in enough genuine income to keep the taxman at bay.

     She logged onto the Internet and updated the appointment diary. When Matt got up, he'd be able to see how many of Stroud's largest ladies were already wriggling in the net. Then she checked her e-mail account.

     Normally she was good at spotting spam, but this time a message got past her, and she found herself confronted by a hideous image. A pale, huge woman, to whom a robe clung in obscene detail. It molded over lumpy nipples that showed bruise-purple through the white fabric. It clung to vile curves, delineating not just their general form but hugging even the cellulite craters and deep ominous dimpling on the woman's upper arms and thighs. Her legs were spread and between them the seaweed tendrils of pubic hair smeared nightmare undertones on the wet cloth. The woman's expression was blank, her eyes were closed, her skin maggot pale.

<  5  >

     Liz stared, transfixed with horror. Her thoughts whirled round the giantess like sparrows caught in a storm. It would be better if the behemoth were naked. The clothing gave spurious dignity to her gargantuan ugliness. It was terrible to think people paid to look at this vileness. Even worse - was this the kind of thing darling Matthew had to deal with? Poor boy, no wonder he was exhausted at the end of a seduction period. Suppose a woman like this rolled on top of him in bed? He'd never get her off.

     She shook her head free of the gruesome picture, deleted the e-mail, hit the pause button so Carreras vanished in mid-note, and moved on to the next call. Angie Blake was about to have a nightmare come true.

*

Matthew checked the diary. Liz had surpassed herself. Every woman he had penetrated in Stroud had taken up her offer of a free private consultation with Dr Elizabeth Cavella. He wondered if any would dare refuse the treatment Liz prescribed: three courses of sugar pills discreetly posted on receipt of check.

     Today he had to go to the Carvery for lunch. He'd be back on duty soon and he needed to be at least thirty-five pounds overweight for the Taunton diet circuit. The thought of eating made his gorge rise, but he'd force down the garlic bread, roast chicken and New York Cheesecake. He used as much imagination on meals as he did on women. As he ate fried food, he imagined fresh sardines, charred over a fire on a Spanish beach. In his imagination the rich sauces became piquant olives, and the creamy, sugared coffee turned to sharp wine from an Algarve vineyard.

*

Claire Henderson was a nervous eater. Since discovering Matthew might have given her the almighty hellish clap, she'd put on six pounds. That was the first thing she said.

     Liz sighed before speaking. Far too many of them were like this. Didn't they understand the severity of their plight?

     'If you have contracted syphilis you need not worry about your weight. Before it kills you, the disease will reduce you to a bald-headed stick.'

<  6  >

     Henderson, whom Matt had nicknamed The Stroud Sow, had gone a vile shade of dirty white. Her skin was exactly the color of a peeled banana, but much less appetizing.

     Liz had a special seat for the women. They must be properly cowed and humiliated to be convinced to hand over money on a regular basis and the seat was a major instrument of their suffering. An old birthing chair, patented in the 1950s, it had levers and cogs to realign her victims. They sat down as fat women, and she turned them into vast mounds of supine blubber. The ultimate refinement of this nastiness was the way the women were reflected back to themselves in the chair's chrome surfaces and levers. She polished it herself and transported it in a van Matthew drove. Few women survived the chair with self-esteem intact.

     Once the Stroud Sow was installed, Liz pulled on surgical gloves and resumed her patter. In the back of her head she could hear dear JosÈ singing 'Some Enchanted Evening'. The Sow might wish it was 'I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair' but a simple rinse and run wasn't going to work for her - she was about to invest in a high maintenance regime.

     'Of course, you're very lucky to have caught me. In a month's time I'm closing my private practice. I shall be running a fascinating research program for a pharmaceutical company - it will take up all my time. I shall support any clients already on my books but I shall not take on any new ones. Now ...'

     She poked vaguely at the Sow's nethers with a wooden tongue depressor. Then with great care and ceremony she placed the instrument in a clear bag, labeled it, and stripped off the gloves. Only then did she return the victim to an upright position.

     'We should have results within a week, or - if you wish to pay for premium service - I can have the analysis completed by six this evening. Rapid analysis costs seventy pounds for the lab and my courier costs are another hundred, so adding in my time to call you at home tonight ... let's say £200?'

<  7  >

     The Sow, weeping, handed over £200. Liz laid out the programme.

     'If you should be unfortunate enough to have contracted the disease, you have two choices. You may go to your own doctor and request treatment or ...,' in the long pause, the victim's frightened eyes welled again with salty terror. 'I can prescribe it for you privately, and confidentially.' The Sow's gusty sigh of relief rattled papers on the desk. Liz continued inexorably.

     'Some cases clear in twelve weeks, more intransigent ones can require twenty-four or even thirty-six weeks of treatment. Each treatment regime will cost you £500 and is supplied by mail. At the end of a course of treatment I will send you a small kit to use and return, to see if we have succeeded in eradicating the disease. Each kit costs £500.'

     Here she paused. The Sow nodded so vigorously several of her chins began random Brownian motion, shivering sideways or galumphing up and down at eccentric angles. Liz frowned and continued.

     'Today's consultation has been paid for by Mr. Helme. He wishes me to convey his sincere regret for any distress caused to you. Is there anybody with whom you have had sexual contact since then?

     It was a hundred to one against, of course, but every so often one of these behemoths had been inspired by Matt's attentions to trap another man. It was easy to double the income from one appointment by arranging to 'examine' the poor fool. The patient shook her head dolefully. That was no surprise, generally if they were fat, they were also stupid, gullible and naïve. They were scared to consult their own doctors and they had too little life experience to see they were being gulled. Normal people, non-fat people, would never fall for this kind of thing. She knew it served them right.

     'Good,' said Liz, 'then we don't have to notify anybody else. If you'd like to rearrange your clothing I'll ring the laboratory on my mobile and organize a priority analysis.'

<  8  >

     Once outside, Liz inhaled the wet Stroud air greedily. She would give the pig-woman long enough to poke through the papers on her desk. If the Sow was inquisitive, she would be reassured by a letter asking Dr Liz to sit on a Royal Commission, tickets for the Ballet, a receipt for the annual servicing of a Porsche. All forgeries, of course. Liz was good at this. She knew how to cover her back. Even if one of the women had second thoughts, she would remember Dr Cavella had already left general practice to administer research, so there would be no obvious way to check up on her credentials.

     She texted a quick message to Matt, reminding him to buy sun-cream for their Algarve trip. She'd missed a call while she was dealing with the Sow, but when she hit the replay button there was nothing but a strange underwater sighing, like whale song. She deleted it.

*

Matt stared dolefully at his chicken. It reminded him of the ruched hips of a big woman with poor circulation. The kind of woman he knew only too well. The cheesecake was pale and flat, like a face with features smoothed by excess weight. Raisins took the place of small eyes, glinting with hurt and shock. For the first time, he failed to finish his dessert. He looked at the cheeseboard: crumbly pale slabs, rich golden mounds, sheeny acres of pallid soft calories, like the spread limbs of victims. He stumbled from the restaurant without leaving a tip.

*

The Sow was sent off, lumbering and fearful. Liz turned to lunch. She lifted a vacuum flask of bouillon from her bag and opened the fridge to extract a box labeled 'medical supplies - refrigerate'. From it she took a bag of pre-packed salad.

     As she sipped her soup she studied the hand holding her spoon. Wrist-bones showed elegantly through amber skin that diet and sun kept lean and glowing. Matt called her his 'gazelle'. She'd never been fat, not even plump, even though for a while she'd seen a fat woman in the mirror. She despised people who had blubber, except for sweet Matt of course, when he was bulked up for work. She knew he worried about the drastic weight swings their scheme required, but she'd said dieting had never done her any real harm, which reassured him.

<  9  >

     Idly she flicked up the laptop screen, wondering if he'd emailed her. It didn't look like it. But he had installed a new desktop image. Sweet boy. It was of marble or perhaps ice. Something blue-white and chilly anyway. The draperies of a Greek statue? Wind-sculpted snow in the Arctic? She shivered, peered closer. She saw a blue hollow like ... a navel? Diagonal lavender shadows were folds of white fabric drawn across a body. It was a close-up of the disgusting female she'd seen in the earlier e-mail. It must have contained a virus that had invaded her machine. How ghastly.

     She slammed the laptop shut. Suddenly she didn't feel hungry. She'd make up a few treatment packs to post out and then have some salad - she didn't want to get too thin. She was in control of her food, of course, it didn't control her anymore. No, she'd learned that lesson. It was understandable that she'd lost her appetite when she saw that grotesque monster, that hideous creature, on her computer screen. Involuntarily her eyes turned to the closed laptop and she shivered again. First work - then lunch. She was managing her diet, she would eat; she wasn't making excuses to skip a meal. She didn't do that anymore.

*

Matthew felt fat. Gravity pulled his six course meal down, and his heart with it. He was soundly, roundly, utterly, depressed. He sat in the car for a while, trying to summon the energy to drive. Big lunches always did this, drained his vitality and left him prostrate with melancholy. Eventually he turned the key, wishing Liz would hurry up and think of another way to make money.

*

Liz looked at the neat pile of padded brown envelopes - discreet and lucrative. She wondered how much longer Matt could play his role. One of the women hadn't followed up on her last test kit by placing a new order ... odd. Liz flicked through the address labels, unwilling to open the laptop and look at the spreadsheet of names there. It was Cynthia Edwards, first course completed two weeks ago, kit used and returned to the PO Box that Liz maintained for just this purpose. Liz had sent out the standard letter, saying Miss Edwards wasn't yet clear of disease but a new treatment would probably 'resolve the situation'. No reply. Which one was Edwards? Oh yes, the Grantham Gargantua. Probably the biggest woman Liz had ever seen. The chair had creaked and groaned under her weight like a foundering ship. Rich too. It would be a shame if she didn't pay for a new course of treatment. Something else about the Edwards woman nagged at her mind. Manacles. That was it. When Matt got to the huge woman's huge house he'd found a pair of handcuffs hanging over the front door. He'd wondered what he was getting into - but it turned out handcuffs were the woman's logo, meant to show how businesses were manacled to the big software companies. Edwards had described herself to Matt as the key that unlocked the cuffs of business. She'd said she hated the way people were tricked into paying for things they didn't need and couldn't use, just because technology moved so fast.

<  10  >

     Her phone beeped, probably Matt ringing to tell her what he'd had for lunch. She grabbed it. The same sound again ... eerie sighing, long bubbling ripples like waves on a beach. It must be a fault. She looked at the screen and saw an image forming with portentous slowness. Maybe it was an advertisement. Scuba-diving? Tropical holidays? A beach holiday would be fun - they could skip Spain this time and go to the Caribbean. The image resolved into a pallid arm, pale as marble, monumental, powerful. It flexed and turned as though reaching for something. It dripped water. The huge wet hand plunged out of the screen, fingers spread wide ....

     Liz felt her throat constrict. A vast power squeezed her airways shut. Scooting backwards on her wheeled chair, she tried to escape the pressure on her throat. Her hands fluttered around her neck, the bird-like bones no match for the strength that held her. Terror congested her face and panicked her heart into surges and troughs. By degrees she quieted until she sat still, eyes wide and dark, staring at nothing. Her hands fell to her sides, shaping a gentle composition of loss. Even in death she was elegant.

*

Matt felt a bump. Had he run over something? Surely he'd have seen it though. He glanced in the mirror. Nothing in the road. Another bump: harder. Was something trapped beneath the car? A third bump, this time a bang on the grille so violent it made the steering wheel shudder. He thought he saw a vague white shape. He shook his head hard. Too much food had made him slow. He needed to pull over and work out what had happened.

     The next blow struck the car from behind, so it jumped forward, kangarooing along the road. In the rear-view mirror Matt could see a huge dent in the boot. He struggled to regain control, but the vehicle jounced along as though pummeled by a giant fist. Fenders crumpled and dints the size of footballs appeared in the bonnet and wings. Within seconds the car had banged off the road and embedded itself in a grove of trees. The airbag inflated and deflated, but Matt was past saving. His neck had snapped and his head hung at an obscene angle, eyes gazing sadly down at his well-nourished frame.

<  11  >

*

'Sarge, you remember that Edwards woman?' W.P.C. Carter asked.

     'It'll be a cold day in Hell before I forget her,' said the Desk Sergeant. 'The nastiest suicide I've ever seen. What kind of person handcuffs themselves to the steps at the deep end of their own swimming pool?'

     'A rich person?' quipped Carter before returning to her task. 'Anyway, there's a report here that relates to her. Except ...'

     'Except what? Don't start what you can't finish, and that includes sentences.' The Sergeant had an aphorism for every situation.

     'Well ... you know that vehicular death I queried? The man who'd driven his Volvo into a wood? The reason I asked for details was the trace evidence suggested he'd hit somebody. No victim was found, but Scene of Crime Officer reported it was a person wearing a cotton garment impregnated with chlorine. They found blood, pool-water, and clothing scraps adhering to the car.'

     'Did they really?' The Sergeant paused for a second, shook his head, and carried on filling in the Day Book.

     'The Edwards woman had cuts on her legs and hands, remember? When we queried them, the pathologist said they were 'inconclusive'. They must have happened post mortem, because they hadn't bled, but there was no evidence of anything in the pool that could have caused them.' W.P.C. Carter wasn't sure where she was going with this conversation. She didn't like anything about it. The Edwards suicide had been a grim business.

     They'd been called to the house by a hysterical cleaning woman. Cynthia Edwards had climbed into her pool, cuffed herself to the steps and sat down to die. She'd been a big woman, huge in fact. They'd had to drain the pool to get her out. There was no obvious reason for her to have killed herself. She was rich and solvent, and apparently she'd seemed happy enough recently. Her business as an internet technology consultant was lucrative enough for her purchase a substantial mansion on the outskirts of town. Until around three months ago she'd even been a member of some diet club. She'd recently visited a Harley Street clinic, which refused to disclose anything - except to say the health concern which had brought her to them was a false alarm. She had not been unwell and was not suffering any disease that could have triggered a death-wish.

<  12  >

     The immense bulk of her, sitting implacable and pale, under the lucent water had haunted the officers called to the scene. There was something horribly powerful about her, even in death. Something stubborn and forceful projected from her, and surrounded the scene with a tangible, threatening misery. Worse than all of it was Kylie in the background, warbling 'I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky ....' You had to be irredeemably sick in the head to commit suicide to the sound of Kylie Minogue.

     'So - the way I see it, Sarge - we've got a car that drove off the road after hitting somebody wearing cotton clothing and dripping pool water and we've got a dead woman in a pool wearing a torn cotton robe, with lots of cuts and grazes. Doesn't that sound odd to you? The only problem is, we found Cynthia Edwards dead, about ... um ... two days before the crash.'

     'W.P.C. Carter, if I were you, I'd keep my wilder imaginations to myself.' The Sergeant moved closer though, to peer over her shoulder at the fax. 'What's that then? That's not a hit and run report.'

     'No, it's not. It's a murder. Elizabeth Cavella; the wife of the man who died in the car crash. She was found strangled in her office earlier today. The analysis of the fingerprints on her neck shows the killer was very large and covered in chlorine.'

     'Odd,' said the Sergeant.

     'Mmm, something else too,' Carter shivered. 'The same music playing at all the scenes: the swimming pool, the car stereo and the laptop - all belting out Kylie Minogue, singing 'I Should Be So Lucky'.