Evergreen Falls (42 page)

She longed for the problems she used to have, when Sam was just a man who smoked too much opium, but was still warm and breathing.

Her own breath left her body again, and she had to force it back into her lungs. This wouldn’t do. She couldn’t keep letting the shock knock her down. He was dead. Now she had to do the right thing, starting with telling the mother of his unborn child.

But Violet didn’t come.

At last, she heard footsteps in the hallway and she stood, ready to face Violet. Yearning to share tears with her. But the person who appeared at the door of the kitchen wasn’t Violet. It was the handyman who drew the pictures. Mr. Betts.

“Ma’am?” he said, surprised to see her.

“I’m looking for Violet.”

“I haven’t seen her this morning. I suspect she’s still in her room.”

“She’s not in her room.”

He frowned. “She’s not?”

“Is she with Miss Zander?”

“I’ve just come from seeing Miss Zander. She’s still too ill to get up. Violet wasn’t there.”

Flora put her hand over her mouth. Sam was dead, Violet was missing. Had they made some foolish lovers’ pact?

“What’s wrong, ma’am?”

She took a step towards him, dropped her voice low. “Mr. Betts, what I am going to tell you may alarm you.”

“What is it?”

“Last night, my brother died.”

His face fell. “Miss Honeychurch-Black, I am so sorry for your loss. Please, sit down. Can I get you tea? Perhaps the snow has melted enough for me to go for the village doctor—”

“Listen. I’m worried about Violet. She and my brother were . . .”

“I know,” he said, simply but meaningfully.

“Sam dies, she disappears. I’m worried she’s . . . done something foolish.”

She sensed the anxiety flexing through his rangy body. “Do you think that’s possible?”

“They were young and in love. I don’t want her to die, too, Mr. Betts. She has something . . .” She started to cry again, but then stopped herself. “I’m sorry. I’m not myself.”

“It’s been a terrible shock, ma’am. To happen at a time like this when we can’t call outside help is the worst kind of luck. Now, you’re not to worry about Violet. I’m sure she’s around here somewhere, and when I find her, I’ll send her to you for the . . . news.”

“Would you?”

“In the meantime, let me bring some breakfast up to your room. I’ll let Miss Zander know about your brother, and as soon as ever we can, we will fetch the doctor. Take care of your brother. Do what needs to be done to get him back to your family.”

His sympathetic words scorched her fragile heart. This man, as low born as she was high, knew the right thing to do better than did her fiancé. “I . . . give me some time. You can’t let Miss Zander know. I shouldn’t have even told you. Can you forget it?”

“Ma’am?”

She put her hands around her temples, and it was all she could do not to scream. “Mr. Betts . . .”

“Clive,” he said. “Please call me Clive.”

“Clive, I have never been so unhappy nor so unsure in my life. Could you let me deal with my people, and you deal with yours? I’ll take care of what happens to Sam. You find Violet.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

“Flora,” she said. “My name is Flora.”

She hurried back along the hallway and up the stairs. Clive was right. She had to talk to Tony, convince him that they needed to go back and retrieve Sam’s body. She wouldn’t leave him out there like wildlife. She wanted to do as Clive had suggested: tell Miss Zander, call the doctor—Will would come. Will would know what to do.

At the top of the stairs, she paused. She heard voices coming from Sam’s room. His door was open. A horrible shudder came over her, as she remembered Sam’s hallucinations about the dead man come back to life.

But it was Tony’s voice, and Sweetie’s. She listened long enough to realize they were clearing evidence from his room.

“All the pipes,” Tony said. “The lamp, too. All of it.”

No, not Sam’s precious things. She steeled herself to march in there and demand they stop, but then she took a moment to consider.

Tony would not stop. Sweetie would not stop. They had no empathy for her or for Sam. They were used to getting their own way, and eventually they would wear her down with their refusals, their combined will. Tony only cared to avoid a scandal, to keep her in her father’s good favor. He seemed at once a stranger, a handsome man with no heart who hid his callous nature under a veneer of practicality. Her fiancé? She would expect an enemy to behave as he had, not an ally. Her abject aloneness made her shudder.

There was only one person who would listen to her, who would tell her the right thing to do.

Flora went to her room to dress as warmly as she could for the walk through the snow to Will Dalloway’s house.

*  *  *

Violet struggled to keep her mind and her body together. Her backside was numb, her spine ached, and her joints burned from being cramped in the same position for hour upon hour. The dampness that had collected in the bottom of the box had turned icy. Her fingertips were so cold that she had to suck on them to keep them from going numb. Even the thinnest fragment of relief was denied her. The night passed, the rain sheeted down, and she remained locked in her miserable prison with her fear and her sorrow and her hunger, wondering if anyone would ever come for her.

Sometime around dawn, though, she drifted into a half-waking, half-sleeping state, in which strange dreams of haunted corridors drifted through her mind. She had no idea how long this nebulous doze lasted, but she woke with a jolt to the first glimmer of daylight through the cracks in the box. Her mind no longer bent out of shape with tiredness and fear, she began to wonder if she could break out of the box with brute force. The only thing holding the door was a latch on the outside: a simple latch to stop the door falling open as produce was hauled up the mountain. Dead pigs and sacks of potatoes didn’t try to escape, so it didn’t need to be the strongest latch ever made.

Violet shuffled backwards, so her back was against the metal. Now she was sitting directly in the damp spot, and the icy water penetrated her clothes in moments. It allowed her, though, to unfold her legs a fraction of an inch, relieving the cramping pain in her knees. Then she retracted her legs tightly and kicked out hard against the door.

Bang!

The noise seemed deafening, and the flying fox swung wildly. Violet’s heart raced and she sat very still for a few moments while the box came to rest. When she looked, she discovered she had managed to bend the bottom of the door nearly an inch. She could see daylight, and dirty melting snow below, a long way below.

Once again, she coiled her legs up like a spring and—
bang!

The swinging was more violent, but the corner of the door was now bent out nearly ninety degrees. She shrugged and struggled, catching her clothes on the metal walls, turning herself over so she could put her face close to the gap she’d opened. She was at least thirty feet above the ground. Even if she did break the latch, she wouldn’t be able to jump out. Should she just wait? Somebody would come eventually. Clive would come to fix the flying fox.

She put her mouth close to the gap and started shouting with throat-tearing force. “Help! Help me!” This time, instead of her voice being trapped inside the box, she could hear it echoing out over the valley. Surely somebody would hear her.

Violet shouted for as long as her voice could hold out, then she leaned her head on the door and cried helplessly.

After what seemed an age—she couldn’t say how long because she’d lost track of time—the box jumped.

She jolted, alert. She hadn’t felt a gust of wind. Had somebody heard her? Was it Clive?

The box jumped again, then began a slow, lurching journey back towards the hotel. “Thank you, God, thank you,” she said. She needed warmth, the woodstove, hot tea, something substantial to eat.

Slowly, slowly backwards. Then she could see the ground. She could see a man’s shoes and the fear boiled up inside her because they weren’t Clive’s shoes. Clive had never had a pair of shoes that expensive. Time seemed to slow as the man fumbled with the latch.

Everything that happened thereafter happened in a jolting, too-bright rush. The door opened, and it was Sweetie, Tony’s thuggish friend. Tony was nowhere to be seen and something about this fact made Violet’s stomach turn to water. Tony could at least be reasoned with. This other man, however, had made it clear that he thought of her as something less than human. Before she could scream, he reached in and covered her mouth with his meaty hand, then dragged her kicking and flailing out of the box and dumped her on the ground. The world looked quite different from the night before. The gleaming white mounds of snow had dissolved to dirty slush. He pinned her to the ground with his foot in the center of her back, her mouth pressed against the snow so she could neither breathe nor scream, and tied her hands behind her. Then he lifted her head by her hair and tied a cloth—A tie? A scarf?—between her teeth then around again over her mouth. She tried to shout for help, but all that came out was a guttural gasp.

He lifted her roughly in his arms, facing down. She kicked as hard as she could, but he plowed on, down the steps to the bush paths. Violet flexed her wrists back and forth to work her bonds loose, and he shook her roughly and said, “Stop that if you know what’s good for you.”

She stopped, her heartbeat deafening in her own ears. She didn’t know what he intended and she didn’t want to anger him further.

A mound of snow was still piled at the base of the fingerpost. Everywhere else the snow had melted unevenly. She watched Sweetie’s feet. Sometimes the snow was above his ankles, but never above his knees. His feet must be sodden by now, and cold. Good. She hoped he was suffering for whatever horror he intended to inflict upon her.

Down the bush path they wound. She could hear the Falls. She thought about the afternoon she had met Sam there, the plunge
they had taken under the cascade, nearly naked. It seemed at once both achingly recent and terribly long ago. A more innocent time. Before death and . . . whatever this morning would bring.

If he hadn’t gagged her, she would never have been quiet.
What are you going to do with me? I’m pregnant, you mustn’t hurt me. I’ve done nothing to you, let me go.
But most of all, she would have screamed. Any name she could think of. Clive. Flora. Tony. Miss Zander. Because she was afraid of what he intended. She didn’t know how far he would go to punish her, to silence her.

What she never imagined was that he intended to kill her.

As they approached the water hole, panic rose through her like a flame.
No, no.

“I saw you here with him,” Sweetie said, gruffly. “You thought nobody was looking, but I was. I saw you. Stripped off like the whore you are. Then you pretended you were too proper, too decorous for me. But I know what you really are.”

She bucked her body violently, trying to get out of his arms, but he had her tightly.

“So, when Tony says to me that we need to make sure you shut up, let me say I know how to make you shut up.” He waded into the water then threw her in to the deep part of the pool.

Down, down she went, her legs kicking madly but her arms useless behind her back. She struggled against the ties around her wrists, couldn’t loosen them. Her heart was frantic, her lungs blocked and desperate. She curled up, sinking farther, and tried to bring her arms under her hips so she could push them in front of her. No use. She kicked against the bottom of the pool, propelling herself up, but the surface was just too far away, and she was running out of breath.

Wildly, she pulled her hands apart, pulling and pulling, hoping she wasn’t making the knots tighter. With a slow drag they came free of each other. She speared them through the water ahead of her and
swam towards the surface. She could see bubbling, churning water ahead and knew it was where the cascade fell. If she came up behind it, Sweetie might not see her.

Air. She needed air. But she needed to breathe cautiously.

Her face broke the surface, and she tore the tie from around her mouth. She gasped. Water rushed into her mouth, and she went under again. She hadn’t seen him. Had he gone already? She rose again, just tilting her face out of the water. She breathed, looking around. Everything was distorted through the screen of the falling water. Sweetie was nowhere to be seen.

Still, she stayed behind the wall of water. The silk cravat he’d used to tie her hands was now hanging limply off one wrist. She waited for her heart to still, but it wouldn’t. Now she was wet, freezing, outside. She couldn’t return to the hotel—Sweetie would be there, and she couldn’t be sure Tony and Flora weren’t in on it, too—but if she stayed out here, the cold would certainly kill her. The only negotiable tracks led back to the hotel. Everywhere else was rough ground, layered with snow.

Her body began to shake, such huge shuddering shakes that she feared she would die right here in the water. She had to get out. She had to make for Lovers Cave.

Violet swam to the shallow side of the pool, then stumbled out. Her body felt as though it would shake into pieces. She could hardly walk, and her breathing was still labored. All around, rain still fell. Falling and falling as though the sky couldn’t bear to see the horrors being played out below, and wanted to wash them away. Violet needed shelter, and she needed it soon.

She started the ascent up the path. Her feet slid and slipped underneath her in the slushy snow. Her lungs burned. The big muscles in her thighs felt as though they had turned to butter. Her skin was puckered and blue.

Violet started to suspect she wasn’t going to make it. She sat down on a rock.

“Sam, Sam,” she said. “What do I do?”

Her aching heart dragged her body down. She put her face on her knees and waited to die. But then she focused: it wasn’t just her who would die. Sam’s child would die along with her.

She pushed breath into her lungs, willing her heart to thump harder and move her blood all the way to her toes and fingers and nose. “Get up,” she told herself. “Get up.”