The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books) (34 page)

Basil Copper made his debut in the horror field with a story in
The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories
(1964). After becoming a full-time writer in 1970, his short fiction has been collected in
Not After Nightfall, From Evil’s Pillow, When Footsteps Echo
and
And Afterward the Dark.

He has written more than fifty hard-boiled thrillers about Los Angeles private detective Mike Faraday, and his other novels include
The Great White Space, The Curse of the Fleers, Necropolis, The House of the Wolf
and
The Black Death.
Minneapolis publisher Fedogan & Bremer is currently publishing hardcover collections of the author’s Sherlock Holmes pastiches, based on the character created by August Derleth, with
The Exploits of Solar Pons
and
The Recollections of Solar Pons
(both illustrated by Stefanie Kate Hawks) already released. He has recently written an essay on Derleth and the Solar Pons series for an American publisher, and another on lycanthropy for a US magazine
.

The following story could be considered something of a companion piece to the author’s classic tale about movie collecting, “Amber Print”
. . .

“B
ETTER DEAD
!” said Robert exultantly as Boris pulled the lever.

The whole laboratory and watchtower exploded in dust and flames.

“Great!” said Robert, getting up to turn down the sound on the projector as the Universal end titles started coming up.

Joyce, who had just poked her head in at her husband’s specially-built brick projection room, yawned, glancing at the hundreds of metal film cans that lined the interior of the thirty-foot-long auditorium, the metal shelving reflecting back the screen images in tiny flickering points of light. Normally Robert had the curtains drawn across his archive treasures but for some reason he had not bothered this evening. The room lights went on as the last foot of black trailer went through the machine.

“You must have seen
Bride of Frankenstein
a hundred times by now,” Joyce said wearily.

Robert’s eyes glowed.

“And I expect to see it another hundred times before the year’s out. The classics never stale.”

Joyce shook her head.

“Tea’s ready. Is there any chance of you cutting the lawn tonight?”

Robert gave her an expression of mock regret.

“Doubtful. I have two more film parcels to open yet.”

“I’ve had enough of the dead alive,” his wife said, a steely undertone coming into her voice. “Film collecting will be the death of you.”

Robert chuckled, his eyes vacantly fixed on two huge cardboard cartons on the bench near his canvas viewing chair.

“What a way to go!”

The outer door slamming cut off any further remarks he might have made, and with a slightly crestfallen expression he switched off the mains electricity and made his way back to the house. The couple ate their tea in silence, Joyce’s eyes fixed smoulderingly on his face. An attractive, dark-haired woman of thirty-six, she had to rein back the resentment within her at her husband’s extravagant collecting habits, while she was forced to hold on to a boring secretarial job in order to help pay the bills.

Robert crumbled a piece of toast into his tea and ate it with satisfaction.

“I think
Night of the Living Dead
just turned up,” he said at length. “We were looking forward to that one.”

“You mean you were,” his wife said pointedly.

She got up to clear her plate, the set of her shoulders indicating extreme displeasure.

She paused by the buffet, delicately cutting a slice of the cream gateau that they had started at lunch-time.

“I shan’t be back until late this evening. I have a committee meeting and then I have some more typing to finish off at the office.”

“Don’t forget your key,” said Robert absently, his mind still fixed on the parcels in his projection room at the bottom of the garden. He gazed fondly to where the roof showed through the top of the rose trellis outside the French windows. “I may be running stuff down there.”

Joyce’s eyes glinted with suppressed anger as she stood with the cake knife in one slim, well-manicured hand.

“Do you want any of this?”

Robert shook his head.

“Just another cup of tea, if you’d be so kind.”

There was an oppressive silence in the room as Joyce bent to pour, accentuated as the faint hum of a motor mower came faintly on the summer breeze.

“Incidentally,” she said sourly, “Karloff never said, ‘Better dead!’ Even after all those viewings you can’t remember the dialogue properly.”

“Oh,” said Robert.

He gave his wife a twisted smile. For the first time she realised how ugly and worn he was looking, even in his early forties.

“Well,” he said eventually, with an air of quiet triumph. “If he didn’t say it, he should have!”

Joyce turned her face away so that he should not see the expression on it. She put the teapot down on the metal stand with barely suppressed fury.

She left the room without saying goodbye. The phone rang as she was crossing the hall. She turned quickly, made sure the dining room door was firmly closed.

“Hullo, darling!”

The voice was unmistakable. She changed colour, put her hand quickly over the receiver.

“How many times have I told you, Conrad. Don’t ring here!”

“Why, is he home?”

She smiled tautly at the alarm in the other’s voice.

“Don’t worry; he’s having tea in the dining room. See you tonight as arranged.”

She put the phone down quickly as Robert’s footsteps sounded
over the parquet. She was putting on her light raincoat in front of the mirror when he opened the door.

“Just the office,” she said, answering his unspoken question.

She smiled maliciously.

“Hope you’re not too disappointed. It wasn’t one of your film dealer friends.”

She went out quickly, slamming the front door before he had time to reply.

Light exploded, splitting the darkness with dazzling incandescence. Joyce, nude, got out of bed, revelling in the fact that the dark, strongly-built young man next her was admiring her sinuous curves, softly explored by the bedside lamp. But she ignored the imploring look in his eyes, dressing quickly with the ease born of long practice in the dangerous game they were playing. She glanced at her wrist watch, noted it had only just turned ten p.m. There was plenty of time then.

“When will I see you?”

She shrugged.

“Soon, obviously. But we can’t keep this pace up, Conrad. We’re meeting too frequently.”

“Nowhere near frequently enough for me!”

He rolled over quickly, reaching for her, as she sat cross-legged, one stocking half drawn on. But she skipped out of reach, laughing, and sat down on the bedside stool to finish dressing. He lay and watched her with the concentration she had often noticed; even when sated with sex men were never satisfied. As soon as the woman had dressed the mystery was there again, waiting to be revealed at the next encounter. She could not really understand the fascination, though she appreciated it in Conrad’s case. She had never owned a man like him; the affair had begun two years earlier and he was a person of integrity, held to her by so many bonds of unswerving loyalty.

She deftly made up her mouth in the mirror, the ratchets of her mind clicking over hopelessly, as they had ever since the affair had begun. If there were only some way out that would make three people happy. If only Robert would find someone else. But that was not within his nature. He was so absorbed in his film collecting that he hardly noticed she was there; that being so, he would hardly turn his attention to another woman. And if he did not appreciate
her attractions – and Conrad certainly did – things could go on as they were for ever if she and Conrad did not make some attempt to solve the problem.

“I can’t understand him,” Conrad said, as though he could read her mind.

“Who?”

Naturally, turning back from the mirror, she knew what he meant.

The dark-haired man in the bed shrugged impatiently.

“Your husband, of course. With all that under his roof he just doesn’t seem interested.”

Joyce smiled bitterly.

“You should be grateful, darling. People hardly ever value what they possess.”

Conrad gave her a twisted smile in return.

“Until they’ve lost it . . .”

The sentence seemed to hang heavily in the scented air of the bedroom.

Joyce bent swiftly and kissed him gently on the brow.

“We’ll see in due course,” she said in a low voice. “We have to be patient.”

“I thought we had been. For two long years.”

Joyce did not answer, her emotions suddenly overcoming her. She turned to the mirror, only the faint trembling of her fingers as she put on the lightweight raincoat betraying her inmost feelings.

“I’ll ring you,” she said through tight lips. “Please don’t ring the house again. It’s too dangerous.’

He did not answer and she went without a backward glance, letting herself out the back door into the secluded garden. It was a bright, starry night and she leaned against the wall, drinking in the fresh air until she had recovered herself. She drove home slowly, her mind still turning over useless prospects. It was still only a quarter to eleven when she got in. Lights burned in the dining room and the French windows were open to the lawn.

From the projection room at the end of the garden came the faint, tinny music. The
Night of the Living Dead
was under way. She sat down at the end of the dining room table, her emotions overcoming her. Slowly her head fell forward and she put her hands up to her face as she rested her elbows on the cold oak surface. Salt tears trickled through her fingers as the raucous music went on.

“It’s alive! It’s alive!”

There was a sudden burst of laughter from the other end of the dining room. Joyce shrank inwardly. The guests round the long table wore blank faces. Only Robert and his friend John at the head were laughing inanely.

“For God’s sake, Robert,” said Joyce irritably. “Can’t you leave it alone for even a few hours?”

The nearest guests looked startled at the vehemence of her tone and John and Robert resembled figures congealed in a photo-flash picture. Joyce forced a smile, aware that she had made a social gaffe. John’s wife was setting next to her and she turned toward Isabel.

“I’m sorry about that, but this film collecting business is getting on my nerves.”

The guests relaxed then, exchanging knowing smiles among themselves and Joyce was inwardly gratified to see that both John and Robert wore chastened looks.

Isabel nodded, fixing her husband with a warning glance.

“Don’t I know it, dear. John and I have no conversation at all nowadays unless it’s about films.”

She paused.

“Or, it’s ‘Pass the salt!’ ”

“We must split them up when we have coffee,” Joyce said.

Isabel sighed.

“I’ve tried before,” she said resignedly. “There’s no stopping them once they get on that topic.”

Joyce stabbed her silver fork into the remains of her dessert with an almost savage gesture.

“They’re hardly ever off it.”

The two women laughed uneasily and then Joyce was in command of herself again. A few minutes later, when she had ushered the last of the guests into the drawing room and she and Isabel had returned to the kitchen to make the coffee, they were silent, as though both were absorbed with weighty thoughts that they did not like to impart to the other.

That night, long after the guests had departed, Joyce was washing up in the kitchen, when she heard the back door slam. Robert had, of course, gone off with John somewhere, as soon as he could decently excuse himself. Now he had come in and, despite the lateness of the hour, had gone out to his projection room. A few minutes later, as she finished drying the glasses, she could hear raucous music coming from the end of the garden. The nearest house to theirs was quite a long way off, so
Robert had not bothered to completely sound-proof his private cinema.

Joyce paused; a sudden thought had come into her mind. Robert’s acquisitions had risen to an alarming total in the past few months. Alarming in the sense that his “hobby”, if it could be called that, must be costing him a great deal. Costing them a great deal, she suddenly realised. She stood, her lips pursed, her flat stomach against the draining board, the last glass poised in her hand. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror opposite. She looked absurdly like Joan Crawford in one of her Warner Brothers melodramas, she felt. Then she angrily dismissed the thought. She was catching Robert’s disease. She crossed the kitchen and took the last trayful of clean glasses back into the dining room.

Then she went swiftly along the corridor to Robert’s study. She switched on the green-shaded desk lamp, making sure that the thick curtains were already drawn across the windows. Robert always kept his chequebooks and stubs in the top righthand drawer. She went through them quickly, her breath coming faster as she noted the sums. She got out a sheet of paper and a pencil and started jotting down the figures. Anger was growing like a dull fire within her. He had spent several thousand pounds in the last two months alone! She fought back the feeling as she completed her calculations. And Robert sometimes grumbled that she was careless with the housekeeping money . . . When she had finished, she replaced everything as she had found it, switched off the lamp and went back to the dining room.

She put the sheet with the notations at the bottom of her handbag and then replaced all the glasses in the big antique glass-fronted corner cupboard. She had just finished when she heard Robert come in, locking and bolting the back door behind him. He looked in at the open dining room door, as though surprised to see her still working. He rubbed his hands with satisfaction.

“I think it all went very well, don’t you?”

Joyce nodded.

“Yes, very well,” she said slowly.

She kept her eyes fixed steadily on his face. It was as if she were seeing him clearly for the first time.