The Year's Best Horror Stories 9 (32 page)

Deborah sipped her coffee. “The girl who took your husband?” she said softly.

The woman smiled grimly. “We entertained a lot in those days, mostly business acquaintances of my husband’s, and people from his office. I did not dress then as you see me now. I used to dress elegantly and tastefully, but never revealingly. An old-fashioned attitude, perhaps, in these days of blatant sexuality, but we all have our own particular tastes and standards.”

“And the girl?”

“A personal assistant to one of my husband’s directors. She came to one of our dinner parties dressed in a gown almost exactly like this one and made it perfectly obvious to my husband that he need only snap his fingers for her to remove it altogether.” Mrs. Bates put her coffee cup on a side table and leaned back in the armchair. “Two weeks later he left me and went off with her.”

“I’m sorry,” said the girl quietly.

The woman was silent for a moment. “He would have come back to me, you know, when the novelty had worn off, and I would have taken him. It was a good marriage. Men are so vulnerable to a really determined and blatant advance from an attractive woman. Few of them can resist. It is almost part of their nature, you might say.”

“What happened?”

“Three weeks after he left they were both killed in a car crash in southern France, and I hope she rots in hell for all time. And it was all so unnecessary. A discreet affair would have been far better. It would have satisfied the sexual attraction and preserved the marriage.”

The girl did not comment. Her sympathy was instinctively with the husband. An autocratic woman such as Mrs. Bates would not be easy to live with from any aspect, sexual or otherwise. There was probably more than one reason why he had left her.

“And all because of a revealing evening gown,” said Mrs. Bates bitterly. “That girl had worked at that office for two years and I
know
that there had been nothing between them prior to that dinner party. It was the gown that did it.”

Deborah sipped at her coffee again. Possible, but not likely. If it had only been a question of sex then a discreet affair would indeed have satisfied the situation. There had to be more to it than that. The way this woman kept harping on that one particular aspect seemed to suggest that Mrs. Bates felt very inadequate and inferior in that area.

“And so I went out and bought this gown, and some other clothing,” said Mrs. Bates. “And do you know why?”

Deborah shook her head. She didn’t like the way this was going. The woman really did have a most peculiar expression in her eyes.

Mrs. Bates stood up abruptly. “Then I will show you. Come with me,” and she took the girl’s hand and led her to the other end of the lounge to where a large mirror hung on the wall. “That’s why,” she said, pointing to the two reflections. “Having come off second best on one notable occasion I wanted to see how I would compare if I were similarly dressed.”

The girl felt her spine begin to tingle. Not fear exactly, but that instinctive nervous apprehension that the sane sometimes feel in the company of the insane. By God, how long had this woman brooded on her misfortune to have produced this sort of crazy reaction? This obviously explained the long string of attractive girls. Mrs. Bates was measuring herself against them, one after the other. And then what? If the measurement was in the older woman’s favor then presumably that was an end of the matter, honor having been satisfied. But what if the comparison was unfavorable?

Deborah looked at the two reflections. Mary Bates really was an attractive woman. Her body was trim and taut, and her figure was still quite superb, even without a bra, and in that wisp of a gown she looked like a high priestess of a pagan cult, sensual, uninhibited, and devastatingly provocative. Few women her age could even begin to compare. But she was forty-eight years of age, and she looked it. Nothing could hide the difference in age between the two women reflected in that mirror, and ironically the two provocative gowns served only to reveal that difference more clearly. Deborah was not vain about her own looks, but she knew that if a choice had to be made at that precise moment then most men would choose herself. Mrs. Bates simply did not compare.

The girl smiled nervously. “There’s no comparison,” she said lightly. “If there were any men around I wouldn’t stand a chance.” In the mirror she saw the woman’s eyes narrow to an expression of cold hatred.

“Nonsense, my dear,” said Mrs. Bates smoothly. “You are far more attractive than I. If the whole situation occurred again my husband would undoubtedly go off with you.”

Deborah released her hand and walked away back to the coffee table. “You underestimate yourself, Mrs. Bates.” She picked up her shawl. “I’m not attractive to men and never have been, no matter what I wear. Why do you think I live on my own? It’s not by choice, I assure you.” She began to move toward the door. Oh God, she simply had to escape from this stupid insanity. “Anyway, it’s getting late, and the wine has given me a headache. If you’ll excuse me I think I’ll go to bed.”

The look of hatred had vanished from the woman’s eyes. “By all means,” she said coldly. “Thank you for a lovely dinner, and a most entertaining evening.”

The girl could not get to her room fast enough. Once inside the bedroom she leaned back against the door and closed her eyes. Her hands were trembling, and sweat had broken out over her whole body. What a weird scene! No wonder the others had left in so much of a hurry. First thing tomorrow she would see if she could get her old bedsit back again. She was not going to stay in this house with that crazy woman a minute longer than absolutely necessary. She stripped off her gown, towelled herself dry, put on her nightdress, and lay down on the bed, but her mind was in too much of a turmoil for sleep.

It was about half past eleven when she heard Mrs. Bates come up the stairs and go to her own bedroom, but an hour later Deborah was still fretfully awake. She went to the open window and stared down into the garden. It looked even more beautiful by moonlight, and the silver bells really did look silver. It was a warm night, and oppressively close. Perhaps a walk round the garden would calm her down.

Silently she opened the bedroom door and stood there listening, but all was quiet. That wretched woman must be fast asleep by now, dreaming whatever weird images would rise in such a neurotic as Mrs. Bates. She slipped on her dressing gown over her nightdress and went downstairs and out into the garden.

It was a lovely night, and for the first time during that entire evening she was able to breathe more easily. It was in many ways a dreadful shame that she had to leave. On the surface it was an ideal job in ideal surroundings, but even from the beginning it had seemed too good to be true, and so it had proved. She sighed and meandered across the lawn. Such a beautiful garden, but such a weird gardener. Even here in the garden the behavior of her employer had been decidedly odd, coming back again and again to this particular spot. Deborah looked down at the long low mound of Mrs. Bates’s favorite flowerbed. “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” she murmured, “how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockleshells, and pretty maids all in a row.”

And it was then, at that precise moment, that the earlier warning bells, the odd behavior of Mrs. Bates, and the fact of the missing girls, all came together in an explosion of realization in her mind. So sudden was the revelation, and so terrifying, that for a full minute she could not move at all even though every instinct in her screamed out for her to get away, and her whole body trembled with wave after wave of piercing coldness. Then slowly she began to back away. Oh dear God, it cannot be, surely!

“Admiring the flowers in the moonlight?” said a voice behind her.

Deborah spun round and there, just a few feet away, was Mrs. Bates looking pale and ghostly in a flowing white dressing gown. This second shock, coming so close on the first, came near to causing a fatal heart attack, quite literally. The girl gave a piercing shriek of terror and fled in panic toward the house, bursting in through the French windows and flying up the stairs to her bedroom.

There was no key to the bedroom door, and no straight-backed chair to prop under the door handle. Frantically she dragged the dressing table across the carpet and rammed it against the door, and only just in time.

“What on earth is the matter, girl!” Mrs. Bates called out from the corridor, rattling the handle and pushing against the door. “Let me in. You frightened the life out of me, shrieking like that. What on earth is the matter? Let me in!”

Deborah said nothing. She picked up a pair of scissors and backed away to the middle of the room. Mrs. Bates had shoved the door open a couple of inches but could move it no more, and Deborah saw her pale hand come snaking round the edge to identify the obstruction.

“This is ridiculous!” the woman shouted. “Remove that thing and open this door!”

“Get out! Get out!” the girl shrieked.

The hand disappeared and then there was silence. Fifteen seconds passed, half a minute, and still there was no sound from the corridor.

“You forgot the connecting door,” said a calm voice behind her, and a hand descended on her shoulder.

Again that shriek of hysterical terror rang out. Deborah spun round and stabbed blindly with her scissors, again and again. She stabbed the woman’s eyes, and her face, and her shoulders, and fell with her to the floor, and kept on stabbing again and again, at her arms, at her breast, and again and again and again at what was left of her face, and then she sprang clear, flung away the scissors, raced through the connecting door, through the sitting room and out into the corridor, and stumbled hysterically down the stairs to the telephone.

The police arrived twenty minutes later; an inspector, a sergeant, two male constables, and a policewoman. Little sense had been made of the hysterical babble on the telephone and they had come prepared for almost anything, though hardly for what they actually found. The girl was covered in blood from head to foot, and at first they assumed that she had been attacked and savagely beaten, but as her story began bubbling out they began to realize that here was something far more grim. “They’re out there, I tell you, buried in the flowerbed, murdered by that crazy woman upstairs!” she finished. “And I was to be next! If you don’t believe me, go and look!” and she burst into great racking sobs.

Leaving the constables downstairs with the girl, the inspector and the sergeant went up to the bedroom. They came out two minutes later and leaned against the wall, fighting down the nausea. “You knew Mrs. Bates quite well,” said the inspector at last. “Is that her?”

The sergeant wiped his brow. “How the hell can I say! It doesn’t even look human!”

Presently the two men came down the stairs and walked over to the open French windows. “There should be a spade or a fork out there somewhere,” said the inspector. “Take the two lads. Just dig enough to verify the story. The rest can wait.”

Thirty minutes later the sergeant returned and the two men exchanged a whispered conversation, and then the inspector came over to Deborah. “Now let’s take this again from the beginning.”

“What more do you want!” said the girl hysterically. “You’ve seen what’s upstairs and you’ve seen what’s in the garden! For God’s sake get me out of this place.”

“I’ve seen you, and certainly I’ve seen what’s upstairs,” said the inspector grimly. “It’s the rest of the story I don’t understand.”

The girl sprang to her feet. “Good God, there are six dead girls buried in the flowerbed! I’ve told you why and how! What else is there to understand!”

The inspector shook his head. “There is no one buried in the flowerbed, Miss Templeton,” he said quietly. “No one at all. Now let’s start right from the beginning—and take it very, very slowly.”