The potting shed murder, p.27
The Potting Shed Murder, page 27
“Honestly, Tolls, I know that we’ve never spoken about it, but I’ve always felt dreadful . . . I—”
“No hard feelings, Charles,” Ptolemy said quietly.
Charles sighed with relief. He hadn’t realized how much the guilt of that night had troubled him for all these years.
“Let’s put it behind us. I’ve just always wondered about it and wanted to ask. Let’s shake on it and vow never to speak about it again.”
Charles smiled gratefully, eager to put it all behind him. He could see that Ptolemy’s eyes were thick with emotion, almost tearful, and he genuinely felt awful that one moment of madness may have tarnished his relationship with his old friend.
The two men stood up to shake hands, but Ptolemy pulled Charles in for a proper hug, cupping the back of Charles’s head and resting his own head on Charles’s left shoulder.
“I’ve missed you, Tolls,” Charles exclaimed, surprised but grateful for this unusual show of affection. He stiffened as he felt a sharp prick to the side of his neck within the lower part of his hairline—close to where Ptolemy’s right arm had awkwardly remained resting on his shoulder. “Ouch!”
He stepped back and looked down at his chest. Why was it thumping so visibly? He could feel that his heart rate was increasing, as he tried to raise his right hand to feel whatever it was that was on his neck. Had he been stung? He felt no raised area, no wetness of blood, and even if he had been able to look, there was hardly a mark to be seen by the naked eye under the short wisps of hair. His hands felt numb and floppy, as though he had been sitting on them, and he looked up to ask Ptolemy if he could see anything on his neck. Except Ptolemy was suddenly blurry, and when Charles tried to speak his tongue felt heavy and swollen. His heart was really racing now. “Tlghh tlghhhhth!” was all that his mouth, with its swollen tongue taking up all of the space, could manage. Through the blurred shapes, he could just make out the outline of Ptolemy walking towards him. Thank goodness, his friend was coming to help him. Ptolemy raised his hand to Charles’s neck and appeared to pull something out of it. Thank goodness for his dear old friend.
12:07 a.m.
The last thing Charles saw before he hit the ground was the feet of Doctor Ptolemy Oates disappearing into the wet darkness of the Pepperbridge community allotment.
CHAPTER 20
Doctor Oates’s story had come to an end. There was nothing left to say, and Daphne’s time was limited. She now knew that Ptolemy Oates had murdered his old friend Charles Papplewick, and she also knew that murderers didn’t tend to leave evidence of their crimes lying around. Least of all witnesses to either crime or confession.
Daphne looked over at the doctor’s impassive face staring unmoved back at her. He didn’t look upset or even slightly contrite. He showed no signs of inner angst or moral struggle. She even suspected that he somehow inwardly rejoiced at having a captive audience for one more dramatic monologue as he described the events leading up to Charles’s death in his wonderfully melodic, deep tones. He had always enjoyed beguiling her with his wealth of historical facts and informative stories over the garden gate. Until now, she hadn’t realized how much he enjoyed the sound of his own voice—almost as much as he had enjoyed the thought of “educating” a woman twenty years his junior. It seemed so blatant now. She had been so eager to make friends with her new neighbor, to be accepted into this new and alien territory by everyone she met and particularly those that she saw on a daily basis. So eager to protect her children and for the family as a whole not to be judged or critiqued for their newness or differences, that she had allowed him to embrace the role of self-appointed educator bordering on the pedagogue. She had allowed him to patronize her in a way that she would never have allowed a neighbor to do back in London. Not knowing what to expect when they got to Norfolk, she had accepted his unexpected friendship with the gratefulness of a lost and relieved puppy. It was, after all, far preferable than to regress to her London ways and allow only the occasional wave and distracted nod of the head.
As abhorrent as the thought seemed now, with her eyes wide open to his true character, she realized that any connection they had made over the past few months could work in her favor now. Despite his recent admission, he liked her. He appreciated her company and her ever-willing and responsive ear. If she could play to his ego, boost his levels of conceit and lessen her viability as a threat, then she could buy more time before he decided what to do with her.
She knew that it would be several hours before James would question where she was. She had asked him to collect the children just in case she wasn’t back from her little excursion with their friendly neighborhood doctor in time. That would mean that he wouldn’t feel the need to call her until around 4 p.m. And her handbag was still sitting on the hallway console table with her phone inside it . . .
“Ptolemy . . .”
“Yes, Daphne?” They had sat in silence for the past five minutes. Each lost in their own thoughts and contemplating separately what was going to happen next.
“Would you mind if I used your bathroom, please?”
The doctor hesitated and gave a slow sigh from deep within his chest. She could see him battling; he was reluctant, but he also considered himself to be a gentleman, and a gentleman could hardly refuse a lady that type of request—regardless of how questionable her timing might be. Daphne knew it; Ptolemy knew it. They both knew that he wouldn’t say no.
“Yes, Daphne, you may use the bathroom, but let me direct you to the one upstairs.”
“Oh, that’s fine—any loo will do,” Daphne replied with faux cheerfulness, trying to keep the atmosphere light. She imagined that he was thinking that she might have attempted to escape through the ground floor toilet window, which now she thought about it, would have been a good idea.
“If you don’t mind, Daphne, I’d like you to go first.”
Doctor Oates was standing directly in front of Daphne, indicating towards the door with his arm. She took her cue and stood up smiling at him, leading the way into the entrance hall and towards the bottom of the staircase. The front door was mere feet in front of her and she contemplated making another mad dash for it, but hesitated when she realized that while one door may have been possible, she would still need to get through the porch door beyond it.
“May I have my bag please? It’s my time of the month.” She looked at him innocently.
The doctor looked from Daphne to the bag and back to Daphne again, assessing the likelihood of this new piece of information.
“Of course.” He nodded towards the bag. “But I’ll have your phone first, please.”
Game over, Daphne groaned silently, while doing as she was asked. She handed over the mobile phone to the doctor as though it were an object of no consequence, taking the handbag upstairs with her to the bathroom that she had been directed to.
Sat safely on the toilet seat, she was engulfed by a wave of momentary calm. With a door in between them, she was safe. For the moment. She could hear him breathing on the other side of the door, and she wondered how long she could feasibly take pretending to use the loo, or perhaps she ought to simply barricade herself inside until help came?
“Daphne? Daphne? Aren’t you finished yet? If you don’t come out soon, then I will have to come in to get you . . .” he said determinedly and without a hint of jest or sarcasm. She realized that he wasn’t bluffing, flushed the toilet, ran the tap quickly and exited the bathroom.
“Thank you for letting me go,” she said politely.
“Why on earth would I not let you go to the bathroom?” he asked incredulously.
“Well . . . I, you know—I don’t know?” she ended, confused. “I mean . . . will you let me go home now?” she asked hopefully.
“Of course not!”
“Well, that’s exactly the reason why I questioned whether I’d be allowed to go to the loo. I want to leave and go to an appointment, but you won’t let me, so why should I presume that you would let me use the toilet!” Her voice was getting higher and was now closer to whining than she intended, but she couldn’t help it. Despite her outward attempts at remaining unflustered, inside she was feeling very frightened indeed—but there was also something else. She was feeling more than a little angry. Angry at being fooled by someone that she had thought was harmless. Angry at being held here against her will. Angry that they had moved all the way from south London to a tiny village only to move next door to a stalker and a killer. Angry that this man had just told her that he had committed murder and yet showed little to no remorse. Angry that she had found herself in this situation in the first place, when she had young children who depended on her. Why, oh why couldn’t she leave things well alone? Why did she have to go snooping every time?
The doctor made her lead the way back downstairs again and back through to the kitchen where they resumed their places, although this time he remained standing and agitatedly started to pace the floor. She noticed that at some point during their excursion upstairs, probably while she was in the bathroom, he had collected a small bottle containing a colorless liquid that he now held in his hand along with a small piece of cloth. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and a trickle of sweat had formed at the nape of her neck, sliding slowly down towards the dip between her shoulder blades. What was in the bottle? She tried to see if she could read the writing on the front, but his hand was masking most of it.
She wondered whether she should just keep her mouth closed and play the waiting game, or whether she ought to keep him talking. There was something in the way that the doctor had suddenly become so quiet and lost in his unsettling pacing that unnerved her. The bottle meant something; she was sure of it. What was it? Chloroform? She could sense that he was thinking hard about what to do with her, now that he had divulged his secret.
Searching for a distraction, she looked over to the kettle sitting on the hob—she couldn’t bear the pretense of drinking more tea and so they sat in silence, lost in their own thoughts as the kitchen clock ticked loudly from above the range.
If only she could rewind the clock. To be standing at the garden gate with the friendly version of Doctor Oates before he revealed himself to be the heartbroken ex-lover of Augusta waiting pathetically in the shadows. Right now, she would gladly draw the scales back over her eyes, returning to a time when she believed the man standing opposite her was simply wanting to impart weird and wonderful tidbits of historical information to his captivated audience. Toad of Toad Hall indeed! Although there was one similarity, she supposed. Both were as selfish as each other, with a tendency to exult in their own exploits. Vain and conceited with a love of the sound of their own voice . . . Daphne looked up at the doctor for a second. She had an idea.
“Doctor Oates?”
“Yes, Daphne?”
“The books in your study. The really old ones on local herbalism and botany. Did I see that some of them were first editions?”
The doctor’s face lit up. This was a welcome distraction.
“While we’re—er, waiting here, would you mind if we had a look at some of them? They looked like the most beautiful books. Would you be able to tell me a little bit about them please? I think that I may have something similar in my shop. They’re a series of leather-bound botanical books, I just wanted to check to see if the illustrations are similar. You know, while we . . . er, wait?”
The doctor didn’t hesitate for a second and even appeared relieved by the diversion. He was always happy to have a ready and willing audience, even if she was here under duress. He put down the bottle and the cloth next to the kitchen sink, and Daphne felt a millisecond of relief.
“Ladies first,” he said with an unexpectedly gracious flourish as he motioned for Daphne to walk through to the back lobby where the pantry, the laundry room and his study resided. The study that had put her in this mess in the first place.
As she walked towards the door, she took note again of the large and antiquated key that remained in the lock. Did it work? Was it stiff? Would she even be able to turn it and lock him in if she got the chance? She walked into the room first and stood in the middle, closely followed by the doctor.
“Right, Daphne—which particular books were you interested in?”
“Those ones over there.” She pointed randomly at a potentially interesting seeming pile.
“Ahh—you have a good eye, Daphne! Now this one is entitled Insectivorous Plants and it’s a Charles Darwin first edition, second thousand. It was published in 1875 by John Murray and is quite a rare find. Now the hardback is made from green cloth and gilt with . . .” He continued sermonizing about the book while Daphne listened with half an ear, her heart thudding almost visibly in her chest, her eyes scanning the room to see if there was any obvious means of escape, or failing that, a heavy object that she could use in defense. Behind her was the bureau with the photographs from Ptolemy and Augusta’s university days . . . and below them lay the three oversized Victorian syringes—one still with its needle attached.
“. . . while this lovely little one is The Flowering Plants of Great Britain by Anne Pratt—which comes in six volumes and may be similar to the ones . . .” He was really hitting his stride now, lost in a world of original decorative cloth bindings and gilt lettering, intricately describing what to look out for when it came to searching out first editions. He was fully immersed, just as she had hoped, in describing the joys of his covetable book collection.
“What about those over there?” Daphne pointed at some red volumes in the corner of the room. It was the corner furthest away from the door. She continued to point and walk towards them, hoping to gain his trust as she purposefully strode further away from the door.
He relaxed visibly as he saw her walk away from her only exit route.
“Be careful, Daphne!” he said with an indulgent smile on his lips and a wagging of his finger as though speaking to a child. “Those ones are truly special—you really do have a keen eye, don’t you?”
“Oh gosh—do I need to wear white gloves to hold those ones? I’d love to see inside?” she recoiled as she spoke, as if nervous about spoiling the beautifully bound scholarly tomes, then looked over to him with what she hoped were eager eyes.
The doctor chuckled good-naturedly. “Not at all, Daphne, I trust you to be careful with them. Here, let me.” And with that, he bent down towards the shelf that held the pile, leaving Daphne just a little behind him for the first time since they had entered the room. The shelf was low and he had to stoop and bend one knee slightly to balance as he reached towards them.
Daphne’s heart was thumping so hard in her chest she felt that it would come up through her mouth and fall onto floor in front of her. It was now or never. As he bent down, she leaned forward and used all of her force to shove him face downwards, pushing him as hard as she physically could towards the piles of books and medical magazines that were piled precariously all around the edges of the room. She then spun on her heel and fled towards the door, upturning the chair and toppling over another pile of magazines to land behind her as she went.
As she reached the doorway, she pulled desperately on the handle. The door was stiff and catching on the wrinkled rug, she remembered belatedly, but the key was still in the lock. She could hear the doctor clambering up from the floor as she tugged to get the door shut. She wasn’t sure that her strength would be a match for his if he got to the door before she managed to close and lock it, so she turned and ran into the kitchen and across the room towards the hallway.
The hallway now felt narrow and dark and claustrophobic. All thoughts of its prior coziness and period features diminished into a cramped and oppressive tunnel that seemed endless in her desperation to outrun the doctor. She slammed her way through the first door, reaching the locked porch door just as she could hear the doctor exiting the study and pounding his feet on the hard tiles in the back pantry hall.
“DAPHNE!” he called out in a deep and rage-filled voice, bellowing through the house like a large and wounded warthog. He caught up with her just as she had managed to turn the latch to the second door, grabbing onto her arm just as she desperately stretched and yanked it away from him, managing to get half of her body out through the front door and into the open air. The sky had remained blue, and the light was still bright. So terrifyingly normal, she thought momentarily, realizing how dark the inside of Doctor Oates’s house had felt by comparison.
“Heeeeelllp!” she screamed, praying that James would hear her—or if not, then at least Byron would alert her husband or one of the other neighbors might hear her anguished cries.
She screamed again as he wrenched at her arm, dragging her back towards the house as she yanked and pulled and kicked, hooking her foot around anything she could and continuing to scream. She kicked backwards, trying to catch his hand and release herself from his grip, writhing and twisting, but his grasp was firm, and however hard she contorted and bent her arm and body, his hand remained tightly gripping on as he gradually and, with great effort, dragged her back, slow step by slow step.
She could see that he was out of breath, but he was like a juggernaut, and she realized that she was no match for his strength.
“I really wish that you hadn’t done that, Daphne.” He puffed with laborious effort. “Now I’m afraid I’m going to have to restrain you to keep you quiet. I was hoping that it wouldn’t have to come to this. We were getting on so well. I thought that you were enjoying the books!”
His voice was a mixture of anger and disappointment, but mixed in there was a sense of wounded male pride. She had hurt his ego, his need to show off, mansplain and impress her with his endless knowledge. More than revealing to her that he had killed a man; more than the admission that he had stalked and watched a woman through her window for over twenty years; eclipsing the implications of any of these shameful revelations was the overwhelming anger that she was no longer entranced by his pseudo-intellectual swagger, his brandishing of facts and figures, his parading of enlightening hypotheses. Daphne saw him now for what he was: a sad and lonely old man who had delighted in the idea of flaunting and parading his “wisdom” to a new and gullible audience. She saw clearly now how patronizing and condescending he had felt towards her all along, and she was engulfed in a new rage of her own.
“No hard feelings, Charles,” Ptolemy said quietly.
Charles sighed with relief. He hadn’t realized how much the guilt of that night had troubled him for all these years.
“Let’s put it behind us. I’ve just always wondered about it and wanted to ask. Let’s shake on it and vow never to speak about it again.”
Charles smiled gratefully, eager to put it all behind him. He could see that Ptolemy’s eyes were thick with emotion, almost tearful, and he genuinely felt awful that one moment of madness may have tarnished his relationship with his old friend.
The two men stood up to shake hands, but Ptolemy pulled Charles in for a proper hug, cupping the back of Charles’s head and resting his own head on Charles’s left shoulder.
“I’ve missed you, Tolls,” Charles exclaimed, surprised but grateful for this unusual show of affection. He stiffened as he felt a sharp prick to the side of his neck within the lower part of his hairline—close to where Ptolemy’s right arm had awkwardly remained resting on his shoulder. “Ouch!”
He stepped back and looked down at his chest. Why was it thumping so visibly? He could feel that his heart rate was increasing, as he tried to raise his right hand to feel whatever it was that was on his neck. Had he been stung? He felt no raised area, no wetness of blood, and even if he had been able to look, there was hardly a mark to be seen by the naked eye under the short wisps of hair. His hands felt numb and floppy, as though he had been sitting on them, and he looked up to ask Ptolemy if he could see anything on his neck. Except Ptolemy was suddenly blurry, and when Charles tried to speak his tongue felt heavy and swollen. His heart was really racing now. “Tlghh tlghhhhth!” was all that his mouth, with its swollen tongue taking up all of the space, could manage. Through the blurred shapes, he could just make out the outline of Ptolemy walking towards him. Thank goodness, his friend was coming to help him. Ptolemy raised his hand to Charles’s neck and appeared to pull something out of it. Thank goodness for his dear old friend.
12:07 a.m.
The last thing Charles saw before he hit the ground was the feet of Doctor Ptolemy Oates disappearing into the wet darkness of the Pepperbridge community allotment.
CHAPTER 20
Doctor Oates’s story had come to an end. There was nothing left to say, and Daphne’s time was limited. She now knew that Ptolemy Oates had murdered his old friend Charles Papplewick, and she also knew that murderers didn’t tend to leave evidence of their crimes lying around. Least of all witnesses to either crime or confession.
Daphne looked over at the doctor’s impassive face staring unmoved back at her. He didn’t look upset or even slightly contrite. He showed no signs of inner angst or moral struggle. She even suspected that he somehow inwardly rejoiced at having a captive audience for one more dramatic monologue as he described the events leading up to Charles’s death in his wonderfully melodic, deep tones. He had always enjoyed beguiling her with his wealth of historical facts and informative stories over the garden gate. Until now, she hadn’t realized how much he enjoyed the sound of his own voice—almost as much as he had enjoyed the thought of “educating” a woman twenty years his junior. It seemed so blatant now. She had been so eager to make friends with her new neighbor, to be accepted into this new and alien territory by everyone she met and particularly those that she saw on a daily basis. So eager to protect her children and for the family as a whole not to be judged or critiqued for their newness or differences, that she had allowed him to embrace the role of self-appointed educator bordering on the pedagogue. She had allowed him to patronize her in a way that she would never have allowed a neighbor to do back in London. Not knowing what to expect when they got to Norfolk, she had accepted his unexpected friendship with the gratefulness of a lost and relieved puppy. It was, after all, far preferable than to regress to her London ways and allow only the occasional wave and distracted nod of the head.
As abhorrent as the thought seemed now, with her eyes wide open to his true character, she realized that any connection they had made over the past few months could work in her favor now. Despite his recent admission, he liked her. He appreciated her company and her ever-willing and responsive ear. If she could play to his ego, boost his levels of conceit and lessen her viability as a threat, then she could buy more time before he decided what to do with her.
She knew that it would be several hours before James would question where she was. She had asked him to collect the children just in case she wasn’t back from her little excursion with their friendly neighborhood doctor in time. That would mean that he wouldn’t feel the need to call her until around 4 p.m. And her handbag was still sitting on the hallway console table with her phone inside it . . .
“Ptolemy . . .”
“Yes, Daphne?” They had sat in silence for the past five minutes. Each lost in their own thoughts and contemplating separately what was going to happen next.
“Would you mind if I used your bathroom, please?”
The doctor hesitated and gave a slow sigh from deep within his chest. She could see him battling; he was reluctant, but he also considered himself to be a gentleman, and a gentleman could hardly refuse a lady that type of request—regardless of how questionable her timing might be. Daphne knew it; Ptolemy knew it. They both knew that he wouldn’t say no.
“Yes, Daphne, you may use the bathroom, but let me direct you to the one upstairs.”
“Oh, that’s fine—any loo will do,” Daphne replied with faux cheerfulness, trying to keep the atmosphere light. She imagined that he was thinking that she might have attempted to escape through the ground floor toilet window, which now she thought about it, would have been a good idea.
“If you don’t mind, Daphne, I’d like you to go first.”
Doctor Oates was standing directly in front of Daphne, indicating towards the door with his arm. She took her cue and stood up smiling at him, leading the way into the entrance hall and towards the bottom of the staircase. The front door was mere feet in front of her and she contemplated making another mad dash for it, but hesitated when she realized that while one door may have been possible, she would still need to get through the porch door beyond it.
“May I have my bag please? It’s my time of the month.” She looked at him innocently.
The doctor looked from Daphne to the bag and back to Daphne again, assessing the likelihood of this new piece of information.
“Of course.” He nodded towards the bag. “But I’ll have your phone first, please.”
Game over, Daphne groaned silently, while doing as she was asked. She handed over the mobile phone to the doctor as though it were an object of no consequence, taking the handbag upstairs with her to the bathroom that she had been directed to.
Sat safely on the toilet seat, she was engulfed by a wave of momentary calm. With a door in between them, she was safe. For the moment. She could hear him breathing on the other side of the door, and she wondered how long she could feasibly take pretending to use the loo, or perhaps she ought to simply barricade herself inside until help came?
“Daphne? Daphne? Aren’t you finished yet? If you don’t come out soon, then I will have to come in to get you . . .” he said determinedly and without a hint of jest or sarcasm. She realized that he wasn’t bluffing, flushed the toilet, ran the tap quickly and exited the bathroom.
“Thank you for letting me go,” she said politely.
“Why on earth would I not let you go to the bathroom?” he asked incredulously.
“Well . . . I, you know—I don’t know?” she ended, confused. “I mean . . . will you let me go home now?” she asked hopefully.
“Of course not!”
“Well, that’s exactly the reason why I questioned whether I’d be allowed to go to the loo. I want to leave and go to an appointment, but you won’t let me, so why should I presume that you would let me use the toilet!” Her voice was getting higher and was now closer to whining than she intended, but she couldn’t help it. Despite her outward attempts at remaining unflustered, inside she was feeling very frightened indeed—but there was also something else. She was feeling more than a little angry. Angry at being fooled by someone that she had thought was harmless. Angry at being held here against her will. Angry that they had moved all the way from south London to a tiny village only to move next door to a stalker and a killer. Angry that this man had just told her that he had committed murder and yet showed little to no remorse. Angry that she had found herself in this situation in the first place, when she had young children who depended on her. Why, oh why couldn’t she leave things well alone? Why did she have to go snooping every time?
The doctor made her lead the way back downstairs again and back through to the kitchen where they resumed their places, although this time he remained standing and agitatedly started to pace the floor. She noticed that at some point during their excursion upstairs, probably while she was in the bathroom, he had collected a small bottle containing a colorless liquid that he now held in his hand along with a small piece of cloth. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and a trickle of sweat had formed at the nape of her neck, sliding slowly down towards the dip between her shoulder blades. What was in the bottle? She tried to see if she could read the writing on the front, but his hand was masking most of it.
She wondered whether she should just keep her mouth closed and play the waiting game, or whether she ought to keep him talking. There was something in the way that the doctor had suddenly become so quiet and lost in his unsettling pacing that unnerved her. The bottle meant something; she was sure of it. What was it? Chloroform? She could sense that he was thinking hard about what to do with her, now that he had divulged his secret.
Searching for a distraction, she looked over to the kettle sitting on the hob—she couldn’t bear the pretense of drinking more tea and so they sat in silence, lost in their own thoughts as the kitchen clock ticked loudly from above the range.
If only she could rewind the clock. To be standing at the garden gate with the friendly version of Doctor Oates before he revealed himself to be the heartbroken ex-lover of Augusta waiting pathetically in the shadows. Right now, she would gladly draw the scales back over her eyes, returning to a time when she believed the man standing opposite her was simply wanting to impart weird and wonderful tidbits of historical information to his captivated audience. Toad of Toad Hall indeed! Although there was one similarity, she supposed. Both were as selfish as each other, with a tendency to exult in their own exploits. Vain and conceited with a love of the sound of their own voice . . . Daphne looked up at the doctor for a second. She had an idea.
“Doctor Oates?”
“Yes, Daphne?”
“The books in your study. The really old ones on local herbalism and botany. Did I see that some of them were first editions?”
The doctor’s face lit up. This was a welcome distraction.
“While we’re—er, waiting here, would you mind if we had a look at some of them? They looked like the most beautiful books. Would you be able to tell me a little bit about them please? I think that I may have something similar in my shop. They’re a series of leather-bound botanical books, I just wanted to check to see if the illustrations are similar. You know, while we . . . er, wait?”
The doctor didn’t hesitate for a second and even appeared relieved by the diversion. He was always happy to have a ready and willing audience, even if she was here under duress. He put down the bottle and the cloth next to the kitchen sink, and Daphne felt a millisecond of relief.
“Ladies first,” he said with an unexpectedly gracious flourish as he motioned for Daphne to walk through to the back lobby where the pantry, the laundry room and his study resided. The study that had put her in this mess in the first place.
As she walked towards the door, she took note again of the large and antiquated key that remained in the lock. Did it work? Was it stiff? Would she even be able to turn it and lock him in if she got the chance? She walked into the room first and stood in the middle, closely followed by the doctor.
“Right, Daphne—which particular books were you interested in?”
“Those ones over there.” She pointed randomly at a potentially interesting seeming pile.
“Ahh—you have a good eye, Daphne! Now this one is entitled Insectivorous Plants and it’s a Charles Darwin first edition, second thousand. It was published in 1875 by John Murray and is quite a rare find. Now the hardback is made from green cloth and gilt with . . .” He continued sermonizing about the book while Daphne listened with half an ear, her heart thudding almost visibly in her chest, her eyes scanning the room to see if there was any obvious means of escape, or failing that, a heavy object that she could use in defense. Behind her was the bureau with the photographs from Ptolemy and Augusta’s university days . . . and below them lay the three oversized Victorian syringes—one still with its needle attached.
“. . . while this lovely little one is The Flowering Plants of Great Britain by Anne Pratt—which comes in six volumes and may be similar to the ones . . .” He was really hitting his stride now, lost in a world of original decorative cloth bindings and gilt lettering, intricately describing what to look out for when it came to searching out first editions. He was fully immersed, just as she had hoped, in describing the joys of his covetable book collection.
“What about those over there?” Daphne pointed at some red volumes in the corner of the room. It was the corner furthest away from the door. She continued to point and walk towards them, hoping to gain his trust as she purposefully strode further away from the door.
He relaxed visibly as he saw her walk away from her only exit route.
“Be careful, Daphne!” he said with an indulgent smile on his lips and a wagging of his finger as though speaking to a child. “Those ones are truly special—you really do have a keen eye, don’t you?”
“Oh gosh—do I need to wear white gloves to hold those ones? I’d love to see inside?” she recoiled as she spoke, as if nervous about spoiling the beautifully bound scholarly tomes, then looked over to him with what she hoped were eager eyes.
The doctor chuckled good-naturedly. “Not at all, Daphne, I trust you to be careful with them. Here, let me.” And with that, he bent down towards the shelf that held the pile, leaving Daphne just a little behind him for the first time since they had entered the room. The shelf was low and he had to stoop and bend one knee slightly to balance as he reached towards them.
Daphne’s heart was thumping so hard in her chest she felt that it would come up through her mouth and fall onto floor in front of her. It was now or never. As he bent down, she leaned forward and used all of her force to shove him face downwards, pushing him as hard as she physically could towards the piles of books and medical magazines that were piled precariously all around the edges of the room. She then spun on her heel and fled towards the door, upturning the chair and toppling over another pile of magazines to land behind her as she went.
As she reached the doorway, she pulled desperately on the handle. The door was stiff and catching on the wrinkled rug, she remembered belatedly, but the key was still in the lock. She could hear the doctor clambering up from the floor as she tugged to get the door shut. She wasn’t sure that her strength would be a match for his if he got to the door before she managed to close and lock it, so she turned and ran into the kitchen and across the room towards the hallway.
The hallway now felt narrow and dark and claustrophobic. All thoughts of its prior coziness and period features diminished into a cramped and oppressive tunnel that seemed endless in her desperation to outrun the doctor. She slammed her way through the first door, reaching the locked porch door just as she could hear the doctor exiting the study and pounding his feet on the hard tiles in the back pantry hall.
“DAPHNE!” he called out in a deep and rage-filled voice, bellowing through the house like a large and wounded warthog. He caught up with her just as she had managed to turn the latch to the second door, grabbing onto her arm just as she desperately stretched and yanked it away from him, managing to get half of her body out through the front door and into the open air. The sky had remained blue, and the light was still bright. So terrifyingly normal, she thought momentarily, realizing how dark the inside of Doctor Oates’s house had felt by comparison.
“Heeeeelllp!” she screamed, praying that James would hear her—or if not, then at least Byron would alert her husband or one of the other neighbors might hear her anguished cries.
She screamed again as he wrenched at her arm, dragging her back towards the house as she yanked and pulled and kicked, hooking her foot around anything she could and continuing to scream. She kicked backwards, trying to catch his hand and release herself from his grip, writhing and twisting, but his grasp was firm, and however hard she contorted and bent her arm and body, his hand remained tightly gripping on as he gradually and, with great effort, dragged her back, slow step by slow step.
She could see that he was out of breath, but he was like a juggernaut, and she realized that she was no match for his strength.
“I really wish that you hadn’t done that, Daphne.” He puffed with laborious effort. “Now I’m afraid I’m going to have to restrain you to keep you quiet. I was hoping that it wouldn’t have to come to this. We were getting on so well. I thought that you were enjoying the books!”
His voice was a mixture of anger and disappointment, but mixed in there was a sense of wounded male pride. She had hurt his ego, his need to show off, mansplain and impress her with his endless knowledge. More than revealing to her that he had killed a man; more than the admission that he had stalked and watched a woman through her window for over twenty years; eclipsing the implications of any of these shameful revelations was the overwhelming anger that she was no longer entranced by his pseudo-intellectual swagger, his brandishing of facts and figures, his parading of enlightening hypotheses. Daphne saw him now for what he was: a sad and lonely old man who had delighted in the idea of flaunting and parading his “wisdom” to a new and gullible audience. She saw clearly now how patronizing and condescending he had felt towards her all along, and she was engulfed in a new rage of her own.
