Safely, anonymously ensconced in a telephone booth, she sat down and checked her coin purse. She had just enough.
The phone rang six times at his hotel room before he answered it.
"Hello?" His voice was thick and bewildered, as if he had been sleeping.
"Raymond," she said, and then she was crying.
"Gloria? What is it? What's wrong?" His deep, reassuring voice calmed her enough so that she could speak.
"Raymond, something is happening, there's a man, I was out on my walk and he started following me, watching me. I went to the police but they—he was spying on me even there, and I had to go. It's hard to explain, but I need you here. I can't handle it anymore. I'm afraid." The last part she almost whispered.
"Of course, darling," he said, soothing and warm again. "I'll be back in . . ." There was a pause and low murmur on his end of the line. ". . . in three hours," he said. "I'll come straight home. You wait for me there."
"Is someone there with you, Raymond?"
"With me?" He sounded startled, almost afraid.
"Is there a man in the room with you? Why is there a man in your room?" Her voice was rising.
"Now, Gloria," he said, "It's not what you think."
"It's him, isn't it? He's there right now, isn't he?" She was shouting now, panicked and furious. "He's listening to every word you say. What is going on, Raymond?"
Mrs. Chambers slammed the receiver down on the hook, not waiting for his reply. She sat there in the booth for a moment, overcome with nausea, her teeth chattering and her hands shaking. Her temples pulsed with pain, her stomach churned, and her thoughts ran in panicked circles.
The judge with the man in the dark coat, the girl in the park, the mother and child on the tram, the man in the dark coat, Officer Reynolds, the couple on the footpath, the man in the dark coat—
Mrs. Chambers had only a vague idea of how she had arrived at her house, but now she was climbing the front steps, now she was fumbling with her key, now she was inside at last, and for the moment she was safe. She closed the front door and locked it, and then sagged against the wood for a moment, her muscles feeling weak and her head swimming. When she could stand straight again, she began making the circuit of the downstairs rooms, checking and latching all the windows and drawing all the curtains and drapes. She was wrestling with the deadbolt on the back door when Mrs. Higgens appeared in the hallway, brandishing a filleting knife in her wrinkled hand. They both started and screamed.
"Ma'am, it's you!" Mrs. Higgens gasped. "When you disappeared without saying anything, and then—and then I was making the fish for dinner, and I heard someone moving around the house . . . " Mrs. Higgens trailed off. "Ma'am, you look terrible. Are you all right?"
Mrs. Chambers gave the deadbolt a sharp blow and it finally shot into place. Massaging her hand, she tried to explain. "We have to keep him out, him and his friends. I had forgotten you were here, but you can help." Seeing Mrs. Higgens' expression, she held out her hands imploringly. "I don't have anyone else. Even the judge is helping him. You have to help me lock him out, lock them all out."
"Who?" Mrs. Higgens said. "Who is the judge helping? Who do we have to lock out? Are you sure you aren't—I mean, you seem very tired, ma'am, and you really don't look well." She stepped closer, and tentatively touched Mrs. Chambers' sleeve. "I could run you a bath upstairs. You could change out of that dress, maybe take a nap, and if you need me to, I could call your doctor—"
"No!" Mrs. Chambers snatched herself back from the alluring visions of a warm, scented bath, a refreshing nap, clean clothes. "I don't have time for a bath, and we can't know if the doctor's on our side, or on his!" Mrs. Higgens was looking frightened and bewildered, and that knife was making Mrs. Chambers very nervous. This would not do. "I'm so sorry," Mrs. Chambers said, swallowing down her nausea. "I've had a very rough afternoon, and I'm just upset. That's all." She tried to smile. "You know what might help? A nice, soothing cup of tea. Would you mind brewing up some chamomile? We could sit down in the kitchen for a moment and calm down. And then I'll help you get dinner ready."
Mrs. Higgens relaxed. "That sounds lovely, ma'am. I'll get the tea started right away."
The chamomile was in the pantry, of course, and once the housekeeper was inside, it only took a second for Mrs. Chambers to slam the door and wedge a chair under the handle. Mrs. Higgens seemed too confused to be one of his accomplices, but she was also a liability. Ignoring Mrs. Higgens' first startled shout, then her tentative knocking and ever-more-hysterical entreaties, Mrs. Chambers gathered as much food as she could carry and stumbled upstairs to her bedroom.
There were no shutters or bars on the beautiful, wide windows, so she contented herself with latching them and pulling the heavy drapes. Her head felt like it was splitting down the middle, and her stomach was roiling, but she did not have time for that. She had only gotten one corner of the massive dresser against the door when someone began shouting and knocking outside. The voice was muffled, but she could hear her name.
"Gloria! Let me in! Gloria, I can explain! Mrs. Higgens, are you there?"
Raymond already, she thought dimly as she tugged at the dresser. He must have taken an earlier train, and then gotten a taxi at the train station, maybe even the same taxi she herself had passed up that afternoon. And with him, she had no doubt, would be her mysterious pursuer, the man in the dark coat.
At the thought of that fiend, that monster, at her front door, nausea swept over her, and she lurched to the bathroom, one hand over her mouth. Leaning over the toilet bowl, she brought up everything she had eaten that day—breakfast and lunch, and the purplish syrup from the shaved ice. Biting back dry heaves, she wiped her mouth and flushed the toilet. Her stomach quieted, and the pain in her head eased.
Outside, the shouting and banging had stopped, and the house was ominously silent. She finished pushing the dresser all the way against the door (wincing with each shove because of her hastily wrapped ankle and splitting headache) and then wedged the bed behind it. Somewhere, glass shattered, a far-away, imaginary sound. Mrs. Chambers spread a blanket in the corner farthest from the door, then paused to listen as frantic footsteps sounded in the room below. There was silence for a moment, then a distant clatter—perhaps the wooden chair falling on its side in the kitchen? She sank down on the blanket and thought of picnics in the park.
The footsteps again, heavy and rushed: on the stairs; on the landing; outside the bedroom door. Someone tried the handle, and a heavy weight thudded against the thick wood panel, but her barricade held.
"Gloria, are you in there?" Her husband's voice sounded hoarse and strained. "Gloria, let me in! We need—we need to talk."
She wondered if that man was waiting downstairs in the kitchen, talking with Mrs. Higgens, or if he was standing behind her husband right now, a sardonic smile on his face. She said nothing; she had nothing to say to him. Her stomach suddenly felt very empty, painfully so. She took an apple from the picnic spread before her on the blanket and bit into it. It was the last of the winter apples, and it was small and sweet and tart.
Sean
