Chapter Text
Prologue: Der Reichenbach-Fall
Gengenbach, Ortsteil Reichenbach, Black Forest, July 1997
Stefan expected to be sick any minute. Turning away from the gory scene, he had to muster all his remaining willpower to keep himself from throwing up over the body. His colleagues from the forensics unit would not be very happy if he did.
“Sowas hab’ ich noch nie gesehen”, his colleague Jürgen, twenty years in service to law and order, said incredulously.
Biting his lip, he turned to Stefan. “Schau am besten nicht so lange hin. Weiß Gott, ich bin jetzt schon zwanzig Jahre im Dienst und sowas ist mir nie untergekommen… Wer- wer macht sowas?“
He seemed genuinely shocked, which did nothing to calm Stefan’s nerves.
The British tourist had been reported missing a week ago by her concerned husband. They had been on holiday here, together with their little daughter and apparently the wife, who had claimed she wanted to take a quick walk in the evening to take a few pictures of the sunset over the dark tree-covered mountains that were eponymous to the entire region, had not returned by eleven pm.
When she hadn’t returned by midnight, the husband had called the police.
They had told him that as of now, they could not help him, she had not been gone long enough to suspect a crime right away and maybe, everything could be easily explained at her return.
But Isabella “Stella” Williams never came home and soon, the whole town was up and about searching for her for days: posters were printed and stuck to lampposts and notice boards in towns and villages in a radius of fifty kilometres, some even appeared across the border in France. A picture of Mrs Williams, taken only a week prior to her mysterious disappearance by her husband, smiled from the front page of the local paper, not to speak of all the local volunteers who searched the popular beauty spots and along the most frequented forest trails for days.
Soon, the search for her grew nationwide and the name Isabella Williams became familiar to a German TV and radio audience from Kiel to Munich.
At times during the last week, it had looked as if perhaps there was an explanation to her disappearance that did not involve a crime, though sad and ugly it was. An anonymous caller claimed to have spotted her at the train station in Offenburg boarding the Intercity-Express to Basel. Another lead had taken them to a petrol station on the outskirts of Strasbourg, where she had supposedly stopped in the early hours of the morning following her disappearance filling up her car, a grey Renault Laguna with a Parisian number plate, and bought a bottle of Coke and some snacks, but that too had been a false lead.
She had not run away with her lover or left her husband and daughter simply because she had tired of them.
Isabella Williams lay dead on the forest floor, the doe-like dark eyes that had shone so brightly even from the cheaply-printed newspapers open, but mercifully turned away from Stefan. All he could see was her hair that covered her head and face almost entirely in dishevelled brown tangles but left her neck, or rather what remained of it, exposed.
The rest of the body was unharmed, her clothing perfectly in place, which at least for the moment made a sexually motivated crime seem unlikely-
Thinking about a possible motive: What in the name of the Lord and all saints in Heaven could motivate a person to commit such a gruesome murder?
Although he would never condone the act of killing another person for other reasons than self-defence in immediate danger to the life of one’s self or another person and possibly without the intent to inflict lethal injuries, Stefan could at least comprehend why some people killed.
He could comprehend the motives of the wife mixing rat poison in her abusive husband’s favourite dish and those of the man murdering his wealthy relation in order to inherit their money; but why would one murder an innocent woman on her holiday, and in such a way?
Most people didn’t enjoy the act of killing, what they were interested in was the time after the kill, after the burial, when they would be rid of their victim once and for all.
During his short career in the Kripo so far, he had seen the bodies of two men shot by members of a rivalling biker gang, a woman stabbed repeatedly by her jealous lover and another man who had been electrocuted by his neighbour.
What all cases had in common was that the murderers had tried to go swiftly about their business. They had had a purpose, a goal why they had wanted to be rid of that person and had tried to minimise the kill itself.
And then there was this.
Mrs Williams’ throat was ripped open. If he hadn’t known any better, Stefan would have put all his money and his prized motorbike on an attack by a non-native wild animal, but the likelihood of being attacked by a tiger or a lion in Central Europe was exactly as remote as his hopes for Freiburg to win the next Bundesliga season.
There weren’t even any imprints in the forest floor that indicated a native wild animal had harmed her.
“One week dead, likely has been killed right here”, a colleague from forensics in one of these unsettling, faceless full-body snowman suits declared.
One week. The chances of finding any evidence that could give them any information about who or what had killed Mrs Williams were bleak to say the least.
Forcing a swell of bile rising in his oesophagus, Stefan forced himself to take a look at the victim once more. Forbidding himself to think of the dead body as a person did make it a little easier. Even from his point of view outside the barrier tape with which the forensics unit had marked its territory the extent of whatever this could be called was visible: her neck was far from intact; there was a gaping hole from side to side below her jaw with bits of hastily torn off skin and flesh dangling along the jagged rim- it was a small wonder the head was still attached.
With a wheezing cough that promised him a second look at his dinner, Stefan turned away once more. He couldn’t handle the sight.
Jürgen, who too was avoiding the body best as he could but fared much better or was at least more adept at feigning composure, patted him clumsily on the arm and led him a little further away from the crime scene, a little more into the soothing darkness of the forest- the same darkness that had proven lethal to Mrs Williams only a week ago.
“This is disgusting. Utterly-“ a female voice coming from underneath a white suit said, almost more to herself than to anybody else.
“What’s the matter?”, Jürgen replied.
“These are bite marks and they look human- in part, at least. Human, but with disproportionately long eye teeth-like fangs. It also appears that who- or whatever has killed her has cleaned all the blood up, except for the blood on her clothing, but not as you’d expect with a towel or something like that, but with its tongue. The attacker has licked all the blood meticulously up, almost like when you give a dog an empty leftovers dish-“ the colleague in white attempted to make an analogy, but the image of an innocent puppy cleaning a Tupperware bowl of sauce transformed into the much too vivid picture of a human tongue licking along the edges of where teeth had ripped sensitive tissue open-
He couldn’t hold back any longer. Stefan barely made it to a bush far enough away from the others before what felt like three days’ worth of semi-digested food came back up. Thankfully, Jürgen offered to take him home; he wouldn’t have known if he could have kept himself on his bike after this night.
The next morning, Stefan, Jürgen and a couple of other members of their team were sitting in the inn-area of the “Zum Hirschen” guesthouse in Reichenbach. They had decided to take breakfast together before going into the forest once more to review the crime scene properly, now that the body had been transported to a morgue.
Although he wasn’t particularly hungry, Stefan did his best to force a few bites of the scrambled eggs he had ordered down his throat, he’d need some strength to survive the day.
“…The whole thing about the eye teeth seems weird to me…”
“…despite the obvious traces the attacker’s tongue left behind, there is no trace of human DNA on her body other than her own…”
“…A human bite? Please, I think we’re being pranked. That wasn’t a real body and the Williams’ are actors and we’re in the middle of a clever PR stunt for that new musical that’s going to hit the stage in October…”
“Jürgen, will you shut up? That’s impious! Why can’t you just…”
It was hard for him to concentrate on anything other than the picture of the body that was still so fresh on his mind.
“I can’t anymore, sorry. I need some air.”
Leaving the half-eaten plate behind, Stefan rose from his chair. The only thing he wanted was to get away from his colleagues for a minute or two. When he reached the door, he noticed apart from his colleagues there was only one other guest in the room: a man, his upper body hidden behind a copy of the Südkurier, which naturally mentioned last night’s gruesome find on the front page.
As he was about to pass the man by, he put his paper down and greeted him.
“Die Tischthemen Ihrer Kollegen sind Ihnen wohl auf den Magen geschlagen.”
He smiled, a s mile that reached his lips but not his unnaturally blue eyes, and invited Stefan to take the empty chair opposite of him across the small table.
The man, he noted, spoke German without any distinguishable regional accent or dialect. His Hochdeutsch sounded polished, each syllable, each letter trained to perfection like the steps of a ballet choreography and yet the “-sch” in “Tischthemen” and “geschlagen” had slipped his linguistic drill.
“Sind Sie Engländer?” Stefan enquired, slowly recognising where on the globe his slight accent might be placed, curious.
“Indeed, I am. And you are a member of the police force? I happened to overhear your interesting conversation”, the man nodded in direction of the others.
“Yes, I’m a policeman.”
“I don’t envy you. Always lagging one step behind the criminal.”
“Until we catch up.”
“But that takes time, doesn’t it? I would not be patient enough to do your job. Anyhow, I am thankful such diligent investigators as yourself and your associates exist.”
And in a lower voice he continued: “You are working on the case of the body they’ve found in the woods last night? Terrible business, this.”
His long index finger traced the headline in the newspaper he had put down.
“Yes. The preliminary results of our investigation however must be kept under wraps, so I’m afraid I can’t talk about anything other than you already know from the papers.”
The man looked somewhat displeased, but quickly caught himself before he began to talk. Stefan wanted to get away from him. He didn’t know why, but he strongly suspected it was the eyes. He never even blinked and the icy depths seemed to see right through his eyes into his soul.
“I thought as much. I hope you find the culprit who did such a terrible thing.”
The man’s face looked devoid of any emotion despite his seemingly empathetic words. It was then Stefan noticed how pale the other man was- unhealthily so, and the skin around his eyes looked red and swollen.
“You don’t look well”, Stefan, animated by the man’s concerning looks and the opportunity to leave the topic of the body behind, remarked. A second body, even if the person died a death in which no second party had a hand in, in the same small town within a day of the discovery of Mrs Williams, would be detrimental to the local tourism industry and keep Reichenbach in the news for the next few months, especially during the slow news season in the middle of summer that always tended to produce the most absurd stories.
“I’m on my way to Switzerland for a cure in a clinic near Lake Geneva. My wife insisted I should take better care of myself.”
At the word “wife”, he smiled somewhat wistfully, but the smile did not last long and faded as Stefan decided to prod a little deeper. Somehow, the man interested him.
“Why didn’t you take a plane? That would have been quicker and easier for sure.”
“It would, but I wanted to take a tour of Continental Europe first, since I had the opportunity to do so.”
“And your wife?”, Stefan continued, “why isn’t she with you?”
“One of us has to stay with the children”, the Englishman answered simply, yet with an undertone that indicated displeasure. Why Stefan could not tell.
“I see. Uhm… You’re from England, right? Did you know Mrs Williams?”
“Tell me, are you sitting here as the nervous young man unable to finish his scrambled eggs or as the respectable, case-hardened investigator you’re trying to be?”
The longer they talked, the more impatient and unfriendly the man grew. His blue eyes sparkled dangerously and his unruly auburn hair that he kept tied in a loose ponytail at the back of his head that stood in awkward contrast to his immaculate three piece suit seemed to glow like fire.
“I’m just interested. You’re English, she was English and Reichenbach is not that big. Perhaps you met on the street before, had a chat?”, Stefan proposed innocently.
“No, I did not know her. Just because we share a few letters in our passport does not mean we have been acquainted and if you are going to ask me now if I have an alibi for the supposed night the crime happened, ask Frau Dettinger, the landlady of this establishment. I went upstairs early and did not leave the house that night. And now, would you please excuse me”, he closed his speech, “My train is about to leave in an hour and I have not packed my suitcase yet.”
He rose abruptly, snatching the paper from the table and went on his way. For a moment, Stefan considered going after him, but he realised that was a bad idea, given the man’s staggering physique. In case of a brawl, and the Englishman seemed like a very short-tempered man, he would have the upper hand and Stefan wanted to save himself a black eye and a lot of paperwork.
Besides, everyone in town was jumpy and nervous after the murder, so the man’s reaction seemed almost normal again in the light of recent events.
He returned to his cold scrambled eggs and his company, who had left Mrs Williams behind and were talking about some children’s novel from the UK Jürgen’s sister had been sent by their cousin in London for her daughter to read. Apparently, the girl was quite keen on learning English now and everyone at the table asked themselves what could possibly be so thrilling about a little boy with a weird scar going to school.
“Back, are you?”, Jürgen commented on his return. “Who was that you were talking to?”
“Someone. A tourist. Not important, I guess.”
“What did you talk about?”
“What do you think people here want to talk about right now?”
“Christ. I hope we find that bastard who killed the poor woman quickly. If only to give closure to her family- imagine what the husband must feel like, and their little girl, barely two years old-“
Jürgen sighed.
“We must protect them best as we can until we know more about the murderer. If it was a person at all- I mean, right now it looks like we’re dealing with a crazy vampire killer-“
“Only problem is vampires don’t exist”, Laura, another member of their team, interrupted. “Let’s see what we can do today at the crime scene and wait for forensics to have a proper investigation of all the traces in their lab. Perhaps things are going to look vastly different then, I mean it was dark, we all were under immense psychological pressure, I don’t need to tell you this is how mistakes are made. We’ll wait. Until then, we don’t talk about our finds to anybody.”
Five heads nodded in unison.
Perhaps it’s for the best, Stefan thought, chewing on his cold eggs once more. Who would ever believe them? Mentally preparing himself for his second view of the crime scene, he quickly forgot about the English tourist.
Exeter, England, December 2016.
The day is wintry in all aspects, but not of the beautiful, sunshine-cold kind my students would use as a background for the vain pictures they take of themselves to upload on the various social media platforms I take no interest in.
I don’t take interest in anything they do and they don’t take interest in anything I do, much to my great displeasure.
They lack the proper discipline to come to class on time, in proper attire (“sweatpants” and any item of clothing with stains on or the stench of having gone three weeks without washing clinging to it do not fall under this category) and with the necessary coursework prepared.
I consider myself a warrior. I fight ignorance and fatuousness with rigour. Sadly, my students often show the same response to a firm, guiding hand as the American rebels of the 1770s and 80s which makes every hour spent teaching in the classroom my personal Yorktown at which I surrender after fifteen minutes of battling the seemingly impervious minds of my charges and begin to explain anew, over and over again- I am fighting for a lost cause, week after week, trying to charm the post-enlightenment youth with the allures of history.
Being a historian and teaching students about wars is almost as hard as to fight in one one’s self.
Considering themselves “bright young things” of their very own particular hue, they deem themselves above the principles of discipline and respect I value and demand of them and much rather direct their attention to their mobile phones than to me.
Apparently, the only day they are able to produce a coherent sentence or set of sentences even about my person and the class I teach is faculty evaluation day.
While a few honest specimens who mirror the virtues I admire and adhere to the principles I hold in high regard write more words about why they enjoy the class than some of their less committed classmates do in an essay, the only thing some others seem to be able to produce are statements of dislike regarding my person in general (“too strict”, “mean”, “evil”, “tests are too hard”) or open mockery of my most unfortunate characteristic (“DAT [sic.] vooooiiice [sic.] xD [sick.]”, “he sounds like a woman who’s permanently on her period and he’s just as bitchy.”, “should have considered a solo career as a male soprano instead of torturing students for fun.”, “Napoleon was short, Richard III had a hump and Psycho-Coe has his voice. I let my observation speak for itself.”).
I wonder what they would say would I comment on their natural deficiencies in such a manner (although I would never stoop so low as to insult women, opera singers or anybody else except for them). Naturally, I have not had a choice in this matter and I have endured more than a lifetime of abuse and mockery for my voice.
It is always wondrous how the safety of anonymity makes the most cowardly man or woman a brave fighter for what they consider is right, a tendency that can be observed throughout history.
The year I taught a class about intelligence during the Revolutionary War, a few ‘funny’ poltroons decided to sign said evaluation forms, which had to be handed out in print form thanks to a major problem in the faculty’s IT system that summer, as “Culper”, “Culper Jr.”, “711”, “722” etc. One especially creative mind coded the sentence “Kiss my ass” with the print of the Culper Ring coding alphabet I provided them with for me to decipher.
That did not take me long. I have become practiced over the years. In fact, without me, they would probably never have known about the Culper Ring and the full extent of its operations; I devoted a lot of my time and research to the topic and can claim success and critical acclaim in my field, though some of my works have been published under pseudonyms- I have my reasons. Academia is treacherous territory and while some liken it in its complex social structures and hidden traps to an Italian Renaissance court, I tend to compare it to initially organised troops slowly transcending into a gory mess under canon and musket fire, men screaming, shouting, the dead and fatally wounded colouring a formerly lush green meadow red-
Some have told me over the years that my fascination with the American Revolution borders on morbidity, an abnormal delight in the detailed description of bloody battlefields and a peculiarly avid interest in the social and personal life of people of the time of which I am said to speak at times as if they had been friends I had once known.
I have no need for friends, not among my competition, regardless of my Oxford degree and various other credentials, I do not tend to socialise with potential enemies. I did not wait an eternity to graduate from Oxford to be stabbed in the back by “friends” who might snatch attractive job offers or publication space in journals from me.
And yet, they force me to join them on lunch breaks, the men and women who have their office on the same floor as I do, thinking they will one day break me into submission to their “friendship”.
“John? John? Joh-on?”
Ah, the false familiarity of academia. I was never fond of first name terms, even my wife tended to use my surname (albeit with a gentle, teasing undertone), especially not if the people inviting themselves to call my name have not asked permission to do so. When I joined Exeter University two years ago, it was simply assumed that I would not object as it was common practice among my colleagues.
An immaculately manicured hand gently but decidedly pushed the volume I was hiding my face behind to be left alone flat onto the table.
I looked up to signal my dear colleague Francesca Montebello, eminent expert in the field of ecclesiastical history in the 11th and 12th centuries, that my interest in whatever table talk had occurred in my mental absence was rather limited.
“What’s wrong with you, John?”
Oh if only she knew.
“Nothing.”
“You always bury yourself in books. How was your weekend?”
“Fine, thank you.”
“Typically, someone ought to reply ‘and yours?’, if only to be polite.”
Her deadpan face paired with the obvious frustration in her voice made me uncomfortable- and angry.
“Excuse me, Francesca, I am reading.”
“What’s that you’re reading anyway, John?”, another colleague, David “Dave” Cooper, the insufferable imbecile they made me share an office with thanks to shortage of space in the university buildings, chimed in and snatched the book from me. If I had wanted to, I could have grabbed it even before his hand had so much as moved an inch away from its previous location next to his plate, but I did not want to alarm anybody present.
“Matthias Claudius”, he read in the mock-dramatic tone of a thespian imitating Shakespearian speech, “what are you doing here with us historians anyway? You sure you don’t belong in the English Literature department?”
When Francesca shot him a warning glance, “Dave” replied defensively, “Have you ever had a look around his office? Because I have, I work there, too. And he uses up all our shelves with his books, and they’re not even relevant to his studies, many of them quite old, too. Catullus, Schiller, Milton, Shakespeare- you’d think he’s leading some sort of double-life either renting out our space as storage for the campus library or he’s running an antiquarian bookshop from his office!”
“Dave, we’re getting you’re trying to be funny. Give it a rest.”, Prof Marcus Cholmondeley, the only fully-tenured member of our party, rolled his eyes before looking at me with a warning glimmer in his eyes (he had spotted my hand tighten around the knife that lay useless on the table next to the empty space in front of me where everyone else had a plate. If I had felt like it, I would have told him that nobody in the right mind would attempt a murder with such a ridiculous weapon as a table knife. At least none of this kind.) and returned to the watery splatter of mashed potatoes on his plate.
“’Give it a rest, Dave’”,” Dave” mimicked Marcus, “’give it a rest’? Seriously? Do you know what working in the same room as John Simcoe is like? He’s always there when I hold my office hours only to comment or do whatever silly little things he does behind my back to unnerve me and my students? Or when he’s supposed to hold his own- last time, he was a complete No-Coe and everyone complained to me? But that’s not it, apart from occupying our shared office space, leaving me to deal with his students and acting up like a thirteen-year-old, he keeps murmuring to himself when he writes. Oh, I forgot, he’s not working. When I say writing, I mean poetry, disturbing stuff. Last time I asked him to stop forcing his fucking twisted imagination on me, I had to evade a book being thrown my way because Edgar Allan Coe here apparently thinks it’s funny to whack my skull in with a complete and annotated edition of Lord Byron’s collected works. He’s a bloody psychopath! No wonder his wife’s no longer in the picture.”
That was enough. I felt the urge to drain him of every single droplet of blood in his body in the most slow and painful manner possible. He could insult me and make stupid puns on my name, fine. It’s not as if I hadn’t heard “psy-Coe-path” before. I am accustomed to not being liked. But dragging Elizabeth into this was too much.
I rose, knowing I towered him easily, even when he was not seated. For one moment, I considered saying something, but decided against it given the number of potential witnesses to something that might cause me legal trouble if reported to the police and went away, back to our shared office, where I locked the key from the inside and left it in the lock. Should “Dave” call a locksmith if he wanted to.
All my colleagues knew about my wife was that she is no longer with me, which they misinterpreted as us having separated and living apart or being divorced.
It never occurred to anybody she might have died.
Mid-December, only two weeks shy of Christmas and our anniversary coming up a week later during the Christmas break, was the worst time he could have said these things.
Rage flooded my body, a rage I knew I would not be able to control if left in the company of people. In this state, I cannot guarantee for anyone’s safety. Locking myself away is, in such situations the most effective method of prevention. I have learned from past mistakes. I tried to focus, concentrate on trying to phrase an email to a publisher I was supposed to write, tried to remember the list of my interlibrary loans, but the only thing I could see before my mind’s eye was the face of a young woman, hazel eyes, her dark hair loosely falling around her shoulders, a serene smile on her face. Since I couldn’t do anything else, I concentrated on her face instead, how the hair that framed it softly danced in the breeze of a golden day in summer, tried to describe the exact colour of her eyes (impossible) and (at least in my mind) traced the curvature of her lips with my finger. In the sanctuary of my closed eyes, I tried to imagine, no, remember what taking her hand had felt like. It was so long ago that I did for the last time it almost feels like a product of my imagination now, unreal.
Almost everything about us had been unreal.
Her warm fingers wrapped around mine, and I felt a soft smile creeping to my lips. I was prepared to hold on to her hand, to follow her as she let herself fall in the whispering grass behind her, half-expecting a tumbling sensation to wash over me when she pulled me down with her, but a knock on the door chased her away, like the loud roar of a car does a doe by the roadside. My eyes opened, and I was in my office in mid-December, not in a summery meadow.
For a brief moment of confusion, my stare lingered on my cold, empty hand that had only seconds ago at least in a slumbering dream state had held hers as if to make sure it had indeed been a dream.
It had been. And would always be. A dream carefully constructed from memories of brighter days.
The knock on the door grew more urgent the second time.
“John? Open the door! Come on, let me in, please.”
Francesca’s voice, not unlike that of a concerned parent, begged for entry. I let her in.
She entered even before I had opened the door properly, one hand holding one of the chipped plates from the small kitchen across the hallway with a cling film-wrapped ham sandwich on it, the other balancing two mugs of coffee. How she managed not to spill or drop anything while pushing herself into the room was almost a miracle.
Without even asking, she decidedly put the mugs and plate down on my desk, on top of my notebooks (not the electronic kind) and papers. I was certain she could read the disapproval in my face, but Francesca, for some reason or other, was one of the few people who were either foolhardy or oblivious to the sort of intimidation I regularly used on most people around me. I don’t like them very much and I prefer solitariness to their sociable lifestyle. People make me sick.
Pulling "Dave"’s chair close (I was already contemplating telling her she was dangerously close to invading my space), she sat down and placed the plate in my hands.
“Here, I got that for you. Eat.”
“Thank you, I’m not hungry. The food at the canteen-”
“Then take a sip. You never eat or drink anything at lunch, you must be hungry and as far as I know –from Dave”, she added reluctantly, “you never have anything in here either. It’s not healthy.”
I lied, I was hungry. But not for a ham sandwich that had spent the entire morning in the self-service fridge in the cafeteria, and I have no liking for coffee either. The smell turns my stomach.
When I pushed the cup she tried to slide over to me away, careful, yet determined, she studied my face with concern.
“You look peaky, you know? If you want to talk-“
“Thank you, Francesca.”
My eyes evaded hers and wandered to the door, where they remained, my stare fixed on the door handle, hoping she would take the hint.
She did, but Francesca was no one who gave up easily.
“I can’t force you. Now, to business. We’ve decided Dave will be moving out.”
I looked to her, my eyes digging deep into the depths of hers, trying to find out if it was just a cheap trick, hoping she was not trying to fool me.
“Don’t look at me like that. To be frank, you have no reason whatsoever to look so pleased, you should be thankful Dave’s not going to report you to the police. He’ll be moving his stuff tomorrow afternoon and I advise you not to be around when he does. “
Finally, I would be rid of him.
“The day after tomorrow, on Friday, your new companion will move in. Do you know Anna Williams?”
“Williams?”, I repeated incredulously. The name sounded familiar.
“Yes, Marcus’ student assistant. She has a small office of sorts on the other side of the floor and when Marcus asked her, she was willing to swap with Dave. I said I oppose this new arrangement” she looked at me, her eyes cattishly narrowed, obviously warning me that if ever a book were to fly in the vague direction of Miss Williams, she would personally see to my undoing. Not that she would be able to accomplish this feat, yet to save myself time and troubles, I let her believe she had the upper hand in this conversation and nodded obediently.
While it would normally have hurt me quite badly to be accused of hurting an innocent person, especially a woman, I was too busy to care about the insult. “She'll only ever be here three days a week at most, and not all day, being a student assistant. All I ask of you is, be nice to her.”
There was an acidic undertone to the “be nice” part of the sentence, almost as if she didn’t expect it.
“Yes”, I said, only to be rid of her.
Whoever this Miss Williams was, she could hardly be worse than my previous office mate. “Dave”’s juice boxes in particular would not be missed. He tends to slurp apple juice out of these tiny cartons made for toddlers who cannot be trusted with bottles yet and fill the room with the unbearable stench of apples. I hate apples. There is a profound reason to my dislike of said fruit that none of these fools could ever understand.
The following day, I stayed at home, working on my latest publication (“Benedict Arnold- A Looter Unhinged”).
The Calmness of the day struck me, no emails from students asking me to explain things I have told them thrice about in class, no invitations to pre-Christmas activities I wouldn’t attend anyway and not even a call about the gas meter or similar trifles I take no interest in. I did, however, receive a visitor. She comes to me often, stays for a snack and demands my full attention before she vanishes again, mostly through the half-open bathroom window.
Diana is not my pet- the huntress has subdued me, not the other way around. One morning before class in winter shortly after I moved in, I found a shaggy bundle of ragged grey fur sitting on my doorstep. Despite her ill looks, the cat, barely fully grown yet, had looked at me with proud amber eyes and strutted into the house without even politely asking for entry. In another life, I remembered, my wife’s cat had looked the same way at her.
Her every move beneath her coat of matted fur was graceful and with the implicitness of an empress, she laid siege to my sofa, which I spent two weeks and a considerable amount of money on cleaning it from cat hair. Soon, I had learned that throws are an efficient means of preventing cat fur from touching the expensive piece of furniture directly.
Carefully, I had lifted her off the sofa and onto the kitchen counter, where I tried to free her of her felted fur with a pair of scissors. She would not have won a beauty pageant when I was finished with my work, but she looked much more hygienic. As for the kitchen counter, I don’t have use of it anyway. I don’t cook, which is why I felt no reluctance to lift a stray cat on top of it and cut her hair there despite my usual love for cleanliness.
Although I have always been what could be called a dog person, this hissy little creature soon became my sole true friend. We had our first and only major disagreement (except for the time she discovered I mixed flea medicine into her tuna) when I bathed her on the same day. My carpets don’t take dirty paws and fur lightly. When I, my arms scratched bloody from her vehement attempts to escape the well-tempered water and pleasantly-smelling bathing salts, had lifted her from the dirty tub and put her in a towel, she had stopped glaring at me as if I had committed an act of the grossest lèse-majesté against her and rolled into a perfect ball, purring as I, somewhat cautious after her repeated attacks against my person, stroked her between the ears. With the bundle on my lap, I settled on the sofa and watched as the cat fell asleep.
From this moment on, she started to return every few days and earned her name by bringing me uncalled for tokens of her appreciation, dead mice, rats and birds- dead when I was fortunate. In the past, I have repeatedly had the dubious pleasure of chasing a lethally wounded mouse around the house that Diana had brought me.
As has become our habit, Diana headed straight for the refrigerator, where she knows I keep her tuna. We have tried ordinary cat food before, but capricious as my stray huntress is, she had made it perfectly clear that she would not stoop so lowly as to accept Whiskas. Through strenuous trial and error experiments we could establish that her expensive taste in salmon (preferably from Ireland or Norway, and not the aquaculture-raised kind), monkfish and even scallops aside, she could envision making do with tuna on ordinary days.
Sadly I lacked her favourite food that day, for some reason I had forgotten to stock up my provisions. I don’t usually go shopping, there is not much I need and most things I can lay my hands on in other ways, but the small supermarket a few streets away has served me well in the past in situations when I required something post-haste.
“I will be right back”, I told her and received a disappointed and hurt meow in return. So much about spending the day at home. I discarded my dressing gown and slipped into a black turtleneck instead, paired with one of my usual work trousers. Since it was an informal outing, I did not pay much mind to doing my hair and left it falling to my shoulders. As it was winter, I added a black coat that fell to my knees and then considered myself ready to go.
At the shop, I did not directly find what I was looking for, these imbeciles had re-arranged the shelving for the third time in five months now. Walking through the aisles and looking confusedly left and right, I almost ran into a woman with a shopping cart.
“Excuse me”, I said and sincerely meant it.
Instead of simply replying in the usual fashion, the woman, whom I now realised was quite young, stopped and looked at me.
“Hello Mr Simcoe! I barely recognised you outside the classroom. I was in one of your classes last semester, “Women of the Revolution”.”
“Ah-“, I started, pretending to remember her name-
“Anna Williams.”
She extended her hand to me and I shook it.
“Williams? The same Anna Williams working for Professor Cholmondeley? Then you are moving into my office.”
“I am. I’m sorry, I have to go- I see you tomorrow at the office, then?”
“You shall. Goodbye”, I sent her on her way before I spied a tell-tale blue and red tin in her cart.
“Wait.” She stopped and turned around once more.
“Where did you get the tuna?”
Third aisle on the left, right hand side, just below the sieved tomatoes.”
Her directions proved astonishingly accurate and within ten minutes, I was back with Diana, who hungrily devoured a whole tin of tuna and some prawns I had bought as a treat in no time.
When I came to the office the following day, nothing reminiscent of “Dave” was left. His books were gone and replaced with new ones, his desk cleaned and the carpet hoovered. Instead, a messy bun of dark hair peeked over the top of the back of his former chair and typed a lengthy email.
“Good morning Mr Simcoe”, Miss Williams said far too cheerily for my taste without even looking up from her work.
“Good morning”, I replied, before I set to my own work. For two hours or so, we worked quietly alongside each other before I, stretching my long limbs that could not be accommodated sufficiently beneath my smallish desk, walked across the room to my assortment of exceptional literature and picked a volume from the shelves.
As I did so, I could not help but notice Miss Williams was no longer searching books in library catalogues or answering her employer’s correspondence. She was immersed in a website called revolutionary-ancestry.com that sported an image of re-enactors at Colonial Williamsburg in British and American uniforms I recognised to be in the style of those worn in the 1770s.
Interested, I drew closer but my plan to read along from over her shoulder proved futile.
“Mr Simcoe? Can I help you?” She turned on her chair and looked directly at me.
“That’s not something Professor Cholmondeley has told you to do, is it?”
“No. I’m taking a break and this is my personal area of interest.”
She seemed oddly offended I was taking an interest in her interest, which puzzled me- as to my understanding, people tended to like it if someone was interested.
Delighted to have found a like-minded person, I could not hold myself back: “As you know, this is my area of expertise. If you are interested in a list of relevant publications or-“
“Thank you, but I doubt you can help me with this.”
“Oh?” Was she insulting my academic capability?
“I’m researching my family history. I can trace everyone on my dad’s side back to 1453, but it’s different on my mother’s.”
“How so?”
“My mother was the last member of her family and it was her lifelong goal to get the family papers and archival material that has been passed down for centuries in order, but she died before she even could get started.”
Dark eyes downcast, she averted mine.
“I am sorry to hear that.”
“It’s all right, I was still very young and my stepmother has done everything she could for me. But I want to know where I come from, who my mother’s people were. And I’ve found these documents from the American Revolution in one of the boxes of documents that I inherited from her that mention an ancestor who has fought in America until 1781 and I was thinking perhaps I could research-“
In this moment, her desk phone rang.
“Yes? I’m on it, Professor.”
Without any further words to me, she turned away, back to her desk and closed the tab quickly before she started typing something into an online interlibrary loan search engine.
Williams. Williams. Where had I heard her name before?
In the same moment, I too was called back to order by a knock at the door. The secretary stood there, handing me a parcel I had eagerly been waiting for. Two new biographies of George Washington and one of General Cornwallis as well as, hidden underneath the more scholarly volumes, a book titled Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring and three seasons of a TV series based on said book I had been told might interest me.
I was already certain I wouldn’t like it, but I would watch it anyway. Alone at Christmas, I needed something to do.
When Christmas came not two weeks later, I spent the entirety of Christmas Eve trying to get through the first season of TURN: Washington’s Spies. While the show’s representation of Abraham Woodhull as a cowardly, philandering cabbage farmer who wore a piece of his produce instead of a head and was more than out of his depth as a spy, I could not wrap my head around the fact that he supposedly was the hero of the story. When had Woodhull of all people been a hero? He had always hid behind others, let the dirty work be done by his friends and family.
By mid-season two, I switched the DVD player off and vowed never to watch this piece of libel, calumny and misinterpretation ever again, and I had even tried to suppress my anger at the inaccurate costumes, props and scenery. The only redeeming feature I could find in all this was the fact that the actor playing Captain Simcoe (who should have been a major by season two) was quite well cast.
I switched the TV on to have some company. It was Christmas Eve after all and, if one was to believe the Coca Cola ads, nobody should be alone on this day.
Fairy Tale of New York blared through the room and filled my heart with wistful recollections of days gone by; she had been pretty, and most definitively the queen of York city.
When the song ended in a clumsy waltz between Shane McGowan and Kirsty MacColl, I remembered Christmases gone by, when the children had been small and the house full of festive spirit. I also imagined what Christmas in the houses of other people I know or once knew looked like; how Francesca and her boyfriend would likely sit at her parents’ place and share secret snogs behind the Christmas tree; how Miss Williams, her father and stepmother stood in the kitchen preparing the food together and how Anna and Edmund sat around the table with their children, how he placed a kiss on her cheek and made her laugh while she dispensed food to three hungry toddlers.
Not even the bloody cat had bothered to visit me. Perhaps she had somebody else on the side, a second servant who tended to her whims and who bought better tuna than I did. I had even bought scallops for her for the occasion.
I could still go home, it was no more than a one hour drive and the roads were likely deserted during this holy night.
No, visiting Wolford Lodge, or rather what was left of it would not be wise. The old house had been replaced by a new one which was rented out to holidaymakers who would likely not want a dark figure stalk around the estate by night and pretending to do my duties at the little chapel there would look odd given the time and day.
Besides my work as an eminent historian, I work voluntarily for a group of people maintaining the chapel, built in the 1700s, for the Ontario Heritage Trust who purchased said building many years ago.
The chapel has for me become synonymous with peace and contemplation, even if the often menial tasks, such as raking leaves from the path in front of it and being friendly to visitors, do often require my full restraint and test my patience, the visitors in particular.
I contemplated going to the cathedral to attend service, it was Christmas after all, the time all those who considered themselves Christian went to church, sheepishly vowing to be a better person next year and attend service more frequently when they didn’t remember the hymns.
No; I had stopped believing in God or indeed any higher order a long time ago and I had other reasons not to want to go there that convinced me to stay home and wait for my little huntress to grace me with a visit and write a few lines of poetry or finish my article on Arnold in the meantime.
The treacherous animal did not come and thus, I spent Christmas Eve all alone.
Hungry, I took a transparent bag from the freezer and microwaved it carefully until its red content had become fluid and was about body temperature warm. I don’t like it any hotter or colder, 38°C is just right. Pouring the contents of the bag into my beautifully cut Waterford Crystal wine carafe , I went to the bathroom and settled in the tub, letting hot water warm my skin while I emptied two glasses in no time.
This was my life –if one could call it that. I dove under the surface of the water and remained there for far too long, thinking about the world, about myself, the job, all these boring things that marked my existence. How I long for the old days in moments like this.
The week after Christmas, just one day shy of New Year’s eve, I left early in the morning and drove my green Range Rover Sentinel to Devon, a bouquet of red roses wrapped in transparent plastic foil in the empty front passenger seat. Thirty in total, the ones with the big heads and a black velvety sheen to them. Anything less would not have done. I would never forget the date, as other spouses I have heard of have done or do. She commands my heart and I revere her, even after all these years, just as I did on our first day.
“Ah, Mr Coe!” the young lady in the florist shop of my choice had greeted me jovially. I have become a habitual customer during the past two years and the proprietor, as well as her daughter, the purple-haired Miss George occasionally earning a little on the side behind the counter, have come to like me- but then, I am a good customer.
“My regards to Mrs Coe, she’s a lucky lady”, George, whose real name was Georgianna, winked. “My mother said only last week you’ve-“
“It’s for a special occasion”, I said plainly, unwilling to talk about my beloved Eliza.
“Speaking of special occasions, last time I spoke with your mother I heard you were accepted into the scholarship programme you applied for. My congratulations”, I diverted the conversation to another topic.
“I’m beyond excited. You should have seen Mum when I told her. Here-“ she passed me the bouquet and typed the amount of money I owed her into the till.
I paid the flowers and slipped her an additional twenty pound note. When she looked at me incredulously and was about to push the twenty pound note back across the counter, I answered “It’s all right” and left.
The day was crisp and cool, and every tree, meadow and bush on my way covered in white frost. It was beautiful. The beauty of the world made me sad, especially on this day. Many years ago, we might have gone on a ride and beheld these sights together, my wife and I. Or the girls would have joined me for an early morning walk and chattered excitedly about this and that until nature was forgotten and all I cared for was their laughter when they took turns using me as their packhorse.
I turned the radio on and let the canned drowsiness of BBC Radio 4 fill the silence in the car.
Often have I wondered about the fact that there are only two kinds of car commercials on television; either the solitary male driving his vehicle through an eye-pleasing landscape, the epitome of so-called freedom and manliness, or those depicting a chaotic family bickering in a car stuffed to the brim for their annual holiday.
Alone in the scenic hills of Devon, I would have given everything to look in the rear view mirror and find Francis and Sophia ruining the leather seats with markers and Eliza next to me, rolling her eyes in desperation. Wiping the image away, I tried to concentrate on the radio.
...After the news: another episode of Great Lives with special guests Marlene Darnell, author and Canadian ambassador to the UK and art historian Professor Graham Bethnick discussing the life of Elizabeth Simcoe, pioneer and painter-
I changed the station with more force than necessary to whatever else was on air. Through the bad techno beats of some third-rate local radio DJ, I fought back tears.
Tears have no biological purpose anymore, like my supposed breathing, pulse and heartbeat which I consciously reactivated when I courted my Eliza, but even creatures have emotions.
Arriving at Wolford, I locked my car and walked to the chapel.
“Happy 234th anniversary my love”, I tried to smile at the weather-beaten headstone in front of me and revealed the flowers I had hidden behind my back, “you won’t believe what was on the radio on my way here.”
The next hour or so I spent sitting leant against the chapel wall next to her stone, one hand on the frozen earth beneath which she reclines for eternity- the closest I could get to her, sometimes talking to her, at other times absent-mindedly running my fingers through the coarse winter grass pretending it was her hair.
To think it had been 234 years since our hands had been joined- I marvelled once more at the memories of that beautiful day in 1782 that had me forget my suffering for a short while.
Without my condition, the things that had happened would never have- Oh I would eventually have my revenge on those who had played a part in making me a vampire, a creature of the lowest degree, forced to live when it is dead, unnatural and despicable.
They had hurt not only me, but Eliza and the children as well by having made me what I am during the late American War. It does not matter the people in question are already dead.
Death is relative and suffering timeless.
And they will pay.