Misery Chastain was dead. Paul Sheldon had just killed her — with relief, with joy. Misery had made him rich; she was the heroine of a string of bestsellers. And now he wanted to get on to some real writing. That’s when the car accident happened, and he woke up in pain in a strange bed. But it wasn’t the hospital.
Авторы: King Stephen Edwin
most levelheaded and practical of women, the sudden outburst of knocking startled a little scream from her, and she scalded herself with the hot milk she had been pouring from pot to cup. Lately she seemed always on edge, always on the verge of a scream. It was not grief, this feeling, although she was nearly overwhelmed with grief — this was a strange, thundery feeling that she couldn’t ever remember having before. It sometimes seemed to her that thoughts better left unrecognized were circling around her, just beyond the grasp of her weary, bitterly sad mind.
“Who knocks at ten?” she cried at the door. “Whoever it is, I thank ye not for the burn I’ve given m’self!”
“It’s Geoffrey, Mrs. Ramage! Geoffrey Alliburton! Open the door, for God’s sake!” Mrs. Ramage’s mouth dropped open and she was halfway to the door before she remembered she was in her nightgown and cap. She had never heard Geoffrey sound so, and would not have believed it if someone had told her of it. If there was a man in all England with a heart stouter than that of her beloved My Lord, then it was Geoffrey — yet his voice trembled like the voice of a woman on the verge of hysterics.
“A minute, Mr. Geoffrey! I’m half-unclad!”
“Devil take it!” Geoffrey cried. “I don’t care if you’re starkers, Mrs. Ramage! Open this door! Open it in the name of Jesus!” She stood only a second, then went to the door, unbarred it, and threw it open. Geoffrey’s look did more than stun her, and again she heard the dim thunder of black thoughts somewhere back in her head.
Geoffrey stood on the threshold of the housekeeper’s cottage in an odd slanting posture, as if his spine had been warped out of shape by long years carrying a peddler’s sack. His right hand was pressed between his left arm and left side. His hair was in a tangle. His dark-brown eyes burned out of his white face. His dress was remarkable for one as careful — dandified, some would have said — about his clothing as Geoffrey Alliburton usually was. He wore an old smoking jacket with the belt askew, an open-throated white shirt, and a pair of rough serge pants that would have looked more at home upon the legs of a itinerant gardener than upon those of the richest man in Little Dunthorpe. On his feet were a pair of threadbare slippers.
Mrs. Ramage, hardly dressed for a court ball herself in her long white nightgown and muskrat’s-nightcap with the untied curling ribbons hanging around her face like the fringe on a lampshade, stared at him with mounting concern. He had re-injured the ribs he had broken riding after the doctor three nights ago, that was obvious, but it wasn’t just pain that made his eyes blaze from his whitened face like that. It was terror, barely held in check.
Mr. Geoffrey! What — “
“No questions” he said hoarsely. “Not yet — not until you answer one question of my own.”
“What question?” She was badly frightened now, her left hand clenched into a tight fist just above her munificent bosom.
“Does the name Miss Evelyn-Hyde mean anything to you?” And suddenly she knew the reason for that terrible thundery feeling that had been inside her ever since Saturday Night. Some part of her mind must already have had this gruesome thought and suppressed it, for she needed no explanation at all. Only the name of the unfortunate Miss Charlotte Evelyn-Hyde, late of Storping-on-Firkill, the village just to the west of Little Dunthorpe, was sufficient to bring a scream tearing from her.
“Oh, my saints! Oh, my dear Jesus! Has she been buried alive? Has she been buried alive? Has my darling Misery been buried alive?” And now, before Geoffrey could even begin to answer, it was tough old Mrs. Ramage’s turn to do something she had never done before that night and would never do again: she fainted dead away.
Geoffrey had no time to look for smelling salts. He doubted if such a tough old soldier as Mrs. Ramage kept them around anyway. But beneath her sink he found a rag which smelled faintly of ammonia. He did not just pass this beneath her nose but pressed it briefly against her lower face. The possibility Colter had raised, however faint, was too hideous to merit much in the way of consideration.
She jerked, cried out, and opened her eyes. For a moment she looked at him with dazed, uncomprehending bewilderment. Then she sat up.
“No,” she said. “No, Mr. Geoffrey, say ye don’t mean it, say it isn’t true — “
“I don’t know if it is true or not,” he said. “But we must satisfy ourselves immediately. Immediately, Mrs. Ramage. I can’t do all the digging myself, if there’s digging that must be done… “ She was staring at him with horrified eyes, her hands pressed so tightly over her mouth that the nails were white. “Can you help me, if help is
