A Bad Heart by Ruth Rendell

They had been very pressing and at last, on the third time of asking, he had accepted.  Resignedly, almost fatalistically, he had agreed to dine with them.  But as he began the long drive out of London, he thought petulantly that they ought to have had the tact to drop the acquaintance altogether.  No other employee he had sacked had ever made such approaches to him.  Threats, yes.   Several had threatened him and one had tried blackmail, but no one had ever had the effrontery to invite him to dinner.  It wasn't done.  A discreet man wouldn't have done it.  But of course Hugo Crouch wasn't a discreet man and that, among other things, was why he had been sacked.

He knew why they had asked him.  They wanted to hold a court of enquiry, to have the whole thing out.  Knowing this, he had suggested they meet in a restaurant and at his expense.  They couldn't harangue a man iin a public restaurant and he wouldn't be at their mercy.   But they had insisted he come to their house and in the end he had given way.  He was an elderly man with a heart condition; it was sixteen miles slow driving from his flat to their house--monstrous on a filthy February night--but he would show them he could take it, he would be one too many for them.  The chairman of Frasers would show them he wasn't to  be intimidated by a bumptious do-gooder like Hugo Crouchm, and he would cope with the situation just as he had coped in the past with the blackmailer.

By the time he reached the outskirts of the Forest, the rain was coming down  so hard that he had to put his windscreen wipers on to top speed, and he felt more  than ever thankful that he had got this new car with all its efficient gadgets.  Certainly the firm wouldn't have been able to run to it if he had kept Hugo Crouch on a day longer.  If he had agreed to all Hugo's demands he would still be stuck with that old Daimler and he would never have managed that winter cruise.  Hugo had been a real thorn in his flesh what with his extravagance and his choosing to live in a house in the middle of Epping Forest.  And it was in the middle, totally isolated, not even on the edge of one of the Forest villages.  The general manager of Frasers had to be within reach, on call.  Burying oneself out here was ridiculous.

The car's powerful headlights showed a dark, winding lane aheadm the grey tree trunks making it appear like some sombre, pillared corridor.  And this picture was cut off every few seconds by a curtain of rain, to reappear with the sweep of the wipers.  Fortunately, he had been there once before, otherwise he might have passed the high brick wall and the wooden gates behind which stood the Crouch house, the peak-roofed Victorian villa, drab, shabby, and to his eyes quite hideous.  Anyone who put a demolition order on that would be doing a service to the environment, he thought, and then he drove in through the gates.

There wasn't a single light showing.  He remembered that they lived in the back, but they might have put a light on to greet him.  But for his car headlamps, he wouldn't have been able to see his way at all.  Clutching the box of peppermint creams he had bought for Elizabeth Crouch, he splashed across the almost flooded paving, under eaves from which water poured as from a row of taps, and made for the front door, which happened to be--which would be--at the far side of the house.  It was hard to tell where their garden ended and the Forest began, for no demarcation was visible.  Nothing was visible but black, rain-lashed branches, faintly illuminated by a dim glow showing through the fanlight over the door.

He rang the bell hard, keeping his finger on the push, hoping the rain hadn't got through his coat to his hundred-guinea suit.  A jet of water struck the back of his neck, sending a shiver right through him, and then the door was opened.

"Duncan!  You must be soaked.  Have you had a dreadful journey?"

He gasped out, "Awful, awful!" and ducked into the dry sanctuary of the hall.  "What a night!"  He thrust the chocolates at her, gave her his hand.  Then he remembered that in the old days they always used to kiss.  Well, he never minded kissing a pretty woman and it hadn't been her fault.  "How are you, Elizabeth?" he said after their cheeks had touched.

"I'm fine.  Let me take your coat.  I'll take it to the kitchen and dry it.  Hugo's in the sitting room.  You know your way, don't you?"

Down a long passage, he remembered, that was never properly lighted and wasn't heated at all.  The whole place called out for central heating.  He was by now extremely cold and he couldn't help thinking of his flat, where the radiators got so hot that you had to open the windows even in February and where, had he been home, his housekeeper would at this moment be placing before him a portion of hot pate to be followed by poulet San Josef.  Elizabeth Crouch, he recalled, was rather a poor cook.

Outside the sitting-room door he paused, girding himself for the encounter.  He hadn't set eyes on Hugo Crouch since the man had marched out of the office in a huff because he,  Duncan Fraser, chairman of Frasers, had tentatively suggested he might be happier in another job.  Well, the sooner the first words were over the better.  Very few men in his position, he thought, would let the matter weigh on their minds at all or have his sensitivity.  Very few, for that matter, would have come.

He would be genial, casual, perhaps a little avuncular.  Above all, he would avoid at any cost the subject of Hugo's dismissal.  They wouldn't be able to make him talk about it if he was determined not to; ultimately, the politeness of hosts to guest would put up a barrier to stop them.  He opened the door, smiling pleasantly, achieving a merry twinkle in his eye.  "Well, here I am, Hugo! I've made it."

Hugo wore a very sour look, the kind of look Duncan had often seen on his face when some more than usually extravagant order or request of his had been countermanded.  He didn't smile.  He gave Duncan his hand gravely and asked him what he would like to drink.

Duncan looked quickly around the room, which hadn't changed and was still furnished with rather grim Victorian pieces.  There was, at any rate, a huge fire of logs burning in the grate.  "Ah, yes, a drink," he said, rubbing his hands together.  He didn't dare ask for whisky, which he would have liked best, because his doctor had forbidden it.  "A little dry Vermouth?"

"I'm afraid I don't have any Vermouth."

This rejoinder, though spoken quite lightly, though he had even expected something of the sort, gave Duncan a slight shock.  It put him on his mettle and yet it jolted him.  He had known, of course, that they would start on him but he hadn't anticipated the first move coming so promptly.  All right, let the man remind him he couldn't afford fancy drinks because he had lost his job.  He, Duncan, wouldn't be drawn.  "Sherry, then," he said.  "You do have sherry?"

"Oh, yes, we have sherry.  Come and sit by the fire."

As soon as he was seated in front of those blazing logs and had begun to thaw out, he decided to pursue the conversation along the lines of the weather.  It was the only subject he could think of to break the ice until Elizabeth came in, and they were doing quite well at it, moving into such sidelines as floods in East Anglia and crashes in motorway fog, when she appeared and sat next to him.

"We haven't asked anyone else, Duncan.  We wanted to have you to ourselves."

A pointless remark, he thought, under the circumstances.  Naturally, they hadn't asked anyone else.  The presence of other guests would have defeated the exercise.  But perhaps it hadn't been so pointless, after all.  It could be an opening gambit.

"Delightful," he said.

"We've got such a lot to talk about.  I thought it would be nicer this way."

"Much nicer."  Such a lot to talk about?  There was only one thing she could mean by that.  But she needn't think--silent Hugo sitting there with his grim, moody face needn't think--that he would help them along an inch of the way.   If they were going to get on to the subject they would have to do all the spadework themselves.  "We were just saying," he said, "how tragic all these motorway crashes are.  Now I feel all this could be stopped by a very simple method."

He outlined the simple method but he could tell they weren't really interested and he wasn't surprised when Elizabeth said, "That's fascinating, Duncan, but let's talk about you.  What have you been doing lately?"

Controlling the business your husband nearly ruined.  "Oh, this and that," he said.  "Nothing much."

"Did you go on a cruise this winter?"

"Er--yes I did.  The Caribbean, as a matter fact."

"That's nice.  I'm sure the change did you good."

Implying he needed having good done to him, of course.  She had only got on to cruises so that she could point out that some people couldn't afford them.  "I had a real est," he said heartily.  "I must tell you about a most amusing thing that happened to me on the way home." He told them but it didn't sound very amusing, and although Elizabeth smiled half-heartedly, Hugo didn't,  "Well, it seemed funny at the time," he said.

"We can eat in five minutes," said Elizabeth.  "Tell me, Duncan, did you buy that villa you were so keen on in the South of France?"

"Oh, yes, I bought it."  She was looking at him very curiously, very impertinently really, waiting for him to apologize for spending his own money, he supposed.  "Listen to that rain," he said.  "It hasn't let up at all."

They agreed that it hadn't and silence fell.  He could tell from the glance they exchanged--he was very astute in these matters--that they knew they had been baulked for the time being.  And they both looked pretty fed up, he thought triumphantly.  But the woman was weighing in again and a bit nearer the bone this time.

"Who do you think we ran into last week, Duncan?  John Churchouse."

The man who had done that printing for Frasers a couple of years back.  He had got the order, Duncan remembered, just about the time of Hugo's promotion.  He sat tight, drank the rest of his sherry.

"He told us he'd been in hospital for months and lost quite a lot of business.  I felt so..."

"I wonder if I might wash my hands," Duncan asked firmly.  "If you could just tell me where the bathroom is?"

"Of course."  She looked disappointed, as well she might.  "It's the door facing you at the top of the stairs."

Duncan made his way to the bathroom.  He mustn't think he was going to get off the hook as easily as that.  They would be bound to start on him again during the meal.  Very likely they thought a dinner table a good place  to hold an inquest.  Still, he'd be ready for them, he'd done rather well up to now.

They were both waiting for him at the foot of the stairs to lead him into the dining room and again he saw the woman give her husband one of those looks that are the equivalent of prompting nudges.  Hugo was probably getting cold feet.  In these cases, of course, it was always the women who were more aggressive.  Duncan gave a swift glance at the table and the plate of hors d'oeuvres, sardines and anchovies and artichoke hearts, most unsuitable for the time of the year.

"I'm afraid you've been to a great deal of trouble, Elizabeth," he said graciously.

She gave him a dazzling smile.  He had forgotten that smile of hers, how it lit her whole face, her eyes as flashing blue as a kingfisher's plumage.  "'The labour we delight in,'" she said, "'physics pain.'"

"Ah, Macbeth."  Good, an excellent topic to get them through the first course.  "Do you know, the only  time we three ever went to the theatre together was to see Macbeth?"

"I remember," she said.  "Bread, Duncan?"

"Thank you.  I saw a splendid performance of Macbeth by that Polish company last week.  Perhaps you've seen it?"

"We haven't been to the theatre at all this winter," said Hugo.

She must have kicked him under the table to prompt that one.  Duncan took no notice.  He told them in detail about the Polish Macbeth, although  such was his mounting tenseness that he couldn't remember half the names of the characters, or, for that matter, the names of the actors.

"I wish Keith could have seen it," she said.  "It's his set play for his exam."

She was going to force him to ask after her sons and be told they had had to take them away from that absurdly expensive boarding school.  Well, he wouldn't.  Rude it might be, but he wouldn't ask.

"I don't think you ever met our children, Duncan?"

"No, I didn't."

"They'll be home on half-term next week.  I'm so delighted that their half-term happens to coincide with mine."

"Yours?" he said suspiciously.

"Elizabeth has gone back to teaching."

"Really?" said Duncan.  "No, I won't have any more, thank you.   That was delicious.  Let me give you a hand.  If I could carry something...?"

"Please don't trouble.  I can manage."  She looked rather offended.  "If you two will excuse me I'll see to our main course."

He was left alone with Hugo in the chilly dining room.  He shifted his legs from under the cloth to bring them closer to the one-bar electric heater.  Hugo began to struggle with the cork of the wine bottle.  Unable to extract it, he cursed under his breath.

"Let me try."

"I'll be able to cope quite well, thanks, if you don't watch me," Hugo said sharply, and then, irrelevantly if you didn't know nothing those two said was irrelevant, "I'm doing a course in accountancy."

"As a wine waiter, Hugo," said Duncan, "you make a very good accountant, ha ha!"

Hugo didn't laugh.  He got the cork out at last.  "I think I'll do all right.  I was always reasonably good at figures."

"So you were, so you were.  And more than reasonably good."  That was true.  It had been with personnel that the man was so abysmally bad, giving junior executives and little typists ideas above their station.  "I'm sure you will do well."  Why didn't the woman come back?  It must have been ten minutes since she had gone off to that kitchen, down those miles of passages.  His own wife, long dead, would have got that main course into serving dishes before they had sat down to the hors d'oeuvres.  "Get a qualification, that's the thing," he said.  In the distance he heard the wheels of a trolley coming.  It was a more welcome sound than that of the wheels of the train one has awaited for an hour on a cold platform.  He didn't like the woman but anything was better than being alone with Hugo.  Why not get it over now, he thought, before they began on the amazingly small roasted chicken which had appeared?  He managed a smile.  He said, "I can tell you've both fallen on your feet.  I'm quite sure, Hugo, you'll look back on all this when you're a successful accountant and thank God you and Frasers parted company."

And that ought to be that.  They had put him through their inquisition and now they would perhaps let him eat this overcooked mess that passed for dinner in peace.  At last they would talk of something else, not leave it to him who had been making the running all the evening.

But instead of conversation, there was a deep silence.  No one seemed to have anything to say.  And although Duncan, working manfully at his chicken wing, racked his brains for a topic, he could think of nothing.  Their house, his flat, the workpeople at Frasers, his car, the cost of living, her job, Hugo's course,
Christmas past, summer to come, all these subjects must inevitably lead by a direct route back to Hugo's dismissal.  And Duncan saw with irritable despair that all subjects would lead to it because he was he and they were they and the dismissal lay between them like an unavoidable spectre at their dismal feast.  From time to time he lifted his eyes from his plate, hoping that she would respond to that famous smile of his, that smile that was growing stiff with insincere use, but each time he looked at her he saw that she was staring fixedly at him, eating hardly anything, her expression concentrated, dispassionate, and somehow dogged.  And her eyes had lost their kingfisher flash.  They were dull and dead like smoky glass.

So they hadn't had enough then, she and her subdued, morose husband?  They wanted to see him abject, not merely referring with open frankness to the dismissal as he had done, but explaining it, apologizing.  Well, they should have his explanation.  There was no escape.  Carefully, he placed his knife and fork side by side on his empty plate.  Precisely, but very politely, he refused his hostess's offer of more.  He took a deep breath as he often did at the beginning of a board meeting, as he had so very often done at those board meetings when Hugo Crouch pressed insistently for staff rises.

"My dear Elizabeth," he began, "my dear Hugo, I know why you asked me here tonight and what you've been hinting at ever since I arrived.  And because I want to enjoy your very delightful company without any more awkwardness, I'm going to do here and now what you very obviously want me to do--that is, explain just how it happened that I suggested Hugo would be happier away from Frasers."

Elizabeth said, "Now, Duncan, listen..."

"You can say your piece in a moment, Elizabeth.  Perhaps you'll be surprised when I say I am entirely to blame for what happened.  Yes, I admit it, the fault was all mine."  He lifted one hand to silence Hugo who was shaking his head vehemently.  "No, Hugo, let me finish.  As I said, the fault was mine.  I made an error of judgment.  Oh, yes, I did.  I should have been a better judge of men.  I should have been able to see when I promoted you that you weren't up to the job.  I blame myself for not understanding--well, your limitations."

They were silent.  They didn't look at him or at each other.

"We men in responsible positions," he said, "are to  blame when the men we appoint can't rise to the heights we envisage for them.  We lack vision, that's all.  I take the whole burden of it on my shoulders, you see.  So shall we forgive and forget?"

He had seldom seen people look so embarrassed, so shamefaced.  It just went to show that they were no match for him.  His statement had been the last thing they had expected and it was unanswerable.  He handed her his plate  with its little graveyard of chicken bones among the potato skins and as she took it he saw a look of baulked fury cross her face.

"Well, Elizabeth," he said, unable to resist, "am I forgiven?"

"It's too late now.  It's past," she said in a cold, stony voice.  "It's too late for any of this.

"I'm sorry if I haven't given you the explanation you wanted, my dear.  I've simply told you the truth."

She didn't say any more.  Hugo didn't say anything.  And suddenly Duncan felt most uncomfortable.  Their condemnatory faces, the way they both seemed to shrink away from him, was almost too much for him.  His heart began to pound and he had to tell himself that a racing heart meant nothing, that it was pains and not palpatations he must fear.  He reached for one of his little white pills ostentaciously, hoping they would notice what they had done to him.

When still they didn't speak, he said, "I think perhaps I should go now."

"But you haven't had coffee," said Elizabeth.

"Just the same it might be better..."

"Please stay and have coffee," she said firmly, almost sternly, and then she forced a smile.  "I insist."

Back in the sitting room they offered him brandy. He refused it because he had to drive home, and the sooner he could begin that drive the happier he would be.  Hugo had a large brandy, which he drank at a gulp, the way brandy should never be drunk unless one had had a shock or were steeling oneself for something,  Elizabeth had picked up the evening paper and was talking in a very artificial way about a murder case which appeared on the front page.

"I really must go," said Duncan.

"Have some more coffe?  It's not ten yet."

Why did they want him to llay?  Or, rather, why did she?   Hugo was once more busy with the brandy bottle.  He would have thought his company must be as tiresome to them as theirs were to him.  They had got what they wanted, hadn't they?  He drank his second cup of coffee so quickly that it scalded his mouth and then he  got up.

"Thank you."  It was over.  He was going to make his escape and he need never see them again.  And suddenly he felt that he wouldn't be able to get out of that house fast enough.  Really, since he had made his little speech, the atmosphere had been completely disagreeable.  "Good night, Elizabeth," he said.  What platitudes could he think of that weren't too ludicrous?  "Thank you for the meal.  Perhaps we will meet again some day."

'I hope we shall and soon, Duncan," she said, but she didn't offer him her cheek.  Through the open door, the rain was driving in against her long skirt.  She stood there, watching him go out with Hugo, letting the light pour out to guide them round the corner of the house.

As soon as he was round that corner, Duncan felt an unpleasant jerk of shock.  His car lights were blazing, full on.

"How did I come to do a thing like that?"

"I suppose you left them on to see your way to the door," said Hugo, "and then forgot them."

"I'm sure I did not."

"You must have.  Hold the umbrella and I'll try the ignition."  Leaving Duncan on the flooded path under the inadequate umbrella, Hugo got into the driving seat and inserted the ignition key.  Duncan watched him, stamping his feet impatiently.  "Not a spark," said Hugo.  "Your battery's flat."

"It can't be."

"I'm afraid it is.  Try for yourself."

Duncan tried, getting very wet in the process. 

"We'd better go back in the house.  We'll get soaked out here."

"What's the matter?" said Elizabeth, who was still standing in the doorway.

"His battery's flat.  The car won't start."

Of coure it wasn't their fault but somehow Duncan felt that it was.  It had happened, after all, at their house, to which they had fetched him for a disgraceful purpose.  He didn't bother to soften his annoyance.  "I'm afraid I'll just have to borrow your car, Hugo."

Elizabeth closed the door.  "We don't have a car anymore.  We couldn't afford to run it.  It was either keeping a car or taking the boys away from school, so we sold it."

"I see.  Then if I might just use your phone, I'll ring for a hired car.  I've a mini-cab number in my wallet."  One look at her face told him that wasn't going to be possible either.  "Now you'll say you've had the phone  cut off."  Damn her!  Damn them both!

"We could have afforded it, of course.  We just didn't need it anymore.  I'm sorry, Duncan, I just don't know what you can do.  But we may as well all go and sit down where it's warmer."

"I don't want to sit down," Duncan almost shouted.  "I have to get home."  He shook off the hand she had laid on his arm and which seemed to be forcibly detaining him.  "I must just walk to the nearest house with a phone."

Hugo opened the door.  The rain was more like a wall of water than a series of drops.  "In this?"

"Then what am I supposed to do?" Duncan cried fretfully.

"Stay the night," said Elizabeth calmly.  "I really don't know what you can do but stay the night."

The bed was just what he would have expected a bed in the Crouch menage to be--hard, narrow, and cold.  She had given him a hot water bottle, which was an object he hadn't set eyes on in ten years.  And Hugo had lent him a pair of pajamas.  All the time this was going on, he had protested that he couldn't stay, that there must be some other way, but in the end he had yielded.  Not that they had been welcoming.  They had treated the whole thing as if--well, how had they treated it?  Duncan lay in the dark, clutching the bottle between his knees, and tried to assess just what their attitude had been.  Fatalistic, he thought, that was it.  They had behaved as if this were inevitable, that there was no escape  for him, and here, like it or not, he must stay.

Escape was a ridiculous word, of course, but it was the sort of word you used when you were trapped somewhere for a whole night in the home of people who were obviously antagonistic, if not hostile.  Why had he been such a fool as to leave those car lights  on?  He couldn't remember that he had done and yet he must have.  Nobody else would have turned them on.  Why should they?

He wished they would go to bed too.  That they hadn't he could tell by the light, the rectangular outline of dazzlement, that showed round the frame of his bedroom door.  And he could hear them talking, not the words but the buzz of conversation.  These late Victorian houses were atrociously built, of course.  You could hear every sound.  The rain drumming on the roof sounded as if it were pounding on cardboard rather than on slates.  He didn't think there was much prospect of sleep.  How could he sleep with the noise and all that on his mind, the worry of getting the car moved, of finding some way of getting to the office?  And it made him feel very uneasy their staying up like that, particularly as she had said, "If you'll go into the bathroom first, Duncan, we'll follow you."  Follow him!  That must have been all of half an hour ago.  He pressed the switch of his bedlamp and saw that it was eleven-thirty.   Time they were in bed if she had to get to her school in the morning and he to his accountancy course.

Once more in the dark, but for that gold-edged rectangle, he considered the car lights question again.  He was certain he had turned them out.  Of course it was hard to be certain of anything when you were as upset as he.  The pressure they had put on him had been simply horrible and the worst moments those when he had been alone with Hugo while that woman was fishing the ancient pullet she'd dished up to him out of her oven.  Really, she had been a hell of a time getting that main course when you considered what it had amounted to.  Could she...?  Only a madwoman would do such a thing and what possible motive could she have  had?  But if you lived in a remote place and you wanted someone to stay in your house overnight, if you wanted to keep him there, how better than to immobilize his car?  He shivered, even while he told himself such fancies were absurd.

At any rate, they were coming up now.  Every board in the house creaked and the stairs played a tune like a broken old violin.  He heard Hugo mumble something--the man had drunk far too much brandy--and then she said, "Leave all the rest to me."

Another shiver that hadn't very much to do with the cold ran through him.  He couldn't think why it had.  Surely, that was quite a natural thing for a woman to say on going to bed.  She only meant, You go to bed and I'll lock up and turn off the lights.  He had often said it when his wife was alive.  And yet it was a phrase familiar to him in quite another context.  Turning on his side away from the light and into fresh caverns of icy sheet, he tried to think where he had heard it.  It came from Macbeth.  Lady Macbeth said it when she and her husband were plotting the old king's murder.  And what was the old king's name?  Douglas?  Donal?

Someone had come out of the bathroom and someone else gone in.  Did they always take such ages getting to bed?  The lavatory flush roared and a torrent rushed through pipes that seemed to pass under his bed.  He heard footsteps across the landing and a door closing.  Apparently, they slept in the next room to his.  He turned over, longing for the light to go out.  It was a pity there was no key in that lock so that he could have locked his door.

As soon as the thought had formed and been uttered in his brain, he thought how fantastic it was.  What, lock one's bedroom door in a private house?  Suppose his hostess came in in the morning with a cup of tea?  She would think it very odd.  And she might come in.  She had put this bottle in his bed and had placed a glass of water on the table.  Of course he couldn't dream of locking the door, and why should he want to?  One of them was in the bathroom again.

Suddenly he found himself thinking about one of the men he had sacked and who had threatened him.  The man had said "Don't think you'll get away with this, and if you show your ugly face within a mile of my place you may not live to regret it."  Of course he had got away with it and had nothing to regret.  On the other hand, he hadn't shown himself withinn a mile of the man's place...The light had gone out at last.  Sleep now, he told himself.  Empty your mind or think about something nice, your summer holiday in the villa, for instance, think about that.

The gardens would be wonderful with the oleanders and the bougainvillea.  And the sun would warm his old bones as he sat on his terrace, looking down through the cleft in the pines at the blue triangle of the Mediterranean which was brighter and gentler than that woman's eyes...Never mind the woman, forget her.  Perhaps he should have the terrace raised and extended and set up on it that piece of statuary--surely Roman--which he had found in the pinewoods.  It would cost a great deal of money, but it was his money.  Why shouldn't he spend his own?  He must try to be less sensitive, he thought, less troubled by this absurd social conscience which, for some reason, he had lately developed.  Not, he reflected with a faint chuckle, that it actually stopped him spending money or enjoying himself.  It was a nuisance, that was all.

He would have the terrace extended and maybe a black marble floor laid in the salon.  Frasers' profits looked as if they would hit a new high this year.  Why not get that fellow Churchouse to do all their printing for them?  If he was really down on his luck and desperate he would be bound to work for a cut rate, jump at the chance, no doubt...

God damn it, it was too much!  They were talking in there.  He could hear their whisperings, rapid, emotional almost, through the wall.  They were an absurd couple, no sense of humor between the pair of them.  Intense, like characters out of some tragedy.

"The labour we delight in physics pain"--Macbeth had said that, Macbeth who killed the old king.  And she had said it to him, Duncan, when he had apologized for the trouble he was causing.  The king was called Duncan too.  Of course he was.  He was called Duncan and so was the king and he too, in a way, was an old king, the monarch of the Fraser empire.  Whisper, whisper, breathed the wall at him.

He sat up and put on the light.  With the light on, he felt better.  He was sure, though, that he hadn't left those car lights on.  "Leave all the rest to me..."  Why say that?  Why not say what everyone said, "I'll see to everything"? Macbeth and his wife had entertained the old king in their house and murdered him in his bed, although he had done them no harm, done nothing to them but be king.  So it wasn't a parallel, was it?  For he, Duncan Fraser, had done something, something which might merit vengeance.  He had sacked Hugo Crouch and taken away his livelihood.  It wasn't a parallel.

He turned off the light, sighed, and lay down again.  They were still whispering.  He heard the floor creak as one of them came out of the bedroom.  It wasn't a parallel--it was much more.  Why hadn't he seen that?  Lady Macbeth and her husband had no cause, no cause...A sweat broke out on his face and he reached for the glass of water.  But he didn't drink.  It was stupid not to but...The morning  would soon come.  "O, never shall sun that morrow see!"  Where did that come from?  Need he ask?

Whoever it was in the bathroom had left it and  gone back to the other one.  But only for a moment.  Again he heard the boards creak, again someone was moving about on that dark landing.  Dark, yes, pitch dark, for they hadn't switched the light on this time.  And Duncan felt then the first thrill of real fear, which didn't subside after the shiver had died but grew and gripped him in a terror the like of which he hadn't known since he was a little boy and had been shut up in the nursery cupboard of his father's manse.  He mustn't be afraid, he mustn't.  He must think of his heart.  Why should they want vengeance? He'd explained.  He'd told them the truth, taking the full burden of blame on himself.  The room was so dark that he didn't see the door handle turn.  He heard it. It creaked very softly.  His heart began a slow, steady pounding and he contracted his body, forcing it back against the wall.  Whoever it was had come into the room.  He could see the shape of him--or her--as a denser blackness in the dark.

"What...?  Who...? he said, quavering, his throat dry.  The shape grew fluid, glided away, and the door closed softly.  They wanted to see if he was asleep.  They would kill him when he was asleep.  He sat up, switched on the light, and put his face in his hands.  "O, never shall sun that morrow see!"  He'd put all that furniture against the door, that chest of drawers, his bed, the chair.  His throat was parched now and he reached for the water, taking a long draught.  It was icy cold.

They weren't whispering anymore.  They were waiting in silence.  He got up and put his coat round him.  In the bitter cold he began lugging the furniture away from the walls, lifting the iron bedstead that felt so small and narrow when he was in it but was so hideously weighty.

Straightening up from his second attempt, he felt it, the pain in his chest and down his left arm.  It came like a clamp, like a clamp being screwed and at the same time slowly heated red-hot.  It took his body in hot iron fingers and squeezed his ribs.  And sweat began to pour from him as if the temperature in the room had suddenly risen tremendously.  Oh God, Oh, God, the water in the glass...!  They would have to get him a doctor, they would have to, they couldn't be so pitiless.  He was old and tired and his heart was bad.

He pulled the coat round the pain and staggered out into the black passage.  Their door--where was their door?  He found it by fumbling at the walls, scrabbling like an imprisoned animal, and when he found it he kicked it open and swayed on the threshold, holding the pain in both his hands.

They were sitting on their bed with their backs to him, not in bed but sitting there, the shapes of them silhouetted against the light of a small low-bulbed bedlamp.

"Oh, please," he said, "please help me.  Don't kill me, I beg you not to kill me.  I'll go on my knees to you.  I know I've done wrong, I did a terrible thing.  I didn't make an error of judgment.  I sacked Hugo because he wanted too much for the staff, he wanted more money for everyone and I couldn't let them have it.  I wanted my new car and my holidays.  I had to have my villa--so beautiful, my villa, my gardens.  Ah, God, I know I was greedy but I've borne the guilt of it for months, every day--on my conscience--the guilt of it..."  They turned, two white faces, implacable, merciless.  They rose and came towards him, scrambling across their bed.  "Have pity on me," he screamed.  "Don't kill me.  I'll give you everything I've got, I'll give you a million..."

But they had seized him with their hands and it was too late.  She had told him it was too late.

"In our house!" she said.

"Don't," said Hugo.  "That's what Lady Macbeth said.  What does it matter whether it was in our house or not?"

"I wish I'd never invited him."

"Well, it was your idea.  You said let's have him here because he's a widower and lonely.  I didn't want him.  It was ghastly the way he insisted on talking about firing me when we wanted to keep off the subject at any price.  I was utterly fed up when he had to stay the night."

"What do we do now?" said Elizabeth.

"Get the police, I should think, or a doctor.  It's stopped raining.  I'll get dressed and go."

"But you're not well!  You kept throwing up."

"I'm okay now.   I drank too much brandy.  It was such a strain all of it, nobody knowing what to talk about.  God, what a business!  He was alright when you went into his room just now, wasn't he?"

"Half-asleep, I thought. I was going to apologize for all the racket you were making but he seemed nearly asleep.  Did you get any of that he was trying to say when he came in here? I didn't."

"No, it was just gibberish.  We couldn't have  done anything for him, darling.  We did try to catch him before he fell."

"I know."

"He had a bad heart."

"In more ways than one, poor old man," said Elizabeth, and she laid a blanket gently over Duncan, though he was past feeling hot or cold or guilt or fear or anything any more.

Gift of the Magi by O Henry

ONE DOLLAR AND EIGHTY-SEVEN CENTS. THAT WAS ALL. AND SIXTY CENTS of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing left to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the look-out for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."
The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of "Dillingham" looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. To-morrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling--something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honour of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 Bat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out of the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she cluttered out of the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mme Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One Eight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
"Give it to me quick" said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 78 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task dear friends--a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please, God, make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was with out gloves.
Jim stepped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold it because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say 'Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet, even after the hardest mental labour.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"
Jim looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. I his dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise-shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to {lash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy Your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."
The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men-who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

Ruth Rendell: A Short Biography

Ruth Rendell was born in 1930 in England to two teachers.  Her mother developed multiple sclerosis shortly after her birth and resulted in a tumultuous childhood which she declines to discuss.  She is a strict vegetarian and has developed numerous fears and phobias.  She has obsessions with psychopaths, routine, and punctuality.  "If it weren't for a ridiculous literary snobbery about 'crime writing', Ruth Rendell would be acclaimed as one of our most important novelists." John Mortimer once remarked.

She has written many stories and novels which fall into three general categories: Inspector Wexford detective thrillers, murder mystery novels, and dark psychological tales written under the pseudonym of Barbara Vine.  She has won many awards, including four Gold Daggers and 3 Edgar Alllan Poe's.  Her latest work, called The Vault, is an Inspector Wexford mystery and will be available in hardcover in mid-September.  She is now widowed and lives in London.

I should emphasize here that Ruth Rendell is British, and writes in a British manner which can be difficult at first for American readers to get used to.  I suggest starting with one of her short story compilations to get used to the language before embarking on one of her stunning novels.

by Ruth Rendell

INSPECTOR WEXFORD THRILLERS

From Doon With Death
A New Lease of Death/Sins of the Fathers
Wolf to the Slaughter
The Best Man to Die
A Guilty Thing Surprised
No More Dying Then
Murder Being Once Done
Some Lie and Some Die
Shake Hands Forever
A Sleeping Life
Means of Evil and other stories
Put On by Cunning (US title Death Notes)
The Speaker of Mandarin
An Unkindness of Ravens
The Veiled One
Kissing the Gunner's Daughter
Simisola
Roadrage
Harm Done
The Babes in the Wood
End in Tears
Not In The Flesh
The Monster in the Box
The Vault

NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES

To Fear A Painted Devil
Vanity Dies Hard
The Secret House of Death
One Across, Two Down
The Face of Trespass
A Demon In My View
The Fallen Curtain (short stories)
A Judgement in Stone
Make Death Love Me
The Lake of Darkness
Master of the Moor
The Fever Tree (short stories)
The Killing Doll
The Tree of Hands
The New Girlfriend (short stories)
Live Flesh
Talking to Strange Men
Heartstones
The Bridesmaid
Going Wrong
The Copper Peacock (short stories)
The Crocodile Bird
The Keys to the Street
Blood Lines (short stories)
A Sight for Sore Eyes
Piranha to Scurfy and other short stories
Adam and Eve and Pinch Me
The Rottweiler
Thirteen Steps Down
The Water's Lovely
Portobello
Tigerlily's Orchids

Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine

A Dark Adapted Eye:  Rendell's first "Barbara Vine" novel.  In just a few pages she establishes a dark Victorian gothic atmosphere and reveals that Vera either is or is not guilty of murder but has been executed for it.  An excellent beginning.  The tone is ominous and there is a LOT of foreshadowing of murder being done.  Relationships among characters are revealed only slowly, like the peeling of an onion, layer after layer; or like approaching a family tree backwards, starting with the outer limbs and working inward toward the trunk.  Some of the relations between characters are downright startling.  The downside of this is that one gets lost in the geneology at times.  I have now finished this novel and can say all of the relationships come to fruition in the end, and it is answered whether Vera was or was not a murderer.  However, Vine leaves one major storyline open to interpretation, a mystery forever.
A Fatal Inversion:  The first scene in this second novel features the death and burial of a pet beagle.  I lost my own beagle last year so this story already makes me emotional.  Back to the story though.  While burying the beagle, the remains of a human are discovered.  The story features 5 people, told in each person's point of  view, about what happened ten years ago when they all lived together; they share some mysterious dark secret that has to do with the human remains that were discovered.  No one weaves the past with the present like Barbara Vine.  The human remains are of a young woman and  a baby.  Without giving the ending completely away, the body in the grave is not the one you were led to believe.  And I had to read the anticlimax twice before I understood the ending.  All in all, a brilliant novel.
The House of Stairs:  The house of stairs is a five story house in 1960's London.  The people who live there come and go; it's like a hippie/commune.  As in the first two Vine novels you know from the outset that there will be a murder but the culprit and the victim will remain unknown until near the end.  And this is my favorite novel of all time because it's not just a grand con job, but it's a grand con job gone very wrong.  Absolutely stunning, brilliant.
Gallowglass: Sandor saves Joe's life by pulling him back from jumping onto the subway tracks.  He tells Joe, "I saved your life so your life belongs to me."  And so Joe becomes Sandor's gallowglass or servant.In a parallel storyline Paul Garnet becomes a servant to a wealthy couple.  Sandor has plans to  kidnap the wealthy wife.  Things don't go as  planned of course, there are plenty of twists and turns and a dead-on, perfectly ironic ending.
King Solomon's Carpet
Anna's Book
No Night Is Too Long
In the Time of his Prosperity
The Brimstone Wedding
The Chimney Sweeper's Boy
Grasshopper
The Blood Doctor
The Minotaur
The Birthday Present

Quotation by me

Great friendships bridge great distances.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps on the back
Of the wind and floats downstream
Till the current ends and dips his wing
In the orange suns rays
And dares to claim the sky.

But a BIRD that stalks down his narrow cage
Can seldom see through his bars of rage
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
Of things unknown but longed for still
And his tune is heard on the distant hill for
The caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
And the trade winds soft through
The sighing trees
And the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright
Lawn and he names the sky his own.

But a caged BIRD stands on the grave of dreams
His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with
A fearful trill of things unknown
But longed for still and his
Tune is heard on the distant hill
For the caged bird sings of freedom.

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually --I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution --with what foresight --with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it --oh so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly --very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this, And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously-oh, so cautiously --cautiously (for the hinges creaked) --I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights --every night just at midnight --but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.
Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers --of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back --but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily. I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out --"Who's there?" I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening; --just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.
Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief --oh, no! --it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself --"It is nothing but the wind in the chimney --it is only a mouse crossing the floor," or "It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel --although he neither saw nor heard --to feel the presence of my head within the room.
When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little --a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it --you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily --until, at length a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye. It was open --wide, wide open --and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness --all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot. And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? --now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eve. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man's terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! --do you mark me well I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me --the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man's hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once --once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eve would trouble me no more.
If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs. I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye --not even his --could have detected any thing wrong. There was nothing to wash out --no stain of any kind --no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all --ha! ha! When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock --still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart, --for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises. I smiled, --for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search --search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.
The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct: --It continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness --until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears. No doubt I now grew very pale; --but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased --and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound --much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath --and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly --more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men --but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder --louder --louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!
"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

Systole (Contraction of the Heart) by me

A human heart and a tight clenched fist
And as blood rushes through and lingers not
And as water slips through fisted fingers, drop
So does the mind imagine moments missed
Like the time I thought you loved me and we kissed.

Hope by Emily Dickinson

Hope     

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20