The Cater Street Hangman - Anne Perry [119]
At least she would face him—if it were him! She would see his face and she would scream, scream as loudly as she could, scream his name so that every house in Cater Street would hear it.
House! Of course, she would go up to the very next house, past this length of garden wall, and bang on the door till someone let her in. What did it matter if they thought she was a hysterical fool? Someone would take her home. Everyone would say she was foolish, but what did that matter?
The footsteps were right behind her. She would not be taken by surprise. She swung round to face him.
He was there in front of her, her own height, no more, but broader, far broader. The gaslight shone on his head as he moved.
Don’t be idiotic. It was Martha, only Martha Prebble.
“Martha!” she said in an ecstasy of relief. “What on earth are you doing out of bed? You are ill! Do you need help? Here, let me—”
But Martha’s face was twisted into an unrecognizable distortion, her eyes blazing, her lips drawn back. She raised her powerful arms and the gaslight caught on the thin silver of a cheese cutting wire in her hands.
Charlotte was paralyzed.
“You filth!” Martha said between her clenched teeth. There was saliva on her lips and she was shivering. “You creature of the devil! You tempted me with your white arms, and your flesh, but you shan’t win! The Lord said, better you should not have been born than that you should have tempted and brought to destruction one of these, my little ones, and brought them to sin. Better you should have a millstone tied round your neck and be put into the sea. I shall destroy you, however many times you keep coming, with your soft words and your touch of sin. I shall not fall! I know how your body burns, I know your secret lusts, but I shall destroy you all, till you leave me alone in peace. Satan shall never win!”
Charlotte only barely understood—some tortured haze of love and loneliness, of twisted hungers, suppressed for long years till they broke loose in violence that could no longer deny itself.
“Oh no! Martha.” Her own fear was consumed in pity. “Oh, Martha, you misunderstood, you poor creature—”
But Martha had raised the wire, stretched taut between her hands, and was coming towards her, less than a yard away.
The spell was broken.
Charlotte screamed as loudly as her lungs would permit. She screamed Martha’s name over and over again. She swung the basket at her, at her face, hoping to scare her, to blind her temporarily, even to knock her over.
It seemed like eternity, and Martha’s hands were already on her arms, gripping her like steel, when the enormous figure of Pitt came out of the fog, and a second later, two constables. They grasped Martha, hauling her off, forcing her arms behind her back.
Charlotte collapsed against the street wall; her knees seemed to have no strength to support her and her hands were tingling with pins and needles.
Pitt bent down to her, taking her face in his hands very gently. “You blazing idiot!” he choked. “What in God’s name were you doing going to see her alone? Do you realize if I hadn’t gone to see you again today, and they had not told me where you’d come, you’d be lying on this very stone, dead like Sarah and all the others?”
She nodded and gulped, tears beginning to run down her face.
“Yes.”
“You—you—” He was lost for a word fierce enough.
Before he could struggle any further there were more heavy feet on the pavement, and a moment later the vicar’s solid form materialized out of the fog.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. “What’s happened? Who’s hurt?”
Pitt turned to him, bitter dislike in his face. “No one is hurt, Mr. Prebble—in the way you mean. The injury is a lifelong one, I think.”
“I don’t know what you mean. Explain yourself! Martha! What on earth are those policemen doing with Martha? She should be at home in bed. She is ill. I found her missing; that’s why I came out. You can let her go now. I shall take her home.”
“No, Mr. Prebble, you won’t.