Gone to Ground by John Harvey

Author:John Harvey [Harvey, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 0151013632
Amazon: 0151013632
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2007-01-01T18:30:00+00:00

The plot, despite devious twists and turns and a succession of betrayals, was relatively simple. Good sister, Alma, meets the man of her dreams, a clean-living and heroic surgeon named Philip, who is dedicated to furthering medical understanding of the human brain, and accepts his proposal of marriage, while bad sister, Ruby, no better than she should be, sneers from the sidelines. There is a subplot, involving Ruby, a crooked nightclub owner and some stolen jewels, but the main concern of the story is with Ruby's jealousy of her sister and her intention to steal Philip away at all costs. Which for a time, of course, she does.

In the buildup to the final scene—borrowed, Hedden told Lesley, from an earlier film called Angel Face —Philip, having finally succumbed to Ruby's seductive wiles, comes to his senses after being confronted by a distraught Alma, and goes to Ruby to tell her their affair is over and he is going to marry Alma after all. Putting on her best false face, Ruby pretends to understand, even to be pleased, and says she will drive Philip to where Alma is waiting. Once behind the wheel, however, she accelerates faster and faster and finally drives the car off the edge of a cliff and into the sea, where they both drown.

The last shot is a close-up of Alma, black veil across her face, at the funeral of both her betrothed and her sister, where they are being buried side by side.

"Not exactly," Lesley said, "what you'd call a happy ending."

Hedden reached up and switched off the projector, stopping the end frames of celluloid from flapping in loose circles. Lesley pulled back the curtains, letting natural light back into the room.

"So," Hedden said, "what did you think?"

"I liked it. The camera work, especially. And I'm not saying that just because you're standing there. It was really atmospheric."

"Ah, that was down to Jack, the director of photography, more than me. I just pointed the camera through the gloom and hoped for the best."

"I'm sure that's not true. But anyway, that was what I liked. And Stella, of course. She's extraordinary, isn't she?"

"She was very good," Hedden agreed.

"First she's this nice young girl, butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, and then, the next minute, she's changed into this—I don't know what you'd call it? Tart? Harlot? Slapper, I suppose that's what we'd say today. Except that's she's evil with it. And sexy, my God! Talk about sex on a stick."

"Exactly," Hedden said. "And this, remember, was Britain in the fifties, when everything that wasn't buttoned down was buttoned up."

"You know the scene that threw me most?" Lesley said. "When Alma's sitting at her dressing-table mirror, dabbing a little powder on her face, running a comb through her hair, all very demure, and then she stands up and turns around and suddenly she's face-to-face with Ruby and it's as if she's still looking in a mirror, except that Ruby's got all this heavy makeup on, the whole works, and even though it's black and white you can feel how red the lipstick is on her mouth.

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