Return by Brian Freemantle

Author:Brian Freemantle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media

Chapter Eighteen

He was too angry, fury literally shaking through him, even to think of returning to bed. For a long time all he could do was stump around the house, wanting movement, wanting to destroy. He actually considered it, smashing everything that was breakable before torching the place, watching it burn to the ground: wipe them out. Wrong way, he reminded himself, regaining control. That wouldn’t be wiping them out. They’d still be alive. Shouldn’t have let himself react like this. He was always in control, manipulating everyone else. Couldn’t be helped, if the old bitch died. That was always allowed for. He still had Janet to play his new game with – intentionally delaying the killing – to make the pleasure last.

Needed to do something, though: punish them in some way. What? Invade their privacy: handle – fondle – their intimate things, learn their secrets. Taylor smiled, pleased with the idea. That was the way to control people. Know everything about them.

He was offended by the untidiness of the emergency there had been in Edith Hibbs’s bedroom, the bed covering cast back, the heavy wardrobe door hanging open. The clothes inside smelt of mothballs and age. Nothing exciting inside: nothing he wasn’t supposed to see. He was glad the commode didn’t stink of her use. The smaller closets and two separate chests of drawers were better. A lot of underwear, most of it silk, long-legged knickers and chemises and stiff-boned corsets that would have encased her from breast to buttock, like armour. He sniffed them, particularly the knickers, wondering about the sort of souvenir he hadn’t taken before. Not the old woman’s. If it was anyone’s it would be Janet’s. Something to think about.

Taylor found the trove at the bottom of a built-in closet, box upon box of letters and albums as well as loose photographs and diaries, virtually the life history of Major and Mrs Walter Hibbs.

Taylor worked methodically, properly, taking each box from its storage place and assembling its chronology from the dated letters and diaries inside, starting in the order that Edith Hibbs had begun, from her wedding to the stern-faced bastard who even when he was young – nineteen, according to the marriage certificate he found – affected that ridiculous moustache. Everything about the two of them was ridiculous, he decided, reading steadily. At first the stupid bitch wrote as if she were talking to a real person. Dear diary, I am so happy. Dear diary, I am so glad I saved myself for marriage. Dear diary, Walter is so wonderful: I am so proud. Dear diary, I pray that God will keep him safe.

The drivel went on and on: about her fear of pregnancy and her joy of having a boy (my angel, my most adorable baby) to continue the family name and then of becoming pregnant with Janet (it’s happened again: why is God so good}). She’d called Janet beautiful and he decided Janet was, even as a child, never gawky or awkward,

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