The Black Wench

"Mainwaring,"' said Bud Kallen from the back seat of the humming car. "So that's the way you spell it over here." He folded up the deed he'd been studying.

"Yes," replied Nigel Sloane, a slim, silver-haired man as smooth as the Bentley he was driving. "But not pronounced Maine wearing, as you did. We pronounce it Mannering. . . ." He turned to the young woman in the passenger seat to his left. "Which, I take it, is the way your late mother spelled her maiden name, Mrs. Kallen?"

"That's right," Elena Kallen answered. She was a beautiful young woman with large brown eyes and sable hair. "Americans said it wrong so often that my great-grandfather Humphrey changed the spelling when he settled in the States right after the First World War."

"Sensible of him."

"Settling in the States?" asked Bud Kallen.

"Simplifying the name," said Nigel Sloane.

The Warwickshire countryside, as green as broccoli in the midday sun, rolled majestically past the window as Sloane guided the car around a subtle bend in the road.

Elena was saying, "The name died out when my mother married. She didn't have any brothers. And her unmarried sister died a long time ago. That must have made it hard for you to find me."

"A bit," Sloane admitted. "But we are a diligent firm, Mrs. Kallen. We kept on the scent until we discovered that Helen Mannering, the granddaughter of Humphrey, had married a gentleman attached to one of the Central American consulates in your country, a Mr. Enrique Castillo, and that their union had produced two offspring: Henry and Elena. If your brother had not been killed in Vietnam, he, being the elder, would have been my passenger today. As fate decreed, however, you are the closest surviving blood relation of Sir Giles Mainwaring. Therefore, according to the terms of his will, you are the legatee of his entire estate, including Mainwaring Hall."

Bud said, "I guess it'll be Kallen Hall from now on, right, honey?"

Before Elena could respond, Nigel Sloane said frostily over his shoulder, "It has been called Mainwaring Hall since Jacobean times, Mr. Kallen."

Sloane addressed Elena: "There will, of course, be a heavy toll in death duties--what I believe you call inheritance taxes--but even after the Inland Revenue has taken its ton of flesh, there will be a substantial cash settlement. And then we must not forget Mainwaring Hall itself, which we could arrange to sell for you, should you decide not to live there."

"Why would we decide that?" asked Elena.

"Well, for one thing, it's so very large for two people, and for another . . . but there, see for yourself." The car slowed down. To their left in the middle distance, looming in the center of spacious grounds, stood an enormous old house, an uneasy mixture of late Perpendicular Gothic motifs and crudely misused classic details. It seemed to grow out of the earth from roots almost four centuries old, as if it had been not so much built as (continued on page 167) Black Wench (continued from page 88) planted. It sucked its strength from the soil and the air, squatted on the landscape like an exotic bloated organism, surveying its dominion with the unblinking eyes of its many windows.

"Must be an expensive place to keep up," said Bud.

"Precisely," said Sloane, agreeing with Kallen for the first time all day.

"But we have money now," Elena reminded her husband. "You heard Mr. Sloane."

Sloane drove slowly through the open gates, up a curving path past trees and hedges, formal gardens and weathered stone statuary of indeterminate age. "Warwickshire is Shakespeare country, you know," he said. "Stratford, if you care for that sort of thing, is a pleasant motoring journey from here." At length, the car drew up to the main entrance of the massive house.

"It's in pretty good shape for its age," Bud commented.

"Restoration and renovation through the years," Sloane explained, "not to mention added wings and what not. Very few of the modern conveniences, though, I fear. No central heating, air conditioning, television antennas...."

"No phone?" asked Elena.

"Oh, yes, Mainwaring Hall is on the telephone. And electricity has been laid on. It also has one other contemporary feature that should interest a Californian couple like you: a swimming pool."

"Really?"

Sloane nodded. "Sir Giles had it installed some twenty years ago, when the doctors prescribed swimming as healthful exercise for his heart. He tried it once, said he loathed the chlorinated water and never got into it again."

"Well, I'll give the pool plenty of use," said Elena. "I love to swim."

"Yeah," said Bud. "I'm more of a scuba-diving nut myself."

"Not much opportunity for scuba diving around here," said Sloane. "Shall we look at the interior?" They climbed out of the car and walked up to the formidable oaken portal. As he lifted the heavy brass knocker and struck it sharply several times against the thick door, the solicitor said, "There's been only a skeleton staff here since Sir Giles died."

"And here's one of the skeletons now," murmured Bud as the door was opened by a cadaverous and very old butler.

"Ah, there you are, Coles," said Sloane as the aged manservant blinked first at the solicitor, then at Bud, then at Elena and, with a long, lung-emptying sigh, toppled forward, as if bludgeoned, into the arms of a startled Nigel Sloane.

•

"Help me get him inside," Sloane said to Bud, and the two men clumsily carried the inert butler into the house to the first available chair, an ornate relic of wood at the foot of the no less ornate staircase. Into this chair they deposited their load as gently as possible, while Elena hovered behind them, uttering helpless moans of sympathy.

The butler's eyelids fluttered several times. He lifted his head from his chest.

"Now then, Coles," said the solicitor, "do you know me?"

"Mr.... Sloane...."

"Well done. These two young people are your new master and mistress...."

He seemed reluctant to look at his new employers, so Elena said, "I think introductions can wait. He should go and lie down until he's feeling better."

Sloane endorsed that idea, and in moments the housekeeper, Mrs. Thayer, who was temporarily doubling as cook, was summoned to convoy the butler to his quarters. While she was thus occupied, Sloane conducted the Kallens on a quick, informal tour of the first floor: main hall, galleries, staircases, dining room, library, drawing room, billiard room. Richly carved walnut paneling covered every inch of every wall: Representations of spaniels, squirrels, woodcocks, partridges, pheasants all stood out in vivid relief. The library was spacious enough to accommodate, in addition to endless shelves of books, no fewer than six commodious sofas for browsing and lounging. Sloane, as he led them through the rooms, kept up a running commentary: "As you see, the doorways, fireplaces and the like are all framed with classic forms, and both inside and outside there is a wide use of gaines, pilasters and S scrolls...."

"Can we see the pool?" Elena asked.

"To be sure. And then we can stroll out to the stables."

"There are horses here?" she marveled.

"Not for some time," Sloane said. "Just motorcars. A Mercedes, a Jaguar, a bright-red Ferrari that will probably suit you, Mr. Kallen, and a very, very old Rolls-Royce."

"Who drove the Ferrari?" Bud asked.

"Why, Sir Giles. He was quite the dashing old gentleman."

He led them out a back entrance of the house to the pool--which was empty and dry, its floor carpeted with dead leaves. Elena groaned with disappointment, but Sloane said, "Not to worry. I'll arrange to have it cleaned and filled for you. Leave everything to me."

Mrs. Thayer appeared from the house at that moment. "Excuse me, sir," she said to the solicitor, "but Mr. Coles would like to speak to you. Can you come upstairs?"

"Now?"

"Please."

"Oh, very well." He told the Kallens how to find their way to the stables and followed Mrs. Thayer into the house.

The stables were larger than they had expected, and their walls were covered by the biggest magnolias Elena had ever seen. All the cars were there, conforming to Nigel Sloane's spoken catalog, and sure enough, Bud was drawn to the red Ferrari. As they were leaving the stables, Elena said, "Hey, look at this...."

She pointed to a group of four words cut into the wood of a dark and cobwebbed corner of the stables. The letters were crude but worn smooth at the edges, their depths engrained with dirt, bespeaking the passage of unnumbered years since they had been carved there. The words were:

Beware the Blacke-Wench

"Probably a horse," said Bud. "An ornery black mare that threw her riders."

In the house again, Nigel Sloane told them that the ancient butler, Coles, had announced his intention to retire from service. He wished to leave immediately.

"It's difficult for the old boy to adjust to new young masters," said Sloane. "He served Sir Giles for almost fifty years! And, to speak frankly, I think you will be better off with a younger man in the post. I'll put you in touch with one or two good employment agencies. You'll be wanting a cook, as well, and gardeners, of course ... other servants, too ... leave all that to me and Mrs. Thayer."

•

Tea was prepared and served by Mrs. Thayer in the drawing room after the Kallens had seen the rest of the house. Finishing his tea, Sloane said, "I should be getting back now. If you have any questions, if there is anything I can do, anything at all, please have no hesitation in telephoning. You have my number." He addressed these remarks to Elena. "And if you should reconsider and wish to dispose of this valuable property at an attractive price...."

"I wouldn't dream of it," she declared. "I love the place, I belong here, I'm a Mainwaring. Why should I get rid of it? Is it haunted or something?"

Bud said, "Sure it is. All these old English houses have ghosts, don't they?"

Nigel Sloane chuckled. "Your husband is right. All old English houses are reputed to harbor ghosts, and Mainwaring Hall is no exception."

"Really?" squeaked Elena. "Ghosts?"

"Just one. So the old wives' tales would have it, at any rate."

"But what's it supposed to be like?"

"The ghost of Mainwaring Hall?"

"Yes! Tell us! I'm dying to know!"

The solicitor sighed. "Oh, dear. Well, then. It's purported to take the form of a naked woman, a black woman, which is why it's known as the Black Wench...." Elena and Bud exchanged quick glances. "Some versions say that its presence is felt rather than seen, felt as a cold wet hand or an expanse of clammy bare flesh ... but I'm upsetting you, Mrs. Kallen."

"No, no! Please go on."

"The Mainwarings of old, some say, were heavily invested in the African slave traffic as early as 1620 and made the bulk of their wealth by financing the capture, transport and sale of the poor wretches to the American colonies. This conveniently accounts for the apparition's color, you see ... a female slave who died in some cruel manner, perhaps, flogged or what you will, and who blamed the Mainwarings for her harsh fate...."

"How long has she been haunting Mainwaring Hall?" Elena asked.

"The first recorded sighting was by Sir Edred Mainwaring in 1624. She allegedly came to him in the library late one night while he was reading his Bible, this naked black woman, glistening as if covered with perspiration from head to foot and, in Sir Edred's words, 'reeking with the stench of hell.' He was a religious man, and he believed that she was 'asweat from the fires of perdition,' whither she'd been sent as a demon, or succubus, to tempt him to damnation with her naked body."

"Wow," said Bud. "If a guy has got to see a ghost, that's the kind of ghost to see, huh?"

Sloane said, "I take your meaning. Sir Giles, after Lady Mainwaring had passed away, once told me that he wouldn't have minded an occasional visit from a naked wench. But I don't think he was ever favored by the black lady's attentions. As far as Sir Edred is concerned, a modern psychiatrist would no doubt say that he was having a sexual fantasy but that his religious convictions wouldn't allow him to enjoy it without pious distortions. I do hope I haven't offended you, Mrs. Kallen, or frightened you."

"No, of course not. Goodness, I don't believe in ghosts."

"Very sensible," said the solicitor as he rose to leave.

"Do you?"

Nigel Sloane smiled. "I've always admired what Sir Osbert Sitwell said when he was asked that same question," he told her. "'Only at night."'

•

That evening after dinner, Bud killed some time at the billiard table, but he soon grew bored without an opponent. He roamed restlessly through the library and several other rooms, finally joining Elena in the drawing room, where she was writing postcards to friends in the States.

"It isn't exactly L.A., is it?" he said, "Or London. I liked London, what we saw of it on the way in. Theaters, movies, restaurants, gambling casinos. It's alive. Not so dead quiet, like this place. We'll have to get a TV."

"If you want to."

He rested on the arm of her chair and, with an excruciating attempt at an English accent, whispered in her ear, "I say, my deah, what about initiating the mahster bedroom?"

She giggled. "It's early."

"Almost ten. And this country air"--he yawned theatrically--"makes me sleepy...."

"We have had a busy day." She, too, was overcome by a yawn. "Give me ten minutes to get ready, then come up."

He bowed deeply from the waist. "As you wish, milady." She left the room.

The master bedroom boasted two adjoining sitting rooms where husband and wife might dress and undress in privacy, visible to no eyes other than their own and those of their valet and maid. To the sitting room with the more feminine decor, where her bags had been unpacked by Mrs. Thayer, Elena now retreated and took off her clothes. When she was without a stitch, she admired herself in a tall old looking glass, smiling with a total absence of false modesty. Her body was sumptuous and full-bosomed, satin to the touch, with the olive skin of her father and a curly nest at her center like a swatch of soft fur. Her brushes had been set out on the dressing table. She selected one, but instead of sitting down to brush her dark hair, she did it standing up, nude, in front of the full-length mirror, watching her breasts bob and quiver as she brushed the gleaming thick mass in long strokes. Once, she winked at herself.

Downstairs, Bud impatiently waited only six minutes, not ten, before climbing the staircase to the master bedroom. The lights were already off, but he had no difficulty discerning the curved shape under the coverlet, thrown into relief by a cool wash of moonlight from the windows.

"My little eager beaver," he muttered playfully as he began to undress, letting the clothes fall to the floor. Nude in the moonlight, he was a well-proportioned, muscular young man and, at the moment, spectacularly virile. "Here I come, ready or not," he crooned and climbed under the coverlet.

She was lying on one side, her naked back to him. He pressed the length of his body to hers, then immediately recoiled.

"Damn, you're cold!" he complained. "And you're all wet--soaking. What did you do, take a cold shower and come to bed without toweling off?"

"What did you say, dear?" Elena asked as she walked through the door from her sitting room, clad in a filmy nightgown.

"Christ!"

Bud sprang from the bed as if kissed by a scorpion.

"What's the matter?"

He crouched naked in the dark, on the carpet next to the bed, gasping. "Who ..." he said in choked fragments, "who's that ... in the bed?"

"Nobody!"

He stretched out a trembling arm and pointed toward the bed. "I felt her ... she's there ...."

Elena snapped a switch, flooding the room with light. "Where?" The bed was empty.

"She was there!"

"Who?"

"How the hell should I know? I thought it was you. And then ... you walked through the door...." His face was chalky.

She handed him his robe. "Come on, dear, get up off the floor. Put this on. You had a dream; that's all."

He got to his feet and wrapped himself in the robe. "A dream ... no ... couldn't be...."

"Sure, don't you see? You got into bed to wait for me, and you dozed off just for a few seconds and dreamed I was already in bed beside you."

"Cold," he said. "She was cold. Naked and wet." He yanked the coverlet all the way off the bed. "If it was a dream," he said, "how do you explain that?"

On one side, the sheet was wrinkled from top to bottom by the long, sodden stain of a drenched and recent occupant.

•

Bud Kallen refused ever to sleep in that bed. He claimed it was "clammy," even after the sheets had been changed, even after the mattress had been replaced. The young couple slept in one of the other bedrooms, he clinging to his wife all night, every night, like a child clinging to his mother.

It was not a conjugal embrace. His virility had been shattered that night. Elena began to feel it was her fault.

"No, honey, it's not you," he insisted one morning at breakfast. "It's this damn house. Why don't we sell it? Sloane said he could get us a good price for it."

"Sell the house?" she wailed. "Just when we've got the pool ready again, and a TV, and a new butler and a cook, and--"

"What's that got to do with it? The pool and the TV antenna are good selling points--"

"I don't want to sell it. Don't you understand?"

"But why not? The cars alone are worth a mint, even if we keep one or two of them. That classic Rolls? It's a collector's item. And those priceless paintings! Gainsboroughs and Constables and--"

"You're not a Mainwaring; that's why you don't understand. But I am."

He laughed metallically. "You're a Kallen; that's what you are. And before that, you were a Castillo--a spick, for Christ's sake! Don't pull that lady-of-the-manor stuff with me."

Her dark eyes had brimmed with hurt and fury. Now she tore away from the table, knocking over her coffee cup, and ran weeping from the room.

He found her huddled on a stone bench in the garden, her tear-streaked face held in her hands. He talked to her gently and contritely, apologizing, asking to be forgiven. He could be persuasively charming when it suited him. By the time they had returned to the house, she had agreed to invite Nigel Sloane to dinner at Mainwaring Hall sometime that week.

•

Two evenings later, the solicitor was enjoying an excellent meal prepared by their new cook: turtle soup, halibut mousse, beef Wellington, fresh asparagus vinaigrette, with appropriate wines from Sir Giles's well-stocked cellar.

Coffee and cognac followed in the drawing room, and as Sloane touched a flame to a Havana cigar, he said, "Am I to understand that you have had second thoughts about selling?"

Bud thought it politic to let Elena speak. She said, "That's the word, Mr. Sloane. Thoughts. Just thoughts for now. Could we talk about it?"

"Of course. Any particular reason?"

She shrugged. "No."

Bud rubbed his arms and said, "Chilly in here. We ought to have a fire. I'll ring for the butler."

"Dear, you'll broil us alive. I feel fine." Her smooth arms and back were bare in her dinner gown. "The cognac will warm you up."

Sloane returned to the subject of selling. "Yes, we can certainly investigate one or two interesting avenues of possibility." He smiled. "But you two seemed to have been settling in so nicely. Haven't seen the Black Wench, by any chance?"

"No," Bud said, too quickly.

Elena asked, "Have you ever known anyone who has seen her?"

"Ah," replied Sloane, "one can never say that one has known somebody who's seen a ghost. The most one can say is that one knows somebody who says he's seen a ghost."

"And did you ever know anybody who said he saw the Black Wench?"

"In point of fact, yes."

"Who?" asked Bud.

"Coles."

"What? That old guy who quit the day we got here?"

Sloane nodded. "A few years ago, Sir Giles told me--laughing as he did so--'I believe old Coles has gone dotty. Claims to have seen the Wench. In the billiard room, of all places. Called him by name, he says. Gave him quite a turn. I told him to stop knocking back the cooking sherry or I'd sack him."'

Bud leaned forward. "How did Coles describe her? Was she naked? And black?"

"I don't know. I didn't cross-examine him." His cigar had gone out. As he rekindled it, he said, "I wouldn't place too much importance on that word black, you know." A long plume of smoke unfurled from his mouth. "Or naked, for the matter of that."

"What do you mean?" asked Elena.

"Well, black hasn't always meant the same thing, when applied to the color of people. Samuel Pepys, in his diary, refers to the wife of a Mr. Hater as 'a very pretty, modest, black woman,' but she was certainly no Negress, simply a woman of dark complexion. Shakespeare, in Love's Labour's Lost and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, for example, calls 'black' characters who are obviously what we would call white. And in four or five sonnets about his beloved Dark Lady, he calls her black, though it's now believed that she was of Italian descent. The same is true of the word naked, which in older parlance sometimes meant clad only in underclothing. So," he concluded with a twinkle, "Sir Edred's 'naked black woman' may have been no more than a late-night ladylove of his steward's, a scullery maid, more than like, thoroughly English if a touch swarthy, and caught in her skivvies on the way back to her own bed. Wandered into the master's library by mistake, no doubt."

Elena smiled. "More cognac, Mr. Sloane?"

"Just a drop, perhaps. Thank you. Now, then: A sale of this property could begin with an auction of the paintings, motorcars and other valuables; or, on the other hand--"

"I've changed my mind," she said. "Talking to you has helped me think more clearly. I don't want to sell, after all."

When Nigel Sloane had left, Bud held his temper until he was certain all the servants had gone to bed. Then he exploded, "What the hell's the matter with you?"

"He was so sensible," said Elena. "So levelheaded. He let me see that so-called ghost for what it really is: nothing at all. A servant girl in her underwear. A senile butler who'd been hitting the bottle. I'm not going to give up all this for some fairy tale."

"All this'? This white elephant? This drafty old museum?"

"I have a right to change my mind."

"What mind? You dumb spick!"

"That's the second time in less than a week you've used that word. I know you're sexually frustrated, and I'm sorry for you, but--"

"Just shut up about that! Getting out of this damn house is all the cure I need!"

She turned and walked away.

"Where are you going?" he shouted.

"For a swim," she said and ran swiftly upstairs, where she stripped, pulled on a skimpy black bathing suit and tripped quickly downstairs again on bare toes, out to the moonlit pool. The night silence was cloven by a splash when, as sleek as a dolphin, she dove cleanly into the water.

She swam the length of the pool, her arms slicing the water in strong, graceful strokes; then she reversed, swimming back toward the other end again. The exercise and the bracing effect of the chill water calmed her, draining the anger and tension from her body and mind.

But then her heart was jolted by something she saw in the moonlight, moving toward the pool. It was luminous in the lunar glow, with the opalescence of bare flesh, vaguely human in outline and yet not human.

Not human, because--although it had two arms that hung at its sides, two legs that were bringing it nearer and nearer the pool--it had no face.

She tried to scream but could only whimper.

Where a face should have been, there was an oval void, eyeless, soulless....

It drew even closer.

Suddenly, she laughed with relief and recognition. It was her husband, in his swim trunks and scuba mask. The oxygen tank was strapped to his back.

"Bud, you idiot!" she said affectionately. "Scuba diving in a swimming pool?"

Without a word, he dove under the surface of the water. She giggled at his eccentric foolery, grateful that he'd chosen this bit of clowning as a way of making up.

She felt her ankles seized by his powerful hands. She laughed again. They had often played like this back home, when they were young surfers on the beach at Santa Monica. She kicked coquettishly, not really wanting to free her legs from his grasp.

She was pulled down, under the surface.

He continued to hold on to her ankles with hands that gripped like steel clamps. She kicked frantically now, coquetry forgotten, roiling the water, struggling to escape. Fear rushed into her very bone marrow as water filled her nostrils, her mouth. She beat upon him with her fists, but he eluded her. She tried to rip off his oxygen tank, his breathing tube, but he was too quick and too strong for her.

Freezing thoughts stabbed her. Why was he doing it? Because she wouldn't sell? Even if she had sold, would he have done it later anyway, to get all the money for himself? If only the servants hadn't gone to bed. If only their quarters overlooked the pool. But there was no one, no help....

The awful pressure of water was in her lungs, and it hurt. It hurt to drown, she realized through her panic; there was pain--hideous, nauseating fear and pain. But soon the pain ebbed, and a numbness set in, and a softness, and a darkness....

•

When she emerged from the pool, she staggered away aimlessly, unsure of her own intentions. She felt giddy, everything looked distorted, she didn't walk normally, she felt as if she were floating. Well, that wasn't surprising, she told herself, after what she'd just been through. She was lucky to be alive.

Had she lost consciousness at some point? She couldn't be sure. How long had she been held under water?

She found herself nearing the stables, and the horses whinnied and reared.

Horses? She peered at the animals. Yes, there were horses in the stables, all right. No cars. Although that puzzled her, she knew there had to be a logical explanation, and she made her way toward the house.

She still couldn't see clearly. The house looked different, somehow. It wavered before her eyes, throbbing and pulsating. She wandered without purpose into the strangely mist-softened billiard room, startling old Coles, the butler....

"Coles?" she said aloud. But he shouldn't have been there. He'd left Mainwaring Hall the day they'd arrived. In that moment, Elena knew she was dreaming. And that explained the horses in the stable. She hoped it explained Bud's attempt to kill her, too. Please, God, let that be part of the nightmare.

The house twirled and gyrated--or was it the world, the universe?--and a wave of dizziness swept over her; a vast roaring filled her ears; she felt as if she were in the center of a tornado's raging dark funnel. The feeling passed.

She entered the library. A gray-bearded man sat at a desk, reading an immense book by the light of a guttering candle. He looked up at her. His eyes bulged. His mouth fell open.

"Who art thou?" he croaked. "Dost seek to tempt me? Avaunt, thou black devil! In the name of Jesu, I charge thee, take thy nakedness hence!" He fell back in his chair, trembling.

Elena backed out of the dimly lit library, shattered by the vivid reality of this dream, and moved toward the undulating staircase. She felt she was not climbing it so much as riding it, as she might ride a smooth, silent escalator. Her bare feet could not even feel the stairs; but that was the way of dreams.

When she entered her husband's sitting room, she saw his wet swim trunks and scuba gear in a heap on the floor.

(And lightning flashes of knowledge seared her.)

His back turned to her, Bud was now dressed in crisp pajamas and robe, fluffing his hair with her blow drier.

(She came to know that time is not a river flowing in one direction but a whirlpool spinning round and round; that a spirit released from the prison of flesh can spiral unfettered into past, recent past, distant past, years, centuries before its own death, its own birth.)

Bud stuffed the damp scuba gear into a duffel bag, threw it into a cupboard, picked up the phone and dialed. "Is this the police?"

(She knew why Coles had fainted at the door upon seeing her the day they arrived: He had recognized her from the earlier sighting in the billiard room some years before.)

"This is Mr. Kallen at Maine Wearing Hall. Something terrible has happened out here...."

(She knew how naked her scantily clad body must have looked to Sir Edred in his 17th Century study; how black her olive skin and dark hair were by his standards.)

"An accident in the swimming pool ... my wife ... I'm afraid she's...."

(And finally, she knew that none of this was a dream; that she had been murdered; that the legendary ghost of Mainwaring Hall was no scullery maid or African slave girl; that she herself, Elena Kallen, was, always had been, forever would be the Black Wench.)

A split second before he felt her, he smelled the pungent chlorine of the pool--Sir Edred's "stench of hell"--and then she reached out and laid a hand of ice upon his shoulder.

With a cry, he spun around and saw his wife, glistening with the water that had killed her. Water trickled from her ears, her nostrils, her gaping mouth, ran in a rivulet between her breasts, snaked down her tapered legs into a puddle at her feet. Howling, Bud Kallen leaped backward, pressed his spine to the wall and slid slowly down the flocked wallpaper until he was huddled on the floor, eyes distended, moaning, vomiting, fouling his clothes, a mass of quivering, whining terror.

When the police arrived and woke the sleeping servants, they found two bodies: those of Elena Kallen, drowned in the pool, and her husband, on the floor of his sitting room, dead from a massive coronary. The telephone was still in his hand.