B004M5HK0M EBOK by Unknown Page A

clue.’
    ‘Chris set fire to Elise?’
    ‘Dr. Muriel told me. Her dress caught fire and Chris was there. I thought she was talking about you but she meant Chris. Setting fire to someone or smothering the flames – to an onlooker, there’s very little difference. He was giving Elise a warning, telling her to keep silent. He’s dangerous, Joe. You be careful.’
    ‘Emily, I tell you what. I think you’re crazy but I’ll talk to Chris. I’ll talk to Zizi. I’ll see if I can find Zsa-Zsa. Will that do?’
    But Emily was distracted. Up ahead in the darkness, near the house, she could just about make out Dr. Muriel skirting past the bushes. She was heading for the cellar. ‘You see what you can find out,’ Emily said to Joe. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.’
    Before Emily could reach her, Dr. Muriel had opened the cellar door and gone inside. Emily followed, hating the darkness. This was the king of darkness compared to the ill-lit passageway that led here, and the corridor that looked on to the grand hall. This was a spidery darkness, full of stacked things and shadows – and, presumably, Dr. Muriel.
    ‘Emily?’ Dr. Muriel’s voice was behind her. A light flared in the cellar, showing the row of giant faces, painted on fibreglass heads as big as a person, each one with different features, but similar in construction to the glowing heads Emily had seen in the garden when she first arrived. She looked for the cage with the dog in it but it had gone.
    ‘Dr. Muriel?’ Emily called. ‘Is it just you in here?’
    ‘Come and look at this, m’dear.’
    Emily went back towards the cellar door. She saw a thin beam of light from a pen torch on a key ring as Dr. Muriel shone it on a painted sarcophagus, depicting a larger than lifesize pink naked woman with long black hair and big blue eyes, her nudity innocent as a mermaid’s, though from what Emily could see of it, she had legs. Dr. Muriel tapped, like an electrician tapping at panelling to check whether the space behind it is hollow and might contain wires that could kill if someone drills into them. She pulled at a catch on the side of the lady, just about where her ribs would be, and lifted the lid upwards to reveal another painted lady inside. It was Zsa-Zsa, the kitchen knife still in her chest, her pretty face tinged with a blue that matched her costume.
    ‘I know what you said about right and wrong,’ Emily said. ‘But until you see something like this, you can’t really believe it.’
    Dr. Muriel said, ‘Sometimes people are driven to do terrible things.’
    And then, as if proof were needed – which it was not – Emily felt the business end of Dr. Muriel’s cane on the back of her head, and she went down in a lump.
    A short while later, Emily regained consciousness. She was standing upright and her legs were untethered, but her arms were pinioned. She was in darkness, her upper body enclosed in a roughly spherical space. The air that she breathed had the smell of an art room about it. From outside, roast pork and bonfire smokiness drifted into the cellar – she couldn’t have been unconscious for too long. It was still the night of the party.
    ‘Emily,’ called Dr. Muriel, fairly robustly, considering the circumstances, ‘what is this? A pantomime horse.’
    ‘I think you might be inside a giant head. You didn’t whack me, did you, with your cane?’
    ‘No, of course not! You really are a most suspicious girl.’
    ‘Dr. M., what do you know about Chekov?’
    ‘Ah, well.’ Dr. M cleared her throat as if to start on a very long lecture. Her voice echoed slightly in her improvised prison. ‘The Russians, of course-’
    ‘I mean, tell me the name of some Chekov plays.’
    ‘The Seagull. I think that might be my favourite because-‘
    ‘Dr. Muriel, can you just give me a list?’
    ‘The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya... I could tell you a rather amusing story about the time I saw Uncle Vanya in-’
    ‘Please