The Old Vengeful

Shocked by her own inattention, she checked her driving mirror carefully for further motor-cyclists before she turned into the concealed drive. But there was only a car way behind her, and that was pulling into the verge ... It looked not unlike the same car she had observed in the street below Margaret's, and she wondered for a moment if it might not be Dr Mitchell at the wheel solving the problem of locating her home simply by following her, since she had clean forgotten to give him any directions. But then she dismissed the thought as pure imagination: the Vicar could supply those directions just as well, and she couldn't see a man like Dr Mitchell worrying about such a small matter anyway.

She sighed as she searched in her bag for her key. It was no good dreaming dreams about Dr Mitchell merely because he was going to take her out to dinner. In another second or two she would step into the hall, and put her bag on the table under the mirror as she always did, and would look into the mirror to check her appearance, as she also always did out of pure habit. And the mirror would then tell her all she needed to know, as it too always did— and this time it would also remind her that it was Father's research in which Dr Mitchell was interested, not her . . . not her . . .

dummy3

She sighed again, and turned the key. Perhaps it would be better to vary the habit this time, and not bother to look in the mirror.

She put the bag down on the table—

There was a sudden flurry of movement in the mirror—she glimpsed something—and then darkness descended on her and arms crushed her—

'Don't scream, girl—an' don't struggle neither.' The voice was as rough as the hands, but unhurried. 'If yer do then I'll give yer somethin' to scream about—I'll break yer bleedin'

arm. Got it?'

Elizabeth wasn't aware that she had made any sound since the bag—or whatever it was—had descended on her head, surrounding her with impenetrable dark. Nor, for that matter, had she attempted to struggle, for the hands and the rock-like bulk of their owner left no scope for resistance: it was like being grabbed by a gorilla.

But perhaps she had cried out in surprise and pain, and the gorilla had misinterpreted both the sound and the weakness in her knees.

'Got it?' The voice grated in her ear and the pressure on her shoulder-blades increased agonisingly.

This time she heard herself cry out—almost as much in astonishment as in pain as her brain started to sort out the unbelievable signals it was receiving: nobody had ever done anything like this before to her— no one had ever held her dummy3

like this, hurt her like this!

'You're-hurting-me!' she gasped.

The pressure relaxed to its original implacable grip. 'Just so you know this ain't nothin' to what I can do, eh?'

She was being robbed—freed from pain she fought against rising panic—she was being robbed, and she must keep her head ... or he would beat her into a pulp ... or ... she felt the fear of what he might also do to her spreading inside her—

the fear founded and fed on a hundred newspaper headlines

—

She must keep her head—she must remember what to do, even though the fear was choking her!

But she couldn't think straight any more. Was it better to fight, and risk injury—or did submission encourage them to do what they might not have intended to do in the first place?

But trying to fight this sort of strength would be sheer insanity—

'I've got 'er—an' she's got the message I reckon.'

The voice outside the darkness wasn't directed at her: Oh, God help me! thought Elizabeth, despairingly—not him, but them!

'Bring her in here, then.' The new voice wasn't rough, like that of her captor: it was educated, but at the same time unidentifiably classless.

Before she could deduce anything more about it—before even she could decide whether to derive hope or greater fear from dummy3

it—Elizabeth was man-handled round in a new direction and propelled forwards.

'Sit her down there,' commanded the educated voice.

Again she was manoeuvred, until the back of her legs came up against something hard—the edge of a chair— and then forced down into it... on to it—a hard chair, with arms.

Inside the hood she hadn't known where she was, but this chair reduced the choice to the dining room or the study, though without sense of smell it was impossible to tell which.

'Well, Miss Loftus, we weren't expecting you back so soon.

But, now that you're here, we can turn that to advantage I think.' The voice paused for an instant. 'Indeed, I don't think

—I know that you will help uss.'

Half of Elizabeth was irrationally terrified by the confidence in the voice, and by its smoothness, in which the sibilants hissed and slithered snake-like. But the other half whispered robbery to her, discounting rape and unnecessary violence.

Even, it was easy to imagine what had brought them, for it must be common knowledge now that she was alone, and a lone woman in a large secluded house would be an open invitation to men like this. She should have