Or was there?
The trembling had stopped and he was just gathering himself together to go downstairs to the phone, to summon ambulances or doctors, or whoever else might need to come out to deal with a dead man in the middle of the night. It was then that he caught a flicker of movement on the rim of his vision, and he spun round at once, his heart leaping up into his throat. Someone here? Someone hiding in the tiny bathroom, standing in the pale mistiness watching him? He remembered what his father had said earlier. ‘Listen,’ he had said. ‘It sounds like someone creeping up the stairs.’ Edmund felt the blood start to pulsate inside his head again.
And then he realized that what he had seen was his own reflection in the big oak-framed mirror above the washbasin. A small nervous laugh escaped his lips, releasing some of the throbbing tension. Only his own reflection.
Or was it? He peered through the wisps of vapour. The surface of the mirror was still patchily misted, but wasn’t it a subtly different Edmund who stood there; an Edmund who was somehow more definite, more vivid? An Edmund whose hair seemed almost to catch an unseen shaft of light, so that it gleamed faintly red…
Edmund moved one hand experimentally, and the other Edmund moved his hand also, but not quite in synchronization, more as if he was sketching a half mocking, half amused salute from the depths of the glass.
I’ll always be with you, Edmund…
The memory made Edmund’s lips twist in a brief acknowledgement that was almost a smile. At once the image in the mirror gave the same near-smile as well, and this time there was no doubt about it; this time the smile was definitely not his own. It was the smile of a young man who once upon a time had possessed sufficient charm to attract a wicked, mischievous lady – a lady with skin like porcelain and hair like polished silk…A young man who had killed and escaped the consequences of killing…A young man with hair the colour of honey with the sun in it, and a smile filled with charm…
Crispin. Crispin standing in the mirror’s smoky depths, looking out at him. Speaking to Edmund inside his mind.
I’ll always be with you, said Crispin’s voice, just as it had done when Edmund was very small. Remember that, Edmund…You won’t need anyone else, because whatever you do and wherever you go, I’ll always be there to help you…
After a long, long time Edmund remembered that there was still a world beyond the house, and things that must be done, and somehow he got to the phone to dial the GP’s night service. An impersonal voice answered and Edmund said, in a perfectly calm tone, that his father had just died, and that he was on his own and he had no idea what he should do but he thought he had better start with his father’s doctor.
Yes, he was quite sure that life was extinct, he said. No, there was no possibility of survival whatsoever. So could the doctor – or one of his partners – come out as quickly as possible? Yes, he understood that it might take a little time to locate whoever was on call. No, of course he would not leave the house in the meantime. He wondered if the owner of the voice suspected him of preparing to zap off into the night to whoop it up somewhere while rigor mortis set in on his father’s corpse.