For some reason that hurt, hurt right down to his soul as Mary Carson’s cruel taunts had not. “No, Meggie, you’re right. It isn’t in me.” He sprang up, smiling wryly. “Would you think it strange if I said I wished it was?” He put a hand to his head. “No, I don’t wish it was at all! Go home, Meggie, go home!”Her face was sad. “Good night, Father.”He took her hands in his, bent and kissed them. “Good night, dearest Meggie.” He watched her walk across the graves, step over the railing; in the rosebud dress her retreating form was graceful, womanly and a little unreal. Ashes of roses. “How appropriate,” he said to the angel. Cars were roaring away from Droghedas as he strolled back across the lawn; the party was finally over. Inside, the band was packing away its instruments, reeling with rum and exhaustion, and the tired maids and temporary helpers were trying to clear up. Father Ralph shook his head at Mrs. Smith. “Send everyone to bed, my dear. It’s a lot easier to deal with this sort of thing when you’re fresh. I’ll make sure Mrs. Carson isn’t angry.” “Would you like something to eat, Father?” “Good Lord, no! I’m going to bed.” In the late afternoon a hand touched his shoulder. He reached for it blindly without the energy to open his eyes, and tried to hold it against his cheek. “Meggie,” he mumbled. “Father, Father! Oh, please will you wake up?” At the tone of Mrs. Smith’s voice his eyes came suddenly very awake. “What is it, Mrs. Smith?” “It’s Mrs. Carson, Father. She’s dead.” His watch told him it was after six in the evening; dazed and reeling from the heavy torpor the day’s terrible heat had induced in him, he struggled out of his pajamas and into his priest’s clothes, threw a narrow purple stole around his neck and took the oil of extreme unction, the holy water, his big silver cross, his ebony rosary beads. It never occurred to him for a moment to wonder if Mrs. Smith was right; he knew the spider was dead. Had she taken something after all? Pray God if she had, it was neither obviously present in the room nor obvious to a doctor. What possible use it was to administer extreme unction he didn’t know. But it had to be done. Let him refuse and there would be post-mortems, all sorts of complications. Yet it had nothing to do with his sudden suspicion of suicide; simply that to him laying sacred things on Mary Carson’s body was obscene. She was very dead, must have died within minutes of retiring, a good fifteen hours earlier. The windows were closed fast, and the room humid from the great flat pans of water she insisted be put in every inconspicuous corner to keep her skin youthful. There was a peculiar noise in the air; after a stupid moment of wondering he realized what he heard were flies, hordes of flies buzzing, insanely clamoring as they feasted on her, mated on her, laid their eggs on her. “For God’s sake, Mrs. Smith, open the windows!” he gasped, moving to the bedside, face pallid. She had passed out of rigor mortis and was again limp, disgustingly so. The staring eyes were mottling, her thin lips black; and everywhere on her were the flies. He had to have Mrs. Smith keep shooing them away as he worked over her, muttering the ancient Latin exhortations. What a farce, and she accursed. The smell of her! Oh, God! Worse than any dead horse in the freshness of a paddock. He shrank from touching her in death as he had in life, especially those flyblown lips. She would be a mass of maggots within hours. At last it was done. He straightened. “Go to Mr. Cleary at once, Mrs. Smith, and for God’s sake tell him to get the boys working on a coffin right away. No time to have one sent out from Gilly; she’s rotting away before our very eyes. Dear lord! I feel sick. I’m going to have a bath and I’ll leave my clothes outside my door. Burn them. I’ll never get the smell of her out of them.” Back in his room in riding breeches and shirt—for he had not packed two soutanes—he remembered the letter, and his promise. Seven o’clock had struck; he could hear a restrained chaos as maid sand temporary helpers flew to clear the party mess away, transform the reception room back into a chapel, ready the house for tomorrow’s funeral. No help for it, he would have to go into Gilly tonight to pick up another soutane and vestments for the Requiem Mass. Certain things he was never without when he left the presbytery for an outlying station, carefully strapped in compartments in the little black case, his sacraments for birth, death, benediction, worship, and the vestments suitable for Mass at whatever time of the year it was. But he was an Irishman, and to carry the black mourning accouterments of a Requiem was to tempt fate. Paddy’s voice echoed in the distance, but he could not face Paddy at the moment; he knew Mrs.Smith would do what had to be done. Sitting at his window looking out over the vista of Drogheda in the dying sun, the ghost gums golden, the mass of red and pink and white roses in the garden all empurpled, he took Mary Carson’s letter from his case and held it between his hands. But she had insisted he read it before he buried her, and somewhere in his mind a little voice was whispering that he must read it now, not later tonight after he had seen Paddy and Meggie, but now before he had seen anyone save Mary Carson. It contained four sheets of paper; he riffled them apart and saw immediately that the lower two were her will. The top two were addressed to him, in the form of a letter. 

 

My dearest Ralph,You will have seen that the second document in this envelope is my will. I already have a perfectly good will signed and sealed in Harry Gough’s office in Gilly; the will enclosed here in is a much later one, and naturally nullifies the one Harry has. As a matter of fact I made it only the other day, and had it witnessed by Tom and the fencer, since I understand it is not permissible to have any beneficiary witness one’s will. It is quite legal, in spite of the fact Harry didn’t draw it up for me. No court in the land will deny its validity, I assure you. But why didn’t I have Harry draw this testament if I wanted to alter the disposition of my effects? Very simple, my dear Ralph. I wanted absolutely no one to know of this will’s existence apart from you, and me. This is the only copy, and you hold it. Not a soul knows that you do. A very important part of my plan. Do you remember that piece of the Gospel where Satan took Our Lord Jesus Christ up onto a mountaintop, and tempted Him with the whole world? How pleasant it is to know I have a little of Satan’s power, and am able to tempt the one I love (do you doubt Satan loved Christ? I do not) with the whole world. The contemplation of your dilemma has considerably enlivened my thoughts during the past few years, and the closer I get to dying, the more delightful my visions become. After you’ve read the will, you’ll understand what I mean. While I burn in Hell beyond the borders of thislife I know now, you’ll still be in that life, but burningin a hell with fiercer flames than any God could possibly manufacture. Oh, my Ralph, I’ve gauged you to a nicety! If I never knew how to do anything else, I’ve always known how to make the ones I love suffer. And you’re far better game than my dear departed Michael ever was. When I first knew you, you wanted Drogheda and my money, didn’t you, Ralph? You saw it as a way to buy back your natural métier. But then came Meggie, and you put your original purpose in cultivating me out of your mind, didn’t you? I became an excuse to visit Drogheda so you could be with Meggie. I wonder could you have switched allegiances so easily had you known how much I’m actually worth? Do you know, Ralph? I don’t think you have an inkling. I suppose it isn’t ladylike to mention the exact sum of one’s assets in one’s will, so I had better tell you here just to make sure you have all the necessary information at your fingertips when it comes to your making a decision. Give or take a few hundred thousands, my fortune amounts to some thirteen million pounds. I’m getting down toward the foot of the second page, and I can’t be bothered turning this into a thesis. Read my will, Ralph, and after you’ve read it, decide what you’re going to do with it. Will you tender it to Harry Gough for probate, or will you burn it and never tell a soul it existed. That’s the decision you’ve got to make. I ought to add that the will in Harry’s office is the one I made the year after Paddy came, and leaves everything I have to him. Just so you know what hangs in the balance. Ralph, I love you, so much I would have killed you for not wanting me, except that this is a far better form of reprisal. I’m not the noble kind; I love you but I want you to scream in agony. Because, you see, I know what your decision will be. I know it as surely as if I could be there, watching. You’ll scream, Ralph, you’ll know what agony is. So read on, my beautiful, ambitious priest! Read my will, and decide your fate. It was not signed or initialed. He felt the sweat on his forehead, felt it running down the back of his neck from his hair. And he wanted to get up that very moment to burn both documents, never read what the second one contained. But she had gauged her quarry well, the gross old spider. Of course he would read on; he was too curious to resist. God! What had he ever done, to make her want to do this to him? Why did women make him suffer so? Why couldn’t he have been born small, twisted, ugly? If he were so, hemight have been happy.