Catherine Narracott
The Wife
I watch through the windows of the breakfast room.
The awful shape of the thing on the sleigh …
I can’t take my eyes from it. There are three men untying the restraints and lifting it from the wood, their heads bent against the snow which has begun to fall heavily now.
The thing … it looks heavy and awkward. And then – oh, horrible, horrible – they jostle it and the coverings loosen enough for a limp hand to fall through the gap.
It hangs there until one of the men notices and tucks it back inside.
The colour of it is a kind of purple-blue … no skin should be that colour.
Everyone is staring, some of the guests are standing. I stay seated, frozen, watching. A group of nuns has formed in one corner of the hall and are praying together. For the soul of the dead.
‘Madame Narracott?’
I blink. It’s the hotel manager, the little man with the flamboyant moustache. And he’s saying something else to me, his lips are moving, but it’s like my ears are blocked or I’m standing behind a pane of glass … because I can’t hear a word he is saying.
Then suddenly I can: ‘I am very sorry to tell you, Madame,’ his fingers caress one another, as though he is comforting himself, ‘that your husband has been found,’ he purses his lips, gives a little sigh, ‘he was found at the top of the gondola. He was …’ He seems to summon all his courage.
‘Madame, I am very sorry to say that he was found dead.’
‘Oh.’ My hand goes to my throat. I can sense a hush falling around me, faces turning to look at me.
‘I don’t believe it,’ I say, ‘oh, no, it can’t be true.
It can’t …’ I stand up, very quickly. The lights are too bright, the faces of the other guests in the room seem to swim around me. Then everything goes black.