‘Why should I be afraid? I’ve nothing to be ashamed of.’ My face was burning and I wondered whether she could feel it. ‘I don’t want to talk about this.’

‘All right.’ Her acceptance was childlike. ‘Then tell me about your day.’ I laughed outright at that: hearing that wifely phrase in her mouth!

‘No, tell me,’ she insisted.

So I told her: perhaps more than I intended. She was soft and childish in my arms, silent but for occasional little sounds of acquiescence. I told her about Effie and how I had come to dread her; my almost superstitious feeling of being a ghost in my own home; my decision to remove Effie to an asylum where she would no longer be a threat; my conviction that she could destroy me. Effie knew about us now-though how she knew I could not imagine-Effie, the enemy, the silent watcher from the shadows, the ghostchild…the ghost. Effie, who should have stayed asleep, who should have died: Effie, who should have been dead…

After a while I forgot I was talking to Marta but imagined myself instead before God’s throne, bargaining desperately with Him in His sublime and stupid indifference, bargaining for my life…

I had no right: I know that now. I took Effie before she was even old enough to understand what love was. I cheated her of her own chance at happiness. I twisted her to suit my own twisted appetites, then cut her away when I tired of her.

I know what I am.

And yet, with Marta in my arms, feeling the soft moisture of her breath against my skin, I seemed to glimpse another possibility, one which raised the hairs on my arms in a delicate, ecstatic self-loathing. The words I had spoken to Marta rang on in the hollow of my skull, sweet and taut as the invisible harp behind my eyelids:

‘There are no ghosts. People don’t come back to haunt the living. I don’t believe people go anywhere after they’re dead.’ I realized I had repeated the words aloud, interrupting the flow of agonized self-analysis. But I could not remember a word of what I had spoken.

Marta was watching me, appraising. Her face was stone. ‘Henry.’

Suddenly I knew what she was going to say and I flinched, caught in the beam of her deathly gaze. I began to speak, not caring what I was saying, anything to prevent her from speaking the words, the word I could hear resonating pitilessly…

‘Henry.’

I turned. She was inescapable.

‘Do you remember the day you told me you loved me?’

I nodded mutely.

‘You made me a promise. Did you mean it?’

I hesitated. ‘I…’

‘Did you mean it?’

‘Yes.’ My head was pounding, my mouth flooded with a sourness like raw gin.

‘Listen to me, Henry.’ Her voice was low, compelling, intimate as death. ‘You don’t love her any more. You love me now. Don’t you?’

I nodded.

‘For as long as she’s there I’ll never be yours. You’ll always have to hide. Always come in secret.’

My breath fluttered through dry lips in an unspoken half-protest, but the terrible purity of her gaze silenced me.

‘You say she knows about us already: she knows she can ruin you. Even to lock her up-if you could do it-might not be enough. She might talk, might make people listen. Do you think her family wouldn’t believe her? There’d be a scandal, whether they did or not. Mud would stick, Henry.’

‘I…’ The knowledge of what she was going to say was like a wall of rushing fire in my brain. What was worse, I wanted her to say it, to loose the wolves inside my skull. Sweet Scheherazade! My head swam deliriously. She was talking about murder: she was talking about silencing Effie for ever…

For a moment I gave myself entirely up to the images which fluttered through my mind and discovered within myself a kind of arousal at the thought of murder; a feeling so intense that it almost eclipsed my longing for Marta…then Marta’s enchantment reasserted itself and I flung my arms around her, burying my face in the sweetness and softness of her, the scent of lilac and chocolate…I think I was crying.

‘Oh, Marta…’

‘I’m sorry, Henry. I really have loved you, and you’ll never know what these nights together have meant to me…’

From my abyss I felt my mind questioning frantically; what did she mean? It almost sounded as if…

‘…but after this I know that we can’t see each other again. I…’

The numbness dropped over all my senses like a frozen blanket. Only the small helpless voice in my mind kept repeating stupidly: this is goodbye, this isn’t what she was meant to say, this is…No! It couldn’t be that! This wasn’t the word I was expecting from her! This wasn’t the promise I wanted to keep. Hysteria welled up in me. From a great distance I could hear my own voice beginning to laugh; a screaming, shrilling laughter like a mad clown’s.

‘No! No! Anything for you…anything…everything…’ The most terrible thing. ‘It doesn’t have to be this…’ O my Marta, my cold Gethsemane…‘I’ll do anything!’

At last she had heard me. She turned her face into the light, meeting my eye. I repeated my words so that she would know I was telling the truth: ‘I’ll do anything.’

She nodded slowly, frail and implacable. I forced my voice into something like control.

‘Effie is ill,’ I said. ‘She may not live long. She takes laudanum all the time. Sometimes she forgets how much she has taken.’

Marta was watching me still, her eyes eldritch as a cat’s.

‘She might die…at any time.’

It wasn’t enough: as her gaze flicked away from mine I knew it; she was no Effie, grasping at shadows. I had promised her everything.

Desperately I blurted out the hateful words, cowardly admission of my already accepted guilt.

‘No-one need ever know.’

The silence rang between us.

We sealed it as are traditionally sealed all the Devil’s bargains. Imagine if you can the God’s-eye view: Chester moaning on his rack of barbed flesh with the voice of a demon sweet in his ears-how He must have laughed! I gave my soul for a woman; how that immortal champion of the absurd must have rocked with laughter as our voices rose up out of the night to Him like flies…and how little I cared. Marta was my soul.

After my initial confession I found her terrifyingly practical. It was she who thought of the details, the plan with which you are already, no doubt, familiar. Quite coldly she outlined my part in her soft, whispering voice, her little hands like ice against my skin.

It would be quite simple. The next day I would go to the studio as usual to work, returning when night fell. I would instruct Tabby to give Effie her drops as usual. After dinner when Effie went to her room I would bring her a cup of chocolate as I often did, lacing it heavily with laudanum and a little brandy to hide the drug’s medicinal smell. Effie would fall into a heavy sleep which would deepen and deepen until she stopped breathing: a painless release. When it was safe to go out without being seen I would carry her outside where a friend of Marta’s would be ready to help me with a hired carriage. We would drive to the cemetery and take the body to a convenient vault, which we would open with tools provided by Marta’s friend. We would place the body inside and reseal the tomb, with no-one the wiser. If we made sure to choose a family with no living descendants we could be certain that our tampering with the grave would never be discovered. I would be able to tell the police that my wife was mentally ill-Russell would certainly vouch for that-and prone to erratic behaviour. I would play the part of the anxious husband, and eventually the case would be forgotten. We would be free of her at last.

I was uneasy about only one detail: my proposed accomplice. I understood that I needed someone to help me carry the body and someone to keep a watch in the cemetery, but Marta refused to tell me whom she had in mind, saying that I should trust her. Finally she grew angry, accusing me of trying to find excuses for my cowardice. I remember her sitting on the bare white bed with her legs tucked under her body like Rossetti’s Virgin Mary, her hair wild about her shoulders and her fists clenched like flints.