Age So Crammed With Madness

Chapter III: The Assassin

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!
-- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

In Coleraine, twenty-eight miles north-west of Ballymena, and at least a million miles removed from anything I had yet encountered in my daily life, there was a mansion. I did not know this at the time. Nor, at the time, did I know anything about the mansion's inhabitants. Nevertheless, the mansion was there.

It was the home of a factory owner. His name was Bernard O'Callaghan. You ask, what does this have to do with me or with Susan?

The answer is, in life he had very little to do with us. His death, however, was one of the things that set us on the course that led to disaster.

You never know before they happen what events will have a devastating impact on your life. Sometimes you never know after they happen. Certainly, when I glanced through the day's newspaper and glimpsed an article titled "Factory Owner Murdered!", I had no idea how that would affect me.

It was about a week after that article appeared in the paper that I became only too familiar with how it would affect me. Like many things in my life, it began with Susan McQuillan.

She had taken to dropping in (thankfully not literally) every day when I returned from work. We had a cup of tea and some biscuits and chatted about how the day had gone for both of us. I never expected that day would be any different.

That was why it was so surprising to open the door and find Susan looking uncharacteristically serious.

"I need help," she said in a voice little more than a whisper.

"Help?" Her tone immediately made me think something was horribly wrong. Had she been robbed? Had she been injured in some accident? "What sort of help? Should I call the police? Or an ambulance?"

She shook her head. "No, no, not that sort of help. It's more... advice. Can you keep a secret?"

I blinked. What on earth was this about? Was she dragging me into a belated April Fools' prank?

"I certainly hope I can," I said dubiously. "What secret? Why should there be any secret?"

Susan sighed. "It's a long story."

~~~~

My living room was a small, cramped room with barely enough space for two armchairs. It did not look at all like the sort of place where one would expect to hear any sort of startling revelations.

"I had a friend when I was at school," Susan said.

What her school friends had to do with anything was beyond me. And why she had announced she needed help (or advice) when she just wanted to talk about her school friends was also beyond me.

"Her name's Eulalia Plundell."

I still couldn't see why Susan was telling me this.

"She's an assassin."

Susan dropped this bombshell as if she was saying, "She's a baker" or "She's a pilot". I didn't believe my ears. There was no way that Susan McQuillan had just confessed to going to school with an assassin.

"And she's come to stay with me."

Just when I thought this sorry saga couldn't possibly get any worse...