Ending Two
EITHNE: Why, husband, it's hard to credit that twenty-five years have passed since that night in the dungeon.
NICHOLAS: Twenty-five happy years ...
EITHNE: Filled with every delightful crime imagined by man.
NICHOLAS: And quite a few new-minted crimes added to the register. Why, wife, you've been a suitable partner in depravity, usury, felony, larceny, lechery, perfidy, villainy, knavery, thievery, treachery, sodomy, obloquy and fiddle-de-dee ...
EITHNE: Indeed.
NICHOLAS: Your vast inherited wealth and influence has been squandered on the pursuit of unholy pleasure.
EITHNE: It is so.
NICHOLAS: And yet further fortunes have we made, through methods dubious. And yet we are heaped with worldly honours and the admiration of all society. To think I once hesitated to filch a coin from a blind beggar's bowl.
EITHNE: Don't say such things.
NICHOLAS: It's true, Eithne. Once I was weak, clinging to absurd notions of morality. Until that Dark Figure came into our lives.
EITHNE: Indeed, let us drink a toast to the Dark Figure.
NICHOLAS: A toast. From our favourite loving cup.
EITHNE: Yes, the flagon we had made from the fleshless skull of that booby, John Straight, who once tried to inconvenience you.
NICHOLAS: I had almost forgotten the clod.
EITHNE: I had forgotten him. Entirely.
NICHOLAS: You know, I think he conceived something of an affection for you. When you were tediously virtuous. Before you became my bride in blood, my helpmeet in horror, my mistress in mayhem...
EITHNE: Drink, husband, drain his brain-pan of this fine wine.
NICHOLAS: Yes, my darkwing dove, I drink a toast to... agh! Bitter almonds!
EITHNE: Have I not learned my lesson well, husband?
NICHOLAS: I am paralysed. The bony mug falls from my fingers.
EITHNE: Hush, don't tire yourself with talk. You have but a few seconds. The toast was laced with a deadly poison. My apprenticeship is finished, husband. 'Tis time I became the true, the only mistress of Mildew Manor, a wicked widow with a great fortune at her sole disposal.
NICHOLAS: Agh!
EITHNE: I shall have you buried face-down. If your corpse should stir in its coffin you will claw your way to the infernal caverns rather than trouble us again on the surface of the Earth.
DARK FIGURE: I am well pleased with you, Mrs Goodman. I trust that we still have a bargain.
EITHNE: Indeed. You know, it's most peculiar, looking at my husband's lifeless face, I could almost imagine that his last expression was a sly smile, as if he were proud of me.
For years thereafter, Mrs Eithne Goodman, ennobled as Countess Mildew, was a familiar public figure, accompanied by a succession of young male servants more notable for the tightness of their britches than their skill at household work. Some say the Countess lives still, seen occasionally in high society or more often in the lowest of the low stews, glimpsed in the company of a cabinet minister or a captain of industry, whispering helpful suggestions into the ears of those who guide the courses of our great newspapers or broadcasting institutions. Her former home is long-abandoned, slowly crumbling into the tarn that holds so many secrets. Traveller be warned that now not a stone stands of the demesne that was once Mildew Manor.
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