Part 3 - Emma
Emma Wheeler had come to Selsdon Battersely in search of Alice Compton, had been shocked to read of her disappearance in the newspapers, had wanted to do something. She had known Alice since a young girl, not that she had lived in Selsdon Battersely herself: it had been a holiday friendship. Their parents had got to know each other when on holiday and going to the same place had met again and again. She had even stayed with Alice in Selsdon Battersely. The two girls had played together and developed a warm friendship. They had walked miles together. Emma liked to walk.
A shock to hear of the disappearance and she had come to stay, not with Alice's father, and had lodged at Simon's house where his parents ran a B&B. She could not understand why Alice had disappeared and had come of her own volition with the slightly crazy idea she could find her. She had talked with Alice's father, seen her room and noted the suddenness of it all. It was not as if Alice had disappeared when known to be out and about or in another town or known to have a relationship with someone. She had talked to people and in her quick and rather suspicious way had felt, and felt strongly, something was being hidden by some. Even Simon Trenchard had seemed to have a look of panic in his eyes when she had talked to him about Alice, asked how well he knew her.
All in all, her enquiries proved fruitless, she was not some female Sherlock Holmes or reincarnation of Miss Marple, let alone Precious Ramotswe... until she heard a particular sound.
Emma paused on the landing, heading for the bathroom at the B&B. She could hear sounds through a bedroom door - Simon's bedroom door. Emma knew nobody was in there with Simon, yet the sounds were unmistakeable - the sound of penis squelching in a vagina. She paused, just so intrigued and went closer. Perhaps she had always been nosy, perhaps it was the frustration of not solving the Alice Compton mystery, perhaps it was because she knew no one else was in the house, perhaps it was simply because she could. Emma bent and peered through the keyhole of the old door.
She would not have cast herself in the role of 'Peeping Tom' but she saw Simon completely naked and... and with Alice Compton. There was no mistaking her face, her friend's face, even with Simon's cock in her mouth. It was a momentary sight and Emma was straightening and banging upon the door calling Simon's name. Eventually, though it was little time, the door knob turned and there was Simon's face peering around the door. Emma pushed and barged into the room. There was no one there, no one in the room with him. She rushed in, pushing Simon out of the way. Nobody there at all. No Alice. No Alice hiding under the bed, no Alice in the wardrobe. No Alice, no woman at all just a naked Simon Trenchard standing with his hands over his genitalia.
The embarrassment - but she had seen, had really seen... What could she say, what could she say to explain herself? Yet Simon seemed strangely quiescent, there was no anger, no outrage - no nothing, really. He seemed to have almost a guilty look about him as if he had been caught doing something he should not. Perhaps it had been a trick of the light and she had seen him reflected whilst masturbating in that big mirror in his room. Perhaps... but she was so sure.
"Sorry... I." And she fled.
It was the very next day she overheard the name 'Mandrake Mortimer' spoken quietly in the tea shop in the village by a couple of women on the next table. They spoke quietly but she heard the word 'mirror' and a contemptuous 'men.' Quite why it intrigued her she could not put a finger on, but it did. And once Emma Wheeler's interest was roused it was not easily assuaged. Yet people clammed up when she mentioned the name 'Mandrake Mortimer.' Clammed up as if a door had been slammed shut. She even caught one woman glancing at a nearby mirror with a look of fear on her face. It was clear to Emma there was a connection between the person and mirrors. She was told it was just a 'silly superstition' and not to worry herself about it. But that led to research.
'The small village of Selsdon Battersely is mentioned in the Domesday Book and has a quaint Norman church with an unusual lytch gate dating from...'
The old guidebook meandered here and there but eventually,
'Ghost stories abound but one of the most curious is about one Mandrake Mortimer, a member of the local gentry and a reputed rake who is said to haunt both the old pub and the rectory. It is not clear what he did or how he died, but the local superstition warns young women from meeting him in the night. You have been warned!'
Emma snorted, the guide told her nothing. It had been written in a jokey style. Perhaps the researcher had found out very little or been told less. But what was it about mirrors?
"Don't ever say that name!" Yet another local woman warned but would not say more.
Emma had seen the cottage built into hillside, knew old Joe Costin lived there on his own. It was not at all what she normally did but, passing on one of her nocturnal walks, the light coming through the curtains of a window drew her eye. She paused by the cottage window and saw the curtains were slightly ajar. It was movement that caught her eye, not a natural inclination to pry. To see old Joe naked, stark naked there in his bedroom was perhaps not surprising and certainly not at all arousing to a young girl: to see him with an erection perhaps embarrassing, and in a man 75 or more probably a bit shocking, but it was what he was doing with his penis that really shocked. Instead of pulling her eyes and head away and hurrying on, cross with herself for being so nosey and getting such an eyeful she just stood rooted to the spot.
There he was, Joe Costin, standing at a remarkably outsize mirror for his bedroom, it reached right to the floor with an ornate gold frame, he was as naked as the day he was born and with his cock so visible and up. He was not alone, not really alone, because, impossibly, out of the mirror came the bottom half of a woman, a girl indeed, and it was her bottom that was towards him and held in his hands. One hand to each hip as he pulled and pushed the bottom moved to him and then away. Not an unusual way for sexual intercourse to be carried out. Emma had been 'taken' that way herself, in the way of the animals by boyfriend's past: not that she really liked that, or the idea of being 'taken.' Sexual intercourse was a mutual act between consenting women and men. There should be no element of the man taking the woman. They were equal partners. She preferred to be on top rather than on the bottom thereby avoiding any possible subjugating or subordinating the woman to the man. In a way she did not really like, as a matter of principle rather than sexual desire, the male penetrating the female. It gave the 'wrong' message even if there was a certain biological imperative for things to be that way.
Joe was doing more than simply subjugating the female. It was all suddenly terribly clear to Emma, the awful, terrible secret of the men in Selsdon Battersely enjoying women who could not resist or say 'no.' It was even worse than that, Joe was not just having his way with her, she could see his penis was not in her vagina but her bottom, Joe was sodomising her and clearly enjoying it immensely if his grunts and groans were anything to go by.
