An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

Cordelia travels to London and tracks down a copy of Mark’s grandfather’s will. She discovers that there could be no financial motive for murder as “no one stood to gain by Mark’s death except a long list of highly respectable charities” (177). After a quick visit to the office, which seems “even more sordid than when she had left it” (178), Cordelia returns to the cottage, where she is attacked just as she is putting the key in the door.

Her assailant covers her head with a blanket and drags her to an abandoned well on the property. He has removed the locked cover and now drops her in and replaces the heavy cap, leaving Cordelia treading water deep under the earth, in darkness.

Cordelia calms herself and realizes the well is narrow, just three feet in diameter. She devises a plan to brace her back against one side and her feet against the other to shimmy herself up. What follows is an agonizing struggle to make this climb. Eventually Cordelia gets to the top of the well and uses the strap she’d been wearing as a belt to harness herself in place. She cannot get the leverage needed to move the cover off the well and resolves to wait until someone passes by and she can yell for help. But then she realizes that whoever dropped her in the well surely intends for her death to look like an accident, which means they will have to return and make it look plausible that she could have pulled the cover off and fallen in. So, she waits “for death without hope and without further struggle” (184), until the cover begins to move.

The person removing the cover is Miss Markland, who was looking for Cordelia and happened to notice the well cover was out of place and the lock was smashed. Once Cordelia is safely in the cottage, she realizes she needs to get Miss Markland out of the way because the person who tried to kill her could return at any moment. She urges Miss Markland to go, saying, “I’m perfectly safe. Besides, I have a gun. I only want to be left in peace to rest” (186). But Miss Markland is moved by the experience of finding Cordelia left for dead in the well. She reveals that her four-year-old son, the child she had with her lover, fell to his death in that same well. Miss Markland is highly emotional in telling this story, and Cordelia grows upset; she finally shouts at the woman, “I don’t want you here. For God’s sake go!” (187). After Miss Markland leaves, Cordelia gets one of Mark’s sweaters, which Miss Leaming knitted for him, gets her gun, and lays in wait for whoever tried to kill her.

Despite the physical toll of the day, Cordelia hides in the woods by the well, waiting, and eventually Chris Lunn arrives. He has her handbag, which she realizes he means to leave at the scene as further proof she fell in the well by accident. She jumps out to confront him, and he runs. Cordelia realizes she cannot shoot him, even though she has the gun, and so she chases him, first on foot and then in her car. He races away in his van, and she is behind him when he runs through an intersection and plows directly into a truck. His van is “crumpled under [the truck’s] front wheel like a child’s toy” (190), and then, as Cordelia is leaving the scene, the van explodes.

Cordelia goes into shock and pulls over onto the side of the road. As she is trying to calm herself, a man approaches; “she could smell the drink on his breath” (191). He accosts her until she threatens him with her gun. He leaves. Then, “her head fell forward and Cordelia slept” (192).