Hungerstone

Detective Inspector Lacey questions Lenore about the incident she witnessed in a cottage in the village of Hathersage, and his gaze lingers on a bite mark Carmilla left on her neck. Lacey wraps up the interview, stating he believes Lenore has told him all she knows. He leaves his card before departing, which Henry crumples. Henry then confronts Lenore for entertaining a male guest alone, then demands to know what Lacey asked her. He angrily blames her for associating herself with the letter she delivered to Hathersage, but she surprises him with newfound defiance, arguing with him about the man killed at his factory. Stunned by her change in behavior, Henry blames Carmilla for having “poisoned [her] mind with alien ideas” (213). The following day, while driving with Cora to a picnic, Lenore impulsively diverts their carriage to the Botanical Gardens. She unnerves Cora by recounting the graphic details of her parents’ fatal carriage accident and asking whether Cora thinks about death. At the gardens, Lenore is overcome by a monstrous, insatiable hunger and eats voraciously. She realizes the poisoned pastilles that used to curb her appetite no longer have power over her. On the ride home, she accuses Cora of being instructed by Henry to watch her, leaving her friend frightened and confused.

Back at Nethershaw, Lenore goes to the high gallery above the dining hall, where she considers jumping to her death. Instead, she claws at the plaster on the ceiling in a fit of despair. She then overhears Henry telling Cora that a “conniving woman” has interfered with plans “months in the making” (227), which Lenore infers is about Carmilla. That evening, Lenore shocks Henry and Cora by coming to dinner in her nightgown. Henry offers her a tin of pastilles, claiming it is an apology for his earlier harshness. Seeing through the lie, Lenore tests him by offering a pastille to Cora, which forces a panicked Henry to intervene, claiming it will spoil her appetite. At the dinner table, Lenore finds the food tasteless and unsatisfying. The frustration culminates in a violent outburst where she throws a piece of beef and then shatters a wine glass against the wall near Henry. She flees to her bedroom and slams the door, barricading herself inside.

Lenore discovers that Henry has locked her in her bedroom. She overhears him and Cora outside the door discussing her as “not sane” and planning to send for a doctor. Over the next day, Lenore descends into a feverish state, tormented by a strange, all-consuming hunger. In her delirium, she eats strips of wallpaper and gnaws on the wooden leg of a chair. 

The following night, Carmilla appears outside her first-floor window. With Carmilla’s encouragement to do what she truly wants, Lenore smashes the windowpane with a pot from her dressing table. Carmilla yanks her through the window and they drop together, landing in the soft heather below, where a carriage is waiting. After giving Lenore a new dress, Carmilla explains that she left so Lenore could discover her own appetites. As they drive away, Lenore acts on her first true impulse, pointing to a theater poster and declaring she wants to see the play.

Lenore and Carmilla see a play called Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn, which is about a woman who is murdered by her lover. The story solidifies Lenore’s desire for revenge against Henry. Afterward, they go to a supper club where Lenore is humiliated to see Henry with another woman sitting on his lap. She flees to a nearby graveyard, where she confesses to Carmilla her lifetime of pain and powerlessness. Lenore declares that she wants Henry to pay and considers killing him, but Carmilla warns her of risking arrest and advises her to stop playing by his rules. On the way back to Nethershaw, they stop by a river and have a passionate sexual encounter. At the riverbank, Carmilla presses Lenore’s hand against a hunger stone, a rock marked in times of drought to signal that times of starvation are imminent. Carmilla tells her the stone is “long drowned,” the river now “free and powerful and raging” (258). With a new sense of purpose, Lenore tells Carmilla to take her back to Nethershaw, stating she has “unfinished business.”

Lenore sneaks back into her locked room before dawn, determined to get revenge by exposing Henry, not by murdering him. When Dr. Foxfield arrives to assess her mental health, Lenore successfully manipulates him into believing she is merely a fragile wife, overwhelmed by her new duties. The doctor diagnoses a temporary “fragility of the nerves” and dismisses Henry’s fears of hysteria (264). Lenore then contrives a reason for Henry to drive Cora to town, ensuring she has the house to herself. She finds Henry’s hidden trunk, replaces his bag of arsenic with icing sugar, and buries the real poison in the garden beneath her broken window. In Henry’s study, she discovers documents proving he has been conspiring with Cora’s father, a government official, to defraud workers of compensation for deaths and injuries at his factory. Recognizing that as Henry’s wife she cannot stand as a witness against him, Lenore compiles the most damning evidence into an envelope alongside a short letter with instructions that it “be opened in the event of [her] untimely death” (272).