Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

That memorable night, Rita had been out for the evening, allegedly at a hen-party, but Lewis was well aware that she had gone out to a club in Merthyr with her latest chap, a used-car dealer from Aberdare. She had returned at one in the morning, reeling drunk and this had decided him that tonight was the night-or, rather, morning. After giving him some semi-coherent abuse, Rita tottered off to her bed and within minutes was flat on her back, snoring like a hog.

Lewis Lloyd had swung into action, going down to the cellar for his equipment. From the old wardrobe, he took four wire coat-hangers saved from the dry-cleaners and bent them at right-angles. He took them upstairs with a few black plastic rubbish bags and carefully constructed a kind of open-topped well around his wife’s head. By sliding one end of each hanger under the pillow and the duvet, he erected four supports around which he arranged the plastic bags, securing them with sellotape.

At this stage, he checked that she was undisturbed, but as expected, Rita was out cold and, even if she had woken up, would have been too confused to know what was going on. Satisfied, he went downstairs again and humped up one of the gas cylinders that was used to pressurize the metal beer kegs. Propping it against the bedside cabinet, he used a length of spare tubing to fill his improvised gas chamber with carbon dioxide. He left the end of the tube inside, keeping a slow but steady flow to displace all the air from inside his little tent. Lewis was well aware that it would overflow, but the heavy gas would sink to the floor and was no danger to himself. He checked at intervals with a cigarette lighter to make sure that the chamber was full, the flame going out from lack of oxygen as soon as he dipped it below the top edge of the plastic bags.

“Worked like a dream!” he murmured, as he slumped in his armchair, then giggled as he wondered if Rita had had any last dreams that night. Her breathing changed after a few minutes from noisy snoring to a rasping hiss, and quickened in rate. Then it began to diminish, both in volume and speed, and after another five or six minutes appeared to cease altogether. By the light of his little flame, he could see that her face and lips had become faintly violet and he suspected that she was already dead. To be on the safe side, he left the gas running and went outside for half an hour, to avoid any possible effects upon himself. When he came back, he knew she had gone, but checked the absence of a pulse in her neck just to make sure.

Turning off the gas, he opened the window to dissipate any remaining vapour. Then he dismantled his apparatus and returned the cylinder to the cellar, where he reconnected it to the barrel of lager, ready for business when they opened. He straightened out the hangers and hung them back in the wardrobe, then filled the plastic bags with old papers and other rubbish and dumped them out in the yard, ready for the bin-men. His work done, he made one last check to make sure that Rita had not managed some kind of resurrection, then he went to bed himself and slept soundly with no twinge of guilt or conscience until it was time to “discover” her body.

Now with a sigh of satisfaction, Lewis sleepily finished his beer and putting aside his birdy magazine, slid further down in his chair for a doze and to think about a trip he had planned to Mid-Wales next month to look for red kites.

“Now we’ll never bloody know what happened to his missus!” grumbled Mordecai Evans, as they left the coroner’s court a week later.

“It certainly wasn’t carbon monoxide poisoning, that’s for sure!” said Willy Williams. “Did you see the colour of his skin in the mortuary? Now I know what they mean by ‘being in the pink’!”

The Detective-Inspector ignored his sergeant’s feeble attempt at witticism. “The SOCOs say the flue-pipe of that stove must have been blocked since last Spring. Bloody ironic, really!”

Willy nodded sagely. “Lewis Lloyd would have appreciated that, if he’d known. A jackdaw’s nest, of all things!”

“Serve the bugger right,” grunted Mordecai.

MIKE ASHLEYis an author and editor of over eighty books, including many Mammoth titles. He worked for over thirty years in local government but is now a full-time writer and researcher specializing in ancient history, historical fiction and fantasy, crime and science fiction. He lives in Kent with his wife and over 20,000 books.

[1] Afrikaans: “Good day.”

[2] Afrikaans: “Scram!”

[3] Curved Boer pipe.