Наташа Купер: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 1. Whole No. 767, July 2005

“She didn’t marry for art, Liza, she married for money.”

“But, Gail, she already had money.”

“Her father had money, but he married a greedy woman. Why do you want everything to be about art?”

“Because art’s the only thing that makes sense of life. Otherwise it’s all random and horrible. And Mo was an installation artist who had witty stuff to say about marriage. She was our friend. I don’t want her death to be about clichés like jealousy and money.”

“Love, jealousy, and money,” Gail corrected me. “Love isn’t a cliché.”

“It is, in this context,” I said, miserable.

“Don’t argue with her, Liza,” Alastair said. “You know she’s always right.” He started circling Mick’s name. “Always, always right.” He began to draw hearts and pound signs around Mick’s name. It was a detail I could fit into a narrative — the story about this day which I would tell myself sometime in the future; like the detail about the music — something I had not recognised as important at the time — which was that the soundtrack to Mo’s life was Dance music because Dance is music for the party people in the pretty dresses, the people who don’t care.

With astonishment I realized that I had never liked Mo and that I despised her taste in music. And with sadness I accepted what Gail probably knew instinctively, that Mick was a man who hid depression and destructiveness behind wit and irony — just like Morrissey. His taste in music gave him away. Just as the other big giveaway was my taste in men. There had to be something wrong with Mick if I liked him.

Gail crunched into a popadum. “Make the call, please, Alastair,” she said.

And I started to remember all of us as if it were already long, long ago. We are young, drunk, howling but essentially happy. The grim reaper hasn’t chosen us. Yet. We have theories but no experience, no proofs. We’re too green for that. In thirty years’ time, who knows — Mo’s death may mean more to us than it does now. It might even have become some sort of art. But until then there is hot food to eat and life to live and a story to construct.

Gail said, “Are we going to tell the police?”

Copyright (c); 2005 by Liza Cody.

(with apologies to Longfellow and “The Children’s Hour”)

Between the dawn and the darkness

And into the midnight gloom,

He’d stalled the promised repair job

On the wall of a run-down room.

The barn-board was piled in the kitchen

By the hole, as yet unfixed,

And the wall was waiting and open,

With the plaster freshly mixed.

As he grumbled he heard on the stairway

The clatter of someone’s heel—

His daughter with veiled expression—

His wife with a jaw of steel.

A whisper, and then a silence

And he knew from an instinct wise

They were plotting and planning together

To tackle him by surprise.

A sudden rush from the hallway,

A sneak assault from the side—

He’d made the mistake of forgetting

That both were so sorely tried.

They shackled his legs with a clothesline

And fastened his arms to the chair.

He tried to escape, but he couldn’t—

The seemed to be everywhere!

A tap on the head with a hammer,

While they hoisted him up the wall,

And he sensed, as they started to plaster,

That their plan wasn’t funny at all!

Did they think — those silly females—

That though he was dizzy and sore,

An inveterate toper like he was

Had never been plastered before?

But they had him secure in their fortress,

And the barn-board was nailed in place,

And his rambling chatter subsided

As the plaster climbed his face.

And there they will keep him forever,

Yes — forever and a day,

Till the wall shall crumble to powder,

And the barn-board rots away.