Allyn Allyn - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 135, No. 1. Whole No. 821, January 2010

I shivered. By the time he did he was having an affair (Opium, June 98-March 99) , and it was I who shunned having children. I didn’t want to bring a baby into an unstable home.

Gulping back the brandy, it crossed my mind, I wonder if Donna wants children?

And suddenly I remembered the body. How could I have forgotten something so monumentally important?

As I dashed to the phone I wondered, Does Donna know her husband’s dead?

But of course she didn’t know! How could she? Nobody knew he was dead except me...

And that’s when the idea came to me — an idea so fiendish it almost took my breath away. I had it in my power to set Derek up. With barely any effort on my part, I could make the suicide look like murder — and Derek the main suspect.

I felt myself shiver. Oh, it was fiendish all right. I knew the ruse wouldn’t last long, they’d soon discover Donna’s husband had taken his own life, but it might make Derek squirm for a few days. And why shouldn’t he, after all he’d done?

I ran through the plan again, searching for flaws. Surely it couldn’t be that easy...

But it was — frighteningly easy. It was all but foolproof provided I kept my head...

Minutes later, I was on my knees in the kitchen, dragging my cleaning kit from under the sink. I took a new pair of rubber gloves from the packet (the thin white kind they say surgeons use), pulled them on, and ran upstairs to the bedroom.

I hadn’t been lying about getting rid of Derek’s things. I’d got rid of every item bar one — the box in the bedroom where he’d thrown his loose change and any other odd bits and pieces he hadn’t known what to do with, or was too lazy to throw away. It was the one thing I’d never got round to sorting.

I found it in the back of a drawer and began to poke through. In it I found cufflinks (when had Derek last worn cufflinks?), old petrol receipts, a screwdriver, a half-used tube of insect repellent, a packet of mints... and the thing I’d been looking for, Derek’s expired credit card. I remembered him cutting it in half shortly before he left.

Taking care to hold them by the edges, I picked up the halves and carried them downstairs. The part with his name on I dropped into a polythene bag. The other I chopped into pieces, mixed with some old dog food, and chucked in the bin.

Alice leapt around like a maniac when I put my coat on for the second time. Another walk? I could see her thinking.

“It’s your lucky day,” I said as I let her out the door, and thought, let’s hope it’s mine, too.

Finding the body, I knew, would be like finding a needle in a haystack. One dune looks much like another, and when you’ve got a few miles of the things it’s not easy to retrace your steps. An hour later I was beginning to panic. But suddenly Alice did her sniffing thing again, let out a whine, and took off over the sand.

“Good girl,” I said, when I found her sniffing around the body. I made her sit, then climbed to the top of the dune. Far off along the beach two people were walking a dog, and a fitness-freak in shorts was jogging along the tideline. Other than that the place seemed deserted. I waited a minute just to make sure, then returned to the body and took the bag from my pocket.

“This gives a whole new meaning to credit-card fraud,” I told Donna’s husband as I shook out the piece of plastic, and hoped, wherever he was, he would approve.

The card landed beneath some marram grass a few feet above his head, and I tapped it into the sand so it didn’t get blown away. Only a small corner was left showing but I knew the forensic team would find it. In the next few hours they would be sifting the entire area in their search for clues.

I glanced around to make sure no one had seen me. I was shaking like a leaf, and not only from cold. But the next minute I was smiling. A piece of Derek’s credit card found next to the body of his ladyfriend’s husband. Yes, that should make life pretty intolerable for him for the next couple of days.

I pulled out my mobile phone — I’d remembered to bring it this time — took a deep breath, and tapped out 999.

It seemed like an eternity before the police arrived. I waved from the top of a dune to show them where to come. It was just two at first, in uniform, but as soon as they saw the body they radioed for assistance.

The older officer took my name and address. “Do you often walk the dog here?” he asked.

“Most days,” I said, my teeth chattering. “It was the dog who found him. If she hadn’t made a fuss I would have passed straight by.”

“Did you see anyone else on the walk?” he wanted to know, and I mentioned the people on the beach. He scribbled it all down, then nodded at the body. “Ever seen him before?”

I hesitated. I hadn’t expected to be asked that so soon. “Actually, I think I have,” I said. “I think he once came to my house.”

“Do you know his name?”

I shook my head. “He just said he was Donna’s husband.”

“Donna...” He wrote the name carefully. “She a friend of yours?”

“Hardly,” I said. “She’s the woman who ran off with my husband.”

The officer stopped writing and met my eyes. “Does she have a surname?”

“Chant,” I said. “Donna Chant. Soon to be Donna Lester.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Lester,” he said, and went off to radio in the good news.

Finally I was allowed to go, but I knew it wasn’t over. A couple of hours later two plainclothes officers arrived at my house. I suppose I’d been expecting a Chief Inspector Barnaby, accompanied by his good-looking sergeant, so was somewhat disappointed when I opened the door. Detective Inspector Conlan was short and overweight, with a face like a retired boxer, and Detective Constable Thorpe had a serious problem with spots. But at least the inspector had kindly eyes.

“I understand you knew the deceased,” he said, making himself comfortable on the settee. “Can you tell me how you met?”

“Is it Donna’s husband?” I asked.

“We believe so.”

“Poor man,” I sighed. “He turned up here shortly after his wife ran off with my husband. He wanted my help in finding a way to get them back. But he didn’t stay long. I don’t think I gave the answer he was looking for.”

“You didn’t want your husband back?”

I shook my head. “His wife wasn’t the first by a long way.”

“I see.” He glanced at his constable, who was writing it all down. “And how did Mr. Chant seem?”

“Devastated. Like the bottom had fallen out of his world.”

“Angry?”

“Not then. I think he was still in shock.”

“And have you any idea why he was in the dunes?”

I shook my head. “I’ve been asking myself that ever since I found him.”

“Might he have been coming to see you?”

“Not from that direction.”

“Maybe he came, found you out, and went for a walk,” he suggested.

“It’s possible, I suppose... It rather depends when he died.”

“We think during the night.”

“In which case, no. I was here from about four o’clock onwards. Besides, Alice always barks if someone comes to the door.”

“I noticed.” Inspector Conlan smiled. “So where are your husband and Mrs. Chant living?”

“London, I think.” I saw him raise his brows. “Our separation wasn’t exactly amicable, Inspector, and all correspondence is done through solicitors.” I turned to DC Thorpe. “Mine is John Wardle at Wardle and Stott. I’m sure he can give you an address.”

“And when did you last see your husband?” Conlan asked.

“Strangely enough, this morning. We’d been for a walk on the dunes — me and Alice, that is — and when I came back he was waiting outside. Or should I say they — there was someone else in the car, I assume Donna. But he was the only one I spoke to. It was quite a shock, seeing him again.”