Simon Brett - A Shock to the System

‘I’m surprised you can find anything in that shed,’ she accused. ‘It’s a terrible mess. Really needs tidying.’

‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’

‘You must get round to it some time.’

‘Sure.’

‘Though I suppose I’ll have to end up doing it myself. Like most things,’ she concluded with a long-suffering sigh.

The remark was meant to make Graham feel guilty. But he was damned if he was going to let it. Guilt, he had decided, even for trivial matters, was not an emotion in which he intended to indulge in the future.

He was coming down from having shouted the children into bed when he met Lilian in the hall. She moved her arm behind her back, but too slowly. He saw the bottle of sherry in her hand.

‘Where did you get that from?’ he snapped.

She gave him the defiant look of the boy in When Did You Last See Your Father? an expression that didn’t suit her.

‘In the shed.’

‘Why on earth did you go in there?’

‘The bottle was around at lunchtime. I saw it. I knew you had hidden it somewhere, Graham.’

‘Why should I do that?’

She straightened up into a posture of martyrdom.

‘I know you don’t like me, Graham.’ She left a pause for the flood of contradictions, which didn’t come.

‘But I do think hiding the sherry’s pretty petty.’

‘But I wasn’t hiding it. I was just using the bottle. It’s not sherry in there.’

‘It smells like sherry.’

Oh God. Had she snatched a quick tipple out in the shed? What effect would it have? He had wanted to test the dosage somehow, but this was not the way he would have chosen.

‘Well, it isn’t sherry!’ He snatched the bottle from her quite roughly. ‘I was just using it for something in the garden. If you want a drink, there’s some wine in the fridge.’

A deep breath telegraphed the start of Lilian’s weeping. ‘I think you’re very cruel to me, Graham. You know I’m desperately upset about how Charmian behaved. And now you … I expected a bit of support from you … I wouldn’t have changed my will if I’d known — ’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Graham stumped off towards the garden. Going through the utility room, he saw the sticky labels Merrily used to identify food in the freezer. He tore one off and wrote on it with felt pen: ‘POISON. NOT TO BE TAKEN.’

He stuck it over the bottle’s original label. Out in the shed he hid the bottle deep in the corner behind a pile of seed trays. Too risky to put it in the dustbin. He’d dispose of it another time.

He looked out of the dusty window to the lights of the house next door. How warming, welcoming other people’s lights looked. Perhaps, he thought wryly, that was how the lights of his house looked to outsiders, the glow of a happy family within. Huh.

It was going wrong. Lilian’s finding the sherry shouldn’t have happened. He had taken a stupid, unnecessary risk.

In fact, his whole approach had been wrong. Slipshod. Inefficient.

He had killed the old man effortlessly and that was now a source of fierce pride. But killing Merrily would take more cunning. In the euphoria of having made the decision he had been careless, underestimated the difficulties that faced him.

Just because of his failure to get George’s job, he must not let his standards slip. He had always prided himself on efficiency, and now he had to demonstrate that he was more efficient than Robert Benham. Since he was prevented from deploying his skills at the office, then he would apply them to his wife’s murder.

No more carelessness.

Detailed, systematic planning.

He was determined that the murder was going to work.

It was Merrily herself who showed him how to do it.

On the Sunday evening, after Lilian had finally gone off to what she insisted on calling her ‘lonely little room’, Graham was watching something less than riveting on the television, when he thought of a new potential economy and went up to his ‘study’ to work it out on the calculator.

He had assumed Merrily to be pottering around in the kitchen, so was surprised to see her kneeling on the floor in front of his desk, sifting through the contents of the drawers. She turned round guiltily at his approach.

‘Lost something?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Then what are you looking for?’

‘I’m looking for some evidence of what you’ve done.’

That gave him a momentary frisson, but then he realised that she was once again referring to his imagined infidelity. God, her stupidity infuriated him.

‘What sort of evidence had you in mind?’ he asked lightly. ‘It might be anything. You never know what’s going on behind a man’s bland exterior. Vivvi found a whole library of pornographic magazines at the back of Will’s sock drawer.’

He understood. Merrily had been talking to her friend. Vivvi was, if possible, more affected than Merrily herself and the current form her affectation took was feminism. In her case all this involved was wearing designer dungarees, talking about menstruation a lot and refusing to cook meals when she felt like being taken out by her long-suffering husband.

‘I’m sorry to disappoint you. You won’t find any pornography here. I suppose I could get some if you fancy it,’ he added ironically.

‘It wasn’t pornography I was looking for in your case.’

‘What then?’

‘Letters.’

‘What sort of letters?’

She stood up and faced him. Defiance did not add to her charms. ‘Vivvi’s mother,’ she began, ‘works at Sotheby’s. She’s a porcelain specialist.’

‘Ah.’ Graham was utterly bemused by this. Merrily, he thought, as she went on, has gone off her rocker. Maybe I could get her certified and solve the problem that way.

‘On her way to Oxford Circus last Monday evening she walked past a wine bar. She saw you coming out with a woman.’

So that was it.

‘Whom you kissed,’ Merrily continued inexorably.

Graham’s first instinct was to explain. It was only Stella from the office, after all. There was no sexual interest on his side. Merrily’s spy had got the wrong end of the stick.

But another instinct stopped him. There was something of value in Merrily’s suspicion. He could not yet identify what it was, but he knew he must foster her distrust.

‘She was talking rubbish,’ he blustered, too vehemently. ‘It must have been someone else she saw.’

‘You were late that evening. I remember. And you’d had a drink.’

‘Yes. O.K., I had. But just with someone from the office.’ He carefully made the truth sound like a lie.

‘I don’t believe you, Graham.’

‘Well, you bloody well should. You’re not going to find any love letters in here.’

‘No?’

‘No. There aren’t any.’

‘Then you won’t mind my looking.’

She spoke with triumph, but in fact was playing straight into his hands.

‘Yes, I bloody do mind you looking! It’s an invasion of privacy. This is my room. These are my papers. Get out!’ And he hustled her to the door.

She turned on the landing and looked at him piercingly. Lilian Hinchcliffe would have been proud of the way her daughter was playing the scene.

‘Very well, then,’ said Merrily.

She used her littlest voice, but there was no doubt that her words were a challenge. She would be back for further snooping.

With a show of anger Graham slammed the study door. But when he sat down in his swivel chair, he was smiling.

Merrily having given him a lead, Graham found that the rest of the components of his plan slotted quickly into place. He had the feeling that his luck was in, that he was working well. His training programme was right and he would peak at the proper time. It was the same good feeling that had always come to him, until the last year, in the run-up to examinations and job interviews. He felt that he was in charge of events, almost that the world span at his bidding.