Simon Brett - A Shock to the System

‘What we did find. . the policeman paused, assessing his impact, ‘was some magazines.’

‘Magazines?’

‘Pornography.’

‘Oh. But surely it’s not illegal to — ’

‘No, no. Fairly soft stuff, these were. No grounds for prosecution or. . No, the interesting thing about them was that they’d been put up there quite recently. Get a lot of dust in a loft, you know. There was hardly any on them.’

Graham met the constable’s eye, which was curious and unyielding. Embarrassed honesty, Graham knew, was what was called for, and that was what he supplied.

‘All right. I put them up there.’

‘Thought that must have been the case, sir.’ The policeman nodded complacently.

‘Yes, I. . I mean, lots of men buy material like that. It’s no reflection on how well or badly your marriage is going. .’

‘No, no, of course not, sir.’

‘So, anyway, I would sometimes look at that sort of stuff and. . Anyway, one day I found my son in my study. He was looking for something in my drawers. . something quite innocuous, a stamp or an envelope or. . and it struck me that I didn’t really want him finding the magazines, so I moved them up to the loft. Preparatory to chucking them out of the house.’

‘Of course, sir. When was this?’

‘Last week.’

‘Hmm. About what we reckoned. So you did actually go up to the loft last week?’

‘Yes.’

‘What interests us about that is. .’ the man paced his sentence ponderously, ‘why you didn’t get a shock when you switched on the light?’

Graham had not been prepared for that. He felt himself colour and begin to sweat. ‘Well, that’s simple. I … I didn’t switch it on.’

‘No?’

‘No. You see, we only moved into this house last year and, quite honestly, since getting the removal men to chuck various bits up into the loft, I’ve hardly been up there. I couldn’t remember whether there was a light rigged up or not. So I used a torch. I was in a hurry, you see, because, well. .’ A little embarrassed cough. ‘Merrily was out just for a few minutes and. . she didn’t know I had these magazines and I didn’t really want her to. . to. .’

‘I quite understand, sir.’ The policeman’s soothing voice was another part of his training in the treatment of shock.

Graham could still feel his face burning and the sweat starting on his temples. Still, a recently bereaved man has cause to look upset. He decided to capitalise on his physical symptoms and stage a little breakdown. ‘Oh God, to think of those magazines — deceiving Merrily — they didn’t matter — but it just seems so petty — and now she’s dead and. .’ He managed to produce some quite presentable sobs.

‘Have some more tea, sir.’ But the constable didn’t let him off the hook. ‘We still haven’t established why your wife wanted to go up to the loft, sir. She couldn’t have had any suspicion that the magazines were up there, could she, sir?’

‘What? No, it’s — oh my God!’ Graham manufactured a larger sob. ‘The sewing machine.’

‘What?’

‘The sewing machine was up there. Oh, and she said she was going to make some curtains for the spare room. Yes, she talked about it Saturday lunchtime a couple of weeks back. Her mother was here, I remember.’ (If Lilian was going to tell the police her recollections, then she could also make herself useful and corroborate his.)

‘Yes, that must have been it — the sewing machine was up in the loft.’ Time for the big, weepy finish.

‘Oh God, she was going to do the curtains for me … As a surprise. . For when I came back. . Merrily. . And now she’s gone. .’ He judged it to be the moment when tears would be more eloquent than further words.

The policeman was very sympathetic. He apologised for having to ask the questions, realised that Mr. Marshall was in a state of shock, and asked if he would feel all right to be left on his own.

The last suggestion appealed strongly to Graham. The strain of curbing his glee was beginning to tell. Only one more thing he needed to know. ‘Where is Merr. . my wife. . her body?’

‘At the police mortuary, sir.’

‘Oh. I suppose I’ll have to sort out funeral arrangements and. . We both agreed we’d want to be cremated if. .’

His voice faltered while his mind thought, Destroy the evidence, destroy the evidence.

‘I’m sure that’ll all be possible after the inquest, sir.’

‘Inquest?’

‘Of course, sir. With all violent deaths there has to be an inquest.’

Sweat prickled on Graham’s forehead. He felt the emptiness of nausea. An inquest was something he hadn’t reckoned with.

After the constable had gone, Graham took a large Scotch to steady him. Soon he would have to face Lilian and the children, but they could wait a little longer.

News of the inquest had shaken him, but a core of confidence remained. He could cope. He would get away with it. The inquest was a formality. There was nothing a police investigation could find to incriminate him. If there had been, his reception on his return would have been very different.

Mentally, he reviewed the crime, testing it for flaws, pulling it this way and that, probing for weaknesses.

No, there was nothing. No careless fingerprint to expose him. His planning had paid off.

Lucky, he thought wryly, that he had chosen the method he had. He thought back, with indulgent disbelief to his earlier ideas, to his fumbling attempts with the paraquat, to -

Oh, my God!

His body was seized by a tremor as violent as his first reaction to the old man’s death.

The sherry bottle.

He ran on legs of jelly to the shed. If the police had been in the house, investigating, inspecting, they might also have gone to the garden, might have found the adulterated sherry, might have started to harbour unwelcome suspicions of him, might have. .

He snatched open the shed door.

It all looked different. The clutter was gone, the lawnmower and tools stacked neatly against the wall. The seed trays, behind which the bottle had been hidden, were now piled neatly on the shelf.

The sherry bottle, with its fatal contents, had disappeared.

He reeled, clasping at the wall for support. The police must have been in, examined the whole building, taken off the sherry for analysis. .

Graham thought he was going to be sick.

But he wasn’t sick, and after a few minutes the rhythm of his breathing steadied. As he reasserted control over his body, he did the same with his mind. Keep calm, keep calm, he told himself. Think it through.

Thinking it through helped. He had leapt to conclusions. It might have been the police who had been in the shed, but there were other explanations. Indeed, if it had been the police examining the building, why should they have bothered to tidy it? The shelves had been dusted down and the floor swept. That was surely beyond the scope of their investigation.

Wasn’t it more likely, Graham thought with a little glint of hope, that Merrily had had one of her rare bursts of domesticity and attacked the shed herself? She had commented before on how much it needed tidying, and to do a major clear-out while he was away would have been in character, a flamboyant gesture to make him feel guilty on his return. Yes, and the policeman had quoted Lilian about Merrily’s ‘planning some tidying’.

Fuelled by hope, he hurried to the dustbins. That’s where she would have put the rubbish she’d cleared out.

But they were empty. Of course, the refuse collectors came on a Thursday.

He was about to replace the lid on the second bin when he saw something. Just a scrap of damp cardboard which had stuck to the inside and escaped the refuse truck.

It was a piece of the weed-killer box. The piece he had torn to funnel the granules into the sherry bottle.