Simon Brett - A Shock to the System

Up on street level, he felt the excitement breaking out, tingling like sweat all over his body. He looked at his watch. It was only seven minutes since he had left the Crasoco tower.

His mind was working very clearly. He knew exactly what he had to do. He walked briskly, but not hurriedly, back to the office.

He had been prepared to go all the way up to the conference room, but was saved the trouble. Stella and a couple of other tittering secretaries were just emerging from the lift.

He walked straight towards her.

‘I waited for you,’ he said.

The other two secretaries split off, giggling, armed with new gossip-fodder for the canteen. Stella gazed up at him. Her eyes were unfocused with alcohol, but full of relief and trust.

They took a cab to her flat. As soon as they were inside the door he seized her. He closed his eyes as their flesh joined, and the recollection of that one push, the image of George Brewer frozen untidily in mid-air, gave Graham Marshall’s body a violent power.

The news of George Brewer’s suicide, spreading round the office on the Monday morning, prompted much chattering and excitement, but compared to Robert Benham’s death, it was a small sensation.

Partly, this was because it had very little surprise value. When most of the staff actually thought about it, they could see that George had been headed that way for a long time. Since the death of his wife, work had been his whole life, and he had made no secret of the dread with which he contemplated the void ahead of him. He was not the first to have done away with himself after a retirement party, and would probably not be the last.

So, though everyone was of course suitably sorry and management tutted over another half-day to be wasted at another funeral, they could recognise the logic of the death. In a way it tidied George up and absolved them from guilt. The idea of his spiralling down to alcoholism in Haywards Heath might have been a spur to recrimination; the idea of him dead made a neat close to his particular chapter of company history.

Graham moved into George’s office ‘for convenience’, and to give Terry Sworder more room. Terry, he had decided, would, once the Head of Personnel appointment had been officially ratified, make an excellent assistant. His research capabilities, coupled with Graham’s ruthless vision, would make an invincible combination.

Stella was not treated in anything more than a professional way, and was kept busy through the day as Graham fired off salvoes of memos and letters under his ‘Assistant Head of Personnel’ title. In the afternoon she was called to Miss Pridmore’s office, whence she returned in tears, but Graham didn’t have the time to ask her the reason.

By the end of the week, Stella was working on the Secretarial Reserve, prior to taking up a more permanent position in another department.

And by the end of the week, too, George Brewer was, like Merrily Marshall and Robert Benham, a mere scattering of ash in a Garden of Remembrance.

Graham worked late on the Friday evening. It was to be a long weekend, with the Spring Bank Holiday on the Monday, and there were preparations he wanted to make for the next week. He also knew that David Birdham was in a management meeting, and half-expected the phone to ring with confirmation of the new Head of Personnel appointment. But it was a confident, not a desperate hope; Graham knew the job was his.

So, though there had been no message, he left the office at eight without anxiety. As he walked out of the Crasoco tower, he felt good. It was a week after George Brewer’s death and Graham Marshall felt he deserved a treat. So, without going home first, he took himself out for an expensive dinner at the Grange. He felt no strangeness in being on his own, though as he looked at the pampered couples around him, he wondered if maybe, in time, he might once again look for a female escort. Have to be very glamorous, of course, to match his new status.

Tara Liston, now. . Hmm. Perhaps he ought to send her a note of sympathy after Robert’s death. .

It was a thought. No hurry, though. He was under no pressure of any sort. He had all the time in the world.

He arrived home after eleven, pleasantly drunk, went straight to bed and slept for twelve hours. All the tensions of the last weeks had caught up with him and, as he relaxed, he felt unbelievably tired. What he needed now was a slow wind-down over the Bank Holiday weekend; he needed to cosset, to pamper himself a little.

He might have slept longer than twelve hours, if he had not been wakened by the sound of a key in the front door lock. He swayed, blinking, on the stairs and looked down into the hall to see Lilian Hinchcliffe.

She looked wizened and unkempt, and was weighed down by a large handbag.

He yawned. ‘Good morning. To what do I owe this pleasure?’

She was silent as he came down the stairs and did not move until he was on the same level. Then, with surprising speed, she snatched something out of her handbag and, with a cry of ‘You’re not going to get away with it, Graham!’ launched herself at him.

He was heavy with sleep and unprepared for the attack, but he managed to ward off the upraised knife, though it gouged through the dressing-gown fabric into his forearm. The pain stung him to action. With his right hand he gripped the knife-wrist, at the same time jerking his elbow up against Lilian’s chin.

Her free hand clawed up at his face, scoring lines of pain as he snatched his head away. He leant back against the stairs, pulling her off-balance, then slammed her right wrist hard against the newel post until the knife clattered from her grasp. As he did it, he felt the heavy handbag thumping against his side and her free hand clutching on to his ear.

He shook himself painfully free and reached out his right hand to clamp round her jaw, forcing the mouth open as he pushed her away to arm’s length. From there her reach was too short to do any harm to his body and she had to content herself with scratching and pinching at his hand.

‘What the bloody hell’s all this for?’ Graham demanded.

‘I’m going to kill you!’ she screamed, fluttering ineffectually in his grasp.

‘Why?’ His tone, he knew, was one of infuriating irony.

‘Because you’re mad.’

Again the word stung and, before he was aware of doing it, he brought the back of his left hand hard against her mouth. She wheezed with pain and her struggling stopped. A gleam of blood showed where the lip had bruised against her teeth.

‘Now come on.’ Graham had control of himself again.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You killed Merrily.’

He laughed aloud and, still keeping his mother-in-law at arm’s length, propelled her into the sitting-room. He positioned her in front of an armchair and gave a little push. She subsided, the violence drained out of her.

Graham sat down on the sofa. ‘So I killed Merrily, did I?’

‘Yes.’

‘If that’s the case, how come the police didn’t mention it at the inquest? How come that even their second investigation, prompted by your poison-pen letter, also drew a blank?’

Lilian had coloured at the mention of the letter. ‘I know you hated her, Graham. Look at you, you haven’t shown a moment of regret since she died. You were just delighted to get rid of her, and the children and me.’

‘That is hardly a crime,’ Graham drawled. ‘I think you’d find a good few husbands who, offered the opportunity of painlessly shedding their families, would leap at the chance.’

‘You planned it all. You knew it was going to happen. While you were in Brussels, while Merrily was looking after the house and tidying up for you, you knew she was doomed.’