Martin Edwards - The Arsenic Labyrinth

You’d never believe it to look at me now, but once upon a time I killed a man.

My calves ache with the effort of scrambling up the slippery fell. It is not too late, I need not carry out my plan. Murder is a choice, an act of free will. How easy to turn around and go back home. Nobody need ever know the wicked imaginings that twist my soul. It is within my power to let him live.

It is not merely his fate that lies in my hands this afternoon. It is my own.

My knees tremble. In the bag slung over my shoulder, I feel the sharp blade of the knife.

I didn’t turn back, but passed beneath the large stone they called the Sword of Damocles. Long gone, destroyed like so much else that once seemed permanent and immune to change. I am ill at ease in the modern world. I shall not be sorry to bid it farewell. But before I leave, I shall share my secrets. I have this foolish superstition that, if they were buried with me, I should never find peace.

His back is turned, but when he hears my footsteps he spins round, leering with anticipation. He expected someone else. At the sight of me, his smile dissolves. The curl of his lip is familiar. I am accustomed to disappointing him.

‘You contrived this.’

A nod of assent.

‘How long have you known?’

What did it matter? When I did not reply, he let fly with a volley of abuse. I was jealous and selfish and sick in my head. The words glanced off me like arrows striking a shield.

When he reaches out and touches my arm, I recoil. A hungry gleam returns to his eyes. I can read his mind. We are alone and I am at his mercy. He looks about him, his attention caught by a rattle of stones.

I am dying now, withered and weary, but that afternoon I was so alive. More alive than ever before. Or since.

Slowly, he takes off his belt. Followed by his shirt.

I stand in front of him, motionless. He commands me to undress, just as I expected. My hands shake as I pull off my stockings and struggle out of my corselette. I take too long. Grunting with impatience, he strips quickly. When I start to fold my petticoat, he roars in disbelief.

‘For God’s sake, woman!’

I bend down and reach into the bag. I have obeyed him for the last time. He stands in front of me, naked and defenceless. I am almost naked too.

But I have the knife.

Who shall I be today?

Guy smiled at the landlady as she proffered a ballpoint pen with a bitten top. Her hands were chapped, her pink nail varnish flaking. He reached inside his suede jacket.

‘Thanks, but I always write with my own fountain pen.’

He liked to think of the black lacquer Waterman Expert as an heirloom, though he’d picked it up less than eighteen months previously in a grubby little shop in Camden Town. The landlady opened the register with as much reverence as if it were The Book of Kells . Guy paused; hadn’t Megan described him as a regular Jekyll and Hyde?

Today, no question — Dr Jekyll.

At Haverigg, he’d studied calligraphy, an agreeable means of passing the long days. No need for artistic skill, just patience and attention to detail. Before running out of both, he’d mastered the basics of an elegant script. Bending over the page, he wrote with a flourish.

RL Stevenson .

Perfectly safe, this flight of fancy. He’d once made the mistake of introducing himself as Guy Mannering to a woman who proved to be a closet Sir Walter Scott fan, but Mrs Welsby didn’t strike him as bookish. Bed and breakfast places further up Campbell Road rejoiced in names like Brideshead and Xanadu, but this house, squashed at the end of a three-storey Victorian terrace, was called Coniston Prospect. Not that the name lacked imagination. A tall man looking out of the attic window would need to stand on his toes to see beyond the trees and satellite dishes and catch a glimpse of Coniston Water.

Fanned out on the table were the Daily Express , opened at the gossip page, and a local tabloid. On a scuffed sideboard squatted a Pye transistor radio, so ancient it was probably fashionable retro chic. Through the interference, he discerned Lionel Richie’s breathy enquiry, ‘ Is it me you’re looking for? ’

‘Welcome to Coniston Prospect, Mr Stevenson.’

The smell of fried bread and burned bacon lingered in the air. Guy gave a contented sniff. He preferred four-star luxury, a boutique hotel by Grasmere or Ullswater would have been more his style, but he didn’t mind roughing it until he sorted himself out. No bad thing to keep your feet on the ground. He found it so easy to get carried away. After leaving Llandudno in a hurry, he was short of cash. Lucky he was adaptable — Megan’s word was chameleon .

‘Please, Mrs Welsby, the name’s Robert.’

Her smile revealed teeth as crooked as the Hardknott Pass. Guy winced. Dentistry counted for a lot, in his opinion. In more affluent days, he’d spent a fortune on caps and straightening.

‘My friends call me Rob.’

‘I’m Sarah,’ she said quickly. ‘I do hope you’ll be happy here.’

Her eagerness to please was unfeigned and he found himself warming to this solid woman in turquoise tracksuit and down-at-heel trainers. Seizing her hand, he found her grip was weak, her flesh soft. Once she’d been pretty, but she’d put on too much weight and years of disappointment had faded her blue eyes. The fair hair was dyed, the roots greying. No rings on the fingers. She could use a little excitement in her life. He pitched his voice lower.

‘I’m sure I will be.’

He meant it. A threadbare carpet wasn’t the end of the world. All she needed was encouragement. There was more to life than wiping cobwebs from picture rails or scrubbing ketchup stains out of your pinafore.

‘I suppose you’d like to unpack?’

He nodded. It wouldn’t take five minutes. He travelled light, out of habit as well as need.

‘I’ll put the kettle on. A cup of tea is so refreshing after a journey. Have you travelled far?’

‘I’m not long back in England, as it happens.’

No less than the truth. He’d spent too long in rain-sodden Llandudno, gazing out at wind-whipped waves. The tan came courtesy of a solarium in Deganwy. No matter; the sparkle of delight in Sarah Welsby’s eyes told him that she was thinking south of France rather than the coast of North Wales. It would be unkind to disillusion her and Guy hated being unkind. He was about to murmur that the world was becoming smaller when his eye caught a headline in the local newspaper, above a blurry photograph of a face he would never forget.

What happened to Emma Bestwick?

‘Detective Chief Inspector Scarlett!’

Hurrying towards the entrance of Divisional HQ, coat collar raised against the cold bite of February, Hannah heard pounding feet and someone shouting her name. She stopped in her tracks and swivelled.

A man was racing across the car park towards her. As he drew closer, his shoes skidded on the rain-greased tarmac and he lost his balance. With a stifled cry, he tumbled to the ground.

She walked over and helped him rise gingerly to his feet. He was about five feet seven, but lean and sinewy, with his clothes so slickly tailored that he did not seem small. She smelled cedarwood; he’d overdone the after-shave. He squinted at the streak of mud on his cream trousers with as much pain as if he’d broken his ankle.

‘All right?’

‘I’ll live.’ Scots accent, gritted-teeth smile. ‘You know, this is the first time I’ve ever been picked up by a senior police officer.’