to Paul to say goodbye to Trixie for her. Again, Angela felt a slight unease about Trixie, but she fought it down. Her drab life was now colourful and full of events because of Trixie. She was proud of her clean house and seemed to be on a constant high of energy and hard work. She could not go back to being the lazy, dreamy person she had been for so long. But she bought the steak.
Trixie put down her spade and walked around from the back garden to the front. She saw Priscilla Halburton-Smythe walking along the road. Trixie ran into the house and emerged a little while later with a navy-blue sweater slung over her shoulders. Ignoring her blank-eyed husband she stepped out into the road just as Priscilla was approaching. “Good afternoon, Priscilla,” she called cheerfully.
“Good afternoon, Mrs Thomas,” said Priscilla. Her eyes fell on the sweater and a little frown marred the smooth surface of her brow. “That looks like one of Hamish’s sweaters,” she said.
Trixie lifted it from her shoulders and held it out to Priscilla. “Would you hand it back to him?” she said, “I’d be too embarrassed.”
“Why?” asked Priscilla, ignoring the proffered sweater.
Trixie giggled. “Our romantic policeman’s a bit soppy about me. He gave it to me to wear, you know, just like an American college kid giving his girlfriend his football sweater.”
Priscilla looked down her nose. “Give it to him yourself,” she snapped, and walked around Trixie and off down the road.
Angela Brodie waited and waited but her husband did not return home. The cat was sleeping by the fire along with the dogs, its claws dug into the carpet in case it should be lifted up and banished to the garden again. The clock ticked slowly, marking off the time. Angela phoned the surgery but only got the answering machine referring callers to the house number. He must have been called out on an emergency, she thought, but then she had a feeling he was deliberately staying away. She tried to read but reading did not bring the old comfort. She turned on the television. There was a party political broadcast on one channel, a sordid play on another, a wildlife programme about snakes on the third, and on the fourth, a ballet with screeching music and white-faced performers in black tights. She switched it off. She opened the cupboard under the sink and took out dusters and polish and began to clean the clean house all over again.
At ten o’clock, she phoned the police station. Hamish Macbeth said he would go and find the doctor. She had a feeling that Hamish knew where the doctor was.
At half past ten, the kitchen door opened and the doctor entered, or rather was helped in by Hamish. He giggled when he saw his wife and sang to the tune of Loch Lomond, “Oh, I’ve just killed Trixie Thomas, the rotten harpie’s dead.”
“Come to bed, doctor,” said Hamish. “Come away. Where’s the bedroom?”
“Upstairs,” said Angela weakly.
She waited, listening to the sounds as the doctor sang loudly about having killed Trixie and Hamish patiently coaxed him into bed.
She could not ever remember her husband being drunk before. But Trixie had warned her that all that smoking and junk food would cause a deterioration in him sooner or later. At the very corner of her mind was a niggling little voice accusing her of having driven her husband to drink, but she did not listen to it. Instead she tucked her sneakered feet – those gleaming white sneakers so like Trixie’s – under her on the sofa and waited for Hamish to descend.
Trixie Thomas could be harsh with her husband for his own good. The fact that Paul did not want to go to the dentist in Inverness and the fact that Trixie was determined he
“Afraid o’ the dentist like a wee wean,” jeered Archie Maclean who had had all his teeth pulled out at the age of twenty-one and had never had to worry about a dentist since.
Paul was eventually seen driving off in the van. At one o’clock, Mrs Kennedy, the boarder, returned to The Laurels with her sticky children to see if she could coax Trixie into making them all some sandwiches. The rain was falling steadily and the children were fractious and bored. But there was no sign of Trixie and her bedroom door was locked.
Angela Brodie turned up at two. Mrs Kennedy was cheerfully raiding the pantry. “Mrs Thomas must be having a wee lie down,” she said. “I cannae get a reply.”
Angela ran up the stairs and knocked on Trixie’s door. Trixie had a separate room from her husband, an odd luxury in a couple who claimed they needed to rent out every available space to boarders. Angela hesitated. Then she knocked louder and called and waited. Silence.
It was a big, rambling Victorian villa. A large fly buzzed monotonously against the stained glass window on the landing. From below came the wails of the Kennedy children demanding ‘mair jelly pieces’ by which they meant more jam sandwiches.
Angela knew Paul had gone to Inverness to the dentist. Everyone knew that.
The silence from behind Trixie’s door was un –
Suddenly alarmed, Angela began to hammer at the door and shout.
Again she waited. Again that silence. The Kennedy family had fallen silent now. The fly buzzed against the glass and the rain drummed on the roof.
Angela decided to go for help. She would look a fool if they burst into that bedroom and found Trixie fast asleep. But she remembered stories in the papers of people who had not interfered for fear of looking foolish and because of that fear, someone had died.
She thought Hamish would laugh at her, but he put on his peaked cap and followed her to The Laurels. His face was set and grim. He tried to tell himself his feeling of foreboding was the weather. The midges danced through the raindrops, stinging his face and he automatically fished in his pocket for his stick of repellent.
He walked up the stairs past the Kennedy family who were gathered at the foot. The children were strangely silent, their jam-covered faces turned upwards.
He went up to Trixie’s room and hammered on the door. Then he tilted his head on one side and listened to the quality of the silence.
“Stand back,” he said curtly to Angela.
He kicked at the lock with all his might and there came a splintering sound and the door burst open.
Trixie Thomas lav half across the bed, her hair spilled over her face. He gently put back her hair and looked down at her contorted face and then he felt her pulse.
“Get your husband here,” he said over his shoulder.
“Is she…?” Angela put her hands up to her mouth.
“Yes. But get him anyway.”
Angela ran down the stairs and along the waterfront towards the surgery. Rain water poured down her face like the tears she could not yet shed.
The receptionist called something as she ran past and burst into the consulting room.
“Come quickly,” Angela called.
Dr Brodie was examining Mrs Wellington’s bared bosom with a stethoscope. Angela reflected wildly that she had never seen such enormous breasts before.
“Mrs Brodie!” screeched the outraged minister’s wife, seizing a brassiere the size of a hammock.
“It’s Trixie. She’s dead,” said Angela, and then the tears came and great suffocating sobs.
“Dear me. Dear me,” said Mrs Wellington, encasing her girth rapidly in underwear and Harris tweed.
Dr Brodie seized his bag and ran out of the surgery to his car. Hamish was waiting for him in Trixie’s bedroom. “Don’t move the body if you can,” he said when he saw the doctor. “I’ll have a look around outside.”
The doctor spent only a short time in the room. Hamish was coming along the corridor when Dr Brodie emerged outside.
“I’ll just write the death certificate,” said the doctor. “Heart attack. No doubt about it.”
Hamish’s eyes narrowed and he said quietly, “Go back in there and try again. It’s a case of poisoning, if ever I saw one. It’s murder, doctor. Pure and straightforward murder!”
? Death of a Perfect Wife ?
