A Shock to the System

‘And you only saw the “POISON” label when you got it home?’

She was too depleted to make any attempt at denial.

‘Oh, Lilian.’ He shook his head in mock-sympathy. Then changed his tone. ‘You spoke of this as proof. Proof of what, may I ask?’

‘Proof that you planned Merrily’s death,’ she replied, emptying her diminished arsenal of defiance.

‘How does this prove that?’ He held the bottle daintily between thumb and forefinger. ‘Merrily died in an electrical accident due to faulty wiring in an old house.’

‘This bottle proves that you planned to kill her, that you tried out poison as a first option, that you hoped you might be able to make her drink it in error, that then you realised it wouldn’t work and.

The words could have been worrying, so close did they come to the truth, but the tone of defeat with which they were delivered and the hopelessness in which they petered out, showed how little even their speaker was convinced by them. With a little surge of delight, Graham realised again his immunity, his invisibility from the searching eyes of suspicion.

‘And this bottle proves all that?’ He placed it on the mantelpiece and shook his head. ‘Why now suddenly? Why didn’t you produce your “evidence” when you sent off your letter to the police?’

‘I hadn’t worked it all out then,’ she mumbled.

‘And you still haven’t,’ he riposted harshly. ‘Still haven’t by a mile. Because there’s nothing to work out. God knows what play this scene comes from, Lilian, but, as ever, you’re all melodrama — you always have been. With you, everything gets inflated into full-scale comic opera. Whether it’s how Charmian’s behaved, or do your grandchildren love you, or your non-affair with the late, great, gay William Essex, it all — ’ He stopped for her to speak, but she thought better of her interruption, so he continued. ‘It all gets overblown and ridiculous. Which is one of the reasons why I am glad to be shot of you. But. .’ He raised a finger to silence her. ‘But it’s now ceasing to be funny. Any more allegations of murder and I’ll have you prosecuted. I don’t think the police are going to be over-impressed by your sherry bottle. They might if it had been found in the shed the week after Merrily’s death, but now. . well, you could so easily have set it up to frame me. They’re already suspicious of you, Lilian. I actually had to deter them from taking action after the letter. Now there’s this knife attack this morning. Bother me again, Lilian, and I’ll get you put away.’

She was still silent as he rose. ‘I am going to get dressed. When I come down again, I would prefer not to find you here. Oh, and, incidentally, I will be watching out for further knife attacks.’

At the door he stopped, curious. ‘By the way, what was the knife attack in aid of? Did you intend to kill me?’

‘Yes,’ she hissed. ‘But not with the knife.’

‘How then?’

She made a limp, disspirited gesture to the bottle on the mantelpiece.

‘You were going to make me drink that?’ He could hardly believe her little nod of assent. ‘At knife point?’

The second small nod released his laughter. The joke still seemed good as he picked up the knife in the hall and placed it out of harm’s way. And during the leisurely process of shaving and dressing, little chuckles kept bubbling through.

When he went back down to the sitting-room, Lilian was still there. She appeared not to have moved. Her face sagged, old and wretched.

‘I am going out,’ Graham announced. ‘I’d be grateful if, when you go, you would leave my house key on the hall table. But if you don’t, I am sure I can get it returned by my solicitors.’

He was at the door before she spoke.

‘You killed Merrily, Graham. And I’m going to be revenged on you. If it’s the last thing I do.’

‘No, Lilian.’ He favoured her with a condescending smile. ‘Not even if it’s the last thing you do.’

He walked out of the house to encounter a new problem.

It was a bright day, the green of the new leaves intensified by the sunlight. He started walking towards the river with no very clear intentions. He felt deliciously free; it didn’t matter where he went, what he did.

‘Graham.’

He turned at the sound of his name to see Stella hurrying towards him from a Mini parked opposite the house. He said nothing as she approached.

‘Graham, I want to know what’s happening.’

‘Why are you here?’ he asked coldly.

‘I’ve got to see you.’

‘You are seeing me. Why have you come here? Why are you stopping me in the street?’

‘I was going to go to the house, but just as I got there a woman arrived.’

‘My mother-in-law,’ he enunciated. ‘The mother of my late wife.’

‘Graham. .’ Stella looked at him in a way that was meant to be appealing.

‘What do you want?’ He was getting annoyed. Fortunately there were few people around, but he didn’t want scenes in the street.

‘I want to know where we stand, Graham.’

He felt a flash of anger. Bloody women. Even someone like Stella, with her vaunted independence, Stella, the quick office fuck, wanted to immobilise him with commitment and responsibility.

‘We stand apart,’ he hissed.

She flinched as if he had hit her. Then, clenching back the tears, she announced quietly, ‘Graham, you’ll regret it. Just wait. Next time you want something from me, you’re going to be disappointed.’

‘I cannot envisage,’ he replied, equally quietly, ‘any occasion when I would ever want anything from you.’

That released the tears. ‘You won’t get away from me. I’ll wait here for you, Graham. I’ll get you!’

He walked away as she started to speak, and, though her voice came after him, it did not get any closer. He kept on walking and did not look back until he was at the end of Boileau Avenue. The Mini had not moved and he could see the hunched figure inside it.

By the time he reached Castelnau and the approach to Hammersmith Bridge, the glow of freedom had returned. With it came hunger. The morning’s first interruption had kept him from his breakfast. He looked at his watch. One o’clock.

He went into a Mini-Market where he bought a couple of pork pies, an orange and two cans of beer. The Pakistani girl on the check-out did not look up as he handed over his money.

As he walked towards the bridge, there was a bubbling excitement inside his head. There was nothing to restrain him. Lilian. Stella. They were as irrelevant to his life as his dead wife and his discarded children. No one was relevant but Graham Marshall.

Near the bridge he suddenly crossed the road and walked down to the tow-path. It was a little delaying tactic, a teasing foreplay before he revisited the scene of his triumph.

He walked along the towpath in front of St Paul’s School Playing Fields and sat down on a bench to eat his picnic. The sun had summer force and glinted on the river before him. Must sort out a holiday, he thought, as he opened the second can of beer. Somewhere nice, abroad, luxurious.

He dawdled some of the way along the footpath towards Barnes Railway Bridge, prolonging the foreplay, but then gave in indulgently and returned to the scene of the old man’s death. He lingered sentimentally by the parapet, even caressed the rail over which his first victim had plunged, already dead. He no longer feared drawing attention to himself. Graham Marshall was invisible, secure in his impenetrable aura of success.

He used his afternoon’s freedom to go to the cinema in Hammersmith. The film was Monty Python’s Life of Brian. The bits he saw he enjoyed, but the combination of his exhausted state and the lunchtime beer meant that he slept through most of it. He emerged round half-past five, feeling rested, and thought about going home.

But why should he? He had no reason to return to Boileau Avenue. There was nothing he wanted there — or, if Lilian or Stella were still around, there were things he positively didn’t want there.

And he was, after all, meant to be pampering himself. For the first time in nearly fifteen years he was free to act on impulse.

An impulse decided him where he wanted to go.

He managed to get to a couple of King Street shops before they closed and bought a shirt, underwear,