by Ruskin Bond
'Was it a fox, do you think?' asked Amanda.
'Sounds more like a polecat,' said Sir Lulworth.
'No,' said Egbert, 'there were marks of webbed feet all over the place, and we followed the tracks down to the stream at the bottom of the garden; evidently an otter.'
Amanda looked quickly and furtively across at Sir Lulworth.
Egbert was too agitated to eat any breakfast, and went out to superintend the strengthening of the poultry yard defences.
'I think she might at least have waited till the funeral was over,' said Amanda in a scandalised voice.
'It's her own funeral, you know,' said Sir Lulworth; 'it's a nice point in etiquette how far one ought to show respect to one's own mortal remains.'
Disregard for mortuary convention was carried to further lengths next day; during the absence of the family at the funeral ceremony the remaining survivors of the speckled Sussex were massacred. The marauder's line of retreat seemed to have embraced most of the flowerbeds on the lawn, but the strawberry beds in the lower garden had also suffered.
'I shall get the otter hounds to come here at the earliest possible moment,' said Egbert savagely.
'On no account! You can't dream of such a thing!' exclaimed Amanda. 'I mean, it wouldn't do, so soon after a funeral in the house.'
'It's a case of necessity,' said Egbert; 'once an otter takes to that sort of thing it won't stop.'
'Perhaps it will go elsewhere now that there are no more fowls left,' Suggested Amanda.
'One would think you wanted to shield the beast,' said Egbert.
'There's been so little water in the stream lately,' objected Amanda; 'it seems hardly sporting to hunt an animal when it has so little chance of taking refuge anywhere.'
'Good gracious!' fumed Egbert, 'I'm not thinking about sport. I want to have the animal killed as soon as possible.'
Even Amanda's opposition weakened when, during church time on the following Sunday, the otter made its way into the house, raided half a salmon from the larder and worried it into scaly fragments on the Persian rug in Egbert's studio.
'We shall have it hiding under our beds and biting pieces out of our feet before long,' said Egbert, and from what Amanda knew of this particular otter she felt that the possibility was not a remote one.
On the evening preceding the day fixed for the hunt Amanda spent a solitary hour walking by the banks of the stream, making what she imagined to be hound noises. It was charitably supposed by those who overheard her performance, that she was practising for farmyard imitations at the forthcoming village entertainment.
It was her friend and neighbour, Aurora Burret, who brought her news of the day's sport.
'Pity you weren't out; we have quite a good day. We found it at once, in the pool just below your garden.'
'Did you—kill?' asked Amanda.
'Rather. A fine she-otter. Your husband got rather badly bitten in trying to "tail it". Poor beast, I felt quite sorry for it, it had such a human look in its eyes when it was killed. You'll call me silly, but do you know who the look reminded me of? My dear woman, what is the matter?'
When Amanda had recovered to a certain extent from her attack of nervous prostration Egbert took her to the Nile Valley to recuperate. Change of scene speedily brought about the desired recovery of health and mental balance. The escapades of an adventurous otter in search of a variation of diet were viewed in their proper light. Amanda's normally placid temperament reasserted itself. Even a hurricane of shouted curses, coming from her husband's dressing-room, in her husband's voice, but hardly in his usual vocabulary, failed to disturb her serenity as she made a leisurely toilet one evening in a Cairo hotel.
'What is the matter? What has happened?' she asked in amused curiosity.
'The little beast has thrown all my clean shirts into the bath! Wait till I catch you, you little—'
'What little beast?' asked Amanda, suppressing a desire to laugh; Egbert's language was so hopelessly inadequate to express his outraged feelings.
'A little beast of a naked brown Nubian boy,' spluttered Egbert. And now Amanda is seriously ill.
He Said It with Arsenic
RUSKIN BOND
Is there such a person as a born murderer—in the sense that there are born writers and musicians, born winners and losers?
One can't be sure. The urge to do away with troublesome people is common to most of us, but only a few succumb to it.
If ever there was a born murderer, he must surely have been William Jones. The thing came so naturally to him. No extreme violence, no messy shootings or hackings or throttling; just the right amount of poison, administered with skill and discretion.
A gentle, civilised sort of person was Mr Jones. He collected butterflies and arranged them systematically in glass cases. His ether bottle was quick and painless. He never stuck pins into the beautiful creatures.
Have you ever heard of the Agra Double Murder? It happened, of course, a great many years ago, when Agra was a far-flung outpost of the British Empire. In those days, William Jones was a male nurse in one of the city's hospitals. The patients—especially terminal cases—spoke highly of the care and consideration he showed them. While most nurses, both male and female, preferred to attend to the more hopeful cases, nurse William was always prepared to stand duty over a dying patient.
He felt a certain empathy for the dying; he liked to see them on their way. It was just his good nature, of course.
On a visit to nearby Meerut, he met and fell in love with Mrs Browning, the wife of the local station-master. Impassioned love letters were soon putting a strain on the Agra-Meerut postal service. The envelopes grew heavier—not so much because the letters were growing longer but because they contained little packets of a powdery white substance, accompanied by detailed instructions as to its correct administration.
Mr Browning, an unassuming and trustful man—one of the world's born losers, in fact—was not the sort to read his wife's correspondence. Even when he was seized by frequent attacks of colic, he put them down to an impure water supply. He recovered from one bout of vomitting and diarrohea only to be racked by another.
He was hospitalised on a diagnosis of gastroenteritis; and, thus freed from his wife's ministrations, soon got better. But on returning home and drinking a glass of nimbu-pani brought to him by the solicitous Mrs Browning, he had a relapse from which he did not recover.
Those were the days when deaths from cholera and related diseases were only too common in India, and death certificates were easier to obtain than dog licences.
After a short interval of mourning (it was the hot weather and you couldn't wear black for long), Mrs Browning moved to Agra, where she rented a house next door to William Jones.
I forgot to mention that Mr Jones was also married. His wife was an insignificant creature, no match for a genius like William. Before the hot weather was over, the dreaded cholera had taken her too. The way was clear for the lovers to unite in holy matrimony.
But Dame Gossip lived in Agra too, and it was not long before tongues were wagging and anonymous letters were being received by the Superintendent of Police. Enquiries were instituted. Like most infatuated lovers, Mrs Browning had hung on to her beloved's letters and billet-doux, and these soon came to light. The silly woman had kept them in a box beneath her bed.
Exhumations were ordered in both Agra and Meerut.
Arsenic keeps well, even in the hottest of weather, and there was no dearth of it in the remains of both victims.
Mr Jones and Mrs Browning were arrested and charged with murder.
'Is Uncle Bill really a murderer?' I asked from the drawing room sofa in my grandmother's house in Dehra. (It's time that I told you that William Jones was my uncle, my mother's half-brother.)
I was eight or nine at the time. Uncle Bill had spent the previous summer with us in Dehra and had stuffed me with bazaar sweets and pastries, all of which I had consumed without suffering any ill effects.
'Who
told you that about Uncle Bill?' asked Grandmother.
'I heard it in school. All the boys were asking me the same question— 'Is your uncle a murderer?' They say he poisoned both his wives.'
'He had only one wife,' snapped Aunt Mabel.
'Did he poison her?'
'No, of course not. How can you say such a thing!'
'Then why is Uncle Bill in gaol?'
'Who says he's in gaol?'
'The boys at school. They heard it from their parents. Uncle Bill is to go on trial in the Agra fort.'
There was a pregnant silence in the drawing room, then Aunt Mabel burst out: 'It was all that awful woman's fault.'
'Do you mean Mrs Browning?' asked Grandmother.
'Yes, of course. She must have put him up to it. Bill couldn't have thought of anything so—so diabolical!'
'But he sent her the powders, dear. And don't forget—Mrs Browning has since….'
Grandmother stopped in mind-sentence, and both she and Aunt Mabel glanced surreptitiously at me.
'Committed suicide,' I filled in. 'There were still some powders with her.'
Aunt Mabel's eyes rolled heavenwards. 'This boy is impossible. I don't know what he will be like when he grows up.'
'At least I won't be like Uncle Bill,' I said. 'Fancy poisoning people! If I kill anyone, it will be in a fair fight. I suppose they'll hang Uncle?'
'Oh, I hope not!'
Grandmother was silent. Uncle Bill was her stepson but she did have a soft spot for him. Aunt Mabel, his sister, thought he was wonderful. I had always considered him to be a bit soft but had to admit that he was generous. I tried to imagine him dangling at the end of a hangman's rope, but somehow he didn't fit the picture.
As things turned out, he didn't hang. White people in India seldom got the death sentence, although the hangman was pretty busy disposing off dacoits and political terrorists. Uncle Bill was given a life sentence and settled down to a sedentary job in the prison library at Naini, near Allahabad. His gifts as a male nurse went unappreciated; they did not trust him in the hospital.
He was released after seven or eight years, shortly after the country became an independent Republic. He came out of gaol to find that the British were leaving, either for England or the remaining colonies. Grandmother was dead. Aunt Mabel and her husband had settled in South Africa. Uncle Bill realised that there was little future for him in India and followed his sister out to Johannesburg. I was in my last year at boarding school. After my father's death, my mother had married an Indian, and now my future lay in India.
I did not see Uncle Bill after his release from prison, and no one dreamt that he would ever turn up again in India.
In fact, fifteen years were to pass before he came back, and by then I was in my early thirties, the author of a book that had become something of a best-seller. The previous fifteen years had been a struggle—the sort of struggle that every young freelance writer experiences—but at last the hard work was paying off and the royalties were beginning to come in.
I was living in a small cottage on the outskirts of the hill-station of Fosterganj, working on another book, when I received an unexpected visitor.
He was a thin, stooped, grey-haired man in his late fifties, with a straggling moustache and discoloured teeth. He looked feeble and harmless but for his eyes which were pale cold blue. There was something slightly familiar about him.
'Don't you remember me? He asked. 'Not that I really expect you to, after all these years….'
'Wait a minute. Did you teach me at school?'
'No—but you're getting warm.' He put his suitcase down and I glimpsed his name on the airlines label. I looked up in astonishment. 'You're not—you couldn't be….'
'Your Uncle Bill,' he said with a grin and extended his hand. 'None other!' And he sauntered into the house.
I must admit that I had mixed feelings about his arrival. While I had never felt any dislike for hi, I hadn't exactly approved of what he had done. Poisoning, I felt, was a particularly reprehensible way of getting rid of inconvenient people: not that I could think of any commendable ways of getting rid of them! Still, it had happened a long time ago, he'd been punished, and presumably he was a reformed character.
'And what have you been doing all these years?' he asked me, easing himself into the only comfortable chair in the room.
'Oh just writing,' I said.
'Yes, I heard about your last book. It's quite a success, isn't it?'
'It's doing quite well. Have you read it?'
'I don't do much reading.'
'And what have you been doing all these years, Uncle Bill?'
'Oh, knocking about here and there. Worked for a soft drink company for some time. And then with a drug firm. My knowledge of chemicals was useful.'
'Weren't you with Aunt Mabel in South Africa?'
'I saw quite a lot of her, until she died a couple of years ago. Didn't you know?'
'No. I've been out of touch with relatives.' I hoped he'd take that as a hint. 'And what about her husband?'
'Died too, not long after. Not many of us left, my boy. That's why, when I saw something about you in the papers, I thought—why not go and seem my only nephew again?'
'You're welcome to stay a few days,' I said quickly. 'Then I have to go to Bombay.' (This was a lie, but I did not relish the prospect of looking after Uncle Bill for the rest of his days.)
'Oh, I won't be staying long,' he said. 'I've got a bit of money put by in Johannesburg. It's just that—so far as I know—you're my only living relative, and I thought it would be nice to see you again.'
Feeling relieved, I set about trying to make Uncle Bill as comfortable as possible. I gave him my bedroom and turned the window-seat into a bed for myself. I was a hopeless cook but, using all my ingenuity, I scrambled some eggs for supper. He waved aside my apologies; he'd always been a frugal eater, he said. Eight years in gaol had given him a cast-iron stomach.
He did not get in my way but left me to my writing and my lonely walks. He seemed content to sit in the spring sunshine and smoke his pipe.
It was during our third evening together that he said, 'Oh, I almost forgot. There's a bottle of sherry, in my suitcase. I brought it especially for you.'
'That was very thoughtful of you. Uncle Bill. How did you know I was fond of sherry?'
'Just my intuition. You do like it, don't you?'
'There's nothing like a good sherry.'
He went to his bedroom and came back with an unopened bottle of South African sherry.
'Now you just relax near the fire,' he said agreeably. 'I'll open the bottle and fetch glasses.'
He went to the kitchen while I remained near the electric fire, flipping through some journals. It seemed to me that Uncle Bill was taking rather a long time. Intuition must be a family trait, because it came to me quite suddenly—the thought that Uncle Bill might be intending to poison me.
After all, I thought, here he is after nearly fifteen years, apparently for purely sentimental reasons. But I had just published a best-seller. And I was his nearest relative. If I was to die, Uncle Bill could lay claim to my estate and probably live comfortably on my royalties for the next five or six years!
What had really happened to Aunt Mabel and her husband, I wondered. And where did Uncle Bill get the money for an air ticket to India?
Before I could ask myself any more questions, he reappeared with the glasses on a tray. He set the tray on a small table that stood between us. The glasses had been filled. The sherry sparkled.
I stared at the glass nearest me, trying to make out if the liquid in it was cloudier than that in the other glass. But there appeared to be no difference.
I decided I would not take any chances. It was a round tray, made of smooth Kashmiri walnut wood. I turned it round with my index finger, so that the glasses changed places.
'Why did you do that?' asked Uncle Bill.
'It's a custom in these parts. You turn the tray with the sun, a complete rev
olution. It brings good luck.'
Uncle Bill looked thoughtful for a few moments, then said, 'Well, let's have some more luck,' and turned the tray around again.
'Now you've spoilt it,' I said. 'You're not supposed to keep revolving it! That's bad luck. I'll have to turn it about again to cancel out the bad luck.'
The tray swung round once more, and Uncle Bill had the glass that was meant for me.
'Cheers!' I said, and drank from my glass.
It was good sherry.
Uncle Bill hesitated. Then he shrugged, said 'Cheers', and drained his glass quickly.
But he did not offer to fill the glasses again.
Early next morning he was taken violently ill. I heard him retching in his room, and I got up and went to see if there was anything I could do. He was groaning, his head hanging over the side of the bed. I brought him a basin and a jug of water.
'Would you like me to fetch a doctor?' I asked.
He shook his head. 'No I'll be all right. It must be something I ate.'
'It's probably the water. It's not too good at this time of the year. Many people come down with gastric trouble during their first few days in Fosterganj.'
'Ah, that must be it,' he said, and doubled up as a fresh spasm of pain and nausea swept over him.
He was better by evening—whatever had gone into the glass must have been by way of the preliminary dose and a day later he was well enough to pack his suitcase and announce his departure. The climate of Fosterganj did not agree with him, he told me.
Just before he left, I said; 'Tell me, Uncle, why did you drink it?'
'Drink what? The water?'
'No, the glass of sherry into which you'd slipped one of your famous powders.'
He gaped at me, then gave a nervous whinnying laugh. 'You will have your little joke, won't you?'
'No, I mean it,' I said. 'Why did you drink the stuff? It was meant for me, of course.'