Miss Benson's Beetle

by Rachel Joyce

  “I’m heading north. Do you know the name of the town up there?” But the British consul wasn’t listening anymore. He had opened Mundic’s passport and was staring at the page. “But you have no visa. You can’t stay in New Caledonia without a visa. I don’t know how the police failed to notice. Well, let me see if I can pull a few strings. It’s the least I can do, though everything closes, of course, because of the season.”

  “What season?”

  The British consul laughed. “Good heavens, man. It’s Christmas. Have you forgotten? Report back to the British consulate in a week.”

  “Can’t I travel without a visa?”

  “Unfortunately not. They’re very strict here about things like that.” The British consul was already hauling himself to his feet. And he still had Mundic’s passport. Without it, he felt cut loose. He didn’t know how he would survive without his passport.

  “What am I supposed to do now?”

  “Enjoy the lovely weather. Any problems, here is my home address. But you need to control your temper, Mr. Mundic. I hear you shout a lot. There is no need for that kind of behavior now.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good man.”

  They shook hands and the British consul passed him twenty francs, just to cover his needs. Then he departed in a hurry, leaving the door to the interview room wide open. So much light that everything seemed either black or dizzying white—Mundic had to back away. He was free to go, just as he’d been a free man in Songkurai when the Allies came. Back then he had stood in a crowd of prisoners, watching the guards who’d made their lives hell being marched away, and an Aussie next to him had laughed. “They’re for it now,” he’d said.

  But war was not over just because someone signed a truce. It was inside him. And when a thing like war was inside you, it never left.

  Mundic found a barber to shave his head. After that he felt clean again, and ready to eat. On the jetty, men were unloading a batch of newspapers from a new boat. They called out, “Breeteesh newspapers! Breeteesh newspapers fresh from Great Breetain! Vous voulez?”

  Mundic walked past. He didn’t give a damn about the news from home. The last thing he needed was another story about some POW who’d hanged himself. He just wanted to get his passport back, and find Miss Benson.

  Ever since it broke, the British newspapers had been full of the Nancy Collett story. People couldn’t get enough.

  Repeatedly she was described as shrewd, cold, and calculating. There was an old photograph of her in the Sunday Mail, sitting with her husband, surrounded by chimpanzees at a tea party. She didn’t look shrewd or cold or calculating. She was wearing a spotted head scarf. She and her husband were eating ice cream, and they were laughing.

  Another photograph had taken up the front pages of the Daily Mirror, the Yorkshire Evening Post, and the Sunday Dispatch of Nancy Collett before she dyed her hair. Almost unrecognizable. A plain young woman, wearing a hat with some plastic cherries on it. If anything, the hat was the bit you noticed.

  A third: her wedding day, featured in The Times, the Daily Sketch, the Manchester Evening News. Her face was hidden by a bunch of flowers, but her husband (Percival Collett, forty-two, deceased) was wearing a suit. She had her arm through his. She looked very young. Full-faced. She was standing on tiptoe.

  Nevertheless, Nancy Collett was repeatedly described as a sexual predator. At least thirty gentlemen had come forward, confessing to knowing her in intimate ways. Later, the same photograph had been splashed all over the daily and Sunday papers, showing her posed on a settee. She was dressed in a frilly blouse, suspenders, stockings and high heels, no skirt. She was leaning her head on her hand—that was certainly provocative—but her neck looked taut, and her smile was stiff, as if she would rather she still had her skirt on.

  The crime was talked about, over and over. Frustrated by her husband’s war injuries, Nancy Collett had taken many partners for her pleasure. (MY CLOSE SHAVE WITH A KILLER ran one of the headlines.) Then, on the night in question, Nancy Collett—who was drunk in some versions of the story, but stone cold sober in others—had gone upstairs with a sharp knife and attacked him repeatedly while he was asleep. She had killed him because she could, and then sat gloating over the dead body before she made her escape in broad daylight.

  Nancy Collett represented passion unleashed. She had spurned the restraints of civilized society and given in to animal instinct. The British public was appalled by what she’d done, and also fascinated. They bought every edition of the papers they could lay their hands on. They even went to gawp at her house. A neighbor stood outside all day retelling the story of how she’d come across the dead body. She was flogging bits of wallpaper from the scene of the crime.

  WHERE IS NANCY COLLETT?

  THIS WOMAN MUST HANG.

  BRITAIN’S MOST WANTED CRIMINAL.

  The truth was that even though she’d been spotted on the RMS Orion in mid-October, there was no record of Nancy Collett on the passenger list, and no record of her arriving in Brisbane. She had disappeared. Possibly under another name. No one had a clue.

  Which was why the British papers had begun concentrating on her accomplice, the Woman With No Head. Very little was known about her, either. She lived alone. She’d been employed for twenty years as a teacher of domestic science. According to police records, she was some sort of petty thief. SPINSTER TEACHER IN DARK LOVE TRIANGLE! In the absence of a photograph, the cartoonists had a field day.

  Nancy Collett was the big story of 1950, even bigger than the Norman Skinner case. It got so big she was mentioned on the wireless just after the king’s Christmas broadcast. “Scotland Yard are continuing their search for the murderer Nancy Collett and her mysterious accomplice.”

  Enid was ashen. “How long does it take,” she said, “for British newspapers to get as far as New Caledonia?”

  They were in the bungalow. She was holding her battery radio—she’d got a signal at last. She was also wearing a homemade paper crown.

  “I don’t know, Enid. A few months?”

  Christmas. A day off. They’d exchanged presents—Enid gave Margery a pink cloth for a neckerchief. Margery gave her a pineapple. They ate yams and eggs and sweet bananas; not a tin of Spam in sight. Afterward Margery had pinned the new specimens they’d found that week; the boys from the shantytown crowded round to watch. The rest of the day she’d spent with her feet in a bucket of water and a compress on her hip. Her legs didn’t feel like legs anymore. She hadn’t said anything to Enid, but the pain in her hip was gigantic. Also, the skin on her lower legs had turned purple and swollen—she was worried the insect bites were infected.

  Anyway, she must have dozed. She was aware that Enid had said something about trying to tune in to the General Overseas Service on her radio—she wanted to catch the king’s Christmas broadcast. Then something else had happened. One minute, Enid was saying, “I’ve got it! I’ve got a signal!” The next moment she yelped, as if her radio had just bitten her.

  She sat now in silence, with it buried in her lap. She said again, “Do you think the British newspapers will be here soon?”

  “Is something wrong, Enid?”

  “No, Marge.”

  “Is there bad news from home?”

  Enid swallowed. She shook her head. She didn’t look remotely convincing.

  “Not another war, Enid?”

  Margery had lived through two, and peace seemed fragile. There’d been talk about Korea before they left. Not to mention Russia.

  “No, Marge. Everything’s fine. There’s no war back home.”

  Enid went outside to smoke, but when she came back, she still looked ill. “Even if the British papers are in Nouméa, I suppose it’ll be ages before they get all the way up here.”

  “Enid, I have never seen a British newspaper in Poum. The only things you can buy in Poum are yams and eggs an
d tins with a picture of a fish on them. And they look pre-war. I wouldn’t eat them if I was desperate.”

  It was a joke, but Enid didn’t laugh. She pulled her hand through her hair and found her paper crown. She took it off as if it was silly and bunched it up.

  “Enid? Why are you worried about British newspapers?”

  “I’m not. I just don’t want to have to read them. I don’t want to know about home.”

  That made no sense when she was always trying to get a radio signal, but she was twitchy and Margery didn’t want to make it worse. She said, “Would you like some ice cream? We could drive to Poum?”

  “Actually, Marge, I think we should stop using the jeep for a few days. I think we should lie low.”

  Another thing that made no sense. Enid loved driving the jeep. Besides, the idea of her lying low was ludicrous. But she was pacing the room, and it was hard to keep up. After that she put away her radio and fetched a beetle book. She picked up Mr. Rawlings, sat at Margery’s feet, and asked her to talk about beetles. They were what really mattered. A little while later she said quietly, more to herself than to Margery, “We’ll be fine so long as we stay north.”

  Enid didn’t listen to her radio again. She gave it to the boys from the shantytown. She didn’t need it anymore, she said.

  * * *

  —

  Ten days later they were back up the mountain, following their path to the peak. The air was as thick and fat as a pig. Even flies looked stuck—Margery had to tie a scarf round her mouth to stop accidentally swallowing them. After Christmas, the weather had changed: silent tongues of lightning in the distance, constant rumblings of thunder. There’d been sunsets, too, with new colors: billiard table green, egg powder yellow, tomato soup red. For a few days there had been constant insect activity, and they had caught six new specimens of hister beetle. But suddenly there was this awful stillness, as if the forest knew something Margery didn’t. It seemed to be holding its breath. She couldn’t even hear water.

  And it wasn’t just the weather that was strange. Enid had changed, too. Ever since she’d got that signal on her radio, she was a different person. She wasn’t scrambling over rocks anymore. She wasn’t happily leaping streams. It could take her a few goes just to get into her hammock. At night she kept calling to Margery to make sure she was still close. Other times she opened her mouth to speak, then sighed. And this was Enid, who could once make an entire monologue out of a shopping list. She’d started going so slowly that Margery, despite her hip and infected bites, was in danger of overtaking her.

  Enid threw off her haversack and lay flat on her back. She stayed with her arms and legs spread out, like a star, as she stared up at the sky. Mr. Rawlings settled next to her. He stretched on his back with all four paws tucked up, exposing the full pink barrel of his belly.

  Clearly neither of them planned to move in a hurry. Margery lowered herself with great difficulty. Now that she was down, she wasn’t entirely sure how she would get up, but that was minor so she let it pass. She eased off her boots and powdered her feet. All around her, ants were flooding into holes in the ground. Their nests were like piles of coffee grains. Something was definitely happening.

  “You’ve guessed, haven’t you?”

  “Guessed what, Enid?”

  “My news.”

  “What news?”

  “Oh, God,” said Enid. She sighed multiple times.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m still pregnant.”

  Margery had to cover her mouth, as if a part of her was about to fall out. Had Enid just said she was pregnant?

  “Yes,” said Enid, implying she’d become a mind reader as well. “I’m having a baby.”

  Margery felt as if she were drowning. As if looking down had now become looking up. She had no idea what was going on. She knew Enid prayed sometimes and was very superstitious. She knew she was resourceful. But not even Enid could get pregnant all by herself and at the top of a mountain. Besides, she had spent the best part of a month scarpering up and down rocks and gullies. If either of them had been acting like a pregnant woman, it was Margery.

  She took her hand from her mouth, but it was still wide open. Barbara would have said something about catching flies. And suddenly, thinking of Barbara, she really missed her consistency. Unlike Enid, Barbara was incapable of surprise—even if she’d had something nice to say, she still managed it without smiling. Barbara had been the last of the household to go. She had suffered cataracts, then near-blindness, and had stayed with Margery to the bitter end, though every time she picked up a kitchen utensil Margery had had to make a dash to rescue her. She’d died penniless and without anything to call her own except a pair of new shoes, both of which she had left to Margery.

  Fortunately, Enid didn’t notice Margery’s distraction. She was busy talking. She was staring at the greener-than-green trees, and saying she knew this was difficult to understand. She knew it was a shock. To be honest, she was shocked, too. She’d genuinely feared she’d lost the baby on the RMS Orion, but after Christmas she had begun to realize she might have been wrong. She hadn’t dared to say anything until she was sure, she didn’t want to tempt Fate—saying the word, she crossed both fingers and held them up—but now she was certain. She’d felt the baby moving. It was moving all the time. It was a miracle, she kept saying. This baby was a miracle. She’d been afraid on Christmas Day that everything was over for her, and now suddenly there was this. Her baby was still alive. Enid had been given a second chance. Finally, she paused. “Marge? What are you doing?”

  Words had disappeared. Margery felt an overwhelming need to straighten her socks. She pulled them over her knees, and adjusted the garters. She just had to get her socks straight. The line of the wool wasn’t right. It was all she could think about.

  “Did you hear what I said? This is my second chance.”

  “So you didn’t have a miscarriage on the boat?”

  “No. I got it wrong.”

  An ant stung Margery’s thigh. She picked it up and looked at it very closely. “I see.”

  “What’s up, Marge?”

  “Nothing’s up, Enid.”

  “You’re not pleased.”

  “I am.”

  “I thought you’d be happy for me.”

  “I am.”

  “We’ll be okay. We can still find the beetle.”

  Again, the world seemed to tip upside down. “Still find it? Are you mad? We’re at the top of a mountain. You can’t be pregnant up here.” Enid sat. She stuck her hands on her hips. She looked like a jug, with her wide-open mouth as the spout. And somehow—was this even possible?—her belly was popping over the rim of her shorts. As if it had been in hiding until she had broken the news and was now freely bulging all over the place.

  “So what are you saying? Are you saying we should stop?”

  “You can’t look for a beetle when you’re pregnant. When exactly will the baby be born?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’m a bit hazy with my dates.”

  “On the ship you said May.”

  “Well, it’s May, then. May.”

  “You don’t sound sure.”

  “I am sure.”

  “And we’re not leaving until February.”

  “So? That gives us ages.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Enid. You can’t be pregnant up a mountain. Suppose you fell?”

  “Suppose I fell? What about you? Your legs don’t even work. Do you think I don’t notice you every day? Crawling behind? You’re the one who should be in a hospital.”

  They were shouting. They were up a mountain, on a small tropical island, on the other side of the world, et cetera et cetera, having a full-blown argument. Minutes previously, she’d been sitting side by side with Enid, po
ssibly incapable of getting up again, but happy, now that she thought about it—or at least at peace—and suddenly she was yelling at Enid and Enid was yelling back at her. She didn’t need a mirror to know she was red in the face.

  “Enid. You’ve done some mad things. You broke into a school. You stole the car. Bribed a policeman. You even buried a gun. But this is insane. We have to go.”

  “Go where exactly, Marge?”

  “Home, Enid. Home. The expedition is over. It is a mad idea. It always was. The orchid is not here. The beetle is not here. I don’t even have a visa anymore. We have to go.”

  There. She had said it. She had said it at last. They should stop. The beetle meant everything to her and they had tried, they had really tried, to find it—she had endured things she’d never even imagined—but now they should give up. They should not go on. And it was not because of Margery that they should stop. It was because Enid was pregnant, and it was no longer safe. To her astonishment, it didn’t even hurt to say it. If anything, it came as a relief. In her mind at least, Margery was already packing her things.

  But this was Enid she was talking to. Wild and unpredictable and completely illogical Enid. She scrambled to her feet so fast, her top popped open. She looked feral, possibly dangerous. Her hand flew out to Margery’s shoulder, yanking her back, and squeezing way too hard to be friendly. Her eyes flashed.

  “Margery Benson, where is the woman who stole a pair of boots? Who organized an expedition to the other side of the world? Who put on a man’s shorts? This is your vocation same as mine is having a baby. You think you can just walk away? What happened to your gumption?”

  Clearly these were not actual questions, they were rhetorical: even though Margery tried to answer, Enid barged on.

  “Marge, this baby will not happen unless we find the beetle. I know it in my bones. I’ve lost ten babies. I did everything you’re supposed to do—I put my feet up, didn’t lift anything too heavy—but I still lost them. And I was certain on the boat I’d lost this one, too. But I was wrong. She held on. We have climbed up and down a mountain every day, Marge, and this child has held on. She wants to live. She wants it, Marge. So cut the crap about giving up. You brought us here. Now get on with it. Find the beetle.” In her fury Enid practically flung Margery aside. Then she stooped to pick up the dog. She patted him, like a soft toy. She even rubbed his ears.