Miss Benson's Beetle

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Miss Benson's Beetle Page 24

by Rachel Joyce


  Guilt clawed the back of her neck, but only briefly. She said she would make sure it was returned to Margery Benson. She got him to fetch a cart and load it into the back of her car. She whipped a few French banknotes from her purse—she was overtipping, but she felt less compromised now she’d paid.

  Back at home, she broke the lock first on the suitcase, then the Gladstone bag. The suitcase was filled with old clothing. You couldn’t even dump it on the women at the mission. It was the Gladstone bag that intrigued her.

  One by one, she removed glass vials, a Kilner jar, plastic tubes. Bottles, which she opened and smelled. Collecting equipment. The sort of thing you would find in a chemistry block at a school…

  She fingered the pearls of her necklace. She laughed. “Got you,” she said. “Got you.”

  * * *

  —

  “You mean?” said Dolly Wiggs, at Friday craftwork. “That it was the two women who broke into the Catholic school?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Pope, all over again. They’d been through this a number of times.

  “Margery Benson and her assistant?”

  “Yes.”

  “And stole all those things?”

  “Yes, Dolly.”

  “And then a jeep?”

  “I can’t believe we actually met them,” said Coral Pepper. “So do you think they are spies, after all?”

  “I don’t know. I have written to the Natural History Museum, asking if they know about her. Of course, I did it in a clever way.”

  “Of course,” chorused the women. Mrs. Pope would only do anything in a clever way.

  “They just seemed so nice,” said Dolly. “It’s hard to imagine them stealing.”

  Coral Pepper looked on the verge of tears. “What should we do? Should we ring our husbands? Send the police to Poum?”

  But Mrs. Pope had enjoyed her foray into detective work, and was not ready to hand it over to men. Now that the Three Kings party was over, she had nothing to look forward to until Valentine’s Day, and Valentine’s Day was not something she enjoyed. All the anonymous cards for Maurice, crowding his wastepaper bin. Besides, she wasn’t sure men would pursue the case. Men, she found, often lacked a woman’s drive.

  “We need to wait until I’ve heard back from the Natural History Museum. Then we will know for certain.”

  At this point, the wives went off on a tangent. They began remembering other things that had gone missing over the past few weeks. Someone’s frock had gone from her washing line. Coral Pepper had lost silver sugar tongs that had belonged to her mother. Daphne Ginger was sure she’d left a steak once on the kitchen counter, which wasn’t there when she’d got back. Mrs. Pope felt the conversation skating toward thin ice. Some of these things had happened months ago, way before Margery Benson had arrived in Nouméa with her assistant. As much as she disliked them, it was unlikely the two women had gone round pinching frocks off washing lines, not to mention choice cuts of meat. Then Daphne went completely sideways and suggested Margery Benson might even be the murderess they had all been reading about in the British papers from home. Could she, in fact, be Nancy Collett, traveling under an alias, and hiding in New Caledonia? And was her blond assistant really the Woman With No Head? Shouldn’t they should alert the French police immediately? Maybe even phone the editor of The Times?

  Mrs. Pope clapped her hands. “Order!” she cried. “Order, ladies! It’s about hard evidence! We just need to wait. Something will bring them back. And as soon as we know what they’re up to, we can make our move.”

  He had them in his sights. He was always there, a little behind, not close enough for them to see, but following. He was waiting for the right moment. He reckoned a few more days, then he’d take charge. The blonde looked tired now. Really tired.

  He couldn’t understand why Miss Benson was blond as well. He didn’t know why she was trying to confuse him when he had come all this way to lead her expedition.

  The dog was an accident. He hadn’t meant to kill it. But it knew he was there. It barked. Even though Miss Benson didn’t notice Mundic, the dog still pricked up its ears. And when he’d found it alone, it wouldn’t sit, even though he said to it, “Good doggy, sit, sit.” It had gone for him with its teeth. It had torn his trousers. And when he tried to bat it off, it went for his hand as well. It wanted to kill him. So he grabbed it by the neck and he saw its teeth and he felt the flame, and the flame was in his chest, it was in his head, and his throat hurt, and suddenly he couldn’t remember what was in his hands, he just knew he had to stop it. Afterward he laid it down, and said, “Good dog,” but it didn’t wake up. So he rolled the dog away, like the Japs rolled the bodies away, because he didn’t want to see.

  He kept following Miss Benson and the blonde every day. He had his haversack filled with his things, and sometimes he went all the way back to the little room and slept on a grass mat so he could get up the next day and go back and hunt for them. If the shantytown kids came up, wanting to sell him crap, he shouted at them to clear off.

  He wrote in his notebook about the things he ate, like the tins from the shop with a picture of a fish on them, and he wrote about what he could see, and when he was thirsty he found water. But his legs were bad again with the beriberi, and even though he wrapped them in leaves, like he’d learned to do in Burma, he could feel the muscles wasting, and it made his chest hurt to keep breathing. When the sweats came, he wrapped himself in his yellow towel, and he said to himself he would not die, he would not die, he was a special boy, just like he’d said to himself in Burma, but there were sores in his mouth and it hurt to keep swallowing.

  And worse things were beginning to happen, too. There was a Jap. Ever since the dog, a Jap was here. Mundic could see him. And the Jap had a stick, and he was watching Mundic, and following him. And the Jap thought Mundic didn’t know, but Mundic did. So Mundic had to get away before the Jap came after him, but there were times he couldn’t remember anymore why he was there. He was slicing his way through the undergrowth, he was ducking between lianas, and his heart was pumping fast, and his legs were mush, and he couldn’t remember but he thought he had escaped from the POW camp and there were snakes in the forest. And he didn’t know why he had tried to escape from the camp because he knew what happened to the prisoners who escaped. If the Jap found him, he would beat him. He would drag Mundic back to the camp and round up all the other prisoners and make them watch as he put the gun to Mundic’s head. So he was trying to get away, but there were snakes, there were snakes everywhere he looked, coiled around trees, thick at his feet, and he sliced his knife at them, so hard the knife went spinning from his hands and disappeared. He just wanted to get back to the POW camp and be safe.

  Then he’d remember. He was in New Caledonia. The Jap was not there. The Jap was a tree. Just a tree. There were no snakes. He wasn’t a POW. He was free.

  Mundic got out all the things he had taken so far. He laid them on the ground. The knife was gone, and so were the towel and the hat, but he had the map, his notebook, the battery, the soup label. He looked at the gun he had found close to where they buried the dog. He stared at each thing and tried to see what came first. He put them in a line, and it went map, label, notebook, battery, gun. But something was missing. There was another line before the one he could see in front of him. It had his mother on it, and the way he always got it wrong as a kid, and the POW camp, and men dying on their feet, and the time the Japs had punished the men who’d tried to escape and everyone had to watch, and then the journey home, and the mayor who didn’t turn up, and the demob suit that was too big. And the things he couldn’t see were so much bigger than the things he could.

  He put everything back in his haversack, but he didn’t know what to do with the things from the past. He had no idea where you were supposed to put things that existed only inside your head.

  The trees stood tall. A basketw
ork of leaves. Then slowly they began to swing, up down, up down, until he threw up. And suddenly he wasn’t sure anymore. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep going.

  “Marge, I wish you’d stop going on.”

  “Enid. I’m just trying to be practical because you are being bewilderingly vague. We are leaving in two weeks. We need to think ahead.”

  “I don’t want to think ahead. I want to look for the beetle.”

  “But it’s already February. You’re having a baby in May. We have to make plans for when we get home.”

  Time, which had moved at different speeds throughout the expedition and taken different shapes, was now solid and clearly defined. Every day was one step closer to the end, and every day they did not find the gold beetle or the white orchid, it seemed more likely that Margery had been wrong; they were not there. It would have been so much easier if Enid had agreed to spend the final two weeks lying flat on her back on the veranda, or adding to her already substantial collection of knitted baby clothes, or even discussing the future, while Margery packed what they already had, and prepared for the journey home. But Enid wouldn’t do any of those things. Since discovering the gun was gone, she was even more jittery. She was constantly stopping to check over her shoulder. “Do you think someone’s following us, Marge? Do you think he’s here? The man from Wacol? Do you think he has the gun?” And even though Margery reassured her—the gun had surely been washed away during the cyclone, or even dug up by animals—Enid stuck so closely to Margery it was difficult not to fall over her. If they slept in the bungalow, Margery often woke and found Enid wedged at her side. “Are you sure my baby’s okay?” she’d say, over and over again. She did not want to talk about the future. She did not want to talk about going home. She did not want to do anything except creep around next to Margery, holding up her enormous belly with one hand and dragging an insect net with the other.

  “Are you worried about money, Enid?”

  Enid simply shrugged.

  “Because I owe you. I need to pay you for your work. As soon as we’re home, I’ll do that, Enid.”

  Enid kicked a stone.

  “Or you can live with me. You can have a room in my flat. At least until you’re sorted out. Have you thought about a hospital?”

  “Beg pardon?” Enid yawned.

  “Where you can have the baby, Enid? You need to think about these things.”

  “Marge, can you stop going on? It’s giving me a headache. It’s all you talk about. What I want is to find the gold beetle. Why do you have to keep spoiling things by talking about home?”

  Every room in the bungalow was now filled with their collection to date—at least a hundred and fifty specimens, some already pinned, but most either stored in naphthalene or carefully wrapped with lint. Margery was using everything they had left to keep them in—all Enid’s old bottles and jars, as well as washed-out tins. As for sending things ahead, there was no need: there was actually nothing to send. In Nouméa, they would buy a few basics for the journey—she couldn’t stride about on deck dressed like a man, and Enid would somehow need to cover up her pregnancy. If only Enid would talk about these things.

  Suddenly there was only a week left. At Enid’s insistence, they continued to search but caught little apart from more clown beetles. Another day it rained so hard they came back and found the boys from the shantytown sheltering beneath the bungalow. But there was no chewing gum left to give them. Margery began to store things in the jeep, ready to depart. She’d given up all hope of getting a bus. She hadn’t seen one in the entire time they’d been living there.

  February 13: two days before they were due to make the journey back to Nouméa. Margery was working late on the veranda, lit by the hurricane lamp, when Enid appeared. She was so big she almost filled the open doorway. Margery laughed. She didn’t even mean to. The laugh came out by itself. She’d thought Enid was asleep.

  “Enid?” she said. “Why are you dressed up like that?”

  Enid was holding her red valise and her handbag. Not only that, she had somehow squeezed herself into her old pink travel suit and pom-pom sandals. She had even tried to pin her hair into a neat style and finished with her tiny hat. “Enid? What are you doing? It’s not time to go yet.”

  Enid didn’t laugh. She crossed the veranda slowly, her belly sticking out through the skirt. The fabric was stretched to within an inch of its life. Clearly she couldn’t do up the zipper, though she’d covered the gap with a scarf around her waist. She lowered herself into the chair beside Margery’s and sat motionless, staring carefully at the black trees and stars as if committing them to memory. Watching her, Margery suddenly felt a strange kind of ease and freedom that seemed more acute because she sensed that, even though she didn’t know what it was, something was wrong, and her peace was about to be shattered. “Enid?” she said. “What is it?”

  Enid took off her hat. She set it on her lap. Then she said to her hat: “I killed him, Marge. I killed Perce.”

  * * *

  —

  The truth cannot be understood all at once. It can only be done in pieces, bit by bit. As Enid explained what happened, Margery found she had to keep taking a break. But there wasn’t much time. The more she heard, the more she understood that something would have to be done quickly.

  Enid was not Enid. She was called Nancy Collett. She had killed her husband before she left home. The British police were trying to find her; she had found that out on Christmas Day when she got her radio signal. She was not Enid Pretty. Enid was her alias.

  “Okay. I see.” Margery went down to the bottom of the dirt garden. She threw up in the dark. She came back. She sat down.

  Enid wanted to go to the French police. She wanted to turn herself in. She spoke slowly, almost in a daze, as if she’d been hypnotized. The words seemed terribly ordinary and yet the thing she was saying didn’t, so that every sentence had a kind of solitary quality, like a group of castaways.

  Enid said the British police wanted Margery, too. They thought she was Enid’s accomplice. They thought she had been involved in the murder. Enid wanted to tell the truth.

  Again, Margery needed a pause, but she couldn’t leave Enid another time. She looked up. She gazed at the thousands of stars in the sky. She didn’t know why, but she envied them. They seemed to run like water. She wished she liked smoking.

  Enid said she wanted to tell Margery about Perce. He liked the lads. He liked them very much.

  “Yes, you told me that before. I understood.”

  “He couldn’t bear so many young boys dying in the war. He talked about it all the time. In the end he decided he had to help. He was too old for the front, but he signed up for the Home Guard. He was back after six months. Lost a leg during training. He’d been accidentally shot by one of the lads.”

  “I see.”

  “After that, I took a catering job at a bar. I catered for all sorts of things. If the cash was there, I did it. Now that Perce was injured, we needed the money.”

  “I see. Yes.”

  On the whole Margery understood what Enid was saying, but sometimes the words didn’t fit together. Enid was telling the whole story as simply as possible, yet Margery had to repeat the sentences in her head. It was as if she didn’t have the brain room to take them all in. She felt she needed an extension.

  Enid kept talking. Slowly and without lifting her eyes from the pink hat on her lap, but stroking it sometimes, she told Margery how Perce had been in constant agony. “He could feel the leg he had lost. It wasn’t there, but it was like his foot was on fire. Sometimes he screamed at me to get a bucket of cold water. So I’d fetch the water, but then I’d have no idea what to do with it. He’d just point and point at the space where his leg wasn’t, screaming that it was burning up.

  “I managed the physical stuff for years—the picking him up and taking him to the lavat
ory, getting him to bed, giving him a bath. I could do that. I’m strong. But I couldn’t make him happy. I couldn’t make him forget the pain. I tried everything. I cooked his favorite meals, I massaged the other leg, I tried to think of things he could look forward to. But he was locked in the pain. He couldn’t get away from it.

  “Then Perce saw your advertisement. He said I should apply. He said he would live with his brother for five months, and I should have a break. He wanted me to put myself first for a while. We were both sad when I didn’t get the job.”

  “Did you know you were pregnant?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it wasn’t your husband’s baby?”

  “Marge? This is difficult to say.”

  “You’d better say it, Enid.”

  “There were a few fellas. It could have been any of them. I don’t know who the father was.”

  Margery had to reach out. Even though she was sitting, she had the sense the ground had gone on a slant and she was going to fall off. She gripped the broken railing of the veranda very tightly. It was talking about the baby, not the uncertainty about who the father was. Already she cared about this baby so much. She hadn’t realized until now. Lit by the hurricane lamp, her hands had little brown spots on them. She hadn’t noticed those, either. She was getting older.

  The rest of the story Enid managed in fits and starts, though she still insisted on telling it to her hat. It seemed it was the only way she could say it, just as Margery could listen only if she kept looking aside. Enid had got back from work one night, and found Perce covered with blood in bed. He’d tried to cut his wrists but made a mess of it. Enid had wanted to get a doctor, but Perce wouldn’t have it. He begged her to let him go. He couldn’t take any more. If she really loved him, she would help him end it. “Please,” he kept saying, “please.” If she thought too hard, she knew she would have refused him, so she grabbed the pillows and pressed them over his face. He didn’t even struggle. And then she realized what she was doing and pulled the pillows away, but it had happened so fast. She couldn’t get the ache out of her arm. That was the thing that confused her most. She’d thought it had happened quickly, yet afterward she could barely move her arm, as if the effort she’d made was huge and the ghost of the weight would always be there.

 

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