by P. D. James
“Knocked on the head—terrible bruise—marks all over the parquet flooring where he dragged her—only just coming round now—human fiend—head resting on a cushion in the gas stove—the poor darling—came in just in time at nine twenty—always come to watch colour TV with her on Wednesday night—back door open as usual—found the note on the kitchen table.” The figure writhing on the floor, groaning and crying in a series of harsh grunting moans like an animal in travail, suddenly raised herself and spoke coherently.
“I didn’t write it! I didn’t write it!”
“You mean Mr. Vinson tried to kill her?” Vera was incredulous, head turning from Mrs. Wilcox to the watchful, inscrutable faces of the police. The senior officer broke in:
“Now, Mrs. Wilcox, I think it’s time you went home. The ambulance is here. An officer will come along for your statement later this evening. We’ll look after Mrs. Vinson. There’s nothing else for you to do.”
He turned to Vera and me. “If you two were here earlier this evening, I’d like a word. We’re fetching Mr. Vinson now from his chess club. But if you two will just wait in the sitting room, please.”
Vera said, “But if he knocked her unconscious and put her head in the gas oven, then why isn’t she dead?”
It was Mrs. Wilcox who replied, turning triumphantly as she was led out: “The conversion, that’s why. We’re on natural gas from this morning. That North Sea stuff. It isn’t poisonous. The two men from the Gas Board came just after nine o’clock.”
They were lifting Emily Vinson onto a stretcher now. Her voice came to us in a desperate wail.
“I tried to tell him. You remember? You heard him? I tried to tell him.”
—
The suicide note was one of the exhibits at Vinson’s trial. A document examiner from the forensic science laboratory testified that it was a forgery, a clever forgery but not Mrs. Vinson’s writing. He couldn’t give an opinion on whether it was the work of the husband, although it was certainly written on a page taken from a writing pad found in the desk in the sitting room. It bore no resemblance to the accused’s normal writing. But, in his view, it hadn’t been written by Mrs. Vinson. He gave a number of technical reasons to support his opinion and the jury listened respectfully. But they weren’t surprised. They knew that it hadn’t been written by Mrs. Vinson. She had stood in the witness box and told them so. And they were perfectly clear in their own minds who had written it.
There was other forensic evidence. Mrs. Wilcox’s “marks all over the parquet flooring” were reduced to one long but shallow scrape, just inside the sitting-room door. But it was a significant scrape. It had been made by the heels of Emily Vinson’s shoes. Traces of the floor polish which she used were found, not on the soles, but on the sides of the scraped heels and there were minute traces of her shoe polish in the scrape.
The fingerprint officer gave evidence. I hadn’t realised until then that fingerprint experts are mostly civilians. It must be a dull job, that constant and meticulous examination of surfaces for the telltale composites and whorls. Hard on the eyes, I should think. In this case, the significance was that he hadn’t found any prints. The gas taps had been wiped clean. I could see the jury physically perk up at the news. That was a mistake, all right. It didn’t need the prosecution to point out that the taps should have shown Mrs. Vinson’s prints. She, after all, had cooked their last meal. A cleverer murderer would merely have worn gloves, smudging any existing prints but ensuring that he left none of his own. It had been an over-precaution to wipe the gas taps clean.
Emily Vinson—quiet, distressed but gallant, obviously reluctant to testify against her husband—was remarkably competent in the witness box. I hardly recognised her. No, she hadn’t told her husband that she and Mrs. Wilcox had arranged to watch the television together shortly after nine o’clock. Mrs. Wilcox, who lived nearby, usually did come across to spend a couple of hours with her on Wednesday nights when Mr. Vinson was at his chess club. No, she hadn’t liked to tell Mr. Vinson. Mr. Vinson wasn’t very fond of inviting people in. The message came over to the jury as clearly as if she had spelt it out—the picture of a downtrodden, unintellectual wife craving the human companionship which her husband denied her, guiltily watching a popular TV show with her cleaning woman at a time when she would be certain that her husband wouldn’t catch them out. I glanced at his proud, unyielding mask, at the hands clutched over the edge of the dock, and imagined what he was thinking, what he would have said:
“Surely you have enough of domestic trivia and Mrs. Wilcox’s conversation—hardly exciting, I should have thought—without inviting her into your drawing room. The woman should know her place.”
The trial didn’t take long. Vinson made no defence except to reiterate stubbornly, eyes fixed straight ahead, that he hadn’t done it. His counsel did his best, but with the dogged persistence of a man resigned to failure, and the jury had the look of people glad to be faced, for once, with a clear-cut case they could actually understand. The verdict was inevitable. And the subsequent divorce hearing was even shorter. It isn’t difficult to persuade a judge that your marriage has irretrievably broken down when your husband is serving a prison sentence for attempted murder.
Two months after the decree absolute we married and I took over the Georgian house, the river view, the Regency furniture. With the physical possessions, I knew exactly what I was getting. With my wife, I wasn’t so sure. There had been something disturbing, even a little frightening, about the competence with which she had carried out my instructions. It hadn’t, of course, been particularly difficult. We had planned it together during those sessions when I was painting her portrait. I had written and handed her the fake suicide note on the paper she had supplied a few days before our plans matured. We knew when the gas was due to be converted. She had, as instructed, placed the note on the kitchen table before scraping the heels of her shoes across the polished floor. She had even managed beautifully the only tricky part, to bang the back of her head sufficiently hard against the kitchen wall to raise an impressive bruise but not sufficiently hard to risk bungling the final preparations; the cushion placed in the bottom of the oven for the head, the gas tap turned on and then wiped clean with her handkerchief.
And who could have imagined that she was such a consummate actress? Sometimes, remembering that anguished animal cry of “I tried to tell him…I tried to tell him,” I wonder again what is going on behind those extraordinary eyes. She still acts, of course. I find it remarkably irritating, that habit she has particularly when we are in company, of turning on me that meek, supplicating, beaten-dog expression whenever I talk to her. It provokes unkindness. Perhaps it’s intended to. I’m afraid I’m beginning to get rather a reputation for sadism. People don’t seem to want to come to the house any more.
There is one solution, of course, and I can’t pretend that I haven’t pondered it. A man who has killed another merely to get his house isn’t likely to be too fastidious about killing again. And it was murder; I have to accept that.
Vinson served only nine months of his sentence before dying in the prison hospital of what should have been an uncomplicated attack of influenza. Perhaps his job really was his life, and without his precious alumni the will to live snapped. Or perhaps he didn’t choose to live with the memory of his wife’s great betrayal. Beneath the petty tyranny, the impatience, the acerbity, there may have been love of a kind.
But the surest option is barred to me. A month ago Emily explained, meekly, like a child propounding a problem, and with a swift sidelong glance, that she had written a confession and left it with her solicitor.
“Just in case anything happens to me, darling.”
She explained that what we did to poor Harold is preying on her mind but that she feels better now that all the details are written down and she can be sure that, after her death, the truth will at last be known and Harold’s memory cleared. She couldn’t have made it more plain to me that it is in my interest to see that
I die first.
I killed Harold Vinson to get the house; Emily, to get me. On the whole, she made the better bargain. In a few weeks I shall lose the house. Emily is selling it. After all, there’s nothing I can do to stop her; the place belongs to her not me.
After we married I gave up the teaching post, finding it embarrassing to meet my colleagues as Emily’s husband. It was not that anyone suspected. Why should they? I had a perfect alibi for the time of the crime. But I had a dream that, living in that perfection, I might become a painter after all. That was the greatest illusion of all.
So now they are taking down from the end of the drive the board which states “This Desirable Residence for Sale.” Emily got a very good price for the house and the furniture. More than enough to buy the small but pretentious brick box on an executive estate in North London which will be my cage from now on. Everything is sold. We’re taking nothing with us except the gas stove. But, as Emily pointed out when I remonstrated, why not? It’s in perfectly good working order.
Mr. Millcroft’s Birthday
Mildred Millcroft, seated in the front left-hand seat of the Jaguar, thumped her copy of The Times into a manageable shape for reading the social pages.
She said, “I see from the paper that Father shares his birthday with a number of distinguished people.” She read out their names and added, “That would please him. Quite a coincidence.”
Rodney Millcroft grunted. Since neither their father nor either of them personally knew any of the distinguished people mentioned, he couldn’t see why Mildred regarded the felicitously shared birthday as a coincidence. He wished, too, that she wouldn’t read the paper while he was driving. The perpetual rustle distracted him and, more dangerously, she was apt to turn over the pages with a flourish of disjointed leaves which momentarily obscured his vision. It was a relief when she completed her scrutiny of the Court pages and the Births, Marriages and Deaths, banged the paper into shape, although hardly the shape the publisher intended, and tossed it on top of the wicker picnic basket on the back seat. She was now able to give her attention to the purpose of their journey.
“I’ve put in a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé as well as a Thermos of coffee. If Mrs. Doggett puts it in the fridge as soon as we arrive it should be drinkable before we leave.”
Rodney Millcroft’s glance was fixed on the road ahead. “Father has never liked white wine, except for champagne.”
“I daresay not, but I thought champagne was going a bit far. Mrs. Doggett would hardly like champagne corks popping all over Meadowsweet Croft. It’s upsetting for the other residents.”
Her brother could have pointed out that for a mild, three-person celebration it was only necessary for one cork to pop, and that this was hardly likely to provoke a bacchanalia among the elderly residents of Meadowsweet Croft. He was, however, not disposed to argue. On the subject of their father the two were as one, their alliance, offensive and defensive, against that difficult old man had for over twenty years given an appearance of sibling amity which, without this common and reconciling irritant, it would have been hard for them to sustain. He said, “This was a particularly awkward day for me to get away. I had to rearrange a number of appointments at considerable inconvenience to important patients.”
Rodney Millcroft was a consultant dermatologist with a large and highly lucrative practice which caused him little trouble. His patients rarely called him out at night, never died on him and, since they were as difficult to cure as they were to kill, he had them for life. Mildred could have pointed out that the day wasn’t a particularly convenient one for her either. It had meant missing the Finance and General Purposes Committee of the District Council, who could hardly be expected to arrive at sensible decisions without her. In addition, it was she who had had the trouble of preparing the picnic. Mrs. Doggett, the warden of Meadowsweet Croft, had telephoned to say that a tea party for the residents had been arranged for four o’clock complete with birthday cake, and it was to avoid this gruesome celebration that Mildred had said firmly that they could be there for luncheon only and would bring a picnic to be eaten either in their father’s room or in the garden. Since she, too, would be sharing it she had taken some trouble. The picnic basket contained salads, smoked salmon, tongue, cold chicken, with fruit salad and cream to follow. Enumerating these delights, she said, “I only hope he appreciates it.”
“Since he has shown no sign of appreciating either of us for the last forty years he is hardly likely to begin now, even under the stimulus of a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé and the heady excitement of his eightieth birthday.”
“I suppose he would argue that he passed over to us Uncle Mortimer’s three million and that was appreciation enough. He’d probably say that he’d been generous.”
Rodney said, “That wasn’t generosity, merely an extremely sensible and legal device for avoiding Capital Transfer Tax at death. It was family money, anyway. Incidentally, he made the gift seven years ago today. He can die tomorrow and it will all be tax free.”
Both reflected that this was, indeed, a birthday well worth celebrating. But Mildred reverted to a perennial grievance.
“He has no intention of dying, and I don’t blame him. He can live another twenty years for all I care. I only wish he’d drop this obsession about moving to Maitland Lodge. He’s perfectly well looked after at Meadowsweet Croft. The home is extremely well run and Mrs. Doggett is a most capable and experienced woman. The local authority have a very good reputation for their geriatric services. He’s lucky to be there.”
Her brother changed gear and turned carefully into the suburban road leading to the home.
“Well, if he thinks we’re going to find over sixty thousand a year between us to pay for a place at Maitland Lodge, it’s time he faced reality. The idea is ludicrous.”
They had had this conversation many times before. Mildred said, “It’s only because that dreadful old Brigadier is there and keeps visiting Father and telling him how wonderful the place is. I think he even took Father to spend a day there. And it’s not even as if they’re old friends. Father only met him on the golf course. The Brigadier is a bad influence on Father in every way. I don’t know why they let him out of Maitland Lodge. He seems to be able to hire cars and travel the whole country at will. If he’s so old and frail that he needs to be in a home they should see that he stays there.”
Both Rodney and Mildred had every intention of seeing that their father, Augustus, stayed in Meadowsweet Croft. Although eighty, he was not particularly frail, but a total inability to cook for himself or, indeed, do anything which he regarded as women’s work, coupled with an acerbic tongue which had driven away a succession of housekeepers except those who had been alcoholic, mad or kleptomaniac, had made residential care inevitable. It had taken his children considerable time and trouble to persuade him into Meadowsweet Croft. The relief for them, if not for him, had been considerable. They told him on their infrequent visits that he was a very fortunate old man. He even had a room to himself where he was able to display the results of his lifelong hobby, a collection of ships in bottles.
Meadowsweet Croft was nowhere near a meadow, nor was it a croft and it could only have been described as “sweet” by a visitor partial to the smell of lemon-scented furniture polish. It was, however, very well run, almost aggressively clean and the diet so carefully balanced in accordance with modern theories about the feeding of the elderly that it would have been perverse to expect it also to be palatable. Mrs. Doggett was a State Registered Nurse but preferred not to use the title or wear her uniform since, after all, Meadowsweet Croft was not meant to be a nursing home and her old dears shouldn’t be encouraged to think of themselves as invalids. She encouraged exercise, positive thinking and meaningful activity and was occasionally a little discouraged to realise that all the activity her residents wanted was to watch television in the lounge with their chair backs placed firmly against the wall as if to guard against the possibility of anyone creeping up on them during th
e more enthralling moments of Midsomer Murders or Wallander. They had had a lifetime of exercise, positive thinking and meaningful activity. It has to be said that Mrs. Doggett and the residents in general got on very well together, with the exception of one central misunderstanding; she took the view that the old people hadn’t come to Meadowsweet Croft in order to live a life of self-indulgent idleness, and the old people thought that they had. But they recognised that there were worse places than this—the grave for one—and when Mrs. Doggett proclaimed, as she frequently did, that she loved her old dears, really loved them, she spoke no more than the truth. In order to love them the more effectively she made sure that they were never out of her sight.
This constant surveillance was helped by the architecture of the home. It was a single-storey, U-shaped building built round a courtyard with a central lawn, a single tree which obstinately refused to thrive, and four precisely arranged flower beds which were planted with bulbs in the spring, geraniums in the summer and dahlias in the autumn. The courtyard was furnished with solid wooden benches so that the residents could, in summer, take the sun. Each bore a plaque with the name of the person it commemorated, a memento mori which might have distressed users less tough than Mrs. Doggett’s old dears. The benches, not built for comfort, were solidly constructed and practically indestructible, and their occupants had no intention of adding to them.
It isn’t easy to manage a satisfactory picnic sitting in line on a hard bench with no table. Mildred had thoughtfully provided large paper napkins, and they sat in a row with these on their laps while she passed plates of salmon and ham and distributed lettuce leaves and tomatoes. The other benches were unoccupied—the residents had no great love of fresh air—but the picnickers were watched by interested eyes while, across the courtyard, Mrs. Doggett occasionally waved an encouraging hand from her office window. Augustus Millcroft ate heartily but in silence. Conversation was perfunctory until the fruit salad was finished when, as his children expected, he embarked on his old grievance.