The Habit of Widowhood

by Robert Barnard

  This time she had rented a cottage, as being more private. It was just outside Grange—a two-bedroom stone cottage, very comfortable and rather expensive. She had taken it for six weeks in the name of Sir James and Lady Harrington. Once there and settled in, Sir James seemed, in his way, vaguely happy: he would potter off on his own down to the lakeside, or up the narrow lanes abutting fields. He would raise his hat to villagers and tourists, and swap remarks about the weather.

  He also signed, in a wavering hand, anything put in front of him.

  Marcia wrote first to his sons, similar but not identical letters, telling them of his marriage and of his happiness with his dear wife. The letters also touched on business matters: “I wonder if you would object if I put the house on the market? After living up here I cannot imagine living in London again. Of course, the money would come to you after my wife’s death.” At the foot of Marcia’s typed script Sir James wrote at her direction: “Your loving Dad.”

  The letters brought two furious responses, as Marcia had known they would. Both were addressed to her, and both threatened legal action. Both said they knew their father was mentally incapable of deciding to marry again, and accused her of taking advantage of his senility.

  “My dear boys,” typed Marcia gleefully. “I am surprised that you apparently consider me senile, and wonder how you could have allowed me to live alone without proper care if you believed that to be the case.”

  Back and forth the letters flew. Gradually Marcia discerned a subtle difference between the two sets of letters. Those from the MP were slightly less shrill, slightly more accommodating. He fears a scandal, she thought. Nothing worse than a messy court case for an MP’s reputation. It was to Sir Evelyn Harrington, MP for Finchingford, that she made her proposal.

  • • •

  Southern found the estate agents quite obliging. Their dealings, they said, had been with Sir James himself. He had signed all the letters from Cumbria. They showed Southern the file, and he noted the shaky signature. Once they had spoken to Lady Harrington, they said: a low offer had been received, which demanded a quick decision. They had not recommended acceptance, since, though the property market was more dead than alive, a good house in Chelsea was bound to make a very handsome sum once it picked up. Lady Harrington had said that Sir James had a slight cold, but that he agreed with them that the offer was derisory and should be refused.

  Southern’s brow creased: wasn’t Lady Harrington dead?

  There was clearly enough of interest about Sir James Harrington to stay with him for a bit. Southern consulted the file at Scotland Yard and set up a meeting with the man’s son at the House of Commons.

  Sir Evelyn was in his late forties, tall and well set up. He had been knighted, Southern had discovered, in the last mass knighting of Tory backbenchers who had always voted at their party’s call. The impression Sir Evelyn made was not of a stupid man, but of an unoriginal one.

  “My father? Oh yes, he’s alive. Living up in the Lake District somewhere.”

  “You’re sure of this?”

  “Sure as one can be when there’s no contact.” Southern left a silence, so the man was forced to elaborate. “Never was much. He’s a remote bugger . . . a remote sort of chap, my father. Stiff, always working, never had the sort of common touch you need with children. Too keen on being the world’s greatest prosecuting counsel. . . . He sent us away to school when we were seven.”

  Suddenly there was anger, pain and real humanity in the voice.

  “You resented that?”

  “Yes. My brother had gone the year before, and told me what that prep school was like. I pleaded with him. But he sent me just the same.”

  “Did your mother want you to go?”

  “My mother did as she was told. Or else.”

  “That’s not the present Lady Harrington?”

  “Oh no. The present Lady Harrington is, I like to think, what my father deserves. . . . We’d been warned he was failing by his daily. Dinner burnt in the oven, forgetting to change his clothes, that kind of thing. We didn’t take too much notice. The difficulties of getting a stiff-necked old . . . man into residential care seemed insuperable. Then the next we heard he’d married again and gone to live in the Lake District.”

  “Didn’t you protest?”

  “Of course we did. It was obvious she was after his money. And the letters he wrote, or she wrote for him, were all wrong. He would never have signed himself ‘Dad,’ let alone ‘Your loving Dad.’ But the kind of action that would have been necessary to annul the marriage can look ugly—for both sides of the case. So when she proposed an independent examination by a local doctor and psychiatrist I persuaded my brother to agree.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “Said he was vague, a little forgetful, but perfectly capable of understanding what he’d done when he married her, and apparently very happy.” He paused, his mouth set in an unforgiving line. “That was the end of the matter for us. The end of him.”

  • • •

  Marcia had decided from the beginning that in the early months of her life as Lady Harrington she and Sir James would have to move around a lot. As long as he was merely an elderly gentleman pottering around the Lakes and exchanging meteorological banalities with the locals there was little to fear. But as they became used to him there was a danger that they would try to engage him in conversation of more substance. If that happened his mental state might very quickly become apparent.

  As negotiations with the two sons developed, Marcia began to see her way clear. Their six weeks at Grange were nearing an end, so she arranged to rent a cottage between Crummock Water and Cockermouth. When the sons agreed to an independent assessment of their father’s mental condition and nominated a doctor and a psychiatrist from Keswick to undertake it, Marcia phoned them and arranged their visit for one of their first days in the new cottage. Then she booked Sir James and herself into Crummock Lodge for the relevant days. “I’ll be busy getting the cottage ready,” she told the manager. She felt distinctly pleased with herself. No danger of the independent team talking to locals.

  “I don’t see why we have to move,” complained Sir James when she told him. “I like it here.”

  “Oh, we need to see a few places before we decide where we really want to settle,” said Marcia soothingly. “I’ve booked us into Crummock Lodge, so I’ll be able to get the new cottage looking nice before we move in.”

  “This is nice. I want to stay here.”

  There was no problem with money. On a drive to Cockermouth, Marcia had arranged to have Sir James’s bank account transferred there. He had signed the form without a qualm, together with one making the account a joint one. Everything in the London house was put into store, and the estate agents forwarded Sir James’s mail, including his dividend checks and his pension, regularly. There was no hurry about selling the house, but when it did finally go Marcia foresaw herself in clover. With Sir James, of course, and he was a bit of a bore. But very much worth putting up with.

  As Marcia began discreetly packing for the move, Sir James’s agitation grew, his complaints became more insistent.

  “I don’t want to move. Why should we move, Molly? We’re happy here. If we can’t have this cottage we can buy a place. There are houses for sale.”

  To take his mind off it Marcia borrowed their neighbor’s rowing boat and took him for a little trip on the lake. It didn’t take his mind off it. “This is lovely,” he kept saying. “Derwent Water has always been my favorite. Why should we move on? I’m not moving, Molly.”

  He was beginning to get on her nerves. She had to tell herself that a few frazzled nerves were a small price to pay.

  The night before they were due to move the packing had to be done openly. Marcia brought all the suitcases into the living room and began methodically distributing to each one the belongings they had brought with them. Sir James had been dozing when she began, as he often did in the evening. She was halfway through he
r task when she realized he was awake and struggling to his feet.

  “You haven’t been listening to what I’ve been saying, have you, Molly? Well, have you, woman? I’m not moving!”

  Marcia got to her feet.

  “I know it’s upsetting, dear—”

  “It’s not upsetting, because we’re staying here.”

  “Perhaps it will only be for a time. I’ve got it all organized, and you’ll be quite comfy—”

  “Don’t treat me like a child, Molly!” Suddenly she realized with a shock that he had raised his arm. “Don’t treat me like a child!” His hand came down with a feeble slap across her cheek. “Listen to what I say, woman!” Slap again. “I am not moving!” This time he punched her, and it hurt. “You’ll do what I say, or it’ll be the worse for you!” And he punched her again.

  Marcia exploded with rage.

  “You bloody old bully!” she screamed. “You brute! That’s how you treated your wife, is it? Well, it’s not how you’re treating me!”

  She brought up her stronger hands and gave him an almighty shove away from her even as he raised his fist for another punch. He lurched back, tried to regain his balance, then fell against the fireplace, hitting his head hard against the corner of the mantelpiece. Then he crumpled to the floor and lay still.

  For a moment Marcia did nothing. Then she sat down and sobbed. She wasn’t a sobbing woman, but she felt she had had a sudden revelation of what this man’s—this old monster’s—relations had been with his late wife. She felt a sudden, sharp compassion for the dead Molly. She had never for a moment suspected it. She no longer felt pity for him, if she ever had. She felt contempt.

  She dragged herself wearily to her feet. She’d put him to bed, and by morning he’d have forgotten. She bent down over him. Then, panic-stricken, she put her hand to his mouth, felt his chest, felt for his heart. It didn’t take long to tell that he was dead. She sat down on the sofa and contemplated the wreck of her plans.

  • • •

  Southern and Potter found the woman in the general store-cum-newsagent’s at Grange chatty and informative.

  “Oh, Sir James. Yes, they were here for several weeks. Nice enough couple, though I think he’d married beneath him.”

  “Was he in full possession of his faculties, do you think?”

  The woman hesitated.

  “Well, you’d have thought so. Always said: ‘Nice day,’ or ‘Hope the rain keeps off,’ if he came in for a tin of tobacco or a bottle of wine. But no more than that. Then one day I said: ‘Shame about the Waleses, isn’t it?’—you know, at the time of the split-up. He seemed bewildered, and I thought he imagined I was talking about whaling or something, so I said: ‘The Prince and Princess of Wales separating.’ Even then it was obvious he didn’t understand. It was embarrassing. I turned away and served somebody else. But there’s others had the same experience.”

  • • •

  After some minutes Marcia found it intolerable to be in the same room as the body. Trying to look the other way, she dragged it through to the dining room. Even as she did so she realized that she had made a decision: she was not going to the police, and her plans were not at an end.

  Because after all she had her “Sir James” all lined up. In the operation planned for the next few days the existence of the real one was anyway something of an embarrassment. Now that stumbling block had been removed. She rang Ben Brackett and told him there had been a slight change of plan, but it needn’t affect his part in it. She rang Crummock Lodge and told them that Sir James had changed his mind and wanted to settle straight into the new cottage. While there was still some dim light she went into the garden and out into the lonely land behind, collecting as many large stones as she could find. Then she slipped down and put them into the rowing boat she had borrowed from her neighbor the day before.

  She had no illusions about the size—or more specifically the weight—of the problem she had in disposing of the body. She gave herself a stiff brandy, but no more than one. She found a razor blade and, shaking, removed the name from Sir James’s suit. Then she finished her packing, so that everything was ready for departure. The farming people of the area were early to bed as a rule, but there were too many tourists staying there, she calculated, for it to be really safe before the early hours. At precisely one o’clock she began the long haul down to the shore. Sir James had been nearly six foot, so though his form was wasted he was both heavy and difficult to lift. Marcia found, though, that carrying was easier than dragging, and quieter too. In three arduous stages she got him to the boat, then into it. The worst was over. She rowed out to the dark center of the lake—the crescent moon was blessedly obscured by clouds—filled his pockets with stones, then carefully, gradually, eased the body out of the boat and into the water. She watched it sink, then made for the shore. Two large brandies later she piled the cases into the car, locked up the cottage and drove off in the Cockermouth direction.

  Once the horror and difficulty of the night were over, everything went beautifully. Marcia had barely settled into the new cottage when Ben Brackett arrived. He already had some of Sir James’s characteristics off pat: his distant, condescending affability, for example. Marcia coached him in others, and they tried to marry them to qualities the real Sir James had no longer had: lucidity and purpose.

  When the team of two arrived, the fake Sir James was working in the garden. “Got to get it in some sort of order,” he explained, in his upper-class voice. “Haven’t the strength I once had, though.” When they were all inside, and over a splendid afternoon tea, he paid eloquent tribute to his new wife.

  “She’s made a new man of me,” he explained. “I was letting myself go after Molly died. Marcia pulled me up in my tracks and brought me round. Oh, I know the boys are angry. I don’t blame them. In fact, I blame myself. I was never a good father to them—too busy to be one. Got my priorities wrong. But it won’t hurt them to wait a few more years for the money.”

  The team was clearly impressed. They steered the talk round to politics, the international situation, changes in the law. “Sir James” kept his end up, all in that rather grand voice and distant manner. When the two men left, Marcia knew that her problems were over. She and Ben Brackett waited for the sound of the car leaving to go back to Keswick, then she poured very large whiskies for them. Over their third she told him what had happened to the real Sir James.

  “You did superbly,” said Ben Brackett when she had finished.

  “It was bloody difficult.”

  “I bet it was. But it was worth it. Look how it went today. A piece of cake. We had them in the palms of our hands. We won, Marcia! Let’s have another drink on that. We won!”

  Even as she poured Marcia registered disquiet at that “we.”

  • • •

  Sitting in the superintendent’s poky office in Kendal, Southern and Potter surveyed the reports and all the other pieces of evidence they had set out on the desk.

  “It’s becoming quite clear,” said Southern thoughtfully. “In Grange we have an old man who hardly seems to know who the Prince and Princess of Wales are. In the cottage near Cockermouth we have an old man who can talk confidently about politics and the law. In Grange we have a feeble man, and a corpse which is that of a soft liver. In the other cottage we have a man who gardens—perhaps to justify the fact that his hands are not those of a soft-living lawyer. At some time between taking her husband on the lake—was that a rehearsal, I wonder?—and the departure in the night, she killed him. She must already have had someone lined up to take his place for the visit of the medical team.”

  “And they’re there still,” said Potter, pointing to the letter from the estate agents in London. “That’s where all communications still go.”

  “And that’s where we’re going to go,” said Southern, getting up.

  They had got good information on the cottage from the Cockermouth police. They left their car in the car park of a roadside pub, and took the lane t
hrough fields and down toward the northern shore of Crummock Water. They soon saw the cottage, overlooking the lake, lonely. . . .

  But the cottage was not as quiet as its surroundings. As they walked toward the place, they heard shouting. A minute or two later they heard two thick voices, arguing. When they could distinguish words it was in voices far from upper-crust:

  “Will you get that drink, you cow? . . . How can I when I can hardly stand? . . . Get me that drink or it’ll be the worse for you tomorrow. . . . You’d better remember who stands between you and a long jail sentence, Marcia. You’d do well to think about that all the time. . . . Now get me that scotch or you’ll feel my fist!”

  When Southern banged on the door there was silence. The woman who opened the door was haggard-looking, with bleary eyes and a bruise on the side of her face. In the room behind her, slumped back in a chair, they saw a man whose expensive clothes were in disarray, whose face was red and puffy and who most resembled a music-hall comic’s version of a gentleman.

  “Lady Harrington? I’m Superintendent Southern and this is Sergeant Potter. I wonder if we could come in? We have to talk to you.”

  He raised his ID toward her clouded eyes. She looked down at it slowly. When she looked up again Southern could have sworn that the expression on her face was one of relief.

  DOG TELEVISION

  The cat flap was a success from the start. For the first week or two the Perspex door was secured up, and Gummidge was convinced that this hole in the door was Godsent, and a secret known only to her: she used to look round to see if anyone was watching before jumping through it, preening herself on the other side that her secret was still safe. When the flap was let down she was suspicious and resentful at first, but she soon learned to pat it with her paw, like a boxer being playful, and to march through. Now her attitude to it changed: this is for ME, she seemed to say. It is MINE, and MINE ALONE. She looked with pity at Jaggers. If he had had a flap of his own it would take out a quarter of the door. So much better to have the petiteness and delicacy of a cat.