by Simon Brett
Jean commented on the workmanship.
“When I do a job, I like to do it properly,” Harry Morton said defensively.
“Of course. Didn’t you . . . like the fireplace?”
“Nothing wrong with it. But it was very draughty.”
“Yes.” She wondered for a moment if Harry Morton were about to change from being one of her easy charges to one of her problems. He was her last call that day and she’d reckoned on just a quick visit. She’d recently made various promises to Mick about spending less time with her work. He’d suddenly got very aggressively male, demanding that she should look after him, that she should have a meal ready for him when he got home. He also kept calling her “woman”, as if he were some character out of the blues songs he was always listening to. He didn’t manage this new male chauvinism with complete conviction; it seemed only to accentuate his basic insecurity; but Jean was prepared to play along with it for a bit. She felt there was something in the relationship worth salvaging. Maybe when he relaxed a bit, things would be better. If only they could spend a little time on their own, just the two of them, away from outside pressures. . . .
She stole a look at her watch. She could spend half an hour with Harry and still be back at what Mick would regard as a respectable hour. Anyway, there wasn’t anything really wrong with the old boy. Just needed a bit of love, a feeling that someone cared. That was what most of them needed when it came down to it.
“Harry, it looks to me like you may have been overdoing it with all this heavy carpentry. You must remember, you’re not as young as you were and you do have to take things a bit slower.”
“I take things at the right pace,” he insisted stubbornly. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
But Jean wasn’t going to have her solicitude swept aside so easily. “No, of course there isn’t. But look, I’d like you just to sit down for a moment in front of the . . . by the fireplace, and I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
Grumbling, he sat down.
“And why don’t you put the television on? I’m sure there’s some nice relaxing programme for you to see.”
“There’s not much I enjoy on the television.”
“Nonsense, I’m sure there are lots of things to interest you.” Having started in this bulldozing vein, Jean was going to continue. She switched on the television and went into the kitchen.
It was some children’s quiz show, which Harry would have switched off under normal circumstances. But he didn’t want to make the girl suspicious. If he just did as she said, she would go quicker. So he sat and watched without reaction.
It was only when the commercials came that he took notice. There was a commercial for double glazing. A jovial man was demonstrating the efficacy of one particular system. A wind machine was set in motion the other side of an open window. Then the double-glazed window was closed and, to show how airtight the seal was, the man dropped a feather by the joint in the panes. It fluttered straight downwards, its course unaffected by any draughts.
From that moment Harry Morton was desperate for Jean to leave. He had seen the perfect way of testing his workmanship. She offered to stay and watch the programme with him, she asked lots of irrelevant questions about whether he needed anything or whether there was anything her blessed volunteers could do, but eventually she was persuaded to go. In fact she was relieved to be away. Harry had seemed a lot perkier than when she had arrived and now she would be back in time to conform to Mick’s desired image of her.
Harry almost slammed the door. As he turned, he felt a shiver of cold down his back. Right, feathers, feathers. It only took a moment to work out where to get them from.
He picked up his ratchet screwdriver and went over to the bed. He drew back the candlewick and stabbed the screwdriver deeply into his pillow. And again, twisting and tearing at the fabric. From the rents he made a little storm of feathers flurried.
It was cold as she walked along towards Harry’s flat and the air stung the rawness of her black eye. But Jean felt good. At least they’d got something sorted out. After the terrible fight of the night before, in the sobbing reconciliation, after Mick had apologized for hitting her, he had suggested that they go away together for Christmas. He hated all the fuss that surrounded the festival and always went off to stay in a cottage in Wales, alone, until it all died down. And he had said, in his ungracious way, “You can come with me, woman.”
She knew it was a risk. The relationship might not stand the proximity. She was even slightly afraid of being alone with Mick for so long, now that his behaviour towards her had taken such a violent turn. But at bottom she thought it would work. Anyway, she had to try. They had to try. Ten days alone together would sort out the relationship one way or the other. And Christmas was only three weeks off.
As so often happened, her new mood of confidence was reflected in her work. She had just been to see Mrs Grüber. Nimrod had made a complete recovery after the removal of his growth and the old lady had actually thanked Jean for insisting on the visit to the vet. That meant Mrs Grüber could be left over the Christmas break without anxiety. And most of the others could manage. As Mick so often said, thinking you’re indispensable is one of the first signs of madness. Of course they’d all be all right if she went away. And, as Mick also said, then you’ll be able to concentrate on me for a change, woman. Yes, it was going to work.
Again her ring at the doorbell was met by a whispered “Who is it?” from Harry Morton. It was Jean—could she come in? “No,” he said.
“Why not, Harry? Remember, I do have a duplicate key. The Housing Trust insists that I have that, so that I can let myself in if—”
“No, it’s not that, Jean love,” his old Northern voice wheedled. “It’s just that I’ve got a really streaming cold. I don’t want to breathe germs all over you.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that.”
“No, no, really. I’m in bed. I’m just going to sleep it off.”
Jean wavered. Now she came to think of it, she didn’t fancy breathing in germs in Harry’s stuffy little flat. “Have you seen the doctor?”
“No, I tell you it’s just a cold. Be gone in a day or two, if I just stay in bed. No need to worry the doctor.”
The more she thought about it, the less she wanted to develop a cold just before she and Mick went away together. But it was her job to help. “Are you sure there isn’t anything I can do for you? Shopping or anything?”
“Oh. Well . . .” Harry paused. “Yes, I would be grateful, actually, if you wouldn’t mind getting me a few things.”
“Of course.”
“If you just wait a moment, I’ll write out a list.”
Jean waited. After a couple of minutes a page from his notebook was pushed under the door. Its passage was impeded by the draught-excluding strip on the inside, but it got through.
Jean looked at the list. “Bottle of milk. Small tin of baked beans. Six packets of Polyfilla.”
“Is that Polyfilla?” she asked, bewildered.
“Yes. It’s a sort of powder you mix with water to fill in cracks and that.”
“I know what it is. You just seem to want rather a lot of it.”
“Yes, I do. Just for a little job needs doing.”
“And you’re quite sure you don’t need any more food?”
“Sure. I’ve got plenty,” Harry Morton lied.
“Well, I’ll probably be back in about twenty minutes.”
“Thank you very much. Here’s the money.” A few crumpled notes forced their way under the door. “If there’s no reply when you get back, I’ll be asleep. Just leave the stuff outside. It’ll be safe.”
“Okay. If you’re sure there’s nothing else I can do.”
“No, really. Thanks very much.”
Harry Morton heard her footsteps recede down the passage and chuckled aloud with delight at his own cunning. Yes, she could help him. First useful thing she’d ever have done for him.
And she hadn’t noticed the w
indows from the outside. Just thought the curtains were drawn. Yes, it had been a good idea to board them up over the curtains. He looked with satisfaction at the wooden covers, with their rows of screws, each one driven securely home with his ratchet screwdriver. Then he looked at the pile of new wood leaning against the door. Yes, with proper padding that would be all right. Mentally he earmarked his bedspread for the padding and made a note of the idea on the “Jobs to Do” list in his notebook.
Suddenly he felt the chill of a draught on his neck. He leapt up to find its source. He had long given up using the feather method. Apart from anything else, he had used his pillows as insulation in the fireplace. Now he used a lighted candle. Holding it firmly in front of him, he began to make a slow, methodical circuit of the room.
It was two days before Christmas, two o’clock in the afternoon. Jean and Mick were leaving at five. “Five sharp, woman,” he had said. “If you ain’t here then, woman, I’ll know you don’t give a damn about me. You’d rather spend your life with incontinent old men.” Jean had smiled when he said it. Oh yes, she’d be there. Given all that time together, she knew they could work something out.
And, when it came to it, it was all going to be remarkably easy. All of her charges seemed to be sorted out over the holiday. Now Nimrod was all right, Mrs Grüber was in a state of ecstasy, full of plans for the huge Christmas dinner she was going to cook for herself and the dog. Mrs Walker was going to stay with her daughter, which meant that she would see the grandchildren, so she couldn’t complain for once. Even smelly old Mr Kitson had been driven off to spend the holiday with his married sister. Rather appropriately, in Bath. The rest of her cases had sorted themselves out one way or the other. And, after all, she was only going to be away for ten days. She felt she needed the break. Her Senior Social Worker had wished her luck and told her to have a good rest, and this made Jean realize how long it was since she had been away from work for any length of time.
She just had to check that Mr Morton was all right, and then she was free.
Harry was steeping his trousers in mixed-up Polyfilla when he heard the doorbell. It was difficult, what he was doing. Really, the mixture should have been runnier, but he had not got out enough water before he boarded up the door to the kitchen and bathroom. Never mind, though, the stuff would still work and soon he’d be able to produce more urine to mix it with. He was going to use the Polyfilla-covered trousers to block the crevice along the bottom of the front door. His pyjamas and pullover were already caulking the cracks on the other one.
He congratulated himself on judging the amount of Polyfilla right. He was nearly at the end of the last packet. By the time he’d blocked in the plug sockets and the ventilation grille he’d found hidden behind the television, it would all be used up. Just the right amount.
He froze when he heard the doorbell. Lie doggo. Pretend there’s no one there. They’ll go away.
The bell rang again. Still he didn’t move. There was a long pause, so long he thought the challenge had gone. But then he heard an ominous sound, which at once identified his caller and also raised a new threat.
It was the sound of a key in his lock. That bloody busybody of a social worker had come round to see him.
There was nothing for it. He would have to let her in. “Just a minute. Coming,” he called.
“Hurry up,” the girl’s voice said. She had told him to hurry up. Like the new checker, she had told him to hurry up.
He picked up his ratchet screwdriver and started to withdraw the first of the screws that held the large sheet of chipboard and its padding of bedclothes against the front door. At least, he thought, thank God I hadn’t put the sealing strips along here.
Jean’s voice sounded quite agitated by the time he removed the last screw. “What’s going on? Can’t you hurry up?”
She had said it again. He opened the door narrowly and she pushed in, shouting, “Now what the hell do you think you’re—”
Whether she stopped speaking because she was taken aback by the sight of the room and her half-naked host, or because the ratchet screwdriver driven into her back near the spine had punctured her heart, it is difficult to assess. Certainly it is true that the first blow killed her; the subsequent eleven were unnecessary insurance.
Harry Morton left the body on the floor and continued methodically with his tasks. He replaced the chipboard and padding over the door and sealed round it with his trousers, sports jacket, shirt and socks, all soaked in Polyfilla. Then he blocked up the plugs and ventilator grille.
He looked round with satisfaction. Now that was real insulation. No one could die of cold in a place like that. Always had been daft, his sister. But he didn’t relax. One more final check-round with the candle, then he could put his feet up.
He went slowly round the room, very slowly so that the candle wouldn’t flicker from his movement, only from genuine draughts.
Damn. It had moved. He retraced a couple of steps. Yes, it fluttered again. There was a draught.
By the fireplace. That fireplace had always been more trouble than it was worth.
It needed more insulating padding. And more Polyfilla to seal it.
But he’d used everything in the room and there was no water left to mix the Polyfilla with. He felt too dehydrated to urinate. Never mind, there was a solution to everything. He sat down with his notebook and pencil to work it out.
Well, there was his underwear, for a start. That was more insulation. He took it off.
Then he looked down at Jean Collinson’s body and saw the solution. To both his problems. Her body could be crammed into the chimney to block out the draughts and her blood (of which there was quite a lot) could mix with the Polyfilla.
He worked at his own pace, unscrewing the boxwork he had put around the marble fireplace with his ratchet screwdriver. Then he pulled out the inadequate insulation of pillows and Do-It-Yourself magazines and started to stuff the body up the chimney.
It was hard work. He pushed the corpse up head first and the broad hips stuck well in the flue, forming a good seal. But he had to break the legs to fit them behind his boxwork when he replaced it. He crammed the crevices with the pillows and magazines and sealed round the edges with brownish Polyfilla.
Only then did he feel that he could sit back with the satisfaction of a job well done.
They found his naked body when they broke into the flat after the Christmas break.
He would have died from starvation in time, but in fact, so good was his insulation, he was asphyxiated first.
THE NUGGY BAR
MURDER, LIKE ALL great enterprises, repays careful planning; and, if there was one thing on which Hector Griffiths prided himself, it was his planning ability.
It was his planning ability which had raised him through the jungle of the domestic cleaning fluids industry to be Product Manager of the GLISS range of indispensable housewives’ aids. His marriage to Melissa Wintle, an attractive and rich widow with a teenage daughter, was also a triumph of planning. Even his wife’s unfortunate death three years later, caused by asphyxiation from the fumes of a faulty gas heater while he was abroad on business, could be seen as the product of, if not necessarily planning, then at least serendipity.
But no amount of planning could have foreseen that Melissa’s will would have left the bulk of her not inconsiderable wealth to Janet, daughter of her first marriage, rather than to Hector, her second husband.
So when, at the age of fifty-two, Hector Griffiths found himself reduced to his GLISS salary (generous, but by no means sufficient to maintain those little extras—the flat in Sloane Street, the cottage in Cornwall, the Mercedes, the motor-boat—which had become habitual while his wife was alive) and saddled with the responsibility of an unforthcoming, but definitely rich, step-daughter, he decided it was time to start planning again.
Hector Griffiths shared with Moses, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and other lesser prophets and evangelists the advantage of having written his own Bible. It wa
s a series of notes which he had assembled during the planning build-up to the launch of NEW GREEN GLISS—WITH AMMONIA, and he was not alone in appreciating its worth. No less a person than the company’s European Marketing Director (Cleaning Fluids) had congratulated him on the notes’ cogency and good sense after hearing Hector use them as the basis of a Staff Training Course lecture.
Hector kept the notes, which he had had neatly typed up by his secretary, in a blue plastic display folder, of which favoured Management Trainees were occasionally vouchsafed a glimpse. On its title page were two precepts, two precepts which provided a dramatic opening to Hector’s lectures and which, he had to admit, were rather well put.
A. EVEN AT THE COST OF DELAYING THE LAUNCH OF YOUR PRODUCT, ALWAYS ALLOW SUFFICIENT TIME FOR PLANNING. IMPATIENCE BREEDS ERROR, AND ERROR IS EXPENSIVE.
B. ONCE YOU HAVE MADE YOUR MAJOR DECISIONS ABOUT THE PRODUCT AND THE TIMING OF ITS LAUNCH, DO NOT INDULGE SECOND THOUGHTS. A DELAYED SCHEDULE IS ALSO EXPENSIVE.
A third precept, equally important but unwritten, dictated that before any action was taken on a new product, there should be a period of Desk Work, of sitting and thinking, looking at the project from every angle, checking as many details as could be checked, generally familiarizing oneself with every aspect of the job in hand. Thinking at this earlier, relaxed stage made it easier to deal with problems that arose later, when time for thought was a luxury and one had to act on impulse.
It was nearly three months after Melissa’s death before Hector had time to settle down to the Desk Work for his new project. He had been busy with the European launch of GLISS SCOURING PADS and had also found that clearing a deceased’s belongings and sorting out a will, even such a simple and unsatisfactory one as Melissa’s, took a surprising amount of time. Janet had also needed attention. Her mother’s death had taken place at Easter, which meant that the girl had been home from her Yorkshire boarding school. Janet, now a withdrawn fifteen-year-old, had unfortunately been asleep at the time of Melissa’s accident, had heard nothing and so been unable to save her. Equally unfortunately, from her step-father’s point of view, she had not been in the bathroom with her mother when the gas fumes started to escape, which would have solved his current difficulties before they arose.