by Richard Hull
From the front gate the road to Llwll bears slightly to the right, and then turns quite sharply to the right, having the meadow in which Farmer Williams puts his cows on the right, and the steep bank of the dingle on the left. Then it swerves sharply to the left and continues its descent to the little stone bridge at the bottom over the Brynmawr brook.
I must admit that the bridge over the stream is often a charming spot. The banks of the dingle covered with primroses in early spring, and later with bluebells and wild anemones, have always a certain fascination for me, and the little brook is always pleasantly chattering. In the autumn there are as good blackberries there as anywhere else, and I am delighted when my aunt gathers them and will even help her, though I prefer collecting the succulent mushrooms that abound in the grass at the bottom.
It was there I was sitting this morning, thinking, when I was recalled to a sense of my present surroundings by my aunt’s voice and the barking of dogs. My aunt, I should say, has two mongrel fox terriers. At the time when she acquired them she had just been reading some absurd comic history of England, full, I gather, of elementary humour of the schoolboy variety. In this two silly words coined by the author had fascinated her.
I remember her staring at these uninteresting but innocent white quadrupeds with black markings and saying suddenly:
‘I shall call them Athelthral and Thruthelthrolth.’
I recoiled in horror. I knew my aunt’s sense of humour. She was quite capable of standing in the public street of Llwll or Abercwm or even Shrewsbury, and calling out, ‘Athelthrolth, Thruthelthral, Thruthelathelthrothel, Althel-throthelthruth,’ and getting redder and redder in the face until bursts of primitive laughter compelled her to stop while the bystanders must inevitably think her crazy. I only hoped that I should never be compelled to stand by and listen.
I made a desperate attempt to avoid such a disaster.
‘Why not call that one Spot?’ I suggested.
‘Why?’ said my aunt.
‘Well, he’s got a black spot on his – er –’ I paused delicately.
‘On his rump,’ said my aunt coarsely. ‘I think’ – she stared hard and pointedly at my forehead where it chanced there was a slight gathering – I am rather subject to these minor unpleasantnesses, but there is no need to call attention to them – ‘I think I shall call you Spot,’ and she did for some days, until fortunately even she got tired of the alleged witticism.
However, Athelthral and Thruthelthrolth her dogs remained, though fortunately convenience has shortened them to Athel and Thruthel, to which they answer. Unfortunately, however, they have a dislike, heartily reciprocated, for So-so, of whom they are jealous because he is allowed in the house and they are not. It was the noise of their ill-bred attack which roused me from my reverie. It is curious how animals take after their owners.
My aunt’s voice broke in. ‘Do stop dreaming and pick up your beastly pet, unless you want Athel to kill him. He’s a very good ratter. I can’t hold Thruthel back much longer either,’ and indeed the dog was straining to get at my poor So-so.
With one quick motion I kicked away the barking Athel and swept So-so, still yapping defiance courageously, into my arms.
‘And another time don’t you dare to kick my dog – or anyone else’s dog.’ My aunt glared at me. ‘You understand?’
I half-turned my back on her and looked up the steep bank of the dingle. My mind was made up.
‘I see. I am to allow you and your curs to kill my dog without stirring a muscle in self-defence. No, my dear Aunt. No.’
There was a contest of wills for some few moments as we glared into each other’s eyes. Very much I have no doubt could have been read in both. I was the first to turn away and saunter up the dingle. My aunt continued up the road, and afterwards I slowly followed her. It is a fatiguing hill, and I had no desire to be passed on the way up by my aunt, who always runs rather than walks; nor had I any intention of hurrying. But my mind was made up.
2
I think it was really made up some time ago; but perhaps it was true to say that that moment was decisive. I might have gone back on my decision before then, but now it is irrevocably fixed.
But it is all very well to make up your mind that somehow or another your aunt shall pay the penalty of her bad driving and shall come crashing down to that bridge where she has so insulted you, and in sight of the very bush where she has jeered and laughed at you, the slipperiness of her beloved road caused by the eternal rain of her idolatrously and senselessly loved Wales being perhaps a contributory cause: it is another thing to arrange for it to happen – especially when for the reasons I have already explained it is essential that no chance of suspicion shall fall on you.
I have been thinking over many ways, but there seems to be some difficulty in each case.
My first idea was that I should wait for a moonless night on which I knew my aunt was going to drive out, and then place some obstruction on the road. This would probably mean waiting some months, as at present it does not get dark until very late, and it would be no good arranging for her to run into it as she came uphill. She would not be going fast enough to be hurled over the bank.
Not that I am not prepared to wait provided the plan seems good enough; but I very much doubt if it is. In the first place the obstruction must appear natural, otherwise there will be inquiries, and it is very hard to block a road with anything sufficiently large to do the work required, sufficiently small not to be obvious yards before by the headlights of the car, and which might reasonably have come on the road by natural causes. A branch of a tree would be insufficient unless of fair size, and a trunk would be seen. Besides, how am I to supply it, unless I cut down one of the trees by the side of the road, the exertion of doing which would be prohibitive, besides the fact that one cannot do it unobserved, nor is it easy to make it look natural. I have examined all the trees, and none of them looks in the least likely to fall, nor is there a telegraph pole conveniently placed.
There are, it is true, some very dark patches on the road before it starts to go downhill where some heavy obstruction might be placed without being too visible, but they are all quite near the house, and my aunt always starts slowly, partly because her old engine prevents any other course, and partly because of the sharp corner on the road. Moreover, supposing that my obstruction is placed there, it is still possible that some other vehicle might run into it. It is unlikely, since Brynmawr is on the road to nowhere practically speaking, and behind the house the road turns into the veriest lane, little more than a cart track leading up to the heather and bracken that surround the Old Farm where Williams lives and his sheep graze. It would give me no compunction at all that my obstacle should hurt Williams when he returns drunk from the Llwll market, but his horse would probably stop before running into it, and drunk or sober, Williams would remove whatever was there, and then no obstacle of any kind could be replaced there for fear of causing questions to be asked.
Moreover, I know of no natural obstacle that I could put there, nor an artificial one that I could remove immediately afterwards without leaving some trace of its having been there. The method seems to be uncertain (which is highly undesirable) and difficult to execute, and, what is worst of all, risky. Unless I can get some really good idea on the subject, I shall not try it.
I have been wondering if I could cause her car to catch fire while my aunt is sitting in it. It is very significant that in all my dreams (and they occur almost nightly now) it is a blazing car which is rolling down the side of the dingle. There have been cases reported in the papers where people have, or are said to have, got rid of some undesirable person and then burnt them while sitting in a car. It is, however, a very remarkable fact, that fire does not seem to do its work properly. Only too often I notice the body is not entirely burnt, and then these busybodies of police doctors come along and are able to make the most alarming and almost inconceivable deductions. I shall not therefore be so foolish as to attempt to burn my a
unt’s body. Besides, this method involves as a first step the actual physical killing of my aunt, and I do shrink with a natural and, I think, commendable squeamishness from that actual deed. Blood is so repellent.
In fact, the very thought is so disturbing that I had to stop writing and read a story of de Maupassant’s to calm my nerves, before I could continue to write these notes. It may seem absurd, by the way, to write them at all, but I find that a frank discussion of the courses open is very beneficial to the intellect. After all, soldiers, I believe, though a stupid class of people, are encouraged to attempt to stimulate their brains into thinking by writing what they call an ‘appreciation’.
But to resume. Is it then possible to arrange some contrivance so that the act of starting the car and driving off would start some electrical contrivance or time machine of some sort which should ultimately set fire to the car? The machine might be put as near as possible to the petrol tank, and it might be operated by a wire attached to the gear lever, so that the act of putting the car in gear would start the machine. There are great advantages in this method. The machine and the attendant wire and all possible fingerprints would be destroyed by the fire. It would be automatic, and it could very well occur at a time when I was nowhere near the spot.
Let me think of any possible disadvantages.
Well, firstly, my aunt might be quick enough to get out. I really don’t know about that, but I should imagine that the effect of a spark on petrol confined in a close space would be a pretty well instantaneous explosion. I should like to experiment, but there are obvious difficulties! And then the spark must, I suppose, be in the petrol tank, but yet I imagine if whatever gives it is beneath the petrol, there might, so to speak, be no spark. But then probably it would be possible to arrange that it was above the top of the petrol. I should have to wait my opportunity when the tank was not quite full, a condition that must frequently occur.
Yes, there is much to be said for this. And a little revenge by means of petrol would be suitable. Unfortunately, however, there is one rather serious drawback. I have not the slightest idea of how to make such a machine, and I can hardly ask! Still, it must be possible to find out. I will keep the idea in mind. It has very great possibilities.
Promising though this is, I will not abandon considering all other ways. A very obvious idea, suggested by my aunt’s driving, is to tamper with the steering. Nothing is easier than a little weakening of the steering rod, but nothing is more certain than that if there is one place where steering has necessarily to be careful it is when leaving the garage of Brynmawr and going down to the front gate, whether you go by the narrow passage to the front door, or by the yard gate and the road. If there was anything wrong with the steering, it is almost certain that my aunt would find it out before she went down the hill to the brook.
But supposing there was nothing wrong when she started, but that any sudden jerk to her steering wheel would cause a break in the steering rod, and supposing that I arranged that there should be some sudden need for her to swerve? Supposing, for instance, that I arranged that So-so should run across the road just in front of her in the dark patch where the drive swings to the right? She would not, I believe, be so callous as deliberately to run over my poor Peke, and so she would try to go to the left (there is a bank on the right), and to come sharply back to the right, but then, smash! – and on would go the car, not to the right, but straight down the bank in front.
Now is there no flaw in that? Yes. Supposing she put on her brakes hard. She will be going slowly at the time, and she will stop before she reaches the drop, and then there might be no smash-up of the car and the steering gear might be examined, and then who knows what might happen? But there is an obvious means of avoiding this. Her brakes must not work.
That’s it, the steering rod nearly broken and the brakes out of action. One hole in the master cylinder and the piston inside will not send the brake fluid along the pipes to any of the brakes on each of the wheels, and the cam will not push out the shoes on to the brake drum, and down will go Auntie and Morris and all! In fact it’s simpler than that: I needn’t puncture the master cylinder – which might be noticed – I need only remove a nut so that the brake fluid escapes through the joints in the oil pipes and the trick is done. And who is to say that the nut did not work loose, the steering gear have a flaw, quite naturally? Herbertson perhaps should have noticed it last time he overhauled the car, but, with care, I can make the point that Herbertson is very careless in his repair work and quite untrustworthy, so careless that I never entrust my car to him. A further advantage.
I will think it over with the greatest care, but I think that plan should be satisfactory.
3
I have been reconnoitring the ground. Really my metaphors are becoming very military! Old Spencer has a son, an unpleasant, hearty sort of fellow, all loud bounce and handshaking, who has the most extraordinary attachment for that curious and depressing anachronism, the Territorial Army (after all, if war is abolished, why not be logical, I say, and abolish soldiers too? I have never met a really desirable one). Anyhow, it is from him that I suppose I have picked up this silly phrase. He never can see you looking at anything or finding out at, say, the County Ball, where the supper room is, without saying, ‘Reconnoitring? Time spent in reconnaissance is rarely wasted, or is it “really wasted”?’ and with that feeble joke – apparently embodying a quotation from one of his foolish textbooks – he will drop the owlish expression he considers good acting and laugh uproariously. He has no restraint, no real self-control. Only soldiers and schoolboys need textbooks with such platitudinous maxims.
The point of my reconnaissance, however, is not so much, as young Spencer would say, the lie of the ground as the use of cover. In plain English I have been looking to see exactly where and how So-so is to be let loose to cause the necessary alarm. Moreover he must be rehearsed in his part; otherwise, nervous little darling that he is, he might refuse to cross the road with the car coming or run back to me, and I think it is advisable, just in case the plan is not entirely successful, that I should be neither seen nor heard, like a good little boy.
Now it is essential that the swerve and the crash shall take place just on the curve of the road; otherwise my aunt will merely proceed straight down the road, and that is of no interest to me. She must go right on over the edge and down into the dingle, and there must not even be a tree to stop her course until the car has gathered a really adequate momentum. Of course the sides of the dingle are nowhere quite free of trees, but if she goes over where I intend her to, there will not be obstruction for some time, for a sufficient time for my purpose. If only one could explain it to her and mark out the spot with white lines on the ground!
However, that being impossible, it is clear that So-so must cross the road at a particular point (which I have marked with a stone), just about when the Morris is between the second and third trees from the front gate. Now the question is, how to induce him to do so, and where shall I be at that moment?
I have given this a good deal of thought. In the first place it is impossible for me to stand on the other side of the dingle and call So-so. He wouldn’t stay there when I went away. Nor have I any intention of being on the bank of the dingle near the road. It would indeed be ironic if my aunt’s car ran over me! No, I must be close so as to control So-so, and I must be hidden on the right-hand side of the road, that is to say behind the hedge that divides Farmer Williams’ meadow from the road. On the left of the road, the dingle side, there is of course no hedge or fence – a fact which I know so well that I ought to have stated it before if I had considered anyone reading these notes. Behind this hedge then, I must be concealed, or perhaps, better still, behind the tree a yard or two into the field while So-so waits on the edge of the road, ready to rush across when I give him the signal, and that suggests to me the way to send him across – how this business of writing does help one’s thoughts!
I have never favoured teaching So-so tricks.
The process is fatiguing, and the obstinacy of So-so really remarkable, but there is a particular form of sweet biscuit for which he will do anything. They are quite easy to come by, as there are always some in the dining-room, being home-made. From my earliest youth I have never known them called anything else than ‘Brynmawr crinkly biscuits’; they are made, I suppose, of flour and butter mostly, with sugar, and emerge as rugged little fingers of shortbread nature – very attractive. The scheme then will be to train So-so that one of these is to be found on the left-hand side of the road, and that he will be held on the right-hand side until I call out ‘Paid for’, and let him free of the string round his collar by which I shall hold him. I can start by placing the biscuit so that he sees me do it, and taking him only just to the other side of the road before I let him go. Gradually I can extend the distance, so that he starts behind the hedge, and then get him used to my being behind the tree. Finally he must recognize the plan and be anxious to dash for the biscuit even if he has not seen me put it there. Fortunately So-so does not bark when he is under the influence of a really strong emotion, such as greed!
There was a slightly disturbing incident this morning.
Acting on the principle that there is no point in wasting time, I had no sooner finished the words above than I went down to the dining-room to get some crinkly biscuits, So-so trotting happily at my heels, for the little wretch is well aware where his favourite dainty is kept. As it happened there were not a great many in the box, and after I had eaten a few myself I found that only seven or eight were left. Feeling that my time would be wasted if I conducted a rehearsal of less than eight performances, I naturally took the lot.
No sooner had I started for the drive than I heard my aunt’s voice: ‘Edward, Ed-ward.’ I did not want to have her searching for me while I was teaching So-so his little trick, so, wisely, I went back to see what was the matter.