What to do When Someone Dies

by Nicci French

  I stopped, my brain hurting with the effort of holding together all the information that wanted to fly in different directions. Therefore what? Therefore a typo, a tease, a slip of the pen, a red herring, a mistake, a contradiction, a fraud, a mystery – something manufactured to drive me mad.

  I rang the bell, and when Frances didn’t answer the door, let myself in with the key I still had. I called from the top of the stairs. The basement light was on. I knew Beth was away on holiday, so I thought that Frances was probably about, but there was no answer. I went down, wriggling out of my coat as I did so, pulling off my scarf, tossing them both over the easy chair as I came into the room.

  Frances had obviously been there earlier and was expecting to return. The radiator was warm, the Anglepoise lamp over her desk was turned on, although the rest of the room was in shadow, and there was a mug beside her computer, as well as her glasses and several glossy holiday brochures with exotic destinations.

  I prowled restlessly round the office, pulling random books off the shelves. I opened the drawers of Frances’s desk and peered inside: a drawer for receipts, one for stationery, another for an assortment of old menus, leaflets and empty bottles. I felt more than usually uneasy now that I knew David had had an affair with Milena, and Frances had had an affair with – with who? The ghastly suspicions I had were eating away at me, although I knew I was probably being ridiculous. Frances, with a husband who cheated on her under her nose with her business partner, and a woman she thought of as a friend who had snuck in under false pretences, gained her confidence, and now spent her time digging out her most intimate secrets.

  Eventually I sat down at Milena’s large desk, switched on the side lamp, and turned on her computer, drumming my fingers on the keyboard as I waited for it to boot up. It was very quiet. I could hear the radiators hum and the wind blow against the glass. Every so often, a car passed or a door slammed, far off. It was quite dark outside now, and the room was dim apart from the two pools of light cast by the lamps. I had a sudden overwhelming urge to be back in my down-at-heel little house – not on my own, though; not in the lonely here and now. I wanted to be there with Greg, blinds drawn, the kettle boiling, him singing loudly and tunelessly and asking what we should eat for supper, reading out crossword clues that neither of us ever got, putting his arms round me from behind and resting his chin on the top of my head. My world of safety, no matter how scary it was outside.

  I shivered and concentrated on the screen, typing in Milena’s password, accessing once more her hectic private life. I heard footsteps on the pavement drawing nearer, then receding. A dog barked. I clicked once more on the messages from David and stared at them, as if some secret was hidden between the lines.

  ‘Oh, God, Greg,’ I said out loud, and leaned forward, rolling the chair a bit closer to the desk and resting my head on my arms. My foot touched something solid. I sat up and pushed the chair back again. I bent down, just a little, to see what was there.

  A boot, lying lengthways, but a boot wasn’t heavy, was it? Two boots, black with elegant pointed toes and small, sharp heels. The room shifted around me; the walls seemed to close in. There was a sour taste in my mouth. I bent down further. I heard a gasp, and it had come from me but it didn’t sound like me. I stood up, the floor tipping beneath me, sweat prickling on my forehead, and held on to the desk to steady myself. Then I saw. Her body lay bundled under the desk, but her head stuck out, and her eyes were looking up at me. I staggered back, my hand over my mouth. I closed my eyes, but when I opened them again, she was still there: how could I have missed seeing her until now?

  I don’t know how long I stood there, almost gagging, staring into the sightless eyes. But gradually thought returned. First, I had to make sure she was dead. I knew she was – you don’t have to be familiar with death to recognize it – but I had to check. I crouched and dragged the body clear of the desk. It was heavy and awkward. I put my ear against her mouth and felt no breathing; I put my thumb where the pulse should have been and felt nothing. There were bruises on her throat and her lips were faintly blue. The sight struck fresh horror into me, even though I had known from the moment I’d seen the body bundled under the desk that this was no accidental death. I gave a few feeble presses on her chest, all the time certain that it was useless. And yet she was warm. Not so many minutes ago she must have been alive. I held her head in my hands and gazed at her thin, intelligent face, her blind, open eyes. Frances stared up at me. Her beautiful linen skirt had risen up above her knees. I saw that her legs were the legs of an ageing woman, and her face had lines and creases I hadn’t noticed before. There were tiny strands of grey in her highlighted hair. Her wrists were thin. A thought spiked through me: perhaps the killer was still there. Fear turned me cold and shivery; my legs shook and when I stood up they would barely hold me. I listened. I heard the radiators still humming, the far-off noise of the main road.

  As quietly and calmly as I could, I put on my coat and scarf. I walked across the room, eased the front door open, closed it softly behind me and went out into the street without looking back. I wasn’t sure if there were other people around. I wasn’t aware of them but there was nothing about me that would make them remember.

  My first impulse was to escape, to return home, to pretend I hadn’t been there. But I thought of Frances. Had I made sure she was really dead? It felt as if it had happened years before and to someone who wasn’t quite me. I had felt her pulse. She had looked dead. Could I be sure? Weren’t there people who had been revived long after they were apparently dead? As I turned out of Tulser Road on to the bustling main street I saw a phone box that hadn’t been vandalized. I could dial 999 without having to put money in. Some strange bit at the back of my mind remembered that 999 calls were recorded, so I tried to make my voice different from normal, a bit muffled. I asked for an ambulance and said that someone was badly hurt, maybe dead, then I gave the address. When the woman asked for my name I said I couldn’t hear, it was a bad line and hung up. Before I reached the Underground station, I heard the siren of an ambulance, though I didn’t see it. I didn’t know if it was the one I had summoned. In London, you hear so many.

  When I reached the station, my hand was suddenly trembling so much that I couldn’t extract the Oyster card from my purse, and when I managed it I dropped it and bent down to fumble for it. A young man stopped to help me and looked at me worriedly. When he asked me if I was all right, I couldn’t speak properly. He must have thought I was on some strong medication. It took a supreme effort to do the simple things, to catch the train in the right direction, to get off at my stop. All the time a thought was repeating in my head, like a tic, like a dripping tap, like a rattling window: Frances is dead, Frances is dead.

  When I arrived home I went straight upstairs and pulled off my clothes, just letting them fall, and got into a bath. I lay there for more than an hour, letting water out as it cooled and refilling it with hot, only my face protruding. If I had had the choice, I would have lain there for the rest of my life, warm and wet and safe. I scrubbed my face. I washed my hair and then I cut my toe- and fingernails as if I was purifying myself. Finally, reluctantly, I got out and put on what had become my normal domestic outfit of old jeans, baggy sweatshirt and slippers.

  Then I started to clean the house. From cupboards and shelves I retrieved every bottle of bleach and disinfectant and polish in the house. With cloths and brushes and sprays, I scoured and scraped every surface. I filled two large bin-bags with rubbish and things that weren’t quite rubbish and things that weren’t really rubbish at all but that I thought I’d be better off without or that I could do without. I thought of one of my grandmothers – my father’s mother – who had seemingly spent her entire adult life cleaning. Even the thought of her conjured up a smell of pine-scented air-freshener. For her, cleanliness was a form of display, a recurrent demonstration that she had the cleanest lavatory of all of her friends. For me it was about purifying, cutting away, eliminating.

>   I checked the time. It was just after seven. When I had got rid of ten items of clothing, I could have a drink. It was easy. I instantly disposed of clothes I’d kept out of sentiment, because I’d worn them as a teenager or at college, or I’d been given them by a boyfriend or bought them in a particular place, that time in Queensland or Seville. As I crammed them into another bin-bag, I saw that I had put in far more than ten. Twenty at least. I deserved an extra large drink as a reward for that. And if I drank a whole bottle of wine, I could throw away the bottle.

  There were eight in the little rack in the kitchen. I found the oldest wine I had. We’d bought it in France a couple of years earlier for what had seemed a lot of money at the time, ten or twenty euros. It had been for a special occasion that had never come. I opened it and poured myself a glass. I sipped. It tasted bitter. Was it corked? I’d never quite known what that meant. It would do, though. Perhaps it needed to be drunk with food. I didn’t have anything that seemed suitable so I toasted some bread and spread butter on it. I munched the toast and finished the glass of wine. Then I looked in the cupboard and found a tin of olives I’d forgotten. I opened the tin and cut my finger on the lid. I wrapped a tissue round it and poured myself another glass of wine. I ate an olive. Everything I ate, everything I drank, was emptying the house just a little more.

  When the doorbell rang, I hadn’t quite finished the second glass of wine, but I still felt lightheaded. I opened the door. It was Johnny.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ I said wearily.

  He walked inside, and although he’d been there before he was looking around him as if he was seeing it for the first time. I picked up my glass. ‘I’m drinking,’ I said. ‘You want some?’

  ‘All right.’

  I poured him some wine and handed it to him. He took a gulp and pulled an approving face. He picked up the bottle and studied it. Then he raised his eyes and looked me squarely in the face. ‘Have you heard about Frances?’ he said.

  ‘What? Tell me.’

  ‘She’s dead. She was murdered.’ There was a pause. ‘You don’t look shocked.’

  ‘I knew.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I found the body,’ I said. ‘I called the ambulance.’

  Johnny was visibly startled. He stepped back as if I’d struck him. ‘You did? Then why weren’t you there when they arrived? Why didn’t you talk to the police?’

  ‘I came straight home.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wasn’t ready to talk about it.’

  ‘I don’t think it works like that,’ he said. ‘When you find a body, you’re meant to stick around, you know, talk to the police, that sort of thing.’

  ‘There’s too much to explain.’

  ‘Is there now?’ He raised his eyebrows and a shiver of apprehension ran through me. ‘David rang me. One of the things he said was that the police want to talk to everybody involved. Apparently they’re having trouble tracking you down. For someone who’s been working in the office for several weeks, you haven’t left much trace.’

  ‘I wasn’t on the books,’ I said.

  ‘No address. No phone number.’

  ‘You’ve got my address,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you tell them?’

  I had a sudden sense of alarm. Had I miscalculated? Did anybody know that Johnny knew me? Did David?

  ‘Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it.’

  Johnny frowned at me. ‘I don’t understand this and neither do I like it. Not one bit. You found the body. What’s the problem with talking to the police about it? Don’t you want to help them? And why are you so difficult to track down? Is there anything you want to tell me?’

  It may have been the memory of Frances’s body in my arms or the wine or the sheer tiredness, but I couldn’t spin any more lies, not just then. But I took a deep breath before I spoke, because I felt I was stepping out into a different sort of world and I was scared. My skin was cold with fear.

  ‘I’m not Gwen,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t understand. What does that mean, you’re not Gwen?’

  ‘It means that my name isn’t Gwen. There is a Gwen Abbott. She’s a friend of mind. I borrowed her name. Stole it.’

  ‘I…’ He stopped, his mouth hanging open as he stared at me.

  ‘My real name is Eleanor. Eleanor Falkner.’

  ‘You mean you were lying?’ he said. ‘All the time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So when we were in bed together and I called you Gwen and you just… I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It got out of hand.’

  Johnny gave a horrible laugh. ‘Got out of hand?’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

  He sat down heavily and some of his wine splashed on to the sofa. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’ll want to put salt on that.’

  ‘It’s a crappy old sofa.’

  ‘So, Eleanor.’ Johnny said my name as if it was one he’d never heard before, from a different language, hard to pronounce. ‘Why did you do this? Or should I just call the police?’

  I thought for a moment and then I went and sat beside him on the sofa. I told him he could call the police if he wanted, but first… And then I told him everything I could, not like a proper story but in a mess of fragments, all out of order, with additions and little explanations. I told him about Greg. I even fetched the picture of the two of us together. Johnny had seen me naked, slept with me, but now I felt even more naked, even more exposed to him. I told him about my connection to Milena. At first he asked questions, but as I continued he became quieter, his expression darker. When I finished he was silent for a long time.

  ‘I don’t even know where to start,’ he said. ‘How could you do such a thing? How could you lie to so many people?’

  ‘I didn’t plan it,’ I said. ‘Really I just wanted to see where Milena worked. I got invited in and it developed a momentum of its own.’

  ‘Just to take one example, almost entirely at random, you used me to get the password so that you could read Milena’s secret mail, things she wanted nobody to see.’

  ‘I didn’t plan things. I didn’t plan us. But she died with my husband. I needed to know everything I could.’

  ‘So I was just a step on that road,’ said Johnny. ‘Something a bit like Milena’s password.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t like that at all. I wasn’t using you. It was something that happened and I didn’t stop it happening – I still don’t know why.’

  He looked at me with a sharper expression. ‘So it meant something to you?’ he said. ‘It wasn’t just to find out about Milena.’

  ‘No! But it was wrong all the same. I was so hurt and so confused and I should never have slept with you. It wasn’t fair.’

  ‘But you did. And now someone has been killed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps because you came and stirred things up.’

  ‘I’ve thought of that.’

  Johnny put the glass down and then put his hands on my face, ran them down to my neck. I willed myself to stay entirely still, although my skin was crawling with dread. ‘So who do you think killed her?’ he said at last.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What if it was me?’

  ‘Was it?’ I asked.

  He raised his right hand from my neck and slapped me across the face so hard that tears came to my eyes. I didn’t speak.

  ‘That’s for lying to me,’ he said. He got up.

  ‘Wait,’ I said, as he turned to go. ‘I need to show you something.’

  ‘What?’

  I went over to the little chest, opened the drawer and drew out the menu card. Without saying anything I passed it to him and he stared at it.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said eventually. ‘Why the fuck have you got this?’

  ‘It was found a
mong Greg’s possessions. It was what made me believe he was having an affair with Milena. It even has the date on it. But then you said something that made me realize you were with her on the twelfth of September.’

  ‘But this is mine.’

  ‘What do you mean, yours?’

  ‘She sent it to me.’

  ‘She can’t have done.’

  ‘You think I wouldn’t remember?’

  ‘But it’s to “Darling G”.’

  He examined it for a few seconds. ‘No. That’s just a continuation of the J – you can even see the join if you look closely.’

  ‘How come it was in Greg’s stuff,’ I asked weakly, ‘if she sent it to you?’

  ‘I sent it back. I sent everything that had ever belonged to her back when she finished it – marched round to her house and dumped it in her lap.’

  ‘So it was in her possession, not yours.’

  ‘I thought she’d just burn it or something.’

  I rubbed my face, trying to concentrate. ‘How did it get from her house to here?’

  Johnny shrugged. ‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’

  ‘Maybe it was Frances all the time,’ I said drearily.

  ‘What the fuck are you on about now?’

  ‘Frances was having an affair too,’ I said. ‘I thought maybe -’

  ‘I don’t want to hear what you thought about Frances,’ he said angrily. ‘She’s dead. Killed by some maniac. Let her alone, do you hear me? You’ve done enough. She was a good woman. Now leave her in peace.’

  ‘Are you going to call the police?’ I said.

  ‘I think that’s for you to do, don’t you?’ he said. ‘At the moment they’re curious. Soon they’ll be suspicious. Don’t leave it too long. Or I’ll make up your mind for you.’

  As soon as he was gone, I rang Gwen. I didn’t even say hello. ‘Have the police been in touch with you?’ I asked.

  ‘Ellie? Yes, some policeman rang me. How on earth did you know?’

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  Chapter Twenty-five