A Shock to the System

by Simon Brett

  His first shock was that the stuff was blue. Little blue granules rather like those tiny cake decorations known as ‘hundreds and thousands’.

  Oh dear. Maybe they would change colour as they dissolved. He poured a few granules into the wine glass and stirred vigorously.

  At first they seemed unwilling to liquefy at all, but then they did. The colour, however, remained. The sherry turned bright, bright blue.

  He wondered, not very seriously, about weaning Merrily off sherry and on to Blue Curacoa, but, even if that could be achieved, he couldn’t see her being fooled. The liquid had a nasty livid sheen on the top, and an opaque sediment was forming at the bottom.

  He sniffed it. The smell hadn’t changed. That was one thing in its favour.

  Hmm. Nobody was going to drink from a glass like that by mistake. Maybe from a bottle, though. .? It was worth trying.

  He emptied the remains of the sachet into the sherry bottle and shook it vigorously. For a moment he set aside the problem of getting Merrily to drink straight from the bottle. Just see if it works first.

  He looked through the dark green glass. The adulteration of the contents was not apparent at first glance. The colour didn’t look odd. But when it was held up to the light the thick sediment showed, and when he looked close, undissolved granules clustered against the sides like some obscene Chinese meal.

  It was pretty obvious it wasn’t going to work, but something kept him going. Maybe it took time to dissolve. Maybe more would have the required effect.

  He ripped open another sachet and, forming a funnel from a piece of cardboard torn off the box, poured the contents in. Another shake and the bottle’s contents looked even more bizarre.

  Suddenly the incongruity of his actions struck and he found himself laughing. The whole situation was farcical and filled him with a strange elation. He slit open the remaining six sachets and poured their stock of granules into the bottle. Then he shook it, like a rattle, singing, through his giggles, the South American tune ‘La Bamba’. What he was doing seemed the funniest thing that had ever happened to him. The seriousness of his intention and the crass incompetence of what he was doing triggered his wild hilarity.

  At last he sobered up and looked at the bottle.

  No. No one would ever be taken in by that blue mass of half-dissolved granules. The person who drank through that lot would have to be very, very determined to die.

  He heard a noise from the house and looked up to see Merrily waving from the kitchen window. Damn. Hadn’t noticed the time. Well, he couldn’t wash up his experiment now. Do it some other time when he was alone in the house.

  He shoved the bottle, the glass and the remnants of the weed killer packing on a shelf behind a large rectangular can of creosote.

  Need for a rethink. Silly to imagine it would have been as easy as that. He went indoors, mildly irritated but not depressed by his failure.

  He carried the Stanley knife to explain his presence in the shed. ‘Wondered where it had got to, darling,’ he said kissing Merrily perfunctorily on the forehead.

  ‘I’m surprised you can find anything in that shed,’ she accused. ‘It’s a terrible mess. Really needs tidying.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’

  ‘You must get round to it some time.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Though I suppose I’ll have to end up doing it myself. Like most things,’ she concluded with a long-suffering sigh.

  The remark was meant to make Graham feel guilty. But he was damned if he was going to let it. Guilt, he had decided, even for trivial matters, was not an emotion in which he intended to indulge in the future.

  He was coming down from having shouted the children into bed when he met Lilian in the hall. She moved her arm behind her back, but too slowly. He saw the bottle of sherry in her hand.

  ‘Where did you get that from?’ he snapped.

  She gave him the defiant look of the boy in When Did You Last See Your Father? an expression that didn’t suit her.

  ‘In the shed.’

  ‘Why on earth did you go in there?’

  ‘The bottle was around at lunchtime. I saw it. I knew you had hidden it somewhere, Graham.’

  ‘Why should I do that?’

  She straightened up into a posture of martyrdom.

  ‘I know you don’t like me, Graham.’ She left a pause for the flood of contradictions, which didn’t come.

  ‘But I do think hiding the sherry’s pretty petty.’

  ‘But I wasn’t hiding it. I was just using the bottle. It’s not sherry in there.’

  ‘It smells like sherry.’

  Oh God. Had she snatched a quick tipple out in the shed? What effect would it have? He had wanted to test the dosage somehow, but this was not the way he would have chosen.

  ‘Well, it isn’t sherry!’ He snatched the bottle from her quite roughly. ‘I was just using it for something in the garden. If you want a drink, there’s some wine in the fridge.’

  A deep breath telegraphed the start of Lilian’s weeping. ‘I think you’re very cruel to me, Graham. You know I’m desperately upset about how Charmian behaved. And now you … I expected a bit of support from you … I wouldn’t have changed my will if I’d known — ’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Graham stumped off towards the garden. Going through the utility room, he saw the sticky labels Merrily used to identify food in the freezer. He tore one off and wrote on it with felt pen: ‘POISON. NOT TO BE TAKEN.’

  He stuck it over the bottle’s original label. Out in the shed he hid the bottle deep in the corner behind a pile of seed trays. Too risky to put it in the dustbin. He’d dispose of it another time.

  He looked out of the dusty window to the lights of the house next door. How warming, welcoming other people’s lights looked. Perhaps, he thought wryly, that was how the lights of his house looked to outsiders, the glow of a happy family within. Huh.

  It was going wrong. Lilian’s finding the sherry shouldn’t have happened. He had taken a stupid, unnecessary risk.

  In fact, his whole approach had been wrong. Slipshod. Inefficient.

  He had killed the old man effortlessly and that was now a source of fierce pride. But killing Merrily would take more cunning. In the euphoria of having made the decision he had been careless, underestimated the difficulties that faced him.

  Just because of his failure to get George’s job, he must not let his standards slip. He had always prided himself on efficiency, and now he had to demonstrate that he was more efficient than Robert Benham. Since he was prevented from deploying his skills at the office, then he would apply them to his wife’s murder.

  No more carelessness.

  Detailed, systematic planning.

  He was determined that the murder was going to work.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was Merrily herself who showed him how to do it.

  On the Sunday evening, after Lilian had finally gone off to what she insisted on calling her ‘lonely little room’, Graham was watching something less than riveting on the television, when he thought of a new potential economy and went up to his ‘study’ to work it out on the calculator.

  He had assumed Merrily to be pottering around in the kitchen, so was surprised to see her kneeling on the floor in front of his desk, sifting through the contents of the drawers. She turned round guiltily at his approach.

  ‘Lost something?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what are you looking for?’

  ‘I’m looking for some evidence of what you’ve done.’

  That gave him a momentary frisson, but then he realised that she was once again referring to his imagined infidelity. God, her stupidity infuriated him.

  ‘What sort of evidence had you in mind?’ he asked lightly. ‘It might be anything. You never know what’s going on behind a man’s bland exterior. Vivvi found a whole library of pornographic magazines at the back of Will’s sock drawer.’

  He understood. Merrily had b
een talking to her friend. Vivvi was, if possible, more affected than Merrily herself and the current form her affectation took was feminism. In her case all this involved was wearing designer dungarees, talking about menstruation a lot and refusing to cook meals when she felt like being taken out by her long-suffering husband.

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you. You won’t find any pornography here. I suppose I could get some if you fancy it,’ he added ironically.

  ‘It wasn’t pornography I was looking for in your case.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Letters.’

  ‘What sort of letters?’

  She stood up and faced him. Defiance did not add to her charms. ‘Vivvi’s mother,’ she began, ‘works at Sotheby’s. She’s a porcelain specialist.’

  ‘Ah.’ Graham was utterly bemused by this. Merrily, he thought, as she went on, has gone off her rocker. Maybe I could get her certified and solve the problem that way.

  ‘On her way to Oxford Circus last Monday evening she walked past a wine bar. She saw you coming out with a woman.’

  So that was it.

  ‘Whom you kissed,’ Merrily continued inexorably.

  Graham’s first instinct was to explain. It was only Stella from the office, after all. There was no sexual interest on his side. Merrily’s spy had got the wrong end of the stick.

  But another instinct stopped him. There was something of value in Merrily’s suspicion. He could not yet identify what it was, but he knew he must foster her distrust.

  ‘She was talking rubbish,’ he blustered, too vehemently. ‘It must have been someone else she saw.’

  ‘You were late that evening. I remember. And you’d had a drink.’

  ‘Yes. O.K., I had. But just with someone from the office.’ He carefully made the truth sound like a lie.

  ‘I don’t believe you, Graham.’

  ‘Well, you bloody well should. You’re not going to find any love letters in here.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. There aren’t any.’

  ‘Then you won’t mind my looking.’

  She spoke with triumph, but in fact was playing straight into his hands.

  ‘Yes, I bloody do mind you looking! It’s an invasion of privacy. This is my room. These are my papers. Get out!’ And he hustled her to the door.

  She turned on the landing and looked at him piercingly. Lilian Hinchcliffe would have been proud of the way her daughter was playing the scene.

  ‘Very well, then,’ said Merrily.

  She used her littlest voice, but there was no doubt that her words were a challenge. She would be back for further snooping.

  With a show of anger Graham slammed the study door. But when he sat down in his swivel chair, he was smiling.

  Merrily having given him a lead, Graham found that the rest of the components of his plan slotted quickly into place. He had the feeling that his luck was in, that he was working well. His training programme was right and he would peak at the proper time. It was the same good feeling that had always come to him, until the last year, in the run-up to examinations and job interviews. He felt that he was in charge of events, almost that the world span at his bidding.

  Robert Benham had, unwittingly, given him another vital component. The trip to Brussels, designed to frustrate Graham’s progress at work, was going to prove an important boost to his other career. It would provide what is essential to any serious murderer, an alibi.

  Graham also realised, his mind working gleefully well, that the trip could be used to increase Merrily’s suspicions of his fidelity.

  He had mentioned Brussels to her once or twice, but now if she brought up the subject he veered guiltily off it, apparently unwilling to give details of the nature of the conference. He also made tactical purchases of new pyjamas and a different aftershave which he hid with minimum efficiency at the back of his shirt drawer.

  Stella had to play her part, too, though she was unaware of it. Meeting her alone in the corridor one day, Graham said yes, he’d love her to cook supper for him one night. She responded eagerly, suggesting the next evening. No, he didn’t think he could make that … or he might be able to. . He’d have to consult the diary at home. Could she ring him that evening to check? Merrily would be out till ten.

  Merrily, who had made no arrangement to go out, took the call, as intended. Graham watched covertly as she reacted. Stella, taken off her guard, must have said something before she rang off, because it registered on Merrily’s face before she turned accusingly to Graham.

  ‘Wrong number, was it?’ he asked with innocence.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Merrily slowly.

  He continued the campaign when he saw Stella at the office the next day. Yes, he’d gathered what had happened. Merrily had come home unexpectedly early. Yes, it had given him a nasty turn, too. Meant he’d have to tread a bit warily for a few days. So supper might be a risk. But how about a drink after work?

  In fact, going to Stella’s flat for supper might have advanced his plan further, but Graham did not relish the inevitable sexual dimension. It was not that he felt any physical revulsion, just that sex seemed decreasingly relevant in his life. For the same reason, it was some weeks since he had made any physical approach to Merrily, a fact which, working like everything else in his favour, gave her more food for suspicion. He added to this by ringing his wife from the wine bar and saying he was having to work late. Then he went back to chatting with Stella. Again he kissed her as they parted. You never knew who might be watching. But he felt no sexual interest.

  Even the pornography he bought raised no excitement. He was interested, particularly to see how candour and photographic techniques had advanced since such material had last been important to him, in his late teens, but the interest was dispassionate. His preoccupation with the murder gave him an ascetic sense of purpose, of all his concentration being focused on a higher goal.

  The purchase of the pornography was perhaps an indulgence, gilding the lily, but he did need a lure for Merrily. She had been looking for letters, but he could not supply any, unless he resorted to forging them. She had, however, also mentioned pornography as evidence of masculine perfidy, so that would have to do.

  He bought some half-dozen magazines for spankers, suckers and mammary fetishists. Deciding that to leave them in his sock drawer would be too slavishly imitative, he put them underneath some insurance brochures in the lock-up part of his desk (to which he was confident Merrily had a key).

  The Brussels trip was not the only reason why he had to complete his preparations quickly. Another approaching deadline urged speed.

  He did not get a chance to test the next part of his plan until the weekend before he went away. Showing a calculated softening in his attitude, Graham allowed his family the Saturday afternoon trip to the cinema which he had previously denied. He encouraged Merrily and Lilian (it was the long Easter weekend and his mother-in-law was going to be there for the duration) to accompany the children. He would stay and watch the sport on television. Merrily had looked suspicious of his altruism, which was no bad thing from Graham’s point of view, but agreed to go. Lilian said it was a great treat; no one ever asked her to go anywhere.

  Over lunch, casually, he mentioned that he thought it was about time they had some new curtains in the spare room. Merrily said, yes, fine, she agreed but thought that they hadn’t got any money to have them made. Graham said he remembered how, when they moved into their first house in Barnes, she had made all of the curtains herself. Now they were hard up again. .

  Merrily’s little face hardened. ‘Very well. Of course, Graham. I’m sure I can find time, along with everything else, to make some curtains. Mind you, Graham, you will have to fork out for the actual material, and the lining, and Rufflette tape. Or perhaps you’d like me to weave the stuff myself. . Perhaps we could organise the children to go into Richmond Park and collect dog hairs. Then we could spin them into yarn and. . What do you say?’

  Graham didn’t r
ise to her. Awfulness from Merrily could now only add to his serenity. ‘No, I’m sure I can afford to buy the material. Is the sewing machine working?’

  ‘I imagine so. I haven’t used it since we moved, so it’s still where the removal men left it.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘In the loft.’

  As he climbed the folding steps and slid aside the wooden covering to the loft entrance, an unpleasant thought struck him. Suppose the light up there had been added later, an extension in modern white plastic-coated flex taken off the antiquated wiring. .

  The fear was quickly resolved. At the top of the steps, he pulled himself up on a pipe which led from the hot-water tank, and reached for the switch. The naked bulb threw instant light over the draped and dusty shapes under the rafters. And revealed that the light switch dated from the same time as the rest of the house’s electrical system.

  He stood astride the opening and surveyed the scene of the crime. The pipe against which he steadied himself could have been designed to conduct electricity.

  He looked closely at the switch. That too couldn’t have been better. It was the old brass type with a scalloped dome. The switch had a round metal end. Red and black rubber-covered wires emerged from the rose for about four inches before they disappeared into a metal tube fixed along a horizontal rafter. Gingerly he felt the thick, stiff wire through its coating and noted with satisfaction that the rubber already showed the crosshatched lines of perishing.

  He hummed contentedly to himself as he went down to the cupboard under the stairs and switched off the power. Then he pulled on a pair of rubber gloves he had found in the kitchen; they were rather tight and squeezed his hands. He picked up a large rubber-cased torch and a pair of pliers and set off back upstairs.

  He didn’t need the pliers. The old insulation crumbled off the wire like pastry. Soon the golden glow of the two wires showed in his torchbeam. He squeezed them gently together between finger and thumb.

  Then he unscrewed the dome of the switch, fretted away at more of the insulation inside and bent one of the wires up out of its porcelain protection until it would touch against the metal cover when he replaced it.