by G. M. Dobbs
Granny wasn’t sure what had woken her.
Beside her Arthur was snoring away.
For a moment she had imagined she was bathed in a blue light.
Granny frowned, reached across and pinched her husband’s nostrils together. He snorted as if gasping for air, and then when she let go of his nose she was rewarded with thirty seconds of blissful silence before he started snoring again.
‘Mocha,’ Granny mumbled and got out of bed, pulled her bathrobe around her and using the glow of the street lighting coming through the window she located her slippers. Then, knowing it would be useless to try and get back to sleep, she made her way downstairs, thinking a cup of tea and a pipe would be just the right combination to relax her.
It had been a long day, the fete having gone on until well into darkness, and it had been close to eleven by the time Granny and her drunken husband had arrived home. Of course Granny had partaken in a couple of glasses of stout herself but Arthur seemed to have gone for considerably more and Granny had found herself having to support him as they had walked home, his equally drunk friend, their next door neighbour, Stan besides them. Edith, Stan’s own wife, had left the fete early complaining of a headache. And as a result of this Granny had found herself having to support both men as they made their way through the streets. Stan had, at one point, collided with a wheelie bin and ended up kissing the kerb, splitting his lip in the process. He had looked ghastly, like a zombie from a cheap movie, as he got back to his feet, blood glistening on his face. Of course Granny had tried to take a look at the injury but he had pushed her away, mumbling that he would be fine, blood bubbling between his teeth as he spoke.
‘You could have knocked your bloody teeth out,’ Granny had said.
To that Stan had pulled out his false teeth. He smiled, all gums and lip, and held the bloodstained dentures for Granny’s examination.
‘Dyna ffiaidd,’ Granny had said. ‘Put them back in.’
Granny smiled at the memory and located the tobacco jar she kept under the sink and started to thumb a cherry mixture into the bowl. Once filled, she took a match to it and happily puffed away as she poured boiling water from the kettle over the teabag in her favourite mug. She spooned in a little sugar, added milk and allowed it to stand for a moment. Ordinarily she used the teapot to make tea and would often scold Arthur for making it directly in the cup, but at the moment she couldn’t be arsed to go through the full and proper tea making ritual.
It was two thirty in the morning, after all.
She took a sip of her tea and almost dropped it when the blue light flashed again, momentarily blinding her. She put her tea onto the worktop and pushed her pipe back into her mouth.
So she hadn’t imagined the blue light after all.
There was more likely an ambulance parked outside the house. Maybe someone in the street had been taken ill, which wouldn’t be unheard of since many of Granny’s neighbours were elderly.
Granny leaned over the sink and lifted the net curtains.
The old woman peered into the glass, her reflection bounced back at her but she could make out two police cars parked in the street. Now that was unusual and Granny went to the hall and slipped a coat over her nightdress and then went and opened the back door. She stepped out into the garden and shivered slightly, feeling the chill, but stood there, puffing away at her pipe and looking at the twin police cars.
There were no officers in either of the vehicles and Granny wasn’t at all sure where the police were. None of the houses opposite had any of their lights on and other than the occasional burst of illegible noise from the police radios in the cars the night was perfectly silent.
One more the blue lights flashed as the dome on one of the police vehicles went through its cycle. It must have been set on intermittent since it wasn’t constantly flashing, but would go several minutes between flashes.
Granny sucked hard on the pipe, allowing the flavoured smoke to linger in her mouth while she stood there. She felt even colder now that the night air had penetrated her clothing, but there was no way she was going back inside until she’d discovered just where the police were.
It would be impossible for her to go back to sleep and she knew she’d just toss and turn all night, imagining all sorts. No the only thing to do was to find out just where the police were, and if she was lucky why they were wherever they were. She didn’t consider this nosey in the slightest and felt it was only natural to want to find out what was happening when you were awoken up in the early hours by a police presence outside your house. This was a close community and everyone knew each other, so whomever it was that required a police presence, might even be in need of some help from a friendly face.
Granny would most certainly be able to help.
If only she knew what was going on.
Lemmy suddenly appeared from nowhere and rubbed itself against Granny’s legs, startling the woman.
‘Come on,’ Granny bent and picked the cat up, holding it against her breast and tickling it beneath its chin. ‘You scared me.’
The cat looked back at Granny and began rubbing its head against her chin.
‘Stop that,’ Granny said and put the cat back down and allowed it to run into the house, where it would sit on the kitchen table until she went in and poured it a saucer of milk. The cat must have thought it was Christmas, Granny reflected. Finding someone to feed it so early in the morning, or late at night depending on your point of view.
Her pipe had gone out and Granny tapped the bottom of the bowl against her hand, shaking the loose tobacco out and allowing it to fall onto the garden. She placed the pipe in her pocket and was just about to go back inside, and watch through the kitchen window, when she heard movement coming from the house next door down.
Stan and Edith’s.
Granny stood there and watched as first one policeman walked out of the garden and went toward one of the police vehicles, and was then followed by another two officers who seemed to be supporting Stan as they led him towards the second of the police cars.
Stan looked to be in distress and seemed to be sobbing. It looked to Granny like he would fall to the ground were not the two policemen supporting him.
‘Stan?’ Granny said, not meaning to speak aloud.
The two policemen stopped, looked at her and then Stan, held between them, looked across and caught her eyes. He looked positively ghastly, his pallor pale in the sodium glare of the street lighting.
‘Granny,’ he said. ‘It’s Edith.’
‘Edith?’ Granny took a few steps towards the fence that separated her property from Stan’s house.
‘She’s dead,’ Stan said, sounding the words as if he couldn’t quite believe it himself. ‘She’s gone. My Edith’s gone.’
‘Dead?’ Granny felt her stomach turn but before she could ask anything else the policemen had bundled Stan into the back of the car.
Granny stood there for several moments after the police cars had driven out of the street.
‘Wake up,’ Granny said, shaking Arthur.
Arthur’s eyes opened, startled and his hands came up as if to protect himself from some assailant.
He farted and the old woman stopped shaking him.
‘What’s er, are you mad?’ Arthur sat up. ‘What time is it?’
‘Edith’s dead,’ Granny said.
‘What?’
Granny told her husband of the police cars in the street, of Stan being led to a police car, and of what he had said.
Arthur just sat there, staring at her.
‘Are you sure Stan said Edith was dead?’ he asked, finally.
‘Of course I am,’ Granny said. ‘It’s not the sort of thing you would be unsure of.’
Silence fell between them; neither of them able to fully understand the events that seemed to have taken place
Three
‘Murdered?’ Granny couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
After watching the police leave with Stan during th
e early hours, she had awoken Arthur and told him the bad news. They had then shuffled around for most of the day in shock without being able to find anything out. Stan still hadn’t returned from the police station and no one in the street seemed to know anything.
‘Yes indeed,’ Mr Patel said and handed Granny a pouch of her usual tobacco. ‘Her body was found you see.’
Granny didn’t need the tobacco but she took it anyway.
‘Found where?’ she asked.
‘In a ditch,’ Mr Patel said and then leaned across the counter and lowered his voice. ‘Terrible business. She was found with her head smashed in. She was in the field behind the community centre.’
‘The community centre? Who told you this?’
‘Mrs Enoch,’ Mr Patel said and stood, crossing his arms and clucking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘I’ll miss Edith, you know. She was a very good customer.’
‘She was a very good friend,’ Granny said and Mr Patel nodded, obviously considering their loss to be equal.
For a moment there was silence during which time a couple of kids entered the shop and started thumbing through the magazine rack. Mr Patel’s eyes followed them, suspiciously.
‘And how would Mrs Enoch know all this?’ Granny asked, presently.
‘Because it was her who found the body. She was out walking her dog and came across it. Must have given her a fright.’
‘Must have,’ Granny said.
‘Put that down,’ Mr Patel shouted at one of the kids, startling Granny. ‘This is not a lending library. If you want to read it then buy it.’
‘I’ve got to go,’ Granny said and quickly left the shop but Mr Patel was ignoring her in any case and all his attention was centred on the children at the magazine rack. He would no doubt remind Granny that she had forgotten to pay for her tobacco the next time he saw her.
Betty Enoch lived a few streets away and Granny went straight there after leaving the shop. She was still dazed by what Mr Patel had told her and she needed to speak to Betty before she would believe what she had heard. The trouble with hearing everything second-hand was that things tended to get exaggerated and quite often separated from the truth by a very wide margin. She had spent most of the morning trying to find out what had happened and was thinking it likely that Edith had suffered a sudden heart attack or been involved in an accident, but not once had the word murder crossed her mind.
Why would it?
Murder was something you read about in the newspapers and it never ever happened on your doorstep. Least not in Gilfach, where criminal activity seemed to be limited to the occasional drunken brawl or random act of garden vandalism, it didn’t.
Betty herself opened the door. She was wearing faded jeans and a tatty sweater and holding a tin of furniture polish.
‘Hello Granny,’ Betty said.
‘I want to talk to you about Edith.’
Betty nodded and stood aside.
‘Come in, ‘ she said.
Granny found herself seated in a kitchen that smelt of lavender polish while Betty made them both a cup of tea. Granny admired Betty’s new microwave for a moment, thinking she could do with one to replace her own which had a wonky door that often refused to close properly.
Granny took a mug of tea from Betty and then waited for the other woman to sit down before asking:
‘Is it true you found poor old Edith?’
‘I did,’ Betty nodded. ‘Or rather Snooky did. The poor thing’s still traumatised.’
Granny looked across at Snooky, a two year old Yorkshire Terrier, who was sleeping peacefully in his basket. The animal had either been sedated or his trauma was very short lived.
‘What happened?’
‘Well,’ Betty said. ‘I was walking Snooky. We always go across the waste ground behind the community centre. I let Snooky off his lead there, you see. For him to have a little run around, you see. He loves to stretch his little legs and often runs himself ragged.’
Granny nodded. The waste ground behind the community centre where the colliery had once stood was popular with dog walkers and also served as a shortcut from one end of the village to the other.
‘Anyway,’ Betty continued, ‘I’d taken Snooky off his lead and he was running on ahead, yapping quite happily. Then he disappeared, went down the ditch at the far end of the field and no matter how much I called he wouldn’t come back. But I could hear him barking and I thought he’d hurt himself so I ran over. I was terrified that little Snooky had broken a leg or something, he’s very fragile you know.’
‘I’m sure, Granny said, not really caring about the dog and wishing Betty would stick to the point.
‘Anyway when found him, I got the shock of my life,’ Betty had to bite her lip to hold back the sobs that were forming in her throat, before continuing. ‘When I found poor Snooky he was whimpering and licking poor Edith’s face as if trying to wake her up.’
‘Edith was in the ditch?’
‘She was,’ Betty shivered. ‘Horrible it was. Her face was covered in blood and poor Snooky got some on him.’ The woman’s words trailed away to nothing as sobs finally filled her throat and she let them go.
‘It must have been terrible for you both,’ Granny said and again took a quick glance at the dog who was happily asleep, no doubt dreaming of whatever it was dogs dreamt about. Whatever canine trauma he had suffered from his grim discovery certainly didn’t seem to be bothering him now.
‘Her head had been bashed in,’ Betty said. ‘Of course I didn’t hang around long but got Snooky back on his lead and made my way home to telephone the police.’
‘You didn’t have your mobile with you?’
‘Don’t have one,’ Betty said. ‘They cause cancer, you know.’
‘Only if you smoke them.’ Granny joked but found the ill-advised humour fell on deaf ears. ‘It’s not necessarily murder, though. Edith could have fallen and struck her head,’ she suggested.
‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen her,’ Betty said. ‘Poor Edith was lying on her back and the front of her face had been caved in. It was like something out of a horror film.’
‘I can hardly believe it,’ Granny said and felt her own eyes filling up. She wiped a tear from the corner of an eye with the back of a hand.
Betty nodded, sobbed and said:
‘It was her Stan that likely did for her, you know.’
Stan. Granny hadn’t even considered that and wouldn’t consider it. She had known Stan and Edith for too long and there was no way Stan would be capable of hurting Edith. If anything the other way around would have been more likely. Edith was more than capable of handling her hulking though placid husband.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Who else?’ Betty said. ‘They were seen arguing at the village fete, you know. And from what I’ve heard no one saw Edith at the fete after the argument. She seems to have vanished without trace until poor Snooky found her battered body.’
‘Everyone argues,’ Granny said. ‘Arthur and me argue all the time. In fact I think we have a daily argument.’
‘But you’ve never been found dead in a ditch afterwards.’
‘No,’ Granny admitted. ‘I haven’t. Though Arthur’s come close a couple of times.’
‘Stan must have lost his mind,’ Betty said. ‘He must have snapped and...,’ once more her words were swallowed up by a series of sobs.
‘What time did you find Edith?’ Granny asked, presently.
‘It was about seven,’ Betty said. ‘I wanted to get Snooky walked and be back home for my soap operas on the television.’
‘Then Stan couldn’t have done it,’ Granny said. ‘He was with my Arthur at that time.’
‘Don’t mean he didn’t kill her earlier,’ Betty pointed out and Granny had to at least consider the possibility.
Four
It was all so odd and Granny was confused as she made her way back to her house that afternoon. She saw a few people on the way home, exchanged pleas
antries and was asked several times if she had heard the shocking new about Stan and Edith. Each time Granny had nodded and rushed off, refusing to be drawn into the conversation.
There was no way she could believe Stan had murdered his wife, and yet from everything she’d heard it most certainly looked like a possibility.
But what did she know for certain?
Granny compiled a mental list of the facts.
She knew that Stan had arrived at the stall yesterday afternoon and that he had been alone, muttering something about Edith being around somewhere. That he had spent the entire night with Arthur in the beer tent, which was not unusual since they did that every year. And that he had made his way home after the fete with both Arthur and Granny and during all that time Edith hadn’t been seen. It had been concluded that she had been under the weather and had gone home early, after all Stan had said she had seemed a little off lately, not herself. That all seemed commonplace enough but there was the fact that the police had led Stan away from the house during the early hours.
Granny would believe that Stan had harmed his wife, not Stan.
It just wasn’t possible.
This sort of thing didn’t happen to people like Stan and Edith.
Or did it, Granny wondered. There was always some story in the newspapers where friends and neighbours would claim that a murderer had always seemed such a quiet, likeable man. Seemed the sort who wouldn’t hurt a fly, they would say. They would pontificate that they were totally shocked by whatever it was that had happened, and then get on with their lives with the knowledge that anyone could hide a monster inside them. It seemed that even the best of us could spill over into horrendous violence, given the right set of circumstances.
No, no, Granny chided herself.
Not Stan and Edith.
People must have gotten it wrong and it was, after all, only gossip without substance.
The only thing Granny knew for certain was that the police had taken Stan away.
Everything else was just speculation.