by Phyllis King
I still stood there, looking round the kitchen, thinking, wondering. Table, workbenches, oven, sink, cupboards. None of them was any use - not unless he fell and hit his head on one of their sharp edges. I thought about him sitting at the table, tipping his chair back onto the two back legs. Mum was always going crook at him for doing that, and once he’d actually tipped over backwards and landed in a heap on the floor. If I could get him to do that - get him to move his chair away from the table, closer to the workbenches, and somehow tip his chair so that he fell backwards and hit his head. That’d look like an accident, that’d be perfect. If I teased him, egged him on to see how far he could tip the chair without falling, losing his balance.
Nah, that was no good. Too risky, too damn stupid. I couldn’t be sure he’d hit his head when he fell, certainly not hard enough to kill him, and I’d have to bash him with something else once he was down. Don’t be so bloody stupid, Angela.
I looked round the kitchen again, and through the door into the laundry; at the sink, the washing machine, the tumble dryer, at the mop and brooms standing in the corner near the door.
My attention suddenly focussed on a broom. It had soft bristles, good for sweeping lino or tiled floors, not much good for murder. But those bristles were set into a solid plastic base. About 27 or 28 cms long; five or six cms wide. I grasped the handle and slammed the base down hard on the floor. Whack! It made a loud, satisfying noise. I crashed it down again - harder this time. An even more satisfying noise. I turned it upside down, held it close, studied the base. No crack, no splinter. It was as solid as my determination.
I read the manufacturers’ label stuck on it: ‘Made in Australia. Multi-purpose broom’. It would suit my purpose very well.
I thought it all through carefully - the method, the timing, the pros and cons. Oh shit, how would he, the non-existent burglar, get in? Force the front door? Break a window?
No, it couldn’t be a broken window; that would make too much noise. Even if the police accepted that I was sound asleep, they’d know that Ricky would have heard it, would have gone to investigate long before the burglar got inside the house. The back door into the kitchen would have to be the burglar’s entry and exit. Yes! That’d be perfect, because we never locked it until Mum came home from work at night.
By Saturday I was ready. Saturday was the best night because Mum was always later home Saturdays than any other night; it’d give me more time to do it, more time for Ricky to die, more time for me to be in bed and seemingly asleep.
It all went perfectly. We were watching television in the sitting room when I said I’d go and make us a hot drink. After a minute or two I called out. ‘Ricky? Can you come here a minute? I can’t get this stupid thing to work.’
I didn’t explain what ‘this stupid thing’ was, but as he came into the kitchen I stood in the doorway of the laundry and gestured towards the kettle and the coffee machine and grinder standing together on the bench opposite. As he walked towards them, his back to me, I picked up the broom.
‘What doesn’t work?’ he asked.
They were the last words he ever spoke.
When I crashed the broom down on his skull it was the same feeling as cracking the top of my boiled egg. But this egg didn’t stay in the cup. Ricky’s head slumped forward and blood gushed. He made an odd sort of noise - not a scream, not even a groan, a sort of long sigh, like air coming out of a balloon if you don’t hold the end tight enough when you’re blowing it up. For a second he stood there, then like Humpty Dumpty he crashed forward onto the bench and slowly tumbled to the floor.
I’ve done it, I’ve actually done it.
Then I began to shake. What if I hadn’t killed him, what if he should survive and tell Mum, the police... What I’d done?
I stood there, staring at him in horror, until I finally realised there was no sound, no movement from his sprawled body. He wasn’t breathing. He wasn‘t breathing. I wasn’t breathing either. I’d been holding my breath in, and with the same sort of noise that Ricky had made I expelled air from my lungs and took another deep breath.
And with that breath I suddenly wasn’t afraid any more.
I knelt down beside him, put my fingers to his neck, kept them there. There was no pulse. Gingerly I picked up one of his hands and felt for a pulse in his wrist. No pulse, no pulse there either. I dropped it quickly. It made a slight thudding sound as it hit the tiled floor, but there was no movement, not even a twitch. I stared at it, and at its mate; two hands, two ugly hands that would never touch me again, never wander over my body again, never do vile things to me again.
I started to shake again, this time with laughter, happy laughter, not hysteria, not fear. For a moment I stood there, laughing, then I glanced up at the kitchen clock and pulled myself together. Mum would be home in an hour or so, and I had things to do.
I opened the cupboard door under the sink, took out a pair of rubber gloves and slipped my hands into them. I picked up the broom, and clasped the handle, first holding it loosely then tight, and swung it in an arc above Ricky’s head in case forensics could determine the angle and the pressure used for any given movement from the pattern - or lack of it - left by rubber gloves. I only gripped the top of the handle with the gloves, and left whatever there was of my own prints elsewhere. My prints had to be on the handle - after all I often swept the floor for Mum. But I needed it to be obvious to Police Forensics that someone wearing rubber gloves had held that broom handle and struck Ricky with it, and that they’d believe the burglary-gone-wrong theory.
With my gloved hands I opened the back door and left it wide open, to make the police think the burglar had rushed out that way. I stepped outside and turned the handle with my gloved right hand. That’s how the hypothetical burglar would have entered the house, wouldn’t he - just turned the door handle and walked in.
It was all set up: the open back door, the broom lying near Ricky’s body, a canister broken on the floor, its rice contents scattered everywhere, a kitchen chair knocked over. Then a voice in my head, that could well have been Lady Macbeth’s, whispered To bed, to bed: there’s knocking at the gate.
There was no knocking, of course, and it’d be an hour or more till Mum came home, but I took my Lady’s advice and headed for my room. I left the light and the television on in the sitting room, but went to bed in the dark. It wouldn’t do for one of the neighbours to tell the police they’d seen my bedroom light on when I was supposed to have been sound asleep.
As I lay in bed, in the dark, it seemed like hours before I heard the garage door open and Mum’s car drive in.
I don’t think I actually heard, and except in my imagination I certainly didn’t see the rest of it: her gasp as she noticed the open back door, her wary voice as she called out ‘Ricky?’ Then her terrified reaction as she walked into the kitchen and saw his body.
I think I heard her call ‘Ricky?’, then a louder, startled, half-scream. I imagined her kneeling down beside him, saw her cradling his head in her arms, turning his sightless gaze towards her. And her realisation that he was dead.
But I didn’t imagine the shout, the screamed ‘No!’ and the terror that somehow lurked in her footsteps as she pounded up the stairs.
‘Angie! Oh god, noooooo.’ The ‘o-o-o-o-o-o-o’ seemed to go on forever. My bedroom door burst open, the light was switched on, and suddenly she was there, holding me, sitting -half lying - on the side of my bed, rocking me. I saw blood on her jacket, I heard her breath rasping in her throat, and I could feel her tears running down her cheeks. She just held me, looked at me through her tears, crooning ‘You’re alright, you’re alright. Thank god, you’re alright.’
‘Mum?’ I muttered, eventually. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ I blinked my eyes as I mumbled it, as though I was just waking from a sound sleep, though I don’t think she’d have taken any notice if I’d sung it with a full rock-band backing.
Everything happened so fast after that. The police. The ambulance. And M
um trying to tell me that Ricky had been hurt. Trying to stop me seeing him. Trying to say it’d be alright. And me, pretending I knew nothing about it, pretending I’d heard nothing, pretending to be concerned about Ricky.
I was in my bedroom and didn’t see his body taken away, but I could hear Mum’s hysterical voice insisting she had to go with Ricky. After their brief initial questions the police let her go in a police car to wherever Ricky had been taken. I guessed he’d been carted out in a zipped-up bag and taken straight to the mortuary, but I went along with Mum’s assertion that he was only hurt, that once he got to hospital he’d be alright.
Before she left Mum came into my bedroom where I was sitting with a policewoman, and put her arms round me again.
‘The police won’t let us stay here tonight, sweetie,’ she said. ‘We’ll stay with Nanna and Pop. I’ve just phoned and they’re coming over to pick you up. I’m going to the hospital, and as soon as I know Ricky’s going to be okay I’ll come straight over there. Can you get your things packed, and pack some clothes and toothbrushes and things for me too.’
She suddenly looked flustered as though she’d only just thought of something. ‘Ooh, I’d better take some pyjamas and toilet things for Ricky, hadn’t I?’ she whimpered breathlessly, looking wildly round and shaking her head, obviously still in shock.
I saw the policewoman open her mouth to say something, then change her mind.
I bet she’s thinking that Ricky’s past toothpaste or shaving gear, and has either decided it’s not her place to tell Mum that, or else she doesn‘t want to say it in front of me. Doesn‘t want to upset me.
I wondered if Mum realised Ricky was dead. Had she actually been told that, even if she couldn’t see it for herself? Was she in denial, not wanting to believe it, or was she trying to keep it from me for as long as she could?
Of course she couldn’t keep it from me forever, and when she arrived at Nan and Pop’s place a couple of hours after I got there she immediately broke down and told the three of us that ‘He’s dead, Ricky’s dead.’
‘No! Oh noooo,’ Nan said and began to cry. She’s Mum’s mother, not Ricky’s, but she shed tears for him. Or maybe she was shedding tears for Mum, losing two husbands in tragic circumstances.
In the days that followed we spent hours with the police, answering questions, listening to their comments. I’m not sure whether anyone actually said it in so many words, but their attitude towards me was one of sympathy. And relief that I’d been sound asleep in bed, that I’d not been woken by the noise and come downstairs to investigate, because I might have been killed too. The idea that I could have been the killer doesn’t seem to have entered anyone’s head, and the premise throughout was that Ricky had disturbed an intruder.
Mum and I, Nanna and Pop, and Ricky’s parents were all present at the Coroner’s Inquest where it was recorded that Ricky had been killed by an unknown intruder. The Coroner was a kindly man who offered his sympathies to Mum and to Ricky’s parents before turning to me. ‘This must be particularly distressing for you, losing your father like this, Miss Norris,’ he said benevolently.
To hide my real feelings I’d held a tissue to my face for most of the proceedings. Now I removed it, looked at him with sorrowful eyes, and said in a strained, unhappy voice. ‘Thank you, sir. Though he’s not my father; he’s my stepfather. I’m not Angela Norris, I’m Angela Kitchen.’
He nodded his head gravely and said again ‘My condolences, Miss Kitchen.’
I had to bury my face in the tissue again, as though I was crying. I did have tears in my eyes, but they were tears of joy. He was dead, my stepfather, Ricky Norris was dead. I, Angela Kitchen had killed him.
I told you Kitchens can be dangerous.
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The Key Suspect
Jane Blechyden
At 12 o‘clock, noon, the child crept into the staffroom and laid hands on a packet of expensive double choc Tim Tams. The hand reached into the packet, the plastic crumpling under pink fingers, and pulled out a Tim Tarn. Stuffing the chocolate into a pocket, the child slipped quietly out the door.
‘This is a big issue!’ said the school principal, Mr Halfhead, banging his fist on the table. ‘All of our expensive Tim Tams are disappearing!’
‘No, Mr Halfhead,’ said Miss Smart, the school secretary. ‘All the expensive double choc Tim Tams’.
‘Alright then,’ admitted Mr Halfhead. ‘Expensive double choc Tim Tams. Anyway, it’s a big issue, they’re all disappearing!’
‘How do you think they get in here?’ questioned Mr Reeder, who for once had his nose out of a book. ‘Isn’t the staffroom usually locked during class time?’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Mrs Kraykamp. ‘I always lock it.’
‘Well,’ Mr Brushy, the cleaner, said nervously. Everyone in the room looked at him. ‘Someone has...’
‘Yes?’ enquired everyone in the room simultaneously.
‘Someone has stolen my key to the staffroom,’ finished Mr Brushy.
‘What!’ gasped all the teachers, ‘The key, stolen!’
‘Yes,’ muttered Mr Brushy.
‘This isn’t just a big issue,’ moaned Mr Halfhead. ‘It’s a HUGE issue!’
Just then, the bell rang signifying the end of lunch. All the teachers stood up and left the staffroom.
Mrs Kraykamp opened the door to her classroom, Room 2, to find everyone talking happily, yet making a racket. She clapped her hands three times but to no avail.
‘Class!’ Judy Kraykamp shouted. ‘Silence!’
At once, everyone was quiet. That is, everyone apart from Johnny Green, who was in the middle of one of his ‘hilarious’ jokes.
‘What’s black and white and really hard?’ he shouted. ’A maths test!’
Okay, it was funny the first time, but all the 30 students of Room 2 had heard it by then.
‘Johnny Green!’ roared Mrs Kraykamp, enraged. ‘Sit down!’
‘But I am sitting down,’ retorted Johnny. ‘See?’
A few people giggled. Mrs Kraykamp sighed.
‘Just,’ she stumbled, ‘just get on with your maths.’
[Dear reader, you may have guessed that young Johnny Green was a rude, impolite and overall, horrible little boy. But let’s not waste words on him, you get the idea.]
‘Mrs Kraykamp,’ said the teacher’s pet, Amy Johnson, who had been working on her maths during the previous incident. ‘I’ve finished.’
‘All right then,’ smiled Mrs Kraykamp, suddenly nice, ‘bring it here and I’ll mark it.’
Amy Johnson, unlike Johnny Green, was a polite, civil girl. She always did the right thing and was respected by her peers (well, the girls anyway).
The next day, just before lunch, Room 2 of Dingle Park Primary had their 5th lesson: sport. It was Tuesday and the weather was hot. As per usual, Mr Ball, the sports teacher, allowed everyone to get a drink at the end of the lesson. But only 29 of the 30 got a drink.
Once again, the child crept quietly along the corridor and turned the key in the keyhole and entered the staff room. And again, the child’s hand reached into a packet of expensive double choc Tim Tams. After putting the chocolate into a pocket, the child slipped quietly out the door.
On Wednesday, Mr Halfhead called an urgent meeting for all the teachers to attend. It was, again, about ‘the case of the disappearing biscuits’ as they called it. When all of the teachers had taken their seats, Mr Halfhead addressed the gathering.
‘The child has struck again!’ he cried. ‘It has happened 14 times in seven weeks! And always on Tuesdays and Thursdays! The days that we’re always busy!’
‘Someone,’ Miss Smart said, getting to the point, ‘someone has stolen Albert’s key to the staffroom.’ A few people glanced in Albert Brushy’s direction.
‘Who could have done it?’ questioned Miss Smart. ‘Does anyone have the slightest idea?’
All the teachers looked at each other, clearly thinking hard but it was Mrs. Kraykamp who spo
ke.
‘It could have been,’ she began, ‘it could have been a boy in my class, Johnny Green.’ Mrs Kraykamp had been having a particularly bad day and Johnny had only made it worse.
‘But we don’t have any proof!’ Miss Smart said.
‘We still have to do something,’ said Mrs Kraykamp. ‘But what?’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ reported Miss Smart. Everyone’s head turned in her direction.
‘What is it?’ asked Mr Halfhead impatiently.