Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 793 & 794, September/October 2007

by Donna Andrews

  It was all a joke. Now I got it, she hadn’t killed her husband. She had made everything up, and I had taken the bait, hook, line, and sinker. It did not exactly match her usual sense of humour (which was rather inoffensive — the odd pun, the odd risqué joke) but, damn it, at least she wasn’t a murderer.

  I was still laughing when I turned to admit defeat, but what I saw froze the laugh on my lips.

  Irene was serious, deadly serious.

  “What are you laughing at?”

  “It’s all a joke, isn’t it?” I replied, and I believe for the first time I thought that it wasn’t, that she wasn’t joking.

  “What is?” said Irene, with an insecure smile.

  “That you killed your husband. Everything.”

  This led to an uncomfortable silence, until she replied, “Listen, it’s not at all easy for me to tell you this. If you are going to laugh...”

  “No, no,” I apologised. “Look. Forgive me. Go on.”

  “No, it’s all the same, really.”

  “No, go on, please. Did you do it?”

  “What?”

  “The saw. Did you do it?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Irene did as she was told, and found out that, as usual, her husband was right. Thanks to the handsaw she made quicker progress, and before the clock struck twelve she had chopped up the corpse and put the entrails into a bucket. The question of the head remained, of course, but Paco told her not to worry about that.

  “We’ll bury it on the hills, it’s not a big deal,” said that inner voice once the blood in the bucket had been emptied into the toilet bowl and flushed several times. “What’s important now is deciding what we’re going to do with the bones.”

  “I don’t know,” replied Irene aloud, while she went back to the kitchen with the bucket she had cleaned under the spray of the shower. “Cats don’t eat bones, and some of these bones are very large. Dogs, perhaps...”

  “Forget the dogs,” answered the voice. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do.”

  This was the most absurd story I’d ever heard, and I can assure you that I heard more than one absurd story when I was making a living in the 7 SINS. Had I really been about to ask that woman to marry me? Had the evening really started with me picking her up at the gates of the high school where — for God’s sake — she gave night classes? How was it possible for us to get to this extreme in just a few hours?

  I looked at Irene. She continued talking and stared out at the bay, her hands gesticulating in the air while she explained to me that she had ground the bones into small fragments that she then crushed in the Thermomix until they were reduced to a greyish powder. She talked about this in the same matter-of-fact way she would have explained to me how to make cod croquettes. Sometimes she hesitated for a few seconds, as if she was listening to the voice she recalled, Paco’s voice, and then went on talking.

  I think if I had left, she would have kept talking and talking all night on that bench, without caring that nobody was listening to her. Was it true what she told me? I suppose it’s a fair question, especially after everything she had said up to this point in the story. Well, I didn’t know it then, but sometime later (when I got over the shock of that night), I did a bit of research on the Internet, just a bit: put a name in a search engine and read the results related to that name.

  Yes, it was true. Irene had been imprisoned in Soto del Real in 1996, charged with first-degree murder with aggravating factors: She poisons husband and feeds him to cats, said the caption below the photo in which Irene’s small dark eyes had been touched up, giving them a yellowish shine: The neighbours were alarmed by the unusual number of cats populating the area but didn’t raise the alarm, they wrote in the piece. Once analysed by forensic specialists, the dust on the park’s gravel paths was discovered to contain very high levels of calcium. That and other evidence, which is confidential information for the moment, appears to indicate that I.J.M. did not lie when she claimed to have pulverised the remains of her husband’s bones.

  Yes, it was true, it was all true.

  “The idea to grind the bones was Paco’s,” continued Irene, “and it was a great idea, really. It would never have occurred to me in a hundred years. Such a darling...”

  Irene kept talking. I listened, in wonder.

  From that time on, Paco — his voice, at least — went everywhere with her. It accompanied her on each walk in the park, when she scattered the fine grey powder her husband’s bones had been reduced to. And he talked to her. He always talked to her.

  He helped her a lot, all the time. He explained to her how to spread out the food for the cats in a way that would not attract too much attention. He helped her to cook the flesh in the pot, pointing out exactly when it would be ready. He corrected her every time she did something wrong, when she forgot and left a light on before going out.

  “It was as if — as if he wasn’t dead, as if he was unemployed and always clinging to my side, hanging around me.”

  Was there a touch of reproach in her voice when she said this? I think so.

  When she went to the bathroom, Paco’s voice told her just how much toilet paper she should use so that it wasn’t wasted; he reminded her to wash her hands and put the bar of soap back in the dish.

  “A place for everything and everything in its place, dear. How many times do I have to remind you?” Paco’s voice boomed constantly in her head.

  When Irene turned up at the police station to report the disappearance of her husband, he whispered in her ear every single word she should tell the officer in charge of the case; in this respect she was fortunate enough to be able to rely on his help. But he also reminded her all the time about how she should make the meals, how to make the bed, where to begin vacuuming in order to make the best use of the cable trajectory. He shouted all the time when anything other than football was on the television. Weeks passed without Irene seeing Médico de familia.

  “Frankly,” she said after a pause, turning towards me, “I got a bit fed up with him.”

  I recall bursting into laughter.

  “Don’t laugh,” she said, and I think she was biting the inside of her cheeks to stop herself from laughing. “Don’t blinking laugh,” she repeated, giving me a little thump on the arm.

  I felt an urge to kiss her. I know it may sound absurd, but I loved that woman, and she had just opened up her heart to me. In a way, everything she had told me up till then (how she killed and carved up her husband) seemed somehow so distant and unreal. The real thing was her, just a few centimetres from me. Murderer or not (how do you suppose you can come to terms with that?), I loved her, and whoever said that love turns everybody into kamikazes was right. So I leaned towards her and kissed her.

  I think I took her by surprise, because she resisted for a moment, but then her lips relaxed and our tongues played together for quite a while.

  Had that woman killed her husband? It was impossible, and at the same time the most logical thing in the world. I would also have wanted to do it had I been in her position, and something deep down told me that was probably the reason why I loved her, because she had had the courage to do with Paco what I would not have been able to in a thousand hellish years with Raquel.

  “I love you,” whispered Irene when we drew apart.

  It gave me the creeps. She wanted to kiss me again, but I pulled away gently.

  “So, what happened next?”

  “Next?”

  “Yes, since you’ve begun to tell me everything, please finish before I come to my senses.”

  Irene smiled. She made herself comfortable again on the bench, ironed out a couple of creases on her dress, and began talking again.

  For a while (she said) everything was all right. Nobody suspected anything. The neighbours comforted her and tried to give her hope of finding Paco alive. Kidnapping was mentioned, and Irene knew that some gossips spread the rumour that he had eloped with another woman, but nobody got even remotely close to the t
ruth. In the neighborhood, the feline population increased in spectacular fashion, but nobody put two and two together.

  But that voice in her head didn’t go away.

  “It was horrible. He was always around, time and again. In the supermarket, he complained when I didn’t buy the chops he liked. I stopped going to the greengrocer’s because he just shouted: ‘Not that apple, the one above! The one above that, look! Can’t you see that one is bruised?’ ”

  Irene began to regret having seasoned his meal with rat poison. Now Paco was with her twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Finally, a month after the cats had polished off every last scrap of meat, she went to a psychologist and told him as much as she could: that her husband had disappeared, she feared he was dead, and occasionally she seemed to hear his voice. Even that watered-down version of the truth was enough to put the psychologist on the right lines.

  “Do you feel guilty about his disappearance, Irene?” he asked her, adjusting his glasses with the middle finger of his right hand.

  “Of course not,” she replied quickly.

  “It would be the most normal thing in the world. When someone has a limb amputated, they continue to feel pain for a while after it is no longer there. It’s what they call phantom pain. You’ve only been married for a short time, it’s not surprising that...”

  Irene paid for the consultancy, but never went back to see that psychologist.

  “But I kept thinking about what he had told me, all that stuff about guilt and acknowledging our mistakes in order to make a new start. Paco said it was just baloney, but I think he was a bit scared. On the other hand, I had got to a point where I couldn’t suffer him any longer. Paco had become totally unbearable. So much so that one day I plucked up some courage and went to the police station where I had reported the disappearance of my husband.”

  “And did you confess?” I asked, with my elbow leaning on the arm of the wooden bench.

  Irene nodded.

  “I confessed everything.”

  Sitting in the office of the chief inspector, a slim type with a sallow complexion and an embittered appearance, she confessed everything: how she dissolved the rat poison in her husband’s meal, how she found him dead after returning home. When she was going to tell him about the way she had chopped up her husband’s body, the policeman asked her to wait there a moment and left the office. From her chair, with her bag placed on her lap, she heard him shouting for “the damned voice recorder.” Five minutes later, he returned to the office with it in his hand. He closed the frosted-glass door and warned her that from then on, if she had no objections, everything she said would be recorded.

  “It seemed fine to me, so I went on talking.”

  Staring at the red light on one side of the voice recorder, Irene explained to the astonished chief inspector how she had chopped up her husband’s body, boiled the remains, and distributed the flesh in the park for the cats to eat, a little every day and always in places some distance apart so as not to raise suspicion.

  “When I explained to him how I had ground the bones, I realised that total silence had fallen over the police station. I looked towards the door and saw that all the officers were listening on the other side of the glass,” said Irene, throwing her head back, laughing softly.

  “And did it work?” I asked her. “Did you stop hearing the voice?”

  “Oh yes! At first he protested quite a lot, and of course he didn’t stop shouting for a minute. But when I finished and the chief inspector asked me to record a statement to confirm that I had confessed of my own accord, without having been subjected to police brutality of any sort, and I agreed, the voice fell silent.”

  “Then?”

  “I never heard it again. That psychologist was right,” she concluded with a charming smile. “They tried me, found me guilty, and I served my sentence in Soto del Real. My lawyer insisted I shouldn’t mention the voice because, according to him, it would seem that I was making it up to plead temporary insanity and thus would appear guiltier in the judge’s eyes. They reduced my sentence because of work and good behaviour and, as I had finished my teaching degree in prison, they put me on a rehabilitation program. That’s how I ended up giving night classes. And that’s it, I suppose.”

  I stared at her without knowing what to say. Irene was looking at me too. After a while, she went on, “Do you still love me?”

  Did I love her? I searched deep down for a response and got it almost straightaway: Yes, I loved her. I suppose it had all happened so quickly, so abruptly, that I didn’t have time to reconsider my feelings towards her. Suddenly I remembered the reason why I had invited her to dinner that night. I put my hand in my pocket and took out the little box. I offered it to her, opening it slowly.

  Irene opened her eyes wide; I would swear she was on the verge of tears.

  “My God! Is it for me?”

  I nodded, taking out the ring and placing it on her ring finger. My heart was beating in my chest like a little bird’s wings. Irene raised her hand in front of her face to admire the stone’s glow under a streetlight.

  “It’s lovely!” she exclaimed. Huge tears ran down her cheeks. “It’s lovely.”

  We had a long hug next to Puerto Chico. The halyards struck the masts like the erratic ticking of a clock. A road-sweeper’s van with its flashing light, very like that of an ambulance, brushed the whole of Castelar.

  We went back with our arms around each other’s waists, in silence. The tide had begun to go out and you could hardly hear the sound of the water from the pier. In the Jardines de Pereda there were just a couple of prostitutes, looking for a treble. For them, the night had only just started.

  We got in my car and went to her house. Irene shone, pure and clean, like a religious icon. We made love. When we finished, I heard sobbing on her side of the bed. I kissed her tears and asked her why she was crying.

  “They’re tears of joy,” she responded. And we made love again.

  There’s still one chapter left. One last chapter.

  That same night, a few hours after we made love for the second time, I was awoken by a light whisper of sheets behind me. I thought Irene had changed her position, so, after seeing on the clock on the bedside table that it wasn’t yet five in the morning, I got ready to go back to sleep. But I couldn’t. I began to go over and over the maddening story that Irene had told me, recalling every one of her words, the taste of that kiss on the bench in front of Puerto Chico, the twinkle in her eyes when she saw the ring, the joy, and so on. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that Irene was the love of my life. In my head it seemed as if I could hear bells, wedding bells. We would have children. We would grow old together. I realised my life was really just beginning that night, and I felt like crying as Irene had done hours earlier: crying out of pure happiness.

  The room was dark and silent. The only light was the luminous digits on the clock bathing the chair with my clothes in a faint crimson glow, the chest of drawers at the back, the window with the blinds down. I stayed very still in that calm scene, lying on my side, smiling in the darkness while the smell of our sex pervaded the air I was inhaling. I may have gone back to sleep.

  After a while, however, I heard another noise and this time I was wide awake. It was a sharp sound, the scraping of metal on Irene’s side of the bed. Metal scraping against metal in the darkness, slowly, very slowly. All my hair stood on end instantly, and I felt as if my testicles had turned into tiny ball bearings. Somehow, I managed to stay still.

  I heard a whisper near my ear, the stifled voice of a woman.

  “I don’t want to do it,” whimpered the voice. I shuddered. It was Irene.

  The sound was extinguished, but the silence terrified me even more. If the sound had been produced by something being removed — something metallic — hidden between the mattress and the bedsprings, that silence meant it was already right out, in her hand. Suddenly, fleeting images of the pig slaughter filled my head. Knives. Enormo
us butcher’s knives.

  “He’s sleeping. It’s time,” muttered a man’s voice behind me in the darkness. I recalled the way Irene had imitated Paco’s voice, and I felt my heart beat faster in my chest.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Do it.”

  “No.”

  I heard that metallic screeching sound again. I thought about old swords being replaced in their scabbards.

  “You’re right,” replied the man’s voice. “Perhaps it’s a little too soon...”

  “It is.”

  “Too soon,” insisted the voice.

  The metallic sound was extinguished again, and only the darkness remained, the red chest of drawers, the clothes upon the chair, the silence. Whatever was there under the mattress had been put back. I stayed still. I heard the whisper of the sheets behind me, and I felt Irene’s breath, her hot breath, next to my ear. And afterwards she slipped her arm round me from behind, her head leaning on the pillow beside me, and her legs tucked into the gap next to mine. Sleeping by my side. Sleeping peacefully by my side.

  Now I couldn’t get back to sleep. The clock on the bedside table had just gone seven-thirty. I got up and dressed without taking my eyes off the love of my life, who was still in bed. When she asked in a sleepy voice where I was going, I told her I was on my way out to buy something for breakfast. I quickly closed the door of the flat behind me. I flew down the stairs and went out into the cool street. I began running towards the car, parked a couple of streets away. But before reaching it, I slowed down. On the other side of the street, the smell of freshly baked bread was wafting out of a bakery.

  I stopped for some five minutes. I don’t know what went through my head during that time, but what’s certain is that eventually I began walking, crossed the street, and went into the bakery.

  I bought two croissants and, with them in a paper bag, returned to Irene’s place, still hearing deep down that sweet tolling of bells.