The Ghost Who Fed Them Bones

by Tim Roux

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” He turns to me again. “M. Lambert, I am afraid that things are developing unpleasantly. It might be better if you escape now, otherwise you will have your second shock of the day.”

  “Stay where you are!” Alice orders.

  I begin to get up.

  “Sit down!” Alice commands me.

  “I am sorry if I have caused any problems, Monsieur, Madame.”

  “You are not the source of the problem, M. Lambert, I assure you. The problem lies entirely inside M. Picard’s trousers.”

  M. Picard blows as inevitably as the thing inside his trousers after prolonged agitation. “I have had enough of this,” he shouts, aiming towards M. Picard who raises her arm to protect herself. “This is intolerable.”

  “It is intolerable,” Mme. Picard spits.

  “It’s working for me,” Alice gloats.

  M. Picard grabs his wife by the shoulder in a furious mirror action to the kindly way he grabbed me earlier by my upper arm to help me up from the pavement.

  “Don’t you dare hit me,” Mme. Picard shouts.

  M. Picard slaps her over the head.

  “Stop him,” Alice screams.

  I rush across to Mme. Picard and try to unlock M. Picard’s grip.

  “M. Lambert, it is very unwise for you to interfere,” M. Picard threatens me.

  “Please get me out of here, Monsieur,” Mme. Picard urges me. “My husband can be a very violent man. It would be better if I went to stay with my sister for a few days.”

  M. Picard tries to push me roughly to one side and to strike out at his wife at the same time.

  “He even murdered his own daughter,” Mme. Picard accuses.

  “She did know!” Alice exclaims.

  “That is totally absurd,” M. Picard shouts. “What idiotic things you say sometimes!”

  “Please get me out of here!”

  “You are not going anywhere!”

  “Get her out of here!” Alice insists.

  I usher Mme. Picard towards the door. M. Picard pulls me back by the collar. I turn.

  “We all need to calm down,” I declare, a split-second before he belts me in the face. Now I am angry. I kick his legs away from him as Mme. Picard flees the house, followed by Alice. M. Picard bangs his head hard against the stone floor.

  “I think we need to call the police,” I inform him.

  “Why?” he says, holding the back of his head.

  “You attacked your wife, you hit me, and your wife says that you murdered your daughter. Quite an afternoon.”

  “I did not murder my daughter this afternoon,” M. Picard protests, “or at any time,” he recovers. “Now let’s calm down, as you suggest. I am very sorry that I hit you. Let me have a look.”

  Remembering that he strangled Alice to death, I step back. “No thanks. I am going.”

  “I am very sorry. I will recompense you. It was an accident.”

  “You meant to hit your wife!” I throw at him as a parting shot and escape into the street.

  “Go straight to the police,” Alice urges me. “Quickly, while you are still bleeding.”

  Thanks, Alice. It is a shame that I didn’t lose a tooth or two, eh?

  “You did a great job, Paul. I love you. That is the best thing anyone has ever done for me. Now, quickly, to the gendarmerie.”

  * * *

  The gendarme sitting behind his desk bantering with colleagues is not expecting violence to break out in Freyrargues at four-fifteen on a weekday afternoon. However, when he sees me he moves to greet me fast enough. “What happened to you, Monsieur?”

  “Someone hit me.”

  “So I see. Who was it?”

  “M. Picard.”

  “That does not surprise me. He has a nasty temper sometimes. What did you say to him?”

  “I didn’t say anything. It was his wife who upset him.”

  “She has a sharp tongue on her too, and not just for her husband.”

  “She says that he murdered her daughter. I suppose that would make her cross.”

  “She said that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think she was merely saying that because she was angry.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “No.”

  “Where is Mme. Picard now?”

  “With her sister, I believe. At least that is where she said she was going.”

  The gendarme starts to ready himself. “In that case, I suppose I had better go to talk to her. It might be the break we have been looking for. Do you need to go to the hospital? One of my colleagues will arrange to get you there.”

  “No, that is fine thank you. I don’t think I will trouble the hospital with a split lip.”

  “And a missing tooth,” he adds.

  “Oh no,” I cry, searching frantically for a mirror as I find the stringy hole with my tongue.

  “There is a mirror in the toilets over there. You can check yourself out and then decide whether you need to go to the hospital or not.”

  Chapter 7

  By the time I reach the Château, after twenty to twenty-five minutes of brisk walking, ruing the loss of my front tooth and exploring the contours of my swollen bloody lip tasting of iron, the gossip-starved roués of the château party not only know as much about the whole incident involving M. et Mme. Picard, they actually know more. The news has come through that M. Picard is being arrested, Mme. Picard is being consoled by her sister, and most thrilling of all, that M. Picard is now being suspected of being a serial killer with maybe twenty or even thirty murders to his name.

  As I appear, beating my way up the driveway against the slope and the sun, I see Albert jump up to inform everyone that I am on my way. It is that scene in any western when the little boy spots the lone stranger or the raiding posse, and goes rushing into the house / village to alert everyone. I am a major league western fan – not the ones involving Indians as baddies to be slaughtered in their thousands (their racism annoys me), but of all the rest from late John Wayne to the more recent revisionist treatments of the genre. I don’t know whether it is the morality or the shoot-outs that intrigue me the most – adult Star Wars – but the minute I see one playing, I am hooked, even though I have probably seen almost every Western ever made since 1950 (I can’t do silent movies).

  Virtually the whole host of guests at the Château spills out to greet me, gripping its glasses and chattering away in suppressed anticipation.

  “Hark the hero returned,” calls Peter, half towards the crowd and half towards me. “You are more famous in these parts even than Inspector John here.”

  Inspector John shrugs to make it clear that he does not wish to be famous – he is not competing.

  “Are you all right?” John Jr. inquires solicitously.

  “A split lip and a missing tooth.”

  “You can get that playing rugby,” comments a rugger-bugger loudly.

  “Or by being gay in a town centre in the wee hours,” Peter adds. “Much the same thing, really. I have always considered rugby an extremely homo-erotic game.” From the sharp glare that the rugger-bugger throws him, he may be about to lose a tooth himself in plain daylight on a château lawn.

  All the men hold out their hands to congratulate me, while the women smile at me in admiring complicity.

  Fiona steps forward. “I think you need some female attention, Paul,” she declares. “Let me examine you.” She kisses me on both cheeks first.

  “Whoo-hoo,” shouts someone hidden amid the throng, “you go it gal.”

  “I have always been a bit of a Penelope,” she answers back. “There is nothing like welcoming a wounded hero home. Ouch!” she adds as she spots my missing front tooth. “Does it hurt?”

  “The lip is uncomfortable, and it is rather hard to talk,” I reply displaying my difficulty in enunciating the syllables properly.

  Mike joins us. “Here, Paul-y, have a drink.” He passes me a large glas
s of rosé. ‘Paul-y’? “So you took on the big bad guy single-handed.”

  “Something like that.”

  “You should have taken me too. I might have saved you a few hours of dentistry.”

  “I didn’t know it would happen.”

  “How could you have done?” Mike makes it sound like he is agreeing with me, but I can tell that he suspects something.

  Even the Earl of Affligem makes a personal appearance and congratulates me. “I have never met a man who has helped to apprehend a serial killer before. That must have taken some guts.”

  “To be honest, I didn’t really think about it, My Lord.”

  “Ummm.”

  He hangs around for another five minutes but doesn’t utter another word.

  After I have received half-an-hour of special attention, Fiona seeks me out again.

  “Come, Paul. I’ll show you to your room.”

  I follow her along the back corridor and up the side stairs which give access to the southerly turret.

  “We have the tower to ourselves. John and Peter sleep in the top room. I have the room below. You will have this bedroom here which is the one in the main house nearest to mine, not that you will use it except for appearances. Your stuff is already there.”

  She takes my hand. “Come, I’ll show you my room.”

  Fiona’s bedroom is classically decorated with stiff drapes and formally patterned blues and yellows. There is a birds-in-a-golden-tree-of-life motif along one wall, and a door which leads to either a closet or a bathroom.

  “Come.” Fiona leads me to sit down on the bed beside her, and pushes me back so that she can kiss me resting on top of me.

  “I rather like you with your gap tooth. It makes you look more approachable – less austere.”

  “I look austere?”

  “Very. As ascetic as a monk. ‘Don’t touch me unless I allow you to’. Like that.”

  “That’s strange. I don’t see myself that way – I’m just normal.”

  Fiona scoffs. “Paul, I doubt that there is a single normal thing about you. How do you see me?”

  “Blond. Loving. Beautiful. Self-sacrificing. Tender. Determined.”

  “That’s how I see myself.”

  “No surprises there, then.”

  “That must make me a bit boring, mustn’t it?”

  “I would never have said that.”

  “So … ”

  “ … so?”

  “So, what does a blond, loving, beautiful, self-sacrificing, tender, determined woman do to welcome back her wounded hero?”

  “Well, usually they live happily ever after.”

  Fiona pulls a saddened expression. “I am afraid that I cannot offer you that. I’m sorry. I would very much like to.”

  “It’s OK, Fiona. I was being unfair. I’m sorry too.”

  She pulls a brave smile that twists into playfulness. “But I can offer you everything else.”

  She lifts herself back onto her haunches and starts to unbutton my trousers. I stop her and she reacts with surprise.

  “What?”

  “Fiona, I am a bit worried.”

  “About what? Nobody will interrupt us. Nobody comes here except John and Peter, and they don’t mind. The only other person who is likely to come searching for you is Mike.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “What is it?” She is frowning with concern.

  “Alice.”

  “Alice?”

  “I need to go and find her. If I don’t, she’ll come looking for me, and if she finds us together she will be really upset.”

  “You are concerned that you are two-timing a ghost with me? That is absurd, Paul.”

  “It is not that. I have told her that I will do what I like, but this is a very important day for her. She has lived years and years of abuse, both of her and of her mother; she has fought through the realisation that she preferred women to men; she has been murdered. Today is the day that she triumphs over all that, and I don’t want to spoil it for her. Today she is a returning wounded hero too.”

  “So you feel you should be with her?”

  “Yes, at this moment. Well, not immediately. She is probably still looking after her mum, but in an hour or so.”

  “That leaves us an hour or so.”

  “True. It’s not that I don’t want to be with you, Fiona. I really do, but I want to celebrate Alice’s big day too, and especially not to wreck it.”

  “What would happen if she got really upset?”

  “She would be really upset.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “She might become stranded here for a holding a grudge against me.”

  “So she could imprison herself here, in effect?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything else?”

  “She could blow the tower down.”

  Fiona raises her eyebrows. “She could?”

  “Not literally. She could go berserk and throw tantrums and whip up quite a gale for me. You probably wouldn’t even notice.”

  “Would that be dangerous for you?”

  “No, just frightening, and maybe troubling.”

  “How frightening? Do ghosts frighten you?”

  “Not normally.”

  “Are there any ghosts here now?”

  “In this room?”

  “Yes.”

  I scan the room. “Not as far as I can see. Nobody is watching us from ethereal realms either.”

  “Well, if we are truly alone, and seeing as we have got nearly an hour … ”

  Fiona gets up and goes through the door we didn’t come in through and turns on the light. It is a bathroom. She rummages around in a drawer or something, turns off the light and places a plastic syringe on the table next to the bed.

  “What’s that for?” I inquire, fearing that she is going to suddenly introduce drugs into our intimacy. I don’t do drugs. I am high enough from my own adrenalin.

  “When I have finished, I need you to rush to the bathroom and warm it up under the hot water tap for about a minute so that it reaches blood temperature. Don’t place it under the tap immediately. It takes about thirty to forty seconds for the water to get hot. Then you bring it back to me.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to transfer your semen in its fertile state. If it drops below blood temperature, the sperm will die.”

  “You’re joking! You are using me as a sperm bank?”

  “That is what I am paying my £1 million for, isn’t it? I cannot waste an opportunity. I am sorry to bring it up. I don’t want to rub it in.”

  “OK. I’ll do what I can to help you.”

  Fiona smiles slyly. “I think you may enjoy it.”

  She returns to unbuttoning my trousers. “Come on. Strip off.”

  She starts to undress herself. There is a minute of struggle as we reveal ourselves.

  “Lie back.”

  I don’t know if I can do this. My emotions are leaping all over the place, and I’m pre-occupied with thoughts of Alice and whether she will have come looking for me, and with the fight, and with my injuries – my throbbing lip and my missing tooth. Besides, I don’t usually come with fellatio. But as Fiona is working hard down there, I had better do what I can.

  I fantasise that we are making love properly, and I stretch myself as long as possible and clench all of my muscles solidly throughout my body. That makes it easier for me to come. I can feel that it is going to be possible after all. The symptoms show up faintly and disappear again. Willing harder. Tensing myself further. They return and disappear again. It happens like this, in waves that get to a momentum when they suddenly dive over the cliff and then nothing can stop them pumping out whatever there is. I normally try to avoid that moment as long as possible to sustain the pleasure both for me and for the woman I am with, sometimes too long. Some women believe that if you do not come together with them, things are not working between you.


  It is going to happen. I feel relief. I am going to come. In a second it will be unstoppable. I breathe faster and heavier to warn Fiona that she is about to get a mouthful and she increases her pace in response.

  I come.

  She keeps me coming for about thirty seconds, then slides her mouth off my penis and goes “Ummm. Ummm,” pointing towards the door of the bathroom.

  I leap off the bed, grab the syringe and dash into the bathroom. I run off the cold then warmish water from the basin tap, and rotate the syringe under the hot water as it emerges. I suppose that it shouldn’t be too hot either. All the time I think about Fiona trying to keep her mouth closed, to breathe, and to avoid swallowing.

  The syringe is hot now. I hold it in my palm to keep it warm, and rush back into the bedroom. I hand it over to her.

  “Um!” (Thank you).

  Fiona eases the syringe between her lips, covers the shaft with her left palm and slowly draws back the plunger with her right hand. When the plunger is three-quarters retracted, she pulls it out rapidly, moves to a semi-crouching position on the floor and slips it up between her legs until it virtually disappears, pushing the plunger home again with as much force as possible to drive my sperm up her channel. She keeps her mouth closed all the time until she returns the syringe between her lips to draw off any traces remaining which she again injects between her legs.

  It is like watching a girl douche herself. Only Denise ever did that in front of me. She was neurotic about germs and pregnancy equally. She would always insist that we shower first in extremely hot water, scrubbing me and herself down with a very bristly brush (she took her own medicines too). She would then examine me out in the open for any signs of venereal disease or even fungi. She insisted on my wearing a condom (she was on the pill), then immediately afterwards she would douche herself with a spermicidal wash. Then she would kiss me precisely and say “thank you”.

  It was like a laboratory procedure, but it was her. After the initial sense of insult the first time we made love, I soon came to terms with the inevitable, and even managed to appreciate its professionalism, not that she was a professional in that sense, should you be wondering. She just had a business-like attitude to everything.

  Fiona swallows. “All done.”

  “Is there a shower?” I ask.