She returned to the kitchen, pulled on some rubber gloves she found under the sink, and collected up the glass. She couldn't tip it in the bin—she'd watched enough police dramas to know it might hold fingerprints—so instead she tipped it into a bag to take away. Next she wiped the worktops and the handles on the hall door. The cellar door she left open. She would have no cause to enter the hall while looking after Tom.
Finally she sat at the computer and removed the incriminating e-mails. She polished the keys and anything else she might have touched, then stood up and took a final look around. Had she forgotten anything?
Ah yes...
She took a tin from the fridge, filled Tom's bowl, and put it on the floor.
She was ready and waiting next morning when the taxi arrived to take Mouse to the station.
"You're early,” she told the driver when she went rushing out. “Or is my watch slow?"
"Must be your watch,” he said. “I'm bang on time."
She didn't argue.
And nor did he when, coming into town, she asked to be dropped at the shopping centre. It didn't matter to him where she went as long as he got his fare.
* * * *
Late on Christmas Eve the snow began to fall more heavily. “Looks like we're going to get that white Christmas,” Ian said, peering around the curtains. “Fancy building a snowman tomorrow, girls?"
"Yes please!” they shouted in unison.
Ian laughed and came back to the sofa. “By the way,” he told Stephanie, “one good bit of news. I don't need to go to Scotland."
"What?" She spun round to face him.
"Nope, the late nights paid off. Everything's finished. I even sorted the McBain—Hey, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, I..."
"Why are you shaking, Mum?” Emma asked.
"Am I?” She gave a little laugh. “Must be tiredness. And you should be in bed, Emma. If you're not asleep when Santa comes, he won't leave you any presents, isn't that right, Lucy?"
Lucy nodded and leaned towards her sister.
” 'Twas the night before Christmas," she whispered, "and all through the house, Not a creature was stirring, not even a MOUSE!"
On the last word she pounced and Emma cried out. Lucy began to laugh.
"Not even a Mouse...” Stephanie echoed and suddenly she was laughing too. Louder ... and louder ... and louder...
©2008 by Caroline Benton
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Novelette: SLOW BURN by Simon Brett
Simon Brett's latest novel in a series set in the fictional retirement community of Fethering, on England's southeast coast, is Bloodatthe Bookies (Five Star Press, August 2008). The ninth entry in a charming classical whodunit series, it was described in Publishers Weekly's recent review as “sure to please longtime fans.” Mr. Brett is also the creator of the Charles Paris and Mrs. Pargeter series of mystery novels. We'll have another of his clever non-series stories for you later this year.
Murder rates always rise during the Christmas holiday period, and Greg Lincoln was determined to add to them. Just by one. The additional statistic would be his wife Shelley.
It's not on Christmas Day itself that the bulk of the murders happen. Most relationships can survive the enforced bonhomie for sixteen waking hours (particularly when some are spent comatose in front of bland television). It's in the days afterwards, the inert sag between Christmas and New Year, that's when people turn homicidal.
The Lincolns had married be-cause Greg had been attracted to Shelley's money, and Shelley had been attracted to ... Actually, Greg never knew exactly what it was in his character that had attracted her. He had reasonably good looks and suave manners, but even he recognised that he had no moral qualities whatsoever. Still, Shelley, a good Catholic girl, had agreed to marry him. Maybe he was the only man who had ever asked her. The fact had to be faced, she wasn't that pretty. But she was beautifully rich.
She was also rather mousey, which suited Greg very well. He'd never wanted a wife who would be too assertive, or who might question the lifestyle choices he had made. In this sense, Shelley was perfect. She never suggested—as some wives might have done—that perhaps he ought to do some work and thereby make a contribution to their mutual finances. Nor did she show unhealthy curiosity as to how he spent his time away from home. She accepted his mumbled excuses about “going off to play a round of golf” without ever wondering why the golf bag in the boot of his BMW still looked as fresh as when it came out of the shop. Shelley's lack of curiosity was convenient, as it was years since Greg had stepped inside a golf club. And the only “playing around” he did was in the bedrooms of bored Sussex housewives.
Perhaps, he sometimes idly wondered, Shelley was unsuspicious simply because she was so preoccupied with her two obsessions. The first of these was her Catholic faith. To Greg, who had never believed in anything except for his own superiority, this was no more than a puzzling eccentricity. Shelley's second obsession he found equally inexplicable. Gardening. Greg Lincoln's lips could not shape the word without an expression of contempt. To him one plant looked much like another, and none of them was very interesting. But to Shelley, her inheritance from her parents, not Lovelock Manor itself but the garden surrounding it, was her raison d'étre. She was never happier than when spending long hours with her gardener Dan in his shed, discussing their plans for the forthcoming season.
Though unable to understand his wife's horticultural obsession, Greg concluded with a mental shrug that it didn't do any harm. And, so long as the garden kept her from taking too much interest in his activities, it was all fine by him.
So that was the Lincolns’ marriage, no better and probably no worse than many another. Greg had announced early on that he didn't want to have child-ren, a decision that Shelley, though it challenged her Catholic principles, had greeted with characteristic meekness. They still had occasional sexual encounters, on days when Greg hadn't managed to find a convenient bored housewife, but with decreasing frequency. Whether Shelley enjoyed these interludes, or regretted their dwindling away, Greg had no idea.
And so their marriage rubbed along. And might have rubbed along for a good many years, but for one thing.
Greg Lincoln fell in love.
It was unwished-for, it was inconvenient, but it was a fact. Greg, who had never regarded women as more than means of gratification, had fallen head-over-heels in love.
Inevitably, the woman he fell for was as tough and cynical as he was. Vicki Talbot. They'd met at a pre-Christmas drinks party. She had had in tow a husband called Alan, in whom she clearly took as little interest as Greg did in Shelley. A few drinks and a quiet chat in a kitchen sticky with mulled wine led to an agreement to meet the following afternoon for what both knew would be a sexual encounter. Like Greg, Vicki showed no coyness. She had no illusions that there might be anything romantic involved, while Greg looked forward to carving another notch on his metaphorical bedpost, before moving on to his next conquest.
And yet, from the moment he had made love to Vicki Talbot, he could not eradicate her image from his mind. At the age of forty-six, Greg Lincoln, hard-bitten, self-serving Greg Lincoln, had fallen calamitously in love. Not the kind of warm love that might make him feel good about himself, but an obsessive, jealous love, over which he had no control. Thoughts of what Vicki might be doing when he was not with her burned like hot wires through his brain. The idea of anyone else just being in her company, let alone touching her ... He tried to force his mind away from the images that tortured him, but to no avail. Greg Lincoln was hooked.
The agony had been increased by the fact that, after a series of torrid, snatched encounters running up to the holidays, he'd actually had to meet Vicki socially on Boxing Day. A drinks party given by mutual friends, an occasion of jaded bonhomie, no one really yet ready for another celebration after the excesses of Christmas Day itself. It was the kind of occasion at which Greg could normally excel, drinking too much, patronising Shelley, getting cheap la
ughs from his less quick-witted friends.
But at this drinks party he was like a coiled spring, his mental radar aware only of where Vicki was standing, who she was talking to, who placed a casual hand on her arm. He thought he would explode if he couldn't get just a moment alone with her. The prospect of their reaching the end of the party, of Vicki being whisked away by the odious Alan with nothing more than a communal wave and wishes for “A Happy New Year,” was more than Greg could bear.
There were moments at the party when he thought Vicki was feeling the same pressure. At times he thought he could read an undercurrent of anguish in her jokey social manner, but he couldn't be sure. Though it had never bothered him much before, he was brought up hard against the impossibility of knowing what went on inside a woman's mind.
They did get their snatched moment, ironically in the kitchen, mirroring their first fatal encounter.
"I need you,” Greg hissed in desperation. “I have to be with you all the time."
"Nice idea,” said Vicki, in a manner that sounded sincere, “but there is a problem."
"What? There's no problem we can't get round."
"Shelley. You can't be with me all the time if Shelley's on the scene."
"It's the same with you and Alan."
"No,” she said contemptuously. “I only stay with Alan because I have expensive tastes, and he can afford to cater to them. With you and Shelley it's different."
"What do you mean?"
Her grayish-blue eyes found his. “I mean that you and I can't be together unless Shelley is out of the equation."
Further intimate conversation was prevented by the entrance of a very drunk Alan. “You two having a secret snog, are you?” he asked with a guffaw that cut through Greg like a serrated blade.
For the next twenty-four hours, he kept trying to analyse the four words Vicki had spoken. “Out of the equation.” What did they mean? That he should leave Shelley? He could do that readily enough. That he should divorce her? Shelley's Catholicism might make that more difficult, but it was not insoluble.
Greg Lincoln, however, knew Vicki had meant more than that. Coming so close to the reference to her expensive tastes, there was only one conclusion that could be reached. Greg had no money of his own. Divorce from Shelley would leave him virtually penniless. But were Shelley to die, he would inherit all of her estate. At the start of their marriage they had made wills, each naming the other as sole beneficiary. All at once the meaning of the phrase “out of the equation” became blindingly clear.
Once he had decided to murder his wife, Greg Lincoln felt a lot calmer. And he started to think in a very logical way.
The most important consideration was that Shelley's death should look like an accident. And ideally should happen while her husband was absent from Lovelock Manor. His plans would be ruined by any suspicion attaching to himself. Shelley would have to die, Greg would have to play the grieving widower for a suitable length of time (or at least till probate on the estate was sorted out), and then he could be with Vicki Talbot forever.
He spent most of Boxing Day evening striding restlessly around Lovelock Manor, assessing various forms of domestic accident. Rewired electrical boobytraps, loosened carpets on the stairs, combustible gas leaks in the kitchen ... he contemplated them all, but none promised the guarantee of success. And many would put him too near for safety to the scene of the crime.
Through the night too he lay sleepless, his mind churning over other ways of eliminating the woman who lay softly sleeping beside him. And it was only as the gleamings of a truculent winter dawn could be seen though a crack in the bedroom curtains that Greg Lincoln's great idea came to him.
Rather than in the house, it would be much easier to engineer his wife's death in the garden.
At lunch the following day, Shelley was surprised when, for the first time in their relationship, Greg showed some interest in her hobby. “Will you be doing gardening stuff over the next few days?” he asked casually.
"Yes, I'll hope to,” his wife replied. “Dan'll be back at work tomorrow, and there's a lot we need to do."
"I'm sure there is,” he replied with an uncharacteristically generous smile. “Planting seeds and things... ?"
"More planning this time of year."
"You and Dan in a huddle in the shed?"
"Yes, a bit cold to be outside too much."
"I'm sure. I was just interested, Shelley..."
"Yes, Greg?” There was a pathetic hopefulness in her look. Was her husband finally getting interested in gardening?
"...because I've got a golf thing on tomorrow, so I won't be here."
"Ah.” She looked crestfallen.
"But you're here today, are you, Shelley?” She nodded. Greg smiled and took an envelope out of his pocket. “Unless, of course, you decide to go off and spend these... ?"
A hundred pounds’ worth of gardening tokens, which he had been out to buy that morning. There was a childlike gleam of excitement in her eye as she took the present. For Shelley, the tokens represented the possibility that her husband might finally be showing some interest in her life. For Greg, they were a means of getting his wife away from Lovelock Manor while he devised a way of ending that life.
Predictably, she went straight off to a garden centre. Greg Lincoln made sure that her car was out of sight before moving to explore what was new territory for him, the garden of Lovelock Manor. As he pottered around, his mind catalogued potential murder methods. Poisoning, yes ... there must be plenty of poison in gardens. Commercially available mixtures to kill off weeds and insects. But how much would be needed to kill a healthy woman in her forties? And, more importantly, how could she be persuaded to swallow the stuff...? In a manner that would appear to be accidental ...?
Then again, there was hazardous garden equipment. Greg had hazy recollections from his school days of reading books in which horny-handed sons of the soil suffered terrible injuries from sickles and scythes. Then, of course, farmers kept getting trapped under tractors. And didn't people die in grain silos?
He realised his fantasies were getting a little out of hand, and decided to curb them until he had actually assessed the possibilities offered by the garden shed.
So far as he could recollect, Greg Lincoln had never been inside the place. Lovelock Manor had come as part of the package with Shelley, and he'd had no curiosity as to what happened outside the house itself. So walking down the path to the shed was a new experience. There had been rain on Boxing Day, the red bricks underfoot were slippery and Greg winced at the idea of getting slime on his tasselled loafers. He passed an almost-dead bonfire from which tendrils of smoke fought their way up though the mist. Amazing how long some things burned for. Dan, the gardener, who must have lit the fire, hadn't been to work since the day before Christmas Eve.
Greg was surprised to find how spacious the interior of the shed was. Also how neat and well-maintained. He had never taken much interest in Dan. A muscle-bound young man probably around thirty, the gardener seemed to be a man of few words. (That was to say that Greg had never heard many words from him; then again, he'd never addressed many to the young man, either.) But the neatly aligned hanging spades, forks, hoes, rakes, and other garden implements suggested a tidy mind, which was confirmed by the carefully labelled pots, boxes, and jars on the benches that ran below the small windows. The minimal light these gave was further diminished by creepers growing outside, and Greg was not surprised to see that Dan had a large fat candle in a holder. Nor that there was a lighter lying on the bench beside it.
There was no electricity running to the shed, but the space was surprisingly snug. Two dilapidated armchairs gathered round a butane-gas heater, and a sofa-bed slumped against one wall. A small butane-gas stove suggested Dan could keep himself supplied with hot drinks and snacks. There was a small cabinet containing instant coffee, UHT milk, sugar, a biscuit tin.
Greg Lincoln only vaguely took in these details. What his mind focused on was the predomin
ant smell inside the shed. Petrol.
The odour emanated from a large fuel can, and from the mower, chainsaw, and strimmer which had been filled from it. Greg smiled at his own good fortune, as all the elements of the plot that had been eluding him fell neatly into place.
The next day Dan would be back at work. The next day Shelley would inevitably join him in the shed to discuss their future planting strategy.
The next day there would be an unfortunate accidental conflagration in the shed. An explosion caused by leaking petrol coming into contact with a naked flame.
Of course, the plan probably meant that Dan would die as well as Shelley. But, Greg Lincoln reflected with a self-satisfied grin, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.
Having decided where and how to arrange his wife's murder, Greg Lincoln began to concentrate on the details of his plan.
It was absolutely certain that she would spend some time the following day in the shed with Dan. Shelley, for whom—inexplicably to her husband—a day without gardening was a day without meaning, had been restless over the holiday period, and the presents of gardening books she'd received had clearly been a poor substitute for actually getting her hands dirty. And yet she seemed unable to do anything in the garden on her own initiative; she needed Dan there as a guide and sounding board. Shelley really did have a very weak personality. Once the shock of her death had passed, Greg felt sure he would have real difficulty in remembering anything about his former wife.
Anyway, by then he would be permanently with Vicki Talbot. The tantalising image of her body strengthened his resolve—which didn't really need any strengthening—to dispose of Shelley as quickly as possible.
So ... a conflagration in the garden shed. The windows would be too small for Shelley and Dan to escape through, but the door would need to be locked somehow. Locked in a way that would not be a giveaway to post-conflagration forensic examination ...?
Greg Lincoln enjoyed the challenge this problem presented to him. He was feeling even more confident than usual. The energy given to him by his passion for Vicki would be channeled into devising Shelley's death.
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