The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Volume 8

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “Can I get you a refill?” Marina called.

  I stood up. “I wonder if I might – is it along here?”

  “Second on the left.”

  In the hall, I opened my handbag and took out Charles’s Yale key. Holding my breath, I opened the front door. I slipped the key into the lock and twisted. The key turned.

  I drew it out of the lock, closed the door quietly and darted into the sanctuary of the bathroom. Marina was wearing the brooch. The jeweller in Cardiff had thought that Marina was me, had thought that she was Charles’s wife. So they must have been in Cardiff together, and acting as if they were a married couple. The key in Charles’s pocket fitted Marina’s door. There could be only one explanation for all that.

  It is strange how in a crisis one finds reserves of strength one did not suspect existed. Somehow I went back into the living room and accepted another dry martini. Somehow I made myself eat the ghastly, overflavoured pork which Marina served up with such a triumphant flourish that I wanted to throw the plate at her. I even complimented her on her cooking. She said that she would give me the recipe.

  The meal dragged on. It was far too heavy and elaborate for lunch. Marina served it in the French way, with salad after the main course, and then cheese before the pudding. So pretentious. What was wrong with our way of doing things?

  When at last it was time to go, Marina came into the hall and helped me on with my coat. Then she bent forward and kissed my cheek.

  “I have enjoyed this,” she said. “Let’s do it again soon. I’m running up to town for a night or two but I’ll be in touch as soon as I get back.”

  I walked home through the park and down Victoria Road. The rat was still lying on the path between the house and the stable. After I had taken off my hat and changed, I went outside and manoeuvred its stiff body into a bucket with the help of a spade. The ice had melted now, so the fur gleamed with moisture. I carried the bucket into the stable. I looked at the various places where the rat-catcher had left the poison. All of it had gone. I wondered if there were more rats. It was then that the idea came into my mind. I remembered the Kipling story.

  Nigel and Charles thought Kipling was the greatest writer of the century. They were particularly fond of the Stalky stories, which are about schoolboys at a boarding school near the sea. I had read them in our early days, when I’d been friends with Charles and Nigel, just before Charles and I became engaged. A wife should try to like the things the husband likes. But I hadn’t liked these stories.

  In one of them, the boys kill a cat with an air gun. They push its dead body under the floorboards of a rival dormitory. The cat decomposes, and gradually its smell fills the dormitory, growing stronger and stronger, and more and more loathsome. If a cat could do it, so could a rat.

  It was just a silly idea – childish, undignified and in any case impossible to carry out. I left the rat in the stable and went inside for a cup of tea. During the rest of the day, however, I could not help thinking about the rat. And about Marina.

  Marina was going to London. I had a key to her flat, which she did not know I possessed. If I went there tomorrow evening, after darkness, there would be very little risk of my being seen as I went to or from the flat. There was a little gate from the park to the communal garden of the flats – I could go that way. People kept to themselves at Raglan Court so with luck I would not be noticed. In any case, I could take the precaution of wearing a rather bright headscarf, a pre-war present which I had never used, and an old mackintosh which had belonged to Charles.

  As the evening slipped past, the idea seemed more and more attractive. Well, why not? It wouldn’t harm Marina to have another smell in that evil-smelling flat. And it was a way of making a point about her beastly behaviour. There was no excuse for adultery. There was no excuse for stealing my husband. The following evening, I decided to act.

  I put the rat, wrapped in brown paper, in my shopping bag, slipped a torch into my pocket, walked up to Raglan Court and let myself into the flat. I was not afraid. Indeed, I had the oddest sensation that it could not be me, Anne Butter, doing this. I felt as if I were watching rather than doing.

  I went straight into the kitchen. This was where the nasty smells came from – so this was the place for the rat. I did not turn on the light, but used the torch sparingly. I unwrapped the rat and let it fall to the linoleum.

  The gas cooker was raised on legs a few inches above the floor. I found a floor mop and used it to push the body under the cooker to the wall. The torch proved to be a blessing. With its help I was able to see that there was a gap between the wall and the back of the cupboard beside the cooker. With a little manoeuvring of the broom, I managed to push the rat into the gap. Even if Marina looked under the cooker she would not be able to see anything. I did not think it would be long before the rat began to smell: the flat was centrally heated, and the kitchen would be the warmest room.

  I went home. Then it was simply a matter of waiting. Waiting for Nigel and waiting for the rat.

  A few days after I had left the rat at her flat, Marina arrived on my doorstep with a small parcel in her hand.

  “For you,” she said, smiling. “Just a little something.”

  I asked her in for coffee. The parcel contained a copy of Elizabeth David’s A Book of Mediterranean Food.

  “The lovely thing about cooking is that when the pleasure’s shared it’s somehow doubled,” Marina said. “You won’t be able to get a lot of the ingredients in Lydmouth. Perhaps I can find what you need in London.”

  During the next two weeks, I saw Marina regularly. I even asked her to lunch. Many of Elizabeth David’s recipes were really very simple. I found one – tarte à l’oignon et aux oeufs – which turned out to be very like the flans I used to cook Charles. Marina said my tarte was quite marvellous.

  Why did she do all this? Why was she such a hypocrite? There were two possible explanations: either she felt guilty about stealing my husband, or she was doing it because she derived a malicious pleasure from pretending to be my friend. On the whole I thought the latter explanation was more likely.

  On the second occasion I had lunch with her, I was sure I could smell something in the living room. It was a faint blueness in the air, an uneasy hint that lingered in the nostrils. After the meal, I helped Marina carry the plates into the kitchen.

  I sniffed.

  “Can you smell something?” Marina asked.

  “Well … ”

  “I keep thinking I can. Something rather unpleasant. I really must turn out the cupboards soon. And the larder.”

  No more was said about it until a day or two later, when Marina drove me up to Cheltenham for a matinée at the Everyman. In the interval she brought up the subject again.

  “Do you remember that smell in the kitchen? I think it might be the drains.”

  “Have there been complaints from the other flats?”

  “Not as far as I know. I’ve got someone coming to have a look.”

  Two days later, she came to tea and gave me the next instalment. Unfortunately the plumber had turned out to be rather good at his job. He soon realized that the smell was not from the drains. He pulled out the cooker and found the decaying body of the rat squeezed between the cupboard and the wall.

  “It was quite disgusting,” Marina said. “It looked as it smelled, if you know what I mean. Anyway, the plumber was marvellous. He got the wretched thing out of the flat and now things are beginning to return to normal.”

  “Isn’t it odd having a rat in a modern block of flats?”

  “Unusual, I suppose. But apparently they are very agile creatures, and you never know where they are going to turn up. The plumber suggested that I get the rat-catcher.” Marina shivered, rather theatrically. “Just in case there are any more.”

  “We had rats in the stable,” I said. “The rat-catcher soon sorted them out. I’ve got his address if you’d like it.”

  Marina took out a little leather-bound diary and made a note of
the details. As she jotted them down, the brooch gleamed on her cardigan. Platinum and unlucky opals.

  The rat man came and left poison under the cooker and in the larder. Marina told me all about his reluctance to leave the poison in the kitchen, about the strictness of his instructions to her. This was just before she went up to London for the weekend. She was going to a party, she said, where she hoped Elizabeth David might be present.

  “I know I’ve only met her once, but I feel I know her really well – as well as I know you – just through her writing.” Marina patted my arm – she was always touching me, which was one of the things I disliked most. “I’ll tell Mrs David I’ve been making converts in Lydmouth. I’m sure she’ll be delighted. I’ll be back on Monday, so I’ll come and tell you all about it on Tuesday.”

  I was in a quandary for the whole weekend. Should I or shouldn’t I? It was such a good opportunity, presented to me, as it were, on a plate. It would make up for the rather tame performance of the rat. I didn’t want to hurt Marina, of course, not seriously. But there would be very little risk of that. The amount of poison that would kill a rat would surely give a human being nothing more than a mild bilious attack.

  All weekend I toyed with the idea. What if? What if? On Sunday evening, when it was dark, I put on the headscarf and the raincoat and left the house. I had the torch and the key of Marina’s flat in my pocket.

  Everything went as smoothly as last time. In the refrigerator was a saucepan containing what I now knew was ratatouille. It looked and smelt quite disgusting. The rat poison was on saucers, one under the cooker and the other in larder. I took a little of the poison from each and rearranged what was left on the saucers so that they both looked untouched. I stirred it into the ratatouille. To my relief, it seemed to dissolve very quickly. I wondered if the poison would taste. Even if it did, I thought that the ratatouille was so strongly flavoured that it would mask any additions.

  What if? What if?

  I went home. That night I dreamed of Nigel. Funnily enough I had always dreamed more about Nigel than about Charles. On Monday morning, I woke with a light heart. Now I could put the past behind me and look to the future. In a sense, there was nothing personal in what I’d done at Raglan Court the previous evening. There was no reason to gloat. It had not been a question of being vindictive – merely of doing my duty. Someone had to teach the woman a lesson, and the someone had happened to be me.

  I was washing up after breakfast when a man walked past the kitchen window and knocked on the back door. A plate slipped from my hand and broke when it hit the sink. I dried my hands and went to answer the door.

  It was the rat-catcher, a grubby little man with a baggy tweed jacket and a collarless shirt.

  “Morning, ma’am. Just come to see how the little fellows are getting on.”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “No dead ’uns?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Shall I take a look? See if they need a second helping?”

  “Yes, please.”

  The rat-catcher went down to the stable. I cleared up the broken plate and tidied the kitchen. A few minutes later, the man came back.

  “They’ve eaten it all. I put down a bit more.”

  “Good.” I opened my handbag and took out my purse. “Were there – were there any bodies?”

  He chuckled. “Gone back to their nests. Give ’em a choice, they like to die in their own beds – just like us, eh?”

  I paid the man. He wanted to stay and gossip – in my experience, men are far worse gossips than women – but luckily we were interrupted by the ring of the front doorbell.

  It was a telegram. My heart lurched because telegrams usually mean bad news, apart from those connected with births and weddings; and I had nothing to do with either. I tore it open.

  BOAT DOCKED LATE LAST NIGHT. COMING DOWN TODAY. IN CIRCUMSTANCES HAVE BOOKED ROOM AT BULL. SEE YOU ABOUT FIVE. NIGEL.

  That was typical of my brother-in-law. Nigel could be very thoughtful. When Charles was alive, Nigel always stayed at the house. But now Charles was dead, the situation was different. Lydmouth wasn’t London. If we were alone under the same roof, tongues might wag. People might even remember that before I became engaged to Charles, I had seen a good deal of Nigel.

  By half-past four I was as ready as I could be – the lounge fire burning brightly, the brasses in the hall gleaming, the water near boiling point in the kettle, the tea tray laid. As I sat waiting, all sorts of foolish thoughts chased through my mind. What if? What if?

  Nigel rang the doorbell at twenty-past five.

  “Anne – wonderful to see you.” He swept me into his arms. “I’m so sorry about Charles.” He hugged me, then stood back. “Sorry I’m a bit late. Train was delayed. Nothing works properly in this country.”

  Nigel was taller than Charles had been, and age had been kinder to him. As a young man, he had been gawky and had had difficulty in talking to a girl without blushing. The war had changed all that. I brought the tea in and we chatted for a while – mainly about Charles.

  “You must be wondering about the money side,” Nigel said. “No need. As far as I am concerned, you can stay in the house for as long as you like. You own fifty per cent of it now, anyway. And Charles’s share in the shop comes to you, so that should give you a decent income, even if we have to pay out a bit more in wages.”

  I asked him how long he was staying in Lydmouth.

  “Only a couple of nights, I’m afraid. I’m popping over to Paris on Thursday.” He grinned at me. “I’ll see if I can find you some perfume.”

  “It’s a shame you can’t stay longer.”

  His eyes met mine. “I’ll be back.”

  “I wonder – could I ask you to help me with Charles’s things? There’re all his clothes, for example. And I’ve not really been through the business papers in the bureau.”

  “Of course I will. When would suit you?”

  “Come to lunch tomorrow – we can sort everything out afterwards.”

  He hesitated.

  “I’ll see if I can do something interesting,” I said brightly. “I’ve been experimenting lately. I love Elizabeth David. Her recipes are mouth-watering.”

  “Yes.” He glanced at his watch. “Elizabeth David, eh? You’ve been acquiring cosmopolitan tastes in my absence.”

  “I try.” I smiled at him. “Even with all the shortages, there’s no excuse not to be adventurous in the kitchen.”

  Nigel stood up and tossed his cigarette end in the fire. He ran the tip of his index finger along the spines of the Kipling edition in the bookcase. I shivered. He turned to face me.

  “Oh – by the way: I owe you some money.”

  “Really?”

  “I asked Charles to pay a debt for me. He mentioned he’d done it in his last letter. A hundred and ninety-odd pounds.”

  A hundred and eighty-nine pounds, nineteen shillings and eleven pence?

  “Oh – oh yes.” I felt as if a horde of insects were crawling across my skin. “I’d noticed the cheque. To a jeweller’s, wasn’t it?” With immense effort I forced a smile. “Who was the lucky lady? If it was a lady.”

  Nigel’s cheeks darkened. The young man I had known before the war was suddenly not so very far away. “I – I suppose I’d better tell you. The thing is, when I’ve come down to Lydmouth in the last year or so, I’ve had a sort of friendship with a woman. A special friendship.”

  “And Charles knew?”

  He nodded, took out his cigarette case and fiddled with the catch. “And then I went to Paris on a business trip in the spring, and I met Ghislaine. One thing led to another – well, in fact we’re going to get married.”

  He paused, looking at me, as if waiting for congratulations. I couldn’t speak.

  “But there was still this – this other lady. That had to end. But I wanted to give her something as a keepsake. Then I had to go to Tanganyika … ” He managed to open the case at last. He took out a cigarette and r
olled it around in his fingers. Crumbs of tobacco dribbled down to the hearthrug.

  “I asked Charles if he’d buy her a present. It was while you were in hospital. A piece of jewellery – something quite decent. So I gave him a rough idea of how much I wanted to spend and left him to get on with it. We were going to settle up when I got home. I do hope you don’t think too badly of me.”

  He looked at me. In the end, I shook my head, which seemed to satisfy him. Men are easily satisfied.

  “It wasn’t serious,” he said, as if that excused it. “Men tend to sow a few wild oats before they settle down. Women are different.”

  Were they? If all women were different, how could the men sow their wild oats?

  He looked at his watch again. “Oh lord, I must go. I’ll see you tomorrow. What time would suit you?”

  “About twelve-thirty?”

  “Splendid.”

  We went into the hall. He bent towards me and his lips brushed my cheek.

  “You’ve always been a good pal. You’re not shocked? Charles thought you would be.”

  “Don’t be silly.” I smiled up at him. “Boys will be boys.”

  We said goodnight and I closed the door behind him. I went back into the lounge. The room was empty and desolate. There was nothing left of Nigel except crumbs on a plate, a puddle of tea at the bottom of a cup and golden flecks of tobacco on the hearthrug. I went over to the bookcase and ran my finger along the spines of the Kiplings. I tried to think about Ghislaine but she was too abstract, too foreign for me to grasp. She wasn’t flesh and blood like Marina. Marina, I thought idly, would be home by now.

  One of the books was a little out of line. It was Stalky and Co, the schoolboy stories which had been Nigel and Charles’s favourite. Boys will be boys. There was a slip of paper protruding from the pages, presumably a bookmark. I took it out, suddenly curious to re-read the story about the dead cat and the smell. The bookmark was buff coloured. I pulled it out and discovered it was a telegram. For a moment, I thought that Nigel’s telegram to me had somehow found its way into Stalky and Co. But that was still propped up on the mantelpiece behind the clock. This one was addressed to Charles and dated in September, while I was in hospital.