Buffet for Unwelcome Guests

by Christianna Brand

  Well, in the matter of Elsa’s murder, he would not fail.

  The house was isolated: three miles from the hamlet of Hartling, six from anywhere else, fifteen from the Cathedral city inland. No neighbours, therefore, to be inquisitive; no friends even, as she had truly said—not here nor out of the past. No friends: only the little world of public house acquaintances, the Bills and the Barbaras, the Noras and the Toms, drifting in from the evening, drifting out into the night: nameless, homeless, without existence for one another beyond the lit bar and clinking glasses, the boasting and the well-worn jokes. And even those, left behind now, in the gay city lights. Well, all right, O.K., he thought: no friends—so no one to stand as witness to the real motive—that tongue of hers that could strip a man down, bare, to his shuddering soul: and was to be endured no more.

  The murder, he had decided, would have to be by drowning.

  She had been a well-known athlete in her day; leaped higher or run faster, he never could remember which, than anyone in the world or in England or only in Surrey; he never could remember that either. But first and foremost she had been a swimmer: she cherished old photographs of herself, half out of the water in the Back Stroke or the Butterfly or whatever it was, forging along, tiny and sinewy, the vanquished spluttering in her rear. Those days were gone and the muscle turning to thick white fat; but she struggled, all honour to her, to keep it down and she still loved to swim. That had been the main reason for settling on this house: that close by was the tiny, deserted bay of Kittle Cove; and there she swam, morning and evening, and could never get enough. All alone—for such pastimes were not for Gerald Fletcher-Store—she would run off, the old regulation black woollen bathing dress under a bright beach-robe; tucking up beneath the white bathing cap as she ran, her rough, curly brown hair. Twenty minutes there, along the wild, lonely cart track, twenty minutes back: half an hour or more swimming around. ‘Keeps you fit,’ she would say, slapping the back of a hard little hand against his flaccid paunch. ‘I’ve got enough to do to keep me fit, digging in that filthy garden,’ he would say, ill-temperedly.

  By drowning, then. An accident. But with such a good swimmer as she was, who would believe in an accident? His mind in the past had toyed, over a second whisky, with wild dreams of stopped-up snorkels and punctured water-wings, but she had no truck with such things: simply plunged in and swam to a rock far out, and dived off the rock a few times and swam round about it and swam back. No records being created, no foolish chances taken: no difficult currents to beware of. Just straight-forward swimming for the sheer love of it.

  If she were to drown then, she must do it while her murderer was well out of the way. To just go down there, push her head under the water and run screaming for help—that wouldn’t do at all.

  His wandering mind seemed to stand still all of a sudden: seemed to come slap up against the idea and just remain there, contemplating it. It had been those words: ‘Push her head under the water.’

  What was drowning, after all, but water forced into the lungs? You could drown in three inches in a basin, you could drown in your bedroom at home, just as easily as you could in the sea.

  And then if you were found in the sea…!

  Force her head into a bowl of water: drown her. Carry her down to the sea and throw her in. (A detail here: could they tell if the water in the lungs was salt water or fresh? Fetch a bucket of sea-water then, and drown her in that. And tip that away somewhere safe, too: no salt-encrusted pipes or wilting garden-flowers to give the game away.)

  But what difference between ‘finding’ her dead in the sea, and having in fact drowned her there? They could still say you had pushed her head under the waves and then gone for help. An alibi—that was what one was going to need: an alibi. And his mind had got going again and worked cold and clear. Drown her here, put her body in the boot of the car. Have somebody in the house for an hour at least, while Elsa was supposed to be sporting it down in the bay. Get rid of the alibi, drive down to the cove—‘I began to get anxious when she didn’t return’—dump her in the sea: fish her out again and go for help. Time of death established by the post mortem—a couple of hours earlier: but a couple of hours ago, one would have been sitting chatting, safe at home.

  Only—chatting with whom? Who, in all this wasteland of dank woods and distant coast-line and beastly narrow lanes, would come to sit for an hour, chatting with him? And on the very night that the accident was set to occur. Not a soul had ever been to this house during the ten months of their resentful occupancy; every evening he sat, while Elsa went for her swim, and banged at his typewriter, listlessly trying to bash out a short story. (She would not let him write during the day: the hens and the pig and that horrible vegetable garden claimed him then. She said that the stories paid less than would cover the produce from their land; and in fact that was true. But when she was gone, he thought, off in reverie again, he would do not one more hand’s turn on that filthy soil. If he had all day to write, no sneering interruptions from her—then, damn it all, he could really get going, he could really make a big thing of it; he knew.)

  An alibi, then; an alibi! Someone who would keep company with him for an evening.

  He could go to the pub, of course. What about that? Leave her dead, drive over to Hartling, spend an hour there; drive home, ‘find she wasn’t back’, drive on down to the cove, programme as before. But then, who was to say that he had not done just this?—drowned her before he came to the pub, gone back and pretended to find her. No: somebody must actually see her start off to the cove, alive and well; who would then spend the next hour and a half with him. And he got up to wash out the whisky glass and put it away before she got back; and dropped the glass and, picking it up, pricked his thumb on a splinter: and thought, exultantly: ‘That’s it!’

  It made him sick to do it, but when the time was ripe he contrived to get the fingers of his left hand entangled in the cutters of the lawn mower; and, making rather more fuss than was necessary over the mangled mess—but that was in character—said to his wife: ‘What on earth shall I do? I’ve got this commissioned series hardly started and I couldn’t type a word with this.’ The series—six short stories of the war-time R.A.F.—had, needless to say, been commissioned by Mr. Fletcher-Store and by no one else.

  ‘Oh, well, Gerald, you really are too careless for words,’ said Elsa.

  ‘I didn’t do it on purpose, my dear, did I?’ he suggested, grinning up his sleeve.

  ‘Can’t you write it in long-hand, like I do?’

  ‘I can’t write in long-hand, you know I can’t.’ This was true. Every author has his own taboos and she was writer enough herself to know that unless he saw the words before him in print, no words would come. ‘If I could type,’ she said, ‘I suppose I’d have to do it for you; only I can’t.’ It was typical of her to resent the bare idea of doing for him, what she was not going to have to do anyway.

  ‘I suppose I shall just have to chuck it in,’ he said.

  ‘Chuck it in! The first and only chance of actually making a little decent money out of this rubbish of yours.’ She thought it over. ‘I suppose we couldn’t find a typist anywhere, in this God-forsaken hole?’

  She had said it. She had actually suggested it herself. He had reconnoitred already in the pub at Hartling; now he went off and returned triumphantly to say that a female called Mrs. Butcher, whose husband worked late shifts or over-time or something, had been a typist before her marriage; and would be very happy to drive over in her Mini-car for an hour or two each evening, and help him out. He would think over the stuff as he dug and delved, said Gerald—for the bad hand was not to stop him from the necessary work with the vegetables and hens—and then she could take it down in shorthand, type it out next day and bring it back. Mrs. Butcher, small, diffident, genteel, began to make her appearance at regular intervals. Elsa continued to go morning and evening for her bathe. Concealed in the tool shed stood a bucket of salt water, ready for The Day.

  There
remained only to set up a scapegoat, just in case by any chance the fact that Elsa had not drowned naturally might come to light. He began to drop small hints into the receptive ear of Mrs. Butcher. Mrs. Butcher was ever so surprised that Mrs. Fletcher-Store should care to go swimming all alone even on these moonlit nights. ‘Yes… Well…’ said Gerald, not actually speaking the words: ‘if she is alone.’ And permitted himself a sigh and resolutely went forward with the work. And he would see Elsa off—taking his time about it, to accustom Mrs. Butcher to a ten-minute absence—and come back into the room wearing a troubled look, a look of wretchedness resigned. ‘Got to put a good face on things,’ he once volunteered to Mrs. Butcher; and seemed about to blurt out confidences but, thorough gentleman that he was, bit the words back. Mrs. Butcher exuded sympathetic understanding but remained mute. What she thought of Mr. Fletcher-Store’s Raff reminiscences also remained unspoken.

  The day came: an evening of moonlight, conveniently obscured by drifting patches of cloud. While Mrs. Butcher sorted out her work, he walked to the gate with Elsa and a short way down the path, as he had recently taken to doing ‘to be out of the woman’s way—she gets into such a flap’. Beyond the gate were some heavy rhododendron bushes and behind these he had left the bucket of salt water, and beside the bucket, the fleece-lined jacket. ‘Good heavens,’ said Elsa, in her irritable way, ‘what on earth’s that doing here?’

  ‘I must have dropped it,’ he said, not bothering what excuse he made; and stooped and picked it up. And in a moment it was round her body, back to front, and tightly belted, pinning her arms to her sides, its over-long sleeves muffling her hands and the possibility of scratching claws. And he had whipped out the bucket and pushed her head into it. She fought and struggled with all her wiry strength but he was half her weight again, and she strait-jacketed in wool and leather. Even before he could have hoped for it, it was all over. He pushed the body in beneath the bushes, tipped the water out of the bucket, hurried back to the shed and, with the jacket, left it there. And in no time at all, was back with Mrs. Butcher, the glass of whisky in his hand: it was a naughty little secret he had taught her to share with him, to account for passing minutes; this time he had had it all ready to hand. ‘Well, now,’ he said, ‘let’s get on.’

  But the hand that held the glass was shaking and, ‘You look rather pale, Mr. Fletcher-Store,’ said Mrs. Butcher, all little-woman concern.

  Even this he had been prepared for. ‘Damn hand’s pretty painful,’ he confessed. ‘Didn’t want to say anything.’ And indeed the struggle with Elsa had wrenched unpleasantly at the bandages, the whole thing was now violently throbbing. ‘Digging celery today; probably opened up the wounds a bit.’ He had even dug some celery, to make that ring true.

  ‘I don’t think you should be using it, honestly I don’t, for all this heavy outdoor work.’

  ‘Someone has to do it. Not that I mean… Clever woman, my wife, you know,’ said Gerald, stoutly. ‘Got to stick to her writing—that’s where the money lies. Famous in her day, you know. Not much fun for her, stuck out here,’ he added, after what appeared to be a moment’s rueful reflection. ‘Not after all that. Damn good-looking she was, you know, and a bit of a girl for the—’ But he broke off and looked away and took a gulp of whisky. ‘All quite innocent, Mrs. Butcher, of course.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ said Mrs. Butcher, playing up to dear Mr. Fletcher-Store’s conjugal loyalty.

  ‘Not many people around here, Mrs. Butcher? I mean,’ he said, putting on an air of surreptitiously feeling his way, ‘not many people of—well, of our sort of age, you know? No one she could pal up with?—she and I, of course I mean.’

  But no, Mrs. Butcher knew of nobody this side of Hartling and after that it was, well a very church-y crowd, all centring on the Cathedral, all as it were turning their backs on this part of the country and facing towards the city. ‘It’s mostly farm-hands and so on, who go to the pub in Hartling; even the farmers go into town for their amusements, in these days of fast cars. Fred, my husband, he works for old Lord Hartling, you see, or we wouldn’t be living out this way, I can assure you. If, any time,’ said Mrs. Butcher, timidly, ‘you and Mrs. Fletcher-Store would care to drop in on us for an evening… But I’m afraid I wouldn’t be much company for someone like her…’

  Mr. Fletcher-Store made civil noises but she could see how abstractedly he gazed out of the window towards the bay where his lady supposedly disported herself in and out of the water with her problematical love. ‘Well, I suppose we must get on, or we shall never get done.’

  By the time Mrs. Butcher was ready to leave, Elsa, strange to say, had not yet returned. ‘If I were you, Mr. Fletcher-Store, I’d be getting quite anxious. Won’t you run down to the cove and see that everything’s all right?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ he said, uncertainly, ‘I suppose I could.’

  ‘I mean, it’s getting very chilly. She can’t still be bathing.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ said Mr. Fletcher-Store.

  ‘You mean…? But, Mr. Fletcher-Store—oh, no! You can’t really mean…’

  ‘One doesn’t like to seem to be—well, spying.’

  ‘I could come with you,’ suggested Mrs. Butcher. ‘I would if you’d like me to. Then it wouldn’t look as if—’

  ‘Good heavens, no!’ said Gerald, violently. He covered up quickly: ‘I couldn’t let her have the humiliation of being—well, being found out—with a stranger present.’

  ‘But you don’t know. It may be all quite untrue. If we were to go down, talking quite loudly, so as to make ourselves heard… As you say, horrible if she were, well, quite innocent; and had to suspect you of creeping down, keeping a watch on her.’

  He shook his head heavily. ‘I’m afraid, you know, it’s true enough. I’ve—well, to say it flat out, Mrs. Butcher—I’ve seen them.’ And in reverie, he saw them: strolling together across the wet sands. Elsa amorously gay, swinging the white cap in one hand, her rough brown hair all curls; he with his arm around her, a big chap, dark and good-looking. ‘A dark man, Mrs. Butcher, broad-shouldered, good-looking.’ He confessed, a bit shame-faced, ‘Actually, that’s why I was—sort of fishing about just now, asking you about the people round here.’

  ‘You actually saw her? With this man? But… It could have been just a chance meeting?’

  ‘Then why didn’t she tell me about it? And anyway, this wasn’t any chance meeting. One—well, one knows, doesn’t one?’

  But Mrs. Butcher didn’t know and evidently didn’t want to know. ‘I’d better go,’ she said, ‘and leave you to deal with it. I think you should… Well, I don’t know what to advise, Mr. Fletcher-Store.’ And she got into her little Mini and wobbled off down the rutty lane towards Hartling. To suspect naughty assignations by moonlight was one thing, Mrs. Butcher’s departing rear-light seemed to say, winking in and out like a glowworm as she sped through the night; but to know—that was much too much like horrid real life.

  He went back to the rhododendron bush. Elsa was still lying there as he had left her. He ran to the shed, rinsed out the bucket—no tell-tale salt there—caught up his jacket and returned to her again. As he had hoped, the thick, soft wool lining had prevented weals upon her body and arms from the struggle. He picked her up—strangely leaden, she was, who in life had been so small and energetic: he had to fight back nausea at the feel of her, hanging so limply, yet heavily in his arms—and carried her to the car.

  It was not a very large boot but he had better put her there; not that there was the faintest chance of his meeting anyone, but—well, be on the safe side, leave nothing to chance. A bit of a joke if there really was a lover, waiting for her down at the bay! However, surely he’d have gone home, long ago? Better keep a look out for any footprints, just in case.

  It was slow going, down to the cove. The moonlight obscured and distorted the ruts and holes in the rough cart-way, long unused: the car jerked and jolted—he was terrified of what might be happening to the curled-up body in the b
oot: what marks might be inflicted that could tell tales. But he got her there at last and parked the car in deep shadow, and got out and stood looking down at the bay.

  He had not been able to spend much time in reconnoitring—she might have thought it suspicious; and now he must work out how best he might get her down to the water, without leaving traces whereby a keen-eyed policeman could observe that he had borne across the sand a burden as heavy as he had carried back. He must pick a way carefully through the rocks that ran down on either side of the cove; and hope that the fast in-coming tide would wash away even such traces as he might leave there.

  First, however, he must run straight across the sand: straight across and then this way and that, a little, as though calling to her, searching for her. The sands would in time be covered by the tide but one might as well take no chances; and it would give him a legitimate reason, moreover, to look behind rocks and in the single small cave, just in case any observer might be lurking there.

  But there was nobody; nor had there been—the sand was unmarked. He recollected that it should not be altogether unmarked—there should be prints of her own progress down to the sea. Well, he would have to make sure that no alarm was given until the tide had covered all—so in fact his artistic work of the past ten minutes would have been wasted. Never mind; there was time enough. He walked along through the ripples to the line of rocks and picked his way up through them, back to the car.