The Wimbledon Poisoner (15 page)

The apparent disadvantage of the scheme – the fact that he was going to end up poisoning not only Elinor and Donald but also most of the inhabitants of Maple Drive, including what remained of Donald’s family (Arfur was notoriously fond of ‘Daddy’s ’Ine’) was outweighed by its brilliantly direct character.

One of the main problems about person-to-person poisoning, Henry had found, was its very intimacy. You had to go to such trouble to persuade the subject to accept the poison and when (or rather, in his case
if
) you managed it, your very intimacy made it all too clear to everyone that you were the one who was slipping them the doctored crumble, the dodgy spaghetti bolognese or the potato salad unusually rich in mineral salts. This way, it was going to be fairly obvious that someone had emptied a bottle of bleach into the punch but, since Henry could not possibly have a motive for murdering the whole of Maple Drive (as far as the police were concerned, anyway), it would be relatively easy for him to gasp in horror and dismay and to take the Wimbledon CID around the places where he had left the bowl of punch unattended. He intended leaving the bowl in as many places easily accessible to a psychopath as possible.

As he mixed away happily (Elinor had retired to bed early) Henry began to see the headlines. wimbledon poisoner – psychopath may strike again say police! He, of course, would have to take a glass or two, enough to make him moderately sick, but that would be a small price to pay for finishing off Elinor, not to mention Mr and Mrs Is-the-Mitsubishi-Scratched-Yet and Nazi Who Escaped Justice at Nuremberg.

THE BLEACH PRANKSTER: NEW FACTS!
They would never trace it to him. Even if he was noticed forcing glasses on to his wife, no one would suspect. Because one of the beauties of this crime was his apparent (or indeed real) lack of motive. Not many people murdered their wives out of dislike. They usually did it for more obvious, sordid reasons; they wanted money, they had fallen in love with someone else or lost their temper. Henry’s dislike was a more rational, delicate emotion than that. It was much more, he thought as he moved the boiling pan off the stove and on to the floor, trying to ignore the unholy smell of bleach that came off it as it sloshed against the sides of the vessel, that he had simply woken up one morning and realized, to use a phrase a friend had used about someone else’s wife, ‘what he had got hold of’. And once he had realized that . . .

To the left of the gas ring was a note. For a moment, Henry thought it would be another few thousand words on the subject of his obscene masculinity, but to his surprise he saw it began ‘Dear Elinor . . .’ A lover. She had got a lover! Well, this made his activity all the more comprehensible, didn’t it? He was picking the letter up when he noticed that it was in Elinor’s own handwriting.

Dear Elinor,
Mean that! Because you are dear! Listen! Listen!

Henry detected the influence of therapy here.

Do not despair! You are Elinor! Talented cook, linguist, dancer, mother, opera singer and interior designer! Love yourself! Doesn’t Irma Cauther have something to say about this?

(Probably.)

Oh, cast off the glooms! Be! Be womanly! Escape from the heavy hands of Patriarchy! But there is one, not far from here, who feels for you as a woman! There is one who would know you, is there not? One who would speak your name and seeks to know the woman in you! Cast off the glooms!

Really she was getting off lightly with a few glasses of bleach. If there was any justice in the world he should really decapitate her with a spade on Wimbledon Common in full view of her therapy class.
Pour encourager les autres.
And what was all this about one not far from here who knew the woman in her? This sounded, to Henry, dangerously like illicit honking. And the not far from here made it pretty certain it was a neighbour. He screwed up the note into small pieces and looked around for others. There were, as far as he could see, none. When the punch had cooled he took it out to the garden shed, within easy reach of Tibbles who, since her dose of Chicken Thallium, seemed to have improved in every conceivable way, and went upstairs to the bedroom. Elinor had woken up and was trying on a black dress that looked more like a kind of solo tent than anything else. With it, she had chosen a pair of black sneakers and a huge black bracelet. She was looking at herself in the full-length mirror by the side of the bed, pulling great lumps out of her stomach and grimacing at her own image.

‘I’m fat!’ she said, as Henry came in.

‘I know,’ said Henry, loosening his trousers, ‘so am I.’

‘God!’ said Elinor, and again, ‘God!’

Henry did not wash his face or brush his teeth. Instead he pulled off his green boxer shorts, given to him by Maisie last Christmas, and farted in what he hoped was a reasonably lighthearted way. Elinor did not bother to respond. Instead, she said, ‘Donald’s death has made me think!’

‘Has it?’ said Henry.

‘Yes, darling,’ said Elinor.

Why is she calling me darling? thought Henry. What does she want? Did she see me pour the Finish ’Em into the punch?

‘I know we’re going through a bad patch at the moment.’

Not at all. I think we’re developing along the right lines, Elinor. I think there are many positive aspects to our relationship at the present time, not the least positive of which is now out in the shed in a large copper bowl!

‘I know sometimes you’re almost brutally male, Henry. And unresponsive. But in a way I think this may be a defence mechanism. Because underneath . . .’

A long, long way underneath.

‘. . . you are probably quite sensitive. But you are out of touch with that human part of yourself. You’ve grown a protective skin, a sort of . . . carapace of crudeness to help you deal with the world. And at the moment you’ve become that outer self. You have no room for good and gentle feelings. Whereas I—’

I am opera singer, talented linguist, cook, mother, feminist!

‘I have feelings of tenderness towards people. People I meet as part of my role as mother. People from nearby. There is someone – I’m not going to say his name, but there is someone who I think . . . admires me.’

Henry goggled at her. This was, presumably, a pathetic, almost touching illusion on her part. He decided not to pander to it by asking for the admirer’s name.

‘It’s helped me through this depression, actually. And yes, I have been depressed. I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that I have some problems of my own,’ she went on, although from the tone of her voice it was clear she had no idea what those problems might be. None the less the brisk, no-nonsense manner implied that once she had found what, if any, they might be, like the good feminist she was, she would be out there dealing with them. In fact she might even just dream up a few to even up the score a little. It must be difficult, thought Henry, when you were living with an obscenely masculine, fat, not particularly talented patriarch like Henry. Especially if you were a quote talented linguist gourmet cook and opera singer unquote.

‘What problems could you possibly have?’ said Henry. ‘You’re a feminist. Feminists by definition do not have problems. They are simply corrupted by patriarchy, aren’t they? All we have to do is to do away with fathers and we’re fine, aren’t we? Isn’t that the idea?’

‘Don’t be silly, Henry!’ said Elinor, in the style of a primary teacher, which once, years ago, she had been. ‘We’re thinking about our problems. Aren’t we?’

She sat up very straight on the side of the bed and continued to address him as if he were sitting on a mat in the Top Infants, wrestling with difficult, dangerous new concepts like add-ups and take-aways and the precise whereabouts of Australia.

‘We’re thinking about how we can be better as a couple and live in harmony as man and woman. Male and female principle. I believe, you see, that Womb and Phallus must be reconciled in some way!’

‘We could do a project on it,’ said Henry. ‘We could cut out pictures of penises and wombs and—’

‘Henry!’ said Elinor, in a voice that suggested that if he didn’t shut up he might get a clip round the ear. Then she continued in the sort of I’ll-be-reasonable-if-you’ll-be-reasonable tones adopted by the Russian government to, say, the Lithuanians.

‘You seek to control,’ she went on, ‘it’s perfectly natural. It’s a very masculine thing. It goes with a whole package of your attitudes. You’re very reactionary, politically. You are racist, as poor darling Donald was. And you are frightened of the world. Frightened of the liberation movements. The movements that seek to free black people, American Indians, Nicaragua and so on. Whereas I seek to go with the flow. To change and grow. To progress, Henry!’

Why was it, thought Henry, that Elinor felt so in tune with the poor and the oppressed of the world? And why was it that this deep empathy with the hard done by inspired her to give him such a hard time? Henry had absolutely no consistent views about anything that did not directly concern him; in his opinion, such views were a rather revolting luxury. Why . . . but Elinor was talking again.

‘I was reading this book the other day. About this urge to control experienced by males. Men seek control over women apparently. Whereas women—’

‘Seek total world domination!’ said Henry, under his breath.

‘What?’

‘Nothing, dear!’

Elinor looked at him suspiciously. ‘The world arms race, for example. Is a product of this urge to dominate, isn’t it? And if you look around at the world and try and find the women in positions of power, you have to say, where are they? Where are they?’

Henry started to mutter, into the duvet, the names of women in positions of power. ‘Mrs Thatcher,’ he hissed, ‘Mrs Gandhi. Golda Meir!’ OK two of those were dead but they had certainly caused a lot of trouble when alive, hadn’t they? When he couldn’t think of any more women in government, he added a few authors, actresses, athletes – ‘Jane Fonda,’ he muttered, ‘Chrissie Evert, Dusty Springfield, Adriana Rich!’ They were all women, weren’t they? They were all doing all right. They were doing a lot better than him. ‘Ella Fitzgerald,’ he mouthed, ‘Kate Millett, Nancy Reagan, Benazir Bhutto . . .’

‘What?’

‘Nothing, darling.’

Elinor turned to him and laid a hand on his head. ‘I just felt,’ she said, ‘since Donald had that terrible thing happen to him, we have been a bit closer. The horror has brought us together. We haven’t dumped so much. We’ve accepted each other for what we are.’

Talented cook, linguist and opera singer and fat, patriarchal slob.

Henry climbed under the duvet. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘I feel—’

These two words brought Elinor out in a kind of rash of solicitude. She swung her whole body round and fixed her eyes on Henry’s face as if he were a dying spy with some vital secret to impart.

‘I feel,’ said Henry, ‘that—’

Elinor nodded vigorously. This was clearly the way to get her to shut up and listen.

‘I feel,’ he went on, ‘as a man—’

What did he feel as a man? Nothing much really, apart from pretty fucking confused. He felt he probably didn’t know what feelings were any more. What feelings were OK and what were obscenely patriarchal and what merely irrelevant. He had more or less given up feeling, thought Henry, when his mother got started on him.

‘Yes,’ Elinor was saying, ‘yes?’

‘Well . . . if we could . . . share more . . .’

‘Yes?’ said Elinor.

‘If once or twice,’ he looked up at her soulfully, ‘we could share a . . . drink, say. You know? Get really drunk together. Have a few glasses of beer or Scotch or . . . you know . . . punch! The way we used to!’

Elinor smiled, a tight, maternal smile. And patted his hand. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I know . . .’

She wouldn’t have to get very drunk, thought Henry. Four or five glasses of Henry’s Stomach Cleanser should do it. Finish ’Em. Finish ’Em all. Her, Dave Sprott the dentist and Sam Baker QC (almost), Inspector Rush, ‘Neighbourhood Watch’, and Mr and Mrs Is-the-Mitsubishi-Scratched-Yet and Nazi Who Escaped Justice at Nuremberg. By tomorrow night Wimbledon was going to be an easier, cleaner, emptier place in which to live.

It was, to start off with
anyway,
a moving and impressive funeral. It was, as Vera ‘Got All the Things There Then?’ Loomis, the ninety-two-year-old from 92 pointed out, the best funeral that she had ever attended. It was, she said, adding that she had been to over fifty funerals in the UK alone, the funeral of a lifetime.

She was, she told everyone, particularly impressed with Henry’s speech.

At one stage Dave Sprott the northern dentist had suggested they hire a black charabanc and people in Maple Drive, used now to his carefully preserved northern humour, had managed deliberately weak smiles of the kind they managed when Sprott backed them into a corner at someone’s Christmas party.

But as Henry remarked to Elinor as the cortège moved away from Darby’s, the undertaker in the village, a charabanc might have been a more decent way of moving the extraordinarily large number of people who turned out for what Sprott referred to as ‘the big good-bye’ for Donald Templeton MD. There were so many limousines and lesser limousines and cars in attendance on the lesser limousines that the queue of cars stretched from Volley’s Pizza and Pasta House down to the Polka Children’s Theatre on the frontiers of Wimbledon. Some of the delayed motorists were distinctly lacking in respect, one going as far as to say that if he were going to get buried he’d have a bit more consideration for other road users.

In spite of this, to start off with anyway, everyone felt the event was going well. Mr Darby himself, a professionally miserable man in his late sixties, handed Billykins down from the car and into the chapel and, as the mourners crowded in after her, as politely unaggressive as only mourners can be, there was a real, though muted feeling of loss in the air. Inside the chapel there were white flowers, piled almost to the ceiling and, in a brown box a little to the right of a bargain-basement cross, was Donald.

The first sight of the coffin made Henry feel distinctly uneasy.

‘Look, Donald,’ he said, ‘I really am incredibly sorry about all of this.’