He fetched a screwdriver to take it off. Have to buy a replacement. As he pulled the wire free, he saw that even more of the rubber was perished. Presumably that meant the whole electrical system was the same. The house had never been properly rewired; the old round-pin plugs had just been replaced with square-pins. Have to get an electrician to look at it. Damn, that was bound to mean more expense.
While he was perched on the ladder, separating the wires so that they didn’t fuse everything when the power came back, Merrily’s little voice floated plaintively up to him.
‘Who were you with?’
‘What?’
‘This evening — who were you with?’
‘Eh?’
He pointed the torch down, bleaching her little face. She blinked, but pressed on. ‘Graham — are you having an affair with someone?’
‘What!’ He almost laughed at the incongruity of the question. God knows, he hadn’t done anything with Stella. But had Merrily got some amazing radar that could pick up the fact that he’d invited the girl out for a drink?
He came down the ladder. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Well, there’s something funny going on, Graham. You’ve been so twitchy the last week. You leap up every time the ’phone goes — or the front doorbell. You’re acting exactly as if you’d done something you shouldn’t.’
He almost laughed. ‘And you think the thing I shouldn’t have done is to sleep with another woman?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it isn’t. No, the thing I shouldn’t have done. .’ he continued nonchalantly.
‘Is what?’
The words were out before he had time to think. ‘Oh, just murdering someone.’
But the confession only got a ‘Ha, bloody ha’ from Merrily. The humour of the situation hit Graham and he giggled uncontrollably.
‘What is it, Graham? Is it another woman?’
‘No, it’s not.’ As he got control of himself he started to regret the mention of the murder. Better feed her a bit of truth before she started to think about it. ‘No, it’s George’s job.’
‘Oh, of course. Have you heard yet?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘Not good. I haven’t got it.’
‘What!’
He shone the torch again in Merrily’s face and saw there some of the disappointment and betrayal which he had felt when he heard the news.
Her disappointment, however, was purely materialistic.
‘But we need the money, Graham. There are lots of things that need doing to the house, and I haven’t got a stitch to wear.’
Merrily was very put out for the rest of the evening. She made no secret of the fact that she felt her husband had let her down.
Simply to get her off that subject, Graham again raised the question of his having an affair. He denied it, with perhaps a little too much vehemence. And in bed he made love to her to convince her of his fidelity.
Again, perhaps with a little too much vehemence.
The events of the evening had suspended his fears about the murder, but they came back when he woke sweating at three in the morning. He soon gave up the hope of further sleep, and walked round the house to control the trembling of his body.
To give himself something to do, he looked at other electrical fittings and found what he had feared, the same old wiring with its perished insulation.
That added a new panic. He tried to recapture the nonchalance that being a murderer had sometimes given and ask himself how potentially lethal wiring could matter to a man who had taken the life of another, but it didn’t work. He switched off the mains.
At eight-thirty, having shouted down the rest of the family’s moans about the lack of light, radios, hot water and hot food, he rang an electrician, asking him to come round and say how serious the danger was.
The post then arrived, bearing a letter from his bank manager, complaining about the abuse of the Marshalls’ overdraft ‘facility’ and demanding a ‘remittance’.
While he was recovering from this blow, Lilian Hinchcliffe rang to say her little Fiat had a flat tyre. Would Graham be an angel and come round and fiddle with whatever needed fiddling with?
No, he bloody wouldn’t. He curbed this response before he voiced it, but said unfortunately he couldn’t because he was waiting in for the electrician, Lilian would have to get in touch with a tyre place and get the thing mended herself (like ordinary bloody people did). But they charged so much, Lilian whined, surely it wasn’t a lot to ask for Graham to just come and have a little look at it. Very well, he’d see if he could get over later.
Merrily, who had gone up after their cold breakfast to dress, came down in the ragged T-shirt and patched jeans she wore for painting. Since they weren’t ever going to have any money ever again, she announced, she’d better get used to their new style of life. The gesture was characteristic, particularly in its totally inappropriate timing.
As if this weren’t enough, Emma, about to leave for school, said she felt funny, and turned out, on examination by Merrily, to have started, at the tender age of eleven, her first period.
Henry, uninformed by his father — or indeed anyone else — about such matters, did not understand and made some inapposite remark, which sent the two women (as they both now were) into floods of tears.
At this moment the doorbell rang. Graham would almost have welcomed a policeman come to arrest him, but it turned out to be the electrician.
Tight-lipped, Graham showed him round the house. The electrician fingered the odd wire that all too easily came out of the wall, tapped a few plugs and tutted over junction boxes. Then, with the understanding gravity of a cancer surgeon, he said the house was a deathtrap, and it would need complete rewiring, at a cost of one thousand four hundred pounds. Excluding V.A.T.
What about switching the power back on — would it be safe? The electrician shook his head dubiously. Well, he wouldn’t like to be responsible. Still, have to take the risk till it was all properly done. What? No, he couldn’t think about doing it for three weeks. Up to here he was. Oh yes, but no question it was urgent. Very urgent.
Graham Marshall thought of Stella with her little flat and no more weighty decision than which cinema to go to that evening.
He thought of Robert Benham, with his potential Head of Personnel’s salary and his weekend trip to Miami.
He thought of himself, who, on top of everything else, was a murderer.
And he thought that at least, when you’re in prison for life, you don’t have any responsibilities.
CHAPTER SIX
Time continued to pass and for Graham Marshall the balance between peace and fear slowly changed. The panics still came, terrors could still clutch at him when least expected, but they did not come so often and they did not stay so long.
Murder, he began to think in moments of detachment, was like any other new experience. Like sex, maybe. The first time it seemed all-important, as if it would dominate the rest of one’s life, but gradually it came to be accepted, even taken for granted. How many married men, he wondered, questioned on their way to work, could remember whether or not they’d made love to their wives the night before.
Sex only became an obsession when the impulse was unnaturally strong or when it was infected with guilt.
Continuing his analogy, he found that his impulse to murder was not unnaturally strong. Nor did he feel any guilt about the one that he had committed.
He sometimes wondered idly whether he’d feel any different if the victim were someone he knew.
Of course, the big distinction between sex and murder was that one wanted to make a habit of the first, and probably not of the second.
Graham Marshall certainly didn’t. Three weeks after the event he still found the shock was sufficient to last him for a lifetime. And he would do anything to avoid the paralysing fear of discovery.