‘Why?’ His tone, he knew, was one of infuriating irony.
‘Because you’re mad.’
Again the word stung and, before he was aware of doing it, he brought the back of his left hand hard against her mouth. She wheezed with pain and her struggling stopped. A gleam of blood showed where the lip had bruised against her teeth.
‘Now come on.’ Graham had control of himself again.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You killed Merrily.’
He laughed aloud and, still keeping his mother-in-law at arm’s length, propelled her into the sitting-room. He positioned her in front of an armchair and gave a little push. She subsided, the violence drained out of her.
Graham sat down on the sofa. ‘So I killed Merrily, did I?’
‘Yes.’
‘If that’s the case, how come the police didn’t mention it at the inquest? How come that even their second investigation, prompted by your poison-pen letter, also drew a blank?’
Lilian had coloured at the mention of the letter. ‘I know you hated her, Graham. Look at you, you haven’t shown a moment of regret since she died. You were just delighted to get rid of her, and the children and me.’
‘That is hardly a crime,’ Graham drawled. ‘I think you’d find a good few husbands who, offered the opportunity of painlessly shedding their families, would leap at the chance.’
‘You planned it all. You knew it was going to happen. While you were in Brussels, while Merrily was looking after the house and tidying up for you, you knew she was doomed.’
‘Any proof?’ he asked, with a needling smile.
‘I haven’t any proof about the electricity. I’ve got proof. . proof that. .’ She lost momentum suddenly, her bluster deflated. She tried to disguise the look but Graham had seen her eyes drop to the handbag slumped at her feet.
‘What’s in there, Lilian?’
She made only token resistance as he snatched the bag from her and drew out its contents.
‘Well, well, well.’ He separated the words with slow irony. He held up the sherry bottle. Time had not helped to dissolve its contents. Still through the green glass he could see the strange sediment of blue granules. Still over the label was stuck his own felt-penned warning: ‘POISON. NOT TO BE TAKEN.’
‘So where did you get this from, Lilian?’
‘Merrily tidied the shed.’ Her voice was sulky and resigned.
‘Two days before she died. I helped her.’
Of course. Merrily’s last accusatory gesture, the preparation for the scene of marital recrimination she did not survive to play.
‘And you found this bottle. What did Merrily say?’
He was unworried, but intrigued. Had the discovery alerted Merrily’s suspicions? He liked the idea, liked the idea of his wife’s fearing him, of her last mortal thought in the loft, as the current slammed through her, being the realisation of her husband’s power.
Lilian flushed. ‘Merrily. . didn’t see the bottle.’
He understood. His mother-in-law, thinking it to be full, had snatched the sherry from the shelf and hidden it in her bag.
‘And you only saw the “POISON” label when you got it home?’
She was too depleted to make any attempt at denial.
‘Oh, Lilian.’ He shook his head in mock-sympathy. Then changed his tone. ‘You spoke of this as proof. Proof of what, may I ask?’
‘Proof that you planned Merrily’s death,’ she replied, emptying her diminished arsenal of defiance.
‘How does this prove that?’ He held the bottle daintily between thumb and forefinger. ‘Merrily died in an electrical accident due to faulty wiring in an old house.’
‘This bottle proves that you planned to kill her, that you tried out poison as a first option, that you hoped you might be able to make her drink it in error, that then you realised it wouldn’t work and.
The words could have been worrying, so close did they come to the truth, but the tone of defeat with which they were delivered and the hopelessness in which they petered out, showed how little even their speaker was convinced by them. With a little surge of delight, Graham realised again his immunity, his invisibility from the searching eyes of suspicion.
‘And this bottle proves all that?’ He placed it on the mantelpiece and shook his head. ‘Why now suddenly? Why didn’t you produce your “evidence” when you sent off your letter to the police?’
‘I hadn’t worked it all out then,’ she mumbled.
‘And you still haven’t,’ he riposted harshly. ‘Still haven’t by a mile. Because there’s nothing to work out. God knows what play this scene comes from, Lilian, but, as ever, you’re all melodrama — you always have been. With you, everything gets inflated into full-scale comic opera. Whether it’s how Charmian’s behaved, or do your grandchildren love you, or your non-affair with the late, great, gay William Essex, it all — ’ He stopped for her to speak, but she thought better of her interruption, so he continued. ‘It all gets overblown and ridiculous. Which is one of the reasons why I am glad to be shot of you. But. .’ He raised a finger to silence her. ‘But it’s now ceasing to be funny. Any more allegations of murder and I’ll have you prosecuted. I don’t think the police are going to be over-impressed by your sherry bottle. They might if it had been found in the shed the week after Merrily’s death, but now. . well, you could so easily have set it up to frame me. They’re already suspicious of you, Lilian. I actually had to deter them from taking action after the letter. Now there’s this knife attack this morning. Bother me again, Lilian, and I’ll get you put away.’
She was still silent as he rose. ‘I am going to get dressed. When I come down again, I would prefer not to find you here. Oh, and, incidentally, I will be watching out for further knife attacks.’
At the door he stopped, curious. ‘By the way, what was the knife attack in aid of? Did you intend to kill me?’
‘Yes,’ she hissed. ‘But not with the knife.’
‘How then?’
She made a limp, disspirited gesture to the bottle on the mantelpiece.
‘You were going to make me drink that?’ He could hardly believe her little nod of assent. ‘At knife point?’
The second small nod released his laughter. The joke still seemed good as he picked up the knife in the hall and placed it out of harm’s way. And during the leisurely process of shaving and dressing, little chuckles kept bubbling through.
When he went back down to the sitting-room, Lilian was still there. She appeared not to have moved. Her face sagged, old and wretched.
‘I am going out,’ Graham announced. ‘I’d be grateful if, when you go, you would leave my house key on the hall table. But if you don’t, I am sure I can get it returned by my solicitors.’
He was at the door before she spoke.
‘You killed Merrily, Graham. And I’m going to be revenged on you. If it’s the last thing I do.’
‘No, Lilian.’ He favoured her with a condescending smile. ‘Not even if it’s the last thing you do.’
He walked out of the house to encounter a new problem.
It was a bright day, the green of the new leaves intensified by the sunlight. He started walking towards the river with no very clear intentions. He felt deliciously free; it didn’t matter where he went, what he did.
‘Graham.’
He turned at the sound of his name to see Stella hurrying towards him from a Mini parked opposite the house. He said nothing as she approached.
‘Graham, I want to know what’s happening.’
‘Why are you here?’ he asked coldly.
‘I’ve got to see you.’
‘You are seeing me. Why have you come here? Why are you stopping me in the street?’
‘I was going to go to the house, but just as I got there a woman arrived.’
‘My mother-in-law,’ he enunciated. ‘The mother of my late wife.’
‘Graham. .’ Stella looked at him in a way that was meant to be appealing.
‘What do you want?’ He was getting annoyed. Fortunately there were few people around, but he didn’t want scenes in the street.