Herley felt an obscure and dull surprise on discovering that the world outside the house was exactly as he had left it—warm and green, placidly summery, unconcerned. Even the patterns of sunlight and leafy shadow looked the same, as though the terrible event in Corcoran’s study had taken place in another continuum where time did not exist.
Grateful for the screening effect of the trees and tall shrubs, Herley tightened his grip on the red box and started out for home.
“It’s wonderful,” June breathed, unable to divert her gaze from the small bottle which Herley had set on the kitchen table. “It seems too good to be true.”
“But it is true—I guarantee it.” Herley picked up the hypodermic syringe he had found in the red box and examined its tip. He had made important decisions on the journey back from Reading. His wife already knew where he had been during the day, so there was nothing for it but to wait until the news of Corcoran’s “accidental” death came out and utter appropriate words. If the body was found quickly: Good God! It must have happened to the poor man soon after I left him—but I don’t think there’s any point in my getting mixed up in an inquest, do you? If, as was quite possible, there was a lengthy delay before the corpse came to light: Fancy that! I wonder if it could have happened around the time I went to see him…
In either case, to prevent June talking about it and perhaps forging links in other people’s minds, he was going to lie about where and how he had obtained the drug.
“Just think, darling,” he said enthusiastically. “Four little shots is all it will take. No dieting, no boring counting of calories, no trouble. I promise you, you’re going to be your old self again.”
June glanced down at her squab-like breasts and the massive curvature of her stomach which the loosest fitting dress was unable to disguise. “It would be wonderful to wear nice clothes again.”
“We’ll get you a wardrobe full of them. Dresses, undies, swimsuits—the lot.”
She gave a delighted laugh. “Do you really think I could go on the beach again?”
“You’re going, dear—in a black bikini.”
“Mmm! I can’t wait.”
“Neither can I.” Herley opened the small bottle, inverted it and filled the hypodermic with colourless fluid. He had been disappointed to discover that the drug was not in tablet form, which he could have slipped unannounced into June’s food, but there was nothing he could do to alter the situation. It was fortunate, he realised, that he knew how to use a needle.
“I don’t think we need bother about sterilising swabs and all that stuff,” he said. “Give me your arm, dear.”
June’s eyes locked with his and her expression became oddly wary. “Now?”
“What do you mean now? Of course it’s now. Give me your arm.”
“But it’s so soon. I need time to think.”
“About what?” Herley demanded. “You don’t think I’m planning to poison you, I hope.”
“I … I don’t even know where that stuff came from.”
“It’s from one of the best Harley Street clinics, June. It’s something brand new, and it cost me a fortune.”
June’s lips had begun to look bloodless. “Well, why doesn’t the doctor give me the injections himself?”
“For an extra hundred guineas? Talk sense!”
“I am talking sense—giving injections is a skilled job.”
“You saw me giving dozens of them to your mother.”
“Yes,” June said heatedly. “And my mother died.”
Herley gaped at her, unable to accept what he had heard. “June! Is that remark supposed to contain any kind of logic? It was because your mother was dying that she was on morphine.”
“I don’t care.” June turned her back on him and walked towards the refrigerator, the great slabs of her hips working beneath the flowered material of her dress. “I’m not going to be rushed into anything.”
Herley looked from her to the syringe in his hand and blood thundered in his ears. He hit her with the left side of his body, throwing her against the refrigerator and pinning her there while his left arm clamped around her neck. She heaved against him convulsively, once, then froze into immobility as the needle ran deep into the hanging flesh of her upper right arm. Herley was reminded of some wild creature which was genetically conditioned to yield at the moment of being taken by a predator, but the pang of guilt he felt served only to increase his anger. He drove a roughly estimated cubic centimetre of the fluid into his wife’s bloodstream, withdrew the needle and stepped back, his breath coming in a series of low growls which he was unable to suppress.
June clamped her left hand over the bright red lentil which had appeared on her arm, and turned to face him. “Did I deserve that, Brian?” she said sadly and gently. “Do I really deserve that sort of treatment?”
“Don’t try your old Saint June act on me,” he snapped. “It used to work, but things are going to be different from now on.”
A fine rain began to fall in mid-evening, denying Herley the solace of working in the garden. He sat near the window in the front room, pretending to read a book and covertly watching June as she whiled away the hours before bed. She maintained a wounded silence, staring at the dried flower arrangement which screened the unused fireplace. At intervals of fifteen minutes she went foraging in the kitchen, and on her returns made no attempt to hide the fact that she was chewing. Once she brought back an economy-size container of salted peanuts and steadily munched her way through them, filling the whole room with the choking smell of peanut oil and saliva.
Herley endured the performance without comment, his mood a strange blend of boredom and terror. Slipping away from Corcoran’s house could have been, he saw in retrospect, a serious blunder. It might have been better to telephone the police immediately and present them with a perfectly credible, unimpeachable story about Corcoran getting drunk and falling backwards against the mantlepiece. That way he could have kept the drug, hiding it in his pocket, and emerged from the affair free and clear. As it was, he was going to have some difficult explaining to do should the authorities manage to connect him with Corcoran’s death.
Why couldn’t the little swine have been reasonable! Herley repeated the question to himself many times during the dismal suburban evening and always arrived at the same answer. Anybody who was crazy enough to regard subcutaneous fat, simple disgusting blubber, as having sentience and a pseudo-life of its own was hardly likely to listen to reason in any other respect. The very idea was enough to give Herley a cold, crawling sensation along his spine, adding a hint of Karloffian horror to the evening’s natural gloom.
As the rain continued the air in the house steadily grew cooler and more humid, beginning to smell of toadstools, and Herley wished he had lit the fire hours earlier. He also found himself longing, uncharacteristically, for an alcoholic drink—regardless of the empty calories it would have represented—but there was nothing in the house. He contented himself by smoking cigarette after cigarette.
At 11.30 he stood up and said, “I think that’s enough hilarity for one evening—are you going to bed?”
“Bed?” June looked up at him, seemingly without understanding. “Bed?”