Rand and Leila slept late the following morning. The remainder of their holiday seemed rather bland, but perhaps it was just as well. The Egyptian Days had come and gone.
Early Retirement
by Frances Usher
© 1994 by Frances Usher
Frances Usher has written and had published two children’s books, but she has always been interested in adult crime fiction, and this is her first effort. The story was submitted at a writers conference in the U.K., where it was evaluated by EQMM Readers Award winner Peter Lovesey, and eventually found its way to our offices. A special thanks to Peter Lovesey for his efforts on behalf of EQMM, and a warm welcome to Frances Usher...
It was in mid-July that Tony Minnifer loaded his books for the last time into the boot of his car and drove away from the comprehensive school from which he was taking early retirement. By early September he had decided to murder his sister.
It was a logical decision; Tony was a lifelong maths teacher, after all. The package of early-retirement measures thrust upon him by his education authority, desperate for staff cutbacks, and by his new headmaster, who believed that anyone who remembered the twelve-sided threepenny bit must be kept away from the young, had not left Tony a wealthy man.
“Only a pittance really.” He stared morosely out into the large neglected back garden.
“Never mind, dear.” His wife Stella lifted her head from a leaflet she’d picked up in the library. It was called Golden Age: Golden Stage. Only a month before, she’d been made redundant from her own job with a building society. “It says here the retirement years can be the most fulfilling, satisfying, and fun-packed time of your life.”
“Can be.”
Beaming grey-haired couples were pictured all over the leaflet, sitting outside their immaculate country cottages, leaning on the rails of cruise liners, hugging their unnaturally friendly grandchildren on some distant airport tarmac.
“Never mind that lot,” said Tony. “All I want is to get this garden in decent shape now there’s a bit of spare time. But I can’t even afford to do that properly.”
It was then that a picture of his only sister Marjorie came into his mind.
He blinked. Now, there was an idea. For the first time, early retirement began to hold out a possibility or two.
“We could always sell the car,” Stella was saying. “See if we could get bus passes instead.”
“No,” said Tony. “I think I might be needing the car for a while.”
Marjorie lived in Worthing. It was a dark, drizzling evening when Tony drew up outside her house.
“Well, Tony. Quite a surprise.”
Marjorie led him into the warm sitting room. Clearly, her accountant husband had left her well provided for.
“You don’t mind, do you?” She eased herself back into her armchair, her eyes fixed on the blue-bathed television screen. It was a Conservative Party political broadcast. “Only another moment or two.”
“Of course,” said Tony. He fingered the rolled-up tie in his pocket. He hadn’t worn a tie since the day he’d left the school.
The Tories would be holding their annual conference in a week or two. Unless he took action now, Marjorie would be there in the conference hall as usual, gazing adoringly at the platform with the rest of her well-fed sisterhood. He’d glimpsed her once on a news bulletin, taking part in a fourteen-minute ovation. He’d felt sick.
“Only a moment or two,” he said.
Perhaps she saw his reflection in the screen. Perhaps it was a sixth survival sense. She turned at the last second, saw him coming towards her with the tie stretched taut between his hands, screamed... and suddenly collapsed over the arm of her chair, her hands scrabbling at her blue twin set, her face purple with pain, terror, and plain simple astonishment.
Tony watched in awe as her chest ceased to heave. Then, slowly, he rolled up the tie again and put it back in his pocket.
“Damn,” he said. Trust Marjorie.
He reached for the telephone and began to dial for an ambulance.
The legacy made quite a difference to the Minnifers’ life. Once the Worthing house was sold Tony was able to buy all sorts of equipment and start laying out the garden in the way that recently he’d been dreaming of. He spent hours ploughing up the rough grass, moving earth, and scooping out trenches. On wet days, he drew plans on squared paper.
Stella, meanwhile, was extending her social life, attending coffee mornings and enrolling in afternoon art classes.
“Tony?” She stumbled towards him across the garden one November dusk. “Whatever are all those stones doing on the drive?”
Tony straightened up, wiping his glasses.
“I’m going to make a rockery,” he said. “Over there in the comer. I’ll see to it all tomorrow. I’m just off to the garden centre now. See if they’ve got any alpines I can buy. It won’t take long.”
The familiar door no longer said “Headmaster.” It said “Director of Educational Policy (Studies).” Tony drew a deep breath. Along a distant corridor he could hear the hum of a floor polisher. He pushed open the door.
The headmaster looked up, startled.
“Tony?”
In the shaded lamplight Tony could read upside-down headings on the documents spread on the desk. “Rationalisation of School Dinner Services,” he read, and “English in the Service of Industry.”
“Was there something you wanted...” The headmaster smiled uncertainly. “... Tony?”
“Yes,” he said, and moved round to the back of the desk. He braced himself against the notice board covered with flow charts and reached into his pocket.
“Oh yes,” he said. “Indeed there was.”
It was quite dark outside. He’d brought a large plastic compost sack with him and it wasn’t too difficult to drag the body, decently wrapped and trussed, over the polished floor the short distance to the outside door. He’d already backed the car close up. Lifting the bundle high enough to topple into the car boot was harder, but he managed it safely and soon he was driving into his garage at home with a warm sense of satisfaction.
Pleasurable, he decided. That was the word. It had been perverse of Marjorie to have had that heart attack at the last moment. Saved trouble, of course. But the plan had been ready, and it had been disappointing not to carry it through.
Still, he’d done it this time. He’d made a start.
The rockery looked very nice in the comer of the garden.
“Sort of substantial,” said Stella, viewing it from the kitchen window. “Gives the garden quite a focus.”
“So will the pool,” said Tony, drying a plate. “That’s my next job. It’s going to be—”
“Shush a minute.” Stella turned up the radio. “Did you hear that? About those young criminals? Whatever are things coming to?”
“I know.” Tony nodded his head. “Makes you think, doesn’t it?”
The research had taken some time, but time was what he had plenty of. And he’d tracked him down now.
Wayne Wilkinson.
To Tony’s relief, Stella hadn’t argued when he’d told her he was going up to London for the weekend.