Here’s the bit I want you to read:
Haven’t you heard of women’s equal rights and responsibilities, you stupid girl? Yes, of course there’s such a thing as a condom. OK! And there’s also such a thing as the pill! What did you think you were playing at? But that’s all water under the bridge. Abortion’s the only answer. I’ll foot the bill on condition there’s a complete break between us. Things can’t go on like this. I land at Heathrow at lunchtime on Saturday 13th, so we can meet next Sunday. Let’s say the usual — twelve noon in the back room of the Bird and Baby. Please be there — for both our sakes.
How nice and cosy that would be!
And I would be there, perhaps.
Yes, there was a chance that I would be there.
The following day, Friday, was to be my last in employment as a cleaning lady, and that morning I put the finishing touches to my plan.
Originally I had intended to kill only Mrs. S-G. But my terms of reference had now widened.
That same afternoon I acted in an uncharacteristically careless way. I wrote a letter to my former employer:
Dear Mrs. S-G
I was grateful to you for employing me but I shall not be coming to work for you again.
My circumstances have changed significantly in the past few days.
I am sure you will not have any difficulty in finding a replacement.
Yours
It would have been tit-for-tat in the resignation-dismissal stakes. But I didn’t post the letter that day.
Nor the next.
Mrs. S-G however had clearly been better stocked with first-class stamps and her letter lay on the hall-mat the following morning, Saturday 13th, with mine still propped up against the Kellogg’s packet on the kitchen table.
Dear Marie Lawson,
Oh yes I do know your real name and I made no attempt to take up your bogus reference. At first I thought you were quite bright and I told you so. But in truth you must be as stupid as you obviously consider me to be. I was curious about why you’d applied and it amused me to offer you the job. So I watched you. And all the time you thought you were watching me! You see my husband told me all about your affair although I didn’t know you were pregnant. Nor, as it happens, do I believe you are. The charades with the note and the letter were prettily performed yet really quite unnecessary. I steamed open the letter as no doubt you wished me to in what (I have to assume) was your futile plan for bringing matters out into the open. I made a photocopy of the letter and forwarded your pathetic plea to America. I think the real reason for my writing — apart from giving you the sack — is to thank you for those two pieces of evidence you provided. I am informed by my lawyer that they will significantly expedite the divorce proceedings I shall be bringing against my husband. After that I expect my own life to turn into happier paths, and I trust that if I later re-marry I shall be more fortunate with my second husband than I was with the man who amused himself with a whole host of harlots besides yourself.
Stupid.
Both of them had called me stupid.
On that same Saturday night — or rather in the early hours of the Sunday morning — I waited with great patience for the light to be switched off in the master bedroom. (You remember it?)
If they were not in the same bed at least they were in the same bedroom, since I had seen the two figures silhouetted several times behind the curtains.
I further waited one whole hour, to the minute, before moving soundlessly along the side of the house and then into the rear garden where I stooped down beside the conservatory door.
Good old Boswell! (Remember him?) I almost hoped he’d decided to sleep out in the open that night.
I struck one of the extra-large Bryant & May matches. (Remember them?) And shielding the flame I pushed my hand slowly through the cat-flap.
Behind the glass-panelled door I could see the loose sheets of paper (so carefully stacked) catching light almost immediately.
No more than ten seconds later I felt rather than heard the sudden “whoosh” of some powerful updraught as a tongue of flame licked viciously at the items (so carefully stacked) beside the conservatory door.
The colour of the blaze reminded me so very much of Boswell’s eyes.
I departed swiftly via the front path before turning round fifty or so yards down the road.
The window of the master bedroom was still in darkness. But at the rear of the house I had the impression that although it was still only 2:15 A.M. the rosy-fingered dawn was beginning to break already.
It was big news.
Headlined in Monday’s edition of The Oxford Mail, for example, I read:
It seems unlikely that the burned-out shell of the listed thatch-and-timber property in Squitchey Lane (picture p. 2) will provide too many clues to the cause of the fire. The blaze spread with such rapid intensity that...
My eyes skipped on to the next paragraph:
The remains of two bodies, charred beyond all chance of recognition, have been recovered from a first-floor bedroom and it is feared that these are the bodies of Mr. J. Speneer-Gilbey and of his wife Valerie. Mr. Spencer-Gilbey had just returned from America where...
But I wasn’t really interested about where.
So I turned to look at the picture on page two.
It hadn’t after all seemed worthwhile to turn up at the Bird and Baby the previous day. So I hadn’t gone.
You can see why.
The fire was still big (bigger) news in the Tuesday evening’s edition of The Oxford Mail:
The Oxford City Police were amazed to receive a call late yesterday evening from Heathrow. The caller was Mr. John Spencer-Gilbey who, it had been assumed, had perished with his wife in the fire which completely destroyed their home in Squitchey Lane, Oxford, in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Mr. Spencer-Gilbey had been expected back in England on Saturday from a lecture tour in America. However it now appears that industrial action by air-traffic controllers on the western seaboard of America had effected the cancellation of the original flight, and Mr. Spencer-Gilbey told the police that he had earlier rung his wife to inform her of the rescheduling of his return to England.
A police spokesman told our reporter that several aspects of the situation were quite extraordinarily puzzling and that further enquiries were being pursued. The police appeal to anyone who might have been in or near Squitchey Lane in the late evening of Saturday 13th or the early morning of Sunday 14th to come forward to try to assist in these enquiries. Please ring (0865) 266000.
“... he had earlier rung his wife...”
Yes.
And he had also rung me.
For a start I was tempted to “come forward” myself — over the phone and anonymously — with a tentative (hah!) suggestion about the identity of that second fire-victim.
God rot his lecherous soul!
But I shan’t make that call.
One call I shall quite certainly make though. Once the dust, once the ashes have started to settle.
You see, I think that a meeting between the two of us could possibly be of some value after all. Don’t you?
And even as I write I almost hear the words that I shall use:
“John? Sunday? The usual? Twelve noon in the back room of the Bird and Baby? Please be there!”
Yes, John, please be there — for both our sakes...