Then again, there was hazardous garden equipment. Greg had hazy recollections from his schooldays of reading books in which horny-handed sons of the soil suffered terrible injuries from sickles and scythes. Then, of course, farmers kept getting trapped under tractors. And didn’t people die in grain silos?
He realized his fantasies were getting a little out of hand, and decided to curb them until he had actually assessed the possibilities offered by the garden shed.
So far as he could recollect, Greg Lincoln had never been inside the place. Lovelock Manor had come as part of the package with Shelley, and he’d had no curiosity as to what happened outside the house itself. So walking down the path to the shed was a new experience. There had been rain on Boxing Day, the red bricks underfoot were slippery and Greg winced at the idea of getting slime on his tasselled loafers. He passed an almost dead bonfire from which frail tendrils of smoke fought their way up through the mist. Amazing how long some things burned for. Dan the gardener, who must have lit the fire, hadn’t been to work since the day before Christmas Eve.
Greg was surprised to find how spacious the interior of the shed was. Also how neat and well maintained. He had never taken much interest in Dan. A muscle-bound young man probably around thirty, the gardener seemed to be a man of few words. (That was to say that Greg had never heard many words from him; then again he’d never addressed many to the young man either.) But the neatly aligned hanging spades, forks, hoes, rakes and other garden implements suggested a tidy mind, which was confirmed by the carefully labelled pots, boxes and jars on the benches that ran below the small windows. The minimal light these gave was further diminished by creepers growing outside, and Greg was not surprised to see that Dan had a large fat candle in a holder. Nor that there was a lighter lying on the bench beside it.
There was no electricity running to the shed, but the space was surprisingly snug. Two dilapidated armchairs gathered round a butane gas heater, and a sofa-bed slumped against one wall. A small butane gas stove suggested Dan could keep himself supplied with hot drinks and snacks. There was a small cabinet containing instant coffee, UHT milk, sugar, a biscuit tin.
Greg Lincoln only vaguely took in these details. What his mind focused on was the predominant smell inside the shed. Petrol.
The odour emanated from a large fuel can, and from the mower, chainsaw and strimmer which had been filled from it. Greg smiled at his own good fortune, as all the elements of the plot that had been eluding him fell neatly into place.
The next day Dan would be back at work. The next day Shelley would inevitably join him in the shed to discuss their future planting strategy.
The next day there would be an unfortunate accidental conflagration in the shed. An explosion caused by leaking petrol coming into contact with a naked flame.
Of course, the plan probably meant that Dan would die as well as Shelley. But, Greg Lincoln reflected with a self-satisfied grin, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.
Having decided where and how to arrange his wife’s murder, Greg Lincoln began to concentrate on the details of his plan.
It was absolutely certain that she would spend some time the following day in the shed with Dan. Shelley, for whom — inexplicably to her husband — a day without gardening was a day without meaning, had been restless over the holiday period, and the presents of gardening books she’d received had clearly been a poor substitute for actually getting her hands dirty. And yet she seemed unable to do anything in the garden on her own initiative; she needed Dan there as a guide and sounding board. Shelley really did have a very weak personality. Once the shock of her death had passed, Greg felt sure he would have real difficulty in remembering anything about his former wife.
Anyway, by then he would be permanently with Vicki Talbot. The tantalizing image of her body strengthened his resolve — which didn’t really need any strengthening — to dispose of Shelley as quickly as possible.
So... a conflagration in the garden shed. The windows would be too small for Shelley and Dan to escape through, but the door would need to be locked somehow. Locked in a way that would not be a giveaway to post-conflagration forensic examination...?
Greg Lincoln enjoyed the challenge this problem presented to him. He was feeling even more confident than usual. The energy given to him by his passion for Vicki would be channelled into devising Shelley’s death.
He studied the outside of the shed door. A broken old-fashioned wooden latch had been superseded by a more robust system with an eye screwed into the frame and a clasp to the door. An open padlock hung from the eye. It could be removed to fit the clasp over the ring, then replaced and closed to secure the building. But a locked padlock in the embers of Shelley Lincoln’s funeral pyre would be far too much of a giveaway.
Greg concentrated on the older fixture instead. It was a traditional Sussex design — a wooden bar pivoted by a screw into the door and fitting when closed into a wooden slot on the door frame. A rectangular hole cut into the door would once have held a handle attached to the bar, which someone inside could lift to let themselves out. But the crosspiece was missing, and the bar hung downwards.
He tested the bar, which he found still rotated on its screw fitting. Hardly daring to believe his luck, he moved it round like the hand of a clock until it stood upright above its pivot. He then gently banged the door closed. Shaken off balance, the bar very satisfyingly moved through an arc to settle into its welcoming groove in the door frame. The shed was locked from the outside.
Greg Lincoln felt a surge of glee. The Sussex craftsman who had made the latch had made it good and robust. Greg used a screwdriver to tighten the screw and, after a few adjustments, found that every time he closed the door, the bar would infallibly fall into the locked position. With no inside handle to reopen it.
Deliberately leaving the latch bar hanging in its downward position, he moved into the shed. Petrol next... petrol to fuel the conflag ration. The smell inside was already so strong that he didn’t reckon Shelley or Dan would notice however much more of the stuff he sprinkled around. But he was careful. Glossy pools on the floor would raise suspicions. So he poured his petrol trail out of sight beneath the benches and armchairs. He shifted the sofa-bed and generously soaked its back, which would be out of sight against the wall.
Greg Lincoln moved deftly, glorying in his own cleverness. While he prepared his fire-trap, his mind coolly assessed possible methods for igniting it. Had to be something remote, something that would activate while he was safely off the scene. He’d decided that the following day he actually might do what he had claimed to be doing so many times before, and go to the golf club. There’d be plenty of old bores there, escaping the cloying bonds of a family Christmas, able to give him an alibi for the time of his wife’s murder.
The ignition method couldn’t involve anything electronic. That too might leave traces. No, he needed something that would disappear in the general conflagration, offering no clues to outside intervention.
A fuse, it had to be some kind of fuse.
He looked around the shed for inspiration. He still felt confidently calm. He was in a zone where he knew that the right solution would come to him. Greg Lincoln could not fail.
But nothing he saw inside rang the right bells. Pensively, he moved out into the garden, and found himself drawn to the bonfire he had observed earlier. The bonfire that was still burning three days after Dan had lit it.
The centre of the fire was dead white ash, but from the circle around the edges little spirals of smoke rose. Greg’s tasselled loafer probed tentatively into the smoulderings, and instantly found what he was looking for.