She passed the two other neat sections, with rows of trimmed plant-tops (whose identity Maureen neither knew nor cared) that appeared clonelike in their similarity, and felt a wave of animosity towards them. It seemed as though, as she passed them, they sniggered at her in the wind and she felt like running amongst them, kicking at them with her shoes and swinging with her bag, tearing them out of their loamy houses with a vicious strangulating hold inflicted by her light blue Marigolds. If she had not been so preoccupied with these thoughts of garden-murder, she might have wondered why the three plots across from these three neat ones were so comparatively uncared for.
But she didn't.
As she reached Stan's shed door and inserted the key into the old lock, Maureen felt her pulse quicken. When she was inside, amidst the sudden silence and the smell of creosote and earth, under the accusative eyes of hoes and rakes and spades, she felt even worse: She suddenly felt her bowels loosen. Must be nerves, she thought to herself, scanning the carefully lined-up bottles and cans on the shelf at the back of the shed. After all, weren't there lots of stories about crooks leaving a mess on the carpet of the homes they burgled? Maureen now had some sympathy for their situation.
She read the various labels, taking care to remind herself mentally every few minutes that under no circumstances must she remove the Marigolds, until she found what she wanted: EXTERMINATE!, an old, tall can whose title appeared on four separate lines— EXT, ERM, IN and ATE!. The label carried numerous warnings printed in bold red capital letters (DANGER!, CARE!, and CAUTION!) and the top around the cap had rusted. Trying to loosen the cap, Maureen doubted that this product was still being made, and she hoped (assuming she would eventually get inside) that the contents were still in good working order.
When the top finally succumbed to pressure, Maureen removed it fully and peered inside. There seemed to be plenty there for her purpose and, even better, EXTERMINATE! had no noticeable smell. Of course, there was always a possibility that Stan was simply using the can to store some other potion— possibly one with few or no harmful effects to humans— but a quick glance across the shelf showed that Stan always used Sellotaped labels denoting the contents when those contents were different from the can containing them.
She replaced the cap, tightly, to make sure there could be no leakage into her pocket (even though she intended first wrapping the container in an old Netto's plastic bag) and checked around to make sure there was no evidence of her visit. Once satisfied, she pushed the shed door open slightly and peered out: The coast seemed clear— no doubt thanks to the continued rain— and, without further ado, she slipped out, closed and locked the door, and went on her way.
This time, the plants in the allotment rows did not snigger. This time they were still (though it was probably just that the wind had dropped) and altogether more respectful. "You're
all
going to die," she whispered into the rain, thinking of the council letter. "Every one of you."
Once she was safely back on Honeydew Lane, Maureen removed the Marigolds and walked down the hill to the Threshers on Eldershot Drive, where she bought three bottles of Black Sheep bitter. Then, pleased that she had not seen anyone that she knew (another vote of thanks for the rain!), she made her way back home.
The stage seemed to be pretty well set: Now all she needed was the star performer to return from his jaunt.
* * *
Maureen's star performer arrived back in the house at a little after four o'clock. Allowing for time spent each way on the bus and an hour or an hour and a half in the pub, he had been in Leeds for more than four hours. You could buy a lot of tools in four hours, Maureen thought. And so wasn't it a little surprising that he arrived back without so much as a single bag? Maybe so. But by this time, Maureen was concerned only with the job in hand.
Thinking ahead, she had realised that leaving the addition of EXTERMINATE! until the actual pouring of the beer itself left room for all kinds of unpleasant developments. Thus, with considerable dexterity, she had opened the bottle— carefully, without bending the cap too much out of shape— poured out a little of the beer, and topped it up with the special brew retrieved from Stan's shed. She had considered repeating the exercise with a second bottle (it could only be two at the most because she needed one "untreated" bottle for another purpose) but felt that one should be enough. Anyway, she had ensured a generous dose.
The cap had then been carefully replaced and tapped down with a small claw hammer Stan kept in the bureau drawer in the hall for when Maureen wanted pictures moved around.
Trying to think of all the things she needed to do had caused her head to ache, so Maureen had written them down on one of the sheets of paper by the phone— itemised thus:
* add poison to bottle and replace cap
* put bottles in pantry
(Stan hated his beer to be too cold, so the fridge was out of bounds.)
* give Stan a drink!
(After this particular item, Maureen assumed Stan would be dead although she refrained from any additional note to that effect but opted instead for the exclamation mark.)
* put bottle in dustbin
* pour out the contents of the spare bottle and leave it by the glass
(Maureen was particularly pleased with this point. Although she stood by her decision to add the poison to the bottle itself and not to the glass, she knew there would have to be a bottle alongside the dead man and she also knew that, although it was hoped that the whole thing would be an open-and-shut case, traces of the poison in the bottle— when the "victim" had drunk from a glass— would cause unnecessary suspicion.)
* make sure Stan's fingerprints are on the EXTERMINATE (She omitted the exclamation mark on this.) and leave the can beside the bottle and the glass
* leave the council letter by the bottle, can, and glass
Stan's first port of call on arriving home— with little more than a grunted acknowledgement of Maureen's presence— was the toilet. Interrupting the Niagra-like cacophony of his flow as it resounded through the house, Maureen shouted up to see if her husband would like a beer. The answer was an emphatic "Great!" followed by another stream of water (no doubt caused by excitement at the prospect of more beer or the need to make more room for same). The toilet flushed as Maureen took the treated bottle of Black Sheep from the pantry. She was opening it when Stan arrived in the kitchen behind her, an arrival announced by two things: the slurring noise of his feet and Stan's voice saying, "What's this?"
When Maureen turned around, Stan was frowning at her list of things to do… albeit, she was delighted to note, the wrong side.
"It's someone's telepho—"
"Sheila Hilton," Maureen said, springing across the room and doing her best to get the paper back without appearing to snatch it. She stuffed it into her pinny pocket and turned back to the table where Stan's final drink was already half poured. "I saw Jackie Cartwright the other day at the market in Tod— getting black pudding," she added, filling the lurking silence with unnecessary information that she knew would blank out Stan's concentration (and, more importantly, his curiosity). "And she said she'd call me with Sheila's number. Haven't seen her in years," she added, pouring the final drops from the bottle and squinting down at the now-full glass for any telltale signs.
Stan grunted, apparently satisfied with the explanation.
"Do you want a few crisps?" Maureen asked. "Or some nuts?" Considering the imminence of the condemned man's execution, nuts and crisps was as close as she could get to the obligatory "hearty meal."
Stan shook his head and plonked himself down at the table.
Maureen watched as he reached for the glass.
Stan looked at her as he raised the glass to his mouth.
Maureen knew that this was the moment beyond which there was no return: If she were to save her husband, now was the time to knock the glass from his hands. But by the time she had thought up an excuse for such a strange action (telling Stan that she had seen a wasp on the rim of the glass seemed like the favourite explanation), Stan had drunk half of the contents. He sat the glass on the table, looked at it for a moment, and then reached for it again, frowning.
"Something up with it?" she asked, hoping he could hear her voice above the drumming thunder of her pulse.
Stan didn't respond. He lifted the glass again and sniffed.
"Is it off?" Maureen enquired, keeping her voice calm.
Stan did one of his usual facial shrugs— a strange lifting of the nose and eyebrows— and put the glass to his mouth. He was halfway through the remaining beer when the glass dropped from his hands and he doubled over on the chair.
Maureen backed away against the cabinet where she kept her best blue-flowered crockery, wincing at the sound of the delicately positioned piles shifting as she hit the cupboard with her bottom.
Stan hit the floor jackknifed, his big hands anxiously kneading his stomach all the way and even when he was flat out.
The sound that Stan emitted was a long drawn-out groan, but not the kind of sleepy groan he gave when the alarm clock went off (always an alarm clock, even though the only place he ever had to go since leaving the buses was his damned allotment). This groan was the collective sigh of all the souls in hell bemoaning their eternal torment. It was the sound of organs deflating and dying, being seared into immediate submission by a concoction of age-old poison and bottled beer.
"I'll get the doctor," Maureen said, rushing out into the hall, keen to avoid the spectacle of her partner for these past three decades and more melting into the checked and threadbare kitchen linoleum.
She lifted the phone and pretended to hit the buttons, staring at Stan as he writhed around. He called out again a couple of times— words and phrases that Maureen could not recognize— and then he began to howl. Maureen thought about switching on the radio to drown out the noise, so that Stan didn't attract attention from the neighbours, and then he went quiet. She ran back to the kitchen and knelt down beside him, thinking he might be gone, but when she rested a hand on his shoulder she could feel it shuddering deep down inside her husband's body, as though Stan were a road-digger. "Doctor's on his way, love," she said softly against his ear.
Stan nodded and gave a low whine.
He opened his eyes slowly and the shuddering stopped.
His stare moved slowly until it rested on Maureen's face. She raised her eyebrows, expecting him to say something… to maybe get to his feet and say,
Well, nice try old love: Now it's my turn!
…stretching his meaty hands out to her throat…
But none of that happened.
What did happen was that Stan's eyes locked on Maureen's and in that split instant she knew that he knew what she had done. Then, without another movement, he went. His eyes were still wide and still in the same position but the life just went from them… fell away from the body like a mist banished by the sun and captured on fast film for one of the nature programmes on the TV.
Maureen got to her feet and thought about doing something about the high-pitched hum she could hear… until she realised that she herself was making it. She clenched her teeth tightly and swallowed.
She got out her piece of paper and read the notes.
The bad bottle went into the peddle bin until she thought better of that and retrieved it to put it into the dustbin outside (along with the light blue Marigolds: a sudden afterthought, just to be on the safe side), beneath all the other stuff they'd thrown away over the past few days.
The contents of a second bottle went down the sink, flushed away by a long run of the cold tap, and the bottle went onto the table. (The third bottle, spared for a while, would languish in the fridge for a few weeks before being consigned, untouched and unused, to the bin long before its sell-by date.)
The letter from the council also went on the table.
She left the glass on the floor.
The poison (duly fingerprinted by Stan's limp right hand) went on the table next to the letter.
Then she went and looked out of the windows. Nobody was around.
Maureen went into the hall and phoned the police.
* * *
The interview with the police seemed to go well, as far as Maureen could judge these things. She felt she had displayed a suitable mixture of hysteria and disbelief, both of which, she was a little surprised to note, were fairly genuine.
All she kept saying was that she had no idea why her husband should do such a thing… explaining that she had left everything just as she had found it.
She tried to feel unconcerned when one of the officers carefully removed the glass, bottle, and EXTERMINATE!, placing them into polythene bags and labelling them.
It seemed to be an open-and-shut case, the detective explained, his voice dripping with regret. Her husband's allotment was his whole life— "No disrespect intended, Mrs. Walker," he had added, to which Maureen had first frowned and then nodded, with a dismissive wave of the hand— and the prospect of losing it had been too much to bear. Stan had brought a can of poison from his shed, mixed it with a glass of beer, and… "Bob's your uncle," he said. (Actually, none of Maureen's uncles was called Bob, but she didn't think that that mattered too much.)
