The Murdering Wives Club Read online

  “Don’t shoot this way,” I ordered, not taking my eyes off her.

  Tilly was determined now, her eye aiming the mean-looking weapon again. Her shoes clipped on the tiles and as she stood above me the metal cylinder came level with my ear. She was panting.

  “Don’t do this, Tilly. Don’t. Give me the rifle,” I begged, reaching out.

  The barrel wasn’t hot like I feared and I slowly wrapped my fingers around it. “You’re no killer, Tilly. You love me like a sister.”

  Holding my breath, I listened to her sob and felt the grip she had on the weapon go slack and I took it off her with one pull. The butt thumped the floor and she retreated to fall onto her knees by the meat near the table. She cried over him, whimpering sweet somethings into the mess of him and swallowed hard to make herself stop crying.

  She leant up towards me and pleaded, “Please don’t harm us any more. Please, Eve. He’s a good man. For me, please. Please? No more.”

  “You landed me in this mess and then you won’t help me out of it. Tried to kill me! I’m beyond cross.”

  What a pathetic creature she had become. She made a praying gesture with her hands, mouthing “please” at me. A good person would have nodded and reassured her, but that person wasn’t in me.

  Silly Tilly had let me down. She didn’t want to be in my company any more, she didn’t wish to be a Rose even though it was she who landed me in the nest of snakes to begin with. I couldn’t hide my anger. I took to nibbling the side of my nails.

  When I looked again, Tilly was kissing Frank’s bloody hand and praying.

  “Which will it be, Glensmal?” I said aloud to the house.

  Tilly muffled her crying in her hands. She was probably right. I’m a little unhinged when I’m annoyed.

  Frank Hockley’s body tipped over the wheelbarrow and slumped back onto the back step. Tilly had a basin and was staring at the blood, like it was poison. I was sure he wasn’t breathing but Tilly wasn’t pleased we didn’t call the doctor and police.

  The ground behind the henhouse was hard under the spade. I had no idea that digging was so difficult. Watching men labour in the past, it all looked rather pleasant and quick. The spade was not liking my foot and the ground was far too tough – even breaking the surface at times took all my effort and concentration.

  “Could we burn him?” I muttered and realised Tilly was not with me.

  Returning to the house, I saw she was on her knees mopping the floor. I silently took the rifle back out with me in case she intended to use it again. She could have gone for help or run for the shore and its path, but I trusted that she was in a state of shock.

  I went back and resumed digging. I managed nothing but a low trench and tossed Frank over into it. It wasn’t much of a grave. His belly would protrude and covering him in wouldn’t make him hidden, that was for sure. There was no sign of neighbours or Tilly. The sheepdog came for a sniff at his old master. I poked and pulled earth from around his corpse with the spade in an attempt to lower the level of the soil . . . and saw his arm twitch.

  The thud of the spade from a height made a satisfying noise on his skull. A few more for good luck and I half-heartedly covered in the trench and its cargo.

  Sweating, panting and semi-pleased with my work, I went back to the house. I found Tilly sitting wide-eyed at the kitchen table, her arms and face clean and the floor wet but free of blood.

  “Good work.” I placed the kettle on to boil.

  There wasn’t a word from her. It was as if she was the one who died but still remained breathing and sitting in the kitchen. Her tea was untouched and even the dog stealing a march in over her cleaned floors didn’t spark a reaction. The silence was deafening and I just knew that she wouldn’t leave with me, and that the bond we’d shared was gone out like the tide. There was an eerie lostness to her I’d never seen in anyone before. Like she’d been broken and couldn’t be fixed.

  “Tilly.” I placed my hand on her arm. It was warm to the touch but she didn’t acknowledge me. “You need to eat. What could we have? He’s gone now and we can say he’s run off and you’ll be left with all of this. We could rent out the farmland if it’s all too much. I understand that you won’t leave here. I see that now.”

  There was no answer.

  After I made scrambled eggs and bacon with more piping hot tea she spoke at last.

  “Will you kill me?” she whispered. “Will you?”

  “Of course not. I don’t kill women. Well, except my mother and that was not violent. It was a quiet slipping away. And what I hope to do to Marjorie.”

  I sat and watched her drink the tea as I devoured the eggs and bacon. There was no Frank barging in the door and I could see Tilly glance at the clock.

  “He should only be home now.” Her eyes glistened. “He came home to tell me he was worried and that I should get you on the bus.” Her voice cracked. “My Frank.”

  “He’s strong, I’ll give him that.” The bacon was salty and I poured myself more tea. “I’d say he’s probably not even dead.”

  Finally her swollen eyes meet mine. “What?”

  “It’s hard to tell, but he’s covered over now anyway.”

  The way she asked, “Did you bury him alive?” made even me shudder.

  I shook my shoulders. “I didn’t manage to dig deep enough. I’ll have to go out again and finish the job. I shut in those geese – they were all interested in scraping where I was digging.” The rain lashed the window and I wondered aloud, “Will that soften the ground or make it harder to cover him, I wonder?”

  “Where will I say Frank is?” Tilly asked.

  There was a coldness to her that was new, and I could still see her with the rifle and moved the knife on the table further away from her.

  The night drew on with me hauling and sweating despite the mizzling rain. I had said nothing to Tilly as I went out to start the arduous task of burying the remains of her dead husband a bit deeper.

  “Never again will I kill a man without a plan. So much for support groups. Now I truly am an expert in all forms of killing,” I told Tilly’s back while I peeled off my clothes by the range and tiptoed upstairs to wash.

  “I need you to leave,” Tilly said, still unmoved from the table when I came back downstairs. “Get the bus away in the morning.”

  “But they’ll want answers.”

  “And bring me the rifle in.”

  My breath held in my chest.

  “Did you hear me? In the morning, I want you to leave after you bring me the rifle in. Away with you and don’t come back.”

  I nodded. All of my troubles melted away as I sunk my teeth into the butter icing on the sponge cake I’d cut. My arms were tired. The cake crumbled away and I let it. When I’d swallowed it all down, I told her, “I’ll miss you, Tilly. You’re all I’ve got left. I can’t just leave you like this. There will be questions to answer and we know you’re not a good liar.”

  “You must go.”

  She was losing her mind. Poor weak Tilly. There was nothing more to be done. Some women are just not meant to be freed. Like a caged animal or a tamed bird, there was no way they can ever be wild and free again. It had never occurred to me that this would have left her like this. She was not strong like me, not willing to work for her independence. Not needing it, like I did.

  I packed my case with many damp and dirty clothes, and I couldn’t help but smile. I’d miss Tilly, but her wanting the rifle would be the best solution for all of us.

  A woman who seemingly murdered her husband would have great remorse, wouldn’t she? Indeed she would, poor, poor, silly Tilly. I snuggled into the bed for the last time for a few short hours. I pondered on whether Tilly was at the kitchen table and whether she might find the rifle herself in the dark and not miss me if I fell asleep.

  But there was no sound of movement at all. I decided in the gloom that Tilly loved me and she’d never harm me.

  In the glum air of the house in the morning, with both relucta
nce and a guilty hopefulness, I propped the weapon against the turf basket. With purpose and poise, I approached the statue sitting on the chair looking forlornly out the far window. I kissed the top of her hair and whispered, “I love you, Tilly. You are free now.”

  My shoes pinched me as I lugged my case to the village square. From the vantage point on the corner I watched the lough between the buildings and wondered where my evil temper came from. Like the sea it swells and sweeps back retreating into some dark corners within me, to burst forth again.

  Suddenly something frightened the birds in the trees by the post office and they flapped squawking into the early morning. The bus swung into the square and I watched the crows circle high above me and hoped that maybe they were startled by a rifle shot further along the shore.

  Back in Newburn Crescent, Cedric Fellows was in Marjorie’s kitchen at Number 4, making toast and two cheese sandwiches. I watched him through the back window, licking his fingers. He spied me and I found myself waving back. He swung open the door and I walked down the steps and in the back door.

  “Hullo.” His apron was clean and his shirtsleeves were rolled up over the pushed-back sleeves of his thick jumper. There was a smell of toasted bread and the steam rose off a teapot, with the tea cosy sitting waiting to be popped over it.

  “I was just thinking outside there now that as you’re here I needn’t bother coming on in,” I said, not wishing to see him. I was even losing my guilt about not visiting Marjorie regularly. There were other things on my mind. I also was thinking that Marjorie’s role in my life might change. “I don’t want to be here, if you are.”

  Cedric was taken aback by my remark and stood rubbing the butter off his fingers with a cloth, uncertain of what to say next.

  “But I am in now,” I added, looking around me. There was a warmth I didn’t remember as usual in the room and I saw that he had lit the large range cooker against the far wall. “It’s cosy in here.”

  “Aunt Margie would rather die of cold than spend money on keeping warm.”

  Cedric’s glasses slipped on his nose and he pushed them back up, all the while looking at me like I was a vision of some kind. I thought for a while he looked almost lustful.

  “Are you sure you won’t stay for tea?” he said. “I’d better get this in to her ladyship while the tea is still hot, as I’d say that it has been a few days since she has eaten. She seems quite weak. I thought she might like a cheese sandwich.”

  They looked very unappealing, but I said nothing.

  “Aunt Margie has missed you. If I knew you were busy I might have called on Saturday or Sunday. Maybe we could make a rota of sorts?”

  I must have given him a murderous look as he took a step backwards, palms facing out, and muttered, “Of course there’s no obligation for you to do anything at all. It is merely that you … I mean ... there’s no need to include you in any rota. I just meant ... Aunt Margie is fond of you. And Father and I also thought that you might benefit from some payment for your time. We felt you’ve been left rather … how might I put this ... that you might need assistance for giving Aunt Margie assistance. Oh dear me, I can be clumsy with the spoken word. Around women especially, I tend to say the wrong thing. Could you perhaps try to take the best of what I said and work with that?”

  “You wish to pay me to visit your aunt?”

  “Concisely put. I know your pride might stop you …”

  “I’m a widow – I can’t have too much pride, Mr Fellows.”

  “I didn’t want to insult you ...”

  “Insult me? Of course you didn’t.” But he had. I had started to boil. “Thank you for your kindness, Mr Fellows.”

  He put the tea cosy on the teapot, swirled the pot expertly and set it on the tray that I liked. Then he placed the sandwiches on one plate after cutting them into triangles minus the crusts.

  He chuckled and poked at his spectacles. “Call me Cedric, please.” There were damp patches on his knees, and his jumper had a hole at the back under the arm that I spotted when he turned with the tray to go down the hallway. “She’ll be glad to see you. I’d say she’s not been up out of the chair much in the last couple of days. There’s quite a strong smell …” He turned and whispered, “Perhaps you might help her to have a little wash?”

  I closed my eyes to hide my despair and shook my head, muttering, “The poor soul. The poor, poor soul.”

  “She’ll not allow me to help her like that,” he said, moving on down the hall.

  “Nor me,” I said. “I’ve tried to suggest it but she refuses and I dare not annoy her further.”

  “I understand. Especially since she thinks highly of you and we all tread on thin ice with her moods.”

  I opened the door and the whiff was pungent. Urine and something else I didn’t want to investigate or have to wash away. Money would not make me deal with bodily fluids – or solids either.

  “You do know,” Cedric whispered, “that she’s had the solicitor here and had me witness an amendment to her will?”

  “Will?”

  Marjorie snored slightly as Cedric set down the tray on the low table.

  “Yes, in your favour,” he whispered. “She’s a generous soul, is Aunt Margie. She said she knows what it’s like not to have a man about the house. And she says that you were like a daughter to her in recent weeks. I did tell her it was a hasty decision, but Margie has always been known for being hasty. And if you’re good to her, like I am, then why shouldn’t she be good to you? She was adamant.”

  His tone was sincere but I wondered if Cedric was all that happy behind that smile of his.

  “I don’t know what to say.” I wanted to know what or how much she had left me but I didn’t dare ask.

  Then he changed the subject.

  “You might know someone to cut those bushes?” he said. “She wants to be able to see your front door and the side of the house through her window better. She likes to keep an eye on things and your help would be invaluable to me.”

  I looked at the dusty, dingy room and the old things cluttering it. I wondered if a woman like Marjorie had anything to leave to anyone. But I guessed that the house alone was worth a fair few bob. My blood simmered down a good bit and I tried not to grin. There was a solution to some of my problems slumbering in the chair beside me.

  I sat down with a new-found hope.

  “I know looking at her and this room, you’ d never think that Aunt Margie has a bob to her name.” Cedric smiled again as he sat down. “But there you go. Appearances can be deceiving.”

  “They sure can.”

  “Cheese triangle?” He held out the plate.

  “No, thank you. I’ve just eaten. Do you visit other women, Mr Fellows?”

  “Pardon?” His cheeks flushed a little.

  “Do you care for other aunts or other women? Call on them? Make them cheese sandwiches?”

  “I’m busy with work and Father and ... coming here … I’m not sure what you mean?”

  He handed me a cup and saucer with a gold trim.

  “Has Marjorie any other family?” I asked.

  “My father is the only remaining sibling she has. The rest have passed away. Quite sad really.”

  “Your father is still alive?”

  “Oh yes. I live with him. My mother is gone now and Father insists I live with him and that I call in here on Marjorie.”

  “Do you call on any other women?”

  He had no idea why I was asking him such questions and I should’ve stopped. But I couldn’t.

  “Do you visit prisons for instance?” I said loudly and Marjorie opened one eye.

  Cedric’s finger went to his lips and his eyes widened. Marjorie murmured but resumed her snoring. “Shh, don’t waken her. She’s peaceful.”

  I couldn’t see why he was afraid of admitting to visiting women prisoners. I sensed Cedric was a strange man. He looked at me with lust far too often but something told me that he wasn’t the marrying kind. It was all very o
dd.

  I sipped at my tea, thinking it tasted a little bitter. There was no sugar on the tray. I set my cup and saucer down.

  “I must go.” I felt like I should leave. I cannot explain it, but everything made me fearful suddenly. My female intuition poked at me to rise off the seat.

  “I find women like you fascinating,” he said. “Sandwich? Please take one. I hate waste.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “That one has beetroot chutney in it too. Delicious chutney, I make it myself. I helped Mother to do it all my life and now it’s my turn to take the reins.” He smoothed down his apron. “I loved Mummy. She was a very clever woman. Like you are. Modest and quiet and no one knew just how talented she was. Her mind worked away all the time. She was never dull and always thought through problems. I can see that you are the same. Fascinating.”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer him. I simply stared.

  “Poor Aunt Margie isn’t the brightest button. She demands respect rather than earns it. You, however, don’t need anyone’s respect. I find that interesting.”

  Alice flashed before me. I wished she respected me, but I didn’t tell Cedric that.

  “Am I insulting you?” he asked, munching on a cheese sandwich and then slurping his tea.

  “Not at all. I like to think that I’m clever and interesting.”

  “Most women get insulted at the slightest thing. Mummy did for instance. Clever lady, but she worried about her reputation. Do you worry about such things?”

  “I do. I’ve been called quite a few nasty things since John died. I’m not used to it.”

  “Like what?”

  “Murderer for one.”

  I’m not sure why, but Cedric was making me say things that I normally wouldn’t. He didn’t even flinch at such a word. He chewed at the bread, swallowed it and sipped nosily from the cup, wiped the side of his mouth with his hanky and then smiled.