The Wimbledon Poisoner (14 page)

Donald’s funeral was, in the planning stages anyway, a magnificent thing.

Billykins, everyone agreed, was magnificent. She was dignified, pale, but, in the playground at least, composed. Arfur seemed positively cheerful. Billykins wore a fetching, knee-length black dress and a kind of Spanish headdress that made her look a little like a sherry advertisement.

‘I just want to carry on,’ she said, ‘as if all this had never happened.’

There were moments when Henry thought she would not turn up for the funeral, so magnificent was she about the whole thing, but as the date approached he noticed she was wearing more and more black jewellery, black scarves, capes, cloaks and jerseys, stockings, blouses and hats. She would deliver Arfur at eight fifty a.m., magnificent in a black coat, black ankle-length dress and black leather boots, and reappear at three fifteen, leaning against the climbing frame in the same ensemble, garnished with a scarf or a single piece of jewellery.

The neighbours, all the neighbours agreed, were magnificent. They called round. They went in and out of Billykins’s house, and did something everyone described as ‘sitting with her’. Mr and Mrs Is-the-Mitsubishi-Scratched-Yet went up to her in the street and pressed her hands between theirs. They baked cakes and meat pies and wholemeal loaves and they ordered flowers and hoovered the carpets and stairs; in fact, thought Henry, Donald was getting more (and higher quality) attention dead than he ever had alive.

His death, people said ‘pulled the street together’. Even Nazi Who Escaped Justice at Nuremberg, at number 42, was seen talking to people in a high, jovial voice, that only increased his resemblance to a Gestapo officer. Mr and Mrs Is-the-Mitsubishi-Scratched-Yet smiled and nodded at people who passed them and tried not to flinch every time anyone went within ten yards of the Mitsubishi. There was, too, at first anyway, wild talk of the honours to be done to Donald. Dave Sprott, the northern dentist at 102, whose carefully preserved northern accent had always seemed to Henry a way of criticizing the London suburb in which he found himself, suggested that they ‘hire’ St Paul’s Cathedral.

‘I think ’e’s owed that,’ said Sprott, ‘I think ’e’s owed a generous tribute.’

From St Paul’s Cathedral to Putney Vale Crematorium did not seem such a short distance to the neighbours, such was their generous enthusiasm for Donald’s internment, and when they heard there were plans for a memorial service at Wimbledon Parish Church, some people said it was even better to do it this way. ‘Donald’, they said, ‘wouldn’t have wanted St Paul’s. What did St Paul’s mean to Donald?’ This was a fair question, although the same could have been asked about his relationship with Wimbledon Parish Church. But the fact that no one seemed to know where Wimbledon Parish Church was, that no one in Maple Drive had seen the vicar, even at Christmas or Easter, seemed to make little difference. It was, as Nazi Who Escaped Justice at Nuremberg pointed out, the thought that counted. And everyone in Maple Drive, as they cooked, consoled, took out their best suits and thought of even nicer things to say about Donald than the last nice thing that had been said about him, were privately so astonished, so relieved, so savagely glad to be alive that if someone had proposed to bury him upside down in a bucket of horse manure they would probably have agreed it was all for the best.

Two days before the funeral Henry was asked to give a short speech, and although he began by saying he would not be able to talk, didn’t think he could get the words out, was no orator, ended, of course by accepting. At the Harris, Harris and Overdene Christmas party three years ago he had made what some considered to be the funniest impromptu speech anyone had ever heard inside the office. At the University of Loughborough there were several people who went on record as saying that you could always get a laugh out of Henry. He didn’t see why he shouldn’t have a stab at the more serious mode of public address. After all – the man was one of his best friends, wasn’t he? It was the least he could do. In one of his private talks with his late general practitioner he said: ‘Look, old son. It won’t bring you back. It won’t, you know, make up for the fact that, let’s face it, I poisoned you!’

‘No no no,’ said Donald, ‘for Christ’s sake, mate. It happens.’

‘No, I mean . . .’ said Henry, ‘I did. I poisoned you. And I’m very, very sorry I did. It was an accident but that doesn’t excuse it. And the least I can do is tell them all what a great bloke you are!’

‘Were,’ said Donald, ‘were . . .’

‘Christ, mate!’ said Henry. ‘You see what I mean?’

He wrote his speech several times.

When it actually came to writing rather than vaguely thinking about his address, Henry found it more difficult than he had expected. He had not written much since
The Complete History of Wimbledon
and that book’s rejection by ten publishers (he had still not heard from The Applecote Press, Chewton Mendip) had made him a little nervous of putting pen to paper, but he found that if he emptied his mind of everything and forced his hand to fist a biro and then forced that biro across a sheet of paper, some pretty profound and interesting thoughts resulted. He ended by writing twenty-five pages, some of which he read to Elinor late one night. There were also two longish poems in free verse, which he didn’t yet feel quite ready to expose to the world. When he had finished the third page she put her head to one side and said in her cross-but-trying-to-be-helpful voice, ‘I like the bit about Donald.’

‘How do you mean?’ said Henry. ‘It’s all about Donald, isn’t it?’

She became assertive-in-spite-of-herself, and marching rapidly from one end of the kitchen to the other, which she always did when entrusting him with a home truth, said, ‘It’s not, Henry. It’s mainly about you.’

‘Is it?’

Henry looked at the pages of script he had written in praise of the man he had helped on the way to eternal bliss, and found this to be true. There was a very long story about him and Donald in the Rose and Thorn, a short, rather vulgar anecdote about something that had happened to Donald’s wife while crossing Wimbledon Common and a boastful piece about how he, Henry, had amused some French sailors in the bar at the Mini Golf, Boulogne sur Mer. The whole thing was, he had to admit, in very dubious taste.

He started again. He decided to write out a list of Donald’s good qualities.
Charity. Skill in Medicine. Standing his Round. Qualities as a Father and Wit.
But the headlines seemed to paralyse him completely. When he got down to
Punctuality
and
Considerateness as a Driver
, he decided to give up and improvise.

‘Well, for God’s sake,’ said Elinor, ‘try and make sense. You only make a fool of yourself when you try and speak in public. You were embarrassing at our wedding.’

‘Was I?’

‘Oh my God, yes,’ said Elinor, ‘you just sort of dribbled!’

Henry folded his arms over his chest. ‘I might, of course,’ he said, ‘be overcome by emotion.’

Elinor wheeled round, a look of horror on her face. ‘How do you mean?’ she said.

‘I may be in tears,’ said Henry, ‘I may just . . . you know . . . blub!’

She made the kind of face she made when tasting sour milk. ‘For God’s sake, Henry,’ she said. ‘If you do that I shall leave you.’

Henry found such moments of unpleasantness between them almost reassuring. She had been so pleasant since Donald’s death that there were times when he could not believe that he was planning to murder her. The trouble was that it seemed almost unfair to Donald not to have another go. Had the man died in vain?

He had probably been trying something far too fancy. Thallium was an Alfa Romeo among poisons, its charm being the fact that it was almost impossible to detect. But was detection such a problem? No one seemed at all interested in how poor old Donald died; he had just keeled over one night. Arfur spoke for everybody when he said, a wondering expression on his face: ‘My Daddy just felled over and died!’

What was needed was something down home and businesslike. Something you could buy over the counter at a supermarket. It didn’t have to be colourless, tasteless or odourless, it just had to be got, somehow or other, past Elinor’s front teeth, down her oesophagus and into her digestive system, even if to do so it should be necessary to hold her down and clamp a funnel between her jaws. If there was a single reason, thought Henry, why he was once again determined to poison her, it was probably her stubborn refusal to go along with his earlier attempt. There must be something she ate that would act as a cover for paraquat or whatever he was going to use. Some particularly disgusting form of health food, some heavily unbleached flour that could be rebleached.

Bleach. He would start by looking at bleach, and then think of something to go with it. When he went to Waitrose to buy the food for their contribution to what everyone in the street was calling ‘Donald’s funeral breakfast’ Henry spent hours browsing through the domestic cleaners, all of which sounded pretty lethal.
Domestos kills all known germs – Dead!
Their names were harsh, aggressive, Vorticist in tone –
Scour! Blast! Zap! –
and the one Henry most favoured, which seemed from looking at the label to be a sexier version of raw bleach –
Finish ’Em.
It came in a huge blue bottle on the side of which was a picture of something that looked like a bluebottle with twelve legs keeling over, while a housewife in rubber gloves looked grimly on.

There would be especial pleasure, thought Henry, in using a household cleanser against a feminist. Women like Elinor refused to channel their aggression in the direction of household germs. Keeping your house clean was now seen, probably rightly, as a plot by men to stop you doing anything more interesting. No, it was Henry who, on Saturday mornings, scrubbed the kitchen floor, wiped down the surfaces, hoovered the carpets, poured bleach down the lavatories and sinks. But now, a few litres of Finish ’Em would be put to the service of a more crucial domestic task, the elimination of Mrs Farr.

The trouble was – how to conceal the taste? Even hot sweet tea, a favourite refuge for poisoners, would not sweeten the flavour of Finish ’Em and in order to kill Elinor he would need at least half a bottle. And – even assuming he could persuade her to drink it – wasn’t it, well, out of the ordinary to find half a litre of bleach in someone’s stomach? It was not possible. She would have to eat a bucket of chicken vindaloo to get the stuff down her and, although there had been publicly expressed doubts about the kitchens of the ‘Tandoori’ Tandoori, Wimbledon, they hadn’t, as far as Henry knew, got around to using bleach to liven up their menu.

He had decided to give up, had, indeed, spent several hours trying to think of one thing he actually liked about Elinor when, two days before the funeral, she looked up from a quiche Lorraine (‘Billykins says it’s about all she could face’) and barked: ‘What are we going to drink?’

‘Uh?’

‘At Donald’s thrash,’ said Elinor, ‘we’re going to have to drink something. I know it’s awful but what? People do like alcohol at a funeral.’

Henry goggled at her.

There had been much discussion in the street on this very topic. Dave Sprott the dentist had suggested a barrel of draught Guinness. Sam Baker QC (almost) from number 113a had suggested that he ‘bring along a few bottles of my Australian Chardonnay’ but no one could face the prospect of being talked through another glass of uniquely flinty, resonantly expressive Murray River Chardonnay by Sam Baker QC (almost). Vera Loomis, the ninety-two-year-old who lived at number 92 and was known for some reason as Got All the Things There Then? had offered plum wine or home-brewed lager and Susan Doyle, who was reported to watch
News at Ten
while her husband pleasured her, had suggested lemonade shandy. Detective Inspector Rush from 38, known to Henry as Neighbourhood Watch, was of the opinion that alcohol at funerals was disrespectful. He stopped Henry, as he so often did, in the street one afternoon and said, as he so often did,

‘Drinking and driving, Henry, wreck lives.’

Someone said that they had heard him suggest that all guests should be breathalysed at the door, for Rush had the reputation locally for being a more than usually dedicated policeman. Henry had been involved in many of these discussions, had indeed had a pint with Dave Sprott to debate the issue, but when Elinor put the question to him he saw, suddenly, how he could not only perform a helpful, neighbourly act, and another last tribute, but also serve something that would, in all senses of the word, Finish ’Em.

‘Punch,’ he said, throatily, ‘I’ll make a punch.’

Henry started making the punch the evening before the funeral. He got grape concentrate, sugar, cooking brandy and a large bottle of bleach and put the mixture into a large saucepan Elinor used for making marmalade. He didn’t boil it, for fear the bleach might evaporate; after the mixture was warm he added twenty bottles of Yugoslav Riesling, two bottles of Guinness and a pound and a half of oranges cut into segments.

Then, reasoning that a little bit of bleach wouldn’t harm him, he sipped, nervously, at a teaspoonful of the mixture. It tasted unequivocally of bleach. In fact though, Henry argued to himself, punch usually tasted of bleach. He was simply responding to the fact that he knew there was bleach in the mixture. He was thinking bleach. His toast in the morning tasted of bleach, his pint at the Rose tasted bleached. He would simply add more sugar.

He added three more packets of brown sugar. It still tasted of bleach.

The beauty of it being a funeral was that no one ever complained about the quality of the food and drink at a funeral. You ate what you were given and tried to look as if you couldn’t really bear to think about food. Even when things warmed up, it wasn’t really done to comment on what was provided. There was, Henry had noticed, a specially reverent way of saying ‘thank you’ when accepting a cheese and tomato sandwich at a funeral reception and he did not see why people should develop critical faculties just because they were swigging back a wine glass containing a fair quantity of the domestic bleach known as Finish ’Em.