Out To Play

Once again Harlow felt his morale being bolstered by the reassuring presence of the high calibre pistol nestling in his inside pocket. He eyeballed his opponent… already one man lay dead, his skull crushed by a lethal blow from…

Tony stopped typing, blinked, and rubbed his forehead. The afternoon sun glinted on the sovereign ring he wore on the middle finger of his right hand.

“Marjory!” he shouted through the half-opened window.

A slim, blonde woman in her fifties looked up from the vegetable patch, where she had been occupied in spraying cabbages.

“Coffee time!”

Marjory waved in acknowledgement and removed her gardening gloves as she picked her way through the cabbages and across the strawberry bed towards the back door. Kicking off her gardening clogs she walked towards the sink, cracking her knuckles as she went. Tony appeared at the kitchen door.

“God, that is an annoying habit. Must you?”

“Yes, Tony, I must. And if you cracked yours a bit more, you’d find it didn’t half improve your so-called arthritis. It removes excess nitrogen from the joints.”

“What do you mean, my so-called arthritis? As if I didn’t know.”

“Tony. I’ve put up with your moans and groans for longer than I care to think about. Didn’t the doctor tell you there’s nothing the matter with you? We’ve all got aches and pains. Comes with the territory of middle age. Learn to live with it, like the rest of us.” Marjory began bustling with the kettle and took a jar of Gold Blend from the cupboard. She turned to address her husband again, but he had disappeared back into the study. She raised her voice. “I hope you’re not…”

Tony reappeared, with a half bottle of Bell’s.

“Oh. You are.”

“It helps me concentrate.”

“Concentrate on getting three sheets to the wind.”

“Give me a break, Marjory. I’ve been working hard all day. I missed my lunch.”

“There’s a pack of turkey ham in the fridge.”

“Bugger that.”

“Tony!”

Tony pushed past his wife to pour boiling water into two matching blue mugs. He added milk to both, and a large slug of whisky to one.

“Sure I can’t tempt you to a whiffee?”

“Honestly, Tony.” Marjory opened a tupperware box and took out a couple of Rich Teas. She walked out to the garden carrying her coffee.

“I can see just what kind of mood you’re getting into. So I’m going outside.” She turned, and smiled grimly. “And I may be some time.”

Tony grimaced behind her back, mimicking her voice. “I may be some time. Oooh! Captain Scott, I’m so scared. Help me, Captain Scott! I’m going all the way outside, and I may be some time. Ooh! Where’s the pemmican? Keep the tent warm for me while I’m gone!”

Marjory was sitting just within earshot, and sent him a sour look. Tony laughed gleefully and took his coffee back to the study; half bottle tucked carefully into his cardigan pocket. Then, after checking that Marjory could not see him, deliberately poured the coffee into a large rubber plant, which was thriving in an enormous earthenware pot by the window. Tony wasn’t a hardened drinker. He enjoyed a snifter or two after a hefty day on the typewriter, but he didn’t go much further than that, as lately it gave him terrible heartburn and put him off his sleep. However, he liked to portray himself as a louche, boozy writer, especially to his wife. It drove her up the wall.

“Now, where was I? Inspiration please! Doctor, doctor – I keep thinking I’m Richard Widmark! No, better – Chucky Heston!”

Tony flexed his fingers above the keyboard and visualised the galley scene from Ben Hur. “Prepare for battle!” He drummed his hands on the desk. “One, two! One two! No, better! Better!” He got up from his green leather writing chair and fetched a small tom tom from a row of curios on top of the low bookshelf beside the window. He beat out a tattoo on the little drum with his fingers. But that wasn’t quite right, either. He went back through to the kitchen and returned with a small rolling pin and a sturdy wooden spoon, weighed them carefully in his hands, then sat down on his chair with the tom tom between his knees and began to use them to hammer out a steady rhythm.

“Battle speed! Boom, boom! Boom, boom! Attack speed!” the drumming got faster. “Full attack!” faster still. “Ramming speed!”

“For crying out loud, Tony!” Marjory’s face appeared at the window. She was wearing her gardening gloves and carrying a pair of lopping shears.

Tony continued to drum frantically.” We’re going to get rammed! Aaaaargh!!!”

“Look, Tony,” Marjory shouted, “I don’t mind your typewriter constantly tiptapping away in the background. After all, it is your bread and butter.”

“OUR bread and butter, if you don’t mind,” Tony interjected, pausing in his drumming to wave a finger between himself and his wife. “Me and you, me and you. Me, breadwinner. You, bread eater.”

Marjory ignored him. “But this Ben Hur carry on is going much too far. The neighbours are going to start complaining and I won’t go into M&S with a red face, Tony, I’m telling you that right now. I’d have invited the Smellies round for dinner weeks ago if you didn’t keep making such a spectacle of yourself. The hedge isn’t that high you know, and they can see everything from the gazebo. I bumped into Gill next door at the fish counter the other day, and I could barely look her in the eye. I won’t have that again, Tony.”

“Who on earth are the Smellies?”

“For God’s sake. You’re getting worse. Gill and Geoff next door. The new people. Well, they were new, three months ago.”

“Well, if you’re quite certain that it was only my behaviour that spoiled your eye contact with Gill…are you sure there was nothing else on your mind, Marjory? Something perhaps…not my fault – for a change?”

“Don’t be stupid, Tony. What else could there be?” Marjory scowled and tossed her head.

She was still an attractive woman, thought Tony. From most angles. It was almost a shame that their marriage had got to the irredeemably horrible stage. However, such regrets had to be banished from the mind; they undermined his resolve.

“Doctor, doctor! I keep thinking I’m a pair of glasses! What do you recommend? Don’t make such a spectacle of yourself!” Tony used a high, screechy voice to cause maximum irritation.

Marjory sighed and turned away. “Just keep the noise down, Tony. And keep off the whiffees. For the neighbours, if not for me. Oh – and by the way – I lent Geoff our old stepladder. He’s going to do some pruning.”

“Well, I hope you warned him about the dodgy step.”

“Don’t be stupid Tony.”

Tony took the half bottle from his cardigan pocket and saluted her with it. Pretending to take a swig, he watched her with narrowed eyes as she walked across the lawn, coffee in one hand, lopping shears in the other.

Stupid, was he? A couple of months ago, just after the Smellies had moved in, he’d used the stepladder in an attempt to trim the top of the boundary hedge, and had come a cropper. He’d only just had the plaster cast removed from his ankle and his leg was still giving him gyp. He was sure that Marjory had deliberately engineered the accident by sawing part way through one of the rungs, and disguising the cut with dirt. She’d had the ladder mended while he was in hospital, so she said, so he couldn’t prove anything. But it all amounted to something; it wasn’t the first time he’d had a so-called accident recently. Another incident involved Marjory “accidentally” letting go of the electric mower, which then ran amok, all too conveniently in the vicinity of the garden pond, in which he was paddling his feet. He only just managed to whip his legs out of the water in time. She’d also started voraciously collecting seeds and such-like from the garden plants and shrubs. He’d found a jar full of tiny brown pods, labelled “laburnum – deadly”, under some towels in the airing cupboard. That was it – there was definitely something going on. And he had a fair idea what it was.

He reached over to the low bookshelf and picked up a small pair of opera glasses. He admired the gleaming brass and mother of pearl for a moment, then, standing back from the window to avoid being seen, trained them on the forsythia. Marjory had downed her coffee suspiciously fast and was clipping away with her lopping shears again. Clip clippetty clip. And he could see Geoff next door emerging from his gazebo and casually making his way over to the fence. Or as casually as he could manage, carrying a stepladder. THE step ladder. Marjory raised her hand just as casually as he approached. Oh ho! So he was right – that was their game. He’d recognised the cut of Geoff’s jib from the moment he moved in, but even for him this was a bit brazen. Clip clip clip. Clippetty clip. Two birds with one stone. What a marvellous idea. Clip clippetty clip.

Putting the glasses down for a moment he picked up a long poker from the fireplace, weighed the handle in his right hand and rested the business end on the letter M on the typewriter. He then picked up the opera glasses again, and attempted to view the goings on in the garden without being spotted. As he raised the glasses the poker slipped out of his hand and off the typewriter, and clattered on to the floor. Drat! Marjory’s head whipped round in response to the poker racket, and Geoff shrank back behind his side of the fence. Tony quickly stepped sideways and out of sight behind the rubber plant. The poker lay dormant under his writing desk, gleaming in the mid-afternoon sunshine. Useful items, pokers. Potentially, of course. He sat back down at his desk and flexed his fingers. For once, his mind was blank. Now would be as good a time as any for an inspirational snifter.

Tony glanced out of the window as he unscrewed the top of the bottle of Bell’s. Marjory had vanished. He guessed she was in the potting shed, preening herself in the little mirror she kept in there, waiting to seize another opportunity to flirt with Geoff. He couldn’t see Geoff, either. Surely he hadn’t the balls to hop over the fence! Perhaps he should have a wander over there, and peep through the crack in the doorjamb…

The telephone rang.

“Saved by the bell!” Tony lifted the receiver. Marjory had given it to him one Christmas – how prescient of her; had she but known it, it was a replica of the telephone used on the set of Dial M for Murder.

“Hello? Tony?”

Gill next door. And she sounded breathless; seductively so, given a following wind. With any luck he could play Marjory at her own game.

“Gill! Fortunately for me, and you, I am alone.” Tony squeezed as much lasciviousness into his voice as he could muster.

“I know you are Tony. I’m using the extension in the gazebo. I can see everything. In fact, I’ve just seen Geoff using a stepladder to climb your fence, and enter your shed. You know your wife’s in there with him?” Gill’s voice sounded crisp, and discouragingly business-like. If anything were going to happen, it would be uphill work – but he might as well give it his best shot. He picked up the opera glasses again. “My god!” He could indeed see the top of a ladder protruding over the top of Geoff’s side of the fence. So he did have the balls after all!

“Gill? You couldn’t pop over here could you?”

“Tony – you must be reading my mind. I’m on my way.”

Tony’s mind began to motor. Life had definitely taken an interesting turn. How would Gill want to handle this? Worst case scenario, she’d rush over for some sort of ghastly confrontation in the shed and then an equally ghastly reconciliation with Geoff. Then he’d be left with a fuming and frustrated Marjory. Unthinkable. Best case? Like himself, she’d have a murderous turn of mind. Between the two of them, they could find some quick and easy way to bump off Geoff and Marjory, and then he and Gill could… He picked up the poker. Was she really the murdering kind? No, probably not. Was he, come to that? It was all very well to talk; murder was a funny old game when you got down to it. He paced around the study, poker still absentmindedly in hand.

“Tony!” Gill’s face appeared at the window. She must have nipped over the ladder as well. This was getting a bit much. What was wrong with the front gate all of a sudden? But he’d deal with that later.

“Come in, Gill. Have a snifter and let’s talk things over.” A marvellous opener; smooth as silk.

“Well, it’s a bit early but I could murder a gin.”

“Sun’s always over the yard arm in this neck of the woods. And in the circumstances…”

With difficulty Tony managed to restrain himself from looking up her skirt as she climbed in the window. Her legs, ankle to knee, weren’t too bad at all. Unfortunately he couldn’t quite see the thighs. He suspected they were on the beefy side. Admittedly it had been quite some time since he’d seen Marjory’s, but he knew that she was fighting a rearguard action against an ominous corned beefy proclivity with assiduous applications of various creams and lotions. He reckoned Gill was a lazier kettle of fish. Nevertheless, she didn’t seem in bad shape at all. Clothes on, of course.

Once inside, Gill smoothed her pink patterned dress as she looked curiously around his domain. The sun caught the red highlights in her hair most pleasingly as she ran her hand along the low bookshelf with the tom toms and other various treasured and carefully chosen souvenirs. There could have been a definite look of Deborah Kerr about her – if it hadn’t been for the excess baggage round the hips.

“So this is where it all happens. All that brain-cudgelling.”

“Well…” Tony tried to blush, aiming for an irresistible mixture of boyish bashfulness and manly intellect.

“Geoff read “Bullet for the Hangman” the other week. He thought it was all right.”

Tony curled his lip. He’d rather not know Geoff’s taste in books, or in anything for that matter.

He turned towards the kitchen. ”Ice in your gin?”

Gill carried on. “Personally, I’m rather looking forward to your next book – “Two Birds with One Stone”. ”

Tony was startled. “But I haven’t…oh. Well, yes – perhaps it does have a nice ring to it.”

“It does, doesn’t it? And Tony?”

“Yes?”

“That’s an awfully big poker. You could do someone a damage.”

Tony replaced the poker by the fire and headed back through to the kitchen. Gill settled herself in his green leather writing chair and crossed her legs. Outside in the garden a blackbird trilled loudly in the warm afternoon sunshine, all but drowning out the yelling, thumping and rattling which was emanating from the visibly vibrating shed.

Tony returned shortly with her gin just as a plank pinged loose by the door.

“That’s not them at it, surely?” he said worriedly. He knew he was thinking ahead a bit but he couldn’t help wondering if Gill was accustomed to such vigorous activity in the bedroom – or shed – department. He couldn’t imagine himself managing anything so energetic: not with the arthritic state of his joints.

“Thanks Tony. Well, I don’t know if they’re at it – knowing Geoff, probably not – but they are still in there.” Gill set her glass on the desk, reached into her ample cleavage and extracted a large rusty key.

“Phew,” thought Tony, hanging on to the words, “probably not”. He took the proffered key and stared blindly at Gill. He was mesmerised. She was a match for Marjory, all right, and he didn’t care if her thighs were beefy – surely this was the woman he’d been waiting for, all his life.

“You must be a very wealthy man, Tony. All these royalties.”

“Well…”

“It’s such a pity that Marjory doesn’t appreciate what she’s got.”

“Yes. I’m afraid Marjory’s thinking about what she might get if only I kicked the bucket.”

“I suppose you’ve left everything to her. And there will be life insurance, I’m sure. I know Geoff’s got a decent policy. Couldn’t you change your will?”

“I already have.”

Gill stared at him with a startled expression, then laughed, throwing her head back in a most attractive fashion. Tony placed his snifter on the desk and moved towards her. It seemed to be the next logical step, and yet as he drew nearer, he felt a tiny stab of apprehension…

“Tony!” Marjory’s face appeared at the window. “What do you think you’re playing at? And why on earth did you lock us in the shed? We were only putting the loppers away. Geoff’s still in there. He’s had a funny turn. Chest pains.” She looked pointedly at the key, which was still in his hand.

“I didn’t…” he looked helplessly at Gill, who smiled archly.

“What a shame. Geoff does get a touch of angina from time to time. Dicky heart. He’s never been able to cope with enclosed spaces.”

Tony’s head began to spin. The last thing he’d expected was Geoff conking out in the shed. Things were definitely getting out of hand.

“I’ll go and see how he is.” Tony climbed out of the window, and Marjory followed him across the lawn.

“Tony. I couldn’t help overhearing what you said to Gill.”

“Oh yes?”

“About the will.”

“Yes?”

“You weren’t serious?”

“Of course not. Everything’s just as it was.”

To his surprise, the shed door was not locked after all. He pushed it open: inside, all was in shadow, but as he got used to the dimness he could see signs of quite a struggle, and there in the gloom was Geoff, tied on to a picnic chair with garden twine. He was sitting bolt upright, clearly stone dead, his face a ghastly purple, mouth opened as if about to scream. The handle of Marjory’s pruning knife stuck out of his chest, just underneath and to the left side of the ribcage.

Tony turned to Marjory, aghast. “But I thought…”

She laughed. “No Tony. You didn’t think. That’s the trouble with you. You think you’re so clever, with your books and your films and your silly opera glasses. You thought you knew it all, but you knew nothing. I’ve been planning this for weeks. Gill and I have an arrangement, and so far everything’s gone perfectly. You were always stingy about me blowing your royalties in M & S. But I won’t have to worry about that now. And neither will Gill. Chucky Heston can’t help you now, Tony. ”

Horrified, Tony took a step towards his wife. Too late, he felt a firm shove in the middle of his back, and the sawn-through floorboards collapse under his feet. A shadow appeared behind him, and he caught a brief glimpse of red hair reflected in Marjory’s little preening mirror, just as he fell forwards, on to the opened blades of the lopping shears, and then down, down, down, into a vast black hole.

Read more: Short Story: Out To Play | Shortbread