SCENE 8
Mrs Smythe sat at the bay window of her living room, looking up at
the sky. It had been six months since her husband's murder, and following the
verdict against Frederick Paul the press, who had been camped on her doorstep
throughout the trial, had now moved on.
On the table in front of her stood a picture, a glass of wine, a
small blue bottle and two red roses. The picture, in a fancy frame with a
highly polished, wide silver bezel, was of her deceased husband. Next to it was
a crystal glass, her best. It had been a wedding gift to the Smythes many years
before. Filled with white wine, it sparkled in the rays of light streaming through
the large bay windows. The small blue bottle had been in the family for over a
generation and contained several pills of mercury bichloride, a substance used
to treat sores and ailments prior to the discovery of antibiotics.
As she sat at the highly polished table, her mind wandered back to
the fateful day of her husband’s murder…
She recalled that on the
day, she had been visited by a young lady, Victoria Plum. A well-groomed lady
of just twenty, her face wore the glow that so often goes hand-in-hand with the
late stages of pregnancy. Victoria had rung the doorbell and anxiously waited
for the door to open. She had waited in the cold all morning to make sure Mr
Smythe would be gone, before approaching the house to speak with his wife. Young,
naïve and desperate, Victoria saw Mrs Smythe as her last, her only, hope. She
was perhaps deluded in thinking that Mrs Smythe would even speak with her, let
alone give up her husband, even if the man had fathered Victoria's bastard
child! Victoria was both surprised and relieved at how Mrs Smythe had welcomed
her and eventually empathised with her situation and condition. Her own
family’s response had been to throw her out of the family home, penniless and
with nowhere to go.
Mrs Smythe listened
intently to the entire tortuous account of Victoria's seduction by Mr Smythe,
and how, until her pregnancy, he had treated her so kindly. It was the first
time she had told anybody other than family of her affair, and she insisted
that she would be no bother to either of the Smythes if they could simply assist
until she could get back on her feet. She was desperate, and knew she should
not have come but was appealing to Mrs Smythe's maternal instinct. Internally, Mrs
Smythe’s blood was boiling at the cheek, the sheer audacity of this intrusion.
She pondered and took several minutes to respond. “Do you like flowers?” was
her first, rather unorthodox response. Victoria nodded. “Good, let’s go into
the garden and get some air. It’s rather stuffy in here, don’t you think?”
It was almost three o’clock
on that afternoon when Mrs Smythe finally came in from the garden. The ground
had been fairly hard, but she had managed to bed in the Pansies and Viola
Sorbet that would provide the garden with colour over the winter months.
Looking at her watch, she had just enough time to bathe before her husband
returned home from work…
Once bathed, Mrs Smythe
pondered over how the relationship with her husband had been a double-decade rollercoaster
ride. He had been abusive towards her and she didn’t believe that this was his first
affair. Over the years, she had found preparing food to be a great form of
stress relief; the more complex the meal, the better the therapeutic capacity.
She began preparing a feast for Mr Smythe, and soon the kitchen would be filled
with the aroma of minted lamb, his favourite.
When Mr Smythe finally
returned from work he removed his jacket and hung it, as he had done every weekday
for the previous five years, on the row of hooks he had erected shortly after
moving in. For her part of this daily ritual, Mrs Smythe stood in the living
room, her hands behind her back, waiting to greet him with a smile. Entering
the living room, he approached her for a kiss, and just like any other day, she
smiled. However, on this occasion she did not reciprocate, instead keeping her
arms behind her back. “What are you hiding back there… Do you have something
for me?” he enquired playfully…
She let out a morbid giggle,
and nudged him away with her left hand so he couldn’t reach behind her. “As a
matter of fact I have something very special for you…” she whispered, and suddenly,
with all her strength, thrust with her right hand until the concealed cold steel
blade was embedded vertically up under his rib cage. She twisted it once, “This
is for Victoria…” and then once more “and this is for her baby! You can go join
them, you bastard!” she spat, in a bitter and remorseless tone. As his eyes
locked with hers, he saw her unfamiliar icy stare. She withdrew the cold-bladed
carving knife, his body slowly buckled and he dropped to the floor. Mrs Smythe
dropped the knife, her unfamiliar stare dissipating as quickly as it had arrived.
Her composure remained intact and she returned casually to the kitchen where she
finished preparing their dinner.
For the next hour she acted
as though nothing had happened, stepping casually over the body twice, firstly on
her way to the bay window where she sat and ate, occasionally glancing over to
the body laying motionless on the living room floor, and again before clearing
up. Once she had finished tidying she returned to the living room, took the
telephone from a coffee table by the door and placed it close to the body. She knelt
down and lifted her husband’s head onto her lap. She pushed down on the wound,
encouraging fresh blood to exit the body. Her breathing became fast and shallow.
Her pulse started to race. Tears streamed down her face and soon led to a
torrent of sobs. By the time she was connected to the ambulance service she was
appropriately hysterical, as though the previous hour had not taken place at
all. “Please come quickly, he’s killed my husband!” she screamed into the
handset.
At the table Mrs Smythe emptied the blue bottle of its contents. She
was ready. There would be no note of explanation. She had despised the man next
door, she had found him creepy and felt no remorse as to his fate. She began
swallowing the pills in small handfuls, washing them down with the wine. She
picked up the picture and kissed it gently. Knowing her time was now limited,
she took the two roses and walked serenely out to the garden, to the new bed of
flowers planted some six months earlier. She found a gap and lay down the roses,
whispering, “Forgive me. I’ll see you both soon”.
Returning to the house, she collected the picture frame once more
and calmly sat down on the sofa. She held the frame tight to her bosom and
closed her eyes.
THE END.
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