Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007

Murder: A User’s Guibe by Neil Schofield

I have had some time to consider the question, and I have decided that it cannot have been a coincidence that almost the very week I decided to do away with Petunia, I found The Appliance on the Internet. Perhaps it was my unconscious mind working away as I wandered down that broad Highway. There is indeed a highway where most people travel in perfect safety, but pay attention: Stray once off that broad and familiar thoroughfare and you will also find yourself on side roads and country roads less well trodden. And there are paths and tracks, some of them weed grown, some of them stinking and muddy, smelly and grim, where bad things live. It was down at the bottom of one of these noisome side paths, far away from the comforting and homely thrum of the highway traffic, that I came upon The Appliance.

In the rather clever moving illustration, a stylized person sat inside what amounted to a cage composed of wooden and metal beams. It was a complicated structure with many cross bracings and supporting struts that went from hither to yon. This stylized person (the gender was problematic), wearing a rather insipid smile, sporting gear, and little else, was sitting on a sliding seat, pedaling with its feet, turning a set of overhead hand cranks, which in turn lifted and lowered sets of weights in cages behind — and was into the bargain also having its stomach muscles massaged by a wide vibrating belt, operated by an electric motor, which also appeared to move the sliding seat back and forth. The first question that occurred to the casual observer was, which muscle groups was this person exercising? The answer appeared to be all of them and then some.

My first thought was, golly, here’s something that Petunia would give her triceps to have, then my handyman’s eye spotted that it could be made to serve my purpose as well as, or as opposed to, Petunia’s.

Because Petunia was, is, keen on exercise. No, that is an understatement. She is fanatical about exercise. All her free time is filled with exercise, either alone or with the monstrous regiments of large, leaping, terrifying muscular women who form her entourage. She has explained to me that, given her large frame, exercise is vital if she is to prevent her muscle turning to fat. So, since our marriage our basement has become a sort of gymnasium; we have her weight machines, her rowing machine, and all manner of other arcane contraptions, the purposes of which are a closed book to me. But then much about Petunia is a closed book to me. To the dispassionate observer, I suppose, we might appear as the classic mismatch.

When I first met Petunia, I was a bookkeeper with the water company, already in early middle age and unmarried. Petunia was a shelf-stacker in Sainsbury’s. The very first time I laid eyes on her, hefting with nonchalant ease a box of two hundred fifty Twix bars from a pallet she was in the process of unloading, I was fascinated. I reached past her to take a Mars bar from the upper shelf (a Mars a day helps me work, rest, and play, I find). As I did so, I smelled her animal scent. She seemed to be surrounded by a miasma of vibrant glowing perspiration. The Mars bars were on a shelf a little beyond my reach, I being of compact build. Petunia, who is a foot taller than I, reached lithely up and plucked a Mars bar from the shelf and handed it to me.

“There you are, Titch,” she said, “chew on that. You need building up, you do.” And in that moment I knew that I had to marry this woman. Why? many people have asked. Why did I, a slender, bookish, bespectacled retiring person, seek to bond myself with this Amazon? The heart has its reasons, I usually say, without adding that it was to avoid marrying my mother, which is what most men do, or so the authorities on the subject have it. Petunia was as far removed as anyone could be from my mother, that genteel, faded, wispy creature, with whom I had lived (to the secret and not so secret amusement of others), and who had faded and wisped away at the end, quitting this life, leaving no visible trace. I lived on in the family house, rattling around it like a pea in a drum. Petunia was far from anything I had previously known, I was lonely, I had never experienced a woman like her, and over the period of my admittedly timid courtship she seemed to develop a genuine fondness for me. And, against all expectations, we married.

And now I wanted to kill her. Why? I have read many murder stories involving spouse killing, and most of the time the husband is a perfect swine, has a mistress, and is locked in a clearly unsuitable union, which, usually for financial reasons, he is unable to dissolve, save by bloody means. I could claim none of that. I had no mistress, in fact Petunia is the only woman I have ever really possessed. I could divorce her, but that would have been cruel, she would suffer dreadfully. No, in truth I had begun to think of Petunia simply as an unendurable burden of which I must disencumber myself. Life had become intolerable after a mere two years in her proximity: the smell of sweatsuits and socks, legwarmers, and other arcane items of athletic apparel; the sheer noisiness of living with this lumping creature forever in movement; and above all, the greedy physical demands that she made on me.

“Come on, Titch,” she would say, throwing me onto the bed, which is another thing I hated, “a growing girl needs her greens.” Then she would rip off whatever clothing I happened to have on me. Those were the days when I wandered dazedly and blearily around the house, barely able to walk or speak and clothed in rags.

There was not an ounce of malice in her, that I knew, and in her slow thinking, animal way she loved me. And perhaps that was the key: She was a large, embarrassing, slightly smelly animal who took up too much space, and that it was kinder to her simply to do away with her.

I had spent a lot of time going through all the crime stories I could find in the library, trying to find some quick and, above all, easy way of killing Petunia. It couldn’t involve hand-to-hand business with knife, pistol, or blunt instrument. A counterfeit burglary, for example, or an attack in a darkened park would have been suicidal: She would have disarmed me and half killed me before I had a chance to inflict even a flesh wound. I had considered and discarded car accidents (too chancy), and a fall onto an electrified railway line (she never took the Underground, but walked or cycled everywhere).

I had abandoned crime fiction murder methods as useless, being unrealistic, fanciful, or just plain foolish and had turned to the Internet, the Great Library in the Sky. And there I found The Appliance. My first thought was, Oh there’s an interesting thing for Petunia, and then my handyman’s eye spotted that, with a little change here, a slight reengineering of that bar thing there, and with the help of the wiring of the powerful electric motor attached to it, The Appliance, as they titled it, could be the answer to my prayers. Some Assembly Needed, they said. Well, that was no problem, I was very good at Some Assembly. Witness the chair-lift I had installed for my mother.

Very well, if you insist, I helped the man my mother inexplicably called in to reinstall it, and put up with some extremely uncalled-for remarks on my DIY skills into the bargain.

However, The Appliance didn’t look difficult at all. If the instructions were clear, any fool could do it.

Fortuitously, some time before, Petunia had announced her intention of passing two weeks in the company of some of her girlfriends at Deauville, where they would be taking a course of Thalassothérapie. In other words, people would be spraying them with sea water from high-pressure hoses, smearing them with algae, plunging them into iodine baths. I have seen the pictures in the brochures. They were like windows into Hell.

But those two Petunia-free weeks would be a godsend. I could spend them very profitably on The Appliance. Without telling Petunia, I arranged two weeks’ leave from the water company, with no questions asked and that very day, with beating heart, ordered an Appliance, through the good offices of the Internet, using our joint credit card.

Obviously, I did this in Petunia’s name, thinking ahead to the inevitable interview:

Leaving day came and went in a great flurry of giant girlfriends, suitcases, and taxis. I waved them off at the door and wished them well of Deauville, which is full of French people, French plumbing, and, no doubt, French germs. Good luck to them, and to the French.

The Appliance arrived the next day, as promised. I was doing the washing up and taking the opportunity to organize the kitchen drawers. No one can accuse me of being a fussy man, but Petunia’s habit of putting knives in the fork compartment of the cutlery drawer was something about which I had had occasion to speak to her more than once. I am surely not overstating the case when I say that that sort of thing, taken to its ultimate, can only end in chaos and anarchy and the breakdown of our social fabric. The same is true in our bedroom. A sock drawer, I have quietly and gently explained to Petunia several times, is by definition for socks, no? Otherwise it would be called something other than a Sock Drawer, no? But Petunia’s so-called sock drawer is a travesty, packed with brassieres, knickers, leg warmers, and things with straps and buckles into whose functions I am far too fastidious to inquire — in short, everything but socks.

I went to the door. There was a man there who wore a smart brown uniform, and behind him there was a matching truck.

This man looked at the flowered pinafore that I had donned to avoid splashing my trousers and had forgotten to take off. He said, in a very truculent manner, “Mrs. Melchett, is it?”

I bit back the sharp retort that came to me. “What is it?” I said shortly.

“Packages for Mrs. Melchett.”

“Oh, great heavens,” I said with impatience, “what has she been and gawn and ordered now?” I was quite proud of this, establishing as it would at the inquest, my complete ignorance of Petunia’s activities. The characterization was drawn from my role of Cruet the butler in a production of The Spouse Trap, that celebrated mystery play by Tabitha Crustie, which we had performed with some success at the Church Hall the winter before. My portrayal of Cruet had been singled out for special praise in the local press.

The delivery man handed me a clipboard. I looked at the delivery note clipped to it. There were ten packages noted there. “All this?” I said, not having to feign surprise. The Appliance must be more sturdy than I thought.

“I hope you’re feeling strong, Mrs. Melchett,” said the delivery man, making far too much of what had been a feeble joke to begin with, “cos I can tell you that this lot weighs a mucking ton.” As he spoke, one package hurtled out of the back of the van and crashed to the ground. There seemed to be some large animal in there. So much for employing a courier service whose name is clearly pronounced “Oops!”

It took me half an hour and cost me ten pounds to persuade the man and his assistant, or “mate,” as they apparently call them, who was a large, dim-witted youth and not a trained orangutan as I had feared, to transport the packages the paltry few yards into the hall. So much for the free market. But farther than that they would not go. Even the offer of a further five pounds would not incite them to descend into the basement. That, it seemed, was against all custom and practice. The fellow even invoked the Workman’s Compensation Regulations, with which dread authority there was, it appeared, no arguing. So the packages remained in the hall.

It took me the rest of the day to haul them down to the basement. They weighed, as the man had said and if I might stray briefly into the vernacular, which normally I abhor, a mucking ton.

But at length, I had them all arrayed in size order. The heaviest, a wooden packing case, which had given me much grief and a nasty graze on my shin, contained, when I managed to pry it open with a hammer and chisel, the large electric motor, complete with cabling. After this, I went upstairs to have a cup of tea and a nice sit down. My head was throbbing, and I had a nasty little wavy pattern dancing in my left eye, usually the sign of an oncoming migraine, something that often afflicted me when Petunia had insisted on a particularly large helping of greens. I decided to prepare something to eat and have an early night. The morrow, I would begin.

The following morning, my tea and toast, without Petunia there to immolate it, was perfect. There were no dabs of butter or smears of marmalade on the tablecloth as is normal when Petunia breaks her fast. And my tea was perfection. I am not in the least obsessive, my worst enemy could not say that, but when I take my tea in the morning the single lump of sugar that I allow myself must be upright in the very center of the cup as I pour on the tea. If not, the day is ruined.

I went down to the basement to commence the Some Assembly. With the aid of a Stanley knife and a pair of shears, I soon had the elements of The Appliance arrayed on the concrete floor. There were a lot of them. Some were made of bright chrome, and some, uglier than the others, of black, surly iron. Yet others, and there were sixteen of them, were made of teak, tectonis grandis, unless I miss my guess, presumably from the forests of Java.

There was also a large, bulky yellow envelope, which presumably contained the plans and instructions for assembly. I took it upstairs to the kitchen to read while having a cup of tea.

I was right. The envelope contained a sixteen-page booklet of very detailed instructions.

In Chinese.

I said “Tchah!” I think, or it may even have been “Pshaw!” This was a most aggravating setback. I thought about it as I drank my tea. On the back of the manual, there was a telephone number, the only thing that was not in Chinese.

I decided to ring the number. I had to suffer three minutes of music plus five of computerized directions, pressing 1 for Customer Service Helpline, and then a six-minute wait while a robotic voice told me that my call was in a queue and would be answered directly. At last, a human voice came onto the line.

“Hello? How may I help you, sir or madam?”

“To whom am I speaking?” I asked; I always like to know the name of my correspondant.

“Mr. Rajit Patel at your service, sir,” said the voice, “and what seems to be the problem? Whatever it is, be sure that I will do my utmost to help you out of your current quagmire.”

I was pleased with his tone and explained.

“Ah,” he said, “The Appliance. I am knowing this product. There is none better. Mrs. Patel’s sister purchased one such. But it is to be employed with moderation, sir. Mrs. Patel’s sister now has arms like a stevedore, not attractive in a woman of small stature, which is her case.”

“However, the instruction booklet is in Chinese,” I informed him.

“Which, of course, you do not speak or read, sir. I understand. This is not uncommon.”

“Could you go and ask someone to send me instructions in English?”

“I would, sir, but the ‘go’ part of it is somewhat problematic.”

“Why?” I asked, “Are you not at the factory?”

He engaged in a long and, to be honest, irritating peal of high-pitched laughter.

“Oh, my dear sir, no, no, not at all. I am merely an insignificant cog in a vast worldwide machine. You are in communication with a call center.”

My heart sank.

“A call center where?”

“In Peshawar, my dear sir.”

I had a hazy idea of where this was.

“You are in India?”

“Indeed not, sir. Peshawar is an important regional capital of Pakistan.”

“Mr. Patel, if you are in Pakistan, how are you able to help me?”

“Simplicity itself. I merely have to call the manufacturer, who if memory serves me correctly, is in the city of Anadhapura.”

“Is that close to Peshawar?”

Again the peal of laughter.

“Oh sir, I can see we did not score highly in geography during our schooldays, dear old golden rule days. Anadhapura is on the lovely island of Sri Lanka.”

I was puzzled.

“I’m sure that my delivery didn’t come from Sri Lanka.”

“That is correct sir. Your appliance came from the regional distribution center nearest to you.”

“Well,” I said, “couldn’t we call the distribution center?”

“That would be the very last thing I would do, my dear sir. They are mere muscle, donkeys, beasts of burden. They have zero intellectual capacity; their tasks do not involve brainwork. No, the recognized procedure is for me to pass on your complaint to the factory in Sri Lanka, who will no doubt expedite your instructions as a matter of urgency. Fear not, my dear sir, I will treat this as an emergency. I will tell them that you are chomping at the bit, suffering agonies of suspense. I may tell you, in brackets, that my wife is in similar throes with her electric Hoover.”

After some mutual and cordial banalities, I left Mr. Patel, not without asking him to give my regards to Mrs. Patel and to wish her well with her electric vacuum cleaner.

“I will tell her, sir. She will be gratified.”

Well, this was an annoyance and no mistake. I went down to the basement and began to open the packages and lay out the components of The Appliance neatly on the floor. Time spent in preparation is never wasted, as I have told Petunia many times. I looked at them and wondered how this assemblage of beams, rods, bars, struts, braces (flanged and unflanged), brackets, tracks, together with the several plastic bags containing cogs, cams, sprockets, grommets, nuts, hinges, bolts, couplings, and coach bolts could ever come together to form a rational and coherent whole.

I could also use the time to install the new cabling for the electric motor. I plumbed in a new socket and switch by the door and ran cable up to the circuit-breaker board in the utility room, where I wired the cable to one of the vacant thirty-two ampere breakers. So far so good.

A nice surprise came the next day. A flat packet arrived, not by Oops but by DHL.

Inside I found, on tearing it open, the promised booklet.

I took it into the kitchen and prepared a cup of tea. Tea always helps the cognitive processes, I have found. I opened the booklet. It was in English, or very nearly. On the first page at the head, were the words: TO PRUDENCE!!!

Flushing a little at this familiarity, I read on:

I began to think I would have done better to stay with the Chinese version.

However, the next page contained a comprehensive and comprehensible list of the ingrediments, and the requisite number thereof. I went down to the basement and began to tick them off, which took me the rest of the day. The plastic bags in particular were intractable and vicious things, apt to explode, and several times I had the floor covered with annoyingly small metal components. At the end, I found I was two transverse track right-angle couplings short, as well as an overhead tracking brace swivel locking pin. The locking pin, I decided I could probably improvise with a two-inch nail, but the transverse track right-angle couplings were irreplaceable. I also had two diagonal cross braces that were four inches longer than the other two. These being of teak, I decided that I could solve this problem by cutting off the excess with my saw. But for the couplings, I realized that I would have to have recourse again to Mr. Patel, who was sympathetic.

“Ah,” he said, “Good day, my dear Mr. Melchett.” I wondered how he knew my name, then realized that of course he had my client number in front of him on his screen.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Patel,” I said. “I’m sorry to disturb you—”

“Disturb?” he said. “Oh but we do not disturb, we involve, we implicate! Such is my job, my dear sir. I am here to be disturbed!”

I explained my problem.

“Oh,” he said, “those villains at the factory. I will be giving them a piece of my mind when I contact them. But fear not, Mr. Melchett, I am ringing immediately Mr. Chakrabahti, the despatch supervisor, who is by way of being a friend of yours truly, and who will spring into action, the idle fellow, once I have inserted a flea into his ear. It is necessary to keep these chaps on the hop, you know. Failing which they will undoubtedly take one’s trousers down. I have already been obliged to administer several sharp reprimands in the matter of Mrs. Patel’s electric Hoover.”

“I’d be obliged to you,” I said.

“No! No! It is for me to feel obliged, if obligements to feel there be,” Mr. Patel said. “You bring meaning into my life, Mr. Melchett. You bring purpose and motivation.”

I rang off. I was slightly perturbed by all these setbacks. Already nearly a week had passed. I had nine days left in which to complete the Some Assembly, verify the workings of The Appliance, and make the several adjustments necessary.

Never mind. I decided that I could, in any case, begin the construction of the base frame and the vertical beams.

This was a simple matter of bolting together the teak beams and the iron diagonal bracing struts. I was also able to fix on the two motive unit supporting brackets and bolt to them the electric motor. I liked the look of that motor. It had a powerful look to it.

The only disappointment came with the transverse cross braces. I had spent half an hour with a saw, cutting down the two braces that were too long, according to the plan. Only to find that it was the other two that had been, in fact, too short. The measurement I had read as yards on the plan was apparently in meters. Why on earth can people not be clearer? And what is wrong with the good old Imperial measures, which have served us well and faithfully for hundreds of years? Now they come along with their newfangled foreign meters and liters to bedevil our lives. Petunia has insisted for some time on referring to her weight in kilograms. To thwart this subversive behavior, I had been obliged to dismantle her bathroom weighing scale, paint over the kilograms, and replace them with the requisite equivalent in pounds and stones.

I would have to call Mr. Patel, I saw. But I noticed that I was breathing hard and had a high color, so before doing so, I went to the kitchen to calm myself down by tidying the kitchen stock cupboard, something that had long been overdue. I could never understand why Petunia was constitutionally incapable of following the simple system I had created of putting our alimentary products and conserves in alphabetical order. Thus: Asparagus, Broccoli soup, Chutney, and so on and so forth. A child of three could understand it. Perfectly simple and perfectly ordered. But no. Petunia simply thrusts the cans and bottles in the cupboard with a blithe disregard for the system. Despite myself, I had to laugh when I found the Pepper in between the Salt and the Mustard. I mean to say, it was a perfect muddle and mess. Everything higgledy-piggledy and hugger-mugger. But the exercise and the laughter occasioned by Petunia’s more risible blunders did me much good, and I was able after two constructive and profitable hours to face ringing Mr. Patel.

Who was kindness itself.

He sympathized on the matter of the transverse braces.

“A mistake anybody might make, my dear Mr. Melchett,” he said. “You must not blame yourself.”

And he promised to speak to Mr. Chakrabahti as soon as possible.

The next day, a heavy package arrived. I opened it with trembling fingers. This was surely the missing couplings. But no. Inside I found a small electric motor and a filter. On examining the paperwork that accompanied them, I found that these objects were replacement parts for the vacuum cleaner of a Mrs. Patel in Peshawar.

I rang Mr. Patel immediately.

“Those bungling fools,” he said with some irritation. “You see the sort of thing that we are up against, Mr. Melchett? Incompetence abounds. Silliness is rife. Small wonder that economies totter and ready cash is in short supply.”

I did not envy Mr. Chakrabahti. I had the impression that Mr. Patel was going to insert another flea in his ear.

I got on with the construction. Now that I had the main cage assembled, it seemed that it would all be plain sailing. Once, that is, I had the couplings and the transverse braces to hand. But I could get on with mounting the sliding weights in their cages and attaching their cables and installing the sliding track support members and the sliding track itself. This was child’s play. The sliding track body support came next. This looked something like an old-style metal tractor seat with an extended backrest and may well have been, for all I know. The next part was more complicated. The motor had to be connected to the sliding track drive bar and to the vibrating belt by a system of geared sprockets and cams and what looked like a motorcycle chain. Whether it was or not, I shall never know. This subassembly alone took up three pages of the booklet.

That went surprisingly well, at the slight cost of some slight mangling of my fingers between chain and sprockets. I went upstairs to have a cup of tea and put my fingers in cold water. I had found during the day that I was sweating excessively and talking to myself, so I made myself a refreshing glass of liver salts to cool my blood down.

The following day a large package arrived. At long last! My couplings and my replacement transverse braces. The courier service also took away with them the replacement parts for Mrs. Patel. I mean, of course, for the vacuum cleaner of Mrs. Patel, not for Mrs. Patel herself, that would be foolish talk.

I went straightaway to the basement, where I set to work installing the transverse cross braces and the right-angle couplings. I stood back when I had finished. I looked upon my work and found it good. The Appliance gleamed and glowered and glowed with chrome, iron, and teak. It was a magnificent piece of work. It looked immensely powerful and purposeful, squatting there, crouching almost, ready to spring. I decided that when Petunia saw it, she would not be able to restrain herself from leaping into it and setting it in motion.

All that remained was to fix what the instructions called the overhead handly-bar on the tracking bar handly-bar fixing slots to secure it with the handly-bar column locking pins and then to attach the weight cables to the large diameter wheel, which was turned by the hand pedals or handlys. I looked around the basement, there were no parts left. Everything was in place.

I could not resist it. I switched on the current at the door. The electricity hummed a little. I walked over to The Appliance. The seat beckoned. I stepped inside the framework and sat down on the seat. I fastened the vibrating belt round my waist. I put my hands up and took hold of the handly-bar grips and turned experimentally. As each hand went forward and round in turn, the weights behind me rose and fell. This was very good. I put my feet on the pedals and pedaled. The handly-bar had rubber grips. Ah. If I took those off, then Petunia’s hand would be in contact with bare metal. And her bottom would be in contact with the metal seat, protected only by a thin layer of cotton shorts. That was it, of course. And if the motor cabling was carelessly connected just so she would know nothing about it. Genius.

I mimed the result, sticking out my arms and legs and throwing my head sideways. I giggled. This would be so easy. My left elbow struck the red button on the casing of the motor, which immediately came to life. The chain clacked around on its gearing, the seat beneath me slid back and forth with an easy motion. The vibrating belt thrummed around my abdomen. I was entranced. The whole appliance was trembling like a dog eager for the chase. I turned the handly-bar and the weights rose and fell in their cages, the seat slid back and forth, pulling me against the seat belt anchored to the transverse braces behind me. I pedaled and pedaled and turned and turned the handly-bar.

Everything worked! The Some Assembly had been a success. I thumbed my nose mentally at my mother, may she rest in peace.

The rhythmic movements of The Appliance must have lulled me into a light doze for a few minutes because I suddenly snapped open my eyes. Something was not as it should be. There was a sharp rattle. Then there was another. I looked up. The overhead tracking brace swivel locking pin, which I had improvised with a two-inch nail was worming its way out. As I watched, it eased all the way out and fell to the floor. The swivel then, true to its name, swiveled, which allowed the end of the tracking brace to detach itself from the tracking brace bracket.

Now, I know that at this point I should have freed myself and stepped out of The Appliance, switched off the motor, and then made the necessary repairs. But everything at this point was happening slowly. There seemed no need for alarm.

But without the overhead tracking brace, wobble had set in. In fact, wobble was ineluctably increasing, and as I watched, the overhead tracking brace freed from its bracket and inclined slowly downward. The other end was still in its bracket, but the weight was obviously too much for the transverse braces behind me, which yielded with a sharp cracking sound, and caused what I estimate to be the transverse brace connecting bar to detach itself and deal me a sharp and painful blow on the back of the head. This in turn caused the two weight cages to which it was also bolted to fold slowly and fall outward, taking with them the vibrating belt motor assembly fixing brackets. I say this, although I am not sure, since I was held in my seat by the vibrating belt and was unable to see, but I could guess from the fact that the belt began to tighten to an unusual degree. The overhead tracking brace, freed from its bracket, was still ineluctably descending, pulled by the collapsing weights and bringing the handly-bar assembly toward me. I would have been easily able to lean agilely to one side had it not been for the vibrating belt, which had now slipped up from my stomach and was gripping me painfully round the chest. Other things were happening too. Some sort of structural meltdown appeared to be occurring, a deadly chain reaction in which beams, struts, and braces seemed to have taken on a malefic life of their own. The Appliance was falling to pieces around me. During the next thirty seconds everything seemed to be in motion around me. It was like being in one of those little glass snowstorms that my mother used to collect.

I may at this point have shouted “No!” or “Stop!” or “Don’t!” I cannot clearly recall. In any case, it was to little or no avail, I fear. The handly-bar was now pressed against my chest and wanted to go farther. The restraining belt was pulling my head farther and farther backward, but clearly unaware of this, the motor, silly thing, was pushing the sliding seat farther and farther forward. As if this weren’t enough, the diagonal bracing strut (r) freed, I imagine, by the fracture of the transverse braces behind me, had fallen across my right arm, and had become unaccountably lodged under the seat track, and my left arm was held in what I believe is irritatingly known as a vicelike grip by the diagonal bracing strut (l). The handly-bar and its subassembly and its overhead tracking brace rested its full weight on my chest. There was a fleeting moment of dangerous equilibrium, and then the motor, which had been trying to maintain the sliding seat’s movement and at the same time pull the vibrating belt through my throat, began to overstrain itself and emit sparks. Then we were plunged into darkness and everything stopped before, thank goodness, the belt had actually succeeded in pulling my head off.

At first I thought I had fallen into a swoon. But then I realized that the motor’s overexertions had asked too much of the circuit breakers, which had flipped open. And judging by the lack of even reflected light from the doorway, it was the main circuit breaker that had gone.

That, as far as I can judge, was two days ago. Time has ceased to have any significant meaning for me, but I have been able to track the passing of the hours by the moon and the sun, which shine in through the tiny window at the top of the wall. And an amusing little incident occurred last night, when a tiny ray of moonlight, passing through the framework of The Appliance, shone directly onto my leg. Despite my position, I could see a tiny glint of metal. This puzzled me for a while, until I realized that it was the missing overhead tracking brace swivel link pin, which must have fallen into my trouser turn-up during the unpacking process. This humorously ironic note made me rock with (obviously) suppressed laughter and lifted my morale to no end.

I have to admit I am hungry and tired. I cannot sleep because of the pain in my arms and back and throat. But the picture is not all black. Because there is no heating down here, and the air is humid, during the night, moisture forms on the chrome handles of the handly-bar, and by turning my head sideways as far as it will go, I have been just able to lick it off with my tongue. So thirst, at least overpowering thirst, is not one of my problems.

The telephone has rung several times. I imagined once or twice that it might be Mr. Patel ringing me to see if everything was going well with The Appliance. I invented a little scenario in which, warned by some sixth sense that all was not well and that I was in mortal danger, he marshaled his vast network of contacts and succeeded in contacting the local police, who broke in and released me. But this was only a waking dream brought on by hunger and thirst, and perhaps a slight case of chromium poisoning.

And help will be at hand ere long.

By my reckoning, Petunia will be returning tomorrow night. She will be coming in on the evening flight from Deauville St. Gatien, I remember quite distinctly her telling me. So she will arrive at the house after dark.

She will enter the house, puzzled at the lack of illumination. But she will wipe her feet before entering the hall as I have trained her to do. She will hang up her coat and not throw it in a heap on an armchair in the sitting room, as the small printed notice pasted next to the hall stand will remind her. She will then try the light switch and when it does not work, she will understand the situation. She will therefore pick up the torch that I keep on the hall table for just such emergencies. At that point, I will call out to her as loudly as my condition permits.

She will descend to the basement and open the door. She will shine the torch upon me and, with her handyman’s wife’s eye, will understand exactly what has happened. I may not be able to explain to her what is needed, but I will make such rudimentary gestures as I am capable of.

But Petunia will already have assessed the perilous situation I am in. She will see that the handly-bar is pressing against my chest and the vibrating belt has a murderous hold on my throat. She will observe my position, enmeshed in this devil’s spiderweb of metal and wood, pinioned like an insect. She will understand perfectly that if the motor starts again I will be a dead man, and she will discern exactly what it is she must do if she is to save her husband’s life.

So she will unplug The Appliance at the door before going upstairs to close the main circuit breaker.

The idea, which has occurred to me in my darker moments, that she won’t is, of course, ridiculous.

Isn’t it?