Butchers and Other Stories of Crime

The Secret Lover

‘Pam.’

‘Yes?’

‘Will you see him this weekend?’

Pam Meredith drew a long breath and stifled the impulse to scream. She knew exactly what was coming. ‘See who?’

‘Your secret lover.’

She summoned a coy smile, said ‘Give over!’ and everyone giggled.

For some reason, that last session of the working week regularly turned three efficient medical receptionists into overgrown schoolgirls. They were all over thirty, too. As soon as they arrived at the health centre, on Saturday morning, they were into their routine. After flexing their imaginations with stories of what the doctors had been getting up to with the patients, they started on each other. Then it was never long before Pam’s secret lover came up.

He was an inoffensive, harassed-looking man in his late thirties who happened to walk into the centre one afternoon to ask for help. A piece of grit had lodged under his left eyelid. Not one of the doctors or the district nurse had been in the building at the time, so Pam had dealt with it herself. From her own experiences with contact lenses, she had a fair idea how to persuade the eye to eject a foreign body, and she had succeeded very quickly, without causing the patient any serious discomfort. He had thanked her and left in a rush, as if the episode had embarrassed him. Pam had thought no more about him until a fortnight later, when she came on duty and was told that a man had been asking for her personally and would be calling back at lunchtime. This, understandably, created some lively interest in reception, particularly when he arrived at five minutes to one carrying a bunch of daffodils.

At thirty-three, Pam was the second youngest of the medical receptionists. She exercised, dieted and tinted her hair blonde and she was popular with many of the men who came in to collect their prescriptions, but she was not used to floral tributes. In her white overall she thought of herself as clinical and efficient. She had a pale, oval face with brown eyes and a small, neat mouth that she had been told projected refinement rather than sensuality. Lately, she had noticed some incipient wrinkles on her neck and taken to wearing polo sweaters.

Under the amused and frankly envious observation of her colleagues, Pam had blushingly accepted the flowers, trying to explain that such a tribute was not necessary, charming as it was. However, when the giver followed it up by asking her to allow him to buy her a drink at the Green Dragon, she had found him difficult to refuse. She had stuttered something about being on duty after lunch, so he had suggested tomato juice or bitter lemon, and one of the other girls had given her an unseen nudge and planted her handbag in her hand.

That was the start of the long-running joke about Pam’s secret lover.

Really the joke was on the others. They hadn’t guessed it in their wildest fantasies, but things had developed to the extent that Pam now slept with him regularly.

Do not assume too much about the relationship. In the common understanding of the word, he was not her lover. Sleeping together and making love are not of necessity the same thing. The possibility was not excluded, yet it was not taken as the automatic consequence of sharing a bed, and that accorded well with Pam’s innate refinement.

So it wasn’t entirely as the girls in the health centre might have imagined it. Pam had learned over that first tomato juice in the Green Dragon that Cliff had a job in the cider industry which entailed calling on various producers in the West Midlands and South-West, and visiting Hereford for an overnight stay once a fortnight. He liked travelling, yet he admitted that the nights away from home had been instrumental in the failure of his marriage. He had not been unfaithful, but, as he altruistically put it, anyone who read the accounts of rapes and muggings in the papers couldn’t really blame a wife who sought companionship elsewhere when her husband spent every other week away on business.

Responding to his candour, Pam had found herself admitting that she, too, was divorced. The nights, she agreed, were the worst. Even in the old cathedral city of Hereford, which had no reputation for violence, she avoided going out alone after dark and she often lay awake listening acutely in case someone was tampering with the locks downstairs.

The first lunchtime drink had led to another when Cliff was next in the city. The fortnight after, Pam had invited him to the house for a ‘spot of supper’, explaining that it was no trouble, because you could do much more interesting things cooking for two than alone. Cliff had heaped praise on her chicken cordon bleu, and after that the evening meal had become a fortnightly fixture. On the first occasion, he had quite properly returned to his hotel at the end of the evening, but the following time he had introduced Pam to the old-fashioned game of cribbage, and they had both got so engrossed that neither of them had noticed the time until it was well after midnight. By then, Pam felt so relaxed and safe with Cliff that it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to make up the spare bed for him and invite him to stay the night. There had been no suggestion on either side of a more intimate arrangement. That was what she liked about Cliff. He wasn’t one of those predatory males. He was enough of a gentleman to suppress his natural physical instincts. And one night six weeks after in a thunderstorm, when she had tapped on his bedroom door and said she was feeling frightened, he had offered in the same gentlemanly spirit to come to her room until the storm abated. As it happened, Pam still slept in the king-size double bed she had got used to when she was married, so there was room for Cliff without any embarrassment about inadvertent touching. They had fallen asleep listening for the thunder. By then it was the season of summer storms, so next time he had come to the house, they had agreed that it was a sensible precaution to sleep together even when the sky was clear. You could never be certain when a storm might blow up during the night. And when the first chill nights of autumn arrived, neither of them liked the prospect of sleeping apart between cool sheets. Besides, as Cliff considerately mentioned, using one bed was less expensive on the laundry.

Speaking of laundry, Pam took to washing out his shirts, underclothes and pyjamas. She had bought him a special pair of bottle-green French pyjamas without buttons and with an elasticated waistband. They were waiting on his pillow, washed and ironed, each time he came. He was very appreciative. He never failed to arrive with a bottle of cider that they drank with the meal. Once or twice he mentioned that he would have taken her out to a restaurant if her cooking had not been so excellent that it would have shown up the cook. He particularly relished the cooked breakfast on a large oval plate that she supplied before he went on his way in the morning.

So Pam staunchly tolerated the teasing in the health centre, encouraged by the certainty that it was all fantasy on their part; she had been careful never to let them know that she had invited Cliff home. She was in a better frame of mind as she walked home that lunchtime. It was always a relief to get through Saturday morning.

As she turned the corner of her street, she saw a small car, a red Mini, outside her house, with someone sitting inside it. She wasn’t expecting a visitor. She strolled towards her gate, noticing that it was a woman who made no move to get out, and whom she didn’t recognise, so she passed the car and let herself indoors.

There was a letter on the floor, a greetings card by the look of it. She had quite forgotten that her birthday was on Sunday. Living alone, with no family to speak of, she tended to ignore such occasions. However, someone had evidently decided that this one should not go by unremarked. She didn’t recognise the handwriting, and the postmark was too faint to read. She opened it and smiled. A print of a single daffodil, and inside, under the printed birthday greeting, the handwritten letter C.

The reason why she hadn’t recognised Cliff’s writing was that this was the first time she had seen it. He wasn’t one for sending letters. And the postmark wouldn’t have given Pam a clue, even if she had deciphered it, because she didn’t know where he lived. He was vague or dismissive when it came to personal information, so she hadn’t pressed him. He was entitled to his privacy. She couldn’t help wondering sometimes, and her best guess was that since the failure of his marriage he had tended to neglect himself and his home and devote himself to his job. He lived for the travelling, and, Pam was encouraged to believe, his fortnightly visit to Hereford.

Presently the doorbell chimed. Pam opened the door to the woman she had seen in the car, dark-haired, about her own age or a little older, good-looking, with one of those long, elegant faces with high cheekbones that you see in foreign films. She was wearing a dark blue suit and white blouse buttoned to the neck as if she were attending an interview for a job. Mainly, Pam was made aware of the woman’s grey-green eyes that scrutinised her with an interest unusual in people who called casually at the door.

‘Hello,’ said Pam.

‘Mrs Pamela Meredith?’

‘Yes.’

The look became even more intense. ‘We haven’t met. You may not even know that I exist. I’m Tracey Gibbons.’ She paused for a reaction.

Pam smiled faintly. ‘You’re right. I haven’t heard your name before.’

Tracey Gibbons sighed and shook her head. ‘I’m not surprised. I don’t know what you’re going to think of me, coming to your house like this, but it’s reached the point when something has to be done. It’s about your husband.’

Pam frowned. ‘My husband?’ She hadn’t heard from David in six years.

‘May I come in?’

‘I suppose you’d better.’

As she showed the woman into her front room, Pam couldn’t help wondering if this was a confidence trick. The woman’s eyes blatantly surveyed the room, the furniture, the ornaments, everything.

Pam said sharply, ‘I think you’d better come to the point, Miss Gibbons.’

‘Mrs, actually. Not that it matters. I’m waiting for my divorce to come through.’ Suddenly the woman sounded nervous and defensive. ‘I’m not promiscuous. I want you to understand that, Mrs Meredith, whatever you may think of me. And I’m not deceitful, either, or I wouldn’t be here. I want to get things straight between us. I’ve driven over from Worcester this morning to talk to you.’

Pam was beginning to fathom what this was about. Mrs Gibbons was having an affair with David, and for some obscure reason she felt obliged to confess it to his ex-wife. Clearly the poor woman was in a state of nerves, so it was kindest to let her say her piece before gently showing her the door.

‘You probably wonder how I got your address,’ Mrs Gibbons went on. ‘He doesn’t know I’m here, I promise you. It’s only over the last few weeks that I began to suspect he had a wife. Certain things you notice, like his freshly ironed shirts. He left his suitcase open the last time he came, and I happened to see the birthday card he addressed to you. That’s how I got your address.’

Pam’s skin prickled. ‘Which card?’

‘The daffodil. I looked inside, I’m ashamed to admit. I had to know.’

Pam closed her eyes. The woman wasn’t talking about David at all. It was Cliff, her Cliff. Her head was spinning. She thought she was going to faint. She said, ‘I think I need some brandy.’

Mrs Gibbons nodded. ‘I’ll join you, if I may.’

When she handed over the glass, Pam said in a subdued voice, ‘You are talking about a man named Cliff?’

‘Of course.’

‘He is not my husband.’

‘What?’ Mrs Gibbons stared at her in disbelief.

‘He visits me sometimes.’

‘And you wash his shirts?’

‘Usually.’

‘The bastard!’ said Mrs Gibbons, her eyes brimming. ‘The rotten, two-timing bastard! I knew there was someone else, but I thought it was his wife he was so secretive about. I persuaded myself he was unhappily married and I came here to plead with you to let him go. I could kill him!’

‘How do you think I feel?’ Pam blurted out. ‘I didn’t even know there was anyone else in his life.’

‘Does he keep a toothbrush and razor in your bathroom?’

‘A face flannel as well.’

‘And I suppose you bought him some expensive aftershave?’

Pam confirmed it bitterly. In her outraged state, she needed to talk, and sharing the trouble seemed likely to dull the pain. She related how she and Cliff had met and how she had invited him home.

‘And one thing led to another?’ speculated Mrs Gibbons. ‘When I think of what I was induced to do in the belief that I was the love of his life...’ She finished her brandy in a gulp.

Pam nodded. ‘It was expensive, too.’

‘Expensive?’

‘Preparing three-course dinners and large cooked breakfasts.’

‘I wasn’t talking about cooking,’ said Mrs Gibbons, giving Pam a penetrating look.

‘Ah,’ said Pam, with a slow dip of the head, in an attempt to convey that she understood exactly what Mrs Gibbons was talking about.

‘Things I didn’t get up to in ten years of marriage to a very athletic man,’ Mrs Gibbons further confided, looking modestly away. ‘But you know all about it. Casanova was a boy scout compared to Cliff. God, I feel so humiliated.’

‘Would you like a spot more brandy, Mrs Gibbons?’

‘Why don’t you call me Tracey?’ suggested Mrs Gibbons, holding out her glass. ‘We’re just his playthings, you and I. How many others are there, do you suppose?’

‘Who knows?’ said Pam, seizing on the appalling possibility and speaking her thoughts aloud. ‘There are plenty of divorced women like you and me, living in relative comfort in what was once the marital home, pathetically grateful for any attention that comes our way. Let’s face it: we’re secondhand goods.’

After a sobering interval, Tracey Gibbons pushed her empty glass towards the brandy bottle again, and asked, ‘What are we going to do about him?’

‘Kick him out with his toothbrush and face flannel, I suppose,’ Pam answered inadequately.

‘So that he finds other deluded women to prey on?’ said Tracey. ‘That’s not the treatment for the kind of animal we’re dealing with. Personally, I feel so angry and abused that I could kill him if I knew how to get away with it. Wouldn’t you?’

Pam stared at her. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Totally. He’s ruined my hopes and every atom of self-respect I had left. What was I to him? His bit in Worcester, his Monday night amusement.’

‘And I was Tuesday night in Hereford,’ Pam added bleakly, suddenly given a cruel and vivid understanding of the way she had been used. Sex was Monday, supper Tuesday. In her own way, she felt as violated as Tracey. An arrangement that had seemed to be considerate and beautiful was revealed as cynically expedient. The reason why he had never touched her was that he was always sated after his night of unbridled passion in Worcester. ‘Tracey, if you know of a way to kill him,’ she stated with the calm that comes when a crucial decision is made, ‘I know how to get away with it.’

Tracey’s eyes opened very wide.

Pam made black coffee and sandwiches and explained her plan. To describe it as a plan is perhaps misleading, because it had only leapt to mind as they were talking. She wasn’t given to thinking much about murder. Yet as she spoke, she sensed excitedly that it could work. It was simple, tidy and within her capability.

The two women talked until late in the afternoon. For the plan to work, they had to devise a way of killing without mess. The body should not be marked by violence. They solemnly debated various methods of despatching a man. Whether the intention was serious or not, Pam found that just talking about it was a balm for the pain that Cliff had inflicted on her. She and Tracey sensibly agreed to take no action until they had each had time to adjust to the shock, but they were adamant that they would meet again.

On the following Monday evening, Pam received a phone call from Tracey. ‘Have you thought any more about what we were discussing?’

‘On and off, yes,’ Pam answered guardedly.

‘Well, I’ve been doing some research,’ Tracey told her with the excitement obvious in her voice. ‘I’d better not be too specific over the phone, but I know where to get some stuff that will do the job. Do you understand me?’

‘I think so.’

‘It’s simple, quick and very effective, and the best thing about it is that I can get it at work.’

Pam recalled that Tracey had said she worked for a firm that manufactured agricultural fertilisers. She supposed she was talking about some chemical substance.

Poison.

‘The thing is,’ Tracey was saying, ‘if I get some, are you willing to do your part? You said it would be no problem.’

‘That’s true, but—’

‘By the weekend? He’s due to visit me on Monday.’

The reminder of Cliff’s Monday assignations in Worcester was like a stab of pain to Pam. ‘By the weekend,’ she confirmed emphatically. ‘Come over about the same time on Saturday. I’ll do my part, I promise you, Tracey.’

The part Pam had to play in the killing of Cliff was to obtain a blank death certificate from one of the doctors at the centre. She had often noticed how careless Dr Holt-Wagstaff was with his paperwork. He was the oldest of the five practitioners and his desk was always in disorder. She waited for her opportunity for most of the week. On Friday morning she had to go into his surgery to ask him to clarify his handwriting on a prescription form. The death certificate pad was there on the desk. At twelve-fifteen, when he went out on his rounds, and Pam was on duty with one other girl, she slipped back into the surgery. No one saw her.

Saturday was a testing morning for Pam. The time dragged and the teasing about her secret lover was difficult to take without snapping back at the others. She kept wondering whether Dr Holt-Wagstaff had noticed anything. She need not have worried. He left at noon, wishing everyone a pleasant weekend. At twelve-thirty, the girls locked up and left.

When Pam got home, Tracey was waiting on her doorstep. ‘I came by train,’ she explained. ‘Didn’t want to leave my car outside again. It’s surprising how much people notice.’

‘Sensible,’ said Pam, with approval, as she opened the door. ‘Now I want to hear about the stuff you’ve got. Is it really going to work?’

Tracey put her hand on Pam’s arm. ‘Darling, it’s foolproof. Do you want to see it?’ She opened her handbag and took out a small brown glass bottle. ‘Pure nicotine. We use it at work.’

Pam held the bottle in her palm. ‘Nicotine? Is it a poison?’

‘Deadly.’

‘There isn’t much here.’

‘The fatal dose is measured in milligrams, Pam. A few drops will do the trick.’

‘How can we get him to take it?’

‘I’ve thought of that.’ Tracey smiled. ‘You’re going to like this. In a glass of his own buckshee cider. Nicotine goes yellow on exposure to light and air, and there’s a bitter taste which the sweet cider will mask.’

‘How does it work?’

‘It acts as a massive stimulant. The vital organs simply can’t withstand it. He’ll die of cardiac arrest in a very short time. Did you get the death certificate?’

Pam placed the poison bottle on the kitchen table and opened one of her cookbooks. The certificate was inside.

‘You’re careful, too,’ Tracey said with a conspiratorial smile. She delved into her handbag again. ‘I brought a prescription from my doctor to copy the signature, as you suggested. What else do we have to fill in here? Name of deceased. What shall we call him?’

‘Anything but Cliff,’ said Pam. ‘How about Clive? Clive Jones.’

‘All right. Clive Jones it is. Date of death. I’d better fill that in after the event. What shall we put as the cause of death? Cardiac failure?’

‘No, that’s likely to be a sudden death,’ said Pam, thinking of post-mortems. ‘Broncho-pneumonia is better.’

‘Suits me,’ said Tracey, writing it down. ‘After he’s dead, I take this to the Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths in Worcester, and tell them that Clive Jones was my brother, is that right?’

‘Yes, it’s very straightforward. They’ll want his date of birth and one or two other details that you can invent. Then they issue you with another certificate that you show to the undertaker. He takes over after that.’

‘I ask for a cremation, of course. Will it cost much?’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Pam. ‘He can afford it.’

‘Too true!’ said Tracey. ‘His wallet is always stuffed with notes.’

‘He never has to spend much,’ Pam pointed out. ‘The way he runs his life, he gets everything he wants for nothing.’

‘The bastard,’ said Tracey with a shudder.

‘You really mean to do it, don’t you?’

Tracey stood up and looked steadily at Pam with her grey-green eyes. ‘On Monday evening when he comes to me. I’ll phone you when it’s done.’

Pam linked her arm in Tracey’s. ‘The first thing I’m going to do is burn those pyjamas.’

Tracey remarked, ‘He never wore pyjamas with me.’

‘Really?’ Pam hesitated, her curiosity aroused. ‘What exactly did he do with you? Are you able to talk about it?’

‘I don’t believe I could,’ answered Tracey with eyes lowered.

‘If I poured you a brandy? We are in this together now.’

‘All right,’ said Tracey with a sigh.

Sunday seemed like the longest day of Pam’s life, but she finally got through it. On Monday she didn’t go in to work. That evening, she waited nervously by the phone from six-thirty onwards.

The call came at a few minutes after seven. Pam snatched up the phone.

‘Hello, darling.’ The voice was Cliff’s.

‘Cliff?’

‘Yes. Not like me to call you on a Monday, is it? The fact is, I happen to be in Worcester on my travels, and it occurred to me that I could get over to you in Hereford in half an hour if you’re free this evening.’

‘Has something happened?’ asked Pam.

‘No, my darling. Just a change of plans. I won’t expect much of a meal.’

‘That’s good, because I haven’t got one for you,’ Pam candidly told him.

There was a moment’s hesitation before he said, ‘Are you all right, dear? You don’t sound quite yourself.’

‘Don’t I?’ said Pam flatly. ‘Well, I’ve had a bit of a shock. My sister died here on Saturday. It wasn’t entirely unexpected. Broncho-pneumonia. I’ve had to do everything myself. She’s being cremated on Wednesday.’

‘Your sister? Pam, darling, I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t even know you had a sister.’

‘Her name was Olive. Olive Jones,’ said Pam, and she couldn’t help smiling at her own resourcefulness. After she had poisoned Tracey with a drop of nicotine in her brandy, all it had wanted on the death certificate was a touch of the pen. ‘We weren’t close. I’m not too distressed. Yes, why don’t you come over?’

‘You’re sure you want me?’

‘Oh, I want you,’ answered Pam; ‘Yes, I definitely want you.’

When she had put down the phone, she didn’t go to the fridge to see what food she had in there. She went upstairs to the bedroom and changed into a black lace negligé.