Daggers Drawn

The Trials of Margaret L.C. Tyler

Margaret’s first thought on waking was that she had had an unusually good night’s sleep. It was only as she rolled over in bed and came face to face (as it were) with the back of Lionel’s head that she remembered she had murdered her husband the evening before.

She rolled back again thoughtfully and then just stared at the ceiling for a while. There was a crack in the plaster that Lionel had been promising for months that he would fix. He probably wouldn’t be doing that now.

There were clearly things that she hadn’t thought through as well as she might, including what to do with the body. Still, for the moment she could afford to lie there and listen to the early morning birdsong and watch the first rays of the sun flickering on the oak chest of drawers. Such was the inward peace that she felt that she was only slightly resentful that it was, strictly speaking, Lionel’s turn to make tea that morning. Somewhere in the house a clock struck six, then another slightly further off, then another. Lionel, in his pre-victim days, had always liked his clocks. He spent half an hour every Sunday going round the house winding them all; she thought she probably wouldn’t bother with that.

Margaret slowly slipped out of bed, trying not to disturb the duvet over her husband, and tiptoed out of the room — it was unlikely she would wake Lionel, but it seemed more respectful somehow. It wasn’t until she got to the kitchen that she allowed herself to start humming something from South Pacific.

Sitting at the table, tapping her foot to the tune and sipping her tea, she ran through the events of the night before. There had been the argument — what they had argued about wasn’t so important as the fact that Lionel had flatly refused to see it as a problem of any sort. Men didn’t see that sort of thing as a problem. Being a man had, frankly, been Lionel’s fatal mistake. Afterwards, he had gone off to wind clocks or something and she had sat there regretting the fact that they did not keep cyanide handy under the kitchen sink. Then she had remembered that she did have a lot of sleeping pills that might be ground up very finely and put into something.

“Would you like an omelette for supper, Lionel?”

“That would be nice, dear,” he had replied, doubtless reflecting that she had got over whatever-it-was quite quickly this time. She opened a bottle of Chablis to go with the food. He had appreciated that and attributed his later drowsiness to the wine.

“I’d get an early night, dear, if I were you. I’ll follow you up later.”

Oh yes, and when serving the two omelettes — the pill-laden one and her own — she had for a moment lost track of which was which, but then thought she could detect just a trace of white powder in the one in her left hand. It must have been the excitement of the moment, because she was always quite good at remembering, for example, which cup of tea had sugar in it and which did not. She had presumably got it right, because Lionel was dead and she wasn’t.

She drained the last of her tea, then realisation finally hit her that she would have to Do Something fairly soon. The initial plan had not gone much beyond poisoning her husband. After that she had assumed there might be a certain amount of awkwardness. Now she thought it through, that awkwardness might include having to spend the rest of her life in prison — in pleasanter company than Lionel’s of course, but still...

Lionel’s body was too heavy for her to carry to the car unaided and, even then, it would be difficult dumping it in a river (or whatever you were supposed to do) without somebody noticing. She could bury it in the vegetable patch of course, but Lionel had always been the gardener in the family. And again, she was sure that her neighbour would find it odd that she was digging such a deep hole in the early hours of the morning.

The issue of the near-miss with the fatal omelette started an interesting second line of thought however. What if she were to claim that Lionel, not she, had cooked the omelettes (some husbands did such things apparently). What if he had done it with the intention of poisoning her and had then mixed up the plates, as she almost had, and eaten the deadlier supper of the two. In that case she would have woken up, gone down to make two cups of tea and then on her return to the marital bed discovered her husband already cold and stiff. She would initially have had no idea what had caused his death, because (being totally innocent) how could she possibly guess that he would have ever contemplated such a thing? So, she would have phoned for an ambulance or something and then looked on with innocent incredulity as events unfolded...

It needed working on a bit, but that seemed the general direction to go in.

“So, you had no idea,” said the policeman, “what had caused his death?”

Margaret wiped a tear from her eye and shook her head. “He went to bed early,” she said. “I didn’t try to wake him when I came to bed myself. It wasn’t until I brought him a nice cup of tea the following morning that I found I was unable to... unable to...”

“Would you like a tissue?” asked the policeman.

“No, I’m fine. Really.”

“So you made tea and took it up. And then?” asked the policeman.

“I dialled 999,” said Margaret. “An ambulance came at once, but it was too late. Too late! A heart attack, they thought. At first, anyway. Until the autopsy report.”

“So you now know the cause of death?”

“Sleeping pills...” Margaret fingered the top button of her blouse and bit her lip.

“Do you know where he might have got them?”

“I checked the bedside table and mine were all gone. Lionel must have found them and taken them.”

“He must have taken a large number of them. Is it possible that he was trying to commit suicide? Had he ever expressed any suicidal thoughts?”

Margaret considered this. A simple ‘yes’ was tempting. On the other hand a brief discussion with any of Lionel’s friends would contradict that. Lionel’s joviality had been one of the more irritating of his characteristics. To lie quite so blatantly at this stage might attract suspicion. And the idea that he might have died trying to kill her was so much more appropriate.

“No. That’s the odd thing. He didn’t. I wondered, though... You see, that last evening he made omelettes for the two of us. And I did notice sort of little white specks in one of them. I mean — what if he’d crumbled my pills into one of the omelettes intending to kill me, then mixed them up...?”

The policeman looked at her oddly. “Why would he do that?”

“Well, we had had a bit of an argument...”

“What about?”

She told him. The policeman shook his head. “Hardly enough to justify murder,” he said.

“On the contrary,” she said indignantly.

The policeman flicked through his notebook. “Your neighbour reported overhearing an argument that evening,” he said. “But we thought—”

“He was an irritating troublemaker?”

“That had occurred to us.”

“Well, yes, he is. But he can be trusted on that. There was an argument.”

“Your neighbour’s evidence was that you had threatened to kill your husband.”

“Really? I doubt he heard that distinctly.”

“He says he did.”

“He’s a bit deaf.”

“He told us he happened to have his ear pressed up against the wall, for some reason he can no longer remember. He heard every single word. It’s just that it seemed a bit improbable, until now...”

“Look,” said Margaret, “we had an argument, then Lionel tried to poison my omelette. Any idiot should be able to see that.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t the other way round?”

“Of course not,” said Margaret.

“Would you like to phone your lawyer now or later?” asked the policeman.

“It would,” said the barrister, “be ridiculous to suppose that the argument that you had would cause you to poison your husband.”

“It wasn’t exactly what we argued about that was so important,” said Margaret, “so much as the fact that Lionel refused to see that it was actually a problem of any sort. Typical man.”

The barrister was pensive for a moment. “Well,” he said, “for my part, I can’t imagine that any sensible jury would see it as a motive for murder.”

“But it may conversely have been enough to make him try to murder me,” said Margaret. “You see, I have this theory...”

“I know you do,” said the barrister. He had a patronising manner not entirely unlike Lionel’s. “That’s why we’re where we are. Please leave this to me. I think we should stick to the facts, which are that there is no evidence that it wasn’t suicide. That was what the police thought. That is what they would still think if you hadn’t talked so much about omelettes.”

Fine. Suicide then, if that’s what he reckoned.

“Which of course it was,” said Margaret.

“Precisely,” said the barrister.

The barrister was scarcely much older than her son, Margaret thought. “Anyway,” she said, “if any reasonable jury — I mean a jury of women — knew what Lionel had done and what he said, they would never convict me. Can we fix it so that I get a jury made up entirely of women?”

“No,” said the barrister.

“That seems very unreasonable.”

“The law sometimes is.”

“But I might just get an all-woman jury by pure chance?”

“The odds are two to the power of eleven against.”

“Sounds good enough to me,” said Margaret.

Margaret counted the jurors as they were sworn in. Nine women and three men. Hopefully the women would keep the three men under control.

The prosecution barrister outlined the case for the Crown. Margaret could see his heart wasn’t really in it. Being a man too, he couldn’t really see that what Lionel had done was worth killing anyone for. A lot of his questioning was perfunctory.

Margaret’s neighbour gave evidence (after which he could forget any chance she’d ever take in a parcel for him again or warn him when the parking wardens were on the prowl). Yes, he’d heard the argument. They often argued. On this occasion she’d definitely threatened to kill him. It wasn’t the first time he heard her say that. At this point, one or two of the female jurors glanced at Margaret sympathetically. She smiled back when she hoped the judge wasn’t looking.

During the lunch break on the second day she got a text message from somebody claiming to be a member of the jury. Hang in there, sister, it read. She deleted it at once, but it gave her a comfortable glow all afternoon. When her turn came to be cross-examined she watched the jury carefully and noticed several women nodding in agreement with her answers. The male jurors looked less certain but, she was pleased to notice, they already had a beaten expression. They had been spoken to. Firmly.

“I think that went well,” said her barrister, removing his wig and easing his collar. “Other than your raising that idea that he might have been trying to poison you. Could you please not do that?”

“It was worth a try.”

“No, it wasn’t. You will kindly allow me to decide what is and isn’t worth a try.”

“You are arguing the case very cogently.”

The barrister nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”

That night she had another text message — goodness knows how they had found her phone number, but everything is out there on the internet if you look. It read: Lionel was completely in the wrong. You have the full sympathy of nine out of twelve of the jury.

Margaret deleted it. You couldn’t be too careful. It would be a shame if they had to go for a retrial just because she had been chatting harmlessly to the jury.

On the third day she listened to the evidence of various expert witnesses with varying degrees of indifference. Let them pontificate on the effects of barbiturates. Let them quote statistics on suicides. Let them talk about the unlikelihood of blah, blah, blahdy, blah. This jury was never going to convict her. It would have been pleasant to show that professor of toxicology the texts she had received and to see his face when he realised how futile his words were.

She scanned the jury to see if she could guess who had sent her the messages. A young-ish woman in a batik dress, no make-up and hair tied in a bun looked both sympathetic and capable of locating her on the internet.

Margaret spent much of the afternoon working out what Lionel’s clocks were worth and what she could do with the money once the trial was over. She’d always wanted to go to Bhutan.

That evening the text read: Your barrister doesn’t have a clue, does he? Still, we understand, though we did have to explain it to the men on the jury. We’re with you all the way.

On the fourth day both barristers summed up their cases to the jury. The barrister for the prosecution took the minimum time that he decently could to outline what he clearly saw as a very weak argument. He was undoubtedly expecting an acquittal. Her own barrister, however, proceeded slowly and methodically. The argument that had been overheard by the neighbour was, he said, utterly trivial. No reasonable man could believe it would be the motive for a murder. It could be true that somebody had put sleeping tablets into the omelette but, if so, could the jury really be certain who had done it? He rather thought not. People did commit suicide unexpectedly. And if the manner of this suicide was odd, surely the decision to end one’s own life was in itself perverse? Logic — and at this point he looked at the male members of the jury — dictated that they could not possibly convict. He had strutted back to his seat, head held high.

Margaret watched her almost-all-women jury return to their room to deliberate.

“So how long until I get acquitted?” asked Margaret. “I need to get to the travel agents. I want to book a flight to Bhutan.”

“We can’t be certain...” said her barrister.

“Nine out of twelve of them are completely on my side,” said Margaret. “I know that much.”

“You haven’t had any contact with the jurors?” asked the barrister, frowning. “That would mean that the jury would have to be dismissed, and you and they would be in contempt of court—”

“Chill,” said Margaret. It was what her children said to her. It sounded cool. “Chill the beans, barrister.”

“Just so long as you haven’t...”

Margaret looked at him with amused contempt.

“Of course not,” she said.

“Well,” said the barrister, “if they reach a verdict in the first half hour or so it almost certainly means you have been found not guilty. The longer they take, the more doubters there must be and the less certain we are.”

It took the jury ten minutes.

“Guilty,” said the foreman of the jury.

The two barristers exchanged puzzled glances.

“But...” said Margaret. She didn’t quite hear what the judge said thereafter. She was expecting the foreman to suddenly smile and shake her head and say: “Oh, sorry, did I say guilty? What am I like? I meant of course...” But she didn’t. One or two of the jurors smiled apologetically. The judge finished speaking. The jury filed out. Margaret was taken back to the cells.

As she walked along a dingy corridor a jolly ringtone announced a text message. She took out her phone and read it.

You have the sympathy of the whole jury, it said. We’d have murdered the bastard for that too.