Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 134, No. 5. Whole No. 819, November 2009

Rearrangements by Marjorie Eccles

Marjorie Eccles began her writing career with short stories for magazines in the U.K., and the short story continues to be her first love. She has had a number of them in EQMM over the years and is a winner of a short story Agatha Award. In 1988, her first crime novel appeared in the U.S. The book featured her series character Superintendent Gil Mayo. More than a dozen books in the Mayo series have followed, and the author also writes non-series novels, such as 2009’s Broken Music, which was released in the U.K. in August.

She was still in good nick; she didn’t need anyone to tell her that, and it wasn’t just luck, either. She’d always looked after herself — she kept to a strict diet, had regular workouts at the gym, and went swimming twice a week. She had her hair expensively styled and the new two-tone highlights Carl had given her last week had given it a youthful bounce and shine. Regular facials and manicures were part of her routine. She was high-maintenance, but she was worth it. All her friends told her she didn’t look her age, and she agreed with them.

All the same...

On her fortieth birthday — or maybe her forty-fourth, or even — fifth — two things happened to Lynda Morrison that were to change her life.

The first was the arrival of a letter. (No cards, because she’d never told anyone the date of her birthday, much less admitted to how many she’d already had, even to those who might have their suspicions.) The letter was from her estranged husband, with not so much as a mention that it was her birthday but, arriving as it had on The Day, was a nastily calculated reminder that he, at least, knew that it was another milestone.

Ivan Morrison was a doctor, rich over and above the salary he earned as a consultant with the NHS and the fees he also collected in his private practice. So that the separation allowance Lynda received from him was sufficient to keep her in comparative luxury, enabling her to dress in the softest cashmere, silk, and fine linen, to devote attention to herself, and even to invest in some good jewellery from time to time. Not to mention having tenure of this spacious serviced apartment he allowed her, in such a highly prestigious block of London flats, just around the corner from Harrods. Over the matter of their separation she had, if one were truthful, taken him to the cleaners, against which he’d had no redress, knowing what she knew about certain indiscretions he got up to on the side. It had forced him to be very generous, over the years, in the matter of the monetary increases she had demanded, due to the rising cost of living, of course. She had no compunction about this; for what he had done, she deserved everything she could wring out of him. In actual fact, separation had so far suited both of them. It had been managed in a discreet and civilised manner, without the messy publicity of a divorce, which he certainly did not need. For several years, Lynda had lived in pampered ease and comfort, and had seen no reason why this state of affairs shouldn’t continue.

But what Ivan said in this letter — and especially coming as it did on this significant birthday — completely threw her. She read it with increasing disbelief and fury. He spoke of his approaching retirement (he was older than she was — of course) and Tamsin’s wish to move to Marbella, or Majorca. In view of this, and of the rising maintenance costs, her flat was an encumbrance he could do without. In short, he intended to sell it. Fighting off the panic, Lynda scrunched up the letter and threw it across the room in a rage. How couldshe possibly move? What would she do without her bridge cronies, her nearness to Harrods and Harvey Nicks, the little restaurants, the flower shops — all the amenities of Knightsbridge that made up her pleasant life here?

He would of course, Ivan had gone on to say smoothly, provide her with other accommodation. Having once worked in an estate agent’s office, Tamsin knew someone who could help in that direction. I’ll bet she does, Lynda thought savagely. She could just imagine the sort of cheap flat that would be found for her, in some dismal corner of Earl’s Court, no doubt — or even worse, a semidetached out in the sticks! Why, she raged, should this — this Tamsin — this floozy, nothing more than a common tart, young enough to be his daughter — why should she dictate the course of the life of a woman whom she had never even met? She would see them both in hell, first.

The second momentous happening of the day, not, perhaps, entirely unconnected with the first, and the hateful name of Tamsin which had haunted her like ear-music all day, was that as she prepared for bed that night, Lynda steeled herself to take a good, long, honest, and overdue look at herself in the full-length mirror. Fortieth — or perhaps forty-fifth — birthdays were said to be a time for reassessment and she wanted to be prepared for the battle which was to come, for battle there would be. This Tamsin might be nothing more than a common little office scrubber, but she had youth on her side.

Lynda’s lifestyle guru was right: honesty was a girl’s best friend. Ruthless honesty. Taking a deep breath as she critically examined herself from top to toe, she began to wonder, for the first time, if that multi-layered hairstyle wasn’t perhaps a little too long, too youthful. Maybe she should aim for sophisticated maturity. Looking even closer, she acknowledged that she had — oh horrors! — the faint beginnings of a double chin, that the “laughter lines” at her eye corners were — well, crow’s-feet. Plunging even deeper into the dark well of truth, it had to be admitted that the interesting shadows under her eyes were fast becoming, let’s face it, bags. That terrifying piece she’d read in the paper a few weeks ago, about the possibility of face transplants, didn’t seem quite such a horror story now as it had then. She would willingly consider the possibility, given the chance.

There was more. Even with the help of the beautifully cut designer clothes which she spent a fortune on, she couldn’t completely hide the love handles on her thighs. (Love-handles, that was a laugh! she thought bitterly.) Her breasts were firm no longer, and it required a determined effort and magic knickers to keep those tummy muscles pulled in.

Knowing she wouldn’t sleep that night anyway, she thought, what the hell, and made herself a pot of black coffee. She needed to think. Where was that magazine she’d bought after seeing it when she was having her hair done at Carl’s? Finding it at last, she flicked through until she came to the article she remembered reading.

Mr. Harvey-Pilbeam, FRCS (Plast), was middle-aged and wore a pink shirt under his impeccably tailored charcoal-grey suit. He was plump and fair-haired, though balding, a man with light eyelashes and soft white hands with a sprinkling of freckles on the back of them, like mouldy cheese. These cool hands with their beautifully manicured nails slightly repelled her when they lifted her chin to the light, turned her face this way and that, scrutinised her hairline, but his immediate understanding of her position enabled her to repress a shudder. He could indeed sympathise with why she wanted these slight adjustments made, he assured her, a beautiful woman was right to wish to keep her looks as long as she could; indeed, in some cases, a little help was a necessity. Was Mrs. Parker, perhaps, an actress, a film star? No? He had thought at first her face was familiar. She saw his eyes flicker, and for a moment, she could have sworn... But she must have been mistaken. He shrugged, and merely added that she was entitled to keep her self-respect, her pride in her pretty face, whatever her reasons. A face which would be even more beautiful when he had finished with it. Perhaps just a tuck here and there to begin with?

No, Lynda (Mrs. Parker for the time being) had thought it all through and wanted more than a nip and tuck. She wanted the works. The sky was the limit. Her face first, and then she’d turn her attention to a remake of her body, she told him. Very well. He murmured about facial peels, dermal fillers, brow lifts, watching for adverse reactions. There were none. She was not afraid, not even apprehensive, being no stranger to Botox injections and having had all her teeth capped. What he proposed would involve a little more discomfort than that, perhaps, but afterwards... Ivan and his Tamsin, look out! With newfound confidence, she would show them who could strike the best bargain.

She arranged to go away for a month. She would see Ivan, she wrote to him, when she returned. It would do him no harm to wait.

She lay on the trolley in the operating theatre, warm and relaxed, drowsy from her pre-med injection. She could hear the murmur of the nurses’ conversation around her and tried to understand what they were talking about, but their voices seemed to come from a long way off and she soon lost the thread... something about Mr. Harvey-Pilbeam and a sudden, unfortunate attack of flu...

“No operation today, then, after all?” She thought she had asked the question, and maybe she had, except that no one answered sensibly; she couldn’t make any sense of what they were saying through the cotton-wool mists in her brain. It didn’t seem to matter. She felt deliciously sleepy and heavy. A masked face loomed over her, an injection by the anaesthetist into the back of her hand, and she knew no more.

The replacement surgeon who had stepped in to cover Mr. Harvey-Pilbeam’s list was always popular with the theatre staff. He joked with the sister while scrubbing up and congratulated the anaesthetist on his golf handicap. It was known that he liked to work to music and “Clair de Lune” played softly as he approached the first patient, Mrs. Parker.

For a moment, when he bent over her, Ivan thought he was hallucinating. And the next instant, with a shock that actually made his heart skip a beat, he remembered that cocktail party... Harvey-Pilbeam squinting down the cleavage of the delectable Tamsin, and then winking one of those pale-lashed eyelids at Morrison, and giving him an old-fashioned look. Ivan had shrugged it off, putting it down to H-p’s jealousy, and thought nothing of it, until now. But — could he possibly have been remembering what Lynda, to whom he had been introduced, briefly, some years ago, looked like? And comparing her with this patient of his, this Mrs. Parker? She did indeed bear a resemblance to Lynda. Except that it was more than a resemblance. Mrs. Parker was Lynda. Ivan’s wife.

No, of course Harvey-Pilbeam could not have engineered this eventuality, ethical questions apart. It was nothing more than Fate, beautiful Fate, intervening by giving Harvey-Pilbeam a bad dose of flu. And going further by nudging his efficient secretary to take upon herself the decision, on his behalf, to request that Mr. Morrison might be willing to take over the list in the emergency, thus delivering to him the patient on the operating table. Ivan felt dizzy for a moment, his hand trembled. Tamsin had read his horoscope that morning and told him Scorpio was in the ascendant and for once it seemed the mumbo-jumbo she believed in might have some semblance of credibility.

He looked down at the helpless, unconscious woman who was still his wife, changed as she was. She had been beautiful once, before the determination for revenge had soured and aged her and shaped her mouth into a permanently discontented droop. Before the light in her lovely hazel eyes had turned into an avaricious gleam, and her hands had become claws ready to tear to pieces every kind impulse he had ever had. So utterly unlike his warm, generous, and life-enhancing Tamsin.

So, he thought, picking up the scalpel. To work. For a moment he paused, almost overcome by a juvenile desire to let his hand slip “accidentally” during the operation. But the temptation was momentary. What was he thinking of? Killing her in front of an operating theatre full of witnesses?

No, that was not the way. Not a gargoyle, either — he was not about to give her grounds to sue him, another opportunity to bleed him dry. Just a little rearrangement of the face in a way that wouldn’t leave any room for real complaint of negligence or anything like that, but wouldn’t please her at all. Something that Mrs. Parker would have to live with for the rest of her life. A not-so-subtle reminder that her time of playing fast and loose with him had come to an end. An end to her blackmail.

He took exquisite pleasure in dwelling on what she would feel when she woke up and learned the name of the surgeon who had replaced Mr. Harvey-Pilbeam. His hands were quite steady as he made the first incision.

Copyright © 2009 by Marjorie Eccles