Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018

Long Slow Dance Through the Passage of Time by Marilyn Todd

Booklist said of Marilyn Todd that she “paints antiquity with a particularly suspenseful brush and skillfully tangled plots.” Her novels are all set in ancient times, thirteen in ancient Rome, three in ancient Greece. At short-story length, the British author more often revisits the recent past, as in this tale of the mid twentieth century. Her flair lor setting the historical scene shines here too!

An owl hoots from the ancient, spreading oak. Voles rustle through the fallen leaves along the hedgerow. The bell of St. Giles tolls three.

Lying here in the dark, my thoughts turn to Richard.

Then again.

My thoughts always turn to Richard.

“Miss Sneed, what a pleasure. I’ve heard so much about you.”

Perhaps I looked at him too sharply, ’cause he blushed.

“Nothing bad, you understand. Quite the contrary. It’s just that my parishioners... well, some of them gossip... oh, not in a spiteful way. I meant the way they chatter...”

Funny how people stammer and gush to cover the embarrassment you caused ’em in the first place.

He cleared his throat. Held out his hand. “Reverend Jenkins. Richard. What I’m trying very, very badly to say is, the church is holding a dance on Saturday night in a bid to attract some younger members to our congregation. I don’t know if you’ve seen the posters—”

“Rock and roll.”

Couldn’t miss ’em. Plastered over every wall and arch and bombed-out building, presumably because bill posters was only prosecuted if the perpetrator of this heinous crime was someone other than a man of the cloth.

“Good, because the, um, the thing is, Miss Sneed, it seems you have quite a reputation when it comes to the jitterbug—”

And other things besides, I thought, but you know the Yanks, and what was said about them during the War. Oversexed, overpaid, and over here. Maybe they was, but Dolly Sneed always had a brand-new pair of nylons, didn’t she? Wore pretty shoes, the latest fashions, swung a handbag stuffed with Hershey bars, all at a time when everything from jam to milk to chocolate and tinned fruit was rationed, and the government only allowed you one measly egg a week. So up yours, all you snotty little cows who laughed at me in class, and wouldn’t let me join your stupid little cliques. Not so stuck-up after that, were you? In your ugly, ration-book frocks and pencil lines down the back of your legs, to make it look like stockings. Who had the last laugh then?

“—so I was wondering if you, er, know anything about this new dance craze? Might teach me how to do it?”

And that’s how it started, Richard and me. Us rocking and rolling in an empty hall to Elvis Presley’s “That’s All Right, Mama” (another bloomin’ Yank!), perfecting our moves to Bill Haley and Fats Domino, so he could show a bunch of teenagers that God was cool and church was fun. And I could show a bunch of frumps from school that I still had “it,” and not just that.

That I had “it” in spades.

Unlike them, I’d kept me figure. The Americans, bless their generous hearts, were still flying their B-26s and B-29s out of Bovingdon back then, and though I never actually saw Clark Gable or Bob Hope wandering round Watford during the War, I caught a glimpse of James Stewart one time (least, I think it was him), and I’m pretty sure that bloke outside the dairy was William Holden. Spitting image from the back. That walk, you know...? The point being, you never knew who you might bump into. Maybe get a lucky break in Hollywood, or even British films.

Which is fine when you’re eighteen. Not so fine when you’re knocking thirty, not going steady or even courting, and are what the government deem a spinster and your old school friends call an old maid.

Richard wasn’t stupid. But at the same time, despite the War, or perhaps because of it, he wasn’t very worldly either. Pretty girl, witty, unconventional, independent, naturally men would be attracted to her like moths to a flame, but—

“What you have to understand, luv, is that these men were married, and married men get lonely.”

Wouldn’t you, I added, giving him my well-rehearsed shudder at the horror of being stationed half a world from home, not knowing if you’d ever see your wife and kids again, or even live to see the sunset.

“That’s all it ever was, though. Companionship. At a time when them boys needed it the most.”

At which point, his eyes welled up, he grasped both my hands in his, said that was “the warmest, most wonderful, selfless act of charity he’d ever heard of,” then dropped to his knees and promptly begged me to marry him.

I ask you. Who’d say no to that?

There were changes. Obviously. Stiletto heels were out. Not the right image, the bishop felt, which was a laugh, considering his penchant for patting little girls’ bums. I scaled back on the port and brandies, learned to say “isn’t” instead of “ain’t,” and how not to drop me h’s, but ooh, I didn’t half miss sashaying around in them tight halternecks a la Sophia Loren! Tailored suits and button-to-the-collar blouses made me feel I was being strangled by a python, and between you and me, I’d have given anything to go striding down the High Street with Richard on me arm in a wife-beater T-shirt and denim jeans, like Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. Not that Richard had the muscles. Or the pout. Or the passion, come to that. But a girl can dream, can’t she? Besides. The War had been over ten long years, the bloom on my skin was slipping away, along with my options, and crikey, I’d put up with a bloody sight worse for a half-decent pair of nylons and a can of condensed milk.

What you need to remember, too, is that a vicar’s wife carried a certain cachet in those days. Because now when I stepped out, it was Mrs. Jenkins this and Mrs. Jenkins that, and people made time for me, can you believe it? They’d actually stop me in the street to chat. Church stuff, as you’d expect. But still. They stopped. Showed respect for the first time I remember, and as though an invisible hand had flicked a switch, suddenly there was no more sniggering about my name, my nose, my whiny voice and lack of table manners. Dolly Sneed was Someone. Mrs. Someone, at that. So they could stick their ugly babies, bawling in their cheap perambulators, and their rented council houses, and their ugly husbands with work-rough hands and beery breath. Stick it where the postmen don’t deliver letters.

No more being lied to. No more used, abused, and treated with contempt by G.I. Joe. I mattered now. And guess what? I enjoyed it.

Thank you, thank you, Little Richard, and your beauti tutti frutti.

With me, of course, nothing good ever lasts for long. I should have known. That first winter, less than six months into our marriage, Richard (my Richard, not Little Richard!) went down with pneumonia. This wasn’t new. He’d had it as a kid, three times, as it happens. Left him with a weak chest, which is why he wasn’t eligible to fight, and all credit to him, rocking round the clock to show the kids at the church dance that God was cool, even though it left him wheezing with a wracking cough for days. But if you think wearing prissy clothes and making polite conversation was not my forte, don’t even think about my nursing skills. Patience, I’m sorry to say, was most definitely not one of my virtues in them days. Still isn’t, come to that.

But.

For better or worse and all that — and let’s face it. Marriage to the Rev. Someone was a million times better than being an old maid and working in the Co-op. So once again I astounded everybody in the parish (myself included) by making soup and filling hot-water bottles, carefully mixing lemon with honey, washing him, helping him to the toilet, holding him while he hacked to bleeding point. At the time, I felt sure I deserved a medal. Or at the very least, a sainthood. “March third, St. Dolly’s Day.” Nice ring to it, don’t you think? Because despite the advances in penicillin, Richard took a week to ditch the fever, a month before the chest pain and the mucus had died down, and another couple of months before the fatigue cleared away and he was back to giving sermons and going on his rounds.

His flock, I have to say, were bleedin’ marvellous. They brought round stews, cakes, and home-baked bread, they pitched in with the gardening — weeds don’t half sprout in springtime! — leaving presents on the hall table, and not just for the vicar. For the vicar’s wife, can you imagine that! A bag of parma violets. Embroidered handkerchiefs. A pair of white lace gloves. In my entire life, no one had given me anything without a quid pro quo, and, hand on heart, I was touched. Especially when the only way to catch my mum’s attention was to steal money from her purse, kick the paint off the front door, or beat up my tittle-tattle of a sister, because even a clout round the ear and a night in the coal cellar without supper meant she was making time for me.

“Do you have any idea of how hard it is, being a widow and raising two kids on yer own?” she’d yell.

“Not so ’ard, you can’t keep a bottle of gin glued to yer lips,” I’d yell back.

That constituted conversation as far as my mother and me was concerned. I don’t recall her ever hugging me, even when I had me tonsils out. No, the best I had to look forward to was Christmas, with an orange, a few walnuts, and a bar of soap that was not carbolic. While birthdays meant a new liberty bodice and a bag of toffees, which I was meant to share. Dream on.

Of course, they’re both gone now, my mother and my sister. Bombed out in 1940, the week I ran away from home.

Who knows? Perhaps there is a God?

“You should have been a cat, you know that, don’t you?”

Richard was just back from his weekly tour of the sick, the poor, the dying, the bereaved. I was at the dining-room table, head down over me new Singer sewing machine, because that’s another skill I didn’t know I had. The ability to make me own clothes. And I was good at pinning on the paper patterns, cutting out the fabric, tacking, hemming, pinking, sewing seams. I was. A skill, admittedly, which sprung from my desire (some might say obsession) with trawling through them great big pattern books in the department stores. Vogue being my favourite, but give me a Butterick or a McCall’s and I’d be lost for days. Drooling over film-star evening gowns with fishtail hems and off-the-shoulder necklines, or big, wide skirts, be-bop-a-lula, and skintight pants like Audrey Hepburn wore in Funny Face.

“Own up, Richard Jenkins. Who was it snitched about how I spend my time curled up at the foot of the bed when you’re out?”

He laughed. Kissed me on the ear, having missed my mouth because I needed to fix a seam that unexpectedly needed repinning. “Secrets of the confessional, I’m afraid.” He slumped down in the armchair. “But the thing about you, Dolly, and the reason I say that, is that no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be totally domesticated.”

“You called in on that Miss Cox again, didn’t yer?” For all I’d turned my lips away, I was smiling. “How many of the furry monsters does she have now? Four?”

“Six, but she’s eighty-two and lonely,” he said, picking a scrap of ginger fur off his trouser leg. “She deserves all the love she can get at her age.”

“And you deserve a cup of tea at yours, luv.”

“I’ll give you a hand.”

“You’ll sit in that armchair and read the paper, Richard Jenkins.” Back end of May, and the colour was only just coming back in his cheeks. “I am the cat that walks by itself and all places are alike to me, remember?”

“Even the kitchen?”

“Especially the kitchen.”

By the time I’d made the tea, he was fast asleep.

After the pneumonia, there was no more awap-bop-a-lu-bop awap-bam-bam in the church hall for us. No shake, rattle, and rolling. No stepping on anyone’s blue suede shoes. Of course, we still tuned our wireless to Radio Luxembourg of an evening. At least those evenings when Richard wasn’t at church meetings, taking choir practice, or running Beetle drives. Which, I might add, I avoided like the plague.

“You ought to come,” he’d say. “They’re fun.”

Fun? Rolling dice to pin different body parts to insects?

“Next time,” I’d say, with a twinkle in my eye. He knew I was happier alone with the record player, bopping round the living room while the jail-house rocked and Guy Mitchell never felt more like singing the blues. I think, deep down inside, he also sensed that his parishioners were happier too. That without me there, a nonbeliever in believer’s clothing, they breathed more easily. Hypocrisy always finds its level.

But life after illness finds its level too, and me, I found another skill. Organising things, jumble sales in particular. Again, not my first choice, but when Mrs. Meredith had a stroke, someone needed to step in, and I don’t care who called me bossy, rigid, rhymes-with-witch, I got the job done, didn’t I? That year, the church banked a third more in takings, which was a terrific boost for Richard’s new soup-kitchen project, so you can shut your ugly faces, all you backbiters from school, and remember who it was that raised more food in that year’s Harvest Festival than any that had gone before it.

And so what, a bit of swearing slipped out here and there?

No one’s bleedin’ perfect.

As for Richard, well... slower songs meant slower dances, and what’s wrong with clicking your fingers to “Blueberry Hill” or tapping your toes from the sofa while someone went sneakin’ round the corner, could that someone be Mack the Knife? The Clean Air Act meant a new gas fire downstairs, a two-bar electric in the bedroom, and that autumn we was as warm as toast, drinking the cheap sherry the bishop and his boring wife brought round, watching the brand new ITV channel, playing Monopoly, and going to the pictures.

But like I said, when it comes to Dolly Sneed, nothing good lasts long.

Richard, poor bugger, caught the flu.

Excuse my swearing, but holy bleedin’ *!?~*!!*, ’cause if you think pneumonia’s bad, this was ten times worse. First off, his temperature shot through the roof. Scary enough, but add on chills, joint pain, diarrhoea (that was just the tip of the iceberg), and I’d never known so many heart-stopping moments in me life. Considering the epidemic started the year before, I suppose he was lucky not to have caught it then. “Asian flu,” they called it. Something to do with ducks, don’t know what exactly, but I do know three and a half thousand people in Britain died from it — and when you’re prone to bronchial pneumonia, I swear the Pearly Gates creaked open half a dozen times.

Once again, though, his parish proved terrific. Even though he was laid up in hospital, they brought round pies and soups and stews and pastries for me, baked flapjacks, swiss rolls, and macaroons, and swamped the entire house with flowers. This was wintertime, remember, and the sacrifices them poor people made to buy me roses, violets, lilies, freesias, brought a lump to my throat. Their scent fingered right the way to June.

The women, bless ’em, knitted shawls for the vicar’s wife, an Aran cardi for the reverend. Their husbands mowed the lawn, checked out the electrics and the plumbing, replaced two washers on the taps, and repainted the kitchen and the lounge. As for the books they donated, dear me, I’m sure we ended up with more than the local public library, but you won’t hear Dolly Sneed complain. Believe me, when you’re nursing an invalid back to health, time passes slower than a snail without its shell.

Leastways, for active girls like me.

I drank too much, I must admit, and sod the port, just gimme the bloody brandy. But the bottle and the books between ’em saved my sanity, because what’s that saying? Them what never reads live only one life. Them what do live a thousand. Glutton that I was, I guzzled everything from pulp fiction to biographies, via serious literature and lurid magazines. National Geographic was my lifeline. Without ’em, see, it was just me and the Courvoisier, taking me back to days when strong arms pulled me, laughing, onto the dance floor, and I’d jive and jitterbug until the music stopped, Glenn Miller still ringing in me ears as the same strong arms pulled me down. That’s when I’d close the living-room door, so Richard upstairs in bed wouldn’t hear, and blast out things like “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “In the Mood,” where Courvoisier and I could pretend I was wearing strappy shoes with a little bow on top, and that frilly skirt that showed my petticoats and sometimes more, while men whistled, clapped, and cheered.

“And he began reasoning to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’Ф”

“Funny, I thought the delirium had passed a month ago.”

“Next Sunday’s sermon,” Richard said, smiling. “Luke twelve, sixteen through twenty-one, the parable of the rich man, whose land was proving remarkably productive. Then he said, ‘This is what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.’ But God said to the rich man, You fool! This very night your soul is required of you, and now who will own what you have prepared?’ So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

“God said that?”

“His exact words.”

My turn to laugh. “Why are you telling me this?” I shot a comical glance over my shoulder. “Did God tell you, in his exact words, that the Grim Reaper’s creeping up, about to swing his sickle any second?”

He smiled, but this time it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m worried, Dolly. In less than a dozen years, people seem to have forgotten the horrors and the deprivations of war and—”

“You worry too much, Richard Jenkins. That’s what you do. You spend too much time out there in the parish—”

“I’m their minister. They need me.”

“I need you too, luv. You’re hardly ever home.”

And when he was, it was only because he’d picked up a tummy bug from Sunday school, or shingles from a kid with chicken pox. Trust me, if it was going round, he’d catch it. In fact, his resistance was so bleedin’ low, a common cold would lay him low for weeks, but God bless ’em, his flock never let up. Loved him like a son, they did, so even when one illness rolled into another and he was bedridden half the time, they’d bake round the clock, knit, sew, make the prettiest lace outside Flanders, and you know the funny thing? They didn’t do it out of duty, boredom, or any of the reasons I’d have done it for. They did it ’cause they liked me. Imagine that! Dolly Sneed, Mrs. Popular. Who’d have thought it, eh?

That’s when I started pressing some of the flowers. Not the likes of Joe Mackenzie’s roses or Miss Hemmings’ potted cyclamen. I didn’t need no physical reminders of their generosity and help. I’m talking about the pansies, violets, even that sprig of mimosa sent round by the girls I went to school with. And when they’d dried properly, squashed between the mammoths and the manatees in the Encyclopedia of Mammals, I propped them upright on my writing bureau, like pupils in class, so I could look at ’em, standing in a line, and say, Well, girls. Never thought you’d be bringing me flowers, did yer? Not when you was teasing me about not knowing how to calculate, or when I got my Keats all wrong and called it “myths and mellow fruitfulness,” or ’cause I couldn’t tell my acids from my alkali. Who’s top of the class now, eh? You answer that.

I can’t begin to describe what it was like when Richard died, and so I won’t.

“It probably started with him straining his back loading sacks for famine relief in Ethiopia,” the doctor said, adding, under his breath and off the record, that the tramps who called at the soup kitchen carried all manner of infectious diseases. With his immunity at rock bottom, the poor bugger stood no chance (my words there, not his), and him at only forty-two years old.

Oh, it was a lovely funeral, though. Folk turned out from miles around, not a dry eye to be seen, and I got so much sympathy from everyone — so brave, they said, leading that horse-drawn procession with dignity and pride — I thought I’d die myself from all that hugging. For two weeks, I was inundated with the same thoughtful gifts and food baskets... then the new vicar arrived. Equally young, equally enthusiastic, but this one came with a wife of his own. A snotty little cow who looked down her ugly, pointy nose at girls what dropped their h’s. Even though she tried hard not to show it, I could sense it. Saw it in her smile, the condescending rhymes-with-witch.

I knew that after Richard died, I wouldn’t be allowed to live in the rectory. But in my mind, I was convinced they — the church in general, the bishop in particular — would find a house for me. God knows, they owned enough property in the area, but no. Turfed out on my ear, I was, and not a single petition from the people of the parish.

Not one.

Hurt? To the bleedin’ bone I was. Angrier than a hornet’s nest on fire, but what could I do? Women had no rights back then. A vicar’s stipend paid sod-all, and while Richard left me everything he owned, his worldly goods, when cashed in at the pawn shop, came to less than fifty quid. Luckily, I’d stashed a bit aside. Surprising amount of good stuff hidden in amongst that jumble, and the money I’d saved on the housekeeping with all those pies and pastries, well, I gave half to Richard, ’cause he knew we was in credit, but half I put away for a rainy day.

Now look. Bloody pissing down.

Excuse my French.

I went to London. Obviously. The lure of the bright lights and all that, and for the same reason I chose a town near the American Air Force base during the War, I headed straight to Hammersmith for its famous Palais. And why not? The strain of dosing Richard round the clock, keeping a close eye on him as he faded day by day, had took its toll, and hell’s bells, I was only thirty-bleedin’-six. So then, all you gone-to-seed fat lumps from school, know this. Dolly Sneed was still a looker, because crikey, you should have seen them heads turn when I walked in the bar. Elvis might have been lonesome tonight, I wasn’t. More Helen Shapiro, me. Walking back to happiness, woopah oh yeah yeah.

But — and stop me if you’ve heard this one before — nothing good EVER lasts for long where I’m concerned. Four months after Richard died, I’d gorged myself knock-kneed on fashion, wore my hair longer and in flick-ups, and was twisting the night away like you wouldn’t believe on the bounciest dance floor in England. But a girl’s gotta live, ai — hasn’t she? Being a vicar’s wife (make that widow) counted for nothing. All I could find was shop work, and the pay from that don’t go far. Not at the centre of the universe, anyway. No, what I needed was a man. Someone to look after me, and although time was knocking on, it wasn’t too late for me to have kids, make some bloke a proud and happy dad.

His name was Johnny, and he was everything the Reverend Richard Jenkins wasn’t. Tall, muscular, dark, and broody, he was seven years younger than me, rode a motorbike, and boy, did Johnny’s blood run red. Wild times, baby. Wild, wild times. We drank too much, popped little pills, rode full throttle on the open road, not caring if we lived or died, yeeha. Oh, could that man dance! I’ve never known anyone with so much stamina, both in and out of bed. Makes me shiver thinking about it, even now. He was a bricklayer, and bricklayers earned good money in the late fifties/early sixties. Dolly Sneed was jiving down Easy Street now and she was happy. At least—

“What the—”

“Shit.”

“You said you was working overtime, you lying cheating bastard!”

I was yelling at Johnny, but at the same time dragging that bitch out of my bed by her long, blond, backcombed hair, and you know the best thing about middle-class teenage girls? No idea how to fight.

“Babe. I’m sorry. I thought you were going to the Palais tonight.”

“I had a headache—” kick, slap, punch “—left early—” throw intruder naked out the door “—came home in time to catch my man with some ugly, two-bit hooker.” Toss clothes out front window, into the street.

Johnny promised, on his mother’s grave, he wouldn’t stray again. Blamed her, the booze, the purple hearts, but swore, on bended knee, it was the worst mistake he’d ever made.

The worst mistake I ever made was believing him.

Blondie wasn’t the first, but what hurt — what really cut me to the marrow — was that wasn’t the first time for them. They’d been at it for over a month, creeping behind my back, shagging in my bed, and how did I find out? Johnny Subtle packed my bags and piled them in the lounge.

“I’m sorry, Babe, it’s just not working out for us.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“It was good while it lasted, but I’ve found someone else. Just give me the key, Babe. Don’t make a scene.”

At that point, I knew why he called me Babe. He called all his women Babe, that way he never got their names mixed up. Didn’t even need to remember ’em, the bastard.

That was also the point where, in pulp fiction, they say the red mist descends. Red be buggered. This was white-hot anger. In the space of thirty seconds, I let rip with every ounce of ammunition in the store. I called him names, I smashed his plates, I told him what I thought of his leaving dirty socks littered round the floor and his rotten taste in shoes. I screamed because he lied, I screamed because he cheated, I screamed because she was young enough to be my bloody daughter, and had perfect little tits. And when he grabbed me by the wrists and said, “Calm down, or else I’ll call the police,” I spat at him and hissed, “Just try, just you bloody try, because if I killed one man, don’t think I won’t kill you either, Johnny Kelly.”

Exactly.

Me and my big mouth.

Of course, I tried to laugh it off. Blamed him, the booze, the purple hearts. Swore on my mother’s grave it was a joke. A bad joke, sure, but one made in the heat of the moment. Broken heart and all that, Sergeant.

The police didn’t not believe me.

But they needed to be sure.

Three days later, an exhumation order saw the Rev. Jenkins rising from his grave way ahead of Judgment Day. A postmortem examination revealed large amounts of arsenic in the body.

“Could be anyone,” I wailed. “All them cakes and pies and pastries.”

“But you weren’t ill from eating them, were you? There’s no trace of arsenic in your system either.”

Something to do with hair, apparently. You can test for it in hair, and mine was clear.

“We also found this article, Mrs. Jenkins. Marked up, and hidden deep in your belongings.”

Bloody stupid of me, that, and you know the silly thing? The only reason I hung on to that bleedin’ paper — the one featuring the Angel Makers of Nagyrév — was ’cause I was worried about leaving it in the rectory/in the jumble/even in the dustbin, in case someone — the new vicar’s wife/Mrs. Meredith (on her feet after the stroke)/one of Richard’s tramps rummaging through the rubbish — might put two and two together.

God knows, I didn’t take much with me. None of those frumpy python-squeezers, that’s for sure. But I couldn’t risk leaving any evidence behind, so I slipped it in among me records, intending to throw it away in Hammersmith, but because dance moved on from rock and roll to twist and I was no longer living in the past, I forgot about it. I ask you. How daft’s that?

You probably don’t know about the Angel Makers. I didn’t neither, till I read it in the papers, but it was around the turn of the century it started. In Hungary, in case I hadn’t said, when a midwife turned up in some remote farming village, a widow, though no one there had ever met or knew the husband. Gawd knows how he died. Anyway, as well as delivering babies and generally healing people (there being no resident doctors in remote farming villages), this woman performed abortions. Which, of course, was as illegal then as they are now, and though she was arrested a dozen times or more, no judge felt inclined to imprison her for what they themselves supported.

So far, so good, but then the Great War kicked off, didn’t it? The men went off to fight (not sure which side), while prisoners of war were held in nearby camps and tasked with working the land in the farmers’ absence. Well, you don’t need to be a genius to guess what happened next. Women, married off as teenage brides to husbands chosen for them, quickly found a strong-backed outlet for their repression. And when the war was over, they reasoned there had to be an alternative to the old days of subjugation. Especially when a number of their husbands were abusive alcoholics, and divorce was not an option.

This is where the midwife came into her own. She boiled the arsenic off strips of flypaper and sold it (120 penges down, 120 more after the funeral, another 120 when the estate was settled) to whoever needed it. Which, it seemed, was pretty much everyone! It was said three hundred people were poisoned by the ladies of Nagyrév, but that sounds an awful lot for one remote farming village. One thing’s for sure, though. Of the fifty bodies that was dug up, forty-six contained arsenic. Hence the name, the Angel Makers.

“I never bought a gram of arsenic in my life,” I protested at the trial. “You ask any of the chemists. Not one bleedin’ grain.”

“You did buy flypapers, though, did you not?” Oh, he was smarmy, that QC. Thought he had me there.

“We was plagued with flies, ask anyone. What with the orchard at the back.”

Take that!

“And so you used, what? Ten flypapers a day, every day? One an hour?”

I can hear the laughter from the gallery, even now. Same horsey snorts I remembered oh so well from school, when I fumbled with my protractor and compasses, couldn’t draw for toffees, and was hauled up before Headmaster for telling tales on Phyllis Hall and Joycie White. Yeah, well, laugh away, ’cause how many of them could have done their husbands in and not been caught?

Like I said. Me and my big mouth.

You think I did it because of the excitement, don’t you? That I was sick of cutting paper patterns, riffling through fusty attic throwaways, wearing collars that made you feel like you had a noose around your neck. Wrong. Boring, all that small talk, I’ll agree. But that was the life I’d chosen, I was happy with my lot. Me and Richard, shake, rattling, and rolling until his chest became too weak, and he threw his reduced energies into building up parish activities with things like Beetle drives and relief funds. All good works, I grant you, and people loved him for it — and that’s the point. They loved me too. Not in the same way. Obviously. But once one illness rolled into another then another, that weren’t no life for him, poor sod. He was better off out of it, he really was. And I swear to God, on my dear mother’s grave, Richard didn’t suffer. Leastways, no worse than all the things he’d gone through a dozen times before, so he was used to it when you look at it like that — and come on. With all them pies and tarts and soups and stews, there were so many opportunities to slip the arsenic in, and the doctor, bless his cotton socks, did not suspect a thing. (Strained back indeed!)

I honestly believed that, when Richard was gone and there was no more holding sick bowls under him or helping him on and off the toilet, his parishioners would look out for the Widow Jenkins. That they’d find a little house for me, bring me gifts and food, and I’d return the favour by pitching in with Beetle drives and stuff. I would. Give back some of the kindness they’d given me, because when it boils down to it, we all want to be loved, don’t we?

Instead, I’m lying in the dark with nothing for company except the cold, my memories of Richard, and that long slow dance through the passage of time.

An owl hoots from the ancient, spreading oak. Voles rustle through the fallen leaves along the hedgerow. The bell of St. Giles tolls four.

I’d known my grave would be this lonely, I’d have asked to be cremated.

© 2018 by Marilyn Todd