Mrs Pargeter 02; Mrs, Presumed Dead

∨ Mrs, Presumed Dead ∧

One

The murderer looked down at the body lying neatly in the middle of its polythene sheet, and indulged in a moment of self-congratulation. It had really been remarkably easy once the decision had been made. The polythene sheet over the thick carpet had been a bonus, no great surprise that it should have been there, considering all the packing of the last few days, but nonetheless a bonus. Not only would it minimise the likelihood of detection, it also fitted in with the murderer’s instinctive fastidiousness.

In the event, there had been little mess. The woman on the polythene sheet lay in a posture that could at a cursory glance have been mistaken for sleep. Properly surprised by the suddenness of the attack, she had gone to her death with the docility which, to outsiders, had characterised her life.

Only a close inspection would have revealed the thin red weal of bruising on the stark whiteness of her neck. And the curtain of reddish hair would have had to be lifted to uncover the livid face with its startled eyes and its engorged tongue parting puffy lips.

The murderer, secure in rubber gloves, dropped the stretched cricket club tie on top of its victim, then wrapped the convenient polythene around the body and sealed it with sticky tape. Like that, the corpse lost its last residual connection with humanity and became just another package ready for removal, along with the tea-chests of newspaper-wrapped china and the stout cardboard boxes full of ornaments, which waited in obedient rows along the wall of that sitting-room.

Surprised by a flicker of anxiety, the murderer’s eyes darted to the large picture window, but the thick Dralon curtains were reassuringly closed. They had been expensively tailored for the space and admitted no sliver of light to the outside world. No one else on the estate could even know whether the lights were on or off.

The anxiety gave way to the return of self-congratulation. Yes, it really had been remarkably easy.

And necessary. Regrettable, but necessary. The risk of discovery had been too great, and once that risk had become known, ordinary human considerations had ceased to be relevant. A kind of mechanistic change had come over both of them. From that moment they had ceased to be people, become abstract figures, archetypes – murderer and victim.

Even now it was done, the situation remained clinical, objective. In the murderer’s mind there was no guilt, only a process of logical assessment, of working out the odds against being detected as the perpetrator of the crime.

And at that moment those odds seemed comfortingly long. Yes, in with an excellent chance of getting away with it.

Bolstered by this thought, the murderer’s mind now felt ready to address that problem which has always proved a much greater deterrent to homicide than any moral or religious qualm – how to dispose of the body.