One of Us Is Dead

21 Saturday 1 October 2022

Pinch and a punch for the first of the month!

It was a sunny Saturday morning, and October couldn’t start much better than this, Paul Anthony thought, remembering how his dad used to wake him on the first day of every month with that line. You had to say grey hares before going to sleep and white rabbits first thing in the morning if you wanted money that month, his dad always said.

Paul Anthony did not like to think he was superstitious. But on the last night of every month, before he fell asleep, he would always murmur grey hares, and if he forgot to say white rabbits first thing in the morning, he’d be in a bad mood and know for sure he was in for a meagre month. So he said it aloud and triumphantly now. ‘White rabbits!’

Pathetic, he knew. But he’d remembered to say grey hares last night, so October was going to be a very rewarding month! Oh yes! And, as if on cue, his doorbell rang, out in the hallway and on his phone. He glanced at the app and saw a man on the doorstep holding a parcel.

‘Hello?’ he said.

‘Delivery for Mr Paul Anthony.’

‘I’ll be right down!’

Oh yes, the grey hares and white rabbits had already worked a treat! The final bit of kit he needed for his little surprise to start — and hopefully end — Professor Llewellyn’s week, on Monday morning. Not bothering with the lift, he sprinted down the stairs, then hurried back up, clutching his square Amazon package. He opened it carefully on the kitchen table, lifted out the main content, removed some wrapping, then held it up like it was the Men’s Singles trophy at Wimbledon.

Yes, oh yes, oh yes! Hard to believe he could be so excited over a red-and-white striped candyfloss spinning machine, which had cost a princely forty-five pounds. But he was, he really was very excited indeed.

It was still warm enough for him to have breakfast out on his balcony, and there was barely enough breeze to flap the pages of his newspapers. The Indian summer weather would break soon, but until then he would make the most of it. For someone who was dead he had a lot to smile about. Tonight he was having dinner with Shannon. And, he had to admit, he was looking forward to it rather a lot.

That put a very big smile on his face.

He finished the last bite of his almond croissant, and the last sip of his double espresso, then fired up his Cohiba Robusto with his Dunhill flamethrower of a lighter. He liked Cohibas. Fidel Castro, paranoid about assassination attempts by the CIA, even more so after they had attempted to kill him with the absurdly ill-fated exploding cigars, brought all the people he considered to be the finest cigar makers in Cuba to his private estate, to make cigars just for him. These cigars had evolved into the Cohiba brand. The cigars many considered to be still the finest in the world.

But, as he exhaled the rich, sweet blue-grey smoke, his mind was not on the taste of the cigars, but the contents of the four glass jars on the far side of his table, each of them half-full. Two with honey, one with strawberry jam and the other, raspberry jam.

What was really floating his boat right now was the contents of each jar — well, three of them. Large, fat, autumnal wasps. The lifespan of a wasp was twelve to twenty-two days. In his experience, those that were still alive at the end of summer became fat and lethargic, their venom building up to a toxic level. Just perfect — not — for anyone allergic to them.

And there were five of the creatures crawling around inside those three jars, all of them off their faces on the sugar hit!

‘Oh yes, my little babies! Oh yes! Have you ever met a professor of artificial intelligence? One of you will, soon, you lucky chaps!’

His traps had worked a treat. As had his scientific research. He had learned that a wasp typically maintains 4–5 kilopascals of oxygen in their respiratory system, four to five times lower than the normal oxygen concentration in the atmosphere. In a normal oxygen-concentration environment, the insect breathes in and releases a burst of carbon dioxide.

Paul Anthony knew, from his chemistry studies at school, what carbon dioxide would dissolve. What he needed was to create, chemically, an environment containing oxygen in which a wasp could survive for a period of hours. The solution he had come up with was, in his opinion, nothing short of genius.

Happy days! Well, perhaps not so much for Professor Llewellyn.