A Moment on the Edge:100 Years of Crime Stories by women

by Elizabeth George

  Lucy, good-hearted repentant Lucy, sought her out where she hid in a locked toilet stall, sobbing in fury, a bloodstained tissue pressed against her nose. Marina?—don’t cry. They don’t mean it, they like you, come on back, what’s wrong? Good-hearted Lucy Siddons she’d hated the most.

  On the afternoon of the Friday before the Monday that would be the start of his trial, Derek Peck, Jr., broke down in Marina Dyer’s office.

  Marina had known something was wrong, the boy reeked of alcohol. He’d come with his father, but had told his father to wait outside; he insisted that Marina’s assistant leave the room.

  He began to cry, and to babble. To Marina’s astonishment he fell hard onto his knees on her burgundy carpet, began banging his forehead against the glass-topped edge of her desk. He laughed, he wept. Saying in an anguished choking voice how sorry he was he’d forgotten his mother’s last birthday he hadn’t known would be her last and how hurt she’d been like he’d forgotten just to spite her and that wasn’t true, Jesus he loved her! the only person in the fucking universe who loved her! And then at Thanksgiving this wild scene, she’d quarreled with the relatives so it was just her and him for Thanksgiving she insisted upon preparing a full Thanksgiving dinner for just two people and he said it was crazy but she insisted, no stopping her when her mind was made up and he’d known there would be trouble, that morning in the kitchen she’d started drinking early and he was up in his room smoking dope and his Walkman plugged in knowing there was no escape. And it wasn’t even a turkey she roasted for the two of them, you needed at least a twenty-pound turkey otherwise the meat dried out she said so she bought two ducks, yes two dead ducks from this game shop on Lexington and Sixty-sixth and that might’ve been okay except she was drinking red wine and laughing kind of hysterical talking on the phone preparing this fancy stuffing she made every year, wild rice and mushrooms, olives, and also baked yams, plum sauce, corn bread, and chocolate-tapioca pudding that was supposed to be one of his favorite desserts from when he was little that just the smell of it made him feel like puking. He stayed out of it upstairs until finally she called him around four p.m. and he came down knowing it was going to be a true bummer but not

  knowing how bad, she was swaying-drunk and her eyes smeared and they were eating in the dining room with the chandelier lit, all the fancy Irish linens and Grandma’s old china and silver and she insisted he carve the ducks, he tried to get out of it but couldn’t and Jesus! what happens!—he pushes the knife in the duck breast and there’s actual blood squirting out of it!—and a big sticky clot of blood inside so he dropped the knife and ran out of the room gagging, it’d just completely freaked him in the midst of being stoned he couldn’t take it running out into the street and almost hit by a car and her screaming after him Derek come back! Derek come back don’t leave me! but he split from that scene and didn’t come back for a day and a half. And ever after that she was drinking more and saying weird things to him like he was her baby, she’d felt him kick and shudder in her belly, under her heart, she’d talk to him inside her belly for months before he was born she’d lie down on the bed and stroke him, his head, through her skin and they’d talk together she said, it was the closest she’d ever been with any living creature and he was embarrassed not knowing what to say except he didn’t remember, it was so long ago, and she’d say yes oh yes in your heart you remember in your heart you’re still my baby boy you do remember and he was getting pissed saying fuck it, no; he didn’t remember any of it. And there was only one way to stop her from loving him he began to understand, but he hadn’t wanted to, he’d asked could he transfer to school in Boston or somewhere living with his dad but she went crazy, no no no he wasn’t going, she’d never allow it, she tried to hold him, hug and kiss him so he had to lock his door and barricade it practically and she’d be waiting for him half-naked just coming out of her bathroom pretending she’d been taking a shower and clutching at him and that night finally he must’ve freaked, something snapped in his head and he went for the two-iron, she hadn’t had time even to scream it happened so fast and merciful, him running up behind her so she didn’t see him exactly—“It was the only way to stop her loving me.”

  Marina stared at the boy’s aggrieved, tearstained face. Mucus leaked alarmingly from his nose. What had he said? He had said…what?

  Yet even now a part of Marina’s mind remained detached, calculating. She was shocked by Derek’s confession, but was she surprised? A lawyer is never surprised.

  She said, quickly, “Your mother Lucille was a strong, domineering woman. I know, I knew her. As a girl, twenty-five years ago, she’d rush into a room and all the oxygen was sucked up. She’d rush into a room and it was like a wind had blown out all the windows!” Marina hardly knew what she was saying, only that words tumbled from her; radiance played about her face like a flame. “Lucille was a smothering presence in your life. She wasn’t a normal mother. What you’ve told me only confirms what I’d suspected. I’ve seen other victims of psychic incest—I know! She hypnotized you, you were fighting for your life. It was your own life you were defending.” Derek remained kneeling on the carpet, staring vacantly at Marina. Tight little beads of blood had formed on his reddened forehead, his snaky-greasy hair dropped into his eyes. All his energy was spent. He looked to Marina now, like an animal who hears, not words from his mistress, but sounds; the consolation of certain cadences, rhythms. Marina was saying, urgently, “That night, you lost control. Whatever happened, Derek, it wasn’t you. You are the victim. She drove you to it! Your father, too, abrogated his responsibility to you—left you with her, alone with her, at the age of thirteen. Thirteen! That’s what you’ve been denying all these months. That’s the secret you haven’t acknowledged. You had no thoughts of your own, did you? For years? Your thoughts were hers, in her voice.” Derek nodded mutely. Marina had taken a tissue from the burnished-leather box on her desk and tenderly dabbed at his face. He lifted his face to her, shutting his eyes. As if this sudden closeness, this intimacy, was not new to them but somehow familiar. Marina saw the boy in the courtroom, her Derek: transformed: his face fresh scrubbed and his hair neatly cut, gleaming with health; his head

  uplifted, without guile or subterfuge. It was the only way to stop her loving me. He wore a navy-blue blazer bearing the elegant understated monogram of the Mayhew Academy. A white shirt, blue-striped tie. His hands clasped together in an attitude of Buddhistic calm. A boy, immature for his age. Emotional, susceptible. Not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. It was a transcendent vision and Marina knew she would realize it and that all who gazed upon Derek Peck, Jr., and heard him testify, would realize it.

  Derek leaned against Marina, who crouched over him, he’d hidden his wet, hot face against her legs as she held him, comforted him. What a rank animal heat quivered from him, what animal terror, urgency. He was sobbing, babbling incoherently, “—Save me? Don’t let them hurt me? Can I have immunity, if I confess? If I say what happened, if I tell the truth—”

  Marina embraced him, her fingers at the nape of his neck. She said, “Of course I’ll save you, Derek. That’s why you came to me.”

  English Autumn—American Fall

  MINETTE WALTERS

  Minette Walters (b. 1949), born Minette Jebb in Bishop’s Stortford, England, to an army captain and an artist, attended Godolphin and Latymer School and spent six months as a volunteer in Israel before attending Durham University, where she took a degree in French. The mother of two sons with husband Alexander Walters, she lists her pre-writing careers as magazine journalism in London, PTA work, and standing for local elections in 1987.

  Walters is one of the most critically acclaimed new writers to debut in the 1990s. Indeed, her first three novels were all award-winners: The Ice House (1990) won the British Crime Writers’ Association’s John Creasey Award for Best First Novel; The Sculptress (1993) won the Edgar for Best Novel from the Mystery Writers of America; and The Scold’s Bridle (1994) won the Gold Dagger Award from
the Crime Writers’ Association for best novel. Most frequently compared to Ruth Rendell, to whose success she attributes her own opportunity to be published, Walters is a traditionalist with a difference, emphasizing family relationships and the importance of a puzzle but disclaiming, indeed denouncing coziness.

  Walters has written few short stories, apart from some romance novelettes done in her magazine days under unrevealed pseudonyms. “English Autumn—American Fall” is an example of the short-short, demonstrating how much character and suggestion can be packed into a very brief tale.

  Iremember thinking that Mrs. Newberg’s problem was not so much her husband’s chronic addiction to alcohol as her dreary pretense that he was a man of moderation. They were a handsome couple, tall and slender with sweeps of snow-white hair; always expensively dressed in cashmere and tweeds. In fairness to her, he didn’t look like a drunk or, indeed, behave like one, but I cannot recall a single occasion in the two weeks I knew them when he was sober. His wife excused him with cliches. She hinted at insomnia, a death in the family, even a gammy leg—a legacy of war, naturally—which made walking difficult. Once in a while an amused smile would cross his face as if something she’d said had tickled his sense of humour, but most of the time he sat staring at a fixed point in front of him, afraid of losing his precarious equilibrium. I guessed they were in their late seventies, and I wondered what had brought them so far from home in the middle of a cold English autumn. Mrs. Newberg was evasive. Just a little holiday, she trilled in her birdlike voice with its hint of Northern Europe in the hard edge she gave to her consonants. She cast nervous glances toward her husband as she spoke, as if daring him to disagree. It may have been true, but an empty seaside hotel in a blustery Lincolnshire resort in October seemed an unlikely choice for two elderly Americans. She knew I didn’t believe her, but she was too canny to explain further. Perhaps she understood that my willingness to talk to her depended on a lingering curiosity. “It was Mr. Newberg who wanted to come,” she said sotto voce, as if that settled the matter. It was an unfashionable resort out of season, and Mrs. Newberg was clearly lonely. Who wouldn’t be with only an uncommunicative drunk for company? On odd evenings a rep would put in a brief appearance in the dining room in order to fuel his stomach in silence before retiring to bed, but for the most part conversations with me were her single source of entertainment. In a desultory fashion, we became friends. Of course, she wanted to know why I was there, but I, too, could be evasive. Looking for somewhere to live, I told her.

  “How nice,” she said, not meaning it. “But do you want to be so far from London?” It was a reproach. For her, as for so many, capital cities were synonymous with life.

  “I don’t like noise,” I confessed.

  She looked toward the window where rain was pounding furiously against the panes. “Perhaps it’s people you don’t like,” she suggested.

  I demurred out of politeness.

  “I don’t have a problem with individuals,” I said, casting a thoughtful glance in Mr. Newberg’s direction, “just humanity en masse.”

  “Yes,” she agreed vaguely. “I think I prefer animals as well.”

  She had a habit of using non sequiturs, and I did wonder once or twice if she wasn’t quite “with it.” But if that were the case, I thought, how on earth had they found their way to this remote place when Mr. Newberg had trouble negotiating the tables in the bar? The answer was straightforward enough. The hotel had sent a car to collect them from the airport.

  “Wasn’t that very expensive?” I asked.

  “It was free,” said Mrs. Newberg with dignity. “A courtesy. The manager came himself.”

  She tut-tutted at my look of astonishment. “It’s what we expect when we pay full rate for a room.”

  “I’m paying full rate,” I said.

  “I doubt it,” she said, her bosom rising on a sigh. “Americans get stung wherever they go.”

  During the first week of their stay, I saw them only once outside the confines of the hotel. I came across them on the beach, wrapped up in heavy coats and woolen scarves and sitting in deck chairs, staring out over a turbulent sea which labored beneath the whip of a bitter east wind from Siberia. I expressed surprise to see them, and Mrs. Newberg, who assumed for some reason that my surprise was centered on the deck chairs, said the hotel would supply anything for a small sum.

  “Do you come here every morning?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “It reminds us of home.”

  “I thought you lived in Florida.”

  “Yes,” she said cautiously, as if trying to remember how much she’d already divulged.

  Mr. Newberg and I exchanged conspiratorial smiles. He spoke rarely but when he did it was always with irony. “Florida is famous for its hurricanes,” he told me before turning his face to the freezing wind.

  After that I avoided the beach for fear of becoming even more entangled with them. It’s not that I disliked them. As a matter of fact, I quite enjoyed their company. They were the least inquisitive couple I had ever met, and there was never any problem with the long silences that developed between us. But I had no wish to spend the daylight hours being sociable with strangers.

  Mrs. Newberg remarked on it one evening. “I wonder you didn’t go to Scotland,” she said. “I’m told you can walk for miles in Scotland without ever seeing a soul.”

  “I couldn’t live in Scotland,” I said.

  “Ah, yes. I’d forgotten.” Was she being snide or was I imagining it? “You’re looking for a house.”

  “Somewhere to live,” I corrected her.

  “An apartment then. Does it matter?”

  “I think so.”

  Mr. Newberg stared into his whiskey glass. “Das Geheimniß, um die größte Fruchtbarkeit und den größten Genuß vom Dasein einzuernten, heißt; gefährlich leben,” he murmured in fluent

  German.” ‘The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously.’ Friedrich Nietzsche.”

  “Does it work?” I asked.

  I watched him smile secretly to himself. “Only if you shed blood.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  But his eyes were awash with alcohol and he didn’t answer.

  “He’s tired,” said his wife. “He’s had a long day.”

  We lapsed into silence and I watched Mrs. Newberg’s face smooth from sharp anxiety to its more natural expression of resigned acceptance of the cards fate had dealt her. It was a good five minutes before she offered an explanation.

  “He enjoyed the war,” she told me in an undertone. “So many men did.”

  “It’s the camaraderie,” I agreed, remembering how my mother had always talked fondly about the war years. “Adversity brings out the best in people.”

  “Or the worst,” she said, watching Mr. Newberg top up his glass from the liter bottle of whiskey which was replaced, new, every evening on their table. “I guess it depends which side you’re on.”

  “You mean it’s better to win?”

  “I expect it helps,” she said absentmindedly.

  The next day Mrs. Newberg appeared at breakfast with a black eye. She claimed she had fallen out of bed and knocked her face on the bedside cabinet. There was no reason to doubt her except that her husband kept massaging the knuckles of his right hand. She looked wan and depressed, and I invited her to come walking with me.

  “I’m sure Mr. Newberg can amuse himself for an hour or two,” I said, looking at him disapprovingly.

  We wandered down the esplanade, watching seagulls whirl across the sky like windblown fabric. Mrs. Newberg insisted on wearing dark glasses, which gave her the look of a blind woman. She walked slowly, pausing regularly to catch her breath, so I

  offered her my arm and she leaned on it heavily. For the first time

  I thought of her as old.

  “You shouldn’t let your husband hit you,” I said.

  She gave a small laugh but said nothing.

&nbs
p; “You should report him.”

  “To whom?”

  “The police.”

  She drew away to lean on the railings above the beach. “And then what? A prosecution? Prison?”

  I leant beside her. “More likely a court would order him to address his behavior.”

  “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

  “He might have a different perspective on things if he were sober.”

  “He drinks to forget,” she said, looking across the sea toward the far-off shores of Northern Europe.

  I turned a cold shoulder towards Mr. Newberg from then on. I don’t approve of men who knock their wives about. It made little difference to our relationship. If anything, sympathy for Mrs. New-berg strengthened the bonds between the three of us. I took to escorting them to their room of an evening and pointing out in no uncertain terms that I took a personal interest in Mrs. Newberg’s well-being. Mr. Newberg seemed to find my solicitude amusing. “She has no conscience to trouble her,” he said on one occasion. And on another: “I have more to fear than she has.”

  During the second week, he tripped at the top of the stairs on his way to breakfast and was dead by the time he reached the bottom. There were no witnesses to the accident, although a waitress, hearing the crash of the falling body, rushed out of the dining room to find the handsome old man sprawled on his back at the foot of the stairs with his eyes wide open and a smile on his face. No one was particularly surprised, although, as the manager said, it was odd that it should happen in the morning

  when he was at his most sober. Some hours later a policeman came to ask questions, not because there was any suggestion of foul play but because Mr. Newberg was a foreign national and reports needed to be written.