by Ruskin Bond
‘He is ours, dear, ours.’
Whispers, echoes, words hovering around me with bat’s wings, saying the most inconsequential things with a logical urgency. ‘You’re late for supper. . . .’
‘He lost his way in the mist.’
‘Do you think he has any money?’
‘To kill a turtle you must first tie its legs to two posts.’
‘We could tie him to the bed and pour boiling water down his throat.’
‘No, it’s simpler this way.’
I sat up. Most of the whispering had been distant, impersonal, but this last remark had sounded horribly near.
I relit the candle and the voices stopped. I got up and prowled around the room, vainly looking for some explanation for the voices. Once again I found myself facing the mirror, staring at my own reflection and the reflection of that other person, the girl with the golden hair and shining eyes. And this time she held a pillow in her hands. She was standing behind me.
I remembered then the stories I had heard as a boy, of two spinster sisters—one beautiful, one plain—who lured rich, elderly gentlemen into their boarding-house and suffocated them in the night. The deaths had appeared quite natural, and they had got away with it for years. It was only the surviving sister’s death-bed confession that had revealed the truth—and even then no one had believed her.
But that had been many, many years ago, and the house had long since fallen down. . . . .
When I turned from the mirror, there was no one behind me. I looked again, and the reflection had gone.
I crawled back into the bed and put the candle out. And I slept and dreamt (or was I awake and did it really happen?) that the women I had seen in the mirror stood beside the bed, leant over me, looked at me with eyes flecked by orange flames. I saw people moving in those eyes. I saw myself. And then her lips touched mine, lips so cold, so dry, that a shudder ran through my body.
And then, while her face became faceless and only the eyes remained, something else continued to press down upon me, something soft, heavy and shapeless, enclosing me in a suffocating embrace. I could not turn my head or open my mouth, I could not breathe.
I raised my hands and clutched feebly at the thing on top of me. And to my surprise it came away; It was only a pillow that had somehow fallen over my face, half suffocating me while I dreamt of a phantom kiss.
I flung the pillow aside. I flung the bedclothes from me. I had had enough of whispering, of ownerless reflections, of pillows and that fell on me in the dark, I would brave the storm outside rather than continue to seek rest in this tortured house.
I dressed quickly. The candle had almost guttered out. The house and everything in it belonged to the darkness of another time; I belonged to the light of day.
I was ready to leave. I avoided the tall mirror with its grotesque rococo design. Holding the candlestick before me, I moved cautiously into the front room. The pictures on the walls sprang to life.
One, in particular, held my attention, and I moved closer to examine it more carefully by the light of the dwindling candle. Was it just my imagination, or was the girl in the portrait the woman of my dream, the beautiful pale reflection in the mirror? Had I gone back in time, or had time caught up with me? Is it time that’s passing by, or is it you and I?
I turned to leave. And the candle gave one final sputter and went out, plunging the room in darkness. I stood still for a moment, trying to collect my thoughts, to still the panic that came rushing upon me. Just then there was a knocking on the door.
‘Who’s there?’ I called.
Silence. And then, again, the knocking, and this time a voice, low and insistent: ‘Please let me in, please let me in. . . .’
I stepped forward, unbolted the door, and flung it open.
She stood outside in the rain. Not the pale, beautiful one, but a wizened old hag with bloodless lips and flaring nostrils and— but where were the eyes? No eyes, no eyes!
She swept past me on the wind, and at the same time I took advantage of the open doorway to run outside, to run gratefully
into the pouring rain, to be lost for hours among the dripping trees, to be glad of the leeches clinging to my flesh.
And when, with the dawn, I found my way at last, I rejoiced in bird-song and the sunlight piercing scattering clouds.
And today, if you were to ask me if the old house is still there or not, I would not be able to tell you, for the simple reason that I haven’t the slightest desire to go looking for it.
He Said it with Arsenic
Is there such a person as a born murderer—in the sense that there are born writers and musicians, born winners and losers?
One can’t be sure. The urge to do away with troublesome people is common to most of us, but only a few succumb to it.
If ever there was a born murderer, he must surely have been William Jones. The thing came so naturally to him. No extreme violence, no messy shootings or hackings or throttling; just the right amount of poison, administered with skill and discretion.
A gentle, civilized sort of person was Mr Jones. He collected butterflies and arranged them systematically in glass cases. His ether bottle was quick and painless. He never stuck pins into the beautiful creatures.
Have you ever heard of the Agra Double Murder? It happened, of course, a great many years ago, when Agra was a far-flung outpost of the British Empire. In those days, William Jones was a male nurse in one of the city’s hospitals. The patients— especially terminal cases—spoke highly of the care and consideration he showed them. While most nurses, both male and female, preferred to attend to the more hopeful cases, nurse William was always prepared to stand duty over a dying patient.
He felt a certain empathy for the dying; he liked to see them on their way. It was just his good nature, of course.
On a visit to nearby Meerut, he met and fell in love with Mrs Browning, the wife of the local station-master. Impassioned love letters were soon putting a strain on the Agra-Meerut postal service. The envelopes grew heavier—not so much because the letters were growing longer but because they contained little packets of a powdery white substance, accompanied by detailed instructions as to its correct administration.
Mr Browning, an unassuming and trustful man—one of the world’s born losers, in fact—was not the sort to read his wife’s correspondence. Even when he was seized by frequent attacks
of colic, he put them down to an impure water supply. He recovered from one bout of vomitting and diarrohea only to be racked by another.
He was hospitalized on a diagnosis of gastroentritis; and, thus freed from his wife’s ministrations, soon got better. But on returning home and drinking a glass of nimbu-pani brought to him by the solicitous Mrs Browning, he had a relapse from which he did not recover.
Those were the days when deaths from cholera and related diseases were only too common in India, and death certificates were easier to obtain than dog licences.
After a short interval of mourning (it was the hot weather and you couldn’t wear black for long), Mrs Browning moved to Agra, where she rented a house next door to William Jones.
I forgot to mention that Mr Jones was also married. His wife was an insignificant creature, no match for a genius like William. Before the hot weather was over, the dreaded cholera had taken her too. The way was clear for the lovers to unite in holy matrimony.
But Dame Gossip lived in Agra too, and it was not long before tongues were wagging and anonymous letters were being received by the Superintendent of Police. Enquiries were instituted. Like most infatuated lovers, Mrs Browning had hung on to her beloved’s letters and billet-doux, and these soon came to light. The silly woman had kept them in a box beneath her bed.
Exhumations were ordered in both Agra and Meerut.
Arsenic keeps well, even in the hottest of weather, and there was no dearth of it in the remains of both victims.
Mr Jones and Mrs Browning were arrested and charged with murder.
*
> ‘Is Uncle Bill really a murderer?’ I asked from the drawing room sofa in my grandmother’s house in Dehra. (It’s time that I told you that William Jones was my uncle, my mother’s half- brother.)
I was eight or nine at the time. Uncle Bill had spent the previous summer with us in Dehra and had stuffed me with
bazaar sweets and pastries, all of which I had consumed without suffering any ill effects.
‘Who told you that about Uncle Bill?’ asked Grandmother.
‘I heard it in school. All the boys were asking me the same question—“Is your uncle a murderer?” They say he poisoned both his wives.’
‘He had only one wife,’ snapped Aunt Mabel.
‘Did he poison her?’
‘No, of course not. How can you say such a thing!’
‘Then why is Uncle Bill in gaol?’
‘Who says he’s in gaol?’
‘The boys at school. They heard it from their parents. Uncle Bill is to go on trial in the Agra fort.’
There was a pregnant silence in the drawing room, then Aunt Mabel burst out: ‘It was all that awful woman’s fault.’
‘Do you mean Mrs Browning?’ asked Grandmother.
‘Yes, of course. She must have put him up to it. Bill couldn’t have thought of anything so—so diabolical!’
‘But he sent her the powders, dear. And don’t forget—Mrs Browning has since. . . .’
Grandmother stopped in mid-sentence, and both she and Aunt Mabel glanced surreptitiously at me.
‘Committed suicide,’ I filled in. ‘There were still some powders with her.’
Aunt Mabel’s eyes rolled heaven-wards. ‘This boy is impossible. I don’t know what he will be like when he grows up.’
‘At least I won’t be like Uncle Bill,’ I said. ‘Fancy poisoning people! If I kill anyone, it will be in a fair fight. I suppose they’ll hang Uncle?’
‘Oh, I hope not!’
Grandmother was silent. Uncle Bill was her step-son but she did have a soft spot for him. Aunt Mabel, his sister, thought he was wonderful. I had always considered him to be a bit soft but had to admit that he was generous. I tried to imagine him dangling at the end of a hangman’s rope, but somehow he didn’t fit the picture.
As things turned out, he didn’t hang. White people in India seldom got the death sentence, although the hangman was pretty busy disposing off dacoits and political terrorists. Uncle
Bill was given a life-sentence and settled down to a sedentary job in the prison library at Naini, near Allahabad. His gifts as a male nurse went unappreciated; they did not trust him in the hospital.
He was released after seven or eight years, shortly after the country became an independent Republic. He came out of gaol to find that the British were leaving, either for England or the remaining colonies. Grandmother was dead. Aunt Mabel and her husband had settled in South Africa. Uncle Bill realized that there was little future for him in India and followed his sister out to Johannesburg. I was in my last year at boarding school. After my father’s death, my mother had married an Indian, and now my future lay in India.
I did not see Uncle Bill after his release from prison, and no one dreamt that he would ever turn up again in India.
In fact, fifteen years were to pass before he came back, and by then I was in my early thirties, the author of a book that had become something of a best-seller. The previous fifteen years had been a struggle—the sort of struggle that every young freelance writer experiences—but at last the hard work was paying off and the royalties were beginning to come in.
I was living in a small cottage on the outskirts of the hill-station of Fosterganj, working on another book, when I received an unexpected visitor.
He was a thin, stooped, grey-haired man in his late fifties, with a straggling moustache and discoloured teeth. He looked feeble and harmless but for his eyes which were pale cold blue. There was something slightly familiar about him.
‘Don’t you remember me?’ he asked. ‘Not that I really expect you to, after all these years. . . . ’
‘Wait a minute. Did you teach me at school?’
‘No—but you’re getting warm.’ He put his suitcase down and I glimpsed his name on the airlines label. I looked up in astonishment. ‘You’re not—you couldn’t be. . . . ’
‘Your Uncle Bill,’ he said with a grin and extended his hand. ‘None other!’ And he sauntered into the house.
I must admit that I had mixed feelings about his arrival. While I had never felt any dislike for him, I hadn’t exactly approved of what he had done. Poisoning, I felt, was a particularly reprehensible way of getting rid of inconvenient people: not
that I could think of any commendable ways of getting rid of them! Still, it had happened a long time ago, he’d been punished, and presumably he was a reformed character.
‘And what have you been doing all these years?’ he asked me, easing himself into the only comfortable chair in the room.
‘Oh just writing,’ I said.
‘Yes, I heard about your last book. It’s quite a success, isn’t it?’ ‘It’s doing quite well. Have you read it?’
‘I don’t do much reading.’
‘And what have you been doing all these years, Uncle Bill?’ ‘Oh, knocking about here and there. Worked for a soft drink company for some time. And then with a drug firm. My knowledge of chemicals was useful.’
‘Weren’t you with Aunt Mabel in South Africa?’
‘I saw quite a lot of her, until she died a couple of years ago. Didn’t you know?’
‘No. I’ve been out of touch with relatives.’ I hoped he’d take that as a hint. ‘And what about her husband?’
‘Died too, not long after. Not many of us left, my boy. That’s why, when I saw something about you in the papers, I thought—why not go and see my only nephew again?’
‘You’re welcome to stay a few days,’ I said quickly. ‘Then I have to go to Bombay.’ (This was a lie, but I did not relish the prospect of looking after Uncle Bill for the rest of his days.)
‘Oh, I won’t be staying long,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a bit of money put by in Johannesburg. It’s just that—so far as I know—you’re my only living relative, and I thought it would be nice to see you again.’
Feeling relieved, I set about trying to make Uncle Bill as comfortable as possible. I gave him my bedroom and turned the window-seat into a bed for myself. I was a hopeless cook but, using all my ingenuity, I scrambled some eggs for supper. He waved aside my apologies; he’d always been a frugal eater, he said. Eight years in gaol had given him a cast-iron stomach.
He did not get in my way but left me to my writing and my lonely walks. He seemed content to sit in the spring sunshine and smoke his pipe.
It was during our third evening together that he said, ‘Oh, I almost forgot. There’s a bottle of sherry, in my suitcase. I brought it especially for you.’
‘That was very thoughtful of you, Uncle Bill. How did you know I was fond of sherry?’
‘Just my intutition. You do like it, don’t you?’
‘There’s nothing like a good sherry.’
He went to his bedroom and came back with an unopened bottle of South African sherry.
‘Now you just relax near the fire,’ he said agreeably. ‘I’ll open the bottle and fetch glasses.’
He went to the kitchen while I remained near the electric fire, flipping through some journals. It seemed to me that Uncle bill was taking rather a long time. Intuition must be a family trait, because it came to me quite suddenly—the thought that Uncle Bill might be intending to poison me.
After all, I thought, here he is after nearly fifteen years, apparently for purely sentimental reasons. But I had just published a best-seller. And I was his nearest relative. If I was to die, Uncle Bill could lay claim to my estate and probably live comfortably on my royalties for the next five or six years!
What had really happened to Aunt Mabel and her husband, I wondered. And where did Uncle Bill get the money for an
air ticket to India?
Before I could ask myself any more questions, he reappeared with the glasses on a tray. He set the tray on a small table that stood between us. The glasses had been filled. The sherry sparkled.
I stared at the glass nearest me, trying to make out if the liquid in it was cloudier than that in the other glass. But there appeared to be no difference.
I decided I would not take any chances. It was a round tray, made of smooth Kashmiri walnut wood. I turned it round with my index finger, so that the glasses changed places.
‘Why did you do that?’ asked Uncle Bill.
‘It’s a custom in these parts. You turn the tray with the sun, a complete revolution. It brings good luck.’
Uncle Bill looked thoughtful for a few moments, then said, ‘Well, let’s have some more luck,’ and turned the tray around again.
‘Now you’ve spoilt it,’ I said. ‘You’re not supposed to keep revolving it! That’s bad luck. I’ll have to turn it about again to cancel out the bad luck.’
The tray swung round once more, and Uncle Bill had the glass that was meant for me.
‘Cheers!’ I said, and drank from my glass.
It was good sherry.
Uncle Bill hesitated. Then he shrugged, said ‘Cheers’, and drained his glass quickly.
But he did not offer to fill the glasses again.
Early next morning he was taken violently ill. I heard him retching in his room, and I got up and went to see if there was anything I could do. He was groaning, his head hanging over the side of the bed. I brought him a basin and a jug of water.
‘Would you like me to fetch a doctor?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘No I’ll be all right. It must be something I ate.’
‘It’s probably the water. It’s not too good at this time of the year. Many people come down with gastric trouble during their first few days in Fosterganj.’
‘Ah, that must be it,’ he said, and doubled up as a fresh spasm of pain and nausea swept over him.
He was better by evening—whatever had gone into the glass must have been by way of the preliminary dose and a day later he was well enough to pack his suitcase and announce his departure. The climate of Fosterganj did not agree with him, he told me.
