by Paul Charles
Do me a favour, please: just raise your hand to your ear. Okay, now in the time it took you to do that, that’s about the time it would take for you to become a murderer. So, say that’s what happened, does that mean you’ll no longer love and respect your parents? Does it mean that you won’t want to go to work each day? Does it mean that you – in this instance, I mean me – does it mean that I would no longer want to get naked with Mary Skeffington? Does it mean that I would never think that someone like Jean Simpson had a beautiful body? Does it mean that I would break the law in other ways? Would I suddenly turn to stealing? Would I not worry any more about not having a television licence?
Hey, would it mean that I wouldn’t be able to get mad if someone broke into my flat and stole my records or helped themselves to something valuable of mine? You know, could I really be upset at someone who had stolen a record worth thirty-two shillings and six pence when I was guilty of robbing someone of their life?
Mary interrupted my thoughts with, ‘You see, in my instance that’s where it would all fall down, in actually having to murder someone. I’m much too squeamish; I wouldn’t have the stomach for it. I couldn’t just go and face them and stick a knife in them, oh no.’
She actually shivered at the thought. She kept on shaking her head as she continued: ‘You know, some people can stick their hand up a cow’s bum and from the midst of all that blood and gore they can pull out a sweet little calf. I love the end product. I’d love to come along when everything has been washed and tidied up and you have this sweet, cuddly little calf and it looks so vulnerable. But I’d need to miss out all the bits to do with blood and guts. Agh!’
‘Well, I’m not exactly in love with all that myself,’ I offered.
‘I know, David, I know. But some people are totally comfortable with it. Some people can even cut open a human and stick their hands into the body and massage a heart back to life! Even the thought of it is sending shivers down my spine! But some people can do it just like it’s second nature and then they immediately go off and eat a rare steak and wash it down with a red wine. They seem to be able to divorce the two acts, so I have to think that a murderer can separate the vile act from the rest of their lives.’
‘Or they employ someone else to carry out the vile act for them?’ I offered.
‘No, no, David; you couldn’t afford the risk of anyone else knowing that you were involved, no matter how directly or indirectly your involvement may have been. You see, to commit the perfect murder there must be no witnesses, there must be no alibi, there must be no lies to cover up. Yes, lies – they’re another big thing. You tell the police a lie and see how long it takes them to catch you out. For instance, “Why were you not back at your house at six thirty if you say you left work at five thirty?” So you say, “Oh, I went to Safeway to do my shopping.” “Well,” WDC McGinley would reply, as she snaps the handcuffs around your wrists, “how come your fridge and your cupboards are empty?”’
‘Okay, I’m with you so far – no blood, no lies, no accomplice, no witnesses, no shopping, no knives. But to me that all adds up to NO MURDER!’
‘And you forgot “and no body”,’ she said, before smiling.
I’d been going along with our little hypothetical just-suppose but every now and then she’d add a little line that would stop me in my tracks. And the ‘and no body’ was such a heart-stopping line.
Before I’d a chance to collect my thoughts Mary jumped up from the sofa in a high state of excitement and shouted, ‘Let’s go for a walk!’
Ten minutes later we were out in the cold night air, our cheeks flushed from a little too much wine. We were walking down the lonely and long Gladstone Road, down towards Broadway, left into Broadway, over Wimbledon Bridge Road on to Wimbledon Hill Road, and up as far as Worple Road on the left, and we stopped down at the corner. At first, I’d thought she was taking me to her office, which is in Mond Road, but then she walked on past her office and took a right into Mansel Road. At that point she broke into a canter, followed by a mere stroll as she came level with the hoarding which sheltered and secured a building site on the other side. She searched the hoarding for a few seconds, pushing here and pushing there, searching for something, I knew not what. By the light of the full moon she eventually found what she was looking for: a loose section. She untied a rope and the section of hoarding – complete with a Tolworth Toby Jug poster advertising forthcoming appearances of Free, Sam Apple Pie, East of Eden, Anno Domini and The Edgar Broughton Band – that functioned as a makeshift door with rope hinges.
Mary caught my hand and pulled me into the site, closing the makeshift door and retying the rope behind us. We carefully picked our way through bricks, planks, scaffolding, a cement mixer, wheelbarrows, hods, mounds of sand, heaps of gravel, bags of cement and trenches – some of which were partially filled with water.
Kopace, flush with the success of their first superstore, had planned to add at least twenty per cent to their current floor space, a fact borne out by the grid of rolled steel joist’s rising majestically towards the Moon. Mary stopped where one of the RSJs disappeared into the ground. There was an eerie silence, broken only by the occasional sound of cars passing by on the other side of the hoarding. Now and then we could hear our feet crunching through gravel.
‘Don’t you see, it’s the perfect place for the perfect murder,’ Mary boasted excitedly.
I didn’t quite get it; I didn’t get it at all, in fact.
‘Oh David, where’s your imagination?’ Mary whispered, as she took my hand and led me to another corner of the site.
This time the steel joists were lying flat on the ground and they bordered a large pit, which I guessed, by the reflection of the water, was at least twenty feet deep. A crane towered lifelessly above us, ready, I imagined, to spring into action the following morning and raise the same RSJs one by one into the sky and then, when in perfect position, lower them into their final resting place in the depths of the pit, where they’d be housed for at least the next hundred years or so.
‘You see,’ Mary continued, with her moonlit lecture, ‘if you really want to lose a body, you’d dump it into one of these deep holes. I’ve been watching the work continue here for the last several months – look, I can see the site clearly from my office window.’
She stopped and pointed towards the sky over my shoulder. There was no doubt about it, she was perfectly placed to observe the site. As she saw the penny dropping, she pushed on further.
‘First they excavate the holes in the ground, then they fill in the bottom with cement and rusted steel rods, you know, to make a binded foundation, which serves as their base. Then, before it’s fully set, they put in a steel plate with bolts sticking upright onto the top solid concrete base. They let that settle and sit for several weeks before they place the girder down into the hole and bolt it into place on the steel plate. Then they fill in the rest of the hole with more cement and again they let that settle before they start adding more and more sections and floors above the foundations. It’s intriguing – I’ve loved watching the workers and working out what their system is.’
‘Ok-ay.’
‘So, what you’d do,’ she continued, sounding slightly annoyed that I’d interrupted her, ‘is you’d bring your victim in here–’
‘What, they’d just obediently follow you in?’
‘What, like you just did?’ she said and then laughed. In a way I had proved her point.
I smiled but stopped the second that a vision of Jean Simpson at the building site hoarding flashed into my mind.
‘Actually, if anything it would’ve been easier with Jean Simpson,’ Mary whispered. ‘All I would’ve had to do would have been to fix up a meeting with her at the Alexandra. I’d pretend I’d something important to tell her. I’d meet her at the pub; I’d be very friendly and girlie with her. We’d have a girlie talk about you, you know, comparing notes over a few drinks, all frightfully civilised. I’d tell her that you and I were going t
o split up and that the coast was clear for her to resume messing around with you. We’d have a few more drinks and we’d leave the pub the best of friends, and we’d come out of the pub, cross the road, and walk past here and I’d say to her “You’ll never guess what goes on in there.” She’d be intrigued, just like you were, David, so I’d bring her in here and bring her to the edge of a freshly dug pit.’
At this point I looked back up towards Mary’s office window and followed the line down. I couldn’t work out if I was trying to see whether all this was truly possible or if I had gone beyond that point and now was looking for the girder which would: a) be visible from Mary’s window; and b) be the final resting place of Jean Simpson? It would have to be one of the older positions, I figured. I continued to try to figure out which girder we were talking about as Mary whispered on with her just-suppose.
‘So, you’d bring her right to the edge of one of the freshly dug, deep pits and you’d say “Look down there!” And she’d lean forward, still not able to see anything, and so you’d say “Look – down there – at the bottom. Here, I’ll support you so that you can look over the edge.” And then, just right when she was on the brink of her balance, you’d just give her a wee push and she’d topple over into the pit. She’d be winded and stunned when she hit the bottom, so you’d need to take aim with a couple of bricks, you know, properly finish the job. If you don’t manage to kill her with the bricks on the head you’d at least knock her unconscious and there’s always at least enough water in the bottom of the pit for her to drown.’
‘Mary!’ I hissed
‘David, snap out of it. I’m just telling you what I’d do to commit the perfect murder. Let me get on with it, please! The following morning the workmen would come along, our Jean would be hidden in the water in the bottom of the pit. The workmen would pour concrete into the hole – they never bother removing the water before they pour the cement. Within a day the corpse would become a part of the building foundations. Don’t you see? It’s so perfect! The body is never going to be found. What’s more, there would be no evidence of any kind on or about your body. There would be nothing to connect you to the murder.’
‘What if someone saw you come in here?’
‘Well, first off, you’d be very careful when you came in, but the even more important thing is to be very careful when you leave. There’s not a lot of people using the side street, anyway, since they started the building works. So, with a little care and attention you could come and go unnoticed. You’d dump your shoes in a dustbin on your way home, having brought a change with you, hidden in your handbag.
‘Where is she Mary? Which hole is Jean buried in?’
‘Oh, don’t be so stupid, David! I’m just playing out this little game of ours! I just wanted to show you that it is possible to commit the perfect murder,’ she said, as she took my hand and cautiously led me off the building site, ‘and I needed to shut you up once and for all about what happened to Jean Simpson.’
Chapter Forty-One.
Had all that been Mary’s way of telling me what had happened? Was it meant to be a warning? I mean, it was flawless – it all made perfect sense. I did find it hard to believe that Jean Simpson would have met with Mary, but I suppose Jean could have been intrigued with what Mary wanted to see her about.
I still couldn’t accept it though; that Mary was capable of murder, even though, I had to admit, that it was murder once removed. Jean Simpson would have been several feet beneath Mary and a still target for whatever missiles Mary would have thrown at her.
Another important thing in all of this (for Mary) was that she wouldn’t have had to look Jean in the eyes as she dealt the fatal blow. Perhaps Mary was even able to convince herself that Jean had finally died from drowning, or by being suffocated beneath several tons of concrete.
On the other hand, all Mary’s main points were accurate: no body, no evidence, no witnesses. What about a motive, though? Could she have been convicted purely on motive? Assuming, that is, that Mary’s actions were anything more than hypothetical.
She’d lost one boyfriend to Jean. She didn’t want to lose another. Her exact words. Would she really have seen killing Jean Simpson as a solution to her problem? Did Mary Skeffington really have it in her make-up as a human being to take the life of another? You see, that’s what troubled me the most: Could I really be head-over-heels in love with a murderer? As we’ve discussed, most murderers aren’t likely to be bad people all of the time.
Like me, there might have been a moment, even just a split second, when Mary saw killing Jean as the only way to solve her problem. Unlike me, though, had she seen that opportunity and taken it? She’d opted for the final solution to her problem and in all probability would never resort to such drastic actions again. The alternate was that she was a serial killer who either enjoyed the act of killing or enjoyed the notoriety it gave her. Nagh, Mary definitely didn’t fit into that category. But it troubled me that she could have been so cool and collected about the whole thing. She didn’t seem to be suffering from nightmares – if anything she was sleeping better than ever. Mind you, she said she would tell me her hypothetical method of getting rid of someone only as a way to get me to shut up about Jean Simpson. I was living with Mary, and I didn’t suspect her capable of anything as bizarre as her hypothetical solution. She was too… well, too normal for that. Yes, I would have definitely considered her to be normal, as normal as you could get, in fact. But at the same time we still had no Jean Simpson!
And you know maybe she did just really wanted me to finally shut up for once and for all about Jean’s disappearance?
Every time I passed the Kopace Superstore – which was at least ten times a week – I thought of Jean Simpson and I thought of Mary. That lasted for about three months, then I started to remember that I was forgetting about Jean and then I’d feel a quick, albeit ever so brief, pull on my conscience.
By May, Jean Simpson’s mother decided to have a party to celebrate not the death, but the life of her daughter. Mary and I both attended. It wasn’t as sad a gathering as you’d expect it to be. I suppose that had something to do with the fact that at the time of the party, we’d all had nearly several months to adjust to the loss of a life from our midst.
Also, there was something quite comforting about the fact that we were celebrating Jean’s life in such a beautiful landscape. Ironically, there was a graveyard at the foot of Jean’s mother’s garden. Every one of the guests, on at least one occasion during the party and mostly at varying times, stole at least a single glance into that graveyard, all of us privately wondering where Jean Simpson’s final resting place was. Why do we all like graveyards to be as beautiful as picture-postcard scenes? I mean, it’s obviously too late for the residents. Could it be that when we come to visit them, to visit the faithful departed, we need to be reminded that the reality in all of this, in the whole big scheme of things, is that we are really nothing more than knee-high to the packet of Surf called life, and that at some point in the future we’ll end up in a similar spot to the dearly departed?
No, you don’t think so? Augh, you know what, you’re probably right.
Jean Kerr was at the celebration. She seemed like she was starting to get her act together. She’d started to lose weight and she was smoking a lot. These two facts may or may not be related. She’d cut way back on her make-up and was dressing more casually. She said she couldn’t believe how much she missed Jean. She said the loss of Jean was the kick up the backside she’d needed to get her act together. She’d applied for several jobs rather than wait for the hopeless situation she found herself in with her present supervisor to work itself out.
In spite of what had happened to Jean Simpson, Jean Kerr was making a return to London. Her mother wasn’t best pleased at that but, as Jean said, the alternative was to lock herself away forever.
‘Life’s for living,’ she said, brushing her proud mane over her shoulders, ‘it’s time I started to do some living again
. I feel I’ve got to live for two now.’
What, you think that’s a bit over the top? Yeah, you’re probably right, but that’s always been our Jean Kerr for you.
Mary Skeffington and me? Well, our relationship is still getting better all the time. I suppose in a way it could have gone either way following our midnight stroll to the building site. I actually made a conscious decision to put all of the stuff behind us… you know… the stuff.
What stuff, David?
Okay, I’ll say it: the fact that I knew there was a distinct possibility that Mary Skeffington could have murdered Jean Simpson. I put all that stuff behind me, and us, and we just got on with our lives. Even if I hadn’t, Mary had a big enough heart and enough energy to pull both of us through it. You see, that’s one of the things I’ve since learned about Mary: once she wants something, she goes all out to get it. Perhaps it’s something to do with losing her father when she was young. Perhaps it’s something to do with losing John Harrison when she did. I don’t know, I just know her resolve is unfaltering.
You see, I knew she was something special the day I met her. I also knew that fate hadn’t put us together; I knew we’d met by accident. We weren’t meant to meet up at all, in fact, and because we did… because we clicked and then started to deal with the fact that we could be together if we worked at it, perhaps we threw things around us off the chosen cosmic track – you know, out of sync?
Maybe that’s why all of the things that happened around us, happened. I’ve searched my heart and wracked my brain and I cannot for the life of me come up with any other reason.
I think of the night we all met, you remember, at Tiger’s party? The first and possibly only time we were all in the one room at the one time. I think of the time I had with Mary before the others happened upon the two of us, you know, when we were sitting in our beanbags getting to know each other before the fight broke out. That was a very magical meeting. I can remember every single thing I was thinking; mostly, I remember thinking that it must have been a dream. I can remember struggling to catch the breath that her beauty was stealing. I remember thinking that her beauty had attracted me, but her soul was definitely the magnet that glued our futures together. I thought I couldn’t possibly be there with the most perfect girl I’d ever met. Not only had I met her, but I was actually talking to her. I mean, I was shocked by the fact that she was really talking to me as if we’d known each other before.
