A Shock to the System (20 page)

Accepting this fact, one which had recently popped in and out of his mind with some frequency, gave it official status. Now he had declared his intention to himself, he could begin to plan.

The murder of Robert Benham would not be as easily accomplished as that of Merrily Marshall. Though he felt pride in the achievement of his wife's death, Graham could see the advantages which he had when planning it. A knowledge of her habits and a knowledge of her environment had both helped. Lack of any motive apparent to the outside world had also been on his side. Living in the same house, he had had time and opportunity to set up the means of her removal. And his absence in Brussels had ensured its remote operation. Setting it in perspective, after, the first euphoria of achievement, he could see that it was a good murder, but not a great murder.

To dispose of Robert Benham he would need something rather better. And in the case of Benham, he might be seen to have a discernible motive, so greater caution would be required.

Like Merrily's, he decided, the young man's death must appear to be accidental. Though he thought he had the skills to divert suspicion from himself in a murder investigation, life would be considerably simplified if no such investigation were ever started.

Benham had three main areas of operation where he might meet with an accident – at the office, at his Dolphin Square flat, or at his country cottage. Other settings were appealing, but impractical. For Robert to be run down on his way to work, or for him to fall down a flight of steps on one of his visits to Miami, were attractive, but hard to arrange. Or hard to arrange without Graham's involvement being too obvious. If he just happened to be in Miami at the same time as Benham, the finger of suspicion would not take too long to home in on him. No, as with Merrily, the operation had to be remote. When Benham died his murderer must not be in the vicinity; Graham must be somewhere else with an unbreakable alibi.

These were just general principles. Graham felt no great urgency to form a complete plan at once. The fact that he was making a start, that he had made the decision, gave him sufficient pleasure for the time being. He opened a rather good bottle of wine and settled down to watch Saturday evening television.

He awoke on the Sunday morning, luxuriating in the space of the double bed. He contemplated masturbating. There was nothing to stop him; it might be quite fun. But an exploratory hand stirred no response. And his mind remained empty of carnal images. Perhaps he really had managed to eliminate desire, along with so many other inconvenient distractions, when he killed Merrily.

He went downstairs to make a cup of instant coffee and collect the papers, then returned to bed. He felt deliciously unhurried. Time to savour all the irrelevancies that journalists dig up for Sundays; time, if he got bored with that, to relish a few more of the pathologist's tales of murder; time, if he felt like it, to think and plan.

The papers occupied him for forty minutes, the book a mere ten. Then, giving in good-humouredly to his mind like an indulgent father, he returned to the teaser of Robert Benham's murder.

First, the setting for the fatal accident . . .

He thought about the office. Like all buildings, the Crasoco tower offered opportunities for fatal accidents. As he knew from experience, anywhere on mains electricity could prove lethal. There were also boilers to explode, heavy furniture to crush people, lift shafts and staircases to be fallen down. Come to that, there were windows to fall out of. Only a year before a twenty-two-year-old secretary had drawn attention to the unhappiness of her affair with her boss by projecting herself from the tenth floor. As a method of killing it had been undoubtedly efficacious.

But nobody was going to believe in Robert Benham as a suicide victim. The idea was totally incongruous. And the idea of anyone falling accidentally from those windows was even less convincing. Because of the building's air conditioning, actually getting one open was quite an achievement.

Besides, even granted the gift of Robert Benham standing at an open window, Graham would have to be on hand – and therefore visible – to push him.

The same objection arose with all office accidents. The Crasoco tower was a busy place; few things occurred unseen. And even if Graham could engineer an accident without witnesses, or, better, contrive one that happened by remote control, it was all too close. In the office setting, if there were the slightest suspicion, professional rivalries would instantly be investigated. The atmosphere between the two had been observed, and Graham's statements to the lunchtime anti-Benham faction would be remembered. He would be set up as a prime suspect.

No, the office was out.

He had never been to the Dolphin Square flat, but knowledge of the block and the dangers of any break-in being witnessed, ruled it out straight away.

He turned his attention to the cottage. This offered considerable advantages over the Crasoco tower and the flat. First it was remote. If, as Benham had implied, he was frequently there on his own, the danger of witnesses was less. Or if a remotely triggered method could be devised, Graham was unlikely to be observed while setting it up. The cottage was also old and, though it had been extensively modernised, its age made an accident more feasible.

Then there were all those beams. And the thatch. In a place like that fire would spread instantly. And the cottage's small windows might make escape difficult. Anyone asleep upstairs when a fire started would be lucky to survive.

As a method of killing it would undoubtedly work, but setting up a suitable conflagration posed problems. Arson was not one of Graham Marshall's special subjects, but his reading of newspapers suggested that it was a crime fairly easily detected. So shoving petrol-soaked rags through the letter box, or throwing a can of the stuff in at one of the windows, or even – in a frivolous image his mind presented – shooting flaming arrows Indian-style at the thatch, though probably efficacious methods, were unlikely to escape the notice of the authorities.

And they all had the disadvantage of requiring Graham's presence at the scene of the crime at the time of the crime.

There were remote methods that might work. Maybe he could use another act of electrical sabotage. Some appliance that could overheat near a curtain, perhaps? Or near a sofa? The flames from the burning foam in modern sofas were notoriously deadly.

Hmm, not quite. The idea had not quite the form yet, not the intellectual perfection that his plan to dispose of Merrily had had. He wondered briefly whether he really had been so convinced when he devised his wife's quietus, or whether the conviction had been added in the retrospect of success. On balance, he thought it had always been there, and felt confident that, when he got the right idea for Robert Benham's extinction, he would recognise it.

He brought his mind back to the cottage. There were arguments against the staging of electrical disasters. The timing might be a problem. Suppose the faulty appliance were spotted . . . Then the sabotage might be identified and investigations ensue.

The trouble with any such plan was that it would involve housebreaking. He realised again how easy he had had it with Merrily. Was that, he wondered wryly, the reason why the majority of murders are of cohabitants?

Breaking into Robert's cottage to set a booby-trap doubled the risk. There was a danger of discovery, not only when the thing went off, but while it was being installed. And there was no guarantee that . . .

Suddenly he remembered the bright blue burglar alarm on the front of the cottage.

For the time being he had reached an impasse. He took the realisation philosophically. Time enough, time enough. He was on the right track. He would get there.

It was while he was shaving that he thought of the boat.

Graham saw Stella in the canteen on the Monday lunchtime. She was sitting at an empty table, eating cheese and biscuits, when he approached with his loaded tray.

‘Do you mind if I ... ?'

‘No. Please.' He sat down. She scrutinised him. ‘How are you feeling?'

‘Oh, you know . . .'

‘Any better?'

‘A bit.'

‘The shock must be awful.'

‘Yes. In surprising ways. It sort of upsets one's whole thinking. Whatever you think about is different. The circumstances have changed.' He was mildly surprised at the fluency with which such lines came out.

‘Yes. I've never lost anyone very close to me. Both my parents are still alive. It must be terrible.' She spoke this automatically, assessing, wondering what his next move was going to be.

‘I mean . . . you,' he said, fully aware of the impact of his words.

‘Me?'

‘Well, you know you and I . . . when we went to the wine bar those times, before . . . before . . .'

She helped him out of his apparent embarrassment at mentioning Merrily's death. ‘Yes, I know.'

‘Well, I enjoyed it.'

‘Me too.'

‘And now suddenly it's all different. I mean Merrily's dead and one part of me is reacting to that, and yet at the same time another part is saying I'd like to go on seeing Stella, but there's this sort of feeling that I shouldn't.'

‘Because of what people might say, people in the company?'

‘I suppose that's part of it. All of it, maybe.'

‘Well then, if we do meet, we should do it somewhere where nobody in the company'll see us.'

‘Yes, that's right, we should. How do you feel about going out to dinner somewhere tomorrow night?'

Predictably, she felt pretty keen about it.

He had rung earlier in the day for an appointment with his doctor and went along after work. The doctor was an earnest young man Graham had met perhaps twice when collecting prescriptions or getting forms signed. Merrily had had all the other dealings with him. She and Lilian regarded a doctor as someone central to their lives, someone with whom they had a relationship; for Graham he represented merely a convenient service, on a par with an emergency plumber or a minicab firm.

‘I'm so sorry about . . . what happened,' said the doctor with a gravity beyond his years. ‘A tragedy. Such a lively woman, so vital.'

Graham nodded agreement.

‘And then I heard about your mother-in-law. A foolish act which must have put additional stress on you at a time when you are least able to bear it.'

Graham prepared to voice his request, but the doctor had not concluded his monologue. ‘The full effect of bereavement is something we medical practitioners have still got a lot to learn about. There's research being done, and the most important thing that emerges is the need for grief, a need for the bereaved person to abandon him or herself to grief. And as soon as possible. I do hope that you are grieving for Merrily.' Graham felt an irrepressible desire to laugh, but when the sound came out, managed to convert it into a sob.

‘Yes, yes,' said the doctor soothingly, ‘that's good. You mustn't have any of these inhibitions about men crying. It's just as important for a man as a woman. Grief is essential.'

Since the young man seemed prepared to go on about grief indefinitely, Graham stated the reason for his presence. ‘The fact is, doctor, I am having difficulty sleeping.'

‘Well, that's no surprise, Mr. Marshall – or may I call you Graham? – no surprise at all. Any normal person is bound to be affected by the sort of shock you have just suffered and the effects are most likely to take a physical form. Insomnia I would expect, or a bad back, headaches or –'

‘Are you saying it's just psychosomatic?' asked Graham, sensitive to any aspersions being cast on his imagined complaint.

‘By no means. Anyway, what is psychosomatic, what is real? Increasingly we medical practitioners are having to learn to treat the whole patient, not to separate the body and the mind. Your mind has experienced a terrible shock, and your body is reacting by depriving you of sleep. It is only time, and the full process of grief, that can complete the healing process.' Since the doctor was in danger of getting on to grief again, Graham cut in. ‘What I'm asking, doctor, is can you prescribe something to make me sleep?'

This the doctor did willingly. Two of the pills, taken half an hour before retiring, should do the trick. If Graham still found himself waking up in the night, he could take one more. Three was the limit, though. The doctor warned him of the dangers of overdose, hesitating slightly as he did so. Presumably, with Lilian's gesture a recent memory, he was a little worried about planting such an idea in the head of a man unhinged by grief. Graham assured him that there was no danger of that sort, and set off with his prescription, trying to look subdued.

By the time he got home, he no longer felt the need for pretence, and moved jauntily to the front door. Everything was coming together very nicely, he reflected.

He was so cheerfully absorbed in his plans that he did not notice the occupant of the parked Ford Escort opposite, nor the intensity with which the man watched his arrival. Nor did Graham see the man get out of his car and walk slowly across the road to the house.

The doorbell rang.

Graham opened the door and looked at the stranger quizzically.

‘Good evening. My name is Detective-Inspector Laker. I'm sorry to trouble you, but I wonder if we could have a bit of a talk about your wife's death.'

‘Can you think of any reason why someone might make this sort of accusation?' asked the Detective-Inspector.

They were sitting quite cosily in the front room. Graham had furnished each of them with a large Scotch. He had been mildly surprised when the policeman had accepted his offer of a drink; he had expected a ‘no, sir, not while I'm on duty' demur. But he was glad. He recognised the seriousness of the confrontation and wanted it as informal as possible.

‘No, no, I can't,' he replied to the question. ‘It just seems very vicious, at a time like this, turning the knife in a wound that hasn't begun to heal.'