She had had a little drinkie and now she embarked upon another of her humble jokes. ‘I read in a magazine that the way to get back my husband’s love was to make myself look glamorous.’
‘Well, you’ve made yourself look a freak,’ he said.
More than one little drinkie, actually; several little drinkies. She tottered up to her feet, took the decanter by its stout glass neck and lifted it above her head. He gave her one look of stunned amazement and, as the bottle hit him, stepped back and fell, grazing his temple on the hard edge of the marble mantelpiece. She put back the decanter slowly on its tray and knelt down beside him. After a little while she realised that he was dead.
Wonderful how it sobered you up. One minute, you were half tight, reeling, stupefied, boiling up within you the pain and indignation of the ultimate insult; and all of a sudden cool again, cold again, aware and very much afraid. But thinking, quickly. I hardly touched him. Well, yes, I hit him. But he scraped his head on the mantelpiece as he fell, it could have been that. I could just have been—talking to him. He’d had a few drinks before he came, he slipped and fell backwards, he banged his poor head. I didn’t hit him, I didn’t touch him, it’s nothing to do with me. And she picked up the decanter and wiped from its neck any grip marks that might be there, and handled it as though it had been used merely for pouring out whiskies, and put it back on its tray. And knelt down again—and touched with her fingers the blood oozing from his head wound, and tweaked out a grey hair, and stood up and smeared her finger against the edge of the mantelpiece, and held the hair against it so that it stuck there….It was horrid, doing it, but she knew, as she had known at the doctor’s with a flash of insight, that in fact she no longer loved him, wouldn’t really have wanted him back: to touch him did not terribly upset her. It will be nicer without him, she thought. I can move away, where I won’t be looked down on, be talked about, by those horrible people up there, out on the balcony.
Out on the balcony! On this sunshine-y evening, they would be out on the balcony—leaning over, peering into her window: seeing it all!
‘He’s fell over,’ said the old woman. ‘He’s lying there. She’s—what’s she doing now?’
‘Leaning over him,’ said the daughter. ‘He’s dead, she can see he’s dead. She’s killed him.’
‘Hit him with that there glass bottle,’ said the daughter’s husband. ‘What’s she up to now?’
‘Wiping the neck of it,’ said the granddaughter.
‘Covering up her traces,’ said the grandson, eagerly.
‘Kneeling down again. She’s… Will I never!’ said the daughter. ‘What’s all this for?’
‘Blood on the mantelpiece. She’s going to pretend he hit his head there. Going to pretend he was drinking and fell over. Just slipped and fell, she never hit him, it’s nothing to do with her. I’ll tell you what,’ said the old grandfather, slowly, ‘I think we should inform the police….’
Mrs. Jennings stood listening—listening….She could almost hear them now, she knew so well what they would be saying. After a little while, she went to the telephone. ‘Police? Would you come round.’ She gave her address. ‘I think I’ve just killed my husband. He’s lying here dead.’ She replaced the receiver and went and stood in the window, looking up at them. ‘I don’t know why I said “I think”,’ she said. ‘You’ll tell them anyway.’
‘Police?’ the daughter’s husband was saying. ‘You’d better come round. We’ve just seen a murder committed.’
‘Yes, it was I who phoned you,’ said Mrs. Jennings when the police arrived. ‘But you’ve had a call already. From the people opposite. Up there, in the balcony flat. They watch me,’ said Mrs. Jennings. ‘Everything I do, they know all about me!’ She glanced down at her fleshless frame in the too-smart new clothes; glanced at the dead body on the floor. ‘Everything,’ she said. ‘They spy on me, they criticise; I never get away from them….They’ve ruined my life. If it hadn’t been for them, I don’t think—this—would ever have happened.’
The officer made a sign to his sergeant and himself knelt down beside the body, glanced up at the mantelpiece, at a grey hair on the edge of it and a smear of blood. ‘Fell against this?’ he suggested, standing up, easing his cramped back. ‘Stepped back, tripped over the mat, something like that?—hit his head as he went down?’