One morning he came into the kitchen a little early. Hilda was making scrambled eggs. The mixture wasn’t setting properly. She had the gas turned up beneath the pan as she stirred the eggs and milk, but it obstinately retained its fluidity. She was starting to lose her temper. Her face suffused to a dark red, small flecks of spittle collected on her lips and she banged the top edges of the pan with the spoon, making small dents around the edge.
“At my last place,” commented Mr Bartlett, settling himself at the table and opening his newspaper, “we always had scrambled eggs made in the microwave. Lovely they were, always creamy. Handy things microwaves Mrs Hopkins, you don’t seem to have one?”
“I’m not having one of those things in here,” snapped Hilda, “they’re dangerous, waves can leak out of them and give you tumours, I’ve read about it.”
The egg mixture in the pan turned suddenly from liquid to a solid mass. She mashed it up with a fork and piled it onto a couple of slices of leathery toast.
“You might need to put some butter on that,” she said, pushing a tub of vegetable spread across the table.
“I’ve never heard of that before,” commented Mr Bartlett.
Hilda gazed at him before she realised he was talking about microwave ovens and not buttery scrambled eggs.
“I’ve no time for new fangled things like that. I’ve got my food processor and a blender, that’s enough gadgets for me to be going on with. I don’t want anything nasty leaking out in my kitchen.”
“They are quite safe, you know, these days,” continued Mr Bartlett as if Hilda hadn’t spoken, “and you can use them for all sorts of things, microwave meals, defrosting stuff, nice scrambled eggs.”
He had eaten half of his egg on toast, and pushed the remainder away with an expression of distaste.
Hilda pursed her lips. This one was too healthy to pop his clogs in the middle of the night, he might need a bit of help to shuffle off this mortal coil. Nothing too messy. Hilda was an avid fan of CSI, she knew a lot about blood splatter and luminal. There were fingerprints and DNA to take into account too. Committing the perfect crime was much harder these days, but of course if you were as clever as Hilda believed herself to be, it was just a matter of a little forward planning.
What about poison? Hilda had thought long and hard about that, but where would she get poison from? It had been all right in Victorian times, arsenic could be found all around the house, it was used in so many things, but in these days of Health and Safety there were too many restrictions. Antifreeze was supposed to be pretty lethal, but it would look odd if she bought that down at the local garage seeing that she didn’t drive or own a motor vehicle. There was rat poison too, but did she want the man in the shop thinking she had vermin in her spotless house? She thought not. Plus it needed to be quick, she didn’t want to see her gentleman suffering, even if he had turned his nose up at her cooking. She wasn’t a nurse, she couldn’t cope with a long illness. Hilda herself had very robust health and despised bodily weakness in others.
It was two separate television programmes which finally solved the problem for her. One was fictional, the other a documentary. In the fictional story the baddie had sedated her victims with valerian before despatching them. The other was a documentary programme dealing with the history of the garrotte. Hilda reflected that if she used both things together, the valerian to sedate her gentleman, then the garrotte to finish him off, it would be a clean kill. Plus she wouldn’t have to see his face as she did it either, Hilda was a little squeamish about some things. She could knit a garrotte, and use a knitting needle to wind it tight…. It would work….what a clever and resourceful woman she was, and what a shame she couldn’t proclaim that from the rooftops!
First of all though, she needed to be sure that she had her facts right. She trotted off down Merrydown Crescent and caught the bus into Midchester. She knew there was a herbal shop in the precinct there. On the pretence that she suffered badly from insomnia, Hilda closely questioned the shop’s owner about sleeping draughts. He actually suggested Valerian tablets, warning her not to drive if she took them as they were quite potent. Hilda thanked him profusely, with an effort she could appear quite gracious. She dithered and twittered a little as she imagined old people must do, and asked if she could buy several bottles to save her the journey into town, it was such an ordeal at her age, especially if she didn‘t get a seat on the bus. The man, kindness itself, not only wrapped up several bottles for her, but even gave her a discount for bulk.
Hilda spent some time experimenting with different weights and types of yarn. She knitted long cords, then practised the strangulation on a baby doll. She kept this as a model for displaying the baby clothes she sometimes made. Some of the cords gave too much, and she decided she would have to make them using a much firmer tension. After several abortive attempts she settled on a wool and nylon mix. The wool was soft to the touch, it would be gentle on the old man’s neck, and the nylon added strength. It wouldn’t do for the cord to stretch or break when it was being used for real.
Hilda sat on the edge of her bed, the baby doll on her knee, twisting the knitting needle round and round, before deciding that a double pointed thicker needle would be better. The thinner ones tended to bend as the knot tightened. The baby doll lay limply across her knee, there were Herod genes somewhere in Hilda’s make up.
All her preparations paid off. Mr Bartlett drank his well laced coffee, and actually fell asleep at the table, falling across his plate. Hilda slipped the loop of brown wool over his head, poked the knitting needle through the cord, then twisted and twisted, pulling Mr Bartlett’s head up from the table as she struggled to make the cord tighter. It bit into the old man’s neck, cutting off the circulation. Mr Bartlett’s arms and legs twitched feebly, and then it was done. His body slumped to one side, and Hilda was nearly pulled off balance as he slid towards the floor. She hauled up on the cord and straightened him out. Tentatively she let the cord slacken. She pulled the needle out of it and watched fascinated as the twisted cord folded in on itself. Would she leave it on him? It might be used as evidence some time in the future if she was very unlucky and got caught. And it would be bad luck, she was far too clever to be caught out by carelessness, but you could never depend on luck, it was fickle, it could be good or bad. She reckoned she had better remove the cord while she could.
Blood splatter; she would have to be careful and make sure she didn’t cut him. Did dead men bleed? She couldn’t remember, better be safe than sorry. Hilda fetched her thinnest, sharpest pair of scissors from her work room and returned to the corpse. She gingerly inserted the scissors’ blade under the cord and snipped away it. She eased it free of his neck, sliding it along gently before dropping it in the bin. The bin men came on Tuesday that would soon be long gone in the landfill.
She already had the wheelie bin bags ready. This time she would use duct tape to tie it all up. She had used string on Mr Smith and it had slipped about something chronic. Still she wasn’t taking Mr Bartlett as far as Mr Smith. She would use the old coal cellar outside the back door. It had been disused since central heating had been installed in the house. It was more of an outhouse than an actual cellar, but the door was always kept locked, and there was still a pile of coal in there at the very back. Hilda hauled Mr Bartlett over the coals (in a manner of speaking) and settled him in the far corner, covering his body with the small black rocks until nothing more could be seen.
She went up to his room and neatly packed all his belongings away. They could go up in the loft with Mr Smith’s things. She removed the money from his wallet and hunted through his paper work until she found a small card with pin numbers written on the back. It seemed to be a common thing amongst the elderly, writing down their numbers so that memory loss wouldn’t leave them destitute. The bed was stripped, all the bedding went into the washing machine, new newspaper lined the drawers, a quick Hoover round and a flick with the duster…perfect Hilda had thought, all ready for
the next one……
“Have you finished?”
Hilda came out of her reverie and looked up at the waitress.
“It’s just that we get busy on Saturday afternoons,” explained the girl picking up Hilda’s plate.
Hilda glanced round the tearoom, it was half empty, but she had been sitting there for some time. She was wearing that god awful coat too, the girl probably thought she was some sort of bag lady. She had had to leave her good cream woollen coat behind at the house, she could hardly have taken that into the loo with her. The policewoman certainly wouldn’t have fallen for that. Still, she mustn’t draw attention to herself even though she was itching to tell this insolent girl off for her cheek.
“Yes thank you. I’ll have the bill, please.”
Hilda paid up, leaving a meagre 10p tip, and wandered out into the main thoroughfare, towing her shopping trolley behind her. Where to now? She didn’t want to go back to Midchester, but where could she spend the night? She turned off the main road and ambled down one side road and into another. This was a lovely street she thought, looking round at all the little bungalows set back behind high hedges. She pottered along, looking through the gates at the neat gardens. Ahead of her a van was drawn up partly onto the pavement. It was a supermarket delivery van. Hilda paused, debating whether to cross the road. She was getting tired, she really needed to sit down for a few minutes. There was a small pathway between two bungalows towards the back of the van. Hilda turned into it and walked down a few yards until she found a low wall she could sit on.
She heard the doors of the van slam, the engine started up, and it drew away and disappeared down the road. Hilda continued to sit on her perch. She turned her head as she heard voices coming from the other side of the hedge.
“I’ve put the perishables in the fridge, Sue” said a deep voice, “I completely forgot the shopping was due. I was so intent on surprising you.”
“You’re such a sweetie,” presumably this was Sue. Hilda eased herself round slightly and tried to look through the hedge but it was too thick.
“It’s just like you, Brian, to swing a surprise holiday on me! Put that last bag in the kitchen would you?”
There was a rustling sound as something was lifted and taken into the bungalow.
Voices sounded again just inside the open door of the bungalow. Hilda strained her ears, she had excellent hearing for her age. A useful asset for someone who was such a nosey parker.
“Well I thought five days in Venice would be a nice run up to our proper holiday,” said Brian, “hurry up Sue, the taxi should be here in a couple of minutes. I think I’ve packed everything you’ll need in your bag, I didn’t want to spoil the surprise by asking you what you‘d want to take. Anyway, anything you’re missing we’ll buy when we get there.”
“I must look a mess,” replied Susan, “you didn’t give me chance to shower or anything.”
“You look wonderful, as ever,” replied Brian.
Hilda’s mouth turned down at the corners. A wave of envy poured over her. Her husband hadn’t treated her to surprise holidays, the only surprise he had ever sprung on Hilda was to disappear one afternoon.
The taxi arrived on cue.
“Have you got your passport?” called out Brian.
“In my handbag where it always lives,” laughed Sue, “what about yours?”
“It’s here safe with the tickets. I didn’t let Mrs O’Grady know we were going away, we’ll have to ring her once we get there.”
“She’s away for the week,” said Sue, banging the door shut, “gone to Herne Bay to stay with her Colin and his wife and the grandchildren. Remember, I told you we’d have to clean for ourselves this week.”
“Not now we won’t. Shove that key under the pot Sue, just in case Mrs O’Grady gets back before us. Come on, the taxi’s waiting, he’ll have his clock on.”
There was a flurry of footsteps, and much slamming of car doors. Hilda pressed back into the hedge as the taxi swept by, but there was little chance of her being seen.
She sat and waited for a good five minutes. There was no more traffic, no pedestrians, just silence. She went round to the gate and boldly walked up the path. She knew instinctively that furtive scurrying would call attention to herself, she had to look as if she belonged here. She examined the small flowerbed directly in front of the bungalow. An upturned flowerpot sat discreetly towards the back. Hilda peeped underneath and saw a Yale key. She snatched it up and inserted it into the lock, moments later she was inside the hall, the door closed behind her, heart thumping. This would make a glorious bolt hole for a few days while she worked out her next move.
Chapter 5
Detective Inspector John Brent looked round the room at the assembled officers and rapped on the desk for attention. All eyes swivelled towards him. He stood by a board on which were pinned several photographs and maps.
“We’ve retrieved the bodies of five men,” he summarised, “a sixth is still missing, presumed dead. Preliminary findings from the pathologist indicate that the men were sedated then strangled. We’ve not identified the ligature that was used yet.”
He looked irritably towards the back of the room where two uniformed officers sat near the door. The woman officer had muttered something to her colleague, who now had a broad grin on his face. Clive Barcroft felt Brent’s eyes upon him, and hastily rearranged his face into a serious expression.
“Would you care to share your thoughts with us, Constable Grey,” asked DI Brent frostily, “don’t be coy Constable, let’s hear your words of wisdom.”
Barbara Grey flushed deeply crimson but answered steadily enough,
“I just wondered if she had knitted a noose to hang them with, Sir,” she explained, “she had all sorts in that workroom of hers, a knitted clock, dolls all sorts. It seems to be something she’s comfortable with, knitting I mean, and she seems to have quite an imagination………”
She trailed off as the senior officer gazed at her. She was already in his bad books having let Hopkins escape, was she digging a deeper hole to bury herself in?
“That Constable, is a very astute observation. Sergeant”, Brent turned to Claire Naylor, “get on to Forensics and see if there were any fibres present on the wounds. If there are, we’ll need to match them up with the yarn in the workroom. We’ll get all of that bagged and labelled.”
He swung back towards Barbara,
“Excellent, Constable. If you get any more bright ideas, share them with all of us not just your partner. This is a serious investigation and I welcome ideas from any of you.”
He let his gaze travel over the group of officers,
“Don’t be shy, I’ll not bite your heads off. This woman has a natural cunning and the luck of the devil. We need to be as shrewd as she is. We nearly caught her this morning. Apparently she spent last night at the Journey Lodge in Midchester but she‘s disappeared again.”
Barcroft nudged Barbara’s arm and gave her a quick wink. She let out a sigh of relief. If only she could redeem herself further in the DI’s estimation.
Chapter 6
Hilda left her shopping trolley in the hall while she examined her new quarters. The master bedroom was at the front of the bungalow, together with a smaller bedroom obviously used as a guest room. To the back was an even tinier room, Hilda reckoned it was smaller even than the box room she used as a workroom back in Melody Crescent. This room had been turned into a small office cum study. Hilda decided she would sleep in the spare bedroom, she wouldn‘t feel comfortable using the young couple‘s bed. The two comfortable looking single beds were already made up, it was ideal. The bathroom held a bath as well as a shower. Hilda inspected the range of toiletries in the cabinet. She would have a lovely long soak before bedtime.
The living room was at the rear of the bungalow, overlooking a long garden fringed by a high Leylandi hedge. Hilda pulled the heavy curtains across the windows, it was as well to be cautious she thought. She went through to
the kitchen. The fridge was well stocked, plus there was a freezer and a cupboard full of tins and packets. There was also a microwave oven. Hilda looked at this askance and quickly pulled its plug out of the wall socket. She turned the kettle on, selected a mug from a cupboard and found the tea bags. She would make a nice cup of tea, and take the chance to relax before planning for the next stage of her escape.
Once she had finished her tea and washed the mug, Hilda went on a proper tour of inspection of the premises. She poked amongst the papers in the study. There was a state of the art computer sitting on a small desk next to a filing cabinet. Hilda turned it on. She was fairly competent with computers, she had a small home one which she used to keep track of goods on EBay, plus she belonged to a number of on-line knitting groups. She left the computer humming quietly to itself while she sorted through the drawers in the desk and the filing cabinet. Her search turned up a credit card in the name of Susan Morris, and several papers with the name Brian Morris.
Morris, that was something of a coincidence, Hilda’s third gentleman had been a Mr Morris, Vernon Morris, she did hope he wasn’t a relative of these people, although Morris was a fairly common name. She didn’t really know much about her Mr Morris. The man had only been at Merrydown Crescent for about ten days when Hilda had given him a mickey finn in the form of valerian tablets. He had complained of a headache, and Hilda had offered him the tablets, telling him they were a herbal analgesic which would send him to sleep and cure his headache. She had omitted to mention that he wouldn’t be waking up again.