The Beheading of Sarah Churchill

Victor Churchill turned off his 600W, 1700 RPM hedge trimmer and stared, open-mouthed, at his wife’s headless body lying on the lawn. The tray, which had slipped from her hands at the moment of decapitation, lay right-side-up, and although the tea was all spilt, the biscuits, sitting in a little pile on a bone china saucer, were perkily undisturbed. 

The silence was profound. Even the birds had stopped singing. As his senses adjusted to the reality of the moment, he heard the splashing of the ornamental fountain in the fish pond and saw the dorsal fin of his giant ghost koi as it breached the water line, perhaps hoping for a closer look. 

At the edge of the pond was his wife’s head, wearing an expression which, if it could speak, would have said ‘Just what the fuck has happened here, Victor?’ 

He stood there for some time. Longer than a moment; less than minutes. And then he put the trimmer down and went inside to call the police. 

‘999, what’s your emergency?’

‘The police. I have chopped my wife’s head off with a hedge trimmer.’

There was a little pause and an almost inaudible intake of breath. In some part of Victor’s mind which was not abstracted, he rolled that sentence around in his head and realised that it wouldn’t do. So he tried again. 

‘I was trimming the hedge,’ he said, aware that his voice was rising, that he might begin to surf a wave of panic if he didn’t try to control it. ‘I was trimming the hedge and she came up behind me with a cup of tea and biscuits. On a tray,’ (he added unnecessarily). ‘She called out my name and without thinking, I turned around on the ladder and — '

‘I understand, sir. The police are on their way. I take it you won’t be requiring an ambulance.’

‘Well of course I will!’ he shouted. ‘She has to be taken away somehow, surely? Or should I just chop the rest of her up and put the pieces in a bin bag for the police?’ He was aware that he was becoming hysterical and took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. 

‘No need,’ said the dispatcher. ‘The police will be with you shortly, sir. Please try not to touch anything.’ 

Detective Inspector Boyle and Detective Sergeant Challis arrived at the trim, nondescript estate house and motioned for a constable to open the wooden gate which led to the side of the house and the garden. Through the kitchen window they saw a man, in his early-fifties, drinking a cup of tea with a family liaison officer. 

‘Poor bloke,’ said Boyle. 

‘We’ll see,’ said Challis. 

Theirs was an unusual dynamic in the rank and file. Boyle, the senior detective, was a man who always thought the best of everyone until the hard facts proved otherwise. Challis, his sidekick, always thought the worst. Generally speaking it was the other way round, a fact often noted down at the station. 

The scene was exactly as Victor Churchill had left it. The trimmer was on the lawn, the head was by the pond, the body was somewhere in between. On the surface of it, there didn’t seem to be much to add. The SOCO, who had been awaiting their arrival so he could start measuring and bagging up, shrugged his shoulders and told the detectives that at first glance, he couldn’t see anything wrong with the husband’s story.

‘An accident,’ he stated. ‘Poor bloke.’ ‘No signs of a scuffle, no marks or bruises on the body. Nothing to indicate a crime has been committed.’ 

Whilst they got busy in the garden, taking photos, putting the body parts gently on a stretcher, bagging up the trimmer and assessing the distance between objects, Boyle and Challis went into the kitchen and made their introductions. 

Victor Churchill was a good-looking man, but the shock had bleached his summer tan. 

‘Sorry for your loss, sir,’ said Boyle, taking a chair. Challis preferred to stand, and looked at the photographs on the sideboard. 

‘I don’t know how I could have been so stupid,’ said Churchill, hitting his head with the heel of his hand.’

‘It’s very regrettable,’ said Boyle, ‘but not stupid. It’s a perfectly normal response to turn around at the sound of someone’s voice.’

‘How long have you been married, Mr Churchill?’ asked Challis. 

‘What? Oh, um. Getting on for thirty years now.’ Churchill’s voice broke then, as though putting into words the duration of their marriage had broken a semblance of self-control. ‘And I need to tell the kids. What are they going to say when I tell them I killed their mother?’

‘I can do that for you, sir. If you’d prefer,’ the liaison officer said. He sighed, looked up at the ceiling and then said, ‘Yes. I think that might be best.’

Boyle scraped the chair away and put his hand on Churchill’s shoulder as he stood up to leave. ‘So sorry about it, sir,’ he said. ‘What a terrible thing to happen. We’ll leave you with PC Manners, and perhaps she can contact some other family members, or friends, and ask them to come over?’ 

‘Yes, yes,’ Churchill said distractedly. ‘Thank you,’ he said as an afterthought. 

‘Just one thing, Mr Churchill,’ said Challis as they were leaving. ‘Did you know your wife was about to bring you tea and biscuits?’

‘Know? Um, no. I didn’t. Does it matter?’

‘Not at all, sir. You take care.’ 

‘What was all that about, Challis?’ Boyle asked as they drove back to the station.

‘You know me, sir. You don’t mind if I do a bit of digging, though? To make sure?’

‘Knock yourself out,’ said Boyle. ‘I’ve got a couple of days off. Don’t let it distract you from your other investigations. This was a tragic accident, pure and simple. So easily done I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often,’ he mused. 

‘You have to factor in the variables,’ said Challis. ‘You need a privet hedge, and you need a wife who still loves you enough after thirty years of marriage to bring you tea and biscuits. It lengthens the odds.’ 

3 days later

The Red Lion

It was a Friday night custom, when cases allowed, for Boyle and Challis to have a drink after their shifts were done. It didn’t always work out that way, but the local residents were behaving themselves that week, and Boyle was rested after a couple of days on the golf course. They talked about ongoing cases, the football and whether or not the new desk sergeant was attractive. Eventually they got on to the accident. 

‘They had a big life insurance policy,’ Challis submitted. ‘But they took that out when they married. There wasn’t a sudden increase in payments prior to the accident. No red flags.’

‘How did you find that out so quickly?’ asked Boyle. 

‘I asked him. He didn’t like it, but he emailed a copy of it for me. He stands to get half a million, assuming the coroner’s verdict is accidental death.’

‘Which it will be. Anything else?’

‘He had a mistress.’ Challis smiled and put his pint down. ‘I knocked on a few doors, and finally spoke to a friend of a friend. It’s been going on for a while. I don’t think Sarah Churchill knew about it.’

‘Do we need to have a word with this woman?’ Boyle asked. 

‘I have. They mutually agreed to break it off a day after the incident. She was after a bit of fun and she’s not going to get it now. So, what have we got? A life insurance policy and a mistress. So far so normal. He has a good job, no criminal record, married to the same woman for thirty years, and two kids who love him. He got along with his wife. The neighbours didn’t mention any arguments and all indications suggest that he’s a horrified, grieving husband. It’s such a bizarre thing, I suppose I was just trying to make sense of it.’ 

‘So it’s a case of Occam’s razor,’ said Boyle, drumming his palms on the table. When Challis raised a quizzical eyebrow, his superior said, ‘The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.’

‘Umm. And aside from anything else,’ said Challis before they went on to other matters, ‘it can’t be proven, one way or the other.’ 

Ten years later

Victor Churchill had been married to his second wife for five years. He had been advised by family and friends to seek counselling, and although that wasn’t his natural solution to life, he went along for the sake of his children. Helen was in the waiting room, and they both shared a grimace at the piped music, which was loud and irritating. She bustled over to him and sat down without invitation. She was enveloped in a subtle, floral perfume which reminded Victor of Sarah, although in all other aspects, Helen was nothing like her. Sarah’s hair had been economically short. It was fair to say that when they first married, the look was gamine, but as she got older it had become more can’t-be-arsed. He often felt that the image of her severed head would have been ameliorated if she’d had a head of flowing locks, because at the moment of her death she had been more John the Baptist than Salome, in more ways than one. 

His counsellor had told him that irreverent thoughts like those were perfectly normal. They were the brain’s way of dealing with extreme trauma, and he should not feel ashamed of them. He did gently imply, however, that constantly dwelling on his wife’s severed head would not, in the long term, be a fitting memorial to her. You must try to remember her as she was, he said, and Victor thought to himself, and for this you get paid?

Helen confided, at that first meeting, that when her husband was diagnosed with cancer, they had been referred to a counsellor who dealt with people facing imminent death. After five minutes he had stood up, pointed to the speakers and said, ‘Fuck this! I’m dying, and here I am, sitting in a plastic chair, smiling heroically at people who are also about to die and listening to whale noises, just so a prick can tell me how to die peacefully.’ 

In a rush of easy camaraderie, Victor had confided the reasons for his being there, and Helen was so understanding, and so careful not to allow the glimmer of a faint smile to play across her features. Because if bizarre deaths had a pantheon, then Sarah would be Hera, or Juno. She would be captain’s table on Mount Olympus, or the chief ballbreaker on the Capitoline Hill. It was, in fact, such a stupid death that only a person with no humour could resist a small flicker of nervous amusement, but to give Helen her dues, she kept it together pretty well. He was smitten by her. 

Helen didn’t have children, which Victor was grateful for. He felt, probably correctly, that children might take a dim view of a man who was the agent of his wife’s death, however accidental that had been. His own offspring were pleased when after several years of covert courting, Victor made introductions. He was a little cynical of their effusive acceptance of this new woman - this stepmother, regarding it as more like relief at dodging the bullet of caring for their widowed father. But no matter. They liked her and that was enough. 

It was a good marriage. Neither worked full-time anymore, and there was plenty of money in their respective accounts, which enabled them to take frequent and often long holidays. A new interest of theirs, as the inevitable signs of old age began to emerge, was hiking. And when Helen proposed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Victor tentatively agreed. The term for atheist pilgrims is wayfarers, which they thought sounded daring and romantic. 

The part of the route they selected was the Way of the Lighthouses, a route which ran from Malpica to Finisterra in the north-eastern corner of Spain. Victor, who had a great fear of heights, was initially reluctant to walk this particular stretch, but his wife, who had no fear at all, was very persuasive on the matter. And so they planned carefully, choosing their overnight accommodation along the route, and packing all the necessary equipment a ‘moderately difficult' hike might require. 

Cabo Vilán Lighthouse

The Coast of Death

Towards the end of their second week the couple arrived at the harbourside village of Camariñas, and settled into their accommodation for the night. In the morning, and following a breakfast of churros and chocolate, Victor and Helen picked their way through the granite, windy landscape of the Costa de Morte. Their goal was a lighthouse, now a national monument, whose electric lamps still warned mariners of the danger they faced if they came any closer. Victor was feeling queasy. The combination of sheer cliffs and broad horizon disoriented his senses, and he fought the childish urge to crawl on all fours. Conversely, Helen sprang along the promontory like a mountain goat, poking fun at her husband constantly. Several Australian hikers emerged from a car park and Victor engaged in casual conversation with them as Helen walked on ahead. 

‘I am not going up there,’ said Victor, as they surveyed the steps leading to the lighthouse. It sat atop a mass of granite, with the sea pounding spray as they argued. 

‘Oh, come on darling,’ she said. ‘I want a photo!’

And so Victor, shaking his head at the other hikers, who seemed happy to look at the view from where they stood, began to climb the steps, following the swaying backside of his wife. At the top, he ran to the lighthouse and pressed his back against the curving stone. 

‘I am not leaving this spot,’ he said. 

‘Fine,’ said Helen, taking deep lungfuls of salty air. She walked towards the edge, in a place where the drop was vertiginous. 

‘For God’s sake be careful!’ he shouted. 

She turned to face him, smiling broadly. So happy in that moment. So exhilarated. Her rain coat billowed in the wind. 

‘You’re too close to the edge!’ he shouted. In fact, one of the last thoughts to pass through Helen’s mind was why is he shouting so loudly?

At the optimum moment, just after he urged her, shouted at her, to step away from the edge, Victor pressed a button on his phone. He had been sure to set the volume to maximum after breakfast. It was a recording of the scream made by an instrument known as the Aztec death whistle, and at the esoterically horrifying sound of it, his wife staggered backwards, utterly startled, and fell. 

The witnesses described hearing a bloodcurdling scream and when they looked up, the woman in the yellow raincoat was gone. They described seeing her husband crawling towards the edge after she fell. They described hearing him telling her to come away from the edge before she fell. They described him standing flat against the lighthouse just before the incident, a man clearly afraid of heights. And when asked, they all said that at no point was Mr Churchill anywhere near his wife when she fell. 

Victor spent a further week in Galicia, arranging the repatriation of his wife’s body and talking to reporters, playing the mortified husband for the second time. He imagined the recently promoted Detective Inspector Challis, in the wake of this newsworthy item, thinking the worst and being utterly unable, just like the first time, of proving anything against him. 

On the flight home, as Victor stared at his reflection in the porthole, he congratulated himself on his latest triumph. Killing a wife is a delicate operation which requires patience and careful planning. The husband is always the main suspect, so it is therefore important that he is present at the time of death. Alibis are no good. They are so easily broken. Motives are ambiguous. His was money, of course, but having a policy or an inheritance is not unusual. It isn’t enough. 

What you needed was plausible deniability. He could not have known that Sarah was about to bring him tea and biscuits in the garden, but he knew that if he waited long enough, she eventually would. He could not have known that Helen would be so keen on a hiking holiday, or that she would choose one of the more treacherous routes along the trail. The witnesses at the lighthouse could not have known that the scream came a split-second before the fall, or that Helen was a safe foot away from the edge when he took out his phone to take a photo. Except he didn’t take a photo. He pressed another button. No one could know these things. 

Plausible deniability. 

As the plane touched down and he anticipated his worried children waiting to console him, Victor remembered to arrange his features into something more suitable for the occasion.