Murder she Thought

Murder she Thought

Jane had come to the Beach Cottage after being diagnosed by her Doctor, Donald Harris an old family friend, as being on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

“I think it advisable that you spend a week or two on the North Coast with my cousin Wendy. She runs a B and B and not only is she a qualified nurse but a very good hostess as well. She often has weeks set aside for people who need to recuperate from some kind of trauma.”

“Oh, but I don’t have enough money to go away on a holiday. I will have to wait until I have some money in the bank.”

“You are very near a complete breakdown. I would not be able to look your Mother and Father in the face, if they were alive, if I did not insist on this. I will send Wendy a letter to say that you will be there for two weeks in September.  I can ask her to hold back the costs until you have settled into your new job.”

 Her nerves were shattered after 6 months of living a hand to mouth existence in Durban. She had lost her job as a pharmacist at the hospital which had closed down and been too proud to approach her sister for help. The patients had been rerouted to other hospitals and the premises were being renovated and made into a Day Clinic. She had learned to live on a bare minimum and had lost 4kg in the process. The two weeks on the coast were to give her a breathing space before starting a new job  she had landed at Ntabeni.

They had arrived on the same day all eight of them.

There was Monica, a stout woman in her middle fifties, with red hair and a waspish tongue,  Ivan, with a middle that goes with too much food and too little exercise and  Edmund a tall lanky young man, with a blonde pony tail. There were four other guests, a father and mother with their teenage daughter and Yvette a widow whose hobby apparently, was painting with water  colours.

“ I  can’t wait to get down to the beach and capture the waves, the light and the seagulls. It is so exciting.”

“How do you capture waves and light?” asked Jane.

“Is there no milk in this house?”

Monica stirred her coffee impatiently clattering the spoon against the saucer.

Edmund the lanky one, spoke,

 “ Oh I say, no need to complain, I will go and ask in the kitchen. You should consider how hard the owner works to keep us all happy.”

“Well we are paying for our stay, so there is a need to get our money’s worth.”

Jane  heard  them  in the dining room, after the other guests had retired. It was the voices  of Ivan and Monica.  They were talking softly.  Jane was sitting in the lounge, hidden by the back of an armchair, totally invisible, reading her book.

“ We  will do it on Friday,  entice him out into the garden  around midday.”

“Do you think it will be easy at that time? It may be too hot for him to want to go outside,” said Monica, her voice crackling with excitement on the last few words. 

“Midday is a good time because most of the other guests won’t  be  around  then. They will have gone off somewhere, for the afternoon. We certainly don’t want anyone to see us.”

This, from Ivan.

“The best place will be in the clearing at the bottom of the garden where the trees have been thinned out a little.”

Jane shrank back into the armchair, her attention stretched to the limit. What were these two strange people planning? There was only one way to find out.

Now it was Friday and here she was lying in wait to see what was going to happen.  She had come to the garden early, so as not to miss anything.

She crawled through the bushes, inching along on her stomach, stray twigs from the African dogwood plants catching at her hair. A beetle scurried past in front of her nose and out of the corner of her eye she saw a lizard slithering along next to her left arm, apparently unafraid. Jane had a strong aversion amounting to phobia status, to lizards. They were after all, reptiles. The yellowwood trees planted decades ago, in the garden of the boarding house, were tall, shutting out the sunlight. Nasturtiums straggled an unruly path through the small patches of light.

 Jane was keeping very low and quiet, hoping that the plants and dust would not bring on a sneeze.

She heard footsteps on the pathway but could not see who it was. The walker stopped and lit a cigarette. Voices heralded the arrival of Ivan and Monica. They walked in to the clearing. A minute or two elapsed and then she heard scuffling noises followed by heavy thudding noises and a dull sound as of something or someone falling to the ground.  Her guess  was that a  heavy  instrument had been used to knock the smoker senseless. It could have been a sock with a brick inside it. It had made a dull, sickening  thump. There was a faint grunt and then a noise of a body falling to the ground. The person attacked, had been taken by surprise and not been able to scream.

“Quickly now, let us drag him along out of sight and see how to finish this off properly.”

“He is very heavy , and I am finding it a bit hard,” said Monica panting and puffing.

“Never mind old girl, I am sure we can manage. We have to.”

Jane could see the two of them dragging a body along the ground and hiding it in the undergrowth on her right. She had a fairly good view of what was going on but was too afraid to get up and accost them. She might be the next victim to be dragged along like a sack of potatoes.

Her breath caught in her throat from fear and she felt the sweat trickling down the back of her neck.

It was hot in the midday sun and she knew she had been stupid to come out here on her own. The other guests having all disappeared, there was not another soul in sight.

Ivan and Monica were not the type that Jane would like to take on in any case. They were  strong, muscular looking people Jane had noticed, at the supper table the previous night . Ivan’s muscles looked tight below the cuffs of his sleeves.  They had a rakish air, a slightly disreputable look as if their clothes had been found in a second hand dealer shop. Ivan wore a red beret on his head covering his long unkempt hair and Monica wore a shabby looking mauve sarong,  tied about her neck.  It fell to her lumpy knees, hiding her muscular shape.

At last an unearthly quiet descended upon the clump of trees and bushes. Jane stretched uneasily and lifting her head saw the coast was clear. She stumbled along the path, too afraid to look  for a dead body  and  made her way as quickly as she could to the office.

“Wendy come quickly,  I think I have witnessed a probable murder,  which took place in front of my eyes.”

“ When? What? Here? But who would do such a thing? What were you doing?”

“ I was hiding in the bushes,” stuttered Jane, her mouth trembling with delayed reaction.

“ Why were you hiding in the bushes? Come let’s go and look.

“I heard them planning last night after supper,” said Jane breathlessly,  “and decided to find out what they were up to.”

Jane followed Wendy at a distance. They came to the trees and the clearing.  Wendy scouted around looking under branches and leaves, there was nothing t be seen.

“There is nothing here, see for yourself, not even a disturbance on the ground.”

“But I know there was someone injured or murdered right her. I heard them talking. I heard Monica say that it was too hard for her to drag the body out of sight.”

“Well where is the body then?” asked Wendy with a laugh.

“ I don’t understand . It was just a few minutes ago. It can’t have disappeared.”

“Jane are you feeling alright? Have you take your medication this morning? I will make you a cup of tea.”

“ I am perfectly fine thank you. You need not talk to me as if I am dreaming it all up. I tell you I heard Ivan and Monica planning. I think the least you can do is find them and ask what they are doing here.”

“ I will make you a cup of tea and I think you should take some calming medicine as well. And then go and lie down.”

Jane felt totally deflated. Maybe she had dreamt everything? Donald Harris her doctor, had implied that there was something wrong with her. The reason she had come to Beach Cottage.

Wendy put the kettle on to boil and Jane sat at the table, thinking .  How could she prove that a murder had taken place?

After tea she went out to the garden to the clearing. Looking carefully, she found the match and the stub of a Marlboro cigarette. Here was proof positive alright. They needn’t think she could be hoodwinked into believing she was mentally ill.

At the supper table Jane looked searchingly at Ivan and Monica.

“What were you doing in the garden this afternoon?”

“Who? Us? We were not in the garden we went shopping at the Beach Centre.”

They looked meaningfully at each other. Ivan tapped his head as if to indicate that a few chocolates were missing from Jane’s box of chocolates.

“Where is Edmund?”

“Oh Edmund has checked out.”

“You killed Edmund.”

“ Are you crazy?”

“Monica I heard you struggling to move the body.”

Right then, Monica gave a harsh laugh and getting to her feet she nodded at Ivan to get up. The two of them propelled  Jane out of the house and around to the garages.

Jane feeling terrified, had no choice but to go along. No one believed her story even though she had shown Wendy the cigarette.

At the garages, Ivan swung open the nearest door.

“ There!  What do you see?”

In  front of Jane was a gleaming white Nissan with a decal on the side, with the words

ROYAL GROUP THEATRE.

“You see, we were rehearsing for a murder mystery play due to open in December. But you were right, we are murderers, but only acting ones.”

 With that, they both doubled up laughing.