Free The Wimbledon Poisoner by Nigel Williams Page B

Thallium in the oven, and then checked his watch again. He thought about the dignified posture of Elinor and Elinor’s mother, about how good they looked in black, about how they retained their composure even as the oblong box containing Derek slid off through a gap in the crematorium wall. About how, as Elinor and Elinor’s mother stood by the flowers in the rain at Putney Vale Crematorium, someone had said to him, ‘They’re taking it very well!’ Of course they were, thought Henry, they couldn’t give a toss about the poor bastard.
    He would wear his black leather jacket at Elinor’s funeral. And the green socks. And the red shoes. He would deck himself out in the kind of clothes that would give most offence to her were she alive. And if Elinor’s mother should break down he would sob operatically and people would say to each other, as he stood by the flowers afterwards, ‘My, my. He is taking it badly.’
    It was six forty-five. He turned the oven on to 250 and put the okra and the edenwort on to a low heat. In approximately one hour she would be getting her chops round the first succulent mouthful of Chicken Thallium. By midnight she would be experiencing severe abdominal discomfort.
    Whistling to himself, Henry laid the table, while, in the corner of the kitchen, Maisie finished her last chocolate bar and got to work on a packet of crisps, a tube of Rolos, half a pound of jelly babies and a jumbo bar of Turkish delight. As she ate she cast worried glances up towards the cupboard by the stove, where lay a small sack of potato crisps, some Liquorice Allsorts and two packets of biscuits. Sometimes Henry wondered whether the junk food industry was going to be able to take the kind of demands Maisie was going to make on it in the years ahead.
    Occasionally, for some obscure reason of her own, Elinor was pleasant. Henry could not quite work out why, since her pleasantness was not always followed by a request for money or some other favour; perhaps she was remembering something he had quite forgotten, an incident during their courtship perhaps (they must have had a courtship) or a Henry, now lost to Henry himself, who could have inspired feelings such as pleasure. Or perhaps this was part of some internal clock of hers and, at some moments, often weeks or months apart, Elinor was programmed to be briefly but definitely pleasant.
    It always threw him.
    ‘Hullo, darling!’ she said, as she came round the kitchen door in her black trouser-suit, her black hair swept back under an Alice band. ‘I’ve had a lovely sleep!’
    Henry looked at her suspiciously. Why is she saying this? he thought. What has she got in mind?
    She crossed the kitchen floor and pecked him on the cheek.
    ‘Sorry I was cross!’ she said. Her voice was light, tremulous. Perhaps she was planning to murder him!
    ‘You’re making supper!’ she said.
    ‘That’s right!’
    With just a hint of normal, workaday Elinor, she pointed a stubby finger at the vegetables.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘It’s edenwort, darling,’ said Henry. ‘It’s a new vegetable!’
    Elinor did not pick up the pan and hurl it across the room. She scooped up a little on her forefinger and nibbled at it.
    ‘It’s rather nice!’
    ‘And I’ve done chicken!’ said Henry. ‘Free-range chicken. How you like it. All crispy in the oven. Topped with . . .’
    ‘What’s it topped with?’ said Elinor suspiciously.
    ‘Lovely herbs!’ said Henry. ‘Lovely fresh herbs from the garden picked all fresh and with no chemicals on!’
    ‘Mmmm!’ she said.
    And skipped off towards Maisie who, at the first sound of her mother’s footsteps, had concealed her cache of sweets under her jersey.
    Perhaps, thought Henry, she was appealing to his better feelings. She was making herself difficult to kill on humanitarian grounds. He watched her as she danced a few larky steps with her daughter, singing in an effortfully pure soprano while Maisie shuffled along trying to keep the sweets