Open Writing

It had been a bad day at the office and she was anxious to get home as soon as she could. She needed to wash her hair before getting supper for the kids, thank heavens the traffic was fairly light and she made good time. So, it was only 5:10 pm when she pulled into the driveway of Alexandra’s pretty house and parked at the side of the sweeping flight of steps leading up to the airy verandah.

Running quickly up the steps she noted that all the windows in the front of the house were closed with blinds drawn and no sign of lights. But she wanted to return the book she’d borrowed. She’d discovered it was always better to give things back as soon as she’d finished with them. Otherwise, with her busy life and the kids to take care of, she’d found so often that the item was forgotten or pushed to the back of the silted up piles of stuff which constantly defied her fruitless efforts to keep the place tidy. Then months later, sometimes after minor unpleasantness with the original donor wanting her possessions back, and Phyllida’s emphatic statements that she’d ‘given it back months ago’ she’d find it at the bottom of a sports bag; underneath the cushions of the sofa, or somewhere equally maddening.

So, she pressed the bell again, looking around for some signs of movement or life – surely somebody must be home. Alexandra was also a working woman with a family to care for and the usual domestic cares, it was hardly likely that she would stay late at the office on a Monday. Most bosses wanted their staff to stay for meetings or work overtime on Wednesdays, Thursdays or Fridays – but seldom Mondays, a favoured evening for the bosses to catch up with their mates at the pub and rehash the weekend’s football matches.

After 10 minutes of futile waiting, just as she was looking through her bag for a piece of paper and a pen, she noticed the black woman, obviously the housemaid, quietly approaching from her quarters at the back of the house where she had been standing silently watching her since her arrival.

‘Evening Mama,’ she said politely, ‘Is the Madam here?’

The woman looked down, shuffling her feet in the sandy soil, obviously embarrassed and reluctant to reply. She glanced up fleetingly, but said nothing.

‘I asked you, is the Madam here?’ she repeated with more emphasis, ‘I need an answer, not your silence.’

Again the woman looked down, shuffling her feet once more. Then, very reluctantly, she raised her head and, not daring to meet Phyllida’s eye, said ”The Madam and Master are in bed They said they didn’t want to be disturbed.’’

Turning,she walked back to her quarters and stood watching her behind the half-closed door. Leaving the book by the front door without a note, Phyllida got into the car, and, gunning the motor, spun down the drive and turned into the thick evening traffic.

“Damn! What on earth was going on. Who comes home at 5 pm on a summer’s evening and jumps straight into bed? Unless, unless… Perhaps Peter had come back from his business trip early – that would explain it, they still seemed to be very much in love even though they’d two teenage daughters who probably thought their mother and father never made love. Obviously they wanted each other after the weeks he’d been away, and now the girls were at boarding school they’d seized the chance and jumped into bed the moment they got home. So Phyllida never gave the incident another thought, until a few days later, she was surprised by a telephone call at her office.

“This is Det. Sergeant Jack Simmons. Is that Mrs – or should I say Miss - Phyllida Patricks?” a no-nonsense voice enquired.

“Ye-e-ss,” she answered hesitantly, wondering what was coming next. From his emphasis on her title, and the offensive way he had stressed the ‘Miss’ she guessed that he knew she was an unmarried mother and might have heard about her colourful past. She felt he was going to be a man who took pleasure in intimidating women, and she flinched at what would be coming next.

“Did you visit the Fitzmaurice’s home on Monday this week?” his bullying voice continued, not giving her time to catch her breath.

“Yes, you obviously know I did. I called in for a few minutes to return a book I’d borrowed. I didn’t see either of them, just spoke to the maid who said they were in bed.”

“What time was this?” the rough voice continued.

“About 5:15 pm on Monday 4th” she replied obediently, anxious to end the conversation.

“Did you see anyone when you were there, hanging around outside – or waiting anywhere in the street?”

“No, of course I didn’t, and I any case, even if I had, it’s unlikely I would have taken much notice and certainly would not have spoken to them. I was just dropping off a book, not paying a formal visit.”

Well, thank you Miss Patricks,” the overbearing voice concluded, “I’ll contact you again if I need to know more.”

“I really don’t know what you think I can tell you,” she replied irritably, “I stopped at their house for a few minutes at 5:15 pm on Monday 4th. I knocked and rang the bell. The windows were closed and the curtains drawn and there were no lights on inside. I waited a minute or two and rang the bell again. The maid came from her quarters at the back of the house and told me her employers were in bed and they were not to be disturbed. I got back into my car and drove home. That’s all I know, and all I can tell you. Now will you please leave me alone and stop bothering me.”

A couple of days later the glaring newspaper headlines brought her up short.

‘CONSTANTIA COUPLE FOUND IN LUXURY HOUSE
WITH THROATS CUT.
SUSPECT ARRESTED.’

Letting out an exclamation of horror, she skimmed the account of how the maid had made the grisly discovery on Wednesday 6th, two days after the presumed date of death. She’d opened the house thinking something was wrong despite her employer’s earlier instructions not to be disturbed. Her story corroborated exactly the account Phyllida had given the police, which meant, Phyllida realised, that at least she would not be wanted for further questioning.

The maid said that when she had not seen or spoken to her employers for nearly two days, she became anxious and decided to ignore their instructions not to be disturbed, and found the bodies sprawled across the Persian carpet in the lounge. As far as was known, nothing had been stolen, although cupboards and drawers in the bedroom appeared to have been ransacked. Until the two daughters returned from boarding school in Johannesburg, there was nobody with sufficient knowledge of the family’s possessions to be able to verify the contents.

Months later, after a sensational trial, the following story emerged.

Alexandra and Peter, a wealthy couple with an active social conscience living in a beautiful luxury home in Constantia had attempted to rehabilitate Gregory, the son of their doctor friend who had ‘gone off the rails’ and become a drug addict. After his father had pulled every string possible to get him admitted to a specialist clinic, he was discharged some months later as cured. The Fitzmaurices, as a favour to their old friend, offered him work as their gardener/handyman and gave him lodging in their renovated stable-block.

Sadly, the so-called “rehabilitation” had not been successful, and within a few weeks the boy had reverted to drug-taking. In a sudden fit of anger and jealousy he had decided to hold his employers captive and force them to give him their money and valuables. It was while this capture was in progress that I had arrived at the house and rung the bell. This had frightened him into murdering them in a fit of pure panic and rage before ransacking their cupboards in an attempt to find the money and jewellery he felt sure was there.

After the murders he had returned to his room in the stables until it grew dark, then hitched a lift into Cape Town and caught a train to Johannesburg. He was finally arrested in a shady nightclub in Hillbrow and taken back to the Cape for questioning. At the end of a long trial he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

“And to think that if I’d got to the house a few minutes earlier, I might have been one of the victims,” Phyllida mused, a shiver of fear passing over her. “How lucky I was that I waited so politely before ringing the bell, and then left immediately after speaking to the maid. It could have been my last day on earth!”

Years later, Phyllida was involved in a relationship with a new lover and as part of their bedtime antics they agreed to tell one another their deepest secrets. “Have you ever done anything really, really outrageous, darling? Phyllida asked her gorgeous lover Ian.

“Yes, coupla times,” he replied carelessly, always prepared to comply with Phyllida’s strange demands and imaginative ideas for enlivening their sexual relationship.

“What did you do, then?” she asked, interested to know what this outwardly conventional, well-dressed and extremely successful businessman considered sufficiently bad to mention in their “Truth and Consequences” game at the risk of his international reputation and standing in society.

“Well…” he replied, “I had a marvellously powerful Harley Davidson, helmet, black leathers, gauntlets, the whole thing. One day I went for a breakfast run and far out in the country I came to a small rickety “Padstal’ (roadside café). It was a ‘Mom and Pop’ operation, run by an elderly couple to supplement their income. On an impulse I circled back a short distance, gunned the motor and drove right through the shop. Everything went flying, and the old couple tried to run away. I hunted them down, chasing them until they were both exhausted. Then I ran them over and rode away without a backward glance.”

“My God! That’s good… it will take something really big to cap your story!” Phyllida replied in admiration, wondering whether she should break her long silence by confessing to what she had done.

“Well, what nonsense have you been getting up to?” queried Ian, lying back as he watched her lifting the clouds of her dark, curling hair off her graceful swanlike neck, piling its lustrous fronds on the top of her head.

“Here, stop that,” he said suddenly, tiring of her posturing, patting the empty half of the bed next to him. “Come and lie here me, put your head on my shoulder and tell me what you’ve been up to.”

“Well…” she drawled, selecting a luscious strawberry from a plate and popping it into his waiting mouth. “It happened like this.”

“I’d been having a bit of an on-and-off sexy playtime with the Fitzmaurice’s boarder, the son of their doctor. He’d been having treatment for drug addiction, and although he was considered cured, I was getting him supplies from a dealer I knew in Observatory, near the university. I expect you know who I mean…” this last, with a little chuckle and a meaning look in Ian’s direction.

“He was growing to depend on me and the regular supply of drugs and was blackmailing me with threats that if I stopped getting them for him, he’d spill the beans to the Fitzmaurices and his father and get me arrested as a pusher and a prostitute. Now, I couldn’t have that - could I? so I decided to set him up and get rid of him and the Fitzmaurices in one go.”

“I worked on him, he was very impressionable, you know, and I only had to put an idea into his head for him to believe it, saying that the Fitzmaurices knew all about what we had been up to, having sex in their bedroom whenever we could, and they also knew he was taking drugs again. I told him that any minute now they were going to do a full-scale exposé to the papers and he would be locked up for the rest of his life. He believed everything I told him, poor impressionable young fool, and with enough pressure, and repeating the right word or two over the next couple of days, I soon got him to the point of doing what I wanted. We only had to wait for the right time, with the maid out of the house and Peter Fitzmaurice back from his business trip. I knew he and Sheila would have a good romp the moment he got back, they were both very randy you know, and always liked a good ‘welcome home’ session. This would be the ideal moment to catch them off their guard, which is exactly what Gregory did, they were both concentrating on what was coming, they did not even notice he was in the house. He caught them in the lounge and slit their throats, then hid in the dark little cupboard under the stairs until it grew dark. He slipped out of the house through a side door, and as he was always in and out all the time, nobody thought anything of it that his prints were all over the place. You know the rest of what happened to him, and how he was found in a Hillbrow nightclub, tried, found guilty and sent to prison for the rest of his life.”

“Yes, I know the last part of the story,” Ian interrupted irritated, “but, why did you go to the house, claiming to want to return a book?”

“Oh that!” Phyllida said carelessly, “I had to establish my whereabouts by proving that I never went into the house that day. I needed the maid to see me, to corroborate what I had planned to say. Then, if anybody made a link between me and the Fitzmaurices (you knew I was sleeping with Peter as well as Gregory, didn’t you?) I had a witness to prove that I’d never been inside, and had left immediately after speaking to her. It was all so easy, I could hardly believe it. And now the best thing of all is that I got rid of two idle society leeches who did nothing for anybody except themselves, and this witless young druggie. I’m been basking in the glow of my achievement ever since.”

And with that, she reached under the bed for the ice-pick she had previously concealed and plunged it deep into her lover’s heart, revelling in her power.