AHMM, Jul-Aug 2005 Read online

  But Stanley's contempt for Erica was never physical. The problem was just that she had a second-class mind. That was the phrase he always used, and the one she had almost come to accept. He would outline his theory to her at every opportunity, with illustrations to vindicate his thesis. Stanley Hatch thought in terms of theses. He was a university lecturer who dealt in such things, who was used to outlining a view and then providing the evidence to substantiate it. He taught English Literature, and most of the views he enunciated were, had he chosen to admit it, not original. Stanley rarely departed from the current acceptable view on an author, as established by the contemporary critics. He had seen the rise and fall of the reputation of D. H. Lawrence, for instance, and accommodated himself to the changing critical times. At work, he never took a chance with an original opinion.

  At home, things were quite different. Behind the Victorian walls of his North Oxford house, Stanley Hatch not only reigned supreme but showed a lofty disdain for the only other occupant. It was worse in small things than in large ones, Erica decided. He would throw an appropriate quotation for a situation at her. If she could not respond in kind, he treated her as if she were a cretin. If she attempted an answering quotation of her own, he told her how inapt it was or, worse still, corrected her inaccuracy.

  Erica Hatch was a historian herself, who had enjoyed some standing in the university until she had allowed the responsibilities of rearing four children to take her away from that work. She regretted giving up her lectureship now, but times had been different then. And Stanley, of course, had been insistent; as Erica was confined increasingly to the roles of housewife and mother, he became patronizing of her efforts and her intellect. She could correct him on almost any historical detail, and occasionally did, but her husband scarcely seemed to notice his error or acknowledge the expertise of his corrector. Second-class mind, he said, with a knowing smile—worthy enough, but scarcely to be allowed opinions of her own.

  He had said it first as a joke. It had never been a very good joke, but at least a joke implied the view was not to be taken seriously. But with repetition and development over the years, the idea had become very serious indeed. It hadn't been too bad whilst the children were still at home, Erica reflected. But now, with the four of them married and making their way in other parts of the world, Stanley's problem seemed to have got worse. She had always thought of it as Stanley's problem, not hers. She was a charitable woman, Erica Hatch. Then one night he asked her to go with him to a university function, and from then on she became less charitable.

  She didn't want to go when Stanley first suggested it. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak, she said, with an apologetic smile. Stanley Hatch bathed her in his superior smile. “I think you'll find the accurate Biblical verse says that ‘The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak,’ dear. Matthew, I believe. You probably don't think that the omission is important, in something so hackneyed, but I'm sure old Matthew would like to be quoted accurately, if at all."

  The real reason Erica didn't want to go was something much more downmarket. She hadn't anything to wear, but she daren't submit that ancient idea to Stanley's withering scrutiny. She had long since ceased going to gatherings at the university, partly because she now felt out of touch with young academics and their aspirations, with their talk of publications and the increasingly obscure intellectual corners where original research had to be done. She was nearly sixty now, and these retreats from real life had long ago lost their fascination for her. She was reluctant to go partly because of that, but much more because she did not want to feel the edge of her husband's acerbic tongue, to see himself belittling himself in other people's eyes by the patronizing way in which he treated her.

  Stanley was sixty himself now, increasingly out of touch with his colleagues and the newer areas of university study. But he did not seem to see that. Or perhaps he did, thought Erica, and the way he treated her compensated for the deprivations he endured in his working life.

  In spite of everything, she got out the evening dress she had last worn years ago, ironed it, and wondered if she would be over-dressed. Probably, but there didn't seem to be any alternative; her more casual things were hideously out of date. At least the evening dress was high-necked and long-sleeved. She wouldn't have to expose acres of wizening skin to the pitiless gaze of younger women, whilst they made remarks about mutton dressed as lamb. She couldn't understand why Stan wanted her to go. Nowadays, he only attended such occasions himself when he could not get out of them. Yet he was suddenly insistent. He even told her she looked nice, as she stood uncertainly in front of the mirror.

  "We'll get a taxi if you like,” he said magnanimously. “So that you'll be able to make a fool of yourself with the drinks, without worrying about the consequences."

  She smiled bleakly at the reflection of the two of them in the mirror. She said, “It's all right, I'll drive. I shan't want to drink much. You can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, you know."

  "Lead a horse, I think you'll find the proverb says,” said Stanley Hatch automatically. “And I'm pretty sure it's that you can't make him drink. You have the sense of it all right, but one prefers to be accurate."

  Erica refrained from pointing out that as proverbs were handed down orally, there was no original source, and they might well come to us in slightly different forms.

  At least she was pleased with her hair. The modern styles were becoming, and the tint the girl had added had brightened her up without looking garish.

  The function was nothing like as bad as she had feared when she got there. She always enjoyed the college buildings, found that the centuries of history around her were a calming influence. She said as much to Stan after she had parked the car. He looked up at the old stone elevations appreciatively. “Henry the Eighth did some good things after all, you see. He wasn't just a man with the right idea about getting rid of unwanted wives!"

  She thought that was an unusual thing for him to say. The reference to the execution of Henry's wives was much broader than his usual kind of joke. “It was Henry the Sixth, actually, who set up this place,” she said loftily, and swept through the ancient portals before he could make any rejoinder. Perhaps she was going to enjoy the evening after all.

  She did. There were more out-of-date and certainly more outlandish outfits than hers, and she even received a few compliments. She met some old friends that she had not seen for years, and was gratified by the warmth with which they greeted her. The man with the Chair in Medieval History even made noises about needing someone of her caliber in his department, and asked if she might be available for a few hours a week. She said that she might be interested, striving not to be excited by the thought that this would put her husband's nose out of joint. She had noticed Stan in conversation with a younger woman, registered how the two of them kept glancing in her direction. But she had been enjoying herself too much to take much notice. In truth, it was good to have a conversation with someone other than Stan, to have some reaction to her views beyond his skepticism.

  She was startled when she heard him say, “Erica, I'd like you to meet a new colleague of mine. This is Pamela Babcock."

  She turned to look into the slightly nervous face of a forty-year-old woman. She was tall, with swept-back dark hair and deep brown eyes. She had a prominent nose and a wide mouth with a fixed, determined smile. She wore a low-cut blouse which showed the tops of what were probably very good breasts. Erica stifled a shaft of jealousy as she noticed how smooth and creamy this woman's skin was. Stan plainly wanted his wife to approve of the woman. Erica saw how uneasy he was, and divined that he was probably smitten with her. No great harm in that, Erica thought coolly. No doubt he wouldn't have the guts to do anything about it, even if this new colleague of his was foolish enough to encourage him.

  She was surprised by how little she cared. At one time, when they were first married, she would have been jealous. Now she couldn't believe anyone would be interest
ed in him, with his prissiness and his pedagogy, his insistence upon the details of life that did not matter.

  It was when she was driving him home that he said through the darkness, “What did you think of Pamela?"

  She sensed that he had keyed himself up for the question, and was amused by his unsuccessful attempt to sound casual. “Was that the woman from your department? The one you brought across to introduce to me? Pleasant enough, I suppose. A bit horsey, but she can't help that, can she?” Erica was surprised how much she was enjoying the exchange.

  "She's a very able woman, Pamela. Very able. An expert on Milton and Dryden."

  "Bit passé, that, isn't it? Students find old Milton difficult, now that most of them don't do Latin. Do the students like her?"

  "I don't know. I expect so."

  She could hear the irritation in his voice; she tried not to be too pleased by it but failed. She said casually, “Henry Martin offered me a part-time job."

  "I shouldn't rely on it. Everyone had had too much to drink."

  "This was quite early on. And Henry was on orange juice."

  "I'm surprised you'd even consider it. You must be thoroughly out of date by this time.” She could hear the pique in his voice and it made her bold. She pulled up abruptly as a traffic light changed to amber as they approached it, enjoying seeing his body lurch forward against his safety belt beside her as he threw up his hands towards the dashboard.

  "I've kept up my interest, over the years. There are one or two new major biographies, but no earth-shattering research discoveries. The world of Medieval History hasn't changed a lot, not at undergraduate level.” She managed to sound much more confident than she felt.

  Stanley Hatch was not used to this assertiveness. He said sulkily, “I thought you could have been a bit more friendly towards Pamela Babcock. She's been waiting to meet you."

  So that's why he wanted me to go, she thought. Get the wifely approval, let his colleagues see that she knew the woman and was friendly with her. She wondered if there was already gossip. She didn't think Stan would be bold enough to take such chances, but you never knew, when sex was involved: nothing upset judgment faster than sex. She smiled in the darkness as they eased away from the lights and she prepared to indicate the left turn that would lead them into the quiet road where their house stood.

  "Got a bit of a thing going with Miss Babcock, have you?"

  "Of course I haven't! I wish you wouldn't be so flippant, Erica. She's a first-rate mind and a nice lady, that's all."

  Erica turned carefully into the drive. “Only you wouldn't want me to be jealous, would you? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and all that."

  Stanley Hatch levered himself stiffly out of the car. “The correct tag is ‘Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned.’ It's Congreve."

  In the days that followed, she saw less of Stan than usual. That was no hardship. She read a long biography of the wretched boy-king, Henry the Sixth, and a few historical articles which she collected from the Bodleian.

  "You're wasting your time,” said Stan. “A great university doesn't employ second-class minds, even in these days of declining standards."

  Then, just when she thought that Stan might be right after all, the phone call came. The great man Henry Martin himself, no less. She wondered aloud to him whether she was still up to it, whether she could still mix it with the best minds in the country.

  "On the contrary, we'd be very lucky to have you. You'll enjoy the students and they'll enjoy you. I never thought I'd get anyone of your caliber for a part-time job, Erica."

  She dropped it in casually to Stan that evening.

  "They must be scraping the bottom of the barrel,” he said.

  But with the words of the most eminent historian in the land still ringing in her ears, Erica scarcely heard him.

  Stan looked at her curiously. He was not used to seeing such animation in his wife. He said, as though announcing a punishment, “I shall be away at the weekend. At a conference in Bournemouth."

  She hardly registered it. But she knew university bigwigs met for conferences in great universities, not in seaside towns. The next day, she rang the Bournemouth hotel where she and Stan had stayed four years previously to check the registration. It was there all right; a double room in the name of Mr. and Mrs. S. Hatch. He couldn't even be bothered to think up a false name.

  She noted over the following week how preoccupied he seemed, how concerned with the new life he saw opening up for him with Pamela Babcock. He told his wife frequently what a fine mind his new love had. Erica thought from the conversation she had conducted with the woman that she was rather limited and humorless. That was probably unfair, but she wasn't too worried about fairness in this context. She knew that things were serious when, after his third mention of Pamela in one evening, she said that it was as well for him that she felt no painful prickings from Jealousy, the green-eyed monster.

  Stan didn't bother either to pinpoint the quotation or to correct the detail of it. He was plainly not his normal self at all.

  Erica rather wished she felt more concerned about the activities of the pair than she did. She was more concerned with the preparations for her own new life; she was to begin teaching in the new year. She tried to discuss the arrangements for Christmas with Stan, to raise some enthusiasm in him for the children and grandchildren who were coming to stay in the old Victorian house.

  "Jenny won't be able to make it, as we thought,” said Erica. “She's due to deliver on the twelfth of January, and it's much too near the event for her to travel two hundred miles."

  "Ah!” said Stanley Hatch. Then, because he could never resist even an inappropriate quotation, he intoned, “'How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is, To have a thankless child.'” He nodded a couple of times, then added unnecessarily, “King Lear."

  Erica sprang automatically to the defense of her daughter. “That's scarcely fair! Or even intellectually convincing. You remind me of Dickens's description of a man rather like you: ‘He'd be sharper than a serpent's tooth, if he wasn't as dull as ditch water.’”

  Stanley stared at her. He couldn't even pinpoint that quotation, never mind correct her.

  It was thirty seconds before Erica added as an afterthought, “Fanny Cleaver, I believe. A somewhat obscure work, but I thought you might have known the tag. Particularly as it's so appropriate, in your case."

  Stanley Hatch could not remember when, if ever, he had ever heard such waspishness from his wife. He consoled himself with the thought that he wouldn't have to endure it much longer. He could not think of a pertinent quotation, so he fell back on a sneer. “I leave all the Christmas arrangements to you, my dear. It seems an appropriate activity for a second-class mind."

  Erica in her new-found confidence thought that he was really quite pathetic.

  It was three days later that she decided that he might be planning to kill her. Stan had discovered emails rather late in his life, and he was so pleased with himself that he did not trouble to take the precautions he should have, no doubt thinking such details beneath a first-class mind like his.

  Erica discovered the email to Pamela three hours after he had sent it. She read of the new life Stan was planning with the desirable if slightly horsey Miss Babcock, and decided she must take certain precautions. It would have shaken her husband to know that. But it would not have altered his plans. He had already decided that he could not afford divorce. The money in the family was Erica's, and he would not be able to live in the style he planned without it. The ricin he had kept locked in the top drawer of his bureau for the last three years seemed now to have been placed there by fate, not by his own hands, which were too mean to throw anything away. His friend had been an anaesthetist at the John Radcliffe hospital, who also taught in the university medical department. Being a natural experimenter, he had offered Stanley the poison to dispose of a nest of mice, and it had proved itself most effective. It was also almost undetectable in the human body, he believed.
Stanley Hatch hadn't told anyone about the ricin he had retained, and his friend the anaesthetist had died last year. Stanley didn't know whether the poison deteriorated with time, but he couldn't see how he could lose out by trying it, since it was undetectable anyway. The doctor would no doubt put the death down to heart failure. Everyone would be very sympathetic to the grieving widower. After a decent interval, he would marry Pamela, who would be a source of comfort to him in his tragic loss. He wouldn't tell anyone, not even Pamela, about the real cause of Erica's death.

  Stanley Hatch began to enjoy the preparation and anticipation of his coup. “The justice of it pleases,” he quoted happily to himself. It did not occur to him that those words were Othello's, who was making a terrible mistake about his wife at the time.

  It was after term was over, five days before Christmas, that he put the ricin into Erica's after-dinner port. They drank in tandem, as if some stage direction dictated that they should mirror each other's movements. He watched her closely, to see how she would react.