Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018
- Автор: Ловси Питер, Зельцерман Дэйв
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018». Краткое содержание книги:
You probably don’t know about the Angel Makers. I didn’t neither, till I read it in the papers, but it was around the turn of the century it started. In Hungary, in case I hadn’t said, when a midwife turned up in some remote farming village, a widow, though no one there had ever met or knew the husband. Gawd knows how he died. Anyway, as well as delivering babies and generally healing people (there being no resident doctors in remote farming villages), this woman performed abortions. Which, of course, was as illegal then as they are now, and though she was arrested a dozen times or more, no judge felt inclined to imprison her for what they themselves supported.
So far, so good, but then the Great War kicked off, didn’t it? The men went off to fight (not sure which side), while prisoners of war were held in nearby camps and tasked with working the land in the farmers’ absence. Well, you don’t need to be a genius to guess what happened next. Women, married off as teenage brides to husbands chosen for them, quickly found a strong-backed outlet for their repression. And when the war was over, they reasoned there had to be an alternative to the old days of subjugation. Especially when a number of their husbands were abusive alcoholics, and divorce was not an option.
This is where the midwife came into her own. She boiled the arsenic off strips of flypaper and sold it (120 penges down, 120 more after the funeral, another 120 when the estate was settled) to whoever needed it. Which, it seemed, was pretty much everyone! It was said three hundred people were poisoned by the ladies of Nagyrév, but that sounds an awful lot for one remote farming village. One thing’s for sure, though. Of the fifty bodies that was dug up, forty-six contained arsenic. Hence the name, the Angel Makers.
“I never bought a gram of arsenic in my life,” I protested at the trial. “You ask any of the chemists. Not one bleedin’ grain.”
“You did buy flypapers, though, did you not?” Oh, he was smarmy, that QC. Thought he had me there.
“We was plagued with flies, ask anyone. What with the orchard at the back.”
Take that!
“And so you used, what? Ten flypapers a day, every day? One an hour?”
I can hear the laughter from the gallery, even now. Same horsey snorts I remembered oh so well from school, when I fumbled with my protractor and compasses, couldn’t draw for toffees, and was hauled up before Headmaster for telling tales on Phyllis Hall and Joycie White. Yeah, well, laugh away, ’cause how many of them could have done their husbands in and not been caught?
Like I said. Me and my big mouth.
You think I did it because of the excitement, don’t you? That I was sick of cutting paper patterns, riffling through fusty attic throwaways, wearing collars that made you feel like you had a noose around your neck. Wrong. Boring, all that small talk, I’ll agree. But that was the life I’d chosen, I was happy with my lot. Me and Richard, shake, rattling, and rolling until his chest became too weak, and he threw his reduced energies into building up parish activities with things like Beetle drives and relief funds. All good works, I grant you, and people loved him for it — and that’s the point. They loved me too. Not in the same way. Obviously. But once one illness rolled into another then another, that weren’t no life for him, poor sod. He was better off out of it, he really was. And I swear to God, on my dear mother’s grave, Richard didn’t suffer. Leastways, no worse than all the things he’d gone through a dozen times before, so he was used to it when you look at it like that — and come on. With all them pies and tarts and soups and stews, there were so many opportunities to slip the arsenic in, and the doctor, bless his cotton socks, did not suspect a thing. (Strained back indeed!)
I honestly believed that, when Richard was gone and there was no more holding sick bowls under him or helping him on and off the toilet, his parishioners would look out for the Widow Jenkins. That they’d find a little house for me, bring me gifts and food, and I’d return the favour by pitching in with Beetle drives and stuff. I would. Give back some of the kindness they’d given me, because when it boils down to it, we all want to be loved, don’t we?
Instead, I’m lying in the dark with nothing for company except the cold, my memories of Richard, and that long slow dance through the passage of time.
An owl hoots from the ancient, spreading oak. Voles rustle through the fallen leaves along the hedgerow. The bell of St. Giles tolls four.
I’d known my grave would be this lonely, I’d have asked to be cremated.
© 2018 by Marilyn Todd
The Screening
by Jehane Sharah
Australian writer Jehane Sharah currently lives in Washington, D.C., but this evocative story (her first professional fiction sale) is set “down under,” a few hours from her native Canberra. She is currently completing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland, where she also teaches English 101.
Ray rarely paid much attention to the conversations between his wife Patricia and her best friend Jolene, whose voice reminded him of the harsh cries of the sulphur-crested cockatoos that attacked their plum trees every afternoon at dusk. But today they were talking about the murder. The DNA screening.
The three of them sat round the table in the living room. The doors to the back deck were open and a slight breeze rose up from Twofold Bay below. Jolene came over for drinks every Thursday. “Sundowners with a view,” she called their get-togethers. But two days ago the Rural Fire Service had lost control of a back-burning operation and now the eucalypts that dotted the gully all the way down to Cocora Beach were charred and lifeless.
“It’s sundowners without a view for the next few months, I’m afraid,” Patricia said, opening a bottle of chardonnay.
“Bloody idiots. It’s lucky they didn’t start a full-blown bushfire,” Jolene said, unwrapping a box of Camembert and placing it on a cheese plate. “Hey, did you see the article in The Magnet?”
“I know. Can you believe it? Every man — every single man!” Patricia said.
“And boys too,” Jolene said.
Patricia nodded. “Boys over the age of fourteen. Or was it sixteen? Gosh, imagine if it was a kid who did it. Just terrible.”
She placed a glass of wine in front of Jolene and turned to Ray. “Do you want chardonnay or beer, love?”
Ray was staring into the distance, studying a white dot circling over the bay. A white-bellied sea eagle, maybe, but he’d need to get his binoculars out to be sure. He wondered if he should tell Patricia what he’d done.
“Hello? Earth to Ray?” Patricia rolled her eyes at Jolene. “He’s been like this all day. Don’t know what’s got into him.”
Ray glanced up. “Hmmm? Oh. Beer, thanks, love. But I’ll get it.” He stood up with a slight groan and walked over to the Coola Can fridge that Patricia had got him last Christmas and slid the top off, grabbing a can of VB from within.
“Hmmm,” Jolene said, her tongue trying to navigate the water cracker she’d just stuffed in her mouth. “You wouldn’t believe Stanley down at the RSL club last night. Drunk as a pissant, he was. Kept saying, ‘No one’s getting their hands on my DNA.’ I don’t think he even knows what DNA is.”
“Well, as far as I’m concerned, if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Patricia said, pursing her lips.