I went back to Langley Hall to face the issue of the body. I’d previously shied away from killing him in the house because of the difficulties I’d encounter in moving him anywhere. Circumstances had overtaken me now, but that still didn’t mean I was strong enough to carry him out of the house. I imagined getting him as far as the car, but not being able to get him off the ground and into the boot, then being found by the postman, a leafleteer, or a Jehovah’s Witness.
And anyway, where would I take him? Digging a hole somewhere was too risky, and I’d already learned that floating him down the river was not a good way to go about it. I could’ve done with James’s help; in fairness he would have had a cool head and some useful ideas.
I was left with dismemberment, which I had already rejected as being too gruesome, but it was starting to look like Hobson’s choice.
I couldn’t see myself cutting through joints and scattering limbs around the district, but I had an idea for a variation on the theme. A bit of searching on a vividly illustrated primary schools’ educational website soon gave me all the information I needed.
You take the brain out through the nose. You have to stick a hook up through the nostril first and mush it all up. I went to my sewing box and took out the tools of abandoned projects: crochet hooks and knitting needles. I tried a crochet hook first, but it wasn’t quite long enough and I had to get started with a knitting needle. It worked better than expected, though, and the mess could be cleared up with a few towels.
After that, I went out into the garden to reset. It was a gruesome job, and it wasn’t going to get any nicer. After clearing my head, so to speak, I headed back in, passing through the kitchen, where the rest of the deadly nightshade cake was still on the worktop. I shoved it deep into the bottom of the bin.
I wandered through the house looking for something to put under the body. Eventually, I found a huge blue IKEA bag in a dark corner of Mr. Billings’s shed. It must’ve been his own because most of our furniture was antique, and what wasn’t was custom made. I hoped he wouldn’t mind me borrowing it. If he knew what I was borrowing it for, he probably would.
Still, I couldn’t really go on Amazon and put in an order for polyethylene sheeting. For a start, next-day delivery would not be soon enough. And I couldn’t go to the shops and look for it myself. What if I met someone I knew?
“Ooh! That’s a lot of polyethylene, Daisy!” they’d say. “Are you cutting up a body?”
So I took the IKEA bag upstairs, laid it on the floor, and pulled James down from the bed onto it. Next up was internal organs.
I cut his clothes off and he lay naked on the sheet. It was the first time for many moons I’d seen him like that. I hadn’t missed it. My mind wandered to Arty, but I got a grip and focused on the task in hand. The instructions said to make a slit along his side, but that made no sense to me, he had ribs all the way along his side. I decided to do it along the front—after all, the instructions were a guide only. I’d already skipped step one, where I was supposed to wash him in either wine or water from the river Nile, and I would not be storing the organs in animal-shaped jars, which was step four.
I wasn’t sure I could do it. I felt ill just at the idea of his insides spilling out, but it was a bit late for changing my mind. A dead body in the house would be hard to explain—a dead body with a missing brain even more so.
I fetched a carving knife, washing-up gloves, and a bucket. I wrapped a scarf around my mouth and nose, and I cut…
Oh! The blood! The instructions didn’t say anything about blood. They’d seemed comprehensive and straightforward, but now that I was using them, I found they weren’t fit for purpose. I wondered what other little surprises I might find along the way.
I needed to think quickly before it spilled off the IKEA bag and into the carpet; I could not have that. At least, having cut him along his front instead of his side, it wasn’t flowing all over the place. That deviation from the instructions was to my credit.
I went upstairs to the old, old cupboards and brought down all the curtains, linen, lace, and vintage clothing I could find. I piled it around James. Then I tilted him sideways and the blood began to ooze out onto the materials, where it was soaked up.
It took ages. I filled the bath with cold water, as Mrs. Billings had advised me to do for blood back in the happy days when the only blood-stained cloth I had to hide was the rag I’d held against Lennie’s head. Whenever a piece of material was sodden, I transferred it to the bath, to rinse, but it wasn’t as simple as that—of course it wasn’t. Every piece of material was so drenched with blood, it turned the water red as soon as I put it in and I had to rinse it over and over again.
As I worked I sang a song to myself that we’d sung when we’d done our school Egyptians project all those years ago. It was about a pharaoh called Ramesses. But after a while I needed to hear other voices, so I fetched the radio from the old kitchen and listened to the usual local station. They were having a phone-in; they wanted us to get in touch to let them know what we were doing that afternoon.
“See if you can surprise us!” the presenter said. I managed to resist the temptation.
All the cloth I used wouldn’t fit in one bathtub. Soon the bathtubs in my own bathroom and both the guest baths were filled withbloody evidence. It felt like it would never end. I took a break to look up “how many pints of blood in a human body.” The answer was eight to twelve. It seemed there should be a zero on the end of that. And all the way through it, I had to remember to stop, to message James and ask him, “What time will you be home?” and “Did you see my message?” and “Where are you?” to create a credible story when I reported him as missing.
I went through a cycle of resolve, determination, despair, and then, finally, relief, when the flow slowed. But there was no real relief. It was time to go back to the script and deal with the organs.
They were every bit as bad as I had imagined. In fact, they were worse than the blood because at least I had seen blood before. The washing-up gloves I was wearing made it harder because I kept losing my grip, but I didn’t want to touch them with my bare hands. Eventually, with several fresh air breaks, it was done and I carried them, in the bucket, downstairs and out to the back garden. I couldn’t leave them long, but I had a bit of time to decide whether to bury or burn. Meanwhile, I went back upstairs.
I surveyed the scene. The carpets had come out of it unscathed, which was cause for great celebration, but the IKEA bag was a mess. Furthermore, I had four baths full of blood-soaked cloths. And the smell was sickening. I opened every window.
I wondered what my mum would say if she could see me now. Probably, “Tidy this mess up at once, Daisy!” And that would be good advice.
I rinsed the soaking materials until I could carry them without blood dripping off them, then took the first load to the washing machine. I hauled the IKEA bag into the bath to rinse it off, until it was clean enough to carry downstairs. Outside, I finished it off with the hose.
I didn’t need to eat—I didn’t think I’d ever want to eat again—but I needed to rest for a few minutes and to think of blue skies, fresh meadows, sea air, anything other than what was upstairs. And I needed to get changed. My old clothes went into the bath to soak, although ultimately they would be thrown away.
The next step was to stuff James to recreate his shape, and truth to tell, he was looking a bit saggy around the middle. The instructions called for straw, sawdust, or rags, but the rags were all in the washing machine, or waiting to go in. As soon as the first load was done, I tumble dried it and took it back to the scene.
Every item was unrecognizable as to what it had originally been. They were all old, old pieces, many of them made before the days of modern machines, and the spin cycle had ruined them. Before, that would have saddened me. Now it was a tragedy I could not waste tears over. I began to stuff James full. I got a little bit carried away—he had something of a bulge by the time I’d finished—but I didn’t want to take anything out, so I left him that way and went on to the next step, the salting.
For this, I needed natron and the purpose was to dry him out, but a quick look online made it clear I wasn’t going to be able to get natron salt, so I went to the kitchen for a box of Saxa. I sprinkled him liberally and hoped it would work in the same way. I had to do it every day for forty days. I was going to need a lot of salt, and a new tally on my wall.
I wrapped James in a new sheet and dragged him down to the priest hole. He was lighter, without his brain and his insides, but still quite a weight to haul. Then I went back outside and fetched the IKEA bag in again to put underneath him; I wasn’t sure what to expect in the way of mess in the days ahead.
