Death Waits for Some Men

Chapter V: In Which There is Too Much and Too Little Healthy Eating

...there is nobody with such a strong bias towards honesty as the man who has just come out of prison. It stands to reason. If you had been laid up for a year in hospital as the result of jumping off this roof, what would be the one outdoor sport in which, on emerging, you would be most reluctant to indulge? Jumping off roofs, undoubtedly. -- P. G. Wodehouse, The Small Bachelor

There was nothing like three plates of boiled kale a day to make arsenic look attractive.

Even Nancy was struggling to keep up the pretence. Ruth, she knew, had given up after the first day of healthy eating. Oh, she pretended to be as fanatical as Nancy supposedly was. But as soon as no one was around, she threw the tasteless-gunk-du-jour in the bin. Then she went to one of the many lakeside cafés and found solace in a steak-and-kidney pie.

Nancy, alas, subscribed to the idea that if she said she was doing a thing, she might as well actually do it. She had told Louise that she was going on an ultra-healthy diet. So she was going to stick to the diet until Stephen and Louise were dead — or until she died of a kale overdose.

"I've made our tea!" Ruth said, bringing in two cups of peppermint tea.

That was the other main problem with this plan. Nancy hated mint. Ruth loved it. The endless succession of mint teas and mint sauces were the only part of this plan that Ruth liked.

Nancy managed a sickly smile and sipped at her tea. She kept an eye on Stephen, who was reading his newspaper on the other side of the sitting room. When she was sure he wasn't looking, she up-ended the sugar bowl into her cup.

The only good part of the last two weeks was Louise's absence. Either she had accidentally poisoned herself, or she'd had a complete nervous breakdown after the boat sank. At any rate she'd taken to her bed and would complain to anyone who'd listen about how ill she felt, how no one knew what she suffered, and how none of them had any respect for her poor nerves.

Stephen, unfortunately, remained the picture of health. He spent most of his days absorbed in redecorating the garage, when he wasn't reading the newspaper. The good thing was, this meant Nancy and Ruth could come and go without question. The bad thing was, with Louise out of commission, who had substituted toadstools for mushrooms yesterday?

As attempted murders went, that one would have worked on anyone who was less paranoid. Nancy had taken one look at the supposed mushrooms, thought "Now there's a murder weapon if ever I saw one!", and had taken them to her science teacher for examination. Sure enough, they had been poisonous.

Nancy had suspected Ruth, right until she had remembered that Stephen had bought the mushrooms and prepared them himself. It seemed utterly ludicrous to suspect Stephen of trying to kill them. He must have made a disastrous mistake.

All the same, Nancy wasn't going to eat anything cooked in this house. So she had no refuge from sickeningly-healthy food.

When she finished lunch she went out to the car. Force of habit meant she checked the brakes, the fuel, and everything else that could possibly have been tampered with. Very carefully she turned the key. The engine rattled to life.

Nancy climbed in and released the handbrake slowly. The car began to roll forward. She panicked and slammed on the brakes. The car stopped. Ah. It was parked on a hill. That was all. She shook her head as if she could physically banish her absurd ideas about a remote-controlled car running into the lake.

She had already searched the nearest town for pennyroyal oil. Not only did the town not have any, it didn't even have a health food store where she could order it. So she headed for the larger town fourteen miles away. Surely it would have a health food store!