Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

They’re trying to be kind. Everyone’s very kind. The coroner was kind. A very sympathetic, kind little man was the coroner, who had no difficulty accepting the expert testimony. A track-rod coupling is what it was, apparently, that had held its own until it was put under too much stress on that horrible corner by that pub, the Jockey, where it had caused Caroline’s little Japanese cabriolet to veer straight into that enormous plane tree that everyone has been saying for years was a danger and too close to the road and should be cut down. And that was that.

She’d been driving too fast, of course, on her way to meet the other wives — well, no, because by then they were all widows — the other members of the Greenacres mob. She’d told me not to wait up for her, and to be sure to lock all the doors and windows because apparently Tricia and Deirdre had told her of some unsavoury-looking characters lurking around the avenue. They’d already told the police, it appears, but she didn’t want to come back and find me murdered in my bed. Then she left, driving too fast.

Everyone knew that Caroline drove too fast, particularly on that corner. And everyone knew that I had been on at her for weeks, months even, to take that car in for regular checks. Everybody had heard me go on about it, I made sure of that. But that was poor Caroline for you. And everybody knew that, too. All you had to do was suggest something a little too insistently for her taste and she’d do the exact opposite.

So we had the inquest and we’ve had a funeral and everyone’s been very kind. And two of her sisterhood came. Tricia and Melanie.

Tricia flew in from Monte Carlo, where she had retired on the golden bonuses that Trader Harry had left behind him. And Melanie flew in from Mustique, where she’d retired after selling Bill’s software house for an astronomical sum to Microsoft or Sun or one of them, I can’t sort them out. I was a little surprised that Suzanne wasn’t there. She didn’t have far to come: She was still living in Greenacres. For the moment, anyway, until she’d finished ramming through the sales of the sixty-four-house development that Doug had started. But I had heard from Eric Porteous, the local estate agent, that she’d already been looking around a ten-bedroom manor over towards the Weald.

All the widows. The rich young widows.

In the cemetery after the burial service Tricia came up to me, her eyes glittering with grief, and placed a black-gloved hand on my arm. She looked into my eyes.

“Tom,” she said, “there are no words.”

I nodded.

She said, “This is a pain that only time will heal. But believe me, Tom, we know how you’re feeling, Tom. We know.”

I nodded again and she left me to join Melanie. A few yards away she looked back, her eyes still glittering.

“We really do, Tom. We know.”

I thought it was pretty unlikely.

At the house afterwards, it was pretty much the same sort of thing. I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I couldn’t wait to be finished with all that pablum that people dribble out when they don’t know what to say after a funeral, when they’re drinking your drink and eating your food and they feel in some indefinable way that they should be nourishing you. You’ve already given. But they come anyway and they eat and they drink and they put together the meaningless phrases and they say things like, “We’re here if you need us, Tom. Anytime.”

What does that mean, in fact? I’ve never understood it. What would the Wadsworths do if I rang them up at three in the morning and said, “I need you. Now. Get yourselves over here, both of you.”

They’d put the phone down and go back to sleep is what they’d do. That’s what I’d do, if I had been stupid enough to say, “I’m here if you need me.” But you go along, don’t you. You nod, and smile that sad little smile, perhaps pat the arm of the idiot who is mouthing these robotic formulae.

But at last it was all done. The drift towards the door had started early, and then I had to stand and say goodbye to these people, listen to the same things all over again and say the same things all over again. It went on forever. But at last they were all gone. And I was alone.

I wandered round the house for a while, idly picking up plates and glasses and putting them down again in the same place. The caterers would be coming in to take care of all that tomorrow. It could stay like that. But just for something to do, I wandered into the kitchen with a couple of unfinished plates of crab cakes and other miniature funeral bakemeats with the thought of putting them in the fridge. There’s no use in wasting good food, not when there’s so much starvation in the world, now is there?

The doorbell rang. I walked through to the hall. Behind the frosted glass door I could see some black shapes. I opened up and there were the absent widows, Suzanne and Deirdre. Suzanne was holding something, a round, foil-covered package.