Page 44 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests
“Someone outside the group, someone who knows us all separately, who orchestrated the dinner party and the numbers and ispicking us off one by one,” says Vivienne. “And I bet they weren’t far away during the dinner party. Probably watching us all.”
“So…”
“Maybe properties around Serendipity’s had CCTV and recorded someone lurking?” Vivienne proposes. “Or it could even have been one of the waiters, or the chef?”
“OK, OK, Vivienne,” Melvin says, slowly nodding his head. “I’ll speak to the landlord again. See what I can find out.”
“I’m going back to Salvation Road, going door-to-door and speaking to the neighbors,” Vivienne says.
Melvin leans back in his chair, a wave of exhaustion suddenly crashing over him.
“Are you ever going to let this go?” he asks.
“No, I’ve got too much to live for,” she tells him. “But, Melvin, I’ve got to ask: What’s going on? You look dreadful. Have you really come straight from a night out? Presumably, Mary wasn’t with you.”
“No, she wasn’t,” Melvin says wearily. Even his head nods forward, as if his neck is tired of holding it up, of facilitating all the lies that come from his mouth.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Vivienne assures him, her tone sympathetic. “People handle illness in different ways. Is Mary very poorly again?”
Melvin looks at her, weighs his options, and chooses to tell the truth. It will be a novel feeling for him.
“No, she’s actually doing really well,” he admits, picturing her cheeks filling out again, turning pink when she laughs, which hasbeen often lately. Those early months of Mary’s treatment seem like a long-ago dream. Melvin looks back on his double life of comforting husband to Mary and inexperienced lover to Christian with a sort of nostalgia. He felt wanted and needed by them both. It was exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure. And then something remarkable happened: Mary’s cancer responded to the treatment, “like magic,” her consultant had said, setting Melvin’s teeth on edge. The treatment had removed all trace of the cancer so that she didn’t need to have more radiotherapy. The news was a tonic to Mary. She blossomed from that stooped, achingly thin person to a vision of life and vitality. She persuaded him to take up line-dancing at the town hall and was talking about booking a three-month around-the-world cruise after Melvin’s retirement. Mary was constantly making plans, dinners, holidays, new hobbies, new ideas. He started to avoid going home for a whole new set of reasons. And Mary’s recovery led to Christian constantly asking, when would he tell her the truth? Christian had started to make changes to his flat in preparation for Melvin’s moving in. If he wasn’t dealing with Mary’s incessant plans, he was batting away Christian’s endless questions. His brain feels constantly under attack. All he wants is some quiet, some peace to process it all. But his life has other ideas.
“So what is it?” Vivienne asks now.
“It’s me. I’ve been…seeing someone else, and it’s got out of control, but I just don’t know how to untangle it all.”
“It’s Christian, isn’t it?”
“How did you know?” Melvin is shocked.
“The makeover, the nights out, the way you smile when you talk about him,” she says. And Melvin sees how stupid he has been. He thought he’d been so discreet, believing that his years as a police officer had taught him to hide his emotions, but they had found a way out. Had Mary seen it too? Is she just pretending to befriend Christian while biding her time until she exposes the betrayal?
“I was going to tell her after Matthew’s memorial, had it all planned out—but that night, she told me the cancer had come back, so I couldn’t do it to her,” he explains, suddenly desperate for Vivienne to see he wasn’t such a bad person.
“Well, good for you, Melvin.” Vivienne smiles. “But now she’s over the worst, perhaps it’s time to come clean. She might take it better than you imagine. After all, you’ve been married all these years; she knows you better than you think.”
“The worst of it is, these last few months, Mary and Christian have become friends,” he admits. The “we” Christian was referring to in his message was actually himself and Mary. Melvin can hardly believe the situation he’s gotten himself into. It’s like a plot from some far-fetched American rom-com that Mary used to watch. His wife and his lover have become friends. Really good friends. In fact, Melvin sometimes wonders if they prefer each other to Melvin himself.
He waits for Vivienne’s shocked response. But instead, he feels the bench start to shake. Puzzled, he opens his eyes and finds that tears are streaking down Vivienne’s cheeks. She’s laughing—she’s actually laughing at his pathetic life.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Melvin. I shouldn’t laugh,” she chuckles. “It’s not you—it’s just life. Someone somewhere has a hell of asense of humor.”
And with that, Melvin finds his despair is replaced with hysteria, and he’s laughing too. Other customers look over at this large man and tiny woman roaring with laughter. Their shoulders are pressed together, supporting each other as their bodies become weak with humor. Itisfunny, tragically funny.
As part of Mary’s new hobbies and reenergized social life, she’d suddenly decided they should have Christian over for dinner.
“I want to meet this colleague you keep talking about,” she said, and Melvin searched her face for any signs she suspected something. But there had been nothing, just his wife’s lovely, innocent smile. So Mary prepared salmon with new potatoes, followed by apple crumble (“I know how you policemen can eat”), and Christian turned up at exactly 7:30 p.m., dressed in a pale denim shirt and smelling divine, armed with a bottle of his favorite red wine. Melvin had never sweat as much as he did during that meal. He was surprised that neither Mary nor Christian had noticed him dabbing his brow every few minutes, squeezing his arms close to his sides to hide the damp patches. But no, they were having too good a time to spot Melvin’s agony. Christian attentively kept Mary’s glass topped up; Mary grilled Christian on the ballet training he’d done as a boy (“You didn’t tell me your partner was a fellow dancer!”). By the end of the evening, they were hopping around the lounge asThe Nutcrackerboomed out of their ancient stereo while Melvin gloomily sipped his beer. Just after midnight, Mary kissed Christian goodbye and practically swooned into Melvin’s arms, “If I was twenty years younger, you’d be in trouble,” she giggled.Actually giggled. Melvin hoped that, with the introduction out of the way, there would be no reason to meet up again, but to his astonishment, Mary and Christian had swapped numbers when he wasn’t looking and agreed to go to the ballet together the following month.
“What are you thinking?” he fumed to Christian, but he didn’t share Melvin’s concerns.
“She’s a lovely lady, Melvin,” he said. “And now she won’t mind when you tell her you’re meeting me for a drink or whatever. It’s just one trip to the ballet, anyway.”
But it hadn’t just been one trip to the ballet. There was a dance exhibition at the V&A, followed by lunch, wine tasting at Borough Market, and regular Sunday lunches at their house. Sometimes they didn’t even consult Melvin on their plans—like today, for instance. He thought he was meeting Christian, not both of them. Lately, he noticed them whispering together, then stopping abruptly when he appeared, and he overheard Mary talking to Christian on her mobile the other day, saying, “Who shall we invite from the station?” With a dull ache of dread in his stomach, it dawned on Melvin that they must be planning a surprise birthday bash for his sixtieth next month.
“It’s never too late for the truth, Melvin,” Vivienne says. But Melvin knows it is too late. It is years and years too late.
“I mean, where does she think you are on these nights?” Vivienne asks.
