Till Death Do Us Part

A solitary snowflake spirals its lazy way down towards the town of Candlewick, a harbinger of the blizzard that will very soon blanket the streets with white, wet powder. It lands gracefully on the pavement outside the Browns’ residence, and, with nobody around to marvel at its unique pattern and delicate features, it sulks for a bit before melting away into nothingness. It is Monday morning, and the first day of a December that is promising to be so cold that it could freeze the snowballs off a snowman.1

The kitchen of the Brown house is an interior designer’s nightmare of blue and white gingham and ceramic ducks, brightly coloured fridge magnets and plastic fruit. The kind of kitchen that could only be loved by two kinds of people – those often referred to as ‘bubbly’, and those known, in hushed tones, as ‘clinically insane’.2

The woman sitting at the kitchen table, on the other hand, could be loved, at least on a visual level, by anyone in possession of a pair of eyes in their head. Imagine, if you will, that every beauty product, face cream and figure-enhancing treatment advertised on TV actually does what they promise. And now imagine that Vinaigrette Brown uses them all. Often. And all over.3

The rather dull-sounding name is deceptive. Vinaigrette’s father is a lover of French cuisine who has no knowledge whatsoever of either cuisine or French. He had named his three children after his favourite dishes. Hence, Vinaigrette had a sister named Lorraine, after the quiche, and a brother named Caesar, after the salad. Which was invented by an Italian chef in Mexico. To this day, Vinaigrette still feels that she drew the short straw on the whole names thing.4

As for ‘Brown’, she has her lumbering oaf of a husband to blame for that. But not for much longer.5

Vinaigrette looks impatiently through sapphire-blue eyes at the cat-shaped clock on the kitchen wall. It is exactly thirteen minutes past eight. Which means that in exactly two minutes, her husband Bill will bounce downstairs in an attempt at cheerfulness, stoop over to plant a cutesy kiss on her nose that never fails to make her cringe, and then give her a hurt kicked-puppy look when she shoots him down with her daily withering glance and spiteful remark. And then he’ll shuffle out to work, shoulders bowed and face downcast, trying to figure out why his wife hates him and how to come up with new ways of making her happy.6

Of course she hates him – his taste in kitchen design is just the tip of the iceberg. The minute he’s pushing up daisies, she’s going to use the first chunk of his hard-earned money – her hard-earned money – to redo the kitchen in tasteful and ultra-modern black and white. And she’ll set fire to that fucking cat-shaped clock herself.7

Who would have thought that marrying a door-to-door salesman would be so lucrative? He must be selling a hell of a lot of cleaning products.8

And if all goes well, she thinks to herself, glancing for the hundredth time at the telephone number scrawled on the crumpled scrap of paper palmed in her hand, the boring old fart will be pushing up daisies by this time next week.9

Vinaigrette’s ruby-red lips curve upwards into a nasty little smile. Despite the description given earlier, it is not a pretty sight.10

***11

It is half past eight. You’ve just missed Bill, who, as predicted, has just trudged out of the house heavy of heart and hunched of shoulder. Nevertheless, Vinaigrette is having an interesting telephone conversation that you might want to stick around for. After weeks of careful practice, her voice is both as hard and as cold as diamonds. Never, in any conversation, have so many euphemisms for the word ‘kill’ been used.12

“I want somebody… removed”, says Vinaigrette.13

“You what?” says the gravely male voice on the other end. It’s the kind of voice that belongs to the kind of person who has been using the last puff of his cigarette to light the next since he was seven years old.14

“I said… I want somebody… ‘taken care of””, she hisses, the inverted commas falling into place as obviously as the two-handed finger gesture that normally accompanies them.15

“Look, lady, I have no idea what you’re talking about…”16

“No, you look. I was told that you… dispose of…” Vinaigrette pauses, then her face lights up. “Oh yes. Sorry. Hang on a second”. She consults the piece of paper. Under the telephone number are two sentences, the first of which she recites into the telephone in the affected monotone of a class dunce who has been allowed to take part in the school play out of pity.17

“Give a man a fire and he’ll be warm for a day”.18

“Set the man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life”, comes the solemn reply.19

“If you love someone, let them go. If they come back, they’re yours”, she reads.20

“And if they don’t, hunt ‘em down an’ kill ‘em”.21

There is a pause. Then Gravel-voice says, “so, who d’you want hit?”22

Vinaigrette clears her throat. “My husband”.23

“Right. Stay by the phone. I’ll get back to you within the hour”.24

“Okay. The number is 82…”25

“I have Caller ID”, snaps Gravel-voice impatiently, and there is a click as he hangs up.26

“I have Caller ID”, Vinaigrette mimics into the dead receiver, rather taken aback. She is not accustomed to people being rude to her. She gently replaces the handset in its cradle, and decides to kill the next sixty minutes by practising her ‘grieving widow’ expressions in the shiny reflection of the kitchen toaster.27

***28

As it turns out, Vinaigrette only has thirty-two minutes in which to contort her face into a number of sorrowful and suffering countenances before the telephone rings again. Heart fluttering nervously, she takes a deep breath to compose herself. When she answers the phone three seconds later, she speaks in the cold, steely tones of a professional who has large numbers of people killed on a daily basis.29

“Yes?”30

There is a pause that gives the impression that it’s never going to end. Vinaigrette is just about to speak again when suddenly the caller breaks the silence.31

“Give me details”.32

This is not the same gravely voice as before. This voice sounds smooth – the kind of voice that comes out of a mouth that contains teeth which catch the light with a glint and a ‘ting’. The kind of mouth that belongs on a face consisting of a strong jaw and chiselled good looks. The kind of face that belongs to a man who has the same effect on women that Vinaigrette has on men…33

“Details?” snaps the voice, cutting into Vinaigrette’s fantasy like a chainsaw through a bag of spanners. She picks up the hint of an accent in that one word, possibly French – the stress is on the second syllable rather than the first.34

“Oh yes… yes. It’s my husband”.35

“Ah… ‘ow many torments lie in ze small circle of a wedding ring!”36

“I’m sorry?”37

“Your ‘usband. Oui. My associate ‘as already informed me of zis. When?”38

“As soon as possible”.39

Another pause, then, “I am free tonight”.40

Vinaigrette smiles. It is at this point in the conversation that a less gold-digging cold-hearted bitch might have second thoughts. Might think something along the lines of ‘oh no, this is happening too fast, what am I doing, I can’t go through with this’ and change her mind.41

“Perfect!”, says Vinaigrette smartly, without a moment’s hesitation. “Dinnertime?”42

“Dinnertime. Ah… hat what time is ze dinnertime?”43

“Half past seven”.44

“Be seated hat the table. Make sure zat your ‘usband sits wiz ‘is back to ze hentrance to ze room. And zen leave ze rest to me”.45

Vinaigrette mentally replaces all the Z’s with th’s, switches a couple of aitches around accordingly, and smiles to herself. Then, curiosity gets the better of her.46

“What should I call you?” she blurts out. She just has to have a name to go with that voice.47

“You should not call me hat hall, mademoiselle”. Yet another pause, then, “I ham known has ‘Le Petrinel’”.48

“Le Petrinel”, she murmurs, copying the stress pattern, enjoying the way the word rolls off her tongue.49

“Oui. And now I must go”.50

And without any further ado, the line goes dead.51

“Le Petrinel”, Vinaigrette says again, dreamily. And at this point, a little warning light in her head should spark off a train of thought that might actually lead somewhere useful, that may in turn cause a rather puzzling question to pop into her head and save everybody a lot of aggro in the long run. But her head is full of echoes of that smooth and sensual voice instead.52

The warning light, the spark, the train and the question eventually show up later.53

Just seconds before the aggro.54

***

And now, it’s just seconds before the aggro…55

Vinaigrette is not really used to cooking. She is the kind of lady of leisure who goes out for lunch at The Meatball, Candlewick’s poshest restaurant, before stopping off at the supermarket on her way to the gym to buy a can of spaghetti hoops in tomato sauce for her husband’s dinner. But, for tonight, she has painstakingly prepared what page twenty-seven of the ‘Family Cookbook’ describes as ‘Herbed Chicken en Papilotte’. Given that Vinaigrette’s cooking skills are on par with those of Bai Yun, a giant panda currently residing in San Diego Zoo, California, the similarity between the grey gooey mess in the dish and the full-colour photograph in the book could be compared to the similarities between a stick figure scratched into a school desk, and the Mona Lisa.56

As Vinaigrette sits and waits for her husband to arrive from work, it crosses her mind that it may seem cruel to give him false hope and optimism in the form of his first home-made dinner since he had said ‘I do’. And she giggles.57

The giggle abruptly turns into a gasp of surprise as the young man with the gun suddenly steps silently into the kitchen.58

“So this is where gingham goes to die”, he says calmly, glancing around the kitchen with obvious distaste. His baby blue eyes land on Vinaigrette and he flashes her a cheesy grin.59

“Good evening, Mrs Brown”, says he, cheerfully, with a distinct lack of French accent.60

Vinaigrette is mildly disappointed. She takes in the scruffy jeans, the black T-shirt, the mop of unruly blonde hair and the baby face. Not at all what she had imagined.61

“You’re early”, she says. “Bill isn’t home yet, but…” her voice tails off as she realises that the gun is aimed in her general direction. If she knew the first thing about guns, she would recognise it as a 9mm Walther P99 semi-automatic, with an ambidextrous magazine release incorporated into the trigger guard, as used by James Bond. But since her knowledge of guns is second only to her expertise in cooking, she acknowledges it only as ‘gun’. With the hole in the end where the bullet comes out pointing at her forehead.62

“Um… Le Petrinel?” she croaks, suddenly very scared. The warning light in her head finally kicks in, and she suddenly realises that in her telephone conversation with the French hitman, he hadn’t asked for her address. And she hadn’t given it to him.63

“Um… nope”, says the man, and the grin vanishes and his eyes harden, the baby blue suddenly turning to steel, as his finger tightens on the trigger.64

“There’s been a mistake”, Vinaigrette whispers. She closes her eyes tightly, and, instinctively, covers her ears with her hands.65

“What the hell is going on?” says Bill, who has just wandered through the front door and into the kitchen only to be greeted by a gunman and the smell of burnt chicken.66

“He’s the one!” Vinaigrette screeches, leaping up suddenly, stabbing a finger at her husband. The sudden movement saves her life. The gunman jerks the gun in reaction to the screech, and the cat-shaped clock behind her explodes into a shower of springs and cartoon eye-balls. The kitchen suddenly looks a little less hideous.67

“He’s the one you’re meant to kill!” Vinaigrette yells frantically over the dying echo of the gun, “Do it! Kill him!”68

The gunman looks bemusedly at Bill.69

“Mr Brown, I presume?”70

Bill gives him a distracted nod, and fixes Vinaigrette with a gaze that seems to sear right through her soul and out the other side.71

“You don’t really mean that, do you Greta?” he says quietly.72

She ignores him, and glares at the gunman.73

“What are you waiting for?” she demands.74

Bill sighs.75

“How many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding ring?” he says sadly, almost to himself.76

Vinaigrette’s mouth drops open as her husband seems to change before her eyes. Gone are the customary stooped shoulders, the gormless face, the puppy-dog eyes. Bill stands tall - looks, somehow, leaner. Tougher. In control. And infinitely more dangerous.77

“You’re… you’re Le Petrinel?” she stammers, her reeling head now full to bursting with warning lights, alarm bells, flashing beacons and sirens. And one hundred percent pure mind-boggling amazement.78

Bill smiles. A small miserable smile, almost a grimace. The kitchen light glints off his teeth and goes ‘ting’.79

“Oui, ma cherie. Did you honestly believe zat I could afford an ‘ouse like zis on ze wage of a door-to-door salesman?”80

The French accent washes over her astonishment like a wave of warm water.81

“Oh. Darling… I…”82

He interrupts her. His voice is granite.83

“You hired me, Greta. You hired me to kill me. I loved you. I love you. I couldn’t believe it when I was given the contact number. When I saw it was my own. You hired me, Greta”.84

She looks into his eyes. There is no emotion there. They are the flat calm of a motionless sea. But there are sharks gliding beneath the surface. 85

“Yes. Yes, I did. But…” she starts, and she hurries round the table, arms outstretched, offering him a golden smile and wide sapphire eyes full of admiration. “I never knew… I…”86

The look he gives her freezes her as efficiently as the pause button on a DVD remote control. Bill points at the gunman.87

“And so I hired him for you”.88

Husband and wife turn to look at the gunman, who has momentarily been forgotten and is leaning on the kitchen counter and wondering whether or not it would be considered rude to interrupt. Now the centre of attention, he stands up and, once again, aims the gun at Vinaigrette’s head.89

“Ah yes”, he says. He throws a sidelong glance towards Bill. “And may I say, Mr Petrinel, sir, that this is an honour…my wife Aimee will be thrilled when I tell her that I met the great Petrinel…” His hand steady as a rock, his finger curls around the trigger…90

“Bill?” whimpers Greta, the waver of hysteria creeping into her voice as she looks down the barrel of the gun and sees eternity.91

A couple of seconds tick by.92

The finger tightens around the trigger. The hitman grins.93

“Bill”, Vinaigrette screams the name now. It barely sounds like a word.94

Bill, suddenly jolting to life, suddenly opens his mouth to speak, then realises that he won’t have time. Hand a blur, moving almost inhumanly fast, he reaches for his own gun…95

Outside, snowflakes spiral down towards the town of Candlewick, the beginning of the blizzard that will very soon blanket the streets with white, wet powder. They pile up gracefully on the pavement outside the Browns’ residence.96

Inside the Brown house, there is a flash and a gunshot.97

Then silence.98

***
99