@Bluebeard
fiction
“I want you to murder my wife.”
Seven little words I never thought I’d have the nerve to say out loud, and here I was saying them to a total stranger. He smiled, once I had finished, and replied:
“Feels good to finally say it out loud doesn’t it? Don’t you worry old sport, I will begin the necessary arrangements.”
I had found his contact details on an encrypted site a month before, in a corner of the internet few dare to tread. He answered me immediately, unlike so many of the others I had first contacted who sneered at my sordid plan. Not him, though. He seemed excited by the prospect.
We had agreed to meet at his members’ club in Pall Mall. I didn’t realize places like this still existed; hushed, leather-and-velvet sanctums that smelled of cigar smoke and port, where silent waiters drifted from table to table like spectres attending an endless wake. Men, (and it was exclusively men in this place) wearing every conceivable shade of pinstripe and tweed, sat in high backed chairs, beneath the mounted heads of stags and water buffalo.
We met in the dining room, where he greeted me from his seat by the window with a boyish wave and a warm smile. His suit was a modern cut, and spoke a discreet kind of wealth. He seemed fit, young, and overall well-kept, unlike the living fossils I had seen on my way in. He introduced himself, taking my hand in his own and giving me a reassuring handshake:
“Glad you could make it, old sport. I do hope you found the place well enough? Damn sorry we couldn’t meet sooner, but my diary has been rather packed as of late.”
His voice, like his appearance, was refined yet modest; it was a sing-song manner of speech, and it suited him well. Calling me ‘old sport’ didn’t grate at the ear like I imagined it would. It was playful and endearing, his old-world mannerisms, like a party trick he pulled out for only his closest friends and confidants.
We ordered lunch (or rather, he did, for he seemed to know the menu almost from memory). As the waiter discreetly slid out of view, I told him just what I have told you now. That I wished for him to murder my wife.
It had been seventeen years since we married. Things had drifted apart, as they always do; work, money, friends, desire, all aspects of our lives that seem to grow further away from us the longer we clung to them. She had lost that youthful spark I had fallen in love with the first time we met, that secret smile that sent my heart racing.
As we settled into the routine of our lives, it appeared that our love was waning. Words of affection once shared freely were now left unsaid; we began to avoid one another’s company, sometimes spending days apart. Then, one day, it was as if she did not need me anymore. We were two strangers sharing a future together in joyless monotony.
I am not a bad person. I know I am not. I only know that I am a coward and that I would rather be alone than unhappy.
“So what does she look like then, your lovely wife?” He asked me over the Entrées.
I took out my phone and showed him an image of her on our honeymoon in Athens. He held the phone in his slim, manicured hand, and took in the picture of my soon-to-be-late wife. He flashed that smile again; discreet, playful, and with a hint of mischief.
“Charming. Simply charming. You are a lucky man. Or perhaps, you were lucky.”
He handed back the phone and we finished our meal. I cannot recall a single aspect of the food we ate but I imagine that it was terribly expensive.
We chatted idly, him telling me in a self-effacing manner about his education, his forays into investments and stockbroking(which he treated more as a hobby than anything else), and his time spent living abroad half of the year in a dozen or so cities across Europe, the other half spent at his flat in Mayfair. I told him a little of my modest affairs, and though by rights I should have been envious of his seemingly carefree, bohemian lifestyle, somehow I was not. He was just too damn loveable.
I gave him my wife’s work address, her phone number, and details of her social media pages. Giving me another firm handshake, he bid me good-day and said that he would be in touch soon. No payment was necessary. Not yet, anyway.
Life went on much as normal for a few months. I settled back into the dull routine of marriage, and soon enough my wife and I were like passing ships in the night. She had begun to take evening classes, you see, at an adult education centre in Kensington. I did not mind, of course; I barely registered her when she was at home, and this confirmation of her absence was nothing short of a relief.
One evening, after a meal together, she said that she would be spending the night with some friends from her evening course. I nodded without objection, as it meant that I could have our bed to myself, if only for an evening. As she left, I smelled sweet perfume on her that I did not recognise. She wore a new shade of lipstick too, the colour of a bloody sunset. It was quite unlike her, I noted, to pay much attention to her outward appearance these days.
Night fell, and as I drifted off into peaceful slumber, my phone buzzed loudly on the nightstand beside our bed. Lifting the screen, I saw that it was a message from an unknown number; it contained a link to an encrypted file, the name of which was ‘old-sport’. I did not have to guess who the sender was.
I opened the file, which appeared to be a video of two figures, a man and a woman, engaged in passionate lovemaking. The video seemed to have been taken by a camera hidden somewhere in the room and stayed fixed on the couple as they clung to one another, thrusting and biting and pulling each other in a way that made my heart race.
As I watched until the end, I noticed something familiar about the woman. She looked like someone I had known when I was younger, with a smile that quickened my pulse. I felt a wretched sickness burrow into my soul when I recognised it was my wife.
She looked happier and younger than I could ever recall her being. She was utterly transformed by this act of passion. And the man who had given her this gift, this rebirth, I recognised as the man I had met in the dining room of the members club in Pall Mall. As he embraced my wife in post-coital bliss, their hands wrapped around one another and the sheets soaked with musk and sweat, I felt then a fury I did not think was possible to rouse within me.
I do not love my wife, I think. I do not desire her body. But the thought of another desiring her, loving her, and for that love to be reciprocated; that is something I cannot bear to think of.
I called him, on the number he had written down on a napkin from the members club. Even over the phone, his voice was honey-rich and sweet.
“I see you got my message, old sport. Just wanted to let you know that things are starting to be set in motion.” In the background, I could hear the sound of a shower running, and a woman’s voice singing softly. She was still with him.
I almost screamed at him then. My eyes running with stinging tears and my voice choked with bitter sobs, I demanded to know why he had done this. I said that I had asked him to kill my wife, not ravish her. Fuck her, and make me watch him do it.
“Easy, easy, old sport. This will all make sense in time. You shouldn’t know every detail of the plan until all the cards are down, so to speak. I know it hurts, but it’s all quite necessary. Just breathe, take some time to compose yourself, and tomorrow you must act as if nothing ever happened. What do you say to that, old sport?”
I hated him then, but in a way, I almost understood what he meant. I was being kept in ignorance, but it was collusion on my part. I did not want to know why he did it. I just wanted him to know how much it hurt.
I wondered why he called me ‘old sport’. Surely a man of his education must have read Gatsby? But somehow, he made the expression his own. As if he had coined it first, and F. Scott had simply followed his lead. I could never discern how old he was, too; his face was youthful, and with the hint of a Mediterranean sunset on his olive skin. His hair was sleek and dark, but flecked with grey here and there around the temples. And his eyes, full of youthful mirth as they were, spoke of someone, far, far older.
Two weeks passed since the night of his message, and in this time my wife seemed more.. alive. More animated, almost cheerful (though never in my direct company). Once, at a meal with some colleagues from work, I saw her hiding her phone beneath the table, observing a message she did not wish others to see. And for the first time, in how many years I cannot recall, I saw her blush. Her pale cheeks went a deep, burning scarlet, and the corners of her mouth curved into a secretive smile.
A month later, she told me that she was going away for a week with friends from her University days. She said that if I needed anything, I could call her at the hotel. As she left the house, I noted how much younger she seemed these days. And ultimately, how much happier she was.
As the day went on, I idly browsed the internet, soon coming across old photos of us together on her social media. Pictures that shone with youth and possibility, with no indication of the rot that was about to take hold. As I came to her most recent posts, I saw my wife had uploaded a picture of herself a few hours ago, in the departure lounge of an airport.
She was posing in a way that I did not recognise; her smile was broad, her hands crossed demurely over her lap as she gazed into the camera lens. She had a look about her I could only describe as giddy as if she was barely containing her excitement for something yet to come. And as I looked at the reflection, cast on the window of the departure lounge behind her, I recognised the familar silhouette of the one who held the camera. It belonged to a man I had met months ago at a private club in Pall Mall; a man whose smile could convince you to walk off the edge of the earth.
My wife did not return after a week. I called on friends of ours, who stated blankly that she had not mentioned anything regarding a holiday with them, or anyone else within her circle of acquaintances. The hotel number she left informed me that she had never checked in. I called her parents, who with panic in their voices told me they had assumed I was with her. How could I have let their only daughter go off into the world, to disappear so unexpectedly?
He called me, after five days of cold-sweat terrors and sleepless nights. The moment he spoke, I felt a chill run through my soul. He reassured me, said that he had several homes abroad that he operated his ‘business’ from. Furthermore, he said that if I spoke to the police now, it would be a clear-cut case of infidelity. A runaway bride, chasing the affections of a mystery-man whose whereabouts were all but unknown.
I did not ask after my wife; I knew what he had done the minute he called. His voice was different, too. It had lost its warmth and was now a sharp, joyless, staccato.
He told me that payment was due now for his services. He did not tell me how this would be done, only that when the time came, he would come to collect what was owed. And that if I told a soul anything of what had happened… well, he had plenty of room in his busy schedule for debtors, too. And that my end would not be so swift as my beloved’s.
Based in part on the French folktale ‘Bluebeard’
The Somnambulist Society 2020
