Devil in Disguise

“Oh thank Goodness, what a relief! I can’t believe you’re still alive!”

My son clung to me, pulling me close, his face against my chest, and tears ran down his face, soaking into my shirt. He was completely hysterical.

“Oh Dad, Dad! Thank heavens,” my daughter-in-law Sarah joined in the lament, taking Tom’s place, clutching me as if I was a dying man.

“We drove down here as fast as we could, when you said you were honeymooning at a place that’s famous for people committing suicide. I really didn’t think we’d make it in time. Where is Lillian?” Tom asked.

“She’s having a lie-in at the hotel,” I explained.

We were at a windswept cliff top called Beachy Head in Sussex, which is famous for people jumping to their death on the rocks far below.

My son hadn’t cuddled me like this since he was five years old, in agony after treading on a sharp stone. Now Sarah was clinging to me like a leech and she’d turned on the waterworks too, and it was all getting very very embarrassing indeed. Especially as Sarah is a late thirties no-nonsense mum herself, and my son Tom is a man of 43, who also happens to be an amateur heavyweight boxer.

Fortunately no one was around at the time to witness all this emotional nonsense.

“Come on you two, calm yourselves. What’s this all about?” I asked my distressed family as we walked to the bench and sat down.

Tom sniffed and pulled himself together, drying his eyes. “I really thought we’d be too late. That you’d be dead.”

“Dead? What are you talking about?” I asked him.

He let out a long sigh. “When you married Lillian a fortnight ago, you know that Sarah and I were delighted – so happy that you’ve found someone to love after Mum died all those years ago.”

I nodded.

“Trouble was, although we didn’t say anything, we were worried about you. After all, we knew nothing about her, except that she’s a widow and she’s American.”

“And she’s lovely,” I added.

“Yes, oh yes, she seemed delightful, we all liked her, we were so pleased for you. Anyway, Sarah and I decided to pay an American private detective to make a few enquiries about her. And – oh my goodness! – her report arrived this morning.”

“And?”

“My God, Dad, did you know that Lillian has been widowed seven times in the last seven years? And all her husbands died of accidents.”

Sarah took up the story, reading from some papers she’d produced from her large handbag, not noticing that she was scattering scrunched up paper tissues. “Mr Prentice choked on a peanut three weeks after the marriage. Mr Haverknocker was electrocuted when the latter K on his computer keyboard was mysteriously wired up to live electricity. Trevor Blossom burst into flames when he was accidentally sprayed with petrol at a barbecue. They said he smelt just like the sausages.”

“While poor Mr Goldstrum was swept into the river while he was out fishing, dragged out to sea and eaten by a shark,” Tom went on.  “All that was left of him was the little finger of his left hand.”

“Mr Jones was poisoned by a Japanese fish dish. Mr Green was a dentist, and while he was drilling a tooth, his drill slipped and ripped open his own carotid artery.”

“And Mr Neverwell was savaged and eaten by a bear in Canada. All they could find to put in the coffin was his right foot.”

“And each time,” Sarah went on, “Lillian inherited all their money, because she insisted on them writing a new will as soon as they were married. By now she must be absolutely loaded – a millionaire – perhaps a billionaire!”

“So you see, Dad,” Tom concluded, “we were certain you were going to be next for the chop. We were so worried. Has she made you make a new will?”

“Oh yes,” I agreed, feeling pretty shaken up, frankly, a bit sick. “She insisted that we both made new wills, straight after the wedding. I think they call them ‘reciprocal’ wills, leaving each other all our possessions if the other one dies.”

“Well, luckily it’s not too late,” Tom said, ever the man of action, standing up and pacing around, looking out over the cliff at the sea, then consulting his phone. “We’ll take you home with us now, and first thing in the morning you can make a new will and begin the divorce process and find out how to evict her from your house. Meanwhile you must stay with us, and keep well away from her until she’s right out of the country.”

“Hold on there,” I protested. “What if I still love Lillian? That I still want to be with her? Supposing this is all some case of – I don’t know – mistaken identity?”

“It isn’t,” Sarah told me sadly. “Dad honestly it isn’t. We’re so so sorry, but you’ve got to face the truth. Your lovely Lillian who seemed so sweet and charming is an evil murderer! A devil in disguise!”

I shook my head, and stood up too, and we all walked along in the grass and scrub and chalky soil.

Then I kicked a stone and smiled. They both stared at me as if I was mad.

“Haven’t you been wondering what I’ve been doing in the United States for most of this year?” I asked them, deliberately taking the conversation off at a tangent.

Tom shrugged. “You were in Special Branch at Scotland Yard for most of your working life, so I imagined they dragged you out of retirement for some kind of unofficial police work.”

“They did. Because of my specialist knowledge in the Met surveillance unit, I’d worked with the FBI before and they wanted me to do some freelancing. You don’t get to become known as The Black Widow without attracting some kind of attention from the authorities, especially when aggrieved relatives complain that so many ‘accidents’ were actually murders. The Americans wanted me to do some pretty tedious legwork in the case. Lillian has been under observation for the last year. Even though Lillian moved around the States and Canada, and even kept changing her name from each new married name, they knew what she was up to, they just couldn’t prove anything. And, frankly, they still can’t. It’s all been an utter waste of manpower. So after the job finished, I decided to stay on in the States for a bit and take matters into my own hands.”

“So you deliberately engineered a meeting with her? Trapped her into marriage?” Tom said, staring at me in amazement. “What on earth for?”

“It wasn’t hard. I exaggerated my wealth, told her I had a country estate in England. And she must have been keen to get away from America, where things were beginning to catch up with her.”

“But Dad,” Sarah said, “You actually married her! Why on earth did you do that?”

I shrugged as we got closer to the cliff-top edge and the fatal drop to the rocks below.

“She got all those thousands, millions, even billions of dollars by marrying those unfortunate men,” I said, peering over the edge. “I didn’t want it all to go to waste.”

“To waste?”

“Don’t you see? We’d already made our wills.” I paused and stared out to sea. “Now it’s all mine.”

Tom stared at me. “You don’t mean…?”

“I brought her up here as a kind of a test. I reckoned that if she didn’t push me, I’d give her the benefit of the doubt. But the moment we got close to the edge, she changed, this kind of evil madness took over. and she began to try and push me over the edge, and I knew I couldn’t show her any mercy. Luckily I was expecting it. She wasn’t prepared for me to fight back, and I was able to push harder. You should have seen the surprise on her face as she fell.”

By now we’d reached the very edge of the cliff-top and I stared down at the rocks below, and caught a glimpse of red material that must have been part of her dress.

“I was just about to call the police when you arrived, to report the accident. We got too close to the edge, you see? Poor girl slipped and I couldn’t save her.”

“Dad,” Tom stared at me open mouthed. “I can’t believe it.”

“You two will never be short of money, nor will my grandchildren. And I’ve also decided to open a charity for battered husbands,” I told my astonished son and daughter-in-law, who, along with their children, I loved more than anyone on earth. “I’ve got quite a bit of money to kick-start it now.”

Image courtesy Jerzy Gorecki, from Pixabay