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Tamara and Angela had organised a nice dinner with all the locals the following night, which they did invite Jake and Harriet to, knowing full well the pair would decline.
“So, ladies, where are the handsome newlyweds?” asked Richard in his booming voice.
“They’re still recovering from that odd accident from the other day,” said Tamara suggestively.
All eyes shot towards her immediately. Gossip was the lifeblood of any village, easily interrupting mundane dinner party chit-chat which nobody really cared about anyway.
“What’s that, odd accident?” said Richard, cocking an eyebrow in slight drunkenness.
“They said their farmhand died while taking a shower,” - Angela.
Indeed, nobody recalled seeing this helper of theirs.
“Well, Jake did say they had only hired him a few days earlier,” Angela added, not without a touch of scepticism.
Indeed, scepticism rippled through the crowd like a bad smell.
Cordelia, a young schoolteacher who had moved into the the area just under a year ago, was quick to catch a whiff. “You don’t think they’re telling the truth then, Angela?”
“Well, I mean! What would I know?” I’ve only sixty years of experience telling me otherwise, she added bitterly to herself, loudly enough that those sitting by her could practically hear her thoughts.
In no time, the ladies’ theory dug its way into the guests’ minds.
“He was trying to cover up why she screamed, of course,” shouted Richard, now fully sloshed and enjoying himself greatly.
Angela agreed. “By god, that is exactly what I was thinking,” you wonderful man! She thought the second bit.
Pompous arse-licker, thought Cordelia simultaneously.
They discussed almost the whole remainder of the dinner what was to be done about Harry, particularly as she seemed intent on lying for her husband. It could only be one thing, but how would they ever prove it?
Jake, meanwhile, was frantically juggling farm duties, a potential murder accusation or workplace endangerment case all while trying to soothe Harriet’s frayed nerves.
She had gone first to the bathroom and had been first witness to the scene. Her scream had nearly sent the hairs flying from his head and neck for fear that she herself had come to some tragic demise. He had run downstairs to the carnage, unfit to be viewed by man or woman – he had been deeply shaken but needed to think fast. The slippy shower had been the first thing to cross their minds and they decided to stick to that interpretation even after finding, to their horror, the fresh red stain on the ground by the unprotected ramp.
Jake knew nothing of the helper he had hired several days prior. A Mr Wurton had walked in from the street asking for work and citing numerous references from distant towns which Jake had planned to follow up in the coming weeks. But he had needed a hand then and there, and hired the man without a second thought. “We’ll sort out your contract by next Friday.”
“Why did I act so hastily? How could I know he was not some clumsy freak? Who hires live-in assistants without so much as a background check?”
“I refuse to let you beat yourself up over this, darling,” cooed Harriet as they sat in their oversized living room, cold and thoughtful. “You could never have known the man would be such a liability. What can they do? They can’t blame you for a shower accident.” She stroked his ash-blond hair lovingly.
“I don’t know what possessed me to lie about where he died, though.” Jake was pale as a drowned child, his honey-coloured eyes bloodshot, jaw muscles flexing.
Almost all his charming looks had deserted him to fend for himself once he had stopped sleeping. “That lie will be the end of me,” he kept saying dramatically. “And I didn’t even do anything!”
Just for one split second of panic, he had lied through his teeth which were now grinding away in self-loathing. That would lay even more suspicion against him.
Grossly did he underestimate the extent of his neighbours’ imagination, however.
“Poor Harriet’s not made a peep since that day,” the old farmer Kevin’s wife said to Tamara as they chatted across each others’ front gates one morning.
“He must be keeping her sweet so she doesn’t raise any suspicions,” replied Tamara, speaking confidently out of her own experience.
“You’re right. It could only be one thing, considering.”
Kevin’s wife was a great admirer of the long-suffering Tamara and her resilience. Any woman who had been through what she had been through was undeniably correct in her suspicions. She had intuition, thought the wife – a mousy, nondescript woman of around fifty.
Tamara loved to boast of her harsh conditions with Andrew and ill health to her lady friends round the village, making sure her own sufferings always outdid theirs.
Although a couple did find it tedious, most ladies of the village viewed her with some level of reverence and used her as a barometer for their own tribulations.
Andrew, too, got what he wanted from the whole thing: a wide berth at social gatherings. He knew very well what had warranted such treatment and though he was not proud, the outcome was rather peaceful. He had a few occasional friends at the pub in the next village. They never asked questions, aside from the inquisitive barmaid who liked to interrogate him when she had a quiet moment.
“So why is this your local if you live up in N--?”
“So are you married?”
“What’s your favourite pastime then?”
“Have you lived round here all your life? Don’t you ever frequent N-- pubs?”
She was an easy fly to swat. Because he was so often curt, known as a man of few words, his softness towards the barmaid made her feel special. A cute little thing, fresh from Australia, she was keen to discover the juicy secrets of the British countryside. He kept his answers evasive but relatively honest nonetheless.
“I’m been coming here for years, since I got a job up here doing a bloke’s electrics who was building his home. I don’t much get on with the folks in N--, there aren’t very many of them and even fewer have two brain cells to rub together. Moved into the area twenty years ago, soon’s I got married… so, yes. I am married.” The finality in his tone told the Sheila to refrain from prying any further in that direction.
Angela could not get her mind off the frantic way Jake had greeted her and Tamara that fateful day. It was now a week and nobody had heard from them. Cordelia had seen the two working on the front lawn one morning on her way to the school, but all in all no further gossip transpired.
Willy Wurton’s body had yet to be disposed of, as the authorities struggled to locate any family member or friend who might claim him. An inquest was surely forthcoming, Jake kept thinking. He knew he had to get on the phone and inquire about the proceedings, or suspense and suspicion would weigh even heavier on his shoulders.
The authorities rang him instead, and he very nearly jumped out of his skin when Harriet passed him the receiver. “Darling, it’s the coroner about Willy.”
“Hello? Yes, this is he,” Jake replied, distractedly fiddling with a nut at the side of the kitchen table.
“Have you been in contact with any of Mr Wurton’s family since you took him under your employment?” asked the voice in its formal manner.
“No. He came to me completely out of nowhere to be honest,” Jake said. “My wife and I had just moved in to a soiled mess of a farm, and needed help quickly as possible. He answered our notice on the village hall notice board within a day of our putting it up. I was just getting the papers ready to give him the contract and he had shown he could do the work, it had only been a week or so, and he clearly knew what he was doing, he was quick and all that--”
“Mr. Sadler, do not get ahead of yourself,” the voice interrupted his distraught ramblings. “I am not a detective, I am trying to find the man’s next of kin so we can organise an inquest.
“I do understand you would be upset. Can you recall any mentions he might have made of any family, where he might hail from, anything like that?”
“N-no, coroner. I have racked my brains all week and scoured the address books of all surrounding villages. There are a couple Wurtons we have not yet tried,” he said, more dutifully.
“Not to worry, Mr Sadler. We are on it. I will keep you informed if anybody does turn up.”
“What about… the body?” Jake asked in hushed tones, glancing sideways at Harriet who was busying herself in the kitchen.
“Well sir,” the coroner’s tone had grown warmer all of a sudden. Jake noted his change to the title “sir”. “ The police are still investigating the matter, of course. The doctor has identified the gentleman’s death as a blow to the head which ruptured the skull and killed him within minutes. I’ll tell you one thing, sir,” he added briskly.
“The nurses who came to the scene ought to have called an experienced investigation team straight away, but instead got some rookie from the force who took a couple of pictures and let them get on with wheeling away the body. Police will have to come interview you. If no will or next of kin can be found, it looks like a pauper’s funeral for the poor sod.”
“Right, thank you so much for letting me know, coroner. When can I expect the police to come over?”
“They should make their way to your neck of the woods in a couple days or so,” chirped the man on the other line, who clearly loved his job. He was fiddling with a loose screw on the dead body’s stretcher as he spoke.
“After you’ve cleared up the circumstances of the death with them, which I’m sure you will, looks a lot like a pauper’s funeral for the poor bugger,” he repeated himself.
Upon ending this odd conversation with the morbid coroner, Jake dragged his feet forlornly to the kitchen.
“Oh darling, you look exhausted,” fretted Harriet, handing him a cup of tea.
“That’s two or three more days of anxiety, my love, and then we’re through with this nightmare. I think I’ll stick to the shower story, because even I can barely believe someone would knock their head that badly then pop in for a wash. He must have fallen off the ramp, stumbled in concussed and finished himself off in there. It’s as close to the truth as anyone will ever know, save the cats and the birds. Judging by the gentleman’s tone on the phone, nobody’s too fussed about this fellow anyway.”
“That’s right, my sweet. That’s right, and you’ve nothing to fear. It’s not your fault you hired a morbidly clumsy clod. We were desperate. Still are, in fact,” said Harriet.
“You’re very right about that, Harry my angel. I don’t know what I would do without you,” groaned Jake, touching her cheeks through her dusty brown curls and looking her straight in the eyes. “You are my goddess, my love.”
Harriet melted on the spot knowing that Jake would be at his most bestial after such upheaval. He had barely had her at all since the accident last week and he was not used to taking such long breaks. Thank goodness I’m not wearing my good stockings today, she thought to herself.
Jake had done so much work on their new place that week, he had been so quiet and his face so lined with worry that Harriet ached to do what she could to soothe her husband’s frayed nerves. The dinners she cooked and help she provided were but trifles compared with what came next.
Her body, small and malleable, was like a stress toy to pent-up Jake. She could feel the angst coursing through his member as he thrust it wherever he needed. Harriet’s whimpers fuelled him further in his destructive passion. Under such dire physical circumstances, her body and mind became one, the brain releasing a trailer-load of endorphins as he gripped her hips like a drowning man clutches at a buoy.
Whines turned to screams as Jake’s teeth nearly joined on her right nipple to accompany his aggressive thrusts. She had lost almost all internal sensation by then, but that bite jolted all the nerve endings from their stupor as the sharp pain from her breast switched instantly to pleasure and oh, how she panted and moaned, how the two of them danced in forgetful bliss, how pleased she was that such a drug had ever been invented. The couple would surely sleep well tonight.
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