The 14th Pan Book of Horror Stories

SO MUCH WORK Conrad Hill

Eleven o’clock.

Being a person of regular habits and insisting that his wife be likewise, Mr Nesbit prepared to venture forth into the November night. He donned Wellington boots, black plastic mackintosh and a flat checked cap. Mrs Nesbit donned Wellington boots, blue plastic mackintosh and a tartan headscarf.

The reason for this nocturnal activity cavorted idiotically in the hall. Heinz the Dachshund, after a number of years, had also become a creature of habit, learning to associate the ritual garbing of master and mistress with a climactic emptying of bladder and bowels: his day’s enjoyable and satisfying finale.

Mrs Nesbit eyed the undulating sausage dog with some distaste, for she was now certain that he was depositing hairs upon the hall carpet. Until her husband had summarily dismissed the cleaning woman for kicking Heinz, Mrs Nesbit had no idea that the animal was shedding his coat upon the carpet in question. But since she had been doing the cleaning herself, she had noticed a quantity of hairs in the bag of the vacuum cleaner. After extensive investigation, during which she examined the cleaner bag as she finished each room, she was able to pinpoint the contaminated area. Every day she found a profusion of offensive tendrils in the bag after she had done the carpet in the hall. And the dog’s pre-walk prancings were to blame.

She had summoned sufficient courage to mention the matter to her husband—in a circumspect manner, of course: she had asked him whether dogs shed their summer coats, or did they merely grow additional hair during the winter months? Mr Nesbit had deliberated at length before pronouncing that they just grew extra hair. Aware that her husband was a self-acknowledged expert on dogs and many other things besides, Mrs Nesbit had thanked him and verified at the library that dogs did shed their summer coats. Furthermore, she continued to accumulate evidence in the cleaner bag to support the fact.

Now, whilst her husband ran through his nightly countdown: keys, torch, lead, collar . . . she resolved to give Heinz a thorough brushing every day for, although this entailed more work, she did like to keep a clean house. She wondered whether all the nasty hairs on the hall carpet had provoked the cleaning woman into the paroxysm that culminated in the kicking of Heinz’s bottom.

Mr Nesbit had long admired Dachshunds and in a burst of benevolence had finally purchased one. Not unnaturally, Mrs Nesbit was required to feed and nurture the puppy (she still remembered with a barely repressed shudder the pools and piles—and the smell—Lord, the smell!) for Mr Nesbit had made it plain that he had bought the dog, not only for his own delectation and delight, but to keep her company during the day. So thoughtful of him.

Watching Heinz disappear into the misty drive, she hoped as usual that he might get lost—not die, or anything inconvenient like that—just get lost. He made so much work. Mr Nesbit made a lot of work, too, but that was different; she had married him of her own volition and she should have realized then that he would be a lot of work . . . No, she didn’t ask for much (she hadn’t asked for Heinz), only that Heinz lose himself.

At the bottom of the drive they paused before the wrought-iron gates for Mr Nesbit’s final deliberation of the day.

‘I think he should have his lead on.’ Then, as a democratic afterthought, ‘Don’t you?’ Mrs Nesbit knew that he required mild dissension to provide him with the satisfaction of overriding it. He also wanted time to survey the house from where he stood.

He was very proud of his house. Many times he had congratulated her on her rescue, by marriage, from a life of mediocrity, and told her how fortunate she was to live in such a nice house. It was a nice house, but it was too big, and big houses made so much work; especially now he had dispensed with the cleaning woman, refusing to employ another, as he feared for Heinz’s safety. Mrs Nesbit was sure she would have been just as happy in a little terraced house in town. (In the country, people tread in such disgusting things.)

‘There shouldn’t be any cars out here at this time of night, dear,’ was her suitable diversity of opinion. She wished that, for once, he would let Heinz out into the lane without his lead.

‘I’m not so sure . . .’ his words trailed off as though he were giving weighty consideration to her argument. He turned, as she knew he would, to look at the house behind them. ‘Don’t you think the house looks pleasant in the moonlight?’ he said, as his gimlet eyes sucked in the mist-shrouded bulk of the building. Mrs Nesbit made no reply—she knew that he didn’t require one. She watched his neat little moustache bristling with the pride of ownership. He looks like Hitler, she thought for the thousandth time, Hitler admiring the Berchtesgaden. His fingers caressed the scrolled ironwork of the gates behind him. The gates were almost his own handiwork, for he had designed them himself with loving care and a minute attention to detail. His own personally sculptured drawbridge . . .

Mr Nesbit turned briskly to the matter in hand:

‘No, better safe than sorry. We’ll have his lead on, I think.’ He waited, giving Mrs Nesbit his full attention now; waited for her final contribution to the polemical charade.

‘But if a car did come along, dear, it wouldn’t be going very fast, would it? With this mist about and the way the lane winds, only a lunatic would be driving fast.’ Pathetic, but necessary, she thought.

‘Can’t risk it. I’m where I am today because I’ve never taken risks. You know that.’ A crushing, predictable conclusion beautifully illustrating his authoritativeness. She took the proffered collar and lead, bending with a small sigh to attach them to the frisking Heinz.

Satisfied that the lead was secure after a careful scrutiny by the light of the torch, Mr Nesbit opened one of the gates, allowing Heinz and Mrs Nesbit out before him; not for any reason of etiquette, but simply because he had insufficient time in which to get out before the enthusiastic Heinz had pulled his wife through the opening like a rag doll. She waited, her arm aching from the effort of restraining the dog, whilst Mr Nesbit carefully closed the gate. Together they set off along the lane; he strutting in fine military manner, illuminating Heinz’s favourite places with the torch; she stumbling blindly along behind the dog with the lead chafing her hand. So much effort, so much work . . .

Mrs Nesbit saw the car hissing down the lane towards them. It was showing no lights and the dark shape of it seemed to stretch from hedge to hedge. She wondered whether she should tell Mr Nesbit about it; after all, from his position in the middle of the lane he should be able to see it as well as she . . .

He saw it. ‘Damned fool’s got no lights. What does he think he’s playing at?’ He waved the torch imperiously. The car approached at undiminished speed, scything through the low-lying mist. ‘Keep the dog into the side,’ he said, no doubt presuming that she had sufficient intelligence to do the same. ‘Good heavens, it’s a Rolls-Royce!’ he bellowed. ‘You’d think the fellow would have more sense!’

To Mrs Nesbit, crouched against the dripping hedge, it was obvious that the car was not going to stop before it reached her husband, who by now was roaring ‘Stop! Stop, I tell you!’ and gesticulating wildly with the torch. King Canute (abridged version), she thought as he disappeared with a thud and a gurgle beneath the perpendicular radiator. Heinz, hearing his master in distress, leapt towards the last-known position of his voice. Such was the strength of his determination that he tore the lead from Mrs Nesbit’s hand. He was just in time to vanish under a rear wheel.

She watched the vehicle draw sedately to a halt and was fascinated and relieved to see that it was a hearse; one of those pre-war models that used to exemplify quality in the far-off days of her childhood. It reversed slowly towards her and stopped a few feet from the sprawling figures of Heinz and her husband. On the gleaming bier in the back of the vehicle rested the unmistakable shape of a coffin.

Two men in funeral clothes and top hats climbed down from the front. One of them went quietly to the two bodies in the lane. The other came and stood beside her. Beneath the brim of the hat his face was one of perpetual suffering; thin and drawn and white in the moonlight.

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘please accept our heartfelt sympathy. It was . . . unavoidable.’ She nodded mutely and assumed a sad posture of weary fortitude.

The other man straightened from his examination of the bodies, and with a gesture of finality he removed his hat. His brilliant, bald head clashed incongruously with his sombre clothes. The man beside her also removed his hat to reveal a head not quite as bald as the other’s. From somewhere inside the hat he produced a card, which he handed to her before deferentially bowing his head in the presence of death. Mrs Nesbit tilted the card slightly to catch the moonlight and read, through welling tears:

She burst into tears then, her body wracked by enormous sobs. The man put his hand on her heaving shoulder.

‘Madam, the Grim Reaper visits all of us at some time, you know.’ He handed her a clean white handkerchief smelling of after-shave lotion and formaldehyde.

‘Fortunately I, Herbert Croaker, and my brother Horace are on hand to render you some assistance.’

For a few moments Mrs Nesbit sobbed in the comforting and sympathetic crook of Herbert’s arm. Finally she blew her nose and composed herself as best she could.

‘I’m very grateful. It’s . . . it’s . . .’ she faltered, pointing sorrowfully at Mr Nesbit and Heinz, ‘well, it’s such an awful mess.’ She choked on a fresh deluge of tears.

‘Leave it all to us,’ said Herbert gently. He patted her arm reassuringly and walked over to join Horace. They held a short murmured conversation before opening the rear door of the hearse. Putting their hats side by side on the floor beneath the bier, they slid the coffin out and laid it on the tarmac next to Mr Nesbit. With considerable self-control Mrs Nesbit advanced to where the two men were now struggling with the lid of the coffin. She winced upon seeing, from the corner of her eye, the muddy red imprint of the tyre tread on her husband’s shirt front. That was a clean white shirt she had taken the trouble to iron that very morning . . .

Herbert paused dramatically from his labours with the lid. ‘Screwdriver,’ he said to Horace in a tone that suggested Divine Revelation. Hearing the Word, Horace exhaled to produce a prolonged ‘Aaaahhh . . .’ and strode purposefully to the front of the hearse. Herbert looked up apologetically:

‘We . . . er . . . always put a couple in . . . screws. It . . . er . . . prevents the lid falling off in transit.’ He seemed a little uncomfortable at his divulgence of a professional secret. Mrs Nesbit nodded understandingly. ‘Very practical,’ she assured him. Horace returned with a yellow-handled screwdriver and a torch. He handed the torch to Herbert, who played the beam along the edge of the lid to reveal the first screw. Horace tackled it with a nice economy of movement—the credentials of a craftsman.

‘What name is it, madam?’ Herbert asked, as his beam sought the next screw for Horace.

‘Nesbit,’ she replied. Should she feel guilty for not providing his Christian name? Not really; after all, they hadn’t been that close . . . She would have to consult his birth certificate.

‘The deceased—he was your husband?’

‘We’ve been married for twenty-five years.’ She felt surprised that such an incredibly long time could be so adequately and succinctly described.

Horace removed the second screw and lifted the lid of the coffin. Mrs Nesbit gasped when she saw the immaculate quilted lining inside.

‘Won’t you ruin the material if you put the—my husband . . .’

‘This is our Rover general purpose model. It cleans up very well,’ Herbert explained.

‘Rather you than—’ Mrs Nesbit decided not to finish her attempt at a little brave humour.

She turned away whilst they manoeuvred Mr Nesbit into the coffin. Horace spoke for the first time:

‘Nice fit, Herbert; almost as if it was tailored for him.’ His voice wasn’t as cultured as his brother’s. It was evident to Mrs Nesbit that he was the artisan, master of the workshops; the sensitive and condolent Herbert would look after the administrative side of the business. Horace addressed her:

‘He’s nice and comfortable now, Missus. Would you like to see him?’

‘Not just now, thank you. Perhaps after you’ve . . . you’ve . . .’

‘Yes, of course,’ Herbert interjected tactfully.

She suddenly remembered Heinz, poor little Heinz. She turned, careful not to look at the coffin. ‘Can you take the dog as well? He loved his Heinz, you know.’

Herbert hesitated. ‘Uhmm . . . it’s not very . . . hygienic . . .’

‘I’m sure my husband wouldn’t mind, Mr Croaker,’ she said eagerly.

Herbert considered for a moment longer. ‘Very well, madam. Special circumstances. We don’t normally make a habit of it, though.’ He signalled to Horace.

Once more Mrs Nesbit turned away as Horace laid Heinz reverently on Mr Nesbit’s feet. Horace secured the lid against any mishap and they nestled the coffin into the hearse. Herbert replaced his hat at a dignified angle.

‘Thank you for your patronage, Mrs Nesbit. Would you be so kind as to call on us in a day or so to discuss your requirements regarding your husband’s remains?’

‘Yes I—’ She broke off. Herbert and Horace cocked their heads towards her in unison, indicating their compliance to her every wish. ‘I’d like a nice send-off,’ was all she could think of to say about her requirements. She looked tearfully at the bloodstained road. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you . . . such a dreadful mess.’ Herbert drew himself up proudly:

‘A creative funeral service is equipped for any eventuality, madam,’ he intoned rather formally. He softened a little when she offered him his handkerchief: ‘No, no, it’s on the house. Good night.’

They climbed into the hearse. It whispered away into the night with the mist swirling eerily behind it.

Mrs Nesbit stood for a long time staring red-eyed at the two dark blotches and the shattered torch. ‘So much work,’ she muttered irritably to herself as she returned to the house for a broom and some hot water.