Page 30 of The Six Murders of Daphne St Clair

Chapter Twenty

BurntheBookBurnerz:

THIS is what the tradwives don’t tell you.

That behind all the pretty dresses and clean kitchens, women are LOSING IT.

Everyone who’s got a hard-on for homeschooling and baking bread needs to remember how much women struggled with this stuff.

Ring Ring Ring, Betty Friedan, looks like we got a case of ‘the problem that has no name’!

PreyAllDay:

Jesus, it feels like you had that one teed up. How long have you been waiting to hit Paste?

StopDropAndTroll:

I don’t get ur fucking problem. She meets a nice man who pays for her and gives her a nice life. David was a fucking saint! He’s even raising kids that weren’t his! She’s lucky to find a man like that. What’s her issue?? This is why we need MGTOW!

PreyAllDay:

Yahhh, what’s the serial killer’s issue? I thought she’d be totally sane /s.

ShockAndBlah:

Okay. . . hot take but. . . is anyone else getting beige flag vibes from David? Like I wouldn’t want to be married to him. . .

BurntheBookBurnerz:

Well, he wasn’t listening to her. She was saying she was unhappy and he ignored that.

CapoteParty:

None of this justifies killing him though.

StopDropAndTroll:

No shit, Sherlock.

DAPHNE: And so, the process began again. It was easier this time because David wasn’t the suspicious type. He was the kind of person who never read his receipt or checked his change because his world was full of kind people, and he always had enough to share.

RUTH (regretfully): What a lovely person.

DAPHNE: Yeah, well, don’t get too attached.

RUTH: How did you do it? Without being seen?

DAPHNE: I’d sneak out of bed before dawn.

That’s a woman’s time, really, when she can do what she wants in a sleeping house.

I’d crush up the pills and put them in the cottage cheese because it was the one breakfast item my kids would never touch.

By the time David woke up there was a beautiful breakfast in his sunny kitchen.

RUTH: What did you poison him with?

DAPHNE: Dexylchromate, which is really the most loving way you can poison someone.

It doesn’t burn the stomach or make you vomit over and over.

Instead it goes straight for the brain, making you exhausted and weak.

It’s really the same as getting old, just on a much faster schedule.

David didn’t know it, but he was on my timeline now.

RUTH: Poor David.

DAPHNE: All right, you’ve made your feelings clear about David.

And look, I tried to be the sweetest wife possible once the poisoning started.

It wasn’t hard because from the moment I had my plan, I felt like my old self.

The danger of being caught, the knowledge that I had a secret, the power I felt over my husband, it electrified me.

And on the first day he complained about exhaustion, I helped him up the stairs before tenderly tucking him into his death bed.

On the fourth day we called the doctor. David was insistent and I knew that people would eventually ask questions if we didn’t have him examined.

But I still felt a surge of adrenaline when the doorbell rang, and I tried to breathe deeply.

I needed to look concerned about David but not like I had something to hide.

I needed to control this situation, to keep the doctor unworried while reassuring David that he was getting the help he needed.

But my mind was full of nasty visions: the doctor, standing up from examining David and pointing a single accusing finger at me.

David turning and scowling at me, his eyes dark with hatred.

My children watching me being handcuffed and thrown in the back of a police car.

This was the gamble. It was my riskiest murder yet, because this time there was no life-threatening situation and no terminally ill husband.

I was killing a perfectly healthy man who posed no real threat to me (unless you can be bored to death).

But when I opened the door, my shoulders sagged with relief.

Dr. Penney was tall and gangly, and his Adam’s apple seemed to bob uncontrollably.

His ears stuck out and he had the cowlicked hair of a little boy.

He seemed terrified to have been called out and was clutching his doctor’s bag with the same fervor as a kid with a teddy bear.

“Hello,” he coughed out.

“Please come inside.” I gestured and he followed me in, stumbling on the doorframe. He apologized and I had to stop myself from smiling, my confidence growing by the second.

“Are you from here?” I asked as we began the long climb to the bedroom.

“Ye-yes,” he said hesitantly. “Of course I went away for school. But I’ve just finished.” Just finished. It was music to my ears. A green doctor with no self-confidence.

“Who was the doctor before?” I asked.

“My father,” he admitted. “But he died a few months ago and the people, they need a doctor . . . so I guess that’s me.” Even he didn’t sound convinced by the prospect.

“Well, we’re glad you could come see us,” I said, making sure my voice sounded grave and low, even though I felt like skipping down the hall.

I pushed the door open and gestured the doctor into our bedroom.

My husband was lying in bed, his head pressed against the pillows as if a great weight was pushing him down, leaving him unable to move.

“So, what seems to be the problem, Mr. Priestly?” Dr. Penney asked.

“David, please,” he mumbled. “I’ve just felt so run down recently. Every day, I hope I’ll wake up having turned the corner but then I spend the day in bed, barely able to keep my eyes open.” His voice had a pleading, frantic quality. My husband was begging this man to understand, to fix him.

“Do you have any other symptoms?” the doctor asked as he fumbled with a blood pressure cuff. He was like a magician struggling to pull off a new trick.

“My brain feels foggy, like I can’t concentrate,” David said, watching the doctor take his blood pressure with all the detachment of someone watching TV.

“Well, your blood pressure is fine. You do look pale though. I’m wondering if it’s an iron deficiency?

” Dr. Penney said with a frown. He looked lost, as if he’d shown up for an exam without attending the class.

I suspected the plan had been for his father to train up his son before retiring but his untimely death had launched Penney Jr. into the deep end.

“It could be?” David said, although a question hung in his voice. He didn’t want guesses; he wanted a rock-solid diagnosis and a plan back to normal.

“I’ll be sure to cook him lots of red meat,” I said smoothly, patting his arm and smiling. “Even if you don’t have an iron problem, a steak dinner should lift your spirits.”

“Just last week I was out in that yard, chopping wood,” he murmured, rolling on his side to stare out the window. “Now I’m stuck in bed.”

“You’ll be back outside soon,” I said, kissing his forehead. “I’ll show the doctor out and then make you a steak dinner.”

But he was lost in his own world, the dappled light from the window throwing patterns on his haggard face.

“I think it’s time for him to be admitted to hospital,” Dr. Penney said to me in the kitchen, a week later.

It was a warm autumn afternoon, the kind of weather that makes you feel incredibly happy to be outside.

The sun was getting lower and the air was full of buttery golden light.

I stared out the window, aching to walk away but knowing that this was the moment when I had to be the most cautious, a devoted wife above even the start of suspicion.

“Of course, doctor. He’s not getting any better. I just want my David well.”

“It’s a couple hours’ drive to Glendale, the closest hospital with the specialists he might need. I’ll call them today but let’s take him tomorrow. He’s already asleep and the trip will be exhausting for him. We’ll set out at eight tomorrow.”

“I’ll ask the neighbors to take the kids,” I said. “I’ll see if they can spend the night, so I don’t have to sort them out in the morning.”

“Okay,” Dr. Penney said. He shook his head and tried to speak a couple of times before he finally got the words out. “I’m starting to suspect David has an aggressive form of cancer. I think you should prepare for the worst.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I said. I sighed and rubbed my eyes, bleary from the exhaustion of being David’s nurse day and night. He nodded sympathetically.

“Well, we should get some answers soon. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” I said, showing him out. After he left, I pursed my lips and began making David’s soup. I pulled the dexylchromate out of my hiding place in the cupboard.

That evening, as the sun faded behind the curtains, I sat with David in the bedroom, all tucked up in bed like a little boy.

Strangely, he seemed to know that he was dying.

I helped him drink more soup, knowing that it was so full of poison he’d never live to see the bottom of the bowl, not in his weakened state.

He seemed so comforted by me, the secret source of all his troubles.

He slipped away peacefully, a smile on his face that made me feel almost good about killing him.

He died knowing what it was to be a husband and father and believing that he was loved.

Meanwhile I felt a strange thrill at his death, the same feeling I’d had when I stared at Ted’s body or contemplated the way I’d changed the Flanagan family’s life on a subway platform.

Except this time, I felt it even more intensely, as if I was injecting it straight into my veins.

It was power. Pure unadulterated power. I decided who lived and died.

Everyone existed at my mercy. And once you’ve felt that, well, it’s hard to go back to tuna casseroles and I Dream of Jeannie .

David did love me. I still feel a little bad about him. He thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with me. And I suppose he was right .