anyway? The thought sequence, again on loan from a TV cop show: helicopter surveillance (at night); infra-red photography (sheâs not sure what this is, but has a notion itâs what you need to use); cops identify and secure crime scene. And sure enough, she can see two officers in uniform unspooling yellow tape and a police vehicle disgorging a photographer and some kind of forensic specialist in a white paper suit. For a dead dog? It briefly reminds her of a TV detective show the girls used to watch, but instead of humans, everyone was an elephant or a hippo or a chimp, and the dog wouldnât have been dead, it would just have had a sore paw. But the girls would never watch such a show now, considering themselves far too old for such childish nonsense, and neither, probably, would anyone else, unless it winked over the shoulders of the children with allegedly humorous allusions to sex and drugs and political scandals. She tears up suddenly, vivid with the sense of passing time and lost innocence, of infants growing old and cynical, of the sad inevitability of decay and death, an entire bolt of somber, Four-Last-Things thought and feeling unfolding and falling through her mind in a lurid cascade. As they pass beneath the gold- and rust- and red-leaved apple trees, her feet crunching on fallen fruit, shivering now in the sharp October air, she braces herself for the sight of Mr Smith in full light, ashamed that she didnât bury the body, or do more than strew a blanket over it, ashamed that she failed to treat him with the respect she feels was his due. But how could she have buried the family dog without the girls, without Danny?
âItâs Mr Smith I feel sorry for.â That was what Danny used to say whenever some domestic crisis hit, and Mr Smith, merrily oblivious, couldnât understand why no one was playing with him. And of course Mr Smith, in his merry, giddy oblivion, was the great disspeller of domestic crisis, the repository, as the girls grew older and complicated and
human,
the locus of sheer happiness in their house, the only one when domestic crisis hit that you
could
play with, that you
wanted
to. Claire is shaking now, her eyes so blurred with tears that she is upon the scene before she can discern that what is lying there is not remotely what she expected. Her first thought is: maybe it was a dream after all! Because Mr Smithâs body is nowhere to be seen. Instead, there is the body of a man, his hair and clothes stained with mulch and dead leaves and clay, his clothes torn, dark smears of what might be blood around the four or five wounds to his stomach and chest. The body of a dead man, not a dead dog. It was like a sneeze, she says later, as involuntary as a sneeze, the sound she makes, the
laugh
she laughs, as if some sorcerer had waved his wand or cast his spell and reality had been overthrown, and there, before the fascinated, appalled eyes of the detectives, stands a woman
laughing
at the sight of a corpse in her own backyard and, indeed, resisting a powerful urge to clap her hands.
âMs Taylor?â Detective Fowler says, and thereâs a tone to it, a âpull yourself together woman, for Godâs sakeâ undercurrent she almost appreciates, as if it is clear sheâs being hysterical and in truth deserves a slap.
âIâm sorry,â she says. âItâs just â¦â
âJust what?â says Detective Fox abruptly.
But Claire canât really say what itâs just.
Itâs just that someone has gotten rid of the body of her slaughtered dog and replaced it with the body of a man she thinks she recognizes, a man she suspects she saw a week ago at the barbecue, disguised as the Angel of Death, standing at her garden gate, waving his hand (or shaking his fist) at her husband.
Itâs just that her husband armed himself with a knife before he approached this man, and then they disappeared out into the Arboretum
âItâs Mr Smith I feel sorry for.â That was what Danny used to say whenever some domestic crisis hit, and Mr Smith, merrily oblivious, couldnât understand why no one was playing with him. And of course Mr Smith, in his merry, giddy oblivion, was the great disspeller of domestic crisis, the repository, as the girls grew older and complicated and
human,
the locus of sheer happiness in their house, the only one when domestic crisis hit that you
could
play with, that you
wanted
to. Claire is shaking now, her eyes so blurred with tears that she is upon the scene before she can discern that what is lying there is not remotely what she expected. Her first thought is: maybe it was a dream after all! Because Mr Smithâs body is nowhere to be seen. Instead, there is the body of a man, his hair and clothes stained with mulch and dead leaves and clay, his clothes torn, dark smears of what might be blood around the four or five wounds to his stomach and chest. The body of a dead man, not a dead dog. It was like a sneeze, she says later, as involuntary as a sneeze, the sound she makes, the
laugh
she laughs, as if some sorcerer had waved his wand or cast his spell and reality had been overthrown, and there, before the fascinated, appalled eyes of the detectives, stands a woman
laughing
at the sight of a corpse in her own backyard and, indeed, resisting a powerful urge to clap her hands.
âMs Taylor?â Detective Fowler says, and thereâs a tone to it, a âpull yourself together woman, for Godâs sakeâ undercurrent she almost appreciates, as if it is clear sheâs being hysterical and in truth deserves a slap.
âIâm sorry,â she says. âItâs just â¦â
âJust what?â says Detective Fox abruptly.
But Claire canât really say what itâs just.
Itâs just that someone has gotten rid of the body of her slaughtered dog and replaced it with the body of a man she thinks she recognizes, a man she suspects she saw a week ago at the barbecue, disguised as the Angel of Death, standing at her garden gate, waving his hand (or shaking his fist) at her husband.
Itâs just that her husband armed himself with a knife before he approached this man, and then they disappeared out into the Arboretum
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