The Dylan Thomas Murders by David N. Thomas Page A

by this time opened up the shop and taken bacon and eggs to my father upstairs.
    We would finish around early evening, and the routine at the end of the day was just as well established. Sid would park on the main road outside the shop, and take the day’s money into my parents. My mother and I would count it on the kitchen table, and it was my father’s job to go out to the Commer and take a note of the paraffin gauges, and check inside to see what stock had been sold. The routine was changed one Saturday evening, and it was my mother who was killed, not my father as it should have been.
    We were back much later than usual. A thick winter’s fog was swirling in off the estuary and we had to inch along the lanes. We came in and found my father sitting in front of the wireless. He was filling in the scores on his football coupon, with a half a bottle of whisky on the table beside him. He refused to go out to the van until the results were over. Sid was anxious to get home, and he couldn’t take the Commer to the yard until the gauges and stock had been checked. My mother said she would do the checking and that my father would move the van later.
    She found a torch, pencil and paper, and went outside. I put the kettle on, went to the bathroom to pee, and chatted to my brother who was splashing about in the bath. I walked through to the front of the house, where I had my bedroom, overlooking the main street. I could only just make out the shape of the Commer, but I could see the fuzzy light from my mother’s torch as she checked the gauges. Next thing, the headlights of a car came up behind her. I heard the screech of brakes, like fingers down a blackboard, and then a tremendous bang. The headlights went out, steam came gushing through the fog, and the torch come spinning up towards me.
    I ran downstairs. My father was still in the kitchen. I screamed at him and ran out into the fog. I didn’t think at all about what I’d find, but wondered what we would do at Christmas.
    She was squashed flat against the paraffin tank, her face turned sideways, looking up at the house as if she had tried in that final second to ask for my help. I watched the blood dripping from her mouth, and heard someone retching in the gutter behind me. Neighbours appeared, splashing frantically through the leaking paraffin, and took me away inside.
    â€œChristmas,” I said to O’Malley “was a disaster. He took us to a hotel in Cornwall but we ran away with the train tickets and went home. Not bad for two kids in short trousers.”
    â€œAnd fat sausages for ever more?” O’Malley really knew how to put two and two together.
    When I arrived home, the house was silent and gloomy. Rachel was in the garden room. I could see she’d been crying. I sat down beside her, and she handed me the Cambrian News .
    â€œPage eight,” she said, so quietly it was almost a whisper.
    At the top of the In Memoriam column was a picture of a black and white collie. The name underneath was Mably, with the words: Caught in a spinney of murdering herbs .
    â€œWho could do such a horrible thing?” Rachel asked.
    â€œIt’s Milk Wood , isn’t it?”
    â€œSort of.”
    â€œBeynon the butcher?”
    â€œNo, Pugh the poisoner.”
    Â 
* * *
    The day started with slaughter.
    I try to let our hens have as much daylight as possible so that they give us lots of eggs in return. I get up about 7-30, and whilst the tea is brewing, I put on my gumboots and walk down to the poultry sheds in my dressing gown and night-shirt. I scoop feed from the bins, and spend a very happy five minutes whilst the ducks, hens and geese scrabble around me fighting for food. And then back for the tea, and upstairs to bed for another hour or so, depending on the weather and the time of year.
    I usually let the small birds out first so that they have time for a fair share before their big sisters come running in with their