Short Story: Once In A Blue Moon

Short Story: Once In A Blue Moon

"You wanted a love-story," she said reproachfully, cleaning her glasses whilst watching the young lady journalist from under wiry grey eyebrows. "Oh no, this is not a love-story."

Tricia ran the end of her Biro into her wavy pink copper hair, and looked anxiously at the old lady. Her initial joy at being offered the chance of an 'exclusive' for the first time, was now tempered with the possibility that it was all about to be nothing.

"But they fought over you didn't they?"

Lady Pamela's waxy wrinkles deepened in wheezy mirth. "That's how I wanted it," she coughed, "That's how it was told."

"...and that's how it was, - wasn't it?"

A look from the old lady told Tricia that was not how it was, and her anxiety deepened to amazement.

"You mean the papers got it wrong?"

"Oh no! The papers reported the case very well, surprisingly..." wheezy chuckles and ensuing coughs were getting in the way, but a journalist had to learn the diplomacy of patience; the story had to be told her way or not at all. "Oh, I'm not being fair to you little girl," the ancient creature leaned forward and reached out a conciliatory skeleton of a hand, "but it's my last fling. I'll tell you now; I wasn't all that beautiful, just a comely, proper girl with a good figure, and they said I was intelligent enough as young girls went. When the Baron proposed to me he wasn't a Baron yet, but we knew he would be."

She wheezed and coughed for some minutes, taking sips of the liquid in a glass beside her, and Tricia wondered if it was water or gin. "I loved him, in a way, but I was shy, and he thought I was being cold and coy, so he didn't try and warm me round; I was his ornament and he seemed happy with that. He didn't seem to want to understand my inexperience, he just left me alone; I realised eventually that he was as shy as I was, but it was too late by then."

Tricia wasn't writing. As she waited for the latest bout of coughing to subside, she bit the end of her pen in an effort to compose herself; - all this was history; what about the trial, or had the old dear just called the paper in a last bid for attention before she died?

"I've written my autobiography!" Lady Pamela suddenly announced, with a pert look on her face. "I wrote it years ago! Remind me to hand it to you before you go, you'll know best if it should be published... I want the proceeds to go to Cancer Research. I can't trust any of my family to deal with it!"

The legal problems this could cause if the book were published momentarily horrified Tricia out of thinking about the story she was here to get, but she calmed herself with the thought that this woman was obviously out of touch, and the situation could be dealt with if it arose.

"Some months after my husband became Lord Carver, and I'd had my second child by him, I met a coach driver.” Another cough interrupted her dialogue. “We had the coach for a business trip; - executive suite, bar in the back, you know, and the driver was so superb I had to have him as my chauffeur." she paused and sipped, and gasped a bit, finally reaching for her throat spray, breathing it in gratefully.

"Now the story everyone knows is that he was my lover, and I saw my husband kill him, or try to, but he killed Clifton before he died..." She paused for a wheezy chuckle as she enjoyed her own mystery, shaking her head with glee. "Clifton would never give to charity; - I hated that about him..."

Tricia frowned. A sudden jump onto another track entirely? What would she do if they got off the subject she was here for?

"...but I still loved him, as far as I knew how to, so the argument we had that morning did hurt; it's always the way with these murders isn't it?"

"Murder!" Tricia dropped her note-pad and went white.

"Surely you must have guessed that's why I called you?" she laughed wonderingly. "My, but you're naive, after the way the case went? Anyway, as I was saying, it was one of those things that would never have happened but for a combination of things. They'd probably both still be alive today if my husband hadn't broken a stirrup whilst out riding that afternoon."

"Oh," Tricia added, while the latest coughing bout took its course, "he came back and found you together?"

"Well, he came back an hour sooner, certainly, and found the chauffeur handing me a drink..." she paused for effect, "...that was all; handing me a drink. No, we never even thought of having an affair, but I had to say we were, you see, otherwise the story I gave wouldn't be convincing. Clifton thought we were, so he marched through to his study without another look at us, and loaded a pistol."

Tricia stopped writing through sheer apprehension as the real story unfolded.

"I sat there sipping my drink, wishing he hadn't caught me having it, the chauffeur stood at the other end of the settee as usual until I'd finished, when he usually took the glass from me and washed it in the kitchen. All done before Clifton's return as a rule. This time I'd sipped barely half the liqueur before Clifton appeared in the doorway and pointed the pistol at the chauffeur... I can't remember his name, it's no good... and BANG! He wasn't used to guns, so he just hit him in the side."

Tricia was hardly concerned with the chauffeur's name, it was already a part of the public's knowledge from that trial, she was gaping as she realised that this cannot, then, have been a duel...

"I spilt the rest of my drink, staring at my husband. All I could think was, 'He's jealous! He loves me!' That's when the chauffeur got hold of the poker and began to beat Clifton with it. I ran out, screaming, loaded the other pistol and came back with it hidden behind me." Lady Pamela now seemed to be getting impatient with her own constant coughing interruptions, and barely allowed each to be over before she was wheezing on again.

"Clifton had got hold of the chauffeur's arm and made him drop the poker somehow, and I watched them struggle quite evenly, until my husband managed to get the upper hand, threw the chauffeur backwards, and he was killed instantly because he caught his head on the sharp corner of the mantle-piece."

Tricia tried to equate this with the original story, frowning again into the unaccustomed silence as the old lady paused. This still wasn't murder.

"But the story was that they died in the same instant as they both shot together, and the chauffeur, George Sullivan by the way, was knocked back into the mantle-piece by Lord Carver's shot, but you had the other...? You? Not you...?"

"Yes! And why, you ask?" Lady Pamela chuckled, "I wanted his money to be used. Watching them fight I had time to think, and I could see how simple the finish could be, a once-in-a-blue-moon chance to live my life the way I'd always really wanted, - giving to charity, and being a person rather than an ornament. No-one knew how much that meant to me, least of all Clifton. Now I could force him to, at pistol-point. Only one shot in those things.; I didn't really want to, 'though I was still smarting from our argument that morning, but he still refused; he laughed at me; said I was silly, so I shot him!"

Her wheezing, spluttering laughter filled the shock which followed, then she grinned slyly. "I've had a good forty years since then, and used his money well I think, but I'll be dead of cancer by tomorrow, and that will be my final gift to charity. You reported the original case so faithfully then, I thought you should have this, before the book is published... it'll be good publicity..."