"But they never found out how she came to be electrocuted," said the foreman, addressing himself to his drink. "Never."

"Funny, that," murmured Simon Cullen.

"It said in the paper that her husband was at work at the time it happened," expanded the foreman.

"At a meeting all afternoon," chimed in Fred. "It said that, too. About a dozen people there with him all the time."

"My wife spends a lot of her time at work in meetings," said Simon. "I know because she tells me when not to ring the office."

"If you ask me," opined the foreman, pushing back his chair, "most meetings are a waste of time. Let’s get started here, Fred."

Simon swept up the empty mugs and drifted off to take a look at the utility room with new eyes. It was situated off the kitchen and housed the central heating boiler and the washing machine as well as all the impedimenta associated with living in a sizeable house in the country—including Simon’s new green wellies. The Wetherbys’ ironing board was gone and Simon had stood the Cullens’ one in its place but otherwise the room looked very much as it must have done in the days of the previous occupants.

Propped up beside the ironing board and the radiator was the clotheshorse which Simon and Charlotte had brought with them from their old house. In fact, the only relic of the Wetherbys’ regime was one of those old-fashioned wooden clothes airers which could be lowered by a thin rope, loaded with damp washing and then hoisted back up to the ceiling above the boiler to dry.

Simon examined everything in the room with his customary care but was no wiser at the end of his survey. He did not know, in fact, that he had reached the same conclusion as the investigating authorities had—that something must have electrified the metal of the ironing board.

When he gave the men their tea in the afternoon he said, "You might just put a lick of paint on that small scratch on the radiator in there next time one of you has a paintbrush in his hand."

"No problem," said the foreman. "No sugar, thanks."

"Two lumps for me," Fred reminded him. "Worked out how it was done, have you?"

"Done?" said Simon.

Fred gave him a knowing wink. "They said the husband had got a lady love tucked away somewhere."

The foreman set his mug down and said sapiently, "What he had got was an alibi, so you mind what you say here, Fred."

Fred bridled. "There’s no smoke without fire. Besides, don’t forget that most murderers are widowers."

"Because they’ve killed their wives," nodded Simon. "I’ve heard that one before."

"Remember," pronounced the foreman magisterially, "it didn’t say anything about that in the newspapers—not even the Sunday ones."

"What did it say?" asked Simon, adding in spite of himself, "I suppose it is theoretically possible that the ironing board was live—electrified, that is—a long time before Mrs. Wetherby touched it . . ."

"Not before one o’clock it wasn’t," insisted Fred vigorously. "Ivy Middleton was here all that morning. She put the dirty washing in the machine and started it up before she went home like she always did, dinner-time."

"That’s right," said the foreman. "I was forgetting about Ivy. She touched that ironing board and she didn’t get an electric shock, did she, Fred?"

Simon and Charlotte hadn’t kept Mrs. Ivy Middleton on to do the rough housework. As Charlotte had put it so pithily when she ("they") paid for the Manor, "We can afford Cullingoak Manor—just—but not the extras as well." Ivy had rated as an extra and so Simon saw entirely to the running of the house.

"There could have been some cable and a time switch," he said. It was just as well Charlotte was at work. She wouldn’t have approved of his wasting the workmen’s time, let alone his gossiping with them like this. "You know, an electric wire from the nearest power point to the ironing board, timed to come live after Mrs. Middleton had left."

"Now, if I may say so, that’s where you’re wrong," said the foreman placidly. "The police thought of that, too." He took a swig from his mug. "It so happens that there wasn’t any such timer in the house or garden and believe you me, they searched for it."

"I can quite see that they would have," murmured Simon.

"And," the foreman tapped the table with his forefinger for greater emphasis, "they had a witness that the husband—Peter Wetherby, that is—didn’t leave the house before the police arrived so he couldn’t have hidden a timer anywhere outside the house."

"Got it in for him, haven’t you?" said Simon absently. "This Peter Wetherby." Suddenly something about the name jarred in his mind. He couldn’t quite place the memory but it was there, somewhere.

"Ironing boards don’t come alive on their own," shrugged the foreman, starting to get to his feet.

"I reckon," said Fred, "it was suicide."

"Suicide?" echoed Simon.

Fred nodded. "I think she connected a wire from the socket to the ironing board herself and her husband came home and found her and removed the evidence pretty quickly. Didn’t want anyone to know she’d done it because of this other woman, see?"

The foreman said, "You’re a great one for your theories, Fred, but it don’t get the work done. Come along now, let’s get started here or we’ll never be done."

Over the next few weeks Simon had to agree Fred’s suicide theory was the most tenable. Something like a kettle flex could have been plugged into the nearest power point and the bare wires at the other end made to touch the metal of the ironing board. Turn the switch on, clasp the ironing board, and Bob’s your uncle. A married man becomes a widower in no time at all. And all the husband would have had to do in order to destroy any evidence of a suicide was to put the proper plug back on the appliance before he rang the police—the work of a moment—and no-one would be any the wiser. Oh, and perhaps change the face of the plug in case there were burn marks there, too.

He gave this thought whenever Charlotte was away. She was away for the bank rather a lot these days. At least he thought it was for the bank until they telephoned one weekend needing to speak to her urgently and he referred them to their conference but they said they weren’t having one. That was when he remembered what it was about the foreman’s use of Peter Wetherby’s Christian name that had bothered him. Charlotte had known it even though the estate agent had only given them his surname. When he came to think of it, she had known, too, about Cullingoak Manor being for sale at a low price before it had even been advertised. That still didn’t explain how Mrs. Wetherby had died while her husband was well away from the action unless it had been by her own hand. Simon Cullen was rapidly coming to the conclusion that it hadn’t been. That was when he laid his plan.

"Darling," he said to Charlotte the next evening, "I think I’m going to have to have a couple of nights away next week. Uncle George wants me to go up to Yorkshire to see him."

"Fine," she said. "Remember me to the old boy. Not that I’ve seen him since the wedding."

"No more you have," he said. Charlotte didn’t much care for his relations. "I’ll go on Tuesday and be back Thursday evening . . . that all right?"

"Fine," she said. "By the way, before I forget, I may be back a bit late on Friday. We’ve got a big meeting at the bank Friday afternoon." She smiled. "Salary review committee—mustn’t miss that."

"Not on any account," he agreed gravely.

Simon studiously avoided the utility room when he got back to the Manor on Thursday evening. He and Charlotte had a quiet evening together. "You might switch the washing machine on first thing, Simon," she said as they went upstairs. "I went through my summer clothes while you were away and want to get them ready for storage."

"They’ll all be beautifully ironed," he said, "by the time you get home."

"It’s getting too chilly to wear them now. I must say I was quite glad of the central heating when I got in yesterday."

"The afternoons are getting cooler," he agreed amiably.

As soon as Charlotte had left for work on Friday morning—the day of her big meeting—Simon entered the utility room very carefully. He didn’t switch on the washing machine, though. Instead he examined the room with extreme caution. There was indeed a plug in the power socket and a length of flex tucked away behind the radiator. It ran, almost out of sight at ground level, to the nearest leg of the ironing board. Fred had been right about that, anyway.

But he wasn’t into metals and Simon was. Also behind the radiator, firmly taped to it, was what he had been looking for—that which would make the whole thing live. But not just yet. Not until the heating warmed the radiator.

"Clever," he murmured to himself appreciatively. "Very clever." It was a short metal bar which neither the police nor anyone else would have looked at twice had they noticed it lying around. It was half copper and half steel lengthways. It was pressed firmly against the back of the radiator, the copper side set alongside, but not touching, one of the two wires in the flex—which had been scraped bare. He checked the thermostat and found that the central heating was set to come on at three o’clock as usual. Simon thought it would take about an hour for the copper part of the bar to heat up enough to expand to touch the flex and complete the electrical circuit. He went back to the kitchen to wait for something to happen to establish that he was alive and well while Charlotte was away at work.

At twelve o’clock their next door neighbour came to the door. "Your wife has just rung me, Mr. Cullen, to say she thinks she can’t have put the telephone back on its hook properly because she keeps getting the engaged signal."

"I’ll check," he said, knowing it would be so. "Thanks for letting me know . . . Like a coffee?"

"Some other time, if I may, please . . ."

"I’ll look forward to that," he said and meant it. His neighbours really were very agreeable people indeed. Getting to know them in future was going to be a pleasure.

When Charlotte got back at six o’clock he was out of sight behind the utility room door. She went straight there, calling out his name as she did so. He did not answer but when she was right inside the room and standing, puzzled, in front of the ironing board, he stepped out quietly from behind the door and gave her a gentle push towards it. She put out her hands to save herself and screamed as she touched the ironing board.

At his trial, before pronouncing a life sentence on him, the judge described Peter Wetherby as the clever, calculating and callous killer of the two women in his life.

The End