The Loving Couple

THE LOVING COUPLE

         John Pringle hated his wife.  Muriel Pringle was a nagger.  If he tried to repair the sink, it was wrong.  If he weeded the garden, Muriel would nag him about the poor job he'd done - even though she'd nagged him to do the weeding in the first place.  Nag nag nag.  You could have made something of your life.  You had political ambitions - why didn't you ever run for town council?  Why don't you get that promotion and make more money?  Nag nag nag nag nag.  Perhaps John Pringle had failed just to spite her.
         Their children were grown and married and had children of their own.  They had all joined John and Muriel last June to celebrate forty years of wedded tolerance, but their family and friends never knew about their unhappy marriage, because by some tacit understanding, he and Muriel would smile and play the charade of well-married contentment.
         Next door lived Shirley Roberts, a widow whose husband had been dispatched by a stroke several years before.  One day, after a snowstorm, Mrs. Roberts asked John if he could push her car out of her driveway.  Her tires just kept spinning like possessed roulette wheels.  John succeeded in getting the car out of its rut and Mrs. Roberts, or Shirley, as she asked him to call her - rewarded him with a cup of tea and English muffins.  Ten minutes later he was in love with her.  Unlike Muriel, Shirley was easy to talk to - always smiling, always happy - she seemed to enjoy listening to him, even laughing at the little stories of his childhood that everyone else always found so boring.
         "I'm so pleased you came in," she beamed.  "You've brightened up my rather dull morning."
         From that moment on, John Pringle knew he had to kill his wife.
         Divorce was never an option.  It wasn't the sort of thing John's generation did.  They took their marriage vows seriously - "'til death us do part" and all that.  And even if John and Muriel did split up - disappointing their family and friends - John would lose half of everything - the investments, the house....  No, John couldn't do it.  And until beautiful, wonderful Shirley, he'd never even looked at another woman.  Yet he could never be an adulterer.
         Nor could he be a murderer.  He knew he could never shoot or stab or drown or suffocate Muriel, mainly because he knew he'd get caught.  He didn't possess the criminal mind.  For weeks he knotted his brain to come up with a solution while he coveted Shirley Roberts next door, stopping to chat with the angel whenever she was in her front yard, or giving her a little wave every time she drove by.
         One night it came to him.  He was cooking dinner - something he did two or three times a week.  John's cooking was the only thing that silenced Muriel's symphony of nagging, although she usually recommenced her tune to criticize his washing up.  This evening, John was just about to add the yogourt to the sauce when he knew Muriel's murder would be a slow one.  It wouldn't even be murder, really.
         Two years ago Muriel had collapsed at the mall and had been subsequently diagnosed with a heart condition.  Her doctors didn't believe she needed surgery, but she had to change her eating habits.  John had meticulously and uncomplainingly joined her low fat, low salt, low cholesterol diet.  Yogourt and olive oil replaced cream and butter.
         Now, with the yogourt container poised above the stove, the idea came to John Pringle.  It came to him as swiftly as if he'd burned himself on the element.  He returned the yogourt to the fridge and searched for the carton of whipping cream (38% M.F.) that had been left over from their son's visit the previous weekend.  John turned the carton's remains into the saucepan, bringing it to a boil, ecstatically watching as the bubbles exploded, filling the air with artery-clogging steam.
         So every day John Pringle dreamed of Shirley Roberts next door and every night he surreptitiously cooked with eggs and mayonnaise and butter and sour cream, hoping his wife would drop dead.

         Muriel Pringle had a head start on her husband:  she'd been trying to kill him for six months.  At first she'd wanted to make it look like a household accident but the debris left on the basement stairs and the loosened screws on the bath handle hadn't worked.  John was just too damned cautious.  Too damned perfect - or so he thought.
         Countless times during her marriage, Muriel Pringle had wished herself deaf.  John had a good singing voice, but he just couldn’t make it stay on key.  He'd croon along fine for the first line or two, then he'd waver up or down and think he was Sinatra.  Even her favourite song was a victim and it had driven her up the wall for forty years.  She always held her breath as she waited, hoping that this one time he’d get it right, but each time John sang, a sharp pain went through her like biting on a sore tooth.  She often wondered if he did it on purpose.
         Over the years this small annoyance had mushroomed into a seething hatred of her husband, something irreparable.  Muriel knew to the penny the amount of their investments and soon John's pension would be coming in.  Even without John, life would be very comfortable.  Yes, life would be perfect if she didn't have to share it with John.
         She changed course on devising John's exit from this world the day he came home from the doctor, ashen-faced, and informed her that he had diabetes.  Muriel decided to bide her time, allowing John all the sweets he loved, but shouldn't have, refusing him nothing.  Much to Muriel's joy, he decided to ignore his doctor's advice completely, but when his doctor expressed alarm at John's increasing sugar levels - he'd never seen such numbers in someone still alive - John decided a radical change in his diet was necessary.
         Muriel still pampered him, though, buying him boxes of diabetic chocolates.  John never suspected that Muriel had doctored these little presents.  She substituted the diabetic sweetmeats for genuine, sugar-rich ones, placing them lovingly into the box, methodically disposing of the originals.  If Muriel had bothered to investigate the trash can as she threw out her well-wrapped waste, she would have uncovered sour cream cartons, egg shells and empty mayonnaise jars, equally well-wrapped.
         "I can't believe diabetic candies taste so good," John would remark as he grabbed two or three to wolf down.
         Muriel would smile indulgently and offer him one or two more.

         John and Muriel's plans continued with little obvious effect, until the day John spotted a red sports car parked in Shirley Roberts' driveway.  Everyone in town recognized the 1957 Thunderbird:  it belonged to Al Ambler.  When his wife had passed away, he'd replaced her with the flashy convertible.  Shirley and Al emerged from the house and promptly drove off, waving to John as they roared by.  John stared open-mouthed, his heart sinking to his feet.
         For the next week, John kept an eagle-eye on Shirley's house, cutting his front hedge to within an inch of its life.  Twice that week Al Ambler took Shirley for a drive.  John cursed Al.  Al was retired.  Who knew how often he came by while John was away at work?
         John knew he had to work fast.  He used entire sticks of butter in his wife's food and he made neighbourly visits to Shirley's, to take care of her odd jobs.  He worked tirelessly for her, believing that his presence would prevent her from falling in love with Al, but Al still arrived to spirit her away and she would willingly accompany him.
         Muriel's plan succeeded first, but not the way she'd hoped.  When John was up a ladder clearing the leaves from Shirley's eavestrough, he turned to watch as Al helped Shirley into the Thunderbird.  John's foot slipped and he plunged to the ground, landing on his head.  Muriel was at his bedside when he died.
         It wasn't two weeks before they reopened John's grave.  The lawyer Muriel had hired to tidy up John's estate summoned Muriel to his office and pensively clasped his hands on his desk.
         "Mrs. Pringle," he said, clearing his throat uncomfortably, "I regret to inform you that because Mr. Pringle died three weeks shy of his retirement, not even a percentage of his pension will be forthcoming."
         Muriel gasped, suffered a massive heart attack and joined John in the cemetery.
         Their family and friends thought it incredibly romantic:  it was obvious that Muriel had died of a broken heart, unable to live without John.  And that was the way John and Muriel Pringle were always remembered - as the most loving couple in town.

         THE END