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He did not smile or wave or show any form of recognition at all. The distance between them was too great for Alison to see if there was any glint of recognition in his eyes.

She sensed that there was.

For what seemed the longest few seconds in her life, Alison looked across at him and he stared back.

Instinctively, she knew what she had to do. Deep down, she’d always known. As much as she wanted to reach out and embrace him, she knew she could never take even the slightest risk of endangering him.

She turned and began a brisk walk along the street, back the way she had come, suppressing her emotions.

At the far end of that long street, she reached the spot where she’d parked her car.

Her hands shook slightly. Tears stung the corners of her eyes.

This was the man she could never get to know better. This was the news scoop of the year, the story that could never be told.

She turned the key in the ignition, pulled out, drove back toward the centre of DC and the television station.

Leaving the secret behind.

Leaving the chameleon to his new and very different life.

I
make the money and my wife spends it. It’s a great partnership. So it seemed only fitting that my profession should provide the means for me to get rid of her. Once and for all.

It began the day Ruth told me about Riverview Acres. ‘It’s a new housing development on the coast,’ she said, peering at me over those dreadful horn-rimmed glasses that she delighted in wearing. ‘An up and coming area. We’re getting in now, before the boom. I’ve bought two luxury homes. We’ll live in one and rent out the other.’

‘What about this place?’

‘I put it on the market last week. Alicia tells me she’s already found a buyer. We’ll get a good price.’

‘But I like it here!’ I cast my Sunday paper aside and glared at her across the sun-drenched balcony. ‘You didn’t ask me. You had no right.’

‘Oh for goodness sake, Ronnie. I’ve always done the buying and selling. You know that. I’m good at it.’

‘Yes. With the money I earn as your springboard.’

‘You’re not going to start that again. Surely. The same old tired argument. Think of it this way, Ronnie. You’ll have two brand new homes to decorate. A nice little challenge for you.’

‘Maybe I don’t want to keep moving around. Perhaps I’d like to settle in one place.’

‘For crying out loud, Ronnie, don’t be so bloody boring.’

But I am boring, you see. I’m not one of these dynamic, prima donna interior designers that grace the social pages of the weekend tabloids. I’m just an ordinary, everyday person who happens to be good at designing décor for flamboyant people. The kind that pay very well. The kind of people that Ruth likes to spend her time with.

Frankly, I don’t like them.

I stormed off and sulked for the rest of the day. Later on I calmed down and grudgingly accepted that Ruth would get her way. She always did.

A week later she confirmed that the sale on our current home was going through. No hitches. She showed me the area plans for Riverview Acres. ‘Alicia has already organised a family to rent the corner block, number 23 Clarion Close. We’ll move into number 40, just down the street on the other side. Alicia says we’ll have a better view from there.’

Alicia Morrison was the elegant, ambitious property consultant that Ruth insisted on employing as an advisor.

‘Looks interesting,’ I admitted, surveying the plan.

‘Everything will be completed in four weeks,’ Ruth continued, ‘around the same time that Alicia and I will be on our trip down south, to Victoria. Could you be a darling, Ronnie, and organise the move and the new décor while I’m gone. That way it’ll all be ready for me to walk straight into when I get back.’

I nodded. As usual, the hard work had been left to me. I’d forgotten that Ruth and Alicia were spending a few days looking at new land releases and development proposals in the Victorian countryside, near Ballarat.

Ruth and I had been married for ten years. Over that time she’d formed an idea of herself as some kind of real estate wheeler dealer. Well, she wasn’t. The notion was ridiculous because she knew practically nothing about it at all.

Alicia advised her on the paperwork and proceedings. My high income made it possible. Ruth bought and sold all over the place but the profits were only ever modest, at most.

It was quite some time since I’d first thought of the plan. Initially, it seemed repulsive to me, like a naughty daydream that you never tell anyone about. Over the years it began to sit more comfortably with me. Eventually, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable way to be rid of such a pathetic, domineering, money spending creature.

Whenever we move to a new home, Ruth likes me to create wallpaper for the main bedroom and living area. Something unique.

Something for her to boast about.

This is one of my specialties in the décor business. I design and manufacture wallpaper in my studio workshop in Sydney. I have a four colour screen printing press and the necessary inks and dyes.

The night before Ruth’s trip I was working late at the workshop. The front doorbell chimed and I ushered Alicia in.

‘Hi. Unexpected visit,’ she said.

‘Expected or not, you’re always welcome.’ I took her in my arms and the soft, smooth touch of her skin against mine felt good.

God knows I’m not a promiscuous man. Hardly the type.

But at least once in his life every man acts on impulse and does something totally out of character. For me that out-of-character moment was an affair. It had begun two months previously when Alicia and I were alone in my workshop for the first time. I’d reached over and kissed her on the lips.

I don’t know what I’d expected. To my surprise, she responded, and we spent the first of many long, lovely nights together.

‘You’re just in time to see my masterpiece.’ I showed her the ocean inspired design of the new wallpaper.

‘Explain how this works again.’ She frowned. ‘I’m still not sure I understand.’

‘I’ve used an arsenical dye in the manufacture of the wallpaper,’ I explained. ‘The use of such dyes in the paper is prohibited but that’s a little known fact. And would never be suspected. Once I’ve pasted the paper onto the bedroom walls I’ll apply a specially prepared paper remover. The chemicals in this paper stripper will cause the paste under the paper to evaporate quickly. This, in turn, will release small amounts of hydrogen gas into the air.’

I used my hands to illustrate the process of fermentation. ‘The hydrogen gas is harmless by itself. But combined with the arsenic in the paper it creates a lethal gas called arsine.’

‘And this process will take about twenty-four hours?’

‘That’s right. When Ruth breathes in the arsine gas it will cause nausea, cramps, dizziness. She’ll be dead within hours. The arsine gas disperses rapidly, leaving no trace, and I can quickly replace the wallpaper before the police are called in.’

Alicia shuddered. ‘And my job is to make sure she gets home late at night from our trip. That way she’ll go straight to bed.

I nodded. ‘She’ll no longer be with us by the following morning. The first day of our new life together.’

• • •

I was proud of my plan. It had the same meticulous detail and creativity as my interior home designs. I’d won awards for those.

I first heard about the deadly wallpaper, the most unlikely of killers, during my college days twenty years before.

I studied for my diploma at the Australian College of Interior Design in Sydney. I first heard the story when one of my lecturers told the class how arsenical dyes came to be banned from use in wallpaper manufacture in the previous century.

Edward Sampson was one of those quaint Englishmen, slightly built, stooped, bearded, who got completely carried away when talking on a subject that fascinated him. The normally reserved lecturer became somewhat theatrical. He was the kind of odd character you never forget.

The story of the arsenical dye had stuck in my subconscious ever since.

Sampson had explained how, over a hundred years ago, a mystery illness spread in a small village in the English countryside. Over a period of many months, members of a number of families died. In some cases whole families were wiped out. The local medical authorities were baffled. Endless tests failed to find a reason for the violent cramps and nausea that led to death.

There was no pattern to the deaths – no link other than the symptoms suffered by the victims and the rural area in which they lived. The local police, suspecting that an ingenious murderer was at work, called in Scotland Yard for assistance.

The one and only clue lay in the fact that there were a number of homes in the village where no symptoms of the illness occurred. Detectives noted that these homes, untouched by the tragedy, all had one thing in common.

Painted interiors rather than wallpaper.

All the homes where death had struck had wallpaper of the same vintage.

Although the various wallpapers had been purchased from differing retail outlets, all had ultimately come from the same district manufacturer at the same time.

Forensic teams were called in to comb the manufacturer’s plant and test the fatal product. They found that arsenical dye used in the colouring of the stock was the cause. There was no immediate effect when the wallpaper was put up. But after a few years, when people repapered their walls, the paste under the new paper underwent a process of fermentation. Excessive humidity during the summers had the same effect. This set up a chemical reaction that led to the formation of the arsine gas.

If it hadn’t been for the fact that many new homes had been built and wallpapered in the same district, then the discovery of the arsine gas years later might never have happened. As a result, the use of arsenic in dyes was prohibited in many countries around the world and had been ever since.

• • •

‘You’ve experimented with this stuff?’ Alicia asked. There was a touch of awe in her voice. It was later that evening. She was sitting on the side of the bed, lighting a cigarette, the bed sheet draped across her. The muted amber light from the table lamp cast a seductive glow across the room. We often came here, to Alicia’s north-side apartment.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I first tried it six months ago. I sealed off a room at the back of the workshop and used caged mice to determine the effects.’

‘Like laboratory rats?’ Alicia was incredulous.

I nodded. ‘It didn’t take long to discover that there was an ideal balance between the amount of arsenic in the dye and the liquidity of the paste, a balance that made the process faster and increased the potency of the gas.’

‘Why weren’t you affected?’

‘I could watch through the window of the adjoining room. And remember, once doors and windows are opened the gas disperses quickly.’

‘You’ve been thinking about this for six months?’

‘Only thinking about it,’ I was quick to point out. ‘I didn’t get serious about it until the night you said you wished Ruth was out of the way.’

A wicked grin played across her lips. ‘I remember that night.’

I grinned back, realizing at the same time that my hands had started shaking. I had always found it unnerving – the cold, hard reality of planning such a crime. ‘And I still wouldn’t go ahead with it, not if you don’t want me to.’

Her hand closed over mine in a firm hold. ‘Is there any other way?’

I didn’t need to stop and think about that. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Ruth would never leave us alone. Never stop hounding. And she’d take half the business, half the investments.’

‘Okay,’ said Alicia, turning over the plan in her mind. ‘But even if this gas disperses, and even if there’s no reason to make a connection with wallpaper in a room, the coroner will still find traces of arsenic in Alicia’s body, in her bloodstream, and the cops will suspect foul play. If they check your financial records and find you purchased arsenic-’

‘But I didn’t.’

‘Then how-’

‘A couple of years ago I had a client who inherited acres of land and an ancient farmhouse, way out west near the ACT border. There were sheds on the property that were full of old cans that had been lying around since his grandfather’s day. I did an interior design and renovation of the old farmhouse. The client was demolishing the sheds, dumping all those old cans, and he told me to take anything I wanted before the waste disposal guys came in.’

‘And there were tins of arsenic there?’ Alicia guessed.

‘You got it. I took all sorts of stuff, aluminium, glass, tins of paint and lacquer, and arsenic that would’ve been used to poison vermin generations ago. There are no records of any of those old cans, and nothing to link me to any of it in any case.’

‘This was a couple of years ago?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve been thinking about something like this for that long?’

I shrugged. ‘I’ve had all sorts of crazy ideas milling around in my head,’ I admitted. ‘But I never would’ve acted on any of them.’

‘Until you met me.’

‘…I guess.’

Another wicked grin. ‘I’m a bad influence.’

‘You’re beautiful.’

Alicia got serious again. ‘Even if there’s no link to you, and no arsenic found in the house, or in any food in the house, the coroner will still find the traces in the body. They’ll be looking for answers.’

‘That’s where your trip to Ballarat with Ruth comes in.’

‘It does?”

‘Ruth fancies herself as an ace wilderness hiker. Used to be part of some bullshit nature- loving group when she was younger.’

‘Yeah, she’s mentioned it from time to time. Wants me to go trekking with her one of these days.’

‘There’s a national park wilderness just hours out of Ballarat. When your business there is finished, and before you head to the airport, suggest going for a brief wander in the forest. Ruth will jump at the idea.’

‘And if she doesn’t?’

‘You’ll persuade her. Hire a 4WD, head out there, spend a day in the woods.’

‘But why?’

‘There are ruins of an old colonial-era gold mining town in that wilderness. Long abandoned, mostly grown over, neglected by the Heritage people.’