Untitled (Elgar)

My name is Oliver Elting and I am in trouble. You can’t help me, I don’t think anyone can. This is between God and I now, I am making this record merely for the sake of posterity. Oddly enough, the only pen available is that of my uncle – the importance of this detail will become clear soon.

As in most stories, it seems best to start at the beginning, so, bowing to centuries of narrative tradition, then is when I shall begin. The beginning of this particular story was two months ago. I was at my family home in Little Wellbank, with my sister, Clarissa, her son, Dougal, and my mother, Mildred. I was in the garden with Dougal, who was and, thanks to my speedy intervention in matters, still is six-years-old. Being six, Dougal is and was still capable of being entertained by the kind of diversions I am wont to provide. I like people who don’t tire of me and his unassuming company was a great comfort. Since the loss of Father some seven months earlier I fraternised with few over the age of ten. Dougal was busy giggling at something particularly clever I was doing with a large glove and a set of juggling balls.

Whilst this harmless fun was going on in the garden, Clarissa and mother were in the drawing room knitting scarves or cardigans – the garment is unimportant. I assume they were discussing cake-making or perhaps some little escapade of Clarissa’s husband, Ernest, or some other little slice of banality - I had stopped listening to them years ago. However, soon, a sound came to rouse my attention. A scream rose up – shrill and blood curdling - from the house and I dropped the juggling balls, much to Dougal’s displeasure.

As I ran into the house all sorts of ghastly visions of gore were flooding to my, what I am forced to acknowledge as somewhat diseased, mind – yet these visions were nothing to prepare me for the utterly bizarre reality which I was presented with. I stormed into the drawing room and found Clarissa slumped back in the arm-chair with her knitting needles plunged deep into her neck and a mess of wool draped all over her. Upon closer inspection it became clear she had managed to knit wool into her neck and wind-pipe – it was also obvious that she was very much dead. Mother was soon on the scene as well and sent me to run for the police in the village.

A few shell-shocked days later we were informed that the case had been dismissed as an unfortunate accident – a verdict I was happy to support as I saw no other explanation. Mother had talked me through the event leading up to one of the world’s first, and most likely last, fatal knitting accidents. In her high, thin and very shaken voice she told me she had popped out of the drawing room to fetch some more tea, leaving Clarissa, a capable woman of 30, working on the arm of a jumper for Ernest, seconds later the scream had echoed from the room and we had both come running. We found no evidence of an intruder and it seemed very likely that Clarissa had simply managed to knit a jumper into her own neck without noticing.

Two weeks passed as normal.

Then, Mother asked me to take a bottle of brandy to my Uncle. The Uncle to whom I refer was my Mother’s elder brother. He had always looked like an emaciated man of around 50, dressed elegantly but with a worn and cold face and a mess of greying brown hair. Yet the feature which stood out most were his eyes, they were set deep into his face giving them the appearance of unspeakable beasts peering out from some unholy grotto. These eyes also had a peculiar way of looking at you as if he were reading you more like a book than a person, you were a collection of descriptions to him as opposed to a human being. My Uncle was a killer. My Uncle was called Elgar Wintershaw. At this time I only knew the latter of these important details.

You may think it curious that Elgar requested a bottle of brandy as opposed to collecting his own, but I did not enquire as to why this was, as I knew that he had not left his house for the past 20 years on account of his hobby. It was this hobby which Mother bade me ask him about upon my arrival at the house. He is a lonely man, she said, do engage him in conversation about something – the history perhaps? I indicated that I would.

Let me explain. Elgar’s hobby was writing in superb detail the entire history of his family. I mean the entirety of it. It has only now become clear to me how thorough the man has been – but I’ll save that detail for later – I appreciate the value of with-holding information from the reader until the appropriate juncture. Mother was to be in there, Clarissa, Father, myself, Dougal and hundreds and thousands of others – the pages were saturated with intimate information.

As I was preparing to leave for Elgar’s grand house on the hill, Mother told me to take Dougal with me for some exercise. Since his mother’s death the lad had done little, his father was once again out of the country and whilst Dougal had seemed oddly unaffected by his mother’s death, he had become staggeringly bored. So, I left the house with my young friend Dougal in tow and told him stories of what a loathsome creep dear Elgar was. He lapped it up and was delightfully terrified by the time we reached the door of Elgar’s house.

I pushed the door open. It was Elgar’s custom to leave his door unlocked and ajar when he knew he had visitors coming – it unnerved them and helped him to create the atmosphere of foreboding that he fed off, like a cactus in a rainforest, swollen with water. I led a shivering Dougal to the room where I knew Elgar would be sat recording hundreds of years in immaculate script.

“Oliver, dear boy. I see you have my fuel! Couldn’t have come at a better time! I’ve been sober for weeks!” Elgar was always disarmingly pleasant upon first sight, but there was always the edge of a contemptuous sneer creeping into his mouth.

“Uncle Elgar, you remember Dougal…Clarissa’s boy.”

“Ah yes! Terrible tragedy…just knitted herself to death did she?” A ghost of a wry smile flitted across Elgar’s face

“Yes, I’m afraid so. But still, probably best not to talk about it in front of the boy.” I said, glancing Dougal-wards. For his part, the boy looked fairly non-plussed by the whole affair. Elgar’s initial friendly demeanour having entirely placated him. However, I knew to be on my guard as the man standing gaunt and malnourished in front of us was a highly intelligent, shrewd, borderline evil genius. Father had always been suspicious of him, a trait which I had inherited.

“Tell me of the history, Uncle, I’m keen to hear of your progress.” I simpered.
“Ah!” He jerked a little, both with surprise and delight. Perhaps he was not expecting my interest, but God did he revel in it. “Yes, the history! Oh it’s going delightfully, you know your great, great Uncle Terrence?”

“No. Never heard of him.” I said, possibly sounding a touch too bored.

“No neither had I until your mother passed onto me some delightfully decrepit old documents from the basement of Hembourne Manor. He was quite a character…” For the next hour or so – I lost track – Elgar regaled us with tales of the exploits of great, great Uncle Terrence. Every so often I would glance to Dougal, whose eyes grew deader every second as boredom permeated every atom of his being. For such a sinister man, Elgar’s conversation was wholly mundane.

“Well, gosh! Look at the time, such a fascinating character our Terrence was that the time has flown away from me. I must get back to work and I’m sure you boys best be getting back to your own abode. You can see yourselves out I’m sure!” Said Elgar.

Gladly Dougal and I made our way to the door of Elgar’s study, hope was flooding back to Dougal’s face.

“Oh, Oliver…” Called Elgar as I began to open the door of the study.

I turned to see him sitting behind his desk, pen in hand. A peculiar and wholly unnerving sneer had taken over his face, but after a second it disappeared and was replaced with a kindly smile.

“Could you tell me how to spell ‘weathervane’?” His eyes continued to hide deep in his face, looking me up and down like hungry wolves.

“Why certainly, Uncle – w e a t h e r v a n e.”

“I know.” He replied sweetly, with a sickening wink.

Dougal and I hastened out of the room very much unsettled.

The walk back to the house was mostly silent. Dougal dragged his feet in an endearingly petulant way. I admire such qualities in a boy. He demonstrates many of the attributes I had at his age. A certain arrogance and callous disregard for others. I’d like to think I’m the only one who can tame him – he certainly shares my distaste for the family’s one remaining woman; dear mother.

Suddenly he ran forward to chase a wood pigeon that had been foolish enough to get into his line of sight. My thoughts of Dougal began to sour – contempt for animals had never been a quality I’d valued, I certainly identified with them more than I did with his mother or his father. I watched as the pigeon took flight with a few soft coos of distress. It had wonderful plumage, far nicer than those of the London pigeons with their mangy feathers and malformed feet – this was a fine beast. Yet Dougal had seen fit to attack it? There must be some hateful edge to him that I had hitherto not seen. I contemplated this for the rest of the walk home.

Upon arriving at the house my attention was drawn to a fearful crowd gathered around the house. High pitched voices and shouting greeted my ears. Gripped by a sudden dread, I rushed to the centre of this crowd, leaving Dougal to linger silently on the edge.

What greeted me left me feeling astounded, furious and curiously weeping.

There, at the centre of the crowd, was my mother, lying face down in a growing pool of blood with the large cast-iron weathervane, which father and I had fixed to the top of the house, plunged deep into her back. I stood, stunned, for several minutes before turning to Father Gregory who was amongst the crowd.

“What on Earth has happened?” I breathed, surprised by my own calm.

“Well…oh Oliver…oh you poor boy.” He simpered like this for a few moments and I was unable to get any information from him.

“Pull yourself together man!” I roared. I was as taken aback by this outburst as he was. “Sorry Father, I’m just a little shocked, I’m sure you’ll understand.” I mumbled in apology.

“Yes…yes, Oliver, I wholly understand. Marjorie who was walking past the house when it happened, said the weathervane simply fell on your mother. Got her right through the back and that was it.” I listened and thought I detected a curious sadism in the priest’s last comment, but what did it matter? Mother was dead and that was the end of it.

Except, obviously as you dear reader have surely realised, it wasn’t. I had fixed that weathervane with father and it was thoroughly secured to the roof of the house, there had been no high winds recently and there was no possibility it could’ve fallen down by chance. But there it was – it must’ve fallen by chance. The house was still locked from when mother left it, no suspicious activity had been seen on the roof. And what sort of method of murder was it? Stabbing someone in the back from a great height with a weathervane.

Then I thought and I thought some more. Weathervane. Weathervane. Not the most common subject of conversation. Not a common object at all. Weathervane. By this time Uncle Elgar had been forced from my mind but the word brought my thoughts back to him – just as he had intended.

Days later I was still thinking about it – weathervane, Elgar. How? This was my prime concern – how? Then, gradually, a theory began to form in my mind. It was so outlandish, so preposterous, but still I had to check. I had to go and find out and that I did. If only for little Dougal’s sake.

And so, having locked Dougal in the dining room, somewhere that surely nothing could hurt him, I took father’s revolver and headed once more for Elgar’s house.

Upon arriving the door was ajar. I strode confidently inside, feeling it necessary to conceal the writhing fear within me – there was a pit of snakes in my stomach. I approached his study and prepared to burst in taking him unawares, but as I readied myself to kick the oak door down I heard a voice from within.

“Come in, Oliver.”

My dramatic entrance ruined, I feebly opened the door and stood before him. He was still at his desk, pen in hand, scrawling lazily.

“Ah, just in time. I’ve just finished the word ‘gun’ would you believe! Yet I do believe we’ve a few seconds to spare. Anything you’d like to know dear boy?” He leered ghoulishly from behind his desk.

“Weathervane…how?” I stuttered. Unable to come up with anything more fearsome.

“Well, oh I’ll delight in this part! I’ve been waiting for this for what must’ve been around 40 years.” Elgar was beaming maniacally, he took a few moments to light his pipe and swig some brandy before speaking once more. “As you well know, I’ve been writing this little history of mine for the best part of my life. It was a wonderful hobby – informative and time consuming, taking up the time that I never learnt to fill with the gallivanting of youth or women.

“Yet there was a problem – I was too hasty, too diligent. Before I knew it I had caught up with history itself. I was writing everything as it happened. So what was I to do? Rest my hobby? Find something else to do? Abandon my life’s work in favour of golf or some other filthy and trivial pastime? No! Of course not. Why, I just kept on going! And soon enough I wasn’t just writing up the family history, I was determining it. I gave my flesh and blood such great fortune – you remember your father’s promotion and all of those caches of money he seemed to find around the place? That was I, that was me. God. But soon benevolence grew boring, I wanted action – spice!

“So I killed your father. And I wrote the shockwaves it caused through the family, your disconnection and your gradual transformation into the introverted, conceited little heap that stands quivering before me. Oh you were marvellous fun. I wrote all of those sleepless nights you had and I wrote your little nihilistic rants to Dougal.

“Then your sister, of course I did her in. Even the woolly headed Clarissa wasn’t stupid enough to knit herself to death – she needed a little help with that. I just wrote it and it happened. A few quiet weeks of elation followed, but this had been 40 years in the making and I must confess I have grown tired. It weighs heavily on me now.

“So, what to do? I brought you to me, of course my little creation. I brought you with gifts of brandy. Oh, and how patronising you were trying to placate me with polite, empty enquiries about my work. So I bored you. I bored you well and then sent you on your way. Of course, I prepared a little surprise for you giving you the one hint I knew would bring you back here…

“Now, would you like me to do for young Dougal? Your hateful little protégé?”

I fumbled taking the revolver from my pocket. Elgar made no attempt to duck and I took several steps forward and shot him in the head. The bullet landed right between his deep-set, beady little eyes and he and his chair fell backwards.

Shaking, I walked over to the desk and began reading the parchment sitting on it. The descriptions were intimate – it read more like a novel than a distant account of the family’s fortune.

“Oliver rushed to his Uncle’s house. Fury coursing through veins corrupted by hate. Surging into his Uncle’s study he lifted his revolver, ready to fire. His Uncle gazed at him, resigned to his fate. Oliver let a shot fly and his Uncle slumped backwards.”

I was surprised by how the manuscript differed slightly from what transpired, but concluded that ultimately we were destined to follow what Elgar had laid out for us. On a spare bit of parchment I began to scrawl my own record of events, lest the police label me a murderer. I made sure all the details of Elgar’s own fearsomely disgusting character were recorded.

Then, feeling a sinking in my written-bitter heart, I read the last paragraph.

“Distraught at what he had become, Oliver spent several moments in silent grief. He strode shakily to his Uncle’s desk and looked upon his life’s work which laid before him. Then, as he calmly resigned himself to his fate, he lifted the revolver and fired. His now lifeless hand dropped the gun.”

“That last sentence really doesn’t work.” I thought as the bullet left the chamber.