A Ghost Wore Knowing

A Ghost Wore Knowing

By Jane Goodhew

The trial was finally at an end after several long months due to being held up more times than a bank.  The verdict, guilty to murder in the first degree, tomorrow she would be hung by the neck until dead.  I wanted to laugh as it was such a stupid statement what else would you be if someone hung you?  It was no laughing matter I had less than 24 hours of my life left and what had I to show for it.  The past 10 years I had worked in an office as a shorthand typist.  All very mundane, one day pretty much the same as the other.  Then I saw the advert for a travel companion and decided to take the opportunity to do something that might be exciting and who knows I could even meet Mr. Right, there had certainly been enough that were wrong. I typed up my CV and enclosed a hand-written letter setting out why I wanted to be given the chance to become the perfect companion.  The words flowed as I wrote my interests, my dreams and my appearance.  Admittedly there was some exaggeration to my finer points and I omitted my more negative aspects but poetic licence must be allowed if one is to succeed.

 

                                 

 

 

I then waited for the outcome and to make sure I did regardless of the answer I enclosed a SAE.  A week passed and then I saw the envelope written in my own fair-hand, trembling I opened it and I had to sit down, subject to a week’s trial before the start of the trip the job was mine.  I was to start immediately.  I was owed some holiday and so I handed in my notice and left at the end of that week and so began the adventure of a life time! I had never been happier, my companion was a widower who had been on his own for over a decade and decided that before it was too late he would go on a round the world cruise but not alone hence advertising for a companion.  He liked what he imagined I would be like and once he met me he knew he hadn’t made a mistake as I was just like his late wife.  He talked endlessly about her until I believed she was there with us, a threesome.  At night I could smell the aroma of Knowing by Estee Lauder it had been her favourite perfume and he still kept a bottle so he could envisage her there.  It lingered for hours and I began to feel ill as it wafted around the cabin, there was no escape.  He even brought her dresses for me to wear in the evening; it would seem we were the same size, how convenient!

One evening I met a couple who had known the late Mrs St John and it seemed I was a remarkable resemblance to her, spookily so they said.  I began to wonder what I had let myself in for; if only I had known I would not be sat here awaiting the hangman.

I suppose you must wonder who it is I have been accused of murdering; I am reluctant to use the term murder as I do not consider it as that as it was he who had doctored the drink and it had been intended for me. It was the last night before we returned to England and we had stayed up late drinking and talking to other passengers. He had ordered a brandy coffee to help him sleep and one for me as we were not docking until midmorning so there was no early start.  I don’t know what made me swap the cups but something did and the next thing I knew he had collapsed back into his chair and was quite dead.  The post mortem showed arsenic poisoning and there were dregs of it in his coffee cup, the cup that had been intended for me.  In his cabin they found a copy of his last will and testament and he had left all his estate to me, his travel companion. That was what convinced the jury that I had poisoned him, motive Greed.  None of it made sense why would he want to leave everything to me and then poison me, there was no logic to it but then it made me think of his wife and had he done the same to her?  I felt her presence in the cell as if she had decided to keep me company until the end as if she were thanking me for changing the cups as yes it was exactly what he had done to her and now she had her revenge she was just sorry that it meant I had to die too. 

Copyright Jane Goodhew