Blood and Water and Other Tales by Patrick McGrath Page B

stayed there, apart from trips to the bathroom, for the next two days. I was really very ill, but I thought that I’d merely “eaten something,” and didn’t call a doctor. On Thursday morning I listened to the BBC news. A crowd of at least two hundred people, most of them women and children, had gathered outside the gates of Wandsworth Prison, and at shortly after eight o’clock, when the black flag was run up, cheering broke out and lasted for ten minutes. Poor Arnold.
    Half-an-hour later, I received a call from Scotland Yard. They told me not to go anywhere, and that an ambulance was on its way; and within a few minutes I was being wheeled out of the hotel, with a doctor in close attendance. I don’t remember much about all this, quite frankly; I was very weak. When I was fully conscious again, I found myself propped up in a hospital bed. I’d had all my blood changed, they told me, a total transfusion.
    “But why?”
    They gave me a letter which, they said, had been found in Arnold Crombeck’s cell shortly after he was hanged. I opened it with trembling fingers.
    “Dear Miss Kennedy,” it began, in beautiful copperplate script. “If you are able to read this, then I must apologize for causing you so much unpleasantness. I did enjoy our talks, but I’m afraid I couldn’t resist the temptation to try just one more; one for the road, as we say. I’ve always wanted to murder an American, so when they sent you along, and you were female to boot—well, I indulged myself, I’m afraid.
    “Doubtless you’re wondering how I managed it. It was not complicated. One flypaper soaked in water for twenty-four hours produces enough arsenic in solution to poison any normal person. Simple enough matter then to transfer it to cigarettes. But you know, the effectiveness of any poison depends to a large extent on the constitution of the victim, and if you can read this then I congratulate you. I’ve always heard you were a robust people...
    [There followed several paragraphs that concern only Arnold and me.]
    “I have very little time left, so I must close. Don’t forget me, Miss Kennedy; and pray God I don’t ruin these trousers, for as you know, I should hate to be planted not looking my best.
    “Yours faithfully, “Arnold Crombeck.”

    I still have that letter, and I certainly never did forget him. And as for his trousers, I contacted the prison authorities as soon as I got out of the hospital, and learned that for once Arnold had got his facts wrong. Executed convicts are buried within the prison walls, in a lime pit—stark naked. But if he had been buried in his trousers—? I asked them. And you can rest assured, Arnold, wherever you are, that your trousers were spotless to the end.

Blood Disease
    This is probably how it happened. William Clack-Herman, the anthropologist (popularly known as “Congo Bill”) was doing field research on the kinship systems of the pygmies of the equatorial rain forest. One afternoon he was sitting outside his hut of mongongo leaves, writing up his notes, when a mosquito bit him. It is only the female that makes the blood meal, for she needs it to boost her egg output. From the thorny tip of her mouthparts she unsheathed a slender stylus, and having sliced neatly through Bill’s skin tissue, pierced a tiny blood vessel. Bill noticed nothing. Two powerful pumps in the insect’s head began to draw off blood while simultaneously hundreds of tiny parasites were discharged into his bloodstream. Within half-an-hour, when the mosquito had long since returned to the water, the parasites were safely established in his liver. For six days they multiplied, asexually, and then on the morning of the seventh they burst out and invaded the red blood cells. Within a relatively short period of time Congo Bill was exhibiting all the classical symptoms of malaria. He was delirious; he suffered from chills, vomiting, and diarrhea; and his spleen was dangerously enlarged. He was also alone—the