NITROGEN CAUSES GREENERY

I’ll start with the second murder.

The second? You might ask, What about the first? The story has only just begun and we’re starting with the second?

Now there’s no need to get our knickers into knots. Yes, I suppose the story has just begun, with an odd beginning, that’s true. But honestly, when has there been a good story without a questionable beginning? Take the first sentence as the ‘hook’ if you will. Yes, go on read it again. How lovely is that sentence? I’ll pat myself on the back for that one. And do hang on to my every word, it’s a wild ride as I recount what happened to me last summer.

Mrs Hardcroft has lived next door to me for about five years. My family and I moved here to be closer to my high school, and although we’ve been hearty next-doorers for all these years, I still don’t think she’s noticed at all.

How do I know this? Gosh, Maggie, you say adoringly, how are you so smart?

Aw, how flattering of you. I consider myself one for brains, but that’s not how I know. I watch her, of course.

Now, now, don’t make dirty assumptions; I’m no stalker. I simply consider myself a highly skilled observer. Watching people has always been one of my favourite pastimes, with the occasional game of ‘Follow Them Until They Notice’. They rarely notice, by the way. And moreover, in my more definite defence, my window is positioned exactly at the right height to stare down into her garden and kitchen. It’s quite hard to look away, you know. Her kitchen has this massive window panel that makes for such a good spying.

Mrs Hardcroft, unlike myself, is not a good observer.

I know this undeniable fact because she’s my science teacher at school. She knows my name and has met my parents and all. She even knew the name of my dog before he died. Can you tell where I’m going with this?

Imagine teaching your student for two years straight, meeting their parents, even knowing the damn dog and not having a single clue that they live next door. I mean, how fucking silly is that?

I apologise, excuse my harsh language.

I guess you could say that her ignorance is an advantage for me. I can gaze into her private space for as long as I like without ever worrying she’ll look up at my window and catch me. And as we know from experience, being caught is not fun. Or perhaps you don’t know. Perhaps you are not as great an observer as myself.

Did I offend you? My apologies again. I do not mean that you are an ignorant pig, I’m just comparing our two comparable relative skillsets within the game ‘Follow Them’, or actually: ‘Watch Them Until They Notice’. Was that confusing? Too bad.

Anyway, Mrs Hardcroft used to have a husband. His name was Gerald, but everyone called him Jerry. You know, because Gerald is a pretty shitty name. He went missing a year and a half ago. No one knows what happened to him… except for me.

DUN DUN DUUUUUN!

I’m just joking around; I didn’t kill the guy.

Or did I…?

Oop, got you again.

Seriously though, I didn’t murder the man. He seemed nice enough when he was around. Him and Mrs Hardcroft used to argue a bit, but no more than my parents have their arguments. I never saw or heard any sort of abuse. Like, things breaking or the ‘thump’ sound when a fist hits a face. One day he was there and the next he wasn’t. It was a very odd situation all round. Mum and Dad just said that sometimes relationships can be difficult, and that we shouldn’t speculate or gossip about why he was gone. The rumours were pretty quick to go around school; though I’m not entirely sure how we all found out simultaneously. One rumour said he committed suicide, another said he was having an affair and moved out of Sydney to Perth to be with his mistress. And the last one was that Mrs Hardcroft murdered him.

And here’s the thing, right, if he was dead, where was the body? And also, if he was dead, why wasn’t Mrs Hardcroft considered a suspect? Police never showed up to our house, her house, or even our street after he went missing. Mrs Hardcroft was pretty distraught after he disappeared. She spent a lot of time crying in her garden. And after she was done crying, she’d actually do the gardening. I suppose since she didn’t have to do ‘wife stuff’ anymore, she dedicated more of her time to her garden. And it got really green and beautiful. Almost suspiciously green and beautiful. She’d bring out this unbranded fertiliser in brown bags and scatter it through her flower beds and lawn. Obviously, it was nitrogenous fertiliser because everything got super green and gorgeous within a week or so. At this point I have to ask, are you connecting the dots too?

You’re not so I’ll spell it out: Mrs Hardcroft murdered her husband and got away with it. And somehow, the only person smart enough to realise it, was me. The invisible neighbour. The watcher.

Here’s how I know for sure: I have a particular interest in Thanatology, which is the study of dead people. The human body is full of nitrogen, plants love that shit. When bodies are buried without coffins, a circle of the greenest grass you’ve ever seen in your life will appear around them. That’s often how police find buried bodies. Taking that fact into account, all of a sudden Mrs Hardcroft’s garden blooms and blossoms? With just unbranded, random fertiliser in brown sacs? Yeah, okay. And the mushrooms. There were tiny mushrooms that she swooped in and yanked out at the first sign. That’s how I know she did it. The ‘why’ is unknown to me, of course. Maybe Jerry was a bad dude, or maybe it was a freak accident. It doesn’t matter really because nothing came of it in the end. Until last summer.

When I finally put two and two together, I started watching her almost every day. Every hour. I wanted to know how murdering her husband had changed her, psychologically. The gardening spree was a way to get rid of the body, but what else had changed? And then I saw it. She made the mistake of bringing it through the kitchen. I guess there’s better light in that room to work on it. It was a board. Like, a profiling board. A prop straight out of that show Elementary. You know, about Sherlock Holmes. There was a picture of a person I’d never seen before and all their details around them in big black marker. I couldn’t read most of it but there was a giant date circled at the bottom: 3 January, 8:00pm. And I knew she was about to strike again.

Why didn’t you tell anyone?! You exclaim.

Well, because what picture would that paint of me? I was spying on her. Invading her privacy. If anything, they’d pin it on me instead of her. Accuse me of trying to frame her. Can you blame me for trying to keep my name clean? Instead, I waited. I waited for January 3rd to roll around. It was a painfully long wait, but when the day finally came, I decided I was going to play my favourite game. And at 7:30pm that day, Mrs Hardcroft left her house, my own curiosity and bad habits towing me behind her.

We walked for what seemed to be kilometres, even though it was just to the suburb over. We entered a residential area that seemed super dodgy. I’d never been where she was taking me, and my unease started to close my throat up. Did I have regrets? You can bet your sweet ass I did. It was terrifying following my teacher at sunset into an unknown neighbourhood, knowing what she was going to do. But I wanted to watch. I wanted to know.

She went into an alleyway between two houses, and that’s when I got caught. I idiotically followed her in there and fucking walked straight into her.

She said, ‘Finally stalked me out of my house, Maggie? Tired of watching through your window?’

I couldn’t say anything of course. I was frozen.

She continued, ‘Why are you following me?’

And I couldn’t give her anything else except the truth.

‘I want to know what it feels like. I want… I want to see…it.’

She just grinned at me. She has perfect teeth. Insanely straight.

‘You want to kill?’ She questioned me.

And like a stupid kid, I nodded.

She took my hand and said, ‘Let me show you.’

And that’s about it. I think it’s safe to say I followed a murderer, and then committed a murder. I don’t know why we had to kill that one particular person, but hey, it was fun.

But I guess you’d disagree, right officer?