Mrs. Snoop, Trev knew, was living next door. If a pen fell down she would make it an explosion. She would explode the whole area concocting the most terrific of the stories. And her story, even to the most attentive listeners, was a concoction of the bitterest recipe. Her name is Aunt Cathy.

Cathy is a widow. Her husband had died of consumption some twenty years ago. She did not remarry. She had no children. For her age she could well remarry. She, perhaps, did find pleasure in some other thing. Of course, not in marriage and conjugation. If anybody wanted to irritate her on this score, he or she would fail. She is in the most sober mood when she speaks about her marital life with Alex. Her life with him was extraordinary and pleasant. Anyone who is aware of how snoopy Mrs. Catherine Alexander is would be surprised to hear of her beautiful life with her late husband. She was only thirty-two when he died. She remained a perfect widow all the time after his death; no flirtations, no incidents of dating. For that matter there was none for her to complain. She was a loner. She spent her early widowhood in perfect silence; she remained in her posh bedroom; she wore white jackets and blouse. She did not use cosmetics and perfumes. These were not forbidden to her. Still she did not use them.
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But things turned when a new couple came and stayed in the neighbouring mansion. The man was handsome. His wife was passable. Cathy never liked being disturbed in her peaceful life. She was young; she had a time when she liked games, conversations and, yeah, some sort of a flirting. She had one or two incidents of sharing bed with young men she liked. But all were before she was wedded. She realized she was made for Alexander and he for her. And the couple began to interfere in her life.
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It was the woman first. She was like intuitive. She harboured on the thought that the young widow in the other building would contaminate the pure soul of her husband. They began to quarrel. The husband began to shout at his wife. The wife created a hell for her husband in her apparently benign silence. She was all malice, avarice of the infernal type. She not only wanted her husband for herself; she wanted to persecute him for no offence of his. She wanted to persecute other women by tying their names with the imaginary connections her husband had with them.
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Mrs. Catherine did not like this. She was living alone. Still till now she had not allowed devil to enter her mind. But when the nuptial quarrel became unbearable, she opened a portion her mind’s door to the devil, as she once said:
“ Doubt crept my mind like this. Otherwise the woman was a perfect wife. But why should she quarrel with her husband? I began to think. I concluded that in fact it was the wife that was cheating her husband”.
And Aunt Cathy began to snoop. She came out of her house. She began to poke around her neighbour. It would be daytime. The cleric that he was he would go to the church early in the morning. He would be back after his work at the stockbroker’s. It would be after the sunset. What does the wife do after the husband goes out? Cooking? Washing? Days of concerted snooping brought her a whisper from within the neighbour’s house.
“ What if he comes, now?”, the man.
“No, it is not possible, he will return only after sunset”, the woman.


(Two)

She continued this even after the young lady committed suicide. Cathy knew very well that the incident had nothing whatsoever with her peeping into her vulgar betrayal of hr husband. She was nurturing a new pleasure area whereby she would spy on the neighbouring wives who are supposed to betray their husbands. Trev and Helen were the present victims. Trev would never think anything ill about his beloved wife. She would not betray. She would not even glance at another man with any carnal desire. She would be satiated with him; he always presumed. Mrs. Snoop would not have anything to prove against his wife.

Now he wanted to meet Mrs. Snoop, he felt. It was like a dawning, yeah, he really wanted to meet her. Not really for anything, not to entrust her with the task of investigating on his wife. Really! But the feeling grew into urgency that he could no longer contain him.

When he knocked at Cathy’s doors, he could not really believe that he had actually reached the place. He was not answered immediately. He was almost leaving when at last he doors were opened. It was a resplendent Cathy that came to open the doors. Dressed in the most beautiful attires, she smelt the soft jasmine fragrance. The autumnal fading had gone and a springtime flowering was all pervading her. Trev stood dumb. She came and took his hands:
“It is for Alex, always”, she handled him with soft words and sticky fingers. He was in a trance, a situation he was unable to skulk away from.
“I knew he would come today; in what ever form, he would have come; it was on this day I killed him”.
Trev was sitting with awe and Cathy stood before him with a pompous smile, that hid wickedness. And she said:
“ He betrayed me as I betrayed him as he betrayed me as I betrayed him as …”,; her noise had a shrill beauty and she no ghost. She was singing the betrayal song until her hands squeezed Trev on his neck without any soft ness. Now she was smelling blood and death.