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The All Hallows' Massacre - 10 problems to solveMaire FisherNobody talks about the murders any more. Time was, it was the first word on everyone's lips, the town was full of speculation and theory: the ways he could have done it, his reasons for killing her, the bad luck of her parents being there too. They never pinned it on him. He got off. Scot-free. Blood. They say the blood spurted ceiling high, sprayed the chandelier, dripped from it; it was still dripping when the police arrived on the scene. But I don't know about that. People tend to exaggerate things. Clever. I taught him for two years and I knew how clever he was. Far cleverer than anyone ever gave him credit for. He was one of those people who knew how to hide, to keep his head down, go unnoticed in a crowd. The press tried calling them "the Halloween Murders", but the name didn't stick. Maybe if it had happened in America. But here, we don't have much use for fancy names. Or we never used to. It's different now. I've taken to buying bags of sweets for the trick-or-treaters. It's easier than having eggs thrown at my front door. He moved out of the house when it happened. Bought himself a small bungalow near to town. Quite a few people thought he should have moved away. Start a new life, and let the town start a new life too. One leg was chopped from each person. No other body parts, just one leg per person. There was blood. Obviously. You can't dismember three bodies without some blood being shed. But he didn't; he stayed here, right where it happened. Went down to the shop every day. Stared them in the eye when he heard whispers. Bought his newspaper every day, just as he'd always done. He walked his dog too. Every day. I suppose he felt he owed it to the dog. It had, after all, provided his alibi. He'd said hello to four neighbours. One of them remembered the exact time at which she had seen him because she was expecting a call from her husband at 4.15 that afternoon. Her husband rang immediately after he greeted her. At a quarter past four on the button, she said. The door of the main reception room was slick with blood. They reckon she must have tried to drag herself away from the murderer, but she couldn't get far. Not with one leg. Her parents happened to be there at the wrong time. They paid her an unexpected visit. They'd gone away on holiday, but had returned home early because the basement of the hotel they were staying at flooded and shorted the wiring. The receptionist said they decided not to wait while repairs were made, even though it would only have taken a day. The story was in the papers. "Decision cost couple their lives." He mowed the lawn every Sunday, polished his car in the driveway. Lived his life in exactly the same way as he had done before. Only difference being, of course, that she wasn't there, laughing at him from the doorway. One fact that leaked to the press was that their hands were tied behind their backs. Speculation was rife when this was discovered. One journalist wrote a particularly sensational piece - "Their last words" - in which she tried to imagine what they might have said to the killer standing over them with an axe. Problem-solving was one of the things he was very good at. He'd never put up his hand with an answer. But when I walked around the class, checking over their shoulders, I could see he had things all worked out, way before the rest of the class. Clean, neat, tidy, all working-out shown. The page neatly divided. The answer underlined in red. There was a white rug in the middle of the room. Soaked, of course, by the time the police arrived. And not white any more either. People were surprised when they married straight out of school. Not that it's unusual around these parts, but he seemed an ordinary choice for her. She was the sort of girl you'd expect to see hightailing it out of a small town like this. Headed for the bright lights. Jo'burg. Maybe bring back some rich banker. Make a splash with a big celebrity wedding. He could have won a scholarship to any university, but she was the prize he wanted. When it came to maths, it seemed there was nothing he couldn't do. The harder and more complex the problem, the more he seemed to enjoy it. His was one of those rare brains a teacher is fortunate enough to come across once in a lifetime. A student who can see the beauty in numbers. Of course, when she began to show, a few months after the wedding, everyone understood. He was passionate about her. As passionate as someone as restrained as he could be. I'd notice the way his eyes followed her in the classroom. Every move she made, every time she laughed, he was watching. He never said anything, though. Hid his love in his 17-year-old heart, and waited. She'd pulled the cover off a small table in the room. Trying to get to the phone, they think. The family photographs fell, and the glass shattered around her, leaving splinters in her hair. If he was the quiet one in the class, she was the candle, the bright flame. He wasn't the only moth to be drawn to her light. All the boys in the class were. She was beautiful. A bright shining star in the dull light of a small country classroom. She wasn't as clever as he was, but she was quick-tongued, always ready with an answer. Streetwise they call it nowadays. Her parents bought them the house. There was no shortage of money in that family. Her father spoiled her, gave her everything she wanted - a new car, clothes, the house they spent those few years in. Prime real estate. Or it was until the murders. It took a while for the property prices to recover. I bumped into them in the street shortly after they were married. She looked as she always did, happy, glad to be alive, even though her stomach was pushing against the short cotton sundress. He didn't say anything. Stood there silent while I asked her if she was happy. I offered to baby-sit for them. Any time, I said. Any time at all. She smiled and said thank you. Then he touched her arm and they walked away. The child died two years before the murders. Drowned in the swimming pool. And of course, after the murders, rumours began to surface. What were the circumstances of the child's death? Was it accidental? Didn't it seem strange that one young man should be dogged by such bad luck? It looked as if she was wearing a silver halo. That's how one of the newspapers wrote it up. Reliable sources and all that. But of course, the police wouldn't give answers, on that or anything else. Pursuing leads was all they were prepared to say. I expect when you're a reporter you have to embroider a few facts to sell papers. He met another woman, a few years after the murders. She was new to town, quiet, like him. They started seeing each other, but she must have been told, warned by someone, and after that they weren't seen together again. She'd left the child in the playpen in the garden and gone inside to answer the phone. She was gone only a couple of minutes, or so she said. When she came back the child was at the bottom of the pool. My marriage had been going through a bad patch for quite some time. My wife wasn't happy - I'd turned down a good post in a city school, and she wasn't thrilled about having to spend the rest of her life stuck in a country dorp like this one. But I was happy. Big towns, city lights, they never appealed to me that much. Other newspapers described the floor. In the middle of the room, it was awash with blood. A long red streak showed where she'd moved, to the door, back to where her parents lay. Like a snail, leaving a bright, shining trail. My wife left me soon after everything died down. Said she couldn't stand to stay in a town of death a moment longer. Her name for it - "The Town of Death". She didn't get that from a newspaper headline. I have all the articles, and none of them ever called it that. He was the main suspect, the obvious one. He stood to inherit everything. There were others, of course. She was known for being a flirt, for giving boys and men the glad eye. And they swarmed to her. Like bees to honey. Like moths to her bright light. My wife and I never had children. She wasn't keen. Said they would tie her down. Maybe later, she'd say, when we've done some living. But my life was here. A child would have made me happy. And her too, I think. But she wasn't prepared to stay, to settle down. The child's death was ruled accidental. In his report the coroner issued a warning to all parents of young children saying that in a study of child drownings, 75 percent percent of submersion victims were between one and three years of age; 65 percent of this group were boys. Toddlers, in particular, should be watched carefully, he said, because they often do something unexpected. Their capabilities change daily. They think she tried to help her parents, but of course there was nothing she could do for them. They were old, and the shock, the sudden loss of blood. They died quickly. The three bodies were found lying together. Holding on to one another. When they finally put the property on the market, they had a show house. The floor in the main reception room had been completely replaced. The final traces lost, the memory faded. A young couple from the city bought it. It's all the trend now. Weekend houses, "in the country". I haven't had occasion to meet them. I did hear, though, that she insisted on having the pool filled in. They have two young children. When I spoke to her again, shortly after the child's death, she was uneasy. Eventually she said she couldn't chat, that her husband didn't like it when she spoke to other men. I understood, I told her. I've lived here quietly for 41 years since the murders, taught maths in the same school for many of them. After I retired I took a few private maths pupils, but none of the students I taught since ever matched him for brightness. She was vital. I'm sure the blood pumped more strongly through her veins than it does through other people's. I didn't remarry after my wife left me. No woman ever smiled brightly enough, or grabbed my heart with a flippant joke. No woman tossed her hair with a pert flick, or glanced at me from the corner of her eye. When I think of the carnage, because that's what it was, bloody, bloody carnage, I think of souls, floating. I have a name for it, one that's whispered in my mind over the years. "The All Hallows Massacre." I see him almost every day when I walk downtown. I nod, but he never greets me, just polishes his car with grim, hard strokes, or mows his lawns in straight, unwavering lines. But when I've passed he stops what he's doing and stares after me. I feel his gaze burning the back of my neck. I no longer take private pupils. Instead, I think of souls, floating, as I work on my special set of problems. Some of them are simple; some have no answer. They are all intriguing. I think he'd appreciate the chance to try solving them.
1.
2. If the volume of blood in the human body is nearly 5 litres, and the heart pumps ±280 litres in one hour, how long would it take, to the nearest approximate second, for the body to bleed out?
3. When severed, the femoral artery can gush blood to distances of over 3 metres. Given that a chandelier hangs directly above the site of the severing, could blood spurt high enough to reach this chandelier? (You may refer to medical sources for further information.)
4. Father and mother agents are chosen, each having 22 genes. The number 15 was created randomly and denotes the split position of genes to be inherited.
5. If, using a sharply honed axe, it takes 2 blows to chop through one leg, how many blows would it take to sever 3 legs? If each blow takes 5 seconds, how long would the total of 6 blows take to complete? (For the purposes of this exercise we will presume that the subjects' hands are tied so that they offer no resistance.)
6. There are 365,242199 days in a year, 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 1 440 minutes in a day. If a man returns from work at precisely 4.30 every day, and then takes his dog for a walk, what are the chances (to the nearest 10 000) of his arriving home early and altering this routine by 22 minutes? (You may use a random possibilities generator when attempting to answer this question).
7. If one event changes in a given set of circumstances, how many alternative outcomes are there? (You may answer this question by using the events written above.)
8. A girl of 17 encounters:
b. a 17-year-old schoolboy (n8); and c. the 46-year-old owner of a local restaurant (n14).
9. If the soul of an old man is ready to depart his body, to float for eternity with the lost souls of the damned, how great will be the host with whom he keeps company?
10. All Hallows' Eve ends at midnight on 31 October, and 1 November is All Souls' day. This story was started on at 16h23 on 31 October and completed it at 01.11 on 1 November. The story is 2 597 words long. What percentage of this story classifies as an All Hallows' Eve tale?
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