A modern take on the Blue Beard tale

A few years ago, there was a very wealthy man who lived in a super million-pound mansion in the countryside and owned properties all over the place. This man, however, had the misfortune of having a blue beard, which made him so frightfully ugly that all women stayed clear of him.

The man ardently wished to marry either one of two beautiful sisters who lived in the nearby commuter village. But neither of the girls were interested and avoided him, not just because of his appearance but also due to the renowned unexplained mystery of his many previous marriages, and nobody knowing what on earth had happened to the wives.

To raise the girls’ interests the Blue Beard organised a trip to one of his mansions on a Greek island, all expenses paid, for the girls, their mother, and a bunch of random young people.

The week was one big raging party, with the most delicious food and drinks served around the clock on an all-you-can-eat basis by the mansion’s massive pools and lawns.

Helicopter trips were organised to the nearby semi-active volcano, Gary Barlow and Mel C performed in candle lit duets every evening in the mansion grounds - except once when they had the night off due to a tummy bug and had to be replaced by East-17 and one of the Backstreet Boys. Candy floss and toffee apples were handed out during midnight firework displays and all the guests were assigned rooms with gold plated toilets and bidets. The youngest daughter was so enthralled by this stylish way of life that by the end of the week she had succumbed to the Blue Beard’s incessant flirting and agreed to marry him upon return to England.

About a month into the wedding, Blue Beard told his wife that he had to leave for a few weeks on a lucrative business trip. Upon leaving, he handed her a set of house keys - he hadn’t entrusted her with a set of her own and she hadn’t asked for one – he ran her through all the keys, telling her that she was welcome to entertain guests, host parties and help herself to the fine wines in the cellar and the gourmet food in the pantry. She was free to use any room of the house as she fancied. All except one, a small closet room located in an unobvious place underneath the swimming pool basement area. She had never even heard of the closet up to that moment. He held up the small key that opened the closet room and explained at length where this room was to be found. He also added that, if ever the girl did enter into the room against his order, she would face his unrestrained fury and everlasting resentment. Then they kissed goodbye.

The girl sent threads of WhatsApp messages to all her contacts and held a party in the house the following day, just as Blue Beard’s flight took off from Heathrow runway 3 for Abu Dhabi. Halfway through the party she left everyone in the middle of a game of badminton, raced down some stairs and along winding corridors to the closet room, almost breaking her neck from the haste that took over her. Inside the closet, she found the dead bloody bodies of several women lying in the darkness. She gasped and dropped the key onto the clotted-blood-stained floor. The key got covered in blood and for all her efforts she could not clean off the stain. For every time she did so, the blood reappeared as if by magic.

The Blue Beard came home early from his trip and demanded that his wife give him back the keys. After some highly believable time-buying excuses the girl soon gave up and handed over the closet key. The Blue Beard knew from the bloodstain that she had disobeyed him. He told her that regrettably, he would now have to chop her head off, but upon her specific request granted her a quarter of an hour of zen meditation before the execution should take place.

The girl locked herself in a room upstairs, but rather than meditating she hastily sent messages to her sister and also to her two brothers, who were policemen, asking for help. Fortunately, in the emotion, it had slipped the Blue Beard’s mind to confiscate her phone. When the time was up the Blue Beard rapped on the door. The girl asked for just a few more minutes’ worth of deep meditation ‘to adequately prepare for death’, until she heard the familiar sound of her brothers’ Ford Mondeo’s wheels grinding on the driveway tarmac outside. 

There followed a lot of swearing, a thump, and some gunshots. Then her brothers’ voices asking her if she was okay, from the other side of the door. 

Thanks to a family friend lawyer, the girls’ brothers were fully acquitted of manslaughter, rightly claiming self-defense, and the girl inherited the Blue Beard’s vast assets. Now pretty well off, she was able to buy a semi-detached house in Slough for her sister and to bribe her brothers’ Police superiors into promoting both of them, all this to the great pride of their mother. With the rest, she led a comfortable existence, dropped out of Uni, never had to seek for a job, and married a perfectly decent bloke with a promising salesman career in Amplifon; a guy who she found reassuring, mild-tempered and reasonably pleasant-looking, despite a dental-related breath issue that she set straight in no time at a highly regarded local surgery. And she never gave much thought to the whole Blue Beard affair ever again.