“Oh, I’ll arrange money for you,” said Fell expansively. “We’ll be starting our business soon. I mean, just help yourself to what you need out of the cash box.”
“Desk?”
“Yes, let’s have a look.”
Fell sorted out bank books and statements. “Nothing odd here,” said Maggie. “Except for one thing.”
“What?”
“Well, since you started work, your pay has been deposited each week. But there are no withdrawals. I mean they would have to draw money for bills, council tax, electricity, gas, things like that. There’s not one withdrawal. And you said they gave you an allowance.”
“That’s odd. You would have thought the tax people would have been after them.”
“Probably saw no reason to. Your tax was deducted from your earnings. What did they live on?”
“There must have been more money, much more than the money in the cash box.”
“Is it exactly fifty thousand?”
Fell opened the cash box. “Just under. It’s in bundles of twenties, see? I just counted the bundles.” He flicked through them.
“Maybe they had rich relatives.”
“I don’t know of any. They scrimped and saved. We never even had holidays.”
“There must be something in your past to explain it. Is there a photo album anywhere?”
“I don’t remember seeing one.”
“There aren’t even any wedding or baby photos anywhere,” said Maggie, looking around the dingy room.
“Let’s look in my mother’s room. I haven’t had the heart to pack anything up.”
They went up the stairs. The bedroom was as dark as the rest of the house. It was dominated by a large double bed. There was a dressing table by the window, with a hard chair in front of it. The fireplace had been blocked up. An Edwardian wardrobe took up most of one wall.
Fell opened the wardrobe. His mother had possessed few clothes. A wave of mothball smell made him wrinkle his nose. On the shelf above the hanging clothes were various hats. “We should get boxes after the funeral and pack all this up,” said Maggie. “Take it all round to Oxfam.”
“There’s something behind the hats,” said Fell, feeling with his fingers. He pulled out an old photo album.
He took it over to the bed. Maggie sat down beside him as he opened it. There was a wedding photograph. To his surprise, his mother looked small and dainty and pretty. His father was stiff in new clothes and sported a large walrus moustache. “Why did they never show me this?” wondered Fell. “Here’s another one of Dad at work. There’s the signal box.”
He had a sudden sharp memory of walking with his mother across the railway tracks to the signal box one hot summer’s day. Willow herb grew along the verges by the railway lines and the air was redolent with the railway smell of soot and creosote.
There was a photo of his father standing on the platform with other railway workers. Then there was a photo of a couple having tea on the lawn outside a large mansion. They were an elderly, aristocratic-looking pair.
“Who are they? And where’s that?” asked Maggie.
“I don’t know,” said Fell, bewildered.
There were various other photographs of trains and railway workers, and then nothing more.
“There isn’t a photograph of you,” exclaimed Maggie. “How very strange.”
“I’ll ask Aunt Agnes tomorrow if she’s got any photos. Let’s leave all this, Maggie. I’ve had enough for one day.”
They spent the rest of the evening sharing a bottle of wine and watching television.
Then Fell looked out clean sheets and made up the bed for himself in his mother’s room and changed the bed in his own room for Maggie.
“I hope you’ll be all right,” he said awkwardly.
“I’ll be fine,” said Maggie.
Fell lay awake for a long time. He tried to remember some affection in his childhood, some hugs and kisses, but could recall none. He prayed for the repose of his mother’s soul and then asked forgiveness because he could not mourn her passing. Maggie also lay awake for a long time, bewildered at the change in her circumstances. Had she been in love with Fell for a long time? He was the only person who had taken pains to be kind to her. Maggie had taken to reading adventure and spy stories so that they could have more to talk about in the hotel dining room. And yet she had never thought of having sex with him. When she was younger, she had experienced two brief flings, one in the back of a car with a businessman, the other with a wine salesman. Both episodes had left her feeling dirty and diminished. Now all she could think of was how much she really wanted Fell to love her and for him to make love to her. Perhaps they would grow together. But she knew in her bones that it would be very easy to frighten him off.
? The Skeleton in the Closet ?
Two
THE funeral of Mrs. Doris Dolphin took place on a beautiful morning in late May. The sun shone down on the churchyard with its old leaning tombstones, on the laburnum tree heavy with yellow blossoms by the church gate and on the dandelions that starred the thick tussocky grass.
The church of St. Peter’s was very old, a Norman church built on Saxon foundations. The stained-glass windows had survived Cromwell’s purges: splashes of jewelled colour lay across the pews and the stone-flagged aisle.
Despite the glory of the day, Aunt Agnes was buttoned tightly into a tweed coat. The coffin lay before the altar with one wreath of flowers supplied by Fell on the top.
Although the vicar had kept to Fell’s choice of hymns, they were played by a steel band. How his mother would have hated it, thought Fell.
After the service, they drove in one large limousine – Barbara and her husband, Cousin Tom, Aunt Agnes, Fell and Maggie – behind the hearse to the town cemetery.
Maggie in a severe black suit looked the only one of them dressed for the occasion. Fell was wearing his new blazer and trousers with a black tie; Cousin Tom had on a blue suit and red tie, Barbara a yellow trouser suit, and her husband, Fred, the same sort of blue suit as Cousin Tom had on.
Fell tried to conjure up suitable feelings, but he felt numb and cold despite the increasing heat of the day. Must order a headstone, he thought.
There had been no conversation among them, but when they got back to the house and Maggie put on an apron and went off to the kitchen to heat the savouries, Fell poured drinks all round, regretting having lavished so much money on such a large selection because Barbara, Fred, Tom and Aunt Agnes all asked for sweet sherry.
“So that’s your fiancee,” began Aunt Agnes. “Not much of a looker, is she?”
“I find her very attractive,” said Fell.
“Oh, well, I’ve never been able to make out what folks see in each other.”
Fell set himself first to discovering if his relatives were in straitened circumstances. As Maggie handed around plates of savouries, he unearthed that Fred owned an electrical-goods shop in Cardiff, and Tom had a building business in Bath. Aunt Agnes said that she hoped Fell would manage. Her late husband, she said, had left her comfortably off. She didn’t suppose Fell had been left much, she said, her little eyes bright with curiosity. Poor Doris had always complained they couldn’t even afford a holiday.
Fell murmured that he would manage. He still insisted on sending the furniture to Aunt Agnes, but instead of saying this time that Maggie didn’t like it, he said instead that it all reminded him of his dead parents.
Barbara and Fred looked bored and said they had better be getting back. “Oh, have another drink…just one,” begged Fell. “I want to ask you all something. I can’t find any family photographs. Have you got any of me when I was young, Aunt Agnes?”
“Can’t say I have,” said Aunt Agnes. “When are you getting married?”
“We’re in no hurry,” said Fell. “Wait here. I’ve something to show you.”
