There was a shocked silence.
'Just joking,' said Charles. 'This cake is jolly good.'
READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT FROM M. C. BEATON'S LATEST BOOK
THE
SKELETON
IN THE
CLOSET
AVAILABLE IN HARDCOVER FROM ST. MARTIN'S MINOTAUR
IN the way that illiterate people become very cunning at covering up their disability, Mr. Fellworth Dolphin, known as Fell, approaching forty, was still a virgin and kept it a dark secret.
His long-standing virginity had come about because he had been a shy, lanky, oversensitive boy, the single child of strict and emotionally blackmailing parents. He had been born when his mother was in her early forties. His father, a railway signalman, and his mother, a housewife, had dinned it into him that his duty in life was to get an education and be the sole support of his parents. When he was older, they chose 'suitable' girls for him, girls who seemed foreign to the young Fell with their vapid conversation and the way their minds seemed to be set on a white wedding and a neat bungalow, both with a total absence of romance. For Fell was a romantic, living through books.
He had been set to go to university, but his father had fallen ill and it was borne in on him that he must take some sort of job immediately or 'they would all starve.' They lived in the market town of Buss in Worcestershire. In Buss, there was a rather grand hotel, the Palace, and it was there that young Fell found employment as a waiter.
His father died from a heart attack several years after Fell had started work. His mother became cross and morose, always complaining. Sometimes when he had finished a late shift in the hotel dining room, he would return home to their scrupulously clean two-up two-down terraced house, and he would see the light in the living room still burning and his feet would feel as heavy as lead for he knew he would have to drink the hot milk he hated and listen to his mother's complaints. In his spare time, he lived through books: spy books, adventure books, detective stories, thrillers, relishing those other worlds of action and mayhem.
He had acquaintances, but no close friends.
Although he was not often prone to depression, as he approached his thirty-eighth birthday, and once more walked home from the hotel, he felt a terrible darkness of the soul. Life had passed him by. He did not look unpleasing, being tall with a good figure, a pleasant face with wide-spaced grey eyes and a long, sensitive mouth. But his thick hair had turned prematurely grey.
The light was on in the living room. He braced himself for another wearying end to the day, listening to his mother's droning complaints, cradling that glass of hot milk and wondering if he could tip it somewhere.
He had not been allowed his own key. 'Why should you have one?' his mother had complained. 'I'm always here.' But he had secretly had one cut, just a little bit of rebellion. He rang the bell. Nothing. The door did not open, nor did his mother's whiskery face appear at the window.
He took out his key and let himself in. He went into the living room. His mother was lying back in her usual armchair. He knew somehow that she was dead.
He felt numb. He phoned the ambulance and the police. He travelled in the ambulance to the hospital. He was told in hushed whispers that she, like his father, had suffered a heart attack.
He walked home at dawn-he had never been allowed to take driving lessons-trying to fight down a guilty feeling of relief. He was free at last from the chains of duty.
As he plodded homeward, he looked about him at the silent streets of the market town. This town had been his cell. He had never even been to London. The clock on the town hall sent down six silvery chimes. The rising sun sent his elongated shadow stretching out in front of him. He shivered, although the day was already warm. What on earth was going to become of him?
The next day a call from Mr. Jamieson, one of the town's solicitors, came as a surprise. Mr. Jamieson said a doctor friend at the hospital had told him of Mrs. Dolphin's death, and asked Fell to call round at his office to go through his mother's will. Fell could not imagine how his mother, who never seemed to leave the house, had got round to writing a will and visiting a lawyer. Fell had already phoned the hotel to say he would be taking time off until after the funeral. He still felt strangely numb. He put on his only suit and a shirt which his mother had turned at the collar and cuffs when they became frayed, a dark blue tie and highly polished shoes. He could now let his shoes get dirty if he liked, he thought, and then was ashamed at the pettiness of the thought. As he clattered down the stairs to make his way out, he looked at his mother's usual chair by the window, almost amazed to see it empty.
Mr. Jamieson seemed too young to have had any dealings with Fell's mother. He appeared to be in his early thirties. He had thick, shiny black hair and a smooth face with pale eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. After commiserating with Fell on his mother's sudden death, he got down to business. 'Your father,' said Mr. Jamieson, 'left everything to your mother on his death and Mrs. Dolphin left everything to you.'
'It won't be much,' said Fell apologetically, for the lawyer's offices seemed too grand to deal with such a small inheritance, 'although I suppose I will get the house.'
'It is in fact a very comfortable amount of money.'
Fell blinked at him. It was a sunny day. The weekly market in the town square below the windows was in full swing. The sun glittered on the glass front of a large bookcase.
The lawyer smiled. 'Did you never look at your parents' bank books?'
Fell gave a rueful smile. 'I haven't had time to look through any bank books or documents.'
'Well, apart from the house, there is the sum of five hundred thousand pounds, plus some shares. Of course, there will be death duties to pay. The first two hundred and fifty thousand is tax-free, and then there is a straight forty per cent off the remainder.'
'But that's impossible!' Fell turned red. 'Quite impossible. We never even had a television set.'
'Your father saved as much as he could all his life. The savings were kept in a high-interest account.'
'But I couldn't go to university! I had to go to work. They lived on my earnings!'
'Perhaps they wanted to make sure you had a comfortable future.'
It burst out of Fell. 'But they took my youth.'
The lawyer looked uncomfortable. 'To business, Mr. Dolphin. I have been made an executor. Would you like me to arrange the funeral?'
'Please,' said Fell, still bewildered and shaken. 'I wouldn't know where to start.'
'The expenses from the funeral will be paid out of the estate. These things take some time to wind up, but in the meantime you can draw any money in advance.'
'May I draw, say, two thousand pounds now?' Fell did not know how he had the temerity to ask for such a sum.
'Certainly.'
When Fell left the lawyer's office, he could feel rage boiling up inside him. He was free at last-free to travel, to set up his own business, to start living. But his parents had filleted out his ambition and his guts. He felt like someone who has come out of prison after a long sentence, wondering how to cope with life and reality and the modern world.
He did not even have a bank account. He had handed his pay cheques first to his father, and then, after his father's death, to his mother, and a small sum had been handed back to him.
He went into the nearest bank, holding the lawyer's cheque, and opened an account. It was all so easy.
Then he returned home and began to go through his father's old desk. Tucked away in a drawer at the bottom was a cash box. It was locked. With a strange feeling of intrusion, he searched his mother's battered old calfskin handbag. On her ring of keys was a little silver one. He inserted it in the lock and found it worked. He opened the box up. It was full of money in neat bundles, each marked 'one thousand pounds.' With shaking fingers, he counted it out. There was nearly fifty thousand pounds. He was about to put it back in the box, take it round to the bank and put it in his new account when he suddenly began to wonder how his father had come by such a large amount of loose cash. He had obviously not declared it to the income tax.
