Death on Account

by Margaret Yorke

  Tonight the desk was piled with untidy heaps of paper, and Wilfred said that his secretary had been away for a month. She had been ill with flu, which had turned to bronchitis.

  ‘I left everything at first, as I thought she’d soon be back,’ said Wilfred. ‘But poor girl, she’s been quite ill, and it’s all accumulated.’

  ‘I’ll help you sort it out, if you like,’ Robbie offered. ‘I could come on Saturday.’ He could polish off the books for Caprice first. Wilfred accepted gratefully.

  The fine, cold weather broke by the weekend, and with grey skies overhead a strong wind blew rain in gusts along Claremont Terrace as Isabel made ready to leave the house on Saturday morning. A sheet of newspaper had caught against the gatepost and flapped soddenly.

  ‘Thank goodness we won’t be here much longer,’ Isabel said. ‘If you’d been home at a reasonable hour last night I’d have told you that Bridges and Culver have a firm buyer at last. The contracts should be exchanged quite soon.’

  Several times already it had seemed that 49 Claremont Terrace had been sold, but before anything was signed each buyer had withdrawn either because they were unable to get a big enough mortgage or because the sale of another house had broken the chain.

  ‘We’ll move next month – at Easter,’ Isabel said.

  Robbie got her car out of the garage and left it with the engine running, ready for her departure. He always did this on Saturdays, though for the rest of the week she did it herself. Unfortunately she was unlikely to have a fatal accident between Claremont Terrace and Caprice, he reflected, not for the first time. Sometimes, when he topped up her car with water or checked the tyres, fantastic plans went through his head, but he knew he would never carry any of them out.

  He might rob the bank, though, to prove to himself that he was capable of some immense gesture of rage, though no one else would ever know.

  He was to lose his home. He would miss Charlie, his car polisher, and he would miss Darcy’s, the shop on the corner where he went for the Sunday papers and where he bought toffees for Charlie and peppermint lumps for himself. He would miss the girls – the bright young women who lived in the street and walked along it in their tight, faded jeans and skimpy sweaters, looking, Isabel said, like tramps, but to Robbie very appealing. Their husbands and boyfriends wore jeans too, and some had long, curling hair, but they were all friendly and would chat to Robbie and Charlie on Sundays as they washed the cars in front of the house.

  Upstairs in his room, Robbie had a drawerful of toys with which he rewarded Charlie for his work – not every week, or he would come to expect it, but now and then. Robbie bought some, if he was near a toyshop with time to spare, and others he got by collecting the tops from cereal packets when there was a special offer. Doing this amused him. There was a handsome fire engine in the drawer at the moment, waiting for Charlie.

  He thought about defying Isabel over the house. But she had paid off the mortgage; legally she could command control of most of the proceeds from the sale. It would be very difficult, and even if he did it, she could go ahead on her own; she was making enough.

  He could refuse to go with her. He could set up on his own. But he knew he would not: he was so accustomed to being her shadow, to taking the easiest way.

  He put the breakfast things in the dishwasher in the high-ceilinged kitchen where he had built all the cupboards. Then he went into the office and got out Caprice’s books. The accounts were soon done; Isabel’s system with dockets and ledgers at both the shops was strictly enforced and the various assistants, most of them part-timers who each did a day, or even only a half-day, were meticulous about every entry. Then he set off for Birley.

  On a Saturday morning it took some time to drive the length of Harbington’s High Street, for people came from miles around to shop there. Cars were double parked, pedestrians, prams and pushchairs poured over the crossings in a long stream. But today, because of the cold weather, there were fewer shoppers than usual, and the trim forms of the young mothers were hidden under bulky jackets.

  Robbie reached Wilfred’s house soon after eleven o’clock. There was no one about, and the Land-Rover was absent from the yard, so he let himself into the unlocked house through the back door and went through to the study. The mounds of paper were even taller than they had been a few days earlier, and Robbie worked on them for over an hour without interruption, sorting accounts and filing letters, making a pile of bills to be paid.

  Pausing for a moment, his glance fell on the gun cupboard and for the first time in his fantasies about raiding the bank he thought of the actual money. He could spend it on anything he liked.

  He could seek a mistress.

  He thought about Angela Fiske, one of the girls in the bank. She was blonde and slim and pretty, and he liked watching her perch on her stool at the counter. She was the sort of girl he had dreamed of in his youth, when he had imagined women as needing protection. But other men had found the shy, gentle girls, and he had won a veritable Boadicea, one who was no longer an object of desire to him, and he doubted if anyone else found her desirable either, even when dressed in expensive clothes from stock. Briefly he remembered Isabel’s solid flesh beneath him, the averted face, the rigid limbs, and his own desperate release. It was as well that no child had sprung from such unhappy couplings, but Robbie had experience of no other sort.

  He had sometimes thought of finding a prostitute, but not in Harbington where he was known. He had telephoned Biddy, who offered massage, and had gone as far as her door when his courage failed and he fled. Other men talked about being given the come-on by women they met at parties, but Robbie went to few parties and if he was given the come-on he would not have realized what was happening.

  It would soon be too late. He was forty-five, and the hair in front of his ears, which he had let grow long to be in the fashion, was turning white, though the rest of it was dark enough and still thick.

  He rose and tried the door of the gun cupboard. It was locked, but he had already seen a bunch of keys in the drawer of Wilfred’s desk. Robbie knew a little about guns; he had used an air rifle as a boy and there was his army training. Wilfred had a matched pair of twelve bore shotguns. Behind them in the cupboard was an odd one, and a fourth, with a shorter barrel. Then there were the two rifles.

  Two minutes later the gun with the shorter barrel was in the boot of his 1100, together with six cartridges.

  Robbie locked the cupboard and resumed his work. After a few minutes he took out his handkerchief and thoroughly wiped the key and the cupboard door, and the drawer of the desk. Wilfred would tell the police when he missed the gun.

  But of course Robbie would return it unused, and soon. He was just testing his plan, to prove that it could be done.

  Wilfred, returning, never noticed the missing gun. Robbie stayed to lunch, which was veal and ham pie and tomatoes, and then, when the rain eased off, helped Wilfred repair a fence in the afternoon. He took Wilfred out for dinner, just to the Star, which did excellent grills and had some good claret. Robbie wasted no time thinking of Isabel and her long day at the shop. She thrived on hard work, and the satisfaction she got from selling garments at more than double the price she bought them for, warded off all fatigue. She might expect to find him at home with dinner prepared as he usually was on Saturdays, but there was plenty of food in the freezer and she would not starve.

  She was in bed when he got home.

  He lit the gas fire and turned on the television set, just in time for the late night movie, a suspense thriller set in San Francisco.

  The shotgun and the cartridges were still in the boot of his car.

  Isabel stayed in bed for an extra hour on Sundays. Robbie took up her breakfast – coffee and toast, placing a folding tray-table, made by himself, across her knees.

  Isabel sat up against soft pillows, her jet hair, dyed by Madge at The Scissor Box, standing up round her head in a fuzz. She poured out her coffee and carried the cup to her large, coarse lips,
then gulped. Robbie, about to withdraw, stared at her with loathing. How had he once embraced that ugly body, now freed from its firm corseting? He saw the heavy, round breasts, pale below the red skin of the neck, a curious contrast, and thought about plunging a knife into the dark cleft between them.

  ‘If you’re planning to do some gardening today, don’t waste your time here,’ she said. ‘There’s plenty to do at the new house. No point in working here when we’re leaving so soon.’

  Robbie’s broad beans were already through. Beneath cloches, early lettuce were hearting up. The new garden was an untidy pile of earth, unevenly spread, as the builders had left it.

  ‘Get a gardening contractor if you want a garden made,’ said Robbie shortly. ‘I’m not going to do it.’

  But he would, for how else would he spend his time?

  He went downstairs and put out some crumbs for the birds. A fat thrush flew down to the table, and the robin who always perched near Robbie when he was digging. In time he could coax birds to come to the new house, he supposed.

  Charlie came out when he saw the hose connected. He wore red rubber boots and stained corduroy trousers, his working garb. Robbie gave him a sponge and the boy followed him round, dabbing at mud on the Golf, which they tackled first.

  ‘Mum says you’ve sold the house,’ he said.

  ‘Um – yes.’ It could not be denied.

  ‘So someone else’ll be here.’

  ‘Yes. But I’m not going far away,’ said Robbie. ‘To Windsor Crescent.’

  ‘It’s the other side of town. Mum said so,’ said Charlie. ‘I’ll not be allowed to ride over there on my bike.’

  ‘You will when you’re older,’ Robbie said. But when he was older, Charlie would have filled up his time with other activities. ‘I’ll miss you,’ he said, then added more cheerfully, ‘I’m not going yet.’

  He never said ‘we’ unless it was unavoidable.

  Charlie scrubbed industriously at a wheel. He was still too small to be much help, but he was a pleasant companion.

  While they worked, the gun and the cartridges reposed in the boot.

  Sometimes Isabel went out for lunch on Sundays; she visited Beryl Watson, her assistant. But today she was at home, and Robbie dished up the roast shoulder of lamb and new potatoes, with spring greens, which he had prepared, watching over the roast whilst attending to the cars. Isabel always carved. She slid the blade of the carving knife into the meat.

  ‘I’m not moving,’ Robbie told her.

  ‘You’ll have to. The contract is signed,’ she replied, not looking up from her task. She had foreseen opposition from him, but not this obstinacy. He had never liked change, and he lacked all ambition. It was hard to remember, now, that once she had felt protective towards him, the only man she had been able to trap. Her tactic of keeping him out of bed until they were married had been the way to make sure of this inexperienced man. She had tried the other way and failed before she met Robbie, and she had enjoyed none of these encounters, but she had never expected to do so. Men’s ways are nasty, her mother had told her, but marriage to one was the only guarantee of security, and the way to obtain social respect.

  Things had changed now and independent women with careers abounded; nevertheless, it was as well not to have been passed over, and on the whole Robbie gave very little trouble. The present storm would pass.

  ‘You can’t make me go with you,’ Robbie said.

  ‘Where will you go, then? Into lodgings?’ Isabel demanded. ‘Oh no! We go our own ways. That suits me too. But we stay together. I’m having no scandal.’

  Robbie rose from the table, ignoring his plate of succulent lamb, still pink as he liked it, and went out to his workshop. He sat down on the stool that faced his bench. In front of him, rows of tools hung on pegs, each in its own place, all shining. On the bench, an owl he had been carving from a piece of yew found on a walk across Wilfred’s land, stared at him with blind eyes. He had his chance now to defy Isabel, to leave her and make some sort of life of his own.

  But there would be a scandal; gossip. He knew that. In this small town, where Isabel was well known and everyone recognized him as her husband, and at their age, there would be a great deal of talk and he would come off the worst, forfeiting sympathy. Even the bank would disapprove, although it could not dictate over that aspect of life. He could ask for a transfer away from the area but he would get no promotion. That would never come his way now.

  But what if he sued for divorce? Isabel would object, but nowadays that was no obstacle, merely a question of time. He could begin again – find another wife, a young one, a warm and kindly one, there could even be children…. But here his thinking ran into a brick wall. There wouldn’t be children.

  He picked up the owl and the knife he used to shape it, and began cutting away at it, savagely, without any of his usual care and skill. Soon there was no owl left: just a heap of splinters and chippings.

  In the house, Isabel finished her lunch; she stacked the dishes in the machine and put everything away, her only concession to his tantrum. He would work it off out there in his shed. He was too weak and idle to manage alone, and he had never, she was certain, looked at another woman since their marriage – or before it, come to that. He was inadequate in that department, but perhaps it did not stop him from the foolish thoughts other men of his age seemed to entertain and often to act upon. Beryl Watson’s husband, for instance: at the age of forty-two he had left her for a young woman of twenty; so humiliating, though Beryl was much happier alone now that she had grown used to it. Isabel did not intend to suffer the same humiliation. Besides, Robbie was useful about the place.

  When he realized that he had destroyed the owl he had spent so much time on, Robbie stormed out of the workshop, banging the door behind him and leaving the knife thrown down on the bench. He got into his car and backed noisily out into the road, crashing the gears as he changed into first. When he drove off he turned, from habit, towards Blewton.

  Images raced through his mind. He remembered Isabel when they first met. She was trim in her uniform, though sturdy; not solid as she was now. Her body with its curves had been full of promise, but none had materialized. He knew that she had married him, not he her, and he still did not understand why; Robbie, accustomed now to women’s emancipation, had forgotten older attitudes.

  When he reached the familiar approaches to Blewton he slowed down, a little calmer now, and turned off at the crossing which led to the bank. He had never been there at a weekend before. He drove slowly along the quiet streets and stopped in the service road which ran past the row of shops that included the bank. A woman with a dog on a lead was walking by, but otherwise there was no one about. The shops had the blank, shuttered look common to Sundays, and the bank’s heavy oak door looked very solid. He started the car up and drove round to the recreation ground. Here there was more activity: children played on the swings and the slide; dogs ran free. There were a number of young men about – fathers in charge of their children.

  Robbie drove on into the main part of the town. He was not going home.

  He thought about the gun in the boot of the car while he sat in the kindly darkness of a cinema watching a film called The Killer. When he reached home there was no one about to see him carry it into the house. He put it in the cupboard in his room, concealed behind his suits, and he put the six cartridges into one of his shoes.

  3

  Robbie’s lunch habits varied. Most days, he brought sandwiches and ate them in the staff room, or, on fine days, in the recreation ground. He always went out for a stroll, and often shopped for the evening meal at the supermarket which was close to the bank. He carried a green Marks and Spencer carrier bag on these expeditions and sometimes he put it straight into the car before returning to the bank; at other times he brought it back with him. His dapper figure in the dark suit, or, in winter, the hip-length dark raincoat, carrying the bag, was a familiar sight to his colleagues. Most of them dashed quickly
round the shops, too, in their lunch break.

  Sometimes Robbie lunched at the Copper Kettle. This was a café two doors from the bank and it attempted, with oak tables and wheelback chairs, to wear an antique patina over its modern façade. When it opened, no one thought it would succeed, because the factories around had their own canteens and the customers for the shops were mostly local residents. But parking was easy in the streets close by and trade was being drawn to the neighbourhood from the centre of town; the café was prospering. It served tasty salads in pottery bowls; the portions were heaped into bowls too small, giving the appearance of generosity, but making it difficult to eat without scattering lettuce and tomato all over the table. Philip Grigson, the chief clerk, and Nigel West, the manager, both lunched there sometimes, though Nigel, who lived nearby, went home when his wife Susan was in, and Philip occasionally went to the Cross Keys on the corner for the steak and kidney pie for which the pub was renowned.

  In his plan for robbing the bank, Robbie would eat sandwiches, for he would have to be quick. He would go to the recreation ground for his usual walk – so it would need to be a fine day. He could not devise an alibi since the shops would be closed, but his impeccable reputation would protect him.

  On Monday he followed Angela Fiske round the supermarket. She bought yoghurt and an apple: her lunch. He debated inviting her to join him at the Copper Kettle, but he knew she would react with amazement. She might accept, but such an interlude could never lead to intimacy. Robbie was old enough to be her father, and she thought of him in the same category; he helped her sometimes when she got muddled about procedure; though Angela was now a cashier, she was a rather scatterbrained girl. How would she behave if faced with a gun held by a masked raider, Robbie wondered. He thought she might turn hysterical, which would be an excellent defence against a thief who meant to use no violence; she would forget to press her emergency alarm but her shrieks would alert the rest of the staff.