by Gill Mather
Roz threw off her hood. Raindrops from the sodden foliage dripped off the trees down inside the back of her anorak.
“Come on then. Let’s see if we can get inside.”
She covered the distance across the open space, through the picket gate and to the front door in short order. Any uncertainty whether it was the right property was put beyond doubt by a nameplate screwed to the gate announcing: ‘Little Avail’.
The front door was of dull solid unstained wood. It seemed to be made from a single thick piece of oak braced with vertical battens. The dull lead-coloured metal escutcheon plate, though ornate, looked far newer than the key Roz held poised to fit it into the lock. Her hand was trembling.
“Will you do it Guy.”
“Go on then. Hand it over.”
The lock was noisy but the key turned easily and the door swung open. They abandoned their muddy boots and dripping coats in the porch.
Incredibly, the little house, though very basic, was clean and tidy. Roz had expected to have to dodge vermin and fight her way through cobwebs, with ivy growing through gaps in the walls and fungus and mould decorating the ceilings.
There wasn’t much of the house downstairs. The hallway, what was presumably the front parlour off it to the right and the kitchen to the left. There was no upholstered furniture. Colourful throws hung over the wooden seats, and rugs decorated the floors which were covered in some kind of wall to wall rush matting that was springy underfoot with, perhaps, insulation. The walls of the two main rooms were clad in dark wood panelling behind which possibly more insulation was conveniently concealed. The hall walls were distempered or emulsioned in white. The spareness lent a shaker-style impression.
No dust particles hung in the sunshine being beamed in through the arched windows and none was visible on any of the surfaces.
The reason for the good order was soon explained by a letter left propped up against a pot of flowers on the kitchen table addressed in a wavering hand to Roz. She opened it and read aloud:
“ ‘Dear Roz,
In the hope that you’d visit Little Avail, as soon as you left I got in touch with my old cleaning lady Mrs. Pearson to come and give the place a good going over. I hope she’s made a good job of it as I haven’t visited the cottage for several years due to ill health. I doubt if she’ll have been able to do much to the garden though.
Having seen it, I hope you’ll like it enough to want to take it from me. I’ve already informed my solicitor who’ll be writing to you. I expect you’ll have to instruct your own.
As I’ve said, I don’t have much time.
Hoping to hear from you soonest,
Yours very sincerely,
Gordon Dearing’ ”
Guy had been quiet as they toured the ground floor rooms and Roz was itching to go upstairs, but she bit her lip and said:
“So what do you think Guy?”
“Well it’s charming to be sure and charmingly situated.”
His eyes rested on the old-fashioned hand pump above the butler sink and slid over to the blacked up range looking very much at home in the large fireplace with piles of cut wood in the spaces either side. Though ornate, the range looked new. An oil lamp hung from a ceiling fitting and more lamps stood on various surfaces. Plus some candles on stands. Guy’s attention seemed particularly rivetted by the lamps and candles.
“And?” Roz asked. She hoped not ‘but’.
Side-stepping he said, “I’ll wager Mrs. Pearson didn’t have to stomp over a ploughed field to get here clutching mop and bucket.”
“Well no.”
“There must be another way here. Perhaps we should go outside and check.”
“Could we see upstairs first?”
“Of course.”
Guy wasn’t usually so formal. It rather worried her and she moved over to him for a hug which he duly and willingly gave her.
“I’m wondering how this lot,” he swung a hand towards the objects in the kitchen, “got here. They must’ve been air-lifted in. And those windows must’ve been specially made. They’re certainly not your standard issue uPVC units. You just can’t get plastic windows like that. It’s incredible.”
“Yes but it’s all mostly here now. Things we’d need. Of course we haven’t seen upstairs yet.”
“Come on then. Let’s go and take a peep.”
There were two bedrooms both neat and clean as downstairs and basically equipped, with double beds, ethnic throws and brass bedsteads.
“No loo then,” said Guy.
“Hmm. I think there might have been something at the end of the hall.”
“Shall we look?” Guy took her hand. As she said, there was something. A small walled off area with a door opening outwards and a caravan-type chemical toilet within.
“Oh well,” said Guy. “A thunderbox. Good. Shall we look for that alternative route now?”
“OK. But what’s wrong Guy?”
There was silence for half a minute.
“Don’t some of the aspects of this place put you in mind of somewhere else? The isolation, the oil lamps, the lack of any services?”
“I suppose so. But we’ve been back there since and it didn’t bother you.”
“Yes but everything was back to normal by then. We weren’t reliant on candles. It wasn’t cut off from the outside world. I bet it’s impossible to get a mobile signal here.”
“Well not all networks are available all over the country. Perhaps if we ask around locally, we can find out what network’s best to have. I know my mobile doesn’t work here. I’ve checked it. Why don’t you try yours.”
He took it from his pocket and poked at it.
“Weak signal. On and off. But….Roz….in January I nearly died. If it hadn’t been for the presence of mind of a kind stranger, I’d be dead now. In fact if he hadn’t been awake in the early hours fretting over his marriage breakdown, that would have been the end of me. It doesn’t exactly haunt me, but I’d rather not risk any similar incidents.”
Roz said nothing.
“Look I know quite well,” Guy continued, “that the likelihood of anything like that ever occurring again is remote. It’s just the thought of it. The thought of leaving you alone here any time, well it’d probably worry me senseless.”
“I suppose,” Roz said at length, “but crowded towns and cities don’t guarantee safety by any means. As children, our parents took us to some out of the way holiday cottages. It’s what people look for. Take as an extreme example the Appalachian Trail. You know I was reading about it recently. People walking that can go for days without meeting another soul. This house would be an ideal get-away-from-it-all holiday destination for lots of people. But if it reminds you too much of what happened to you, I’ll tell Gordon ‘No’.”
“Sorry Roz. I can’t do that to you. I know you’ve fallen in love with this house already. I can tell. And my daft fears are just illogical. I can’t stop you from having it. But there will still be practical difficulties. Lots of them. You’ll have to think about them.”
“I know. But no-one’s ever left or given me anything Guy. Not even the pick of a worthless ornament from a deceased aunt’s cabinet. My own mother left all her stuff to her boyfriend and my dad has a second family. That this old man should want to give me this lovely house because he went out with my mother for a few months seems incredible. And incredibly generous. Even if I didn’t think this was such a gorgeous house, I’d still find it desperately difficult to say no to Gordon.”
“I can imagine. Come on. Lets go and see if we can find that other route to this clearing. But we’d better hurry. It’s getting quite late. We should be getting back to the car.”
“And then the pub.”
“Yes. Then the pub.”
Chapter 2 Fait Accompli
THE SOLICITOR’S LETTER arrived sooner than expected, the next day in fact. Guy had already left for the university much earlier. It was a thick envelope and Roz made a cup of coffee and was settling down
to open and read the contents when the door bell rang.
Tutting to herself and putting her envelope aside, Roz hurried into the hall and placed her eye to the spyhole.
“Damn,” she cursed quietly. It was Alice Bingham, a neighbour from the other end of the close who had already bent Roz’s ear several times about her particular problem. Since moving in with Guy, in a surge of community spirit, Roz had encouraged greater familiarity with their neighbours in the little close in which the house stood. Invitations to gatherings, previously spurned by Guy when living alone, had been taken up by Roz.
Getting to know the neighbours was made easier by the fact that there was a residents’ association. Something to do with the sewerage and a pump. But it was also used informally to arrange social events and, as a result, the residents’ meetings were far more frequent than they need have been to merely discuss cases of backing up and to sign off management company accounts.
Roz had already hosted a little drinks evening at their house and hoped to put on an outdoor event later in the year. Having leisure time was a novel experience for her and she was enjoying it.
Though like the proverbial curate’s egg, it wasn’t necessarily all good. One slight niggle was that, having let slip she was a former detective inspector, she tended to be regarded as an expert on anything remotely connected with the authorities: minor traffic violations, TV licences, parking tickets and the like.
“You should start a detective agency,” Guy had suggested unhelpfully, “and get paid for your trouble.”
She found herself regularly gratuitously consulted about people’s trivial concerns, though the problem of the lady at the door wasn’t really trivial but still, Roz couldn’t help her. Her husband was missing and Roz knew from years of experience that people frequently disappeared, in large numbers. Thousands were never found including young girls and no-one did anything about it. It rather sounded as though the husband had planned to leave from what Alice had said so far. Also when Roz had been at the house of another neighbour helping to prepare for an event, one woman had insisted that Keith had had several affairs, though on the basis of quite what evidence wasn’t clear. Roz hadn’t enquired too closely. She was still having withdrawal symptoms from being unable to interrogate people. People didn’t like to feel they were being grilled and she often had to bite her tongue.
Roz could only hope that Alice was coming to tell her that Keith had returned.
Roz let Alice in and led her to the sitting room. Seeing her own coffee, she felt obliged to offer a cup to Alice. Alice eagerly accepted and followed her into the kitchen.
“So is it good news about Keith?”
“Well I’ve found out some things. Apparently he handed in his notice a week before he disappeared. He had some accumulated holiday so he only had to work a week of his notice. But they didn’t tell me that before. They said they couldn’t tell me anything until the notice period expired and he was no longer formally employed by them. They wouldn’t tell me if he has another job that they’re aware of.
“There’ve been no letters for him which I thought a bit odd so I went to the sorting office to see if there was any undelivered mail and they said mail addressed to him at our address has been re-directed but they wouldn’t say where.
“And a bank statement arrived for our joint account and he’d withdrawn all the money in it. There wasn’t much in it thankfully.”
Roz had brought her own coffee into the kitchen and had quickly poured one for Alice. They were both sitting down at the kitchen table by now. Roz, within minutes of meeting Alice, had concluded that the less she asked the better. Asking questions just led to a torrent of information that was difficult to stem. So she made a statement instead.
“Obviously Alice he planned to leave.”
“But he never said anything.”
Roz shrugged helplessly. What could you say? It was just what some people did. They just upped and left. Roz knew that the house Alice lived in was rented not owned, unlike all the other houses in the close. She was, perhaps unwisely, about to ask what Alice would do when the tenancy expired but Alice hurried on:
“I can’t understand why the police won’t investigate it. Try and find him.”
“You know what I said before. Hundreds of people just up and leave without explanation. If no crime’s been committed, then the police don’t have anything to investigate.”
“But how do they know that his leaving his job and that wasn't just meant to put everyone off the scent, that he’s actually been murdered or committed suicide and he’s lying in some shallow grave somewhere or at the bottom of the sea? They ought to look into it.”
“Quite honestly if you really want to find out something, your best bet would be to employ an enquiry agent.”
“Huh! I phoned a few and they charge a fortune. They quoted me thousands of pounds.”
“Well funnily enough, it costs a great deal of money to run a police force. They can’t be wa….spending their time hunting for people who obviously wanted and planned to leave.
“Er actually Alice, I’ve got some paperwork I was planning to get on with.” Roz stood up. Alice didn’t take the hint and remained seated.
“Don’t you have any contacts you could talk to?” She looked up at Roz.
Mainly to get rid of Alice, Roz said she’d think about it and would call Alice if she was able to get anywhere. Alice grunted and got up. Roz showed her out and rolled her eyes to herself as she shut the door.
She’d never met Keith before he departed, just seen his shadowy figure leaving for work almost before sunrise when she was up early enough herself and chanced to look out of the window at the right time. The Binghams didn’t come to the residents’ meetings as they were only tenants and, though someone always slipped an invitation through their letterbox for any gatherings, only Alice had been to a couple which is how she’d latched onto Roz after she’d found out what her job had been. The Binghams were in their forties, though Alice looked older, and childless so far as Roz knew. Alice had a part-time job though no career as such.
It seems a sleazy thing to have done, to leave your wife and home without warning or explanation and dissolve apparently into the ether. But Alice had about her a simple but dogged tenacity and a manner quite unsympathetic towards others. Selfish would be the obvious word, but it wasn’t even that; it was more a total inability to even begin to comprehend what was and wasn’t acceptable and that other people had feelings too. Most people wouldn’t have pestered Roz to the extent that Alice had, would have been embarrassed to do so. Perhaps Keith had found it impossible to split up with her openly. Roz felt a twinge of sympathy for Keith and was more or less resolved not to attempt to raise the issue with any of her former colleagues.
She made another coffee and settled herself once again to the prospect of reading the legal material regarding Little Avail.
THE SOLICITOR’S LETTER was quite short. It enclosed a copy of a Transfer Deed already signed by Gordon and witnessed by the solicitors described as a TR1 together with a copy of a Statutory Declaration made a few days ago by Gordon attesting vaguely as to his use of three different means and routes of access over the years.
The solicitors understood that she already had a full copy of the Lease and said that they had no information about or documentary evidence of the freehold of the site. They stressed that the Lease hadn’t yet been registered at the Land Registry and strongly advised her to employ her own Solicitor to deal with the finalisation of the transaction and thereafter. If she chose however not to do so, they would be happy to agree a completion date with her and they undertook to send the original of the Lease and other documents to her after completion or she could come and collect them from their Norwich office. Otherwise they would deal direct with her solicitor to whom she should hand the letter, the copy TR1 and the copy Statutory Declaration.
The solicitors enclosed a bundle of papers and documents from Gordon with information about the property, the
veracity, accuracy and authenticity of which they said they could not confirm.
They stressed the urgency due to their client’s failing ill health.
The letter ended with a stern warning about the problems which might arise if she failed to instruct her own solicitor and a disclaimer of any responsibility on the part of the solicitors.
Roz wasn’t fazed by the warning or the disclaimer. It was just part of life today in this country. If anything went wrong for many people, they would rush to blame someone else or expect someone else to sort it out for them, as Alice did in relation to her husband. Roz decided even more firmly not to take Alice’s importunings any further.
She made up her mind to phone the solicitors and try to complete the Transfer that very day. By the time she’d instructed her own solicitors and they’d gone through the ID and other formalities, Gordon could well be dead. She might decide to put the matter in the hands of solicitors later but the priority at the moment was to get the thing completed.
It was still only ten thirty in the morning and Roz spent an hour on both the Land Registry website and the Leasehold Advisory Service website the latter of which Guy had mentioned this morning. The Land Registry information seemed to say that it wasn't necessary to produce evidence of the freehold title but that if one didn't, some sort of inferior title resulted, not what they referred to as ‘absolute leasehold’. It also suggested the need for a detailed scale plan which was a bit of a blow when she didn’t even know where the boundaries of the property were. The picket fence was recent and might not even remotely accurately mark out the boundaries. Maybe the edges of the clearing denoted the boundaries but surely over three hundred and seventy four years, they might have shifted somewhat.
