Bacchus and Sanderson (Deceased)

by Simon Speight

  Still gasping, he said,

  “’A little less ethical than was normal?’” the incredulity in his voice made her wince.

  “He was the single most unethical man I have ever had the misfortune of being acquainted with and related to. To my enduring shame, I have, for many years, taken the family shilling. As you have pointed out, it has enabled my family and I to enjoy a lifestyle that my chosen career could not offer. I know that this largesse was only bestowed upon me because, if I were guilty by association, I would remain silent should the authorities ever come knocking. Throughout my entire life, or at least the portion of my life when I understood that my family where miserable thieves and thugs dressed in the finery of business people, I have chosen to ignore everything that they do and distance myself from it as completely as possible. So please Felicity don’t treat me like an imbecile. I know what you are like, all of you and, by association, what I am like as well.”

  Felicity sat on the chesterfield sofa, stunned. Her Uncle’s analysis of his situation was more astute and accurate than she had expected.

  “May I finish?” She took his silence as agreement.

  “As I said this would have been the end of it. However our young scientist had ignored his brother and wasn’t trying to file patents for the work he had done while employed by us but from his academic career where we had discovered him. Grandfather had all of his previous academic research work copied, analysed by other research scientists and then filed patents on the discoveries they made. When he discovered that we had already filed patents, he accused grandfather of theft of his ideas. He was told that he wasn’t the only scientific employee we had and to accept he had been beaten to it.”

  “I assume that he didn’t respond well to being told he had been beaten?” Freddie surmised.

  Felicity paused before replying. The next part of her story was going to be difficult to put a positive spin on, even for her. So why bother?

  “No, not very well at all. We found out that he had planned to speak to his brother and to publish his findings in the scientific press. Either of these happening would have been disastrous. Then he had a massive heart attack and died.”

  “He had a massive heart attack and died? How did you achieve that amazing piece of coincidence?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Freddie looked for clarification of what had happened and how.

  “You’re admitting he was killed? You just don’t know how it was done?”

  “His death appeared to be from natural causes, but wasn’t. He was killed. Problem solved. His brother wanted a post-mortem examination to prove his brother died from natural causes. Impossible. He had been cremated within a few hours of his death, a tragic error on the part of the undertaker I believe. To cut, what has already been a very long story short, his brother Ernest Sanderson became a detective. Over the years since his brother’s death he has been a small but constant source of irritation. He has now passed away.” Standing, she walked over to the window that looked out toward the cathedral. She came out of her private reverie and walked back to her seat opposite her uncle.

  “Moving forward we come to Ernest Sanderson’s will which had only two beneficiaries. One was to his son Ben, some cash and a house. There is also a trust fund, which will mature when he is thirty. Ben is going to be a very wealthy young man. The other bequest was to William Bacchus, why we don't know. Yet.”

  ***

  “Annabel? It’s William.” There was silence at the other end of the mobile phone while Annabel tried to work out who William was. She recovered, remembering him from this morning.

  “With Wooster the Labrador? Am I late? We did say seven this evening didn’t we?” The questions all came out in a hurried jumble, merging into one.

  “Yes, yes, sorry to call you, but I have caused a situation that I’m not sure how to resolve. Do you know Ben, from the bookshop?”

  “Yes, we have a shared passion for crime novels. Why?”

  “Are you very busy at the moment? If not, could you meet me at the bookshop? I’ll explain when you get here, if that’s okay?”

  Laughing, Annabel agreed to meet him in ten minutes at the shop saying,

  “This is going to cost you a large mocha and a chocolate brioche”

  William ordered another coffee for himself as well as Annabel’s mocha and brioche.

  While he waited for Annabel to arrive, he replayed the conversation with Ben, wincing at his heavy-handed approach. All he had achieved was to alienate the one person he had been charged with looking after. The shock of discovering he had a brother was subsiding. Ben, he thought, must be experiencing similar feelings to his own. Why, he wondered, had Ernest not warned him he had a brother? He’d not worried about the shock William had experienced discovering his father wasn’t who he had thought it was. An extra brother wouldn’t have caused much additional stress. Now he needed to know what to do. Should he give him some space, let Ben have some thinking time? Search for him? Looking around the shop, he spotted the waitress who he had spoken to earlier.

  “Excuse me, er?”

  “Debbie”

  “Debbie, thank you. I’m William. Debbie I need some advice. You seem to be friends with Ben,” He paused not sure what to say next. How do you tell a random stranger that you have upset their friend and he has disappeared into the distance?

  “I have given Ben some news that has upset him and he’s left, walked out, up the street.” William pointed up Cheap Street, indicating the direction he had gone.

  “Has this happened before?”

  Nodding, she replied,

  “Don’t worry, he’ll sometimes just disappear. He’s only gone for an hour or so. It has been as long as a couple of days and as little as ten minutes.” She wasn’t fazed by Ben’s behaviour or concerned that William had inadvertently upset him.

  “He’s been cosseted from an early age because of his leg. He can sometimes come across as a bit weird. If you get to know him, you’ll realise he’s lovely. Weird, but lovely.”

  Debbie returned to the table she had been clearing leaving William with his thoughts.

  “Mocha and Brioche, fantastic. Crap for the figure but I love them.” Annabel sat down opposite William, took a sip of her coffee and sighed.

  “How are you? You sounded worried, now you look relieved.”

  Annabel smiled at William and started to eat her Brioche and sip her large Mocha.

  “I seem to, no, well maybe, appear to have been a little precipitous,” he stammered. Taking a deep breath, he started again.

  “I called you because I upset Ben and he upped and left. Having spoken to Debbie, it seems he does that sometimes and he will come back of his own accord when he wants to. Sorry.”

  Smiling again, Annabel asked,

  “What did you say or do to upset him? Not that I mind, I’m finished for the day and having a handsome stranger treat me to mocha and brioche is far better than weeding my vegetable patch.”

  William blushed and said,

  “I told Ben, that I had inherited this shop and that his father was also my father, different mothers. I only found out that Ernest was my father yesterday and that Ben was my brother about an hour ago. I was heavy handed, when I should have been gentle.”

  “That’s quite bombshell. I know Ben quite well and he can be a bit dramatic. As to what I would have advised, exactly what Debbie told you to do. Leave him be and he will sort it out. Now dinner. What do you and the handsome man at your feet like, pizza or pizza?”

  Chapter 11

  “She’s good, isn’t she? Confident, good sense of humour, relaxed. She could really do him a lot of good. Could you do your spiritual ghost stuff on her, while I contact William?”

  Ernest looked at Juanita. He knew the answer would be no.

  “Very good, very funny. I think now would be a good time to practice on William, let him get used to you. I’ve often found the best way to gain their trust is a demonstration. Tell them somethi
ng they know.”

  His voice was tinged with disbelief when he interrupted her to say,

  “Hi I’m Ernest, your friendly ghost. I’m now going to tell you a series of facts that you are already aware of so that I can gain your trust. As the depth of my knowledge now astounds you, you will...”

  Juanita glared at Ernest with such ferocity it caused him to stumble mid sentence.

  “I have a backlog of cases in waiting areas scattered around the four corners of limbo whom I cannot help until we have completed this ludicrous, double assignment. I am a talented guide with many hundreds of year’s of experience who is not accustomed to being ridiculed by an inexperienced limboista.” Her Spanish accent crackled as she added her own Andalucian twist to the word for a person trapped in limbo,

  “It would help me if you could listen, letting me finish before you blunder in with your famous, funny English wit and amuse us all with your ironic interpretation.”

  Ernest had the decency to look embarrassed by his attempts at humour. Shame wasn’t an emotion he experienced very often.

  “Sorry, the inner school boy got out. Won’t happen again. You were saying; gain their trust by demonstrating you know something that only they should know. In this case what did you have in mind?”

  Juanita was still smarting from his earlier attempt at humour and responded with an irritated snap in her voice.

  “Think for pities sake, think. What have we just been watching? William meeting your other son Ben. No one else was in earshot, so if you introduce yourself and offer a few salient facts it should help to engender some trust between you.”

  Calming down, she continued,

  “The first time is always unsettling. You’ll be fine, straight in; introduce yourself, gain trust and out again, simple. Let’s go.”

  They entered Williams borrowed home in Sherborne. Juanita floated upstairs to check whether William was in one of the bedrooms while Ernest eased himself through the sitting room wall, through a print of a Picasso and into the sitting room. He could hear the sound of a kettle boiling and whistling coming from the room next door that he took to be the kitchen. A laptop was open on the dining room table along with an empty wine glass and a small bottle of Bells whisky.

  Everything in moderation he thought. William’s Labrador had wandered into the room heading towards the sofa when the hackles on the back of its neck stood upright and it turned in a complete circle examining the room. As soon as it was looking in Ernest’s direction, it went berserk. Frantic barking and snarling accompanied by wild lunges at his legs. The noise was unholy, bringing William charging into the room armed with a saucepan shouting at the top of his voice,

  “Get out you bastards.”

  William realised that contrary to the level of noise and commotion, no one but Wooster was in the room.

  Still taking deep breaths, he said to the dog,

  “That’s the last time you have cheese at bedtime you lunatic animal. Show me the burglar. That’s right no burglar. Settle down while I finish making you a bowl of tea.”

  Ernest was listening to the dogs reprimand from the space between the floorboards and the ceiling. As soon as the dog had started his frantic barking, he had shot upwards in fright, scaring Juanita who was gliding through checking bedrooms. Wasting no time, he dropped straight down beside William, landing on the work surface, at the same instant Juanita appeared half in and half out of the ceiling. Nodding at him she indicated with a facial expression and a flick of her hand that he should begin.

  “William. William, this is Ernest.” His voice was gentle, soothing. He didn’t want to sound threatening William mustn’t panic.

  Williams spun around in fright, looking for the owner of the voice. He backed out of the kitchen door and into the lounge. Looking across to Wooster, he said in a shaky voice.

  “Did you hear that? The voice. Was the woofing because you saw someone?” Patting Wooster’s head, he went back into the kitchen to continue making their tea and coffee.

  “William, it’s Ernest Sanderson, your father. I’m dead; so you aren’t going to be able to see me, but we can talk to each other. If you can hear me, please hold up your right hand.” Shaking his head, William swivelled on the spot looking for the owner of the voice. Wooster was still calm, so no one in the lounge. The dead are dead; period. William took a deep breath and thought, what if the voice was who it claimed to be? He was a vicar, he talked to someone he couldn’t see everyday. He didn’t expect a response, at least not verbal response. What did he have to lose by holding a hand up? He raised his hand inch by inch, unsure what would happen.

  Ernest looked up at Juanita hanging out of the ceiling to check he was doing okay and got a smile and a nod as his answer.

  “Thank you William. I know this challenges everything that you hold dear, and in your shoes, I would be even more sceptical than you are now. To try and show you that this voice in your head is not mental illness, delusions or a psychotic episode let me tell you a couple of thing that I heard you chatting about today with my other son Ben. If that is ok, just talk to me as you would to anyone else.”

  Watching for a reaction from William, he knew that if William responded aloud to him he was half way there.

  “I know I’m talking out loud and I know you said, in my head, that you are Ernest Sanderson but to be honest at the moment I think this is either stress or medication. So convince me.” The act of talking out loud to an empty room was unsettling, uncomfortable. Was this how it started? Mental illness? The joke that he had found so funny at school popped into his head. ‘What’s the first sign of madness? Talking to yourself. What’s the second sign of madness? Replying.’ It didn’t seem so funny anymore.

  Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, Ernest began one of the most important speeches he had ever had to make.

  “When you introduced yourself to Ben, he looked very confused and he offered to buy you a coffee. When he brought the coffee over he also brought tea for your dog.” Ernest paused to let that sink in.

  William walked out into the sitting room, poured himself a large whisky from the half bottle of Bells and sat on the sofa.

  “I’m not impressed. All you’ve proven is that you know someone who was in the bookshop this afternoon. You’re going to need to be a lot more convincing than that.”

  Frowning for a moment Ernest then said,

  “He told you about my death and that his mum died five years ago from cancer.”

  William made to interrupt, but Ernest continued without letting him speak,

  “He didn’t tell you his mother was called Jess, but I did in the letter I wrote to you. When Ben did a Ben, as it has become known in the bookshop, you panicked. Even when Debbie tried to reassure you, you were still panicky. Your friend Annabel is nice and she’s right, Ben is a great chap and he can be unpredictable. Listen to her, she tends to be right more than she’s wrong.”

  William stared into space scratching Wooster’s ears to keep him from barking again, barking at what he didn’t know, but the noise was more than he could cope with. Getting up, he walked into the kitchen and returned with a shoebox full of pills and began taking out the instructions from each packet. Smoothing each one out he placed them in a pile. Picking up a piece of paper from the top of the pile, he began to read. After a few moments it became apparent that he wasn’t finding the information he needed in the first of the drug instruction leaflets, he discarded it and picked up a second. After he had rejected three of the leaflets and was selecting the fourth from the pile, Ernest asked,

  “What are you doing?”

  “The voices, it must be the pills. I’m on so many of the things, one of the combinations is producing these auditory hallucinations.”

  “Ok William, what could I know, that it wouldn’t be possible for anyone else to know? Ah, yes. William, when you were a child, did you go away on holiday with your mother?” William thought back to his childhood and the raft of family holidays he had had with hi
s mother he had loved, enjoyed or abandoned. He answered as honestly as his memory allowed.

  “Yes, not every year, but most years.”

  “Excellent. You went to a variety of places including, Weymouth, Torquay and I think, Guilford. Your mother had family in Guilford I think. When you were five, which was the last year I had any contact with you, you went to North Devon, Croyde Bay. When you were on holiday you hurt yourself, you fell from one of the large stones on the beach and broke your arm. It was a bad break and it needed to be pinned in hospital. That explains the scar that runs along the inside of your arm from your elbow to your wrist. It also explains why you have an irrational fear of beaches. Have you been back to the beach since?”

  “No, not once. I think I could now but for years, the thought of them made my arm hurt, I would have, what now I suppose would be called anxiety attacks. Mum was very good and we had our holidays in the countryside until she died.”

  Ernest continued in the hope that all he was saying would persuade William that he was talking to his father.

  “I collected you and your mother from your cottage in Croyde Bay and brought you back to Batcombe. Soon after that your mother decided that she could no longer cope with such a fragmented upbringing for you. I continued to provide for you both financially but I never saw you again.”

  Now for the difficult part, Ernest thought, how do you talk to a priest about heaven and hell?

  “I’m here talking to you now, trying to convince you that I’m not the symptoms of early onset dementia or schizophrenia. When you die, you are allocated; the good go up to heaven, the bad go down to hell and those with unfinished business go to limbo.”

  Juanita could see from her perch halfway through the kitchen ceiling that Ernest was losing him. It was taking too long. Finishing Ernest’s sentence, she took over and said,

  “And that William is where Ernest is now, limbo, and why he needs your help. William walk over to the mirror in the hall and look into it.”

  Bolting out of the chair he was sitting in, William spun around looking for the source of the second voice.