by L. C. Tyler
But I do not necessarily treat all of my readers equally. I often, for example, throw in a line or two that will only be understandable to a tiny minority. I am by no means the only writer with such a penchant for private jokes. In Enderby Outside (page 94 of the Penguin edition) Anthony Burgess includes, with no attempt at explanation, a pun that could only be understood by a Malay speaker. Oddly enough, I was able to appreciate the joke, such as it is. During the first few months after Geraldine left me I found myself unable to write anything, other than one or two rather miserable and unpublishable poems. I was prescribed sleeping pills (most of which I still have stashed in the bathroom, for who knows what rainy day?) and I tried to forget other things by learning, first, Malay and then, later, some elementary Danish. I cannot say that either language has since been of immense benefit to me, but they both occupied my mind at a time when there was a large void to be occupied.
Finally, and more subtly, I like to include in my stories what I would describe as ‘pointers’. These offer parallels to the main story, and suggest avenues that might be explored. In All on a Summer’s Day, for example, where the interpretation of a date is critical to the plot, I have Sergeant Fairfax (in his capacity as an amateur historian) musing on a strange paradox: while the date of the first encounter between the Spanish Armada and the English fleet is beyond dispute, Spanish historians always give it as 31 July 1588, while their British counterparts more usually record it as 21 July. Why this anomaly for such a well-documented event? It is the sort of question, however, that I usually do not answer immediately, but leave hanging in the air for the reader to ponder. Occasionally I forget to explain it at all.
It did not surprise me that Elsie was in touch again soon after her visit to Findon. The reason for the call however was, ostensibly, routine literary business. A Danish publishing house wished to bring out a translation of All on a Summer’s Day.
‘Can’t think why,’ said Elsie, with her usual tact. ‘I told them it was a crap book. Can’t give it away here. And Danish sales won’t bring in much money. Scarcely worth my time to set the deal up. But they seem to think that that gloomy, brooding sod Fairfax will appeal to the Nordic reader.’
‘I wonder what they will call it in Danish,’ I said. ‘Hr. Fairfax’ Fornemmelse for Datoer, possibly.’
There was silence at the other end of the phone.
‘Sorry – just a little private joke,’ I said.
‘Save it for your editor at Gyldendal,’ she continued, after a short but meaningful silence. ‘They’re emailing me a contract. I assume the wonders of electronic communication are still unknown to you? I’ll post you a copy when it arrives.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m coming up to London anyway on Tuesday. I have some things to clear up as Geraldine’s executor.’
I knew it was a mistake to say this the moment the words had left my lips.
‘What are you planning to do exactly?’
‘Boring stuff. I need to look at the accounts of her business, check the flat, that sort of thing.’
‘A chance to look for clues, though.’
‘There will be no clues. This is dull stuff about the will. Dull, Elsie. Really uninteresting.’
‘The flat is in Barnsbury Street, isn’t it? I still have your old address somewhere. I’ll meet you there at eleven on Tuesday.’
‘Elsie …’
But the phone had already been put down at the other end.
Bugger.
Eight
When I moved from Islington to Sussex, it was a form of self-imposed exile. In part, it is true, there were financial considerations that obliged me to move. And there was a straightforward desire to put as many miles as I could between Geraldine and myself. But it was also an act of contrition – a recognition that I had failed to hold together the only marriage I had ever had and that I deserved to live in the outer darkness, only just this side of Worthing.
I had expected, on my first visit to Islington for many years, to see some changes. But the neat terraces of narrow but expensive Georgian houses still shone in the shafting sunshine, each front door painted in authentic heritage hues – Oxford blue, walnut brown, claret, Brunswick green – the quiet, confident colours of money. The rows of railings fronting both sides of the street were a glossy jet black. Autumn was sliding in unobtrusively: not a Findon riot of golds and reds, but the leaves of the carefully spaced cherry trees had on them the merest hint of burnt orange – one of that year’s fashionable colours.
Elsie was waiting for me at the street door, tapping her size 3 foot and raring to go. Today’s unsuitable outfit for the smaller woman proved to be a yellow trouser suit with large red checks, and I hoped that she would not ask me if it made her bottom look big.
‘Nice suit,’ I observed defensively, as she handed me my copy of the Gyldendal contract. ‘New?’
‘You took your sodding time,’ she replied, temporarily shelving the bottom question.
‘I had to come from Sussex. You only had to come from Hampstead.’
‘I’m a woman. I’m not supposed to be on time. You’re a man. You’re meant to be here to let me in. It’s a thing men do.’
‘The age of chivalry has been dead for some time. Since 1485 men have done pretty much as they pleased. Blame Henry VII.’
‘Don’t be a silly tosser, Tressider,’ Elsie observed. And I let her into the flat.
Once through the door, Elsie bustled round like a fat little terrier, almost literally sniffing the air for clues. ‘You take the sitting room, I’ll check the bedroom,’ she said.
‘You take whichever room you like,’ I said. ‘I need to get papers together for probate.’
She snorted at my lack of enthusiasm for what she considered to be the real business in hand, but waddled off to the bedroom, where for a while she could be heard opening cupboards and nosing through whatever least belonged to her.
I was happy to have a few minutes to myself. I quickly found the relevant files. They were still in the same drawer that they had occupied when I lived in the flat, and indeed many still had my handwriting on the cover. I extracted the recent statements from the file marked ‘BANK’. A swift glance revealed that there was little to give comfort to any of Geraldine’s creditors. I was also able to locate something else I needed, in an old chocolate box that had served for many years as a receptacle for spare keys. By the time Elsie emerged triumphantly from the bedroom and started her investigation of the sitting room, I had almost finished my own work.
‘So, what have you come up with?’ she demanded.
‘Only papers on Geraldine’s finances.’
‘Skint?’
‘In a manner of speaking. A small positive balance on her current account.’
‘Building societies? Shares?’
‘Building society account closed. No shares that I can find. Large mortgage, recently increased, but the sale of the flat should cover that. Unpaid creditors from her previous exploits, who will never see their money now. Ditto credit cards, I fear.’
‘Pretty much as expected then.’
‘Pretty much,’ I conceded.
‘So, you’ve discovered nothing. Typical. Come and see what I’ve found,’ she said, smirking.
She led me into the bedroom and threw open a wardrobe door.
‘There!’ she said. ‘That is not a woman’s wardrobe.’
I looked at the row of dresses and skirts hanging neatly from the rail.
‘You don’t see what I mean, do you?’ she said. She waved an empty coat hanger at me. ‘What’s this then?’
‘An empty coat hanger?’ I hazarded.
‘Exactly!’ she exclaimed.
‘I don’t follow.’
‘You’re a man,’ she reminded me for the second time that morning.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘A woman’s wardrobe,’ she said, very slowly and carefully, ‘does not have empty hangers. A woman’s wardrobe is crammed full, because it contains the clothes you act
ually wear and it also contains all sorts of other things that you have bought over the years and kept because you never know when you might wake up one morning as a perfect size ten again. OK? This wardrobe is only two-thirds full, which means that half of the clothes have gone.’
Ignoring for a moment the strange mathematics of women’s wardrobes, I surveyed the contents and admitted that it was less full than I remembered it.
‘So, she had time to pack,’ said Elsie. ‘That’s two or three suitcases. Where are they now? They weren’t in the car. And come and look at this.’
She led me back to the sitting room and stood me in front of the bookcase. ‘What do you see? And don’t say “books” or I’ll have to cut your dick off with a rusty hacksaw.’
I stayed silent. It seemed like the safest option.
‘See those little yellow dots?’
I nodded. I had in fact noticed them earlier, but had said nothing to Elsie. They were small, removable sticky-backed paper circles, attached quite inconspicuously to the spines of some of the books and to the photo albums. ‘So?’ I enquired.
‘Well,’ said Elsie, ‘they’re what you put on things when you move house, so that the removal men will know where to take them. You know: blue dots for the sitting room, green triangles for the dining room, white squares for the main bedroom, pink stars for the kitchen, yellow dots—’
‘I get the picture,’ I said.
‘So, why the yellow dots?’ Elsie persisted. ‘She was doing a runner. She wasn’t going to get the removal men to come in and crate things up for her.’
‘Maybe they had some other purpose entirely.’
‘Hang on,’ Elsie announced suddenly. ‘Look – there’s one on that watercolour too.’ She started prowling round the room on a serious dot-hunt. ‘And on this vase. And on this photo frame.’
‘Red herring,’ I said. ‘They’re probably from when she and Rupert split up. Maybe she was marking things that were hers and that Rupert was not to take. Somewhere in Rupert’s new flat there are probably rows of books with green pentagons on them.’
‘That’s possible,’ said Elsie, crestfallen.
‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ I said.
‘Still, it does at least confirm that she had been planning her departure. You don’t pack three cases for a suicide. She had definite plans to go somewhere and to look smart when she got there. And where are the cases now, eh?’ demanded Elsie.
‘Where indeed?’ I asked.
‘So, what next?’ Elsie asked briskly.
‘Next I have to visit the bank,’ I said. ‘And you are on your way back to Hampstead.
‘No buts, Elsie. Thanks for bringing the contract down – I’m grateful. For the next couple of hours however I have to look like an executor, and an apprentice detective at my heels will not be required.’
Elsie haggled a bit and, as a concession, I agreed in my capacity as executor that she could raid the kitchen for any chocolate that Geraldine might have left behind.
‘Well, she won’t be needing it wherever she is,’ said Elsie.
‘Where she is, it would probably melt,’ I said.
It is rarely necessary to lie to one’s agent, but in this case I had been a little economical with the truth. I had for example not one but a number of visits that I wanted to pay without Elsie’s running commentary in the background. The first was only a few hundred yards away, and required the keys that I had located in the ex-chocolate box.
Standing in the pigeon droppings and old newspapers at street level, I was able to confirm that I had reached my destination by means of a small sign attached to the wall of a nondescript fifties industrial building: ‘Geraldine Tressider (Property Division) 3 rd Floor’. It was unclear, as with so much that she did, why occupying part of this grimy con-crete-and-plate-glass eyesore on a noisy main road had appealed to Geraldine as part of her business strategy. The other identifiable occupants were a casting agency and a firm classifying itself as ‘import-export’, though what it imported and what it exported was not specified. The street door proved to be unlocked and, since there was no lift, I climbed the three flights of unswept stairs to Geraldine’s Corporate Headquarters.
Once inside the office, it was evident that what Geraldine had been saving on rent, she had allocated to furnishings. In the larger, starkly white, outer office, there were comfortable modern chairs upholstered in black leather, and a large curving desk with a new computer on it. Suspiciously pristine, almost certainly empty, bright red box files and some reference books were carefully spaced on well-polished wood-and-steel shelving. On an oval coffee table rested the current editions of two or three glossy magazines. The leaves of the obligatory office plant gleamed as though they had been oiled. Post lay neatly stacked in an in-tray. Only the lack of any human activity spoiled the air of quiet efficiency. The inner office – Geraldine’s sanctum – was a repeat of this on a smaller scale, with cherry-wood blinds to hide the uninspiring view of the buildings across the road and a small green Buddha sitting Elsie-like, fat and self-satisfied, on a low corner table.
I knew what I needed and, as had happened at the flat, it took only a short time to locate what passed for Geraldine’s financial records. They confirmed what was becoming a consistent story: the company had no assets to speak of. I was just trying to decide whether to undertake a more thorough search of the office when I heard a key in the lock. Just for a moment I had a vision of Geraldine waltzing through the door as if nothing had happened, then the improbability of this struck me and I sprang to my feet.
I emerged from the inner office just in time to see a pimply young man, hands occupied with a carton of milk and cheap plastic document case, in the process of trying to close the front door with his elbow. He turned, saw me, gasped, let go of the milk, grabbed it again as it reached waist height, juggled with it for a couple of seconds and dropped the document holder.
‘Shit!’ he said. Then he yielded to the inevitable and dropped the milk too.
‘Who the hell are you?’ I asked.
He ignored my enquiry. ‘What are you doing here?’
I ignored his. ‘I asked you first.’
He paused. This pattern of questioning was likely to occupy us for most of the day unless one of us changed tack. ‘I’m Darren. Darren Oxtoby. I work for Mrs Tressider – worked, I mean. I’m her assistant. Was.’
‘Ethelred Tressider,’ I said. ‘My ex-wife’s executor.’
‘Right,’ he said uncertainly. He picked up the milk carton, which fortunately had not burst on impact.
He was recovering from the shock of finding somebody in what should have been an empty office. I, of course, should not have been shocked to see him: the carefully piled post in the tray, the new magazines, the watered plants should all have told me that the office was continuing to operate after a fashion – quite possibly more efficiently than when Geraldine had been present in person. Perhaps it should always have occurred to me that Geraldine would have employed staff of some sort – half-witted charity cases, almost certainly. After all, it would not have been possible to achieve the sort of losses she usually sustained single-handed. But for some reason I had not pictured this gangly young man with a spotty face and a tendency to perform vaudeville acts with milk cartons. If I was ignorant of his existence, then in all likelihood the police also were. But did he know anything of value?
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Where is she?’
His eyes widened and his jaw dropped open. For a moment I thought that he was about to do the milk trick again, and I was not sure that the carton would survive a second drop.
‘But …’ he said. ‘But … she’s dead.’
If he had not had the desk behind him, I think he would have tried to back away from me as a dangerous lunatic.
‘Not Geraldine,’ I said with some show of justifiable irritation. ‘For God’s sake – I am scarcely expecting to see Geraldine here, am I? Where is Charlotte?’
‘Who?’
&n
bsp; ‘Charlotte Turner. Geraldine’s sister. Isn’t she supposed to be a partner here?’
‘Miss Turner? She doesn’t come here. She’s a – what do you call it? – sleeping partner. I’ve spoken to her on the phone, but I’ve never met her.’
‘Has she phoned since Geraldine disappeared?’
‘Once. I just said that I didn’t know where Mrs Tressider was. It was what I was always supposed to say to people.’ The spotty one shrugged his bony shoulders.
‘So Geraldine – Mrs Tressider – didn’t tell Miss Turner where she was planning to go?’
‘She can’t have done, can she? Or why would Miss Turner have asked me?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I suppose not. And what did Mrs Tressider tell you?’
‘Nothing. Not really. She just said that she wouldn’t be in for a while and to tell people she would get in touch with them when she got back.’
‘So she didn’t say where she was going?’
‘Switzerland. I think she had some sort of deal lined up there.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Come to think of it she didn’t actually tell me where she was going but I overheard her making the booking. I’d said I could do it, but she said, no, I should get on with my other work. I don’t remember the tickets arriving though – maybe she picked them up herself.’
‘And what is the other work that Mrs Tressider said you should get on with?’
‘I do some filing. I make coffee sometimes. I answer the phone.’
‘I suppose that’s what they call “multi-tasking” in the job adverts.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Nothing. So did Mrs Tressider keep you busy?’
He laughed. ‘No, not really. I spend a lot of time working on my book.’ He pointed to the cheap plastic wallet. ‘I’m going to be a writer.’ He smiled diffidently.
‘Really? That’s a coincidence. I’ve just spent most of the morning with a literary agent,’ I said.
