Account Rendered & Other Stories

by Marjorie Eccles

  When he was just starting his business, William had bought the house from an elderly spinster, complete with the furniture she’d inherited from her father, primarily because its nostalgic ambience had appealed to him. Showing potential clients around, using the house as a sort of showroom, had served to emphasize the point he was trying to make—that his furniture was timeless and fitted in anywhere. Each room in the house held at least one of his pieces. Here it was a huge table in heavy, dark, gleaming rosewood, its simplicity of design revealing the beauty of the grain, making it look almost silkily alive. I always wanted to stretch out a hand to stroke it.

  A draught came through from the dining-room, shivering the papery petals of a bowl of golden-eyed white narcissi on the table. Mrs Sugden, who came to clean, had left the window—and doubtless all the other windows in the house—wide open, as was her wont. In a moment, Magda would appear and go round shutting them, clucking her disapproval, but for now the gusts of sunlit air blowing in lifted the curtains, wafted around the delicate scent of the flowers and brought the cold breath of the moor indoors. Due to Mrs Sugden’s unwavering belief in the natural symbiosis of cleanliness and godliness, everywhere was relentlessly clean; if anything could be polished, it was. You walked across those coloured, shining tiles at risk to life and limb.

  Magda came into the hall with a rush of the exuberance that characterized all her actions, arms thrown wide. She was fair and buxom, a big woman in every sense, huge emotions, generous impulses. Being engulfed in that wide, all-encompassing embrace was a bit like being swallowed by a marshmallow. At last she stood back and regarded me, her huge blue eyes brimming. ‘Oh, my dorlink, I’m just so, so glad to see you!’

  Although Magda was given to dramatic gestures and utterances, her command of English was normally excellent and idiomatic. She’d found herself in England just after the war, a bewildered refugee, one of those who were then called Displaced Persons, and had counted herself lucky to be employed by William to act as his housekeeper and to look after his motherless little daughter, Elisabeth, my mother. She’d been with him ever since and had taken me to her bosom when I in turn arrived motherless at Ingshaw. Now it was only in moments of stress that her faultless pronunciation deserted her, when the rhythms of her native tongue asserted themselves. ‘You have told her, then, Daniel?’

  He had come in with me, but I was the one who replied. Yes, Daniel had told me. I’d been stunned when he had, and it must have showed on my face now, for Magda said sadly, ‘And you don’t believe it, either?’ Normally one who bestowed smiles like blessings, she looked so downcast, so obviously at her wits’ end that I hugged her again.

  ‘Magda, it just seems so—’

  ‘You don’t have to take my word for it. Come with me.’ Picking up a large flashlight which was standing on a bookshelf, obviously in readiness, she beckoned us to follow. ‘She won’t be back yet. She’s gone down to that solicitor fellow, Baines. Again.’

  Daniel and I exchanged glances and followed her up the thickly carpeted steps to the top, where she knelt down beside the ugly majolica jardiniere and shone the light on two tiny holes in the oak skirting, roughly the same distance above the floor, either side of the staircase.

  ‘What do you make of that?’

  I saw what I was meant to make of it, that a string had been stretched across between them, forming a tripwire. But I couldn’t believe it—I wouldn’t! That my grandfather had been made to die like that. Cruelly, and without grace, or dignity. That he had, as Magda was convinced, been murdered.

  * * *

  But it was no use, nothing would persuade Magda that a strong nylon thread or something similar hadn’t been deliberately fastened across the top of the gloomily lit staircase, causing William to trip and plunge to his death.

  ‘There! If only I’d thought of looking straight away! But everyone—the police included—took it for granted it was an accident, an old man falling because he wasn’t accustomed to a walking-stick.’

  This was the first I’d heard about any police. ‘What were they doing there?’

  ‘Routine, when there’s a sudden death,’ Daniel assured me.

  ‘I should have known!’ Magda moaned. ‘He hadn’t been himself lately—that lumbago was the last straw. He wouldn’t have missed seeing something like that otherwise. There was nothing wrong with his eyes.’

  I knew Daniel had heard all this before. Like him, I could see it was no use pointing out that those two holes proved nothing, how they’d got there was anybody’s guess—they could have been woodworm holes for all anyone knew. And hadn’t I, often enough, pinned garlands and streamers down the length of those gloomy walls at Christmas? Evidently the police hadn’t been suspicious, and I couldn’t see how they might prove an ‘accident’ had been staged even if they had been, but I was pretty sure they’d need less flimsy evidence than that.

  ‘Magda, if anything of that sort had been rigged up, then someone would have had to remove the string or whatever afterwards, and there was no one in the house when it happened.’

  ‘So we’ve been told—but remember who found him! Don’t forget, I was conveniently given the day off. I was at the January sales in Leeds with Rita.’ She sniffed. ‘At least she agrees with me.’

  The redoubtable Rita Beardsall, Magda’s boon companion. Until her recent retirement, owner of the busiest hairdressing establishment for miles around (it was no coincidence that Magda was still improbably blonde, at her age) and in a prime position to be arch-priestess of local gossip.

  Daniel put his arm around Magda’s plump shoulder ‘We’re all upset, but think about it, Magda—that’s a pretty haphazard way of attempting to kill anyone; there’s no guarantee they’d actually die. More than likely he’d just have been badly injured.’

  ‘An old man like that, with his heart condition? The shock alone would have killed him! Anyway, it was worth a try, especially when he hadn’t made a will—’

  ‘No one could have known that!’

  ‘You believe that, do you—with that woman thick as thieves with his lawyer? A man like that? As Rita says, if he’s such a hotshot as he makes out, what’s he doing working here? Don’t tell me they didn’t know!’ She paused for breath, and added deliberately; ‘Or maybe there was a will—’

  There’d never been any love lost between the two women—perhaps because Magda had hoped no second Mrs Brereton would ever come on the scene to challenge the way she’d always cared for William. Cluny reacted only by remaining aloof, unlike Magda, who was never able to keep her feelings to herself.

  This, however, was more dangerous. Not only was she accusing Cluny of attempting to murder her husband, but she was also accusing Stephen Baines, suggesting serious professional misconduct at the least, of suppressing a will.

  I’d always believed Grandpa was trying to protect me -mistakenly, perhaps—by refusing to be drawn into discussing what was past. Or that the failure of my parents’ marriage, my mother’s early death from cancer, the loss of his own wife, had been too painful to speak about. I’d never pressed him, knowing what an intensely private man he was. It wasn’t until he astonished everyone who knew him by remarrying that I realized with a shock he might have been a lonely one, too.

  For this reason, if none other, I’d tried to be glad that he’d found Cluny, so much younger, but willing to share his latter years. Still, I was amazed at such hidden depths in my grandfather, and I wasn’t the only one. Tongues wagged . . . old William Brereton and this stuck-up, spiky lady from nowhere, who would have thought it? With all those willing widows and well-preserved spinsters who’d been after him for years and would have been only too happy to provide him with home comforts and no hassle? As for her, what had brought her here, and made her stay, in this climate, after sunny Africa, married to a man old enough to be her father?

  William, as usual, had ignored the gossip, and Cluny had lifted her chin a little higher, smiled her ironic smile and let them wonder.

  And as
if to confound them all, life at Ingshaw had gone on as quietly and uneventfully as usual. Cluny, unlike other local wives, didn’t entertain, accept invitations, join local societies, or even play bridge. She made no friends and seemed content to live a life as self-contained and independent as William, becoming a familiar topic of speculation, driving around in her open-topped car (whenever the weather allowed) with the handsome salukis sitting disdainfully upright in the back seat.

  Magda said now, dejectedly, ‘Well, I’ve done what I can. All I wanted was justice for him, but—’ She laced her fingers together and took a deep breath. ‘I’m leaving, anyway. My wages were paid three months in advance when I started here, and it’s nearly three months since he died, so I’m free to go next week.’

  ‘What?’ I was shocked to the core. Magda had lived here all her life since coming to England. ‘Magda, you can’t leave! Where will you go?’

  ‘I’m going to live with Rita.’

  The idea of Ingshaw without Grandpa was bad enough, without either him or Magda it was inconceivable. But Rita had recently sold her hairdressing business for a very comfortable sum, and bought a luxurious chalet-style bungalow in a highly desirable new development on the outskirts of the town. She and Magda had known each other for thirty years and been bosom chums from the moment they’d first met.

  Perhaps it would be the best solution, after all.

  * * *

  I couldn’t help feeling relieved when Cluny later made her apologies for not being in for supper that evening. The prospect of sitting opposite her, with Magda’s accusations still ringing in my ears, wasn’t one I’d looked forward to. But Magda was furious, since she’d arranged with Rita to make up a four for bridge, and she wouldn’t leave me alone, she declared, on my first night back.

  ‘Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine,’ I told her. ‘I’m tired after the drive, all I want is a sandwich and an early night. I’ll see to myself.’

  Through the window, I could see Daniel’s Discovery parked outside, and lights in the workshop showing he was still working. Sensing Magda was beginning to waver, I went out and crossed the yard before she could change her mind again.

  I never felt as though I was really home until I’d been into what I still thought of as William’s workshop, the central hub around which Ingshaw House had always revolved. The first thing I’d done, every day when coming home from school, was to pop in, just to say hello. As I entered the big, brightly lit space now, I was welcomed by the familiar scents of new wood, linseed oil and glue, mingling in the thick, dry air with the sharper ones of shellac and turps. Sean, the boy who worked for Daniel, was still here too, hand-planing a piece of timber, his feet lost in rich blonde curls of wood shavings. Daniel had great hopes for this seventeen-year-old, had chosen him from a long list of applicants as one who really wanted to learn a craft, rather than simply get himself a job, in the same way that William had chosen Daniel himself.

  We hadn’t met since Grandpa’s death, and the lad greeted me a little awkwardly, as if unsure whether to offer his sympathies, but he relaxed as I exchanged pleasantries with him for a minute or two, enjoying watching him as he finished the job. His hands on the plane were strong and sure. He’d been taught well. ‘Daniel’s in the back,’ he told me, blowing the dust away, smoothing the piece of walnut with loving hands.

  Daniel was telephoning and signalled he’d be with me shortly. I wandered over to the shelves where designs and sketches were fastened on to drawing-boards with large-headed draughtsman’s thumbtacks, and brochures with photographs of finished pieces were stacked next to the design and pattern books going back to when William first started on his own. Furniture was still being made to some of his earliest designs. Idly, I picked up a leather-bound folio that was lying on the long, sloping drawing-table beneath. The front cover was decorated with a tooled and gilded design, showing the initial ‘B’, garlanded with honeysuckle, the flowers and foliage almost hiding the tiny bee, the Brereton trademark. I began to flick through, but saw immediately that the designs weren’t drawn by William. Master of his craft as he was, creating articles of furniture powerful and strong enough to last until the next millennium, he was incapable of the sort of delicacy I was seeing here, in the turn of a leg, the curve of a backrest, that wonderful marquetry. Clearly, these designs were Daniel’s.

  I turned a page, and a sheet of paper sailed to the ground. As I bent to pick it up, my own name jumped out at me. My dear Zoe. The forceful, upright handwriting was unmistakably William’s. What was a letter from him, addressed to me, doing in one of Daniel’s pattern books? Why hadn’t he given it to me? Daniel put the telephone down and without thinking too much about what I was doing, I thrust the paper into my pocket.

  ‘That was Magda ringing from the house. She wants me to come and eat with you tonight to keep you company. She says she’ll leave us some food.’ He closed the book casually and slipped it back on to the shelf.

  ‘Oh, Lord! I’ve told her—a sandwich is all I want.’

  ‘A sandwich! I’ll bet you’ve had nothing to eat all day. We can do better than that. There’s a very good Indian restaurant opened down by the viaduct—not to be compared with the heady delights of a night out in Leeds, of course! But if that doesn’t appeal, we could eat at my house. I do a mean bolognese.’

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks, Daniel.’ I summoned a smile. ‘I’m tired, not feeling very sociable.’

  An evening alone with him, before I’d had time to come to terms with the shock of what had happened between us out there on the moor, was the last thing I needed. Especially to be alone with him in the blissful house further down the hill that he’d converted himself from a tiny, former Methodist chapel—small for a chapel, that is, but as a house spacious and airy, full of light. Peaceful. I was far too relaxed and off-guard there at the best of times.

  ‘OK. Another time, huh?’ he said lightly

  * * *

  Cluny was pleased when I told her I meant to have a quick snack and an early night. ‘Now I needn’t feel guilty about going out myself.’

  Where was she off to, all glamoured-up, her eyes secret? Head to toe in black, simple and unadorned but definitely not of the mourning kind, her only jewellery two small diamond ear-studs. She looked stunning, but surely over the top for an evening out locally? Even with this Stephen Baines, as it apparently was. Her relief seemed equally overdone. Could it be that she’d arranged to go out because she was as nervous of us being alone together as I was? Cluny could be an amusing companion, when she was in the mood, but tonight she was brittle and edgy. Her green catlike eyes glittered and her smooth tawny hair caught the light as she bent to caress the narrow head of one of the salukis. Her tension seemed to have communicated itself to the dogs, whom she called Jewel and Gold. Despite their speed and alertness to any intruder, the beautiful creatures were of a nervous, gentle disposition, and they padded around uneasily, quivering every time a gust of wind howled down the chimney.

  Cluny shivered too, in her thin dress. She’d always been enviably slim, but now there wasn’t an ounce of spare flesh on her body. Even her face seemed thinner, there were shadows under her eyes and hollows sculpted under her elegant cheekbones. It could be put down to stress, a natural reaction after the last few weeks, but try as I would, I couldn’t believe she had been as emotionally involved with my sober, elderly grandfather as all that . . . though would that thought have occurred to me, I checked myself, shame-faced, before I’d heard Magda’s accusations?

  But my guilty thoughts were soon turned to indignation by her careless shrug when I asked if I might look through William’s papers. ‘That old stuff? Oh, do what you like with it. I was going to burn the lot anyway when I got around to it.’

  My face always reflected too much of what I felt. Cluny responded with a long, level gaze. ‘I have to get rid of all the clutter, Zoe. I’m going back. To Harare. I’m going to fight for what was mine, for what my husband Stuart and I built up over the years.’ She
looked suddenly hard.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, taken aback. ‘Well, good for you.’ Cluny’s previous life was mostly a closed book to me, but I did at least know that she’d fled Zimbabwe, after escaping from Mugabe’s insurgents when they’d killed her first husband and lain waste to the farm it had taken half a lifetime to build. It was a brave, perhaps foolhardy, decision to go back and try to reclaim what she’d lost. And to carry out such plans she’d need money—but I couldn’t yet bring myself to ask if she intended to sell Ingshaw.

  * * *

  In spite of my assertions that I wasn’t hungry, I did full justice to the hearty soup Magda insisted on leaving. I found an orange and then made coffee. This big, old-fashioned kitchen was my favourite room, with its polished flagstone floor and red curtains, and always warm from the heat of the stove. Nothing matched, the cupboards were original to the house and the kitchen appliances were out of date, but it was comfortable and unpretentious. Only somehow I didn’t feel quite so easy there tonight. I was aware as never before of the distance between Ingshaw and its nearest neighbour, and quickly drew the curtains. I switched off the lights, except for the lamp on the dresser, and sat near the stove on a rush-seated chair with a cushion at my back, feet up on the rung of another chair, a mug of coffee on the table, my patience rewarded. I’d steeled myself to wait until I was alone and unlikely to be interrupted before reading the letter, which had been burning a hole in my pocket ever since I’d picked it up in Daniel’s workshop.