But Sophie was made of sterner stuff. She had fallen in love with someone her father regarded as a penniless colonial upstart, and when he refused his consent to the marriage, she simply eloped with her young man. This seemed to shame Alexander into standing up for himself. He walked out of his father’s business and left with the newly married couple to start a new life in Rhodesia. After a few years he set up as a photographer in Salisbury, having fulfilled his father’s predictions by failing to make a living as an artist. By then he was married and had a daughter, Jacquetta, who became my wife.
So it was Alexander Temple, artist and photographer, of The Orthochrome, Jacquetta’s father, who was my great-grandfather. I wasn’t directly descended from Sophie.
Sophie’s marriage, though happy, was short-lived. Her husband died, and not long afterwards old Benjamin, who had fallen ill and thought he was dying (though he still had another thirteen years to go) decided he could bring himself to be reunited with his daughter, now that she was relieved of such an unsuitable husband. He begged her to return to England for a visit. She came, but Alexander was another matter. Benjamin could not forgive his son for leaving him in the lurch, as he saw it, Alexander would not apologize, and both remained adamant in their refusal to be reconciled.
To her sorrow, Sophie was never blessed with children, and she lavished all her love on her brother’s only child, Jacquetta, which made their later quarrel all the more bitter. But before that they were constant companions and when Sophie visited England in 1939, Jacquetta, then seventeen, came with her. They were caught here when war broke out, and stayed to help in the war effort. That was how Jacquetta and I met, three years later, when I was in London, on leave, and she was working in an officers’ leave club. When the news came that her parents had been killed in a car crash, we were already married and Jacquetta was expecting our child. So it was Sophie who returned to South Africa to sort out Alexander’s affairs. He didn’t leave much money, but enough to make Jacquetta independent when she decided she’d had enough of being married to me. When your mother was eighteen months old, Jacquetta left us both and went back home.
And there it was, my sad family history, in a nutshell. A legacy of family quarrels, bitterness, abandonment, old scores never forgiven. That photo my mother might never have seen—which could not, by the way, have been taken by Alexander, since he was dead by then. Perhaps his business had been continued by someone else. It didn’t matter. What really mattered was whether all this might in some way have contributed to a story that ended in my grandfather’s death. A story that wasn’t by any means finished yet.
Sean came in at that moment with the coffee. ‘My mum’s sent you some of her curd tarts.’ He put a plate of little cakes on the desk. Daniel was regularly supplied with pies and cakes and casseroles by local ladies, who wouldn’t acknowledge that a young man living alone was capable of being as self-sufficient as Daniel patently was. He could cook with the best of them, but was too good-natured to do other than accept their offerings graciously, as he did now, thanking Sean and offering me the plate.
The tarts were worth a bit of diplomatic dissembling on his part, I decided; the pastry was crisp and golden, the sweet cheesy filling stuffed with currants. ‘Yummy, tell your mum,’ I told Sean.
‘I will,’ he promised, looking pleased.
Daniel stopped him as he was going out of the door. He’d been deep in thought while I read the letter, and now he asked, ‘What do you remember about the day the Old Man died, Sean?’
Sean shot a rather embarrassed glance in my direction.
‘It’s OK, you can talk about Grandpa, I don’t mind.’
He thought for a bit. ‘Well, after you set off for the Dales to deliver that sideboard, up near Ramsgill, Magda came in to tell me she was going out for the day. Mrs Brereton had taken the dogs to the vet and wouldn’t be in till late afternoon, so Magda asked me to see to the Old Man’s dinner about half twelve. She’d left something cooking, but bending to get things out of the oven was awkward for him, with his lumbago. But he rang from the house and said I needn’t bother, that solicitor guy had been in to see him, and he’d done the necessary before he left.’ He swallowed. ‘A few hours later, Mrs Brereton found the Old Man on the floor and came rushing in here for help. She thought he’d had a stroke, but when the doctor came, he said he’d broken his neck.’ He looked upset, remembering.
‘Thanks, Sean,’ Daniel said. ‘Just wanted to be sure we had things clear.’ His eyes met mine when Sean had gone. ‘So much for Baines as a suspect.’
‘OK, if there was a booby trap, it had to be fixed while Grandpa was upstairs after lunch, so Baines couldn’t have rigged it up before he left. But he could have come back later.’ It was a faint-hearted protest. Anyone could have been in and out of the house during the afternoon. The workshop windows only gave a view of the back door. And did I really believe Baines capable of doing that? Could I actually believe that anyone had deliberately plotted William’s death?
‘There’s always Cluny,’ I said weakly. ‘How long does a visit to the vet take, for goodness’ sake?’
‘Leave it, Zoe,’ Daniel said, quite gently. ‘We’re getting nowhere like this. He fell, and that’s it. Isn’t it better to believe that?’
He was probably right. But there were still a lot of questions I’d have liked the answers to.
Frustrated, I turned back to finish reading the letter. There were only a few lines, couched in such awkwardly affectionate terms that I was on the verge of tears, knowing how difficult this whole letter must have been for William to write. I was so concerned with that, it took a while for me to absorb what was written beneath his signature, and learn that I was to contact the law firm of Alderson, Jeavons & Wyngate at an address in London.
* * *
‘And that’s about it.’ I poured myself another cup of Magda’s bracing tea. Explaining everything that had led up to the finding of that letter tucked behind Sophie’s portrait had been thirsty work.
We were sitting together in the kitchen as dusk fell, always a nostalgic hour. From the side window I caught glimpses of the lights winking on in the town directly beneath, I could still see the clock tower on the Town Hall, and the grey face of my old school on the slope opposite, the bulk of the hill behind it rising to the moors against a darkening skyline. There was now a Tesco superstore just below the school, where the old bus garage had once been, by the viaduct. A line of sodium lights snaked towards Leeds—a handy road to have nearby, when I started my new job.
‘Oh, goodness, so that’s what he meant about the backing! I should have told you, but I’d completely forgotten, dorlink!’ Magda looked stricken, stress bringing out the Hungarian in her. ‘He had made the picture look so nice again, with that new frame and all. Such a disgrace it was when he brought it down from the attic! So dirty, and the frame was badly damaged. Somebody—I suppose it was your grandmother—had left it at the bottom of a trunk with all sorts of junk piled on top—’
‘Magda, what was it you forgot?’
‘Oh yes, well, after he did that reframing, he said to tell you to have a new backing put on, though I did wonder why he hadn’t done it himself while he was at it. “Tell her to make sure it’s done,” he said. ‘I’m so sorry I forgot.’
‘That’s all right.’ But if Magda had told me this when she gave me the picture, I would have found out immediately that he’d wanted me to replace the old splintery backing so that I would discover the letter concealed behind. As it turned out, I was going to take the train for London tomorrow, to keep the appointment I’d arranged with that firm of solicitors.
‘And then,’ said Magda, with satisfaction, ‘maybe some people will get their come-uppance at last.’
* * *
Henry Alderson’s telephone voice was that of a tired old man. I’d been lucky to find him in the office, since he only came in once a week, nowadays. The name of William Brereton eventually emerged from somewhere in the dusty recesses of hi
s mind as that of a client, and he expressed himself shocked that he hadn’t been informed when he’d died, though not entirely surprised to hear that was because no one had known of William’s connection with his firm. Ah yes, it had been a somewhat singular arrangement, he admitted cautiously, which he would explain when we met.
The offices of Alderson, Jeavons & Wyngate, established in 1888, were in Clerkenwell, and at first glance, Henry Alderson looked as though he might have been the original of that name, so old did he seem. A small, tortoise-like man with pale eyes, his white hair was almost non-existent, and even the effort of half-rising from behind his desk to offer his hand made him breathe alarmingly hard. I feared for him, remembering the stairs I’d just climbed. But as we began to speak, I realized he must be younger than his appearance indicated, quite a lot younger, simply the sort who’d been born elderly. Time could only have made him even more lethargic.
The last time he’d actually met my grandfather, he said, had been eight years ago, just at the point when he himself was beginning to leave matters to more junior members of the firm before taking a back seat, as he put it. I translated this as marking time until he could retire and take up stamp-collecting, or if that was too energetic, maybe a little gentle petit point.
‘We met,’ he went on in his whispery voice, ‘through the will of one of the firm’s oldest clients, the late Mrs Sophie Venables, who lived in what is now Zimbabwe. We had previously acted for her father, Mr Benjamin Temple. She herself lived to a great age, well into her nineties, and when making her will, she came back to us, conditions in Zimbabwe being what they were—plus the fact that the beneficiary, your grandfather, was British.’
‘Sophie? She left my grandfather her money?’
His light eyes were sharper than the rest of him, not missing the fact that Sophie’s name was known to me. ‘Most of it, yes. She left small amounts to certain people, and one or two charities, over there, but the bulk of it—a very tidy sum—went to him.’
‘Surely she must have had relatives . . .’
But I was rapidly working out how it might have been. Sophie had had no children, her brother Alexander had died in 1943, when she had returned from England to sort out his affairs. And according to William, she’d quarrelled bitterly with her niece, Jacquetta, my grandmother—who in any case, might very well have been dead herself before Sophie made her will. Who were Jacquetta’s descendants, other than me? I didn’t even know whether she and my grandfather had ever divorced, and she’d remarried.
‘Distant relatives only,’ Alderson said, brushing the matter aside when I asked. ‘There were—attempts—to challenge Benjamin Temple’s will, but there were absolutely no grounds, I assure you. He willed everything to his daughter. Who she subsequently left it to was entirely her own business, no one else has any legal claim at all. When the money came to your grandfather, he immediately made a will of his own. Everything he possessed when he died, apart from a bequest to his housekeeper, Miss Lutz, is now yours, I’m happy to tell you.’
At least one of us was happy, then. Me, I was too staggered to be sure how I felt. ‘Didn’t he make a later will, leaving something to his wife? He remarried two years ago.’
If he was surprised at that, he didn’t show it. ‘Not with us.’
‘His solicitors in Yorkshire were Brownrigg and Shaw, but he didn’t leave one with them, either. We thought he’d died intestate.’
‘Just so,’ he said stiffly, making no secret of his disapproval that William had chosen to use one firm for his business affairs and another for his will. ‘It would have been simpler had he dealt with either one of us, but for some reason he chose not to.’
Tittle-tattle, William would have said. What nobody knows, nobody can talk about! And he did have a point. Somehow, the fact that William Brereton suddenly had all that money to leave would have leaked out in his home town. And that was something he’d have done a lot to avoid.
‘However, in the light of what you’ve just told me, you may have been very fortunate. Your grandfather rang me at my home about six months ago, to make an appointment to review his will and make some changes. I couldn’t do that from home, so I asked him to ring me again when I was back in the office, the following week. I never did hear from him, so I supposed he’d changed his mind.’
Fortunate for me, yes, perhaps—but if only Alderson had bestirred himself to follow up William’s call, the will would have been changed. And then maybe he wouldn’t have died . . .
‘I still don’t understand why Sophie chose to leave her money to my grandfather.’
‘Her actual words were that she’d found him to be an honourable man who faced up to his responsibilities, and she could trust him to use the money to see that her niece’s child—your mother—was compensated. Unfortunately,’ he added drily, ‘it came too late.’
* * *
‘So that was Sophie.’ Cluny stared at the portrait, which I’d hung on the wall to replace a stormy looking Victorian depiction of Malham Tarn. ‘She’s nothing like I imagined.’
We were in the sitting-room at Ingshaw: me; Cluny, on the sofa facing the portrait; Daniel propped against the window sill, arms folded; Magda, sitting stiffly on an upright chair and keeping a tight rein on herself for my sake, I was sure. And Stephen Baines. I’d rung him to ask him to come up to the house, feeling that Cluny would need professional, if not moral, support when she was told the news. I didn’t say why and he didn’t ask; no problem, he’d replied colourlessly, he’d drive up immediately.
‘You never actually knew her, then?’ I asked Cluny, handing round the glasses of William’s Glenfiddich that Daniel had suggested as a means of helping the situation along.
‘No, but I heard plenty about her from Jacquetta, Stuart’s mother. Stuart Temple was my husband,’ she said flatly. ‘I thought it better to use van Doelen, my maiden name, when I came over here. Like Jacquetta used hers, after she returned from England, though she and your grandfather were never divorced. She called herself Temple until she died. She was never married to Stuart’s father, so his name was Temple, too.’
Did that make Cluny some distant relation of mine—a kind of step-aunt by marriage? Whatever, I wasn’t about to relish informing her that I’d inherited, through William, everything that had been Sophie’s, though why I should feel bothered about this, when I suspected her of being involved in his death, I couldn’t think. But in the end, when she finally understood, and saw that she was no longer legally entitled to benefit from the sale of Ingshaw, that William hadn’t left her a penny, I had the strangest impression she was, in an odd sort of way, relieved.
‘It was worth a shot.’ A bitter, defeated smile played round her mouth.
‘We shall claim,’ Baines intervened suddenly, very cold. ‘You were his wife, you’re entitled to a share.’
He had a point. I was having difficulty myself in coming to terms with William having done something so petty and out of character. On the other hand, he’d valued integrity above all else and he didn’t give anyone a second chance. It made me wonder just what Cluny had done to cause him to act in such a way.
It was Daniel who said, ‘Zoe’s told you how she came to find out about the will, Cluny. Isn’t it time she heard your side of all this?’
Baines shot her a warning glance. ‘You’ve explained too much already.’ He spoke slowly and carefully, and I thought how oddly he was sitting, rigidly, as if he had a rod down his back. He’d already downed the first whisky. I poured him another.
But Cluny ignored his warning. ‘Fair enough,’ she answered Daniel, an unaccustomed air of sad resignation about her. ‘We’re talking a long way back . . . As I said, Jacquetta was my mother-in-law. Not an easy woman, always complaining she’d had a raw deal from life, particularly through the injustice of old Benjamin’s will. She believed she was entitled to what should have been her father’s share, had he lived, but Sophie had refused even to consider dividing the inheritance. They already had a long-standin
g quarrel, but this refusal soured their relationship for ever. After that, they barely spoke to each other again.’
I recalled what William had written about them coming to England together, staying to help with the war effort. ‘I thought they were the best of friends once.’
‘So they were—until Jacquetta walked out and left her husband and her baby, which was something Sophie couldn’t condone. She’d always regarded Jacquetta almost as her own child, taught her to know right from wrong, Well—you know how it can be when there’s a major row, both of you saying and doing things so awful there comes a point when it’s too late to go back.’
She wrapped her arms tight around herself. Without a fire in the grate, the sitting-room felt cold and unfriendly, despite the soft, buttery lamplight that lay in pools on the carpet but served only to emphasize the growing darkness outside and to cast shadows on the taut planes of her face. I felt cold, too, thinking of all those needless miseries which had had such repercussions.
‘Sophie had always been straight-laced and unforgiving,’ she went on, ‘according to Jacquetta, anyway.’ She paused. ‘That may have been true, though you couldn’t always believe everything Jacquetta said. She craved excitement, and she’d make it up if it wasn’t there. She’d led a bit of a wild life after she came back from England—until she met John Nash, that is, and Stuart was born. John was a farmer, different from the usual men she associated with. He was a good man, but in the end he proved far too dull for her and she ditched him, though it suited her to let Stuart live with him most of the time. John was a prosperous farmer and when he died, he left everything to Stuart. We both loved the farm and worked hard to keep it going, until . . . until he was killed, and I was left with literally nothing.’
Account Rendered & Other Stories Page 18
