Funeral Music

by Morag Joss

  She cast her eyes heavenwards and she and Sara exchanged a headshake. Honestly, bank managers these days. It struck Sara as odd that everything had become so conversational. Didn’t Olivia realise that she was incriminating herself? Or should she seriously worry that the reason for Olivia’s calm was that she herself was going to be silenced before she had a chance to go to the police? Perhaps she should drop a hint – a lie, in fact – that Andrew knew where she was and what she was doing.

  ‘The museum had no extra secure storage available, so the boxes hung around here for a bit. It’s bending the rules, but they were safer here. And anyway, I was the boss.’

  She smiled. ‘That might have been it, but then other things happened. Just after that Dad, Edwin, got worse. I’d been looking after him, going back at lunchtime and so on, but he needed someone here all the time. So we had to get a day nurse. That was when I promised him I would never let him go into a home. And money was incredibly tight because I was still being paid my old salary and I was expecting to be upgraded to director level.’

  Her lips tightened. ‘When I agreed to be acting director, I was helping them out of a hole. I knew it would take them a while to sort out my new salary and I was very patient. There was no question that I should’ve been put on the director’s scale and I assumed it would be backdated. And in the end they took more than six months over it, and they decided not to upgrade me. They just “enhanced” my old salary by an insulting amount and refused to backdate it. They regarded the first six months as an “induction period” payable at the old salary.’

  ‘But that’s monstrous. Didn’t you have a union or anything?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I should have contested it. I was angry enough. Frankly, though, I was just too damn exhausted and I had so many other things to worry about. The job was demanding, and I didn’t think I’d be able to keep things going at home.’

  She sighed and Sara saw how easily a look of deep tiredness took over her face.

  ‘Soon after that, Paul appeared on the scene. He and Sue seemed very happy at first. Then one day he came round on his own. I was in the study having a cry. I told him how worried I was about money and he couldn’t really understand at first; my salary seemed such a lot to him. And I didn’t actually need much. I was short of about just over five hundred pounds a month on average. So I explained it all and Paul just looked round and said, “Why don’t you sell some of this stuff?” There were Hackett pieces all over the desk, you see. And I said, “You don’t understand, they’re not mine.” And he just said, “I know.” And then he took me completely by surprise. He kissed me.’

  She gave an abashed smile. A younger woman might have simpered, but Olivia frowned and drank some more wine.

  ‘I didn’t let it go any further than that, although it was difficult. I’ve never been so flattered in my life. He said he was in love with me, if you can believe that, and that he was glad I needed help, because it meant there was something he could do for me. I could trust him and he’d keep me and Edwin safe. And to his own cost, he has.’

  Sara was nonplussed by the unnatural neatness of her confession. She said, ‘So that was that? Paul just sold things off then, gradually, to bring in a bit more money?’

  ‘Yes. Of course they were sold in France. The collection was documented in this country and these collectors are very knowledgeable, some of them. It would have been too risky to sell here. Paul saw that.’

  Sara had almost reached the bottom of her glass and suddenly felt a little woozy. Christ, she’s poisoned me, she thought wildly. She’s poisoning both of us. That bottle was already open. Frascati, is it always as sharp-tasting as that? She knows the game’s up so she’s doing herself in and she’s taking me with her. That’s why she’s telling me all this. Get out of here, get out. Yet she was glued to her seat. She stared helplessly out of the window as a nauseous sweat washed through her.

  ‘And there was a certain justice in it, you know, or I couldn’t have done it’. Olivia grew animated in her defence. ‘The collection wasn’t even meant to exist anymore, remember? It had been de-accessioned anyway, so who actually owned it? Can you tell me that? And I was furious, after the way they behaved over my salary. So why shouldn’t I take it, when they wouldn’t pay me what the job was worth? It wasn’t for me, it wasn’t greed. Do you understand?’

  Sara nodded as Olivia swallowed from her glass. Hold on, she thought, Olivia’s not looking too bad on it, and she’s had much more than I’ve had.

  ‘There was another thing. I had researched quite a bit into the Hackett family. They were wealthy. Steel mill owners in Birmingham. The parents moved to Wiltshire for the cleaner air, for the daughter’s sake. She had tuberculosis. She was the collector, Eugenia Hackett. She was an invalid all her life and her needlework was apparently wonderful. She got interested in needlework tools through that and started the collection when she was still a girl. Eventually she couldn’t even sew anymore and the collecting took over. People used to go to her. She lived to be fifty-three, longer than anyone expected, and by the time she died her collection was very large and important, as these things go.’

  But what was the point Olivia was making?

  ‘Don’t you see? If I had just handed the collection back to the museum, what good would that have done anyone? It would probably never even have gone on display, which was what Miss Hackett wanted. I can’t help feeling that she’d approve of what I did. Those pieces were sold to other collectors, like her, and the money was all going to another invalid, someone who suffered just like her. So that he could have the care he needed. Don’t you see?’

  There was a silence. As far as it went, Sara did see, but still...

  ‘I didn’t deprive anyone of anything. I just sold pieces from the collection carefully, only two or three at a time. They fetch high prices, some of those tiny things. I remember there was a box made out of a walnut, a real, polished walnut, mounted in gold with a tiny hinge between the two halves of the shell.’

  Olivia’s eyes were lit up now with the enthusiasm of the expert, seemingly indifferent to the trouble she was in.

  ‘Inside it was padded in crimson velvet, with places for scissors, needles, thimble and spools, all in gold. So tiny and so perfect. That alone made nearly a thousand pounds. Imagine, a walnut.’

  Where did she think she was? The Antiques Roadshow?

  ‘I sold just enough to make the extra for Edwin’s nursing. Then after a time he needed night nursing too, so I sold a bit more. I reckoned even so there was a few more years’ worth, just about enough to see him out.’

  Sara was momentarily tempted to surrender to the pathos of the story until the ‘but still’ of the whole thing reasserted itself in her mind. Matthew Sawyer was dead. Matthew Sawyer had been deprived of something. Olivia seemed quite able to overlook that. And apart from murder, her astute husbandry of her ‘assets’ should not blind them to the fact that it had been theft on quite a scale. If I had any sense, Sara thought, I would stop this right here and go and get Andrew. But she had to know if she was right.

  She said, ‘Olivia, it was a mistake, wasn’t it? You made a mistake over that memo, didn’t you? The memo Matthew Sawyer sent you that afternoon about the Hackett Collection. It wasn’t about the collection, it was about the catalogue, wasn’t it? What did it say? “MS needs urgent updating.” You thought it was his initials, that he was on to you and was demanding more information. But I think he meant MS as in manuscript. He meant that the manuscript needed updating. He should have said improving or restoring, but he wrote it carelessly, in a hurry. He was talking about the catalogue: he didn’t know about the collection turning up.’

  The silence went on long enough for Sara to begin to imagine perhaps she had not heard her. Then Olivia spoke, looking out at a sky laden with heat and as white and thick as lard. Her tone hardened.

  ‘On the day he died he told me that the Terry Trust wasn’t going to give Edwin a stairlift. Send him to a home to die, he said, more o
r less. You should have heard him. He’d got so much, he’d got so much damn money and I needed such a little amount to make a huge difference to Edwin. So much depended on that grant, though it was only for five thousand pounds. He was so stinking rich, and so complacent.’

  She swallowed a mouthful of Frascati and gave a bitter laugh. ‘Needless to say, he was being paid the proper salary. Straight on to the director’s scale, on appointment. And still ambitious, had his eye on the top job, I think. And his wife has real money. Most of that afternoon I was trying to work out if I could sell enough Hackett pieces for the stairlift and still not run out while Edwin needed nursing. I was on the verge of tears all day. I worked out what I could get for my own things – you know, the things in the drawing room – although contemporary work fetches less than you’d think. I’d promised Edwin the lift. He thought this might be his last summer, and he was desperate to spend it in the garden. Then I got the memo, when the Hackett Collection was on my mind anyway, and I just jumped to the conclusion that Matthew had somehow found out about the bank in Warminster and would soon be on to me. So as well as refusing us the lift he was about to take away even the little I had. Just that little bit I was managing to get for Edwin’s care. And if I’d gone to prison, what would have happened to Edwin?’

  Sara pictured it. Olivia’s cool exterior hiding the near panic she must have felt at her own and Edwin’s world falling apart, her realisation that if Matthew Sawyer were just stopped, then she would remain a respected professional curator and Edwin could live out his days in safety. The necessity of acting quickly, finding Paul, telling him of their danger, the hurried planning of how, where and when Paul would end Matthew Sawyer’s life.

  ‘It wasn’t until the Friday a week later I read his file copy of the memo. That’s when I noticed George behaving oddly. That’s why I asked you to supper: I thought you might know if he knew anything, or help me find out.’

  ‘I didn’t though, did I?’

  ‘No, you were useless, and really quite irritating,’ Olivia said.

  She was quite drunk now, and openly hostile.

  ‘I expect you’re quite pleased with yourself, aren’t you? Clever little Sara solves the Hackett racket?’ She laughed weakly, but was nearer to tears than laughter.

  Sara said slowly, ‘But the murder. Paul murdered Matthew Sawyer, didn’t he? What about that?’

  Olivia gave her a steady, unfriendly gaze. ‘Matthew Sawyer. Bernard Whatever-his-name-is. They’re both dead. Everyone dies sometime, why the song and dance? And what makes you so sure it was Paul? Or not Paul? You’ve nothing to go on. I didn’t say he killed Matthew. The police don’t think he did. There’s no evidence that he did.’

  ‘Somehow, though,’ Sara said quietly, knowing that she was making Olivia even angrier, ‘I feel sure that he did kill Matthew Sawyer. I don’t know – yet – where the murder of the other man fits in. I’m only sure that Paul killed Sawyer, and that you know he did. Only I can’t see how.’

  ‘Feel as sure as you like. You can’t prove anything against Paul. I haven’t told you anything. Everything I’ve told you comes down to me. I stole the Hackett Collection. All right, Paul handled stolen goods. But you can’t prove anything else. And I’ve told you too much already.’

  Sara felt utterly confused. First Olivia had been recklessly forthcoming about what she had done. Now the shutters were down and there was no point in pursuing it further.

  Trying not to sound angry herself she said, ‘Olivia, I don’t understand. You’ve told me such a lot. But you know much, much more about all this. Why hold back now?’

  Olivia stared at her blankly and then her face crumpled. ‘You really don’t get it, do you? Paul still has his life ahead of him, if he can get away. I’ll certainly never see him again. And I don’t give a damn what happens to me now. It doesn’t matter anymore. Why else would I have told you?’

  Sara was suddenly aware of the awful stillness in the house above them.

  Olivia sobbed, ‘Dad, Edwin, he died last night.’

  CHAPTER 32

  SARA WAS NOT sure how she got home. She had left Olivia crying at the table, insisting angrily that she wanted nothing, nothing at all, but for Sara to go. She telephoned Andrew again. His mobile was still switched off. She rang the police station and was put through to Bridger.

  ‘Chief Inspector Poole’s on special leave this afternoon. He has a family matter to attend to. Can I help?’

  But it was Andrew that Sara had to speak to. ‘No, I’ll get him another time. Thank you.’

  ‘Special leave’ sounded like a funeral, but Andrew had been in such high spirits only yesterday – it had been only yesterday – and hadn’t mentioned anyone dying. If it was a funeral, would Bridger not just have said that? Was one of the children ill? Run over? Somehow, special leave sounded as if it was for something a bit more planned than that. She decided to risk it and rang his home number. She got Valerie.

  ‘Hello. Look, I’m terribly sorry to bother you at home, but I wondered if I could possibly speak to Andrew for a minute? I hope it’s not a bad time. It’s Sara Selkirk speaking.’

  Valerie was breathing in and out heavily and sounded close enough, as well as sufficiently angry, to bite Sara’s ear off. ‘I don’t believe this. Couldn’t you have waited?’

  ‘Oh, look, I’m sorry. I just hoped it wasn’t a bad time. I am sorry—’

  ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve! You know perfectly well what you’re doing! You couldn’t wait another minute to get your hands on him, could you! You whore!’

  Before Sara could gather any sort of reply she heard Andrew’s voice in the background, raised in anger. Still holding the receiver close, Valerie was shouting back at him. ‘Oh, so it’s not true, is it! You lying bastard! Don’t tell me now you’re not having an affair! You tell your bloody tart she’s welcome – you liar! You filthy liar!’

  Sara quietly replaced the telephone. Within a minute it rang. On the third ring, she lifted the receiver no more than an inch and dropped it back into its cradle. She was shaking and tearful, smouldering with grievance, and suddenly overwhelmed by a huge fatigue. Wearily, she collapsed onto the deep sofa in the dark drawing room and acknowledged the enormous injustice she felt, less for Valerie’s accusation which, given a little more time, might easily have been deserved if not altogether accurate, but more for having only so briefly known and then lost the sweet, wise Edwin.

  She had been so excited about seeing him today. She had wanted to play for him again, properly. She had been going to tell him what had really happened in Paris. He knew only what the music press, full of speculation had said, about a nervous breakdown. A natural reaction, everyone said, to the tragic and untimely death of Matteo Becker two months previously. Delayed grief. She had wanted to tell Edwin that it had not been quite as simple as that. She had never told anyone that just after that first Christmas in Medlar Cottage Matteo had seemed quieter, a little unwell, and that she had been almost pleased. Perhaps he was going to slow down a little and enjoy being at home more. The first time he complained of the pain in his side she had just come off the telephone, making arrangements for her series of three concerts in London, Dublin and Cardiff. She had poked him in the stomach and teased him for overeating. She had told him to drink lots of water and keep off the wine when he was in Australia, where he was going in four days. If it doesn’t go away, see a doctor. If you can spare the time. When he was leaving for the airport he had said wistfully, unaccountably, ‘Sara, come with me?’ and of course he had been joking, she was playing at the South Bank the very next day. She had ignored the faint look of fragility in his face and they had been laughing as they kissed good-bye. On the plane his appendix had burst. When the plane landed seven hours later, he had been taken to a hospital where they had been unable to prevent the onset of septicaemia. Five days later he had died.

  After the funeral, she had gone on with her engagements. People were amazed at her strength. She had carried on until Par
is, when she had simply stopped in the middle of the second Bach cello suite, frozen in mid-phrase. In the awful shocked silence of the concert hall, the only sound had, eventually, been her own footsteps as she left the platform. And she had not really played in public since, but had withdrawn into her life, bowing under the burden of her guilt and all the sympathy and all the kind understanding of people who understood nothing. But Edwin had understood something. He had known that after such damage, recovery is slow, but that perhaps she had spent enough time waiting. She looked out and saw over the valley the low sky, clogged with rainclouds, grief-laden, and she buried her face. Even if I had been on that plane, Matteo, I could not have saved you. Till the end of my life I shall wish I had seen how ill you were and stopped you going, but it was not my fault. It was not my fault you died. When the telephone rang again she did not answer it.

  SHE WAS wakened by the cat springing into her lap. She had an idea that it was early evening, but the drawing room was darker than felt right. Against the horizon, banks of bruise-coloured cloud were building steeply, and across the lime tree meadow a shadowy pink light shimmered with the dangerous glow of imminent thunder. It was only just after five but as dark as a winter afternoon. She made tea and switched on lamps, intending this time to be gentler in the nursing of her grief. The thunder came and with it hard, perpendicular rain. Just before seven the telephone rang again.