The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing

by Mary Paulson-Ellis

  ‘Not me,’ said Solomon, getting in first with his alibi. ‘I wasn’t even in the country. Just for the absence of doubt.’

  ‘Do you have any proof of that?’ said the DCI.

  Solomon attempted to look outraged, knew there was no point. He could have got her to check the PNC database for licence plate recognition showing him driving south one night, north the next. But both of the vehicles he used had been stolen, didn’t want to give DCI Franklin an excuse.

  ‘I was at Kew,’ he said. ‘Searching the records for our client’s next of kin.’

  Though even that had been conducted under a false identity. Solomon glanced towards his fellow Heir Hunter, wondered for a moment if Colin Dunlop might verify the deceit for him. Decided he probably would not.

  ‘And did you find any?’ asked the DCI.

  ‘Yes,’ said Solomon, brightening now that he had something to show for her faith in him. ‘No. Well, maybe. She hasn’t exactly signed yet.’

  ‘Good thing considering the money has been stolen.’

  The inscrutable PC Noble, sticking in the knife.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ said Mrs Maclure genuflecting towards the police officers.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ wheezed Barbara Penny. ‘Nobody thought that it was.’

  ‘Why would I rob my own client?’ said Margaret Penny. ‘The council always need the cash.’

  They all looked towards Solomon’s aunt who wasn’t really his aunt. But the way she was fiddling with her turquoise hair pin made them realize that a false accusation in that direction might be a dangerous precedent to set.

  ‘Well somebody’s taken it,’ said DCI Franklin. She came to stand in front of Solomon where he was perched by the coffin. ‘Empty your pockets.’

  ‘What! I said it wasn’t me.’

  ‘You’re the only one with a police record, though, aren’t you.’

  It wasn’t a question. Though Solomon was sure that Margaret Penny flinched then, a small tell, but a true one. Wondered what it was that she had done wrong in her life. Still, he knew it was best to appease the DCI.

  You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

  For one final time he dipped his hands in. To the pockets in his trousers. To the pockets on his jacket. Not forgetting the one above his heart. He laid what he found along the edge of Thomas Methven’s wooden box.

  An empty packet of orange tic tacs.

  A dead Nokia.

  A walnut shell rubbed to its bones.

  Everything he had come into this case with. Everything he had taken out. Also a blue kerchief that belonged to a dog he had stolen, albeit inadvertently, reminding him about the other debt he still owed, time running out to settle that one, too.

  DCI Franklin studied the paltry remains of Solomon Farthing. Then she studied the rest as though she might find the answer there. The ladies of Edinburgh’s Indigent Funeral Rota stared back. Apart from Mrs Maclure, who nodded towards Mr Methven in his coffin, faint flush on her cheeks.

  ‘Shall we try the suit?’

  In the end they cut him open, unscrewed the lid of Thomas Methven’s coffin and took a pair of scissors to his burial gown. The suit was still blue as a starling’s egg despite all the years that had passed. Three buttons, turn-ups, neat lapels. Solomon would not have been surprised to find Fortune stitched in at the collar, if he’d dared to look.

  But it was the ladies of the Indigent Funeral Rota who were wielding the knife. Up one seam, down another, until PC Noble took over and dipped her hands in. The young officer pulled it out piece by crumpled piece, banknotes of all descriptions stuffed into the lining of Thomas Methven’s going away outfit, sewn together in neat pink stitch. Tens here. Twenties there. Purple notes. And brown ones. Even black and white. The women stared at the treasure trove as it showered to the floor, eyes shining like everyone’s does when cash is thrown around. Used notes. Dirty notes. Ten shilling notes. A sea of paper money all long past its use-by date.

  ‘I remember the brown ones,’ exclaimed Mrs Maclure, dropping her roses at last. ‘1960!’

  ‘This one goes back to 1953,’ said Margaret Penny, picking a pound note from the carpet and frowning at it, front and back.

  ‘The green is from after the war, isn’t it?’ asked Solomon’s aunt. ‘The second one.’

  ‘Look at the white.’ Mrs Maclure’s eyes were wide behind the gold rim of her spectacles. ‘Isn’t that from 1921?’

  Paperwork collected over three generations by Godfrey Farthing, piece by precious piece. Never did pay it into a bank. Or entrust it to the Co-operative Society. Kept it hidden beneath his ladies’ gun instead. Thousands squirrelled and secreted over fifty years. All in honour of a debt that never could be paid.

  DCI Franklin looked both disgusted and astounded at what had been revealed.

  ‘They never told me it was in old currency,’ she said. ‘What a waste of time.’

  ‘Must have been a mistake at the funeral home,’ frowned Margaret Penny.

  ‘Not even legal tender,’ grumbled her mother.

  ‘Can’t you swap it?’ said Mrs Maclure. ‘Take it to the bank and they’ll give you face value at least. A pound for a pound.’

  ‘Hardly fifty thousand though, is it, either way?’ said PC Noble, dampening even the slightest idea of any profit.

  More like three, thought Solomon, doing a quick calculation as he gazed at the ocean of paper about his feet. Or three and a half, if he was lucky. Thirty per cent of which was not much more than nine hundred quid. The funeral parlour had got it right, though. Three grand in 1971 when his grandfather finally laid down his ledger, probably was worth about fifty today. Unlike any of them standing in Thomas Methven’s former living room now, seduced by the glitter of false promise, somebody, somewhere had done the right sum.

  After DCI Franklin had departed, indignant at the waste of woman hours, PC Noble by her side, Pawel served a round of tea and biscuits, pink wafers balanced on each saucer, as the ladies of the Edinburgh Indigent Rota finally got around to actually counting the cash.

  One hundred.

  Two hundred.

  Three hundred.

  Four.

  ‘I never said it was fifty thousand,’ Solomon’s aunt was still insisting as she gathered in the ten shilling notes. ‘A silly mistake on the part of the funeral parlour.’

  ‘Or the nursing home,’ said Margaret Penny. ‘Got lost in translation.’

  ‘Either way, poor Solomon here got sent on a wild goose chase,’ complained Barbara Penny. ‘Found the next of kin, only for her to be robbed at the last.’

  Solomon’s aunt sniffed then, as though all the largesse she had bestowed upon the city of Edinburgh in her various to-ings and fro-ings had been sorely misunderstood.

  ‘Pawel and I made an executive decision,’ she said rising once again to stand over the coffin. ‘On behalf of poor Mr Methven. Expedited the money’s return to where it belonged.’

  ‘Stole it you mean,’ muttered Barbara Penny.

  ‘That’s one version of the story.’

  ‘Oh, I love a story,’ said Mrs Maclure, sorting the cash into pre-and post-war. ‘This will make a good one.’

  The Edinburgh Indigent Funeral Rota, disputatious to the last.

  Meanwhile, upstairs in the back room, away from all the flurry and fuss, the other new arrival laid it all down. Colin Dunlop of Dunlop, Dunlop & Dunlop explaining the real reason he had pursued Solomon up hill and down dale for the last few days.

  ‘Been chasing your family tree,’ he said. ‘On your mother’s side.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Solomon wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this. But what could he do. All Heir Hunters liked to command the room with a story to tell if they could.

  ‘Did you know you had an aunt?’ said Colin Dunlop.

  ‘Yes,’ said Solomon. ‘She’s downstairs now sorting things for Thomas Methven’s funeral. We had to get another slot from Mortonhall.’

  ‘Not that aunt. A real one. Your mother�
��s sister, Judith Gold.’

  Another name to add to that little patch of white, in amongst the green of a London cemetery.

  ‘My mother’s family are all dead,’ Solomon replied.

  Swept away in the second war to end all wars, the bitter aftermath of which eventually swept away both his parents, too.

  ‘No.’ Colin Dunlop was smiling now. ‘Well, yes. Well . . . only recently.’

  Solomon Farthing’s real aunt survived on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, lived her life accruing whatever she could, so that something would be left for any others who remained.

  ‘It’s a reasonable amount,’ Colin Dunlop went on, withdrawing his paperwork from his briefcase and spreading it across the mattress for Solomon to see. ‘Several thousand, perhaps. Maybe more.’

  How many thousand? thought Solomon. But he knew that Colin Dunlop of Dunlop, Dunlop & Dunlop wouldn’t tell him. Not until they had agreed commission, of course.

  ‘What makes you think I couldn’t sort it myself?’ he said.

  Colin Dunlop just smiled. ‘My international reputation and expertise.’

  Solomon sighed, knew that this Edinburgh Man was correct.

  ‘Five,’ he said.

  ‘Fifteen.’ Colin Dunlop adjusted his cuff. ‘And I’d be doing you a favour.’

  But in the end they settled. On ten per cent, of course.

  Solomon signed the contract, then stayed in the spare room to rest while Colin Dunlop made his way to the kitchen to secure a cup of tea. Despite all his years as an Heir Hunter, Solomon realized it made him feel warm inside – the thought that he had done a fellow Edinburgh Man a favour.

  When he came back downstairs to rejoin the funeral crowd, he found them wielding a screwdriver, ready to fasten Thomas Methven in once again.

  ‘Anything you want to put with him?’ said Margaret Penny, firmly in charge now. She had already removed every single scrap of cash from inside Thomas Methven’s suit, waited for it to be counted, before hiding it beneath her own. To pay for the hearse, she told them. And the flowers, perhaps even a stone. Not to mention Pastor Macdonald’s eulogy, chapter and verse. Solomon had watched as she did it, realized Margaret Penny’s fox was watching him back.

  There wasn’t much to put alongside Thomas Methven in his wooden box. Mrs Maclure placed her three spring roses on the dead man’s breastbone, where they lay like Walter Pringle’s three dead finches.

  Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

  Solomon’s aunt who wasn’t really his aunt sacrificed one of her heavy silver rings in memory of Thomas Methven’s long departed wife. Barbara Penny fished a small coin from her purse, slipped that in at the foot.

  ‘To pay the ferryman.’

  While Pawel tucked a reel of pink thread into the dead man’s pocket.

  ‘Just in case he needs to do a repair.’

  ‘What about his father’s notebook?’ said Margaret Penny, its cover stiff with age, blue horizontals and red verticals all faded now. ‘You’ll want to keep that, won’t you, to secure the inheritance for the next of kin? Or at least explain.’

  But Solomon shook his head, let her slide the notebook down the inside of Thomas Methven’s coffin, too. He was ninety-nine per cent sure that Iris Fortune would never sign for the cash now, if even half of his aunt’s story turned out to be correct.

  When it came to his turn, Solomon put in the most precious thing Mr Methven ever owned:

  A pawn ticket, no.125.

  That small slip of blue.

  It was funny what turned out to be valuable in the end.

  ‘There is one last thing,’ said Mrs Maclure, just before the final screws went in. ‘I found it wedged between some floorboards in the downstairs loo when I was sitting in one night.’

  A silver cap badge belonging to a member of the London Scottish, little lion raising its paw.

  ‘He was in the war, wasn’t he, Mr Methven,’ said Pawel. ‘I think it must be his.’

  ‘Toss it in then,’ insisted Solomon’s aunt.

  And before Solomon could interject, Mrs Maclure flipped the badge over the lip of Thomas Methven’s coffin, where it landed with a soft plink amongst the detritus of a life well lived.

  Strike Sure.

  There was one thing Solomon Farthing was left with at the end though, delivered to him by the men who turned up from the funeral parlour to help see Thomas Methven on his way at last. They handed it over as they slid the coffin onto one of their neat folding trolleys, wheeled Thomas Methven down the garden path between his roses and into the back of the hearse.

  ‘Did our boss a favour once,’ the undertaker said as he offered it to Solomon. ‘Kept him for you, just in case.’

  A box rimmed with dust, sticker on the top.

  Godfrey Farthing

  1893–1971

  His grandfather’s ashes, returned to Solomon after more than forty years away.

  1919

  Godfrey

  Godfrey Farthing came home to find spring spreading like a rash across England. Six months since the war had ended, and demobbed at last. He didn’t stop in London. Nor in the east. Not even in Hastings to visit his parents laid beneath their stone. Instead he stayed one night in a boarding house close to the port where he landed, then got on a train headed for the further reaches of the country, somewhere deep in the borderlands where England and Scotland touched.

  He had come to deliver a field postcard that he carried always in one pocket, I am quite well the only words not yet crossed out. Also a pawn ticket, no.125. One mother’s legacy to her only son. He brought a dog with him that walked with a limp now, back leg smashed beyond repair. But Godfrey Farthing thought the dog might prove popular amongst the boys where he was headed – a school for foundling children near the border with Scotland. A bonny place to live.

  Godfrey arrived when the sun was already long past its peak, the only one to disembark at the small station, train steaming on ahead. To the Athens of the North, he thought, as he tucked the dog beneath his arm, checked the directions scribbled on a scrap of paper. Somewhere that might be worth a visit one day.

  He walked to his destination through a land of rolling fields, before turning down what seemed like a never-ending drive. It was the beginning of a warm evening and he carried the dog looped over one arm, wondering what he might encounter when he arrived. Tea, perhaps, poured from an urn. Boys running in the yard. The sound of laughter as children played their ordinary games. Or maybe a field with buttercups and two types of clover, river running swift at the bottom of the hill.

  The shadows grew sharper as he approached, the sun starting its long fall from the sky as he came to it at last. A tall building hidden behind a fold in the land, grey walls and a turret, every little boy’s dream. But as he entered the courtyard, Godfrey Farthing knew from the flutter in his fingers that once again he was too late. Found the old home shut and boarded, all the windows covered, no men left to run it anymore. There were weeds poking through the gravel in the quad. Godfrey walked about the building one way, then about again, found nothing but emptiness and dilapidation, rather like the buildings he had left behind in France.

  The girl was sitting on the stump of an old tree by the gate as Godfrey finally took his leave.

  ‘I like your dog, mister,’ she called to him.

  He stopped to let her pet the thing, the creature turning its dark eyes upon her as she rubbed and coddled its head. The girl was fair, like Alec had been fair, her hair cut in the new fashion Godfrey saw all about him now. Bobbed, barely skimming her ears. At her feet was a basket covered in a cloth and a thousand little daisies, or thereabouts, pierced by her thumbnail, one attached to the next.

  ‘My name’s Daisy,’ the girl said when she saw Godfrey looking at the flowers. ‘Daisy Pringle.’

  And Captain Godfrey Farthing touched the pocket where he kept a field postcard, knew he had arrived at the right place at last. He was about to deliver his bad news when the girl got in first.

  �
��Have you come about the advert?’ she asked, eyes bright with hope.

  ‘What advert?’ replied Godfrey, confused for a second.

  Daisy Pringle pulled a newspaper from where she’d been sitting on it to keep her dress from getting stained.

  ‘This one,’ she said.

  The newspaper was from Scotland – the Borders Observatory – front page covered from masthead to foot in advertisements of all kinds. Martins for quality bread. The Pavilion for variety. Coal deliveries and spring goods. Godfrey noticed one offering home-sewn flannels, realized he might need some new trousers for himself now that the thing was at an end. Then he saw what Daisy Pringle was pointing at, a small text written out on a single line:

  WANTED: Home for a baby boy, 6 months old. Total surrender.

  Like the ending of the war. Then she pulled back the cloth covering the basket at her feet. And Godfrey Farthing peered in to find a child, smiling and kicking, hair bright as flax and two grey eyes looking back.

  The village that was home to the Borders Observatory was barely thirty miles further north, on the cusp of the line that separated England from the rest. Godfrey arrived the next morning to find flowers blooming in all the gardens, clematis and spring roses, as though nothing untoward had gone on. He asked about for the address, found it with no problem, knocked on the door then stood back to wait. He fiddled with a small notebook in his pocket as he waited for someone to answer. When the woman appeared, they stared at each other for a moment as though they could not believe that the other existed, before Godfrey held out his hand.

  ‘Captain Farthing,’ he said as they shook hands across the step. ‘How’s your boy?’

  Watched Mabel Methven’s eyes fill like the sea.

  The entire time they sat and drank tea together in Mabel Methven’s front room, all Godfrey could think about was the tick tick tick of his father’s old clock in the parlour at home. He must get the clock back from wherever it had gone, he thought, before he moved on to wherever he might go next. North, perhaps, away from the flatlands of his youth. Somewhere with hills and surprises round every corner, a place where one could not see what might be coming next. He realized at some point that Mabel Methven was talking about the north, too. About Edinburgh. How she might move there some day, to join her cousin who ran a shop.