Some Deaths Before Dying

JENNY

“For heaven’s sake! Not that tie with that shirt! Here, this one.”

(Left to himself, even when not in a hurry, Jeff would have dressed in whatever was out—yesterday’s clothes or something, perhaps still slightly damp off the bathroom clothesline—rather than go to the trouble of opening a drawer and choosing. His ensembles tended therefore towards the random.)

“And stop worrying. I’ll be all right. He won’t have a clue who I am, anyway.”

“I was thinking if you took the bloody thing with you, it might jog his memory. Look. Take it, see how it goes, and if it looks—”

“Jeff! Stop it! Your lace-up shoes, not those horrible brown things. And your good coat. You’ve got three minutes. I’m doing your thermos.”

He came down the stairs like a falling boulder. She had the door open, locked it behind him and ran for the car. All the way to the station he rabbitted on about Uncle Albert, but she was too busy making time through traffic to pay attention. They reached the station with forty-five seconds to spare. “All right,” she said. “I’ll see Sister Morris first. I’ll take the gun and show him if I think it’ll help. I’ll cope, right? And this evening you’ll come home and tell me that Sir Vidal has ordered Billy’s public disembowelment. Kiss me.”

He did, and loped away. She watched him out of sight, and drove home to make herself breakfast feeling weirdly unresentful that a tycoon’s whim should have cost them one of these free days together.

* * *

Marlings Retirement Home had originally been built, apparently, by a successful tea planter when he had returned to England with his family just before the First World War. Jenny was unsystematically interested in that kind of thing. She had never been to India, but she felt she might have guessed about the house—wide-eaved, with a deep verandah of dark brown wood, occupying the crest of a low ridge, with dense rhododendrons all along the drive, and behind them droop-branched conifers that might as well have been deodars but presumably weren’t. Anyway, it didn’t feel as if it really belonged in England. Perhaps it wouldn’t have felt right in India either, because it didn’t actually belong anywhere. This made it a bit depressing for the kind of place it now was, full of people sitting and waiting, sitting and waiting, the way one does in airports when one’s flight’s delayed. There’s nothing to do here and nowhere else to go.

Sister Morris was a heavy, dark-skinned woman with a faintly scowling look which Jeff said didn’t mean anything.

“I was hoping to see Mr. Pilcher,” she said. “Thing is, we’ve had a bit of bother about Albert. There was a gentleman came a couple of days back—no, I’m a liar, Friday it would’ve been—said he thought he’d look in seeing he was passing so close. Matson, he said his name was, and his dad had been in the war with Albert. Be that as may be, he sounded all right, but when I told Albert he pulled me up sharp. It was Colonel Matson, he told me, and anyway he was dead and Albert knew that ’cause he’d been to the funeral. I told him, no, that must’ve been this Mr. Matson’s father, and Albert went all stubborn the way he does, and said he didn’t want to see him, but I persuaded him. They get things into their heads, you know, but seeing the gentleman had come all this way, from Devon, he told me…

“Turned out Albert was right and I was wrong, ’cause I’d not left them alone five minutes when Albert was shouting from the top of the stair to me to come and show the gentleman out. He can shout too when he puts his mind to it. So up I run and there’s the gentleman trying to calm him down but I could see it wasn’t any good so I had to tell him he’d better go.”

“Did you tell him anything about Jeff looking after Uncle Albert’s affairs?”

“No, I didn’t. I was just set on getting shot of him quick as I could, and he’d lost his rag and was trying to put it over me in that hoity-toity voice of his and I wasn’t standing for that. Good as a play it must’ve been for the other old dears by then. Should I have told him about Mr. Pilcher?”

“No, I’m sure Jeff would say you did right. It was just that he came and saw me, later that evening, and pretended he didn’t know anything about Uncle Albert living here…I wonder how he found me…Never mind. Anyway, I know what this is about. Mr. Matson is trying to get hold of something belonging to Uncle Albert. I can’t tell you any more. I’m sorry.”

“Well, I’m not letting him come bothering Albert again, and that’s for sure. The poor old boy’s been that fussed since it happened, not wanting to come down for meals in case the gentleman showed up.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll see what I can do, but I’m not sure he’ll listen to me. He doesn’t usually remember who I am, especially with Jeff not here. Is he up in his room? I’ll go straight up, shall I?”

From her first visit Jenny had been impressed by how they did things at Marlings. The stair carpet was thick, the elaborate dark woodwork dusted and polished. There were cyclamen and heavy-scented narcissi in pots on sills and landings. The staff had time for you. Jenny had merely appreciated these things on earlier visits, but this time she saw them not under the pleasant glow of civilised behaviour towards the elderly, but in the more acid light of cost. Uncle Albert’s pension, with the annuity from his savings, didn’t make up half the Marlings fees. Jeff supplied the rest. This hadn’t been difficult out of one excellent salary and one reasonable one, but it would be impossible with both jobs gone.

She went down a corridor, passing two fire doors, and knocked at a room labelled “Mr. Fredricks.”

“Who’s that?” snapped a voice. Even without what Sister Morris had told her Jenny might have detected the note of anxiety. She opened the door and put her head round.

“It’s me, Jenny, Jeff’s wife,” she said.

He was sitting in an upright armchair with a newspaper across his knees, a gaunt old man with a large, high-bridged nose and a thin mouth. He was wearing a suit and tie, and brown laced shoes, polished to a high sheen.

“Thank you, my dear,” he said, “but I don’t need anything just now.”

“Hello, Uncle Albert,” she said, paying no attention. “I’m afraid Jeff couldn’t come at the last moment. He sent his love. I’ve brought some fruit. Shall I put it in the bowl?”

“That’s right.”

She did so, then adjusted the other chair so that she was almost facing him, and sat down. He was only a little deaf, but on earlier visits he had seemed to find the lighter timbre of her voice harder to hear than Jeff’s. After the fraught, irrational apprehension of her first visit, when, in spite of Jeff’s assurances that Uncle Albert was a nice old boy in excellent health, she had really needed to force herself to go through with it, for Jeff’s sake, Uncle Albert’s room now held no horror for her. His grasp of present reality might waver, but the habits of order and cleanliness persisted. All his possessions had their exact places. There was none of the reek which pervades the air around some of the old. The visitor’s only difficulty was keeping a conversation going.

Jeff’s technique was to talk much as he would have to anyone else, a little more slowly but no louder, and if the old boy got hold of the wrong end of the stick, not to correct him, but either to carry on or, if it looked more promising, to go off in the new direction. He said you never knew how much Uncle Albert would pick up, but he would spot it at once if you were trying to make things easy for him.

“I’m sorry Jeff couldn’t come,” she said. “So’s he. It happened only this morning. In fact we were still asleep when the phone rang. The thing is, Jeff had a row with his immediate boss and walked out. Or he was sacked—it depends how you look at it. Anyway, the call was from someone who works for the top guy in the whole company, saying the big man wanted to see Jeff today, in Birmingham, about the row. It looks like being his one chance to put his case…”

He was peering at her, frowning.

“Dyed your hair, then?” he said.

“No, it’s always been this colour.”

“Not since I’ve known you, it hasn’t, and then you were just about so high. You took after your dad, that way. Comes of living in America. They’re always messing around with how they look, Americans. Your lad’s not coming today, then? What’s his name? I’ll get it in a minute.”

The gnarled fingers groped for the memory.

“Jeff,” she said. “He had to go to Birmingham all of a sudden. He sent his love.”

“That’s right, Jeff. A good enough lad. You’ve done very well by him, Penny.”

Jenny grasped the nature of the confusion, shrugged inwardly, and settled for the moment into the role of being her own mother-in-law.

“I’m glad you think so,” she said. “I’m very proud of him.”

“Jeff,” he said, frowning again. “There’s something—you tell him—something he’s looking after for me.”

He fell silent, staring at her with obvious distrust. Jenny didn’t hesitate. If she pretended ignorance now, what if he remembered that when she admitted knowledge later? Anyway, she wanted to get it over.

“Your pistol, you mean?” she said.

The stare hardened to chilly ferocity. He hadn’t done this to her before. It was as if an old family myth of Jeff’s, a quirk from his childhood, had stalked living and potent into the room.

“What do you know about that?” he said in a quiet, level voice, seeming to bite each word off to separate it from the next. “Who the hell are you, anyway, coming here making out you’re my niece. You’re not.”

“I’m Jeff’s wife, Jenny,” she said. “Look, I’ve brought the pistol to show you it’s all right, and Jeff’s still got it.”

She took the parcel out of her shoulder bag and gave it to him. He opened the box, checked that the pistol was there, closed it and put it on the table beside him, all without acknowledgement or comment.

“Do you want me to tell you what happened?” she said.

“If you think you’ve something to say for yourself, miss, say it.”

His tone was unmollified.

“Jeff put it carefully away, like you asked him,” she explained. “I found it when I was looking for something else. I didn’t know what it was, so I left it out to ask him about when he got home. Then…”

His look didn’t soften as she told the story. She couldn’t guess how much he was taking in, but if she paused he nodded to her to carry on.

“…so when Jeff got home I told him what had happened, and he said I’d better come and see you, and tell you. I’m sorry, Uncle Albert. Of course I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known it was yours.”

He continued to stare at her, conceding nothing, but she remained unquelled. She could see how this look might once have awed paraded regiments, but it had no effect on her. It lacked the password to her controls.

“What about Dick Matson, then?” he said. “Put you up to this, did he?”

“No. He showed up on my doorstep the evening after he’d seen you and tried to persuade me that the pistol belonged to him. I didn’t believe him. I thought he wasn’t telling the truth about several things.”

“He’s no good. Never was. Scum. What did he say to you?”

She told him, still slowly and carefully, getting the impression now that he was listening with something like comprehension, though for a while he simply watched her as before, in silence. She wasn’t expecting it when he broke in.

“Hold it there. She’s still alive, Mrs. Matson,” he said.

“Yes, but I gather she’s not very well.”

“I want to see her. Where is she? Still at Forde Place, eh?”

“He didn’t say. Where’s that, Uncle Albert?”

“Forde Place, Matlock, Derbyshire.”

He was heaving himself to his feet, a little tottery after long sitting.

“Derbyshire’s too far, Uncle Albert. We can’t go now. We’ll have to ring up and see if she’s there, and ask if she’s well enough to see you.”

“I’ll just get my coat.”

“No, Uncle Albert. You can’t go today. It’s too far.”

She took his arm, but he shook her off and started for the door. She ran to bar the way, but the pulse of energy died and he let her lead him back to his chair and settle him dejectedly down.

“Listen,” she said. “I’ve got a few days off, and so has Jeff. I’ll try and find out where Mrs. Matson is and talk to whoever is looking after her, and if they say she’d like to see you we’ll find a way of getting you up there. Is that all right?”

“Have to be, won’t it?”

“I can call Directory Enquiries, I suppose, but…Have you got an old address book? Only they’ll have changed the number. Can I look in your papers, Uncle Albert?”

“Carry on. Bottom drawer.”

He sounded beaten, indifferent, exhausted. Jenny knelt by the chest of drawers and pulled out the lowest one. Most business correspondence came to Jeff, and Marlings redirected anything that came there except the obviously personal. Jeff made copies and then took the originals over on his next visit, went through them with Uncle Albert and then “filed” anything that Uncle Albert took it into his head that he needed to keep. It was mostly pointless, but Jeff said it helped feed the sense of orderliness and control which was part of what kept Uncle Albert in such good shape.

The filing was done in large brown envelopes, each labelled and dated in Jeff’s elegant, slanting hand—so much more characteristic, Jenny thought, of his inward self than was most of his outward mien. She tried “Keepsakes.” It was mostly postcards, including, she was amused to see, one from Jeff on their honeymoon on Teneriffe. Otherwise it was letters and clippings from newspapers—what, she wondered, had moved Uncle Albert to preserve a photograph and report of an agricultural steam machine rally?

The “Personal” file was no better, but the “Military” produced the goods, a list of addresses, stapled into a booklet, of the Cambi Road Association (Patron Mrs. J. J. Matson). She glanced through it. There were forty or fifty names, and at the end a dozen short obituaries. Everyone was listed by military rank with regiment: RSM A. D. Fredricks, 2nd Derbyshire, c/o Pilcher, 238 Ashford Road, Maidstone. Mrs. Matson was the one civilian. Her address was still given as Forde Place.

“Here you are,” said Jenny, showing him. “Just like you said.”

She pointed at the line. His eyesight was remarkable. He had spectales, but could read print without them by holding the paper only an extra few inches away.

“Right,” he said. “I’ll be taking the train.”

Again, but much less decisively, he started to rise.

“No, it’s much too late,” she said, coaxing him back down. “Look, as soon as I get home I’ll ring the secretary—his number’s here, Mr. Stadding…”

“Major Stadding—he’s dead. Saw it happen. No doubt about it. Ask Terry Voss.”

There was an odd note in his remark which made Jenny look round at him. Anger or something? His face gave her no clue. She checked the date on the front of the list.

“It’s this year’s,” she said. “I suppose it might be his son, or something.”

“Simon. Now, he’s a good lad. Going to marry Miss Anne, one point, only he didn’t. What about him?”

“I’ll call him and see if he’ll let me have Mrs. Matson’s number and then I’ll call whoever’s looking after her and ask if there’s any chance of you going up to see her, and then, if she says yes, we can work out how and when. All right? But what we’ll do now—it’s such a lovely afternoon—is go for a drive and have tea somewhere, and then I’ll bring you back. Would you like that?”

“If you say so.”

“Do you want to go to the bathroom first?”

“Might as well.”

He rose obediently and left the room. Jenny made a note of Mr. Stadding’s number, tidied the files away, put the pistol in its box and then in her bag. On Uncle Albert’s return he looked at her sharply.

“Who are you, then?”

“I’m Jenny, Jeff’s wife. We’re going out for a drive.”

“Going to Forde Place, you mean?”

“Not today, Uncle Albert. There isn’t time.”

He enjoyed the drive. They stopped at a sports field and watched schoolboys playing soccer, and ate at a tea room below the Downs, after which she shepherded him round a supermarket so that he could buy a packet of ginger nuts. On the way back to Hastings he slept, effortlessly balancing his head upright, unperturbed by the movement of the car.

“Wake up, Uncle Albert,” she said as they climbed the Marlings drive.

He leaned forward to stare through the window screen.

“No,” he said sharply. “You’ve got it wrong, young lady. That’s never Forde Place.”

“We’re not going to Forde Place today. There isn’t time. But when I get home I’ll—”

“If you say so,” he interrupted and groped for the door catch. She went round and helped him climb out, slowly and stiffly, looking very much his age. When she’d got him up to his room and settled him into his chair she asked him whether he wanted her to leave the pistol or take it back to Jeff to look after.

“Do that, if you like,” he said, and fell asleep.”

She looked for Sister Morris, to tell her about the pistol, but she was busy with one of the other patients, so she just told one of the junior staff that she’d brought Uncle Albert home and drove back to Maidstone.

There were two messages on the machine, one from Jeff, saying he would be on the eight forty-eight, and things had gone pretty well, he thought, and the other from Sister Morris, asking her or Jeff to call as soon as possible. She did so, and was told that Uncle Albert had twice been stopped trying to leave, once needing to be chased down the drive. He said he had to catch a train to London, and he was very upset about something he’d lost, but refused to say what it was. They’d given him a sedative and he was quieter now, but they didn’t like doing that more than they had to.

“I know what this is about,” Jenny said. “I was going to ring you anyway, in case. Tell him that Jeff’s got this thing and is looking after it. You may need to remind him that Jeff is Penny’s son. Penny is Uncle Albert’s niece. He sometimes thinks I’m Penny. He wants to go see an old lady in Derbyshire. I’m trying to get hold of her, to see if anything can be arranged. I’ll let you know as soon as I can. With a bit of luck he’ll have forgotten all about it by tomorrow. But I don’t think he will.”

A woman’s voice, quavering and anxious, answered the telephone. Jenny asked to speak to Mr. Stadding.

“Could you tell me what it’s about?”

“It’s to do with the Cambi Road Association.”

“Oh, dear. Well, I’ll see. Please wait.”

There was a long pause, and then a man’s voice, slow, weary.

“Well, how can I help you?”

“Mr. Stadding? My name’s Jenny Pilcher. My husband—”

“Pilcher who deals with old Fredricks’s affairs?”

“That’s right. Jeff’s away, but I visited Uncle Albert today and—”

“One moment. You’re in Maidstone, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I’ll explain in a moment. Carry on please.”

Jenny did so. When she’d finished she heard him sigh, as if her apparently simple request posed immense problems.

“I don’t normally give telephone numbers,” he said. “The rule is that you have to write to the member in question, care of the Association, at this address, and I will then forward your letter. However, I have reason to believe that Mrs. Matson, or rather her daughter, Flora Thomas, is trying to get in touch with you. She called only this morning to ask if any of the members lived in Maidstone. I told her no, because I send Fredricks’s stuff direct to that place in Hastings, and it slipped my mind that your husband is in the list at Maidstone. I think this must be more than mere coincidence, so what I suggest is that I call Mrs. Thomas now and tell her what’s happened, and then it will be up to her. So if you’d give me your number to pass on…”

“That’ll do fine. Thank you very much. Ready?”

The call came through in twenty minutes.

“Mrs. Pilcher?”

“Speaking.”

“Now let’s get this straight before we start. Are you the one who took a Ladurie pistol to The Antiques Roadshow, the one that was shown—Sunday before last, it would have been?”

Jenny paused, unprepared. The voice was sharp, a bit county, bossy in a lively way.

“I’m afraid I’m not in a position to say anything about that,” she said.

“Oh, come off it. It’s quite simple. You’ve got my father’s Ladurie pistol. I’ve no idea how you got hold of it, but it belongs to my mother and we want it back.”

With her wits now about her Jenny had no problem remaining professionally unruffled.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but what I told you was the truth. The pistol isn’t mine and I shouldn’t have taken it to the show. I’m not in a position to talk about it. I have no standing in the affair. All I can do is to pass on anything you wish to say to the person concerned, who may then be prepared to discuss it with you.”

There was a pause, and a frustrated exhalation.

“Can I tell you why I wanted to get in touch with you?” said Jenny.

“Has it got anything to do with the pistol?”

“I don’t know, and if I did I couldn’t tell you.”

“Bother you. You talk like a lawyer.”

“I’m a solicitor…”

“Ha!”

“…but I’m not acting for anyone in this. Really, I’m not.”

Another pause.

“All right. You’d better tell me what you want.”

“It’s about my husband’s great-uncle, who’s an old man called Albert Fredricks—”

“Sergeant Fred!”

“Yes, he was a sergeant major in the Second Derbyshire Regiment, I believe.”

“That’s right. Such a dear. Salt of the earth. How is he? Getting a bit doddery, I suppose.”

“Physically he’s in very good shape for his age, but his memory’s pretty erratic. He’s in a retirement home in Hastings, and being very well looked after. I took him for a drive this afternoon.”

“Good for you. Go on.”

“Well, while we were talking Mrs. Matson’s name came up—that’s your mother, isn’t it?—and Uncle Albert took it into his head he wanted to come and see her about something that’s bothering him. He wouldn’t tell me what, but he got very upset about it. He wanted to start off at once, and to keep him quiet I told him I’d try and get hold of Mrs. Matson and see if it was a possibility. He may have forgotten all about it by tomorrow but I don’t think so. After I went he was trying to leave the home to catch a train to London.”

“Good for him. This has got to have something to do with the pistol, hasn’t it?… Oh, all right, you’re not going to tell me. Look, my mother’s the other way round from Sergeant Fred—I mean she’s paralysed and bedridden and can’t talk much, but she’s absolutely all there mentally. I’ll talk to her and see what she says. Then it’ll be a question of getting him up here. You could put him on a train… No, he’d have to have somebody with him, wouldn’t he, or he’d get out at the wrong station. I think we’d better send a car. Would he be up to that? It’s three hours plus from London, make it five from Hastings—he’d have to stay the night—does he need nursing? I could arrange—”

“If you’re serious, I think he’ll have to come with someone he knows,” said Jenny. “I suppose I could drive him up. If Jeff—that’s my husband—if Jeff’s free, he could come and share the driving. I’ve got a few days off, so it’d have to be this week…”

Jenny was uncertain how she had reached a point where she could be thinking about the trip as a possibility. It was something to do with being, for this week only, a completely free agent, free, even, from her own rational needs, with just her whims and desires to satisfy.

“Take a week off to think about it,” Jerry had said, but there was no thinking to do. Millie had worked for Trevor for twenty years. Selina’s partner had left her and the kids just before Christmas, and not been traced for maintenance. Dave was getting married. Trevor himself was dying. And so on. Anyway, what was the point? The only moral certainty that Jenny had been able to grasp was that she would have to leave. That was fixed. When she’d left, she would try to decide whether to tell Mr. McNair that he’d been right about the docket. But for this week she was in limbo. So was Jeff—not officially sacked, not until this morning working. The car too—theirs and not theirs, for this week only. And the house—there were things to be fixed before they could put it on the market, but the decision couldn’t yet be made…

Thus it didn’t, until she had put the telephone down and thought about it, strike Jenny as odd that she should have pretty well agreed with this stranger that she and Jeff might use one, or perhaps two, of their precious days to take Uncle Albert up to Matlock to visit a bedridden old lady, though when she’d first spoken of it it had been little more than the easiest way to persuade him back into his chair.

“And besides,” she told Jeff over supper, “I really want to know about the pistol. I’m inquisitive.”

“I’m not,” he said wearily. “I just want it out of my hair. Do I have to ring this woman tonight?”

“It’s a bit late. Tomorrow…Look, I’ll do it, if you want. And if she says yes, I’ll take Uncle Albert up there and sort out about the pistol with her. I’ll do you a couple of lines for you to sign, giving me authority. I’d better look up the law relating to gifts…”

“My impression is that Uncle Albert doesn’t actually think it belongs to him. None of that matters, anyway, provided he finishes up happy about it. Do you think you can do it in a day?”

“If I can’t I’m not going. It’s unlucky sleeping apart, I’ve decided. Bad things happen. You’ll be all right for a day?”

“I’ll be fine. When you’re here, I keep wanting to break off. In fact, one good solid day, when I can really concentrate, would be a help. I’ve got the stuff on disk, but it’s all over the shop and pretty technical. See if you can fix Matlock for the day after tomorrow, then I’ll spend tomorrow sorting out what I need—that’s just a question of time—and I’ll have two days to get it into a shape Sir Vidal can understand. That’s going to be the tricky bit.”

“I’m worried about him wanting to take you over, sort of absorb you, the way Billy tried. These guys think you’re a gizmo, Jeff. There’s plenty of gizmos out there, but you’re the best, and they want you for themselves.”

“I had a thought on the train. Suppose I went freelance, and you packed it in with Barlow and Ames and ran the business side…”

“…and get to come with you to Paris and Bermuda as part of the package…”

“It’ll just as likely be Flint, Michigan.”

“Not if I’m running the business side, it won’t.”

“There’s that. Right. I’ll take the car back Friday, and clear my desk. But first I’m going to screw Billy.”