He gave a little, confused shake of his head.
‘Perhaps you think I should be offering to come to the house, as a kind of housekeeper. But I can’t see that working, Graham.’
‘No.’ His voice still sounded puzzled.
‘I can’t really see us as a foursome,’ she continued with her customary bluntness. ‘I’m just talking about the children.’
‘Yes. I understand that.’ But he didn’t sound as if he understood.
‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have barged in like this. Maybe you don’t want Henry and Emma to leave the house. Maybe you’d rather get in some sort of professional housekeeper. .’
Oh no, that sounds expensive, thought Graham. His mind was absolutely made up, but the scene, he knew, required some token prevarication.
‘I’m sorry, it’s a bit sudden. .’
He looked at Charmian. The grey eyes were tense, dependent on his response.
What she had offered made excellent sense from every point of view. She had a core of common sense which the rest of the family lacked, and her current feud with her mother was bound to minimise Lilian’s influence.
Once again he felt the strange need to confide in her, to confess his murder — no, he wasn’t doing himself justice — his two murders. He felt a need for outside commendation. Again he missed his parents. He knew it was idiotic, but he wanted to phone them, to hear their impressed and reverent silence as he described his latest success. In his parents’ absence, Charmian seemed the most likely person to give him the reaction he needed.
He felt very drawn to her. Sex played no part in the attraction. Sex was now a vague recollection from his past, like a journey walked daily to school, presumably important at the time, but instantly forgotten once discontinued.
Charmian’s grey eyes looked sympathetic. She had said she always hated Merrily. She had said she would like to shake her sister’s killer by the hand. Graham wanted to see the eyes light up with surprise and admiration when he told her of his achievement.
‘Charmian, there’s something you don’t know. .’
‘Yes. What?’
He suddenly realised what he was about to do, and stepped back from the brink. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t. . I’m confused. .’
Again she misread the cause of his incoherence.
‘I know it’s a shock. Take time. Let the idea sink in. Think about it. Or ask me any details you want to know.’
‘Yes. yes.’ And with the broken delivery masking the baldness of the question, he asked, ‘What about money?’
‘Money?’
‘Yes. I mean, if you were to look after them, you couldn’t do it for nothing.’
‘Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, I had thought about that.’ She had. Sensible woman. She had thought it out in some detail and she presented her suggestions with clarity. The appeal of the idea to Graham increased. It would move the obligation to his children to that area of contractual agreement he so favoured.
But the greatest appeal of Charmian’s proposal lay in how little she was asking. With no mortgage repayments and the children mopped up by such a modest monthly outlay, he was going to be quids in. True, there were school fees, but they couldn’t possibly get to their current schools from Islington, and he recalled with relish that Charmian was a great advocate of State education. Still, time enough to sort that out.
He felt light-headed. He couldn’t believe with how little effort everything was working for him. That the force of Charmian’s hatred of her mother should be channelled so conveniently was pure serendipity. What she had offered him completed his desires. He had removed his wife from his life. Charmian was proposing to do the same service for his son and daughter. And, incidentally, for his mother-in-law.
All was quiet when he returned to the Boileau Avenue house. He had taken a taxi all the way, feeling he deserved a little pampering and celebration. He had contained the urge to leap about and shout for joy until he got home.
Inside he found the post, which had been neglected in the upheaval of the cremation. Amongst other less important items was a letter from the broker through whom he had arranged the mortgage.
From a flurry of condolence, one hard fact emerged. The letter confirmed that, following the tragic death of his wife, the outstanding mortgage on the Boileau Avenue house would be paid off by the insurance policy.
It had all worked. Graham poured himself half a tumbler of Scotch and, drinking it, began to laugh, softly at first. But as the tensions of the past weeks, of the old man’s murder, of Merrily’s murder, of the inquest, the cremation, drained out of him, the laughter increased in volume.
He was aware after a time of the door being opened and of Lilian’s bemused face framed in the space. Hers was soon joined by the shocked faces of Henry and Emma.
And the sight made Graham Marshall laugh all the more.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
An unpleasant shock awaited Graham the next morning. He had not been in to work since Merrily’s death, claiming a week of compassionate leave.
When he walked into his office he found that his desk had been moved from its central position to one side and directly opposite it was an identical desk, at which sat a young man in an open-necked shirt and brown leather blouson. The young man smoked a small cigar. Graham recognised him as Terry Sworder, one of the brighter Personnel Officers who had been recruited from Operations Research Department.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
The young man looked up at the question. ‘Oh, hi. Very sorry to hear about your wife.’
The sentiment was delivered without interest, purely as a matter of convention. Ironically, though Graham was not aware of the irony, he felt affronted that the young man was not showing more respect for the dead.
‘Thank you. But that doesn’t answer my question. What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Oh, Bob asked me to sit in while you’re away,’ Terry Sworder replied languidly.
‘Bringing your desk with you is a rather elaborate way of “sitting in”. If your presence was really necessary, I wouldn’t have minded you sitting at mine.’
The young man shrugged. ‘Bob said I might as well make myself at home since we’re going to be working together.’
‘Who’s going to be working together?’
‘You and me, pal.’
‘On what?’
‘Bob reckons it’s daft not having someone who can use the computer in this office, so I’m going to be here to help you with that.’
‘Oh, are you?’
Terry Sworder seemed not to notice the sarcastic emphasis. ‘Yes. We’re going to put in a terminal over there.’ He gestured vaguely to the corner of the room.
‘And you’re really asking me to believe that you’re going to stay in here?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘We’ll see about that.’
Graham stalked out of the door and set out along the corridor towards Robert Benham’s office.
The Head of Personnel Designate’s secretary directed him to the office of the retiring Head of Personnel. ‘Bob’s with George, I think.’
Graham didn’t like the way Robert Benham had suddenly become ‘Bob’ to everyone. It betokened a certain mateyness of management style that didn’t appeal to him. He didn’t want the Personnel Department filled with scruffy young men in denims calling everyone by Christian names. Christian names should be reserved for colleagues at the same level, and their use extended beyond that by invitation only.
He met George Brewer in the corridor outside his office. The old man was moving about nervously, as if anxious to get to the Gents, but his movement had no direction.
‘Graham, hello. Very sorry to hear about Merrily. I know how I felt when my own wife. . when … I … I don’t know what to say.’
Again Graham felt that this response was only just adequate. He said yes, it had been a terrible shock, and the reality of what had happened would only sink in gradually, and he would have to learn to live with it, and he thought hard work was going to be his best therapy for the time being.