‘How’s that? What do you mean?’
Oh Lord, signs of animation at last. If not grief, at least anxiety. Thomas was a conscientious lawyer, but he still liked alarming the client and enjoyed it when people gave themselves away. It always amazed him how mere information had the knack of creating anger, which was something he preferred to witness rather than experience first hand. Hence the love of football. Ritualised disharmony. Also Wagner. Anything with a tempest included, watched from a safe seat.
‘She insured her life, of course. She would have had to have done that, to get the mortgage. I did the legal work, I have those papers. A verdict of suicide, as such, can invalidate life policies. Most coroners are careful these days. A verdict of accidental death would be better. You aren’t really supposed to take out insurance and then kill yourself, any more than you’re allowed to insure your wife and then kill her. Simply not sporting. But yours, all yours, old son, pending evidence of other instructions, of course.’
‘So we want the Coroner to say something like accidental death while balance of mind disturbed?’
‘Yes. Especially if the insurance policy she took out on the mortgage has a suicide clause. It would diminish the estate quite a bit. Coroners rarely give a verdict of suicide. Even murder would be more convenient.’
Frank barked with horribly satisfied laughter.
‘How do you pay the bloke to get the words right? Get him to say she didn’t really mean it when she’s thrown herself out of a window in front of witnesses? For fuck’s sake, there can’t be much doubt about that, even if she was copying someone else.’
‘We all need doubts, Frank, no doubt about that.’
Thomas turned the old newspaper over in his hands and slipped it under the sofa. It was offensive. Let someone else take it away. He supposed that the money Marianne had left in his care was for practical things, like paying for cleaning and a funeral. Three days after her last occupation, and the place was already dusty. She had been the owner for less than a week. There was a bed, sofa, the rudiments of furniture. The rest she was going to buy new. There must be things stored with other friends.
‘You don’t pay coroners,’ he said. ‘You pray for their discretion.’
‘Surely Marianne would have known that suicide could invalidate insurance policies? She was a lawyer after all.’
‘One of the few female Queen’s Counsel, and the even fewer who made crime pay,’ Thomas answered. ‘But speaking as one who acts as a humble, domestic lawyer to many other lawyers, I’m beyond being surprised about how little they know about law outside their chosen field. And how little they take the legal advice they either dispense or receive. Such as making a will, minimising tax, that kind of thing. I doubt if she read her policies. Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty left. She was clever with property. She invested wisely.’
Frank Shearer moved from his view over the gardens at the back and sprawled on the sofa, testing the springs with his weight, as if already deciding whether he would keep it or not. Or maybe regretting that she had depleted what was going to be his inheritance by purchasing such a thing. He pulled a cream cushion on to his lap and picked at the braid around the edge, actions designed to irritate. The last buttocks to occupy that sofa were those of his dead sister. The indentation of her behind was still present, next to him. Thomas would have scalded himself rather than sit on it. Oh why, oh why, had she not made herself clear? There were too many whys buzzing around here, like angry wasps trapped in a room, such as why she had done it at all. There were all those possessions of hers, no doubt hidden with some other friend, maybe the will was there, too. Hope sprang in his mind and he kept his face bland. You’re like an old cat, Marianne had said. No one knows what you’re thinking, even when you purr.
‘I’m sure she didn’t make a will,’ Frank said. ‘Because, if she had, she would have told me what to expect. There was no love lost, if you see what I mean, but I’m still her only brother. Perhaps she jumped because she’d invested her all in the dream flat, and then found she was still fifty-one, past her sell-by date, still ugly and as lonely as ever.’
‘She wasn’t lonely,’ Thomas protested, guilty for leaving out the fact that beautiful she was not.
‘Don’t tell me she was popular.’
‘No… I mean yes. She never needed to spend an evening alone unless she wanted. She was a workaholic, not lonely. Have we finished here?’
He could not bear the sight of Frank Shearer unpicking a cushion as if he might find money inside it. Frank grinned at him.
‘Shame you don’t like me, old boy,’ he said. ‘’Cos we’re stuck with each other for a bit, aren’t we? That’s what she would have wanted. Everything sorted out fair and square in strict accordance with the law, and you in charge, looking after me.’
‘I don’t know what she wanted,’ Thomas said. ‘But I’ll act for you in the matter of her estate if you pay me. I’ll need to advertise and hire a probate researcher, just to ensure there’s no other beneficiaries. I’ve got Peter Friel on hand to do that.’
‘Look out those insurance policies, old boy. Smile at the taxman, cosy up to the Coroner, throw a few hissy fits, kiss arse and sleep with the enemy. That’s what she would have done, that’s what she did all the time. Anything for a result.’
The phone rang, eerily loud in the empty space. Thomas looked around for the source of the sound, coming from the small room stage left of where they were. He hovered, for once uncertain about a bizarre piece of etiquette such as who should be the one to answer a dead person’s phone. There was no precedent for that one. He moved towards it but Frank moved faster.
‘Hello, what d’ya want?’
‘Marianne? Is she there?’
‘Don’t you read the newspapers? She’s dead.’
Thomas stepped forward, seething with anger and grabbed the receiver from Frank’s hand.
‘Hello, who is this please?’
There was the sound of tumultuous breathing, like someone struggling for air.
‘I’m so sorry for that response,’ Thomas said. ‘You got Ms Shearer’s brother. He’s upset. Can I help you?’
More breathing. He waited.
‘I don’t read any newspapers, I make things for her, I have this dress, ready for her, and… I so sorry. Why she die?’
Why, oh why? Not enough to say I don’t know.
‘It seems she was very depressed,’ Thomas said, gently. ‘So depressed, she took her own life.’
The breathing became sharper.
‘Tha’s a lie. She not depressed. How can she be depressed? She had this dress, beautiful dress, she wanted it so bad. I don’ believe you. Someone gotta pay. She love it. Oh, nooooo…’
He paused. Another challenge to the good manners that dictated his life.
‘Can you give me your name?’ he asked quietly. ‘And send details of any outstanding bills to me? I assure you, they’ll be paid.’
He recited his address as he listened to the sound of noisy weeping.
‘I send what I want. I keep the dress, maybe. Now I’m the one depressed. Someone kill her, you hear?’
The phone was slammed down and the sound rang in his ears. He went back to the living room, shaken. Frank was on his feet, chucking the keys to the place from one hand to another, itching to move all of a sudden. The cold of the place got to them. With her usual efficiency, Marianne had turned off the heat before she left from her new home here, to go to a room in a hotel a hundred yards away in order to kill herself. She had been sure she would not need warmth when she came back.
He took the keys from Frank and Frank took one last look around. Thomas remembered as he closed the door on the empty space what it was that had impressed him about Marianne Shearer when they had first met, a decade before. Not beauty, for sure. Style. He wondered for the first time what exactly she had been wearing when she jumped.