And his family lived in Greece. Where he’d died. Funny.
The funeral tea was a great success mainly because old Miss Tooley had insisted on laying in a supply of bottled Guinness and Irish whisky. When Mirabelle, who was as near teetotal as wouldn’t have stirred the needle on a Breathalyzer, looked disapproving, Miss Tooley said, “Two things Daniel asked for in his will, one being the scattering of his ashes at the dog track — the other being that his friends should drink him slainte, and you can’t do that in tay!”
Mirabelle took her revenge when the old lady, in response to a question about her travelling plans, announced that, to be sure, she ought to be getting back, but the planes to Belfast were so packed now the peace was here, she doubted if she could get a seat for several days more.
“I’ve some good news for you there, Miss Tooley,” said Mirabelle, who’d just returned from her flat next door looking triumphant. “I’ve just been phoning my old friend Mrs. Marley’s daughter who works on the booking desk at the airport and when I told her how desperate you were to get back home, she played with that machine of hers and came up with a ticket for you on the eight-thirty flight tomorrow morning.”
“Eight-thirty?” said Miss Tooley in dismay. “Now how am I going to get up and find my way to the airport at such an ungodly hour?”
“Don’t you fret, my dear,” said Mirabelle. “I’ll see you don’t oversleep. And Joe here will drive you to the airport, won’t you, Joe?” Joe, having once again been given the proof that no one messed with Mirabelle, eschewed even token resistance and said, “My pleasure, Miss Tooley.”
It looked like game, set, and match to the home team till at the height of what was now undeniably a party, Miss Tooley screamed, “The ashes! I can’t go without scattering dear dead Daniel’s ashes!” and collapsed in a fit of what Mirabelle termed the vaporizers.
Joe knew what was going to happen before it happened and was already heading out of the Tooley apartment when his aunt announced. “Don’t you give that no nevermind, Miss Tooley. Joe will fetch them. And if you set out half an hour earlier, you’ll have plenty of time for the scattering.”
Joe looked at his watch. Quarter to seven. Would the ashes still be at the crem or would Lou have had them collected? Either way, would there be anybody in either spot to hand them over? For once in his life he acted sensibly and dived into Mirabelle’s flat and picked up the phone.
It rang ten times before it was picked up and Lou’s professionally sepulchral tones announced, “Webster Funerals. How may I help you?”
“Lou, it’s Joe. Listen, you got Mr. Tooley’s ashes yet?”
“Yes. Made sure of it. Mirabelle said the old lady would be flying home very soon.”
“Sooner than she thinks,” said Joe. “Listen, we need ’em now. Any chance you could bring them round?”
“No way. It’s the annual LAUFS dinner and I’m giving the address.”
“Laughs?” said Joe. “Didn’t know you did comedy, Lou.”
“Luton Association of Undertaking and Funeral Services,” said Lou. “And I’m late.”
“Sorry,” said Joe. “Any way I can collect them myself? It’s a matter of death and death.”
He’d hit the right note.
“What I’ll do is leave the key to the workshop entrance, that’s round the back by the garages, on the ledge above the door. The urn will be just inside. Lock up behind you and push the key through the front door. And don’t hang about getting here. I get burgled, it’s down to you.”
“Thanks, Lou. I’ll be there five minutes tops.”
It was a lie. He knew it was a lie as soon as he got out into the cold night air and realized just how much he’d enjoyed of old Miss Tooley’s Irish hospitality. The car was out, and the Rasselas Estate was not the kind of place that taxis cruised.
He set off walking, wasted time waiting for a bus, saw three sweep by in convoy when he was between stops, took a shortcut, got lost, and was resigning himself to the last indignity for a P.I. of having to ask his way when he saw the sign, Webster’s Funerals.
He made his way round the back. There was a car parked in the shadow of the garages, a BMW. Lou must be doing well, thought Joe, glad it wasn’t a hearse. He took out the pencil torch he carried and ran its finger of light over the door ledge till he found the key.
As he took it down and poked the finger of light into the keyhole, a distant clock struck eight.
Superstitiously, he felt mightily relieved it wasn’t midnight.
The relief was short-lived.
Midnight was nothing, a time to frighten kids with telling ghost stories round the fire.
When you were standing outside a darkened funeral parlour and the door swung open at the mere touch of the key, didn’t matter what time of day it was, that was really scary.
He stepped inside, telling himself Lou had been careless and forgotten to lock the door. He didn’t believe himself, but that didn’t always mean he was wrong, any more than believing himself had ever meant he was right. He was in a long stone-flagged corridor. His torchlight dribbled onto an urn standing against the wall. He picked it up and gave it a little shake. It was full, presumably of Mr. Tooley.
Now was the time to withdraw, lock the door, and if in the morning it turned out someone had stolen all Lou’s gilt-edged coffin handles, say, “Hey man, I’m sorry, but I didn’t notice a thing.”
He took a step backwards. And heard a noise.
It was not the kind of noise you wanted to hear in the kind of place he was hearing it in. It was sort of frictional, like wood being dragged across wood, as in, say, a coffin lid being dragged off a coffin. Also it was so loud you couldn’t pretend you hadn’t heard it, though he was doing his best.
Then came a second sound, this one human, like a gasp, or a groan, perhaps even a yuck!
Joe went cataleptic for thirty seconds, or it might have been thirty minutes. When the power of thought returned, he wished it hadn’t, for it was a funny thing, but now that he was really scared, there was no choice but to go forward and take a look. Something wrong there, surely?
A lesser man might have used this interesting psychological contradiction as an excuse to stand still and ponder, but Joe’s anti-intellectual feet were already carrying him steadily down the dark corridor. As he moved, he felt his senses sharpened by fear. He could feel the sensuous curve of the urn he was still carrying like a cupped breast; he could hear smaller sounds, rustling, heavy-breathing sounds; he could see the outline of the door behind which they were being made, and he could smell a whole complex of smells. In it were woodshavings and embalming fluid, the things you’d expect in such a place, plus a heavier, muskier, and somehow familiar perfume. And finally, as he gently pushed on the unresisting door, blotting all these out completely, he was hit by the foul and fetid stench of rotting flesh!
On the last turn of the hinge the door squeaked, and so did the redheaded woman standing by an open coffin with a funerary urn in her hands, and on her handsome face, lurid in the light of a fluorescent lantern perched on a workbench, an expression of mixed shock and guilt.
“Hello, Mrs. Levine,” said Joe. “Still looking for talent?”
She recovered quickly, you had to give her that.
“Jesus Christ, it’s you, the baritone blackbird! What the hell are you doing here? Not where you work, is it?”
As she spoke she put the urn on the workbench and from a large canvas toolbag removed a long slender screwdriver which glinted like a stiletto in the light. Joe eyed it uneasily.
“No,” he said. “Actually, I’m a P.I., a private investigator.”
And not someone you should mess with was his intended implication, but instead it sent her into peals of laughter.