And Elizabeth?’ asked Anselm.
‘She is in the middle. A late and only child. A beaming girl of ten in ribbons and bows. It was an age, she once said, that seemed perfect in every way She was young enough to appreciate that she was a child, and old enough to consciously enjoy it.’ Sister Dorothy swung Anselm a glance. ‘That is the photograph of the Glendinning family.’
‘How did the inventor make his fortune?’ asked Anselm roguishly.
‘By dying,’ she replied.
Elizabeth was born when her mother was nearly fifty, explained Sister Dorothy Her father was already in his early sixties. It was a late match, and a contented one. They had found companionship after having long accepted that loneliness would take the greater portion of their days. Elizabeth’s coming was a boon and, like many booms, unforeseen. But the unforeseen was to lay its heaviest hand upon the child. The year after the portrait was taken, her father came down from the attic grumbling about a trip switch. He turned on a wireless, sipped a glass of milk, closed his eyes and promptly died — as if he’d blown the fuse box. The doctor said he’d reached a fine old age. The fellow might not have had a policy named after him, but he did take one out on his life: his nearest and dearest were amply provided for. A year later Elizabeth’s mother died from septicaemia arising from a trivial leg injury Her father, however, had taken out another, even larger, policy and Elizabeth, at fourteen, found herself without either parent but the beneficiary of a very healthy trusted income.
‘People are odd, aren’t they?’ observed Sister Dorothy shaking her head. ‘Elizabeth’s father had filled in all these forms, but he hadn’t made out a will. She had no legal guardian. And there were no relatives chomping at the bit. So the court had to get involved. In the end, it was a judge who sent Elizabeth in our direction.’
The congregation ran a boarding school in Carlisle. (Where, deduced Anselm, you were matron.) So Elizabeth became a pupil, but not without a period of considerable adjustment. The first years after the death of her parents were marked by rebelliousness and grief. She started coming to the dispensary when there was little if anything wrong with her. Headaches. Stomach aches. Splinters. But Elizabeth began talking to this young nun whose veil kept crashing into cabinets and doors —Sister Dorothy would never get used to the contraption.
‘But she did very well, in the end,’ she said proudly ‘When she went to university, I gave her The Following of Christ.’
In a curious way Anselm felt stumped. He couldn’t tell her —as he’d intended — that Elizabeth had cut a hole in its pages. At a stroke, everything to do with the trial had been closed down. He did not feel capable of revealing that the book, her gift, had been permanently damaged. A question left his mouth before he could admire its excellence. ‘When did you last see her?’
‘Forty years ago.’ Sister Dorothy spoke vaguely as if she were drifting towards sleep. She’d closed her eyes. Anselm watched for several minutes. Then he tiptoed away altogether sure that the nun in the brown pakol had had enough.
It was only when Anselm was trotting down the stairs to the Underground that he felt the entire interview had been incongruous — but he couldn’t reduce the insight to any particulars.
When he got back to Hoxton he found two sheets of paper outside his bedroom door. The first was the fax from Larkwood. The second was a message asking him to call Inspector Cartwright.
Anselm read the letter from Elizabeth by the light of a window.
Dear Anselm,
I would be very grateful if you would visit the following lady:
Mrs Irene Dixon
Flat 269
Percival Court
Shoreditch
Mrs Dixon may not know that I am dead, so please explain, if needs be. Thereafter, listen rather than speak. I suggest you arrive unannounced.
Farewell, Anselm. You have helped me more than you can know.
Warm regards,
Elizabeth
Anselm let his hand drop. This was the final letter, he was sure. He thought of Elizabeth the rich orphan who hadn’t quite gone, who wouldn’t let go, even in death. Subdued, he rang Inspector Cartwright.
‘You won’t believe this,’ she said, ‘but I’ve received a letter from Mrs Glendinning.’
They arranged to meet in half an hour. Feeling more and more like an ass in a bridle, Anselm set off on this next unforeseen errand. Perhaps it was the act of retracing his steps to the Underground that brought home another veiled truth: the old biddy in the woolly hat had taken him to the cleaners — but he didn’t know how, and he couldn’t guess why.
7
At breakfast, Nancy said that Prosser had been sniffing around again.
Riley looked up, put his tea down and went bonkers. He grabbed a plate and sent it to the wall, like a frisbee. The pieces went everywhere. Arnold tore from his wheel and Nancy ducked as if it were an air raid (as a teenager she’d hidden in the Underground while London got trashed by the Nazis).
‘I’m sick of him,’ shouted Riley His mouth curled like a boxer’s, and he huffed and puffed, pacing the ring in his head. ‘He’s always watching me, chewing that cigar.’
Riley looked for something else to throw, but Nancy had cleared the table.
‘I’ll speak to Wyecliffe,’ vowed Riley.
‘When?’ said Nancy dropping a cup. ‘What for?’
‘I’ll go tonight,’ he seethed. ‘And he’ll bang a writ on Prosser’s nose.
That sounds very legal, thought Nancy not quite knowing what it meant.
Buoyed up and punchy Riley set off for work, his boots crunching on the crockery.
When Nancy duly opened her shop that morning she went straight to the filing cabinet. She untied Mr Johnson’s plastic bag and pulled out the first volume that came to hand. She sat by the fire, aiming to read, to drive out the memory of that lawyer in his stuffy twilit room. But he was too strong. Nancy let the book drop on her lap. She could almost feel his breath and smell the nuts.
A few weeks after the ‘preliminary conference’ at the bungalow, Mr Wyecliffe sent Nancy a letter ‘requiring your kind attendance’.
She thought solicitors weren’t meant to have beards and yet his was like an old toilet brush. She hadn’t liked him. Not because he’d been hungry when he should have lost his appetite, and not even because of the grilling he’d dished out (he’d leaned across his desk, tugging at his hairy chin, not taking no for an answer, digging around in her private life: it was like he was after something, but wouldn’t say what). No, she didn’t like him because she’d said too much. Part of her had gone missing. The room had been dark, the windows jammed, and he’d just bitten his way through her life, as if it were another sandwich. And another thing: his eyes were too close together.
Mr Wyecliffe had said, for openers, ‘What you now tell me is completely confidential.’
‘Then how does it go in my statement?’
That knocked him one. He wasn’t used to women with minds of their own. But he explained himself. He was the professional. He needed to know everything. ‘Just imagine I’m doing a jigsaw out of sight. You’ll wonder why I pick up this bit or the other. Don’t think about the broader picture: leave that to me.’ Nancy supposed that that was why lawyers earned so much money —they could see things the rest of us couldn’t. And then Mr Wyecliffe got started in the middle of nowhere, and wouldn’t let go. ‘I suppose your husband goes out with the lads every now and then?’
‘Never. He stays at home. ‘All the time?’
‘Well, apart from work and that –’
‘Every evening?’
‘Yes, unless he’s doing overtime.’
‘Do you ever get unexpected phone calls from a strange man?’
‘Of course not.’ She folded her arms tight across her chest. ‘Why would I?’