'And Liam died?' I said.
'Dan died. Eighteen months ago, just before Christmas. He was ill for only a month. It was so quick.' A pause. 'And Liam and I, we didn't realise until after- We didn't know how much we depended on Dan, until he wasn't there. He was so strong. He could lift things… and the garden… Liam was eighty-six, you see, and I'm eighty-eight, but Dan was younger, not over seventy. He was a blacksmith from Wexford, way back. Full of jokes, too. We missed him so much.'
The golden glow of sunlight outside had faded from the peonies, the great vibrant colours fading to greys in the approaching dusk. I listened to the young voice of the old woman telling the darker parts of her life, clearing the fog from my own.
'We thought we'd have to find someone else to put the bets on,' she said. 'But who could we trust? Some of the time last year Liam tried to do it himself, going round betting shops in places like Ipswich and Colchester, places where they wouldn't know him, but he was too old, he got dreadfully exhausted. He had to stop it, it was too much.
We had quite a bit saved, you see, and we decided we'd have to live on that. And then this year a man we'd heard of, but never met, came to see us, and he offered to buy Liam's methods. He said to Liam to write down how he won so consistently, and he would buy what he'd written.'
'And those notes,' I said, enlightened, 'were what Chris Norwood stole?'
'Not exactly,' she said, sighing. 'You see there was no need for Liam to write down his method. He'd written it down years ago. All based on statistics. Quite complicated. He used to update it when necessary. And, of course, add new races. After so many years, he could bet with a thirty-three per cent chance of success in nearly a thousand particular races every year.'
She coughed suddenly, her white thin face vibrating with the muscular spasm. A fragile hand stretched out to the glass on the table, and she took a few tiny sips of yellowish liquid,
'I'm so sorry,' I said contritely. 'Making you talk.'
She shook her head mutely, taking more sips, then put down the glass carefully and said, 'It's great to talk. I'm glad you're here, to give me the opportunity. I have so few people to talk to. Some days I don't talk at all. I do miss Liam, you know. We chattered all the time. He was a terrible man to live with. Obsessive, do you see? When he had something in his mind he'd go on and on and on with it. All these sea pictures, it drove me mad when he kept buying them, but now he's gone, well, they seem to bring him close again, and I won't move them, not now.'
'It wasn't so very long ago, was it, that he died?' I said.
'On March 1st,' she said. She paused, but there were no tears, no welling distress. 'Only a few days after Mr Gilbert came. Liam was sitting there…' She pointed to one of the blue armchairs, the only one which showed rubbed dark patches on the arms and a shadow on its high back.'… and I went to make us some tea. Just a cup. We were thirsty. And when I came back he was asleep.' She paused again. 'I thought he was asleep.'
'I'm sorry,' I said.
She shook her head. 'It was the best way to go. I'm glad for him. We'd both loathed the thought of dying in hospital stuck full of tubes. If I'm lucky and if I can manage it I'll die here too, like that, one of these days. I'll be glad to. It is comforting, do you see?'
I did see, in a way, though I had never before thought of death as a welcome guest to be patiently awaited, hoping that he would come quietly when one was asleep.
'If you'd like a drink,' she said in exactly the same matter-of-fact tone, 'there's a bottle and some glasses in the cupboard.'
'I have to drive home…'
She didn't press it. She said, 'Do you want to hear about Mr Gilbert? Mr Harry Gilbert?'
'Yes, please. If I'm not tiring you.'
'I told you. Talking's a pleasure.' She considered, her head to one side, the white hair standing like a fluffy halo round the small wrinkled face. 'He owns bingo halls,' she said, and there was for the first time in her voice the faintest hint of contempt.
'You don't approve of bingo?'
'It's a mug's game.' She shrugged. 'No skill in it.'
'But a lot of people enjoy it.'
'And pay for it. Like mug punters. The wins keep them hooked but they lose in the end.'
The same the world over, I thought with amusement: the professional's dim view of the amateur. There was nothing amateur, however, about Mr Gilbert.
'Bingo made him rich,' the old woman said. 'He came here one day to see Liam, just drove up one day in a Rolls and said he was buying a chain of betting shops. He wanted to buy Liam's system so he'd always be six jumps ahead of the mugs.'
I said curiously, 'Do you always think of a gambler as a mug?'
'Mr Gilbert does. He's a cold man. Liam said it depends what they want. If they want excitement, OK, they're mugs but they're getting their money's worth. If they want profit and they still bet on instinct, they're just mugs.'
She coughed again, and sipped again, and after a while gave me the faint smile, and continued.
'Mr Gilbert offered Liam a lot of money. Enough for us to invest and live on comfortably for the rest of our days. So Liam agreed. It was wisest. They argued a bit about the price, of course. They spent almost a week ringing each other up with offers. But in the end it was settled.' She paused. 'Then before Mr Gilbert paid the money, and before Liam gave him all the papers, Liam died. Mr Gilbert telephoned me to say he was sorry, but did the bargain still stand, and I said yes it did. It certainly did. I was very pleased to be going to be without money anxieties, do you see?'
I nodded.
'And then,' she said, and this time with anger,'that hateful Chris Norwood stole the papers out of Liam's office… Stole all his life's work.' Her body shook. It was the fact of what had been stolen which infuriated her, I perceived, more than the fortune lost. 'We'd both been glad to have him come here, to carry coal and logs and clean the windows, and then I'd begun to wonder if he'd been in my handbag, but I'm always pretty vague about how much I have there… and then Liam died.' She stopped, fighting against agitation, pressing a thin hand to her narrow chest, squeezing shut those wide-staring eyes.
'Don't go on,' I said, desperately wanting her to.
'Yes, yes,' she said, opening her eyes again. 'Mr Gilbert came to collect the papers. He brought the money all in cash. He showed it to me, in a briefcase. Packets of notes. He said to spend it, not invest it. That way there would be no fuss with tax. He said he would give me more if I ever needed it, but there was enough, you know, for years and years, living as I do… And then we went along to Liam's office, and the papers weren't there. Nowhere. Vanished. I'd put them all ready, you see, the day before, in a big folder. There were so many of them. Sheets and sheets, all in Liam's spiky writing. He never learned to type. Always wrote by hand. And the only person who'd been in there besides Mrs Urquart was Chris Norwood. The only person.'
'Who,' I said, 'is Mrs Urquart?'
'What? Oh, Mrs Urquart comes to clean for me. Or she did. Three days a week. She can't come now, she says. She's in trouble with the welfare people, poor thing.'
Akkerton's voice in the pub floated back: '… she never told the welfare she was earning…'
I said 'Was it in Mrs Urquart's house that Chris Norwood lodged?'
'Yes, that's right.' She frowned. 'How did you know?'
'Something someone said.' I sorted through what I had first said to her to explain my visit and belatedly realised that I'd taken for granted she'd known something which I now saw that perhaps she didn't.
'Chris Norwood…' I said slowly.
'I'd like to strangle him.'
'Didn't your Mrs Urquart tell you… what had happened?'
'She rang in a great fuss. Said she wasn't coming any more. She sounded very upset. Saturday morning, last week.'
'And that was all she said, that she wasn't coming any more?'
'We hadn't been very good friends lately, not with Chris Norwood stealing Liam's papers. I didn't want to quarrel with her. I needed her, for the cleaning. But since that hateful man stole from us, she was very defensive, almost rude. But she needed the money, just like I needed her, and she knew I'd never give her away.'