Inheritance

by Ellen Kefferty

  “Over six years. Not long, I suppose. But it was incredibly easy to like him. I considered him a friend, not a client.”

  “It must have been awful to hear of his death.”

  “Of course,” James cast his eyes down to his hands which lay in his lap. “I couldn’t believe that such a good man would die so young.”

  Edith stretched her hands forward across the desk. “And now I come in here suggesting it might be murder...that must be difficult to process.”

  James nodded quickly and shallowly. His eyes locked warily on Edith. “Nobody has suggested it before. I can’t believe it, of course.”

  “But if it’s true? Doesn’t that change anything? Surely the fact that Thomas altered his will six months before he died strikes you as odd?”

  “It’s not connected. I promise you that. Though I cannot, under any circumstances, tell you why.” James glanced away. “You have to figure it out for yourself.”

  “And you swear that you didn’t benefit from the change?”

  James held his hand over his mouth. A long thoughtful gaze fell on Edith. “Let me tell you the truth. I did benefit. I receive a few thousand a year due to his new will.”

  “You do?” That was quite an admission.

  It frustrated Edith that each answer was weighed and pitched just for her. A secret was being unfolded. Her glimpses of it managed and rationed. Of course he would admit that, he wanted her to know. But why? The only way forward was to keep asking the questions he laid out for her “Can I ask why you benefit?”

  “It’s, well, it’s not public knowledge. But there’s no harm in letting you know that I administer a trust set up by Thomas Faircote at the time he changed his will.” James bit his lip.

  “You do? But you’re not the beneficiary of the trust?”

  “No. I’m not.” The animation present in his face only a moment before faded. The game was over. He leant forward once again. “And I will, on no account, ever divulge the name of the beneficiary to his family. As far as they are concerned that information died with him. Do you understand? He took it to his grave.”

  Edith grabbed the car door handle and stopped. There was no reason to leave Milnrow until she had an answer. The handle made a satisfying click when she let go.

  What more could she find out here? For a moment she looked up and down the main street, lost in thought. Then back across the road to the lawyer’s window. He wasn’t watching her leave, but he wasn’t watching her stay either. Though she wished he was.

  The lawyer’s insistence that Thomas’s money had nothing to do with his death was sincere. Yet what else was there? From the outside it was the most glaring problem of the dead man’s life. He died much poorer than anybody would have expected. The money was missing, even if it was in a trust. Nobody but the lawyer and the beneficiary could account for it. The former wasn’t going to say another word. The latter had to be found.

  Others in Milnrow must have known Thomas. Friends, neighbours, people where he shopped, whoever fixed his car or cut his hair. More pieces of Thomas’s life were out there.

  Edith glanced once again at the lawyer’s window. He had to know that somebody in the town would betray his secret.

  ‘Bastard,’ she muttered to herself. It would have been easier if he had just told her.

  Edith marched off purposefully, feeling anything but. At the corner of the next road she ducked round the building, out of sight, and stopped. Milnrow was hardly a big town, but she had a starting point that would cut down her work substantially. ‘Sampson’s Fold’, she typed into her phone the street where Thomas had lived for years. Even an unassuming man couldn’t have been forgotten in three months. Thomas Faircote would have made more of an impression than most.

  The map on her phone, once she oriented herself and zoomed in, delivered a pleasant surprise: Sampson’s Fold was only two streets away.

  A right turn off the main street lead to Flower Street, lined with close–set sandstone houses darkened by age. The pavements clogged with bins waiting collection. The tarmac of the road peeled away in patches to reveal ancient setts below.

  The map suggested a left turn after two hundred metres. Even when nearly upon it there seemed to be no such turn. Only when practically stood in the carriageway was it apparent that the gravel passage sloping down between two houses was not a drive but Sampson’s Fold.

  The passage led along the sides of the houses and their gardens before opening into a small terrace. To the left a few cars were parked at odd angles, to the right stood four ancient weavers’ cottages. Their stone was bright and clean, a pale cream nearly as fresh as the day it was quarried. Standing three storeys tall and narrower than most houses the proportions were uncanny. The third storey window, spanning nearly the whole width of each cottage and heavily mullioned, had been designed to maximise the light for the original inhabitants. The cottages strayed too far from the modern ideal of a house, relics of an earlier time.

  Edith paused only for a second to consider the cottages. Distracted by the soft murmurs of water flowing nearby, she crept to the edge of the terrace where, opposite the cottages, the ground fell away in a mass of trees and undergrowth. Even at the edge there were only bare glimpses of the river which ran below.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Edith span round, surprised that she was being watched.

  A woman in her forties strolled forward from the cottages, carelessly kicking a loose stone as she neared. The woman dressed plainly in jeans and jumper, her hair tied back away from her face in a utilitarian way.

  “If you open the bedroom window,” the woman gestured back to the cottages, “you can listen to it all night long. As soothing as rain on a window, except it never stops.”

  “Oh,” Edith turned to face the woman fully, “that must be wonderful.”

  “I assume you’re here to look at the cottage?” Her tone suddenly businesslike, giving way quickly to a childish grin. “Not many people wander down here by accident. It’s wonderfully isolated down here. Though the shops are only a short walk away. The rent is very reasonable, too.”

  “I...well,” Edith scrutinized the woman’s face, looking for signs that she meant what she said, confused by the quick shift in her demeanour. The cottage must have been Thomas’s, still unlet after his death. “I can have a look round?”

  “Sure! I’ll get the keys. My name’s Kath, by the way.” The woman stretched out her hand as if for a handshake. Instead she patted Edith on her upper arm. “I’m the owner. If you hadn’t worked that out.”

  Kath turned to walk toward the cottages. Edith now noticed one of the doors had been left open.

  “Wait. I’m...,”

  Kath stopped. “Yes?”

  “Sorry, nothing. I mean, thanks.”

  While Kath fetched the keys Edith weighed up her options.

  Deception would get her inside the cottage but she wouldn’t be able to ask questions about Thomas. Honesty would risk the house for a chance to quiz Kath about her former tenant. What of Thomas’s could still be in the house after three months? How much could she find while being watched?

  Kath emerged and beckoned Edith to the front door of the rightmost cottage.

  “I’m sorry,” Edith levelled with at Kath as she neared, “I think we have crossed wires.”

  “How so?” The keys jangled in Kath’s hand as she spoke.

  “I’m actually not interested in the house.”

  “Oh, that’s a shame. Do you not like the look of it? It is really spacious. Lots of potential. You could make it your own. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to just take a quick look?” Kath opened the front door and stepped inside. She encouraged Edith to enter. “You’re here now and it would be a wasted journey. Let me change your mind.”

  “No. I mean, it’s not that. I’m actually interested in the guy who used to live here. This is where Thomas Faircote used to live, isn’t it?”

  Kath stiffened and suddenly filled the doo
rway. “It is. What do you want?”

  “I wanted to speak about Thomas. One of his cousins sent me.” Edith moved nearer to Kath. “Can we chat?”

  “I’m not exactly keen on his family. At least what I’ve seen of them.”

  “It’s not about money.” Lawyers must have been sent here too. “I want to know more about his life.”

  “I don’t know you.” Kath let her gaze fall and shook her head. “It’s really not something I want to talk about with a stranger.”

  “Everybody I’ve met says what a great man he was.” Samuel and the lawyer, Edith shrugged inwardly. “Did you know him well? I wish I had known him.”

  Kath leant against the wall. She fiddled absently the keys. At last she sighed. “Come in.”

  The air in the cottage was stale and cold. Kath led her out of the hallway, the sounds of their movements echoing in the half–empty house. The living room was dominated by a wide and low coffee table of a style long out of fashion. Rather than a settee there were two thinly–upholstered armchairs. An empty bookcase and lampstand made up the rest of the furniture.

  The kitchen to the rear was similar in its lack of comfort. An ageing cooker stood against one wall. A 1950s larder cabinet in blue and white to one side and a cupboard dresser to the other. In the middle of the room a round sea green formica table equipped with mismatched chairs.

  Kath drew out one of the chairs and sat down. She motioned to Edith to do likewise. Blinking back the tears Kath rubbed her face.

  “His cousin sent you?” Kath stared out the window and into the tiny yard. “Was it the same fellow who came a few months ago?”

  Edith recalled Sam’s visit to Thomas to announce his engagement. “It might have been.”

  “That was the only member of his family I ever met before he died. Nice guy.” Kath sniffed. “Never saw any of the others before his death. They just turned up a few days after he died and took anything they wanted from his possessions. The rest they left for me to dispose of. That was before his funeral. They didn’t even wait.”

  Edith wondered what might have been among Thomas’s belongings. Kath must know more than most about his life. Let her talk. Gain her trust. Don’t mention murder as she’s already on the edge of crying.

  “It’s hard, very hard, you know. They just ignored me, as though I wasn’t grieving too. Tom wasn’t really my tenant in the end, more of a friend. And well...” Kath shifted in her seat. After a pause she turned to face Edith and leant forward. “Tom came here about eight years ago. He was much too polite and well–spoken to want to live here, in Milnrow, but I could tell he would be an easy tenant so I wasn’t about to turn him down. Of course, I didn’t know anything of his background then.”

  “They’re quite well–off, aren’t they?” Edith smiled, not needing an answer.

  “It shocked me when I discovered it. He had been here a few months when he accidentally transferred to my bank £5,000 instead of £500 for his rent. He casually told me to keep it and use it for the next ten months’ rent. How many people can do that?”

  “Not many.”

  “Yet look around. This is Tom’s furniture. I rented the cottage to him unfurnished and he quickly filled it up with things from the secondhand shop. He didn’t care for his own comfort. All that money and he wasn’t interested in nice things.” Kath rested her elbow on the table and let her chin fall into her hand with a sigh. She cast her eyes down to the table. “He was really remarkable in that way. I doubt I’ll ever have a tenant like him again.”

  Edith ran a finger along the edge of the table feeling the chips and dents. The green formica faded and uneven. The table was worthless except for the most utilitarian of needs. Kath was so obviously shattered by Thomas’s death.

  “You knew him well?”

  Kath laughed. It was almost a sob. “No. And yes. Nobody could ever know him well, he wasn’t the kind of man to open up about himself. He never spoke much about anything but nature. He never mentioned a job yet he certainly didn’t spend his days moping round his cottage. He would be gone all day, maybe days at a time. And he would always return and energetically talk about fox hunting, or water pollution, or some ancient tree in damage of being cut down. I lost track of everything he spoke about, but I admired his passion. He was so alive.”

  “I’m so happy that I’ll be able to tell his cousin how much others admired him.” Edith pushed her hands out to Kath. This was fake. It felt wrong. She couldn’t stop herself before it was too much. “Did he have lots of friends? He sounds like the kind of person anybody would have enjoyed a drink with.”

  Edith winced at the awkwardness with which she forced Thomas’s drinking habits into the conversation. Kath must have known that alcohol was implicated in his death.

  “I don’t recall many friends. You couldn’t help but like him though. Everybody liked him.” Kath ignored Edith’s awkward questioning. She was taken with a memory she couldn’t relinquish. “I think a few years ago I fell for him. I must be a good five years older than him, but he was a handsome guy. I never saw him with a girlfriend, and maybe I felt that it worth a try.” She frowned and forced it into a mangled smiled. “I’m such a stupid woman to think he might have liked me in that way.”

  Kath bent forward and shut her eyes. A single sob. A shake of the head.

  When she looked up again tears swelled in her eyes.

  “He was always inviting me to meetings about this or that, something to do with the environment or whatever his latest interest was. I got to thinking it was his idea of a good date. I thought his invitations were advances. He wasn’t the kind of guy to go to pubs or bars, I never saw him drink, but he went to plenty of meetings.”

  Kath smiled through her tears.

  “I accepted one of his invites. We went to this cafe—well, it was more like some kind of community centre—in Manchester. Really different for somebody like me, but he said that he went there all the time. There was a talk on about occupying a coal power station for some reason or another that I forget.

  “It wasn’t a date though. I was soon made aware of that. He spent most of the time talking with all the people there. He simply thought I would be as interested in it as he was. Tom was just so earnest. Painfully so. He was just...just such a genuine guy.”

  Edith reached out and stroked Kath’s arm. “It’s okay, you’ve lost such a good friend.” She wasn’t weeping over only a lost friendship.

  “Oh, look at me!” Kath fumbled in her pocket for a tissue. “Crying like this. I’m so false. How can I call myself a friend? I’ve never even been to his grave. What kind of friend is that?”

  “Maybe it would do you good to visit his grave?” Edith nodded gently. “It’s a powerful way of coming to terms with loss.” She had heard people speaking like that on television.

  “I just keep making excuses to not make the journey.”

  Edith had missed something. “Is it a long way? Did his family take him to be buried in Knutsford?”

  “Oh no, they had almost nothing to do with him, like I said. Tom was buried in Wigan.”

  Wigan?

  Edith drove along the M60 with that single question in her mind. A man who grew up in comfort in Knutsford, spent most of his time in nature, and lived in Milnrow, chose to be buried in Wigan. There had to be some kind of connection. But it felt as though the mystery was deepening rather than clearing.

  Thomas was dead, though seemingly not an alcoholic, his money gone but not stolen, and he made decisions about where to live and die which made little sense.

  Maybe everybody’s life looked like this from the outside. It was only the insider’s view which made sense of all the disparate parts. Once the insider is gone and can’t explain the logic there’s only a mass of jumbled, incongruent fragments. Death irretrievably smashes a world to pieces.

  Edith had no idea how to reassemble these shards. She had taken down the name of the cemetery. Going there would be a start. But after that, who knew? It wasn’t as
if Thomas’s new neighbours would have much to say. Maybe somebody would know something about the rich guy who had chosen to spend eternity in Wigan. It must have attracted comment, surely?

  She suddenly felt a flush of guilt. For all she found Thomas’s choice ridiculous she had never even been to the town. It was merely prejudice. Too many casual jokes unexamined.

  A gantry sign passed overhead instructing Edith to take the slip road onto the M61 for all destinations north, including Wigan. She checked her mirror and indicated. Then a second later glanced back to the mirror to see if the car behind was indicating too.

  It was.

  The same car had been behind her since at least the Simister junction, over five miles back. It hadn’t tried to overtake. It hadn’t turned off. It had been content to sit behind her and follow. Now it was following her onto the M61.

  It was impossible, in the mirror, to describe the driver as anything but a silhouette. Edith was vague enough on the makes of cars as well, and could only be sure that it was red and probably not expensive. The car certainly didn’t look like anything Andrius would drive, which, beyond the Punto and her father’s knackered Jaguar, was the breadth of her experience.

  There was nothing exceptional about the car. Edith repeated to herself. The only exceptional thing that the car had done so far is followed her for a few miles. Any car might have done the same purely by chance. Of the millions of cars on the road one had to sooner or later. It was a coincidence, and people always read more into coincidence than is justified. People also dismiss concerns up to the very moment they are proven.

  Edith felt the draw of her mirrors. Take a look. See if the car is still there. Worry.

  No, better to resist. If she refused to look then she refused to worry.

  A lane merged from the left and she breezed through without checking her mirrors, even for safety.

  Further on the road split. One part went to Bolton, the other north west to Wigan. There was no way to avoid changing lanes. Far too dangerous here not to look. Only a fool would risk it.