by Ivan B
I gave my smartest reply.
“I do own the place you know.”
She blinked like an owl in sunlight.
“It was just the surprise, one moment I’m listening to Radio 2 and the next it’s being drowned out by Beethoven at full volume, I wasn’t expecting it.”
I decided not to apologise, “Nice piano isn’t it?”
“Well it’s certainly loud.”
I ignored the jib, “I’ve been looking around, what’s all the funny wiring going down beside the spiral staircase.?”
She shrugged.
“Search me. I think it’s some form of radio aerial, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I reckon he used bedroom five as a sort of workshop, there’s certainly enough sockets in there to indicate that.”
I lost interest. “Where are these tin trunks then?”
She pointed upwards. I shut the piano lid.
“Then lead on McDuff.”
She shook her head, “Not a chance, not while you’re dressed like that. You’ll need a boiler-suit and something to cover those stitches in your skull. It is remarkably dusty up there.”
I noted that she was wearing a rather fetching pale-green boiler suit that hugged her curvy bits. She looked me up and down, “I’ve got a spare boiler suit in the van, it’ll probably fit you.”
I smiled to myself, if it was hers then I stood no chance.
Ten minutes later I was somberly reflecting that I must be thinner than her as the boiler suit not only fitted, it hung loose. She surveyed my sartorial elegance.
“You’re a bit smaller than my dad, but it’ll do.”
She tossed me a bobble-hat.
“Put that on, it’s clean.”
I went to object and thought about me impending visit to the doctor’s to have my stitches out. It fitted quite nicely.
As soon as I looked into the loft I realised the need for the attire. She had a ladder from the landing to the loft-hatch, but the head-height was restricted and the beams filthy. I heard her muffled voice from below and turned to look down the loft-space that was over the piano room. In proud isolation there was a tin trunk about the size that the landed gentry used to take aboard the transatlantic liners. I called down.
“Where are the others?”
Her voice floated back.
“The other side of the water tank, you’ll have to crawl there; go down the left had side – you can’t get through to the right because of the pipe-work.”
I looked at the tiny gap beside the water tank and decided to investigate the big trunk first. I slithered into the loft and crawled up to the trunk. Yolande’s head popped up through the hatch.
“At least it’s boarded and I’ve put up the temporary lights as I don’t like crawling where I can’t see.”
I tried the lid, it was locked. I made an executive decision.
“Lets get it down before we open it.”
Yolande slithered up next to me.
“Won’t go through the hatch; I’ve measured it. Must have been put up here without the lid and then assembled. Even then it must have been a tight fit.”
I slithered alongside the trunk and looked at the hinges, they were pop-riveted on. I slithered back.
“Got a drill?”
She disappeared down the hatch and I had a look around. The loft was long and thin and dominated by the large water tank. There were small circular windows in the end walls, but they didn’t look like they had been cleaned since the place was built. Yolande reappeared with a fearsome looking battery powered drill and handed it to me. I slithered behind the trunk and tried to drill out the top rivet, but the drill kept bucking in my hand and I got nowhere. To me utter chagrin Yolande came round the other side of the trunk, took the drill off me and promptly started to effectively drill out the rivets She said something, but fortunately the words were lost in the whine of the drill. In a remarkable short time the drilling stopped and we twisted the lid around to look inside.
Chapter 8
Grief and Gifts
Yolande reached up and moved one of the temporary lights so we could see better as we mutually peered down. The trunk was slightly less than half-full and whatever was inside was covered with a large piece of what looked like grease-proof paper. I tentatively reached in and took the paper out to expose what was underneath. The trunk contained some clothes and a white envelope with the simple word Naomi scrawled across it. After a moment’s hesitation I picked up the envelope to find that the glue had dried out and the envelope flap was unstuck. The letter inside was from Mr Grant to his wife and was five pages long. I read the letter page by page and passed them to Yolande. It was a highly personal letter between man and wife and I won’t reproduce it here in it’s entirety. Basically it stated that he loved her very much, wished that it was him who had been on the plane and not her, and that the centre of his world had dropped out. However, he said that he wouldn’t commit suicide for fear of not joining them in heaven. After reading the letter neither of us felt like speaking and to be honest I didn’t feel like poking about in the trunk, it had become all personal to the Grants and none of my business. However, Yolande was made of more curious genes and she reached inside and pulled out a pair of low heeled blue shoes; they were exquisite and obviously hand made. She placed them on the grease-proof paper and extracted a cashmere coat. This was followed by a translucent blue dress and a complete set of underwear. Yolande murmured, “This must be he favourite outfit,” as she extracted a small blue leather handbag that contained a set of expensive make-up and a small bottle of French perfume. She looked at me.
“What happened to them?”
I did my best to shrug, but that’s difficult in such cramped conditions.
“I have the merest outline in one of my files. They intended to park their children with her brother in France and go for a cruse together for a couple of weeks. She was to take them to the brother’s on a hired plane, but they never made it across the channel and I believe the plane was seen crashing into the sea, but no bodies were ever recovered.”
Yolande’s eyes filled with tears and she whispered. “So he could never really say goodbye. I think this trunk holds what he would have dressed her in for her final journey.”
I began to feel like a grave robber and wanted to do nothing more than crawl out of the loft with my tail between my legs. Yolande reached into the trunk and brought out one last item, a foolscap size brown envelope. We looked at each other and she slid out the contents; one birth certificate, one baptism certificate, one confirmation certificate, five school reports, various examination certificates and a three bearer bonds each for £10,000. In the harsh light I examined the bonds, they were twenty year bonds to mature in the year 2000 with fifteen of the twenty detachable coupons still intact. Yolande took one.
“What are they?”
“Bearer bonds issued by the DeMills private bank, these were issued in 1980 and designed to mature in 2000. You don’t get automatic interest as such, you have to send off these little detachable coupons once a year and they send the interest back.”
She fingered the bond.
“And he ceased to claim after 1985.”
I inspected one of the other bonds.
“Coupons can be used after March in the year due, I guess the planned holiday was in the summer.”
Yolande ran her finger over the embossed surface.
“Why would anyone use bearer bonds, don’t you risk loosing them?”
I delved into my brain for my bank training.
“They’re outside the tax system. The recipient of the coupon interest is supposed to declare it on their tax form, but as DeMills will have no register of who has the bonds they can’t inform the tax authorities of who’s getting what. They’re also a handy form of currency for some people.”
Yolande sniffed.
“You mean it’s all about tax evasion.”
“Possibly.”
“So how much are these worth now?”
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I did a swift calculation, something I was good at.
“The original £10,000 plus a guaranteed minimum interest of 3%per year, that’s £300 per annum. So at conservative estimate each one of these is worth £14,500, possibly slightly more.”
Yolande gazed down the loft towards the water tank and I knew what she was thinking; six more trunks lay beyond and possibly six more brown foolscap envelopes.
Three hours later we had the answer. We had started by re-packing the wife’s trunk and twisting the lid back to it’s former resting place. After that we took a break for lunch and I scoffed half of Yolande’s sandwiches even though cucumber and low fat cheese spread was not one of my favourite combinations. Then it was a crawl down the side of the water tank to the little space beyond in which were six tin trunks the size of milk-crates, each with a small external padlock. Each one was packed to the same formula; a letter, a set of clothes and an envelope containing the relevant birth certificate and one bearer bond. We’d started with the nearest trunk that had obviously been for his eldest son Peter and worked our way through Paul, Danielle, Philip and Diana to Dulcie. I have to say that the further we went down the line the more harrowing it became; it wasn’t the letters it was the size of the clothes. Yolande found the last trunk extremely difficult as the child must have been no more than five and when Yolande pulled out a little blue frilly dress she burst into tears. For me it wasn’t the clothes, but the toys; he’d packed a teddy-bear and one toy in each trunk. A football for Peter, make-up mirror and hair brushes for Danielle, table tennis bats for Paul, die-cast model of the Queen Mary for Philip, Barbie doll for Diana and a sort of felt covered rag-dog for Dulcie. The rag-dog really churned me up.
We ended up back at the kitchen table and Yolande made a mug of tea while I inspected the bonds, I now had nine, each worth at least £14,500, that was a total of £130,500. Yolande sat down and passed me a mug of tea, I passed her a bond.
“Keep it, without you I wouldn’t have them.”
She fingered the paper and muttered.
“Dad says that I should never take presents from clients.”
I tried for a joke, but to be honest we were both emotionally drained.
“Call it a payment to persuade you never to go back to playing the violin.”
She didn’t laugh, but pushed the bond back to me.
“It’s an awful lot of money.”
“You’ve earned it.”
She took a large gulp of tea, it must have been red-hot.
“Will you keep it for me and cash it with the others?”
“Of course, we’ll put them in the safe for now until I can contact DeMills.”
She looked me in the eyes.
“Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
I could afford to be generous as she had just eased my financial problems at a stroke; without her I’d never have seen the trunks and without her I would never have had the emotional courage to empty them out and find the envelopes at the bottom. We reverted to silence as we each recalled the experience of looking at other people’s grief. Out of the blue she said huskily.
“Do you think that people who commit suicide do go to hell?”
I nearly made a fanciful quip, but remembered her brother in time to prevent any harm.
“No, I think God is bigger than that.”
We lapsed into silence again. When the drink was over, at some wordless command, we went down into the basement and I searched through my bunch of keys for the safe key. Eventually I unlocked the door and swung it open. As Bryony had promised there was nothing in it save a few adverts for bigger and better safes, a box of candles and a funny looking blue china vase with a fluted neck. We locked the safe and went back upstairs. Yolande went home and I went to the studio flat. I was so emotionally churned up that I even put off my weekly drink with Barney, something I hadn’t done for years.
At 2am I was woken from a deep sleep by the strident call of Fiatimo’s car alarm from beneath my bed. I tell you my heart rate must have gone from a slow sleep rhythm to flat out in less than a second. I didn’t exactly panic, but I must have come close. I turned on all the lights and went down the stairs to peer into the garage. Fiatimo sat with its lights flashing, but all else looked normal. I reset the alarm and sat down on the stairs with my head in my hands waiting for my heart rate to come back to some semblance of normality and my legs to stop trembling. Two minutes later something touched my shoulder. I don’t know if you have ever experienced fear, real fear, but I did so then. I leapt off of the steps and spun round; the culprit was a large fluffy white cat who looked at me with startled eyes and upright tail. I didn’t know whether to scream with relief or die of shame at being scared by a cat. It sprang from the steps, bounced off Fiatimo and stood by the garage door yowling. I opened the door and let it out into the dark night wondering for the second night in a row if I was being wise in living here.
Contrary to popular belief that you can just walk into a bank carrying a pile of bearer bonds and walk out with the money, it took me two days to set up the exchange. I had to e-mail DeMills with the bond serial numbers and then with the serial numbers of each of the coupons. Not content with that, I had to fax them with the same information plus details of to whom I wanted the cheques to be made payable. The result was that on Thursday morning I sought out Yolande and found her running cables under the floorboards of the lower landing. She wiped her hands on her jeans.
“Have you seen a white cat around?”
“Fluffy thing with a nick out of its left ear?”
“That’s the beast; damn thing scared the life out of me earlier on by jumping on the kitchen table.”
I empathised with her experience, but refrained from saying so. “How’s it going?”
“Making progress, but don’t hold your breath, this is the easy part.”
I glanced at the cluster of wires and decided that if this was the easy part I’d never become an electrician.
“I’ve got the bearer bond exchange set up for tomorrow morning, fancy coming?”
She paused from pulling on a cable and looked at me.
“Can’t just take time off you know, time is money and my client is a bit of a hard taskmaster.”
I ignored the jib.
“Doesn’t your father ever help you?”
“Of course, but he’s trying to finish off re-wiring the standby generator at the hospital; it went up in smoke last week.”
I nodded to the cables.
“Can I help?”
To tell the truth I was already getting bored with doing nothing and also wanted the rectory to be sold as soon as possible. She stretched her sinewy arms upwards.
“Won’t get paid.”
“Yes I will, the job will get done faster and so I’ll pay less.”
She made a face.
“Could do with some help with the cable pulling, but the connecting up is down to me and me alone.”
“Fine.”
She stretched again.
“Good, then I’ll come.. When and where?”
“I’m leaving at nine.”
“Where is DeMills?”
“City of London, they say that they’ll have a parking place for me.”
She nodded and looked me up and down.
“Boiler suit’s in the van, but I thought that you were having your stitches out today?”
I made it to the nurse’s office just on time.
That night I had another scare, this time waking up to blue flashing lights. I pulled on a pair of trousers and a sweater and went down to see what the police were up to. By the time I got outside the policeman and policewoman were standing outside their car looking over the fields. The policeman seemed surprised to see me and told me that he thought the place was empty. I was dead curious, but tried to appear ultra casual
“What you looking for?”
“Had reports of a big cat.” the policewoman said lazily.
“How bi
g?”
She coughed in a disbelieving manner.
“Panther size.”
That’s all I needed, some ruddy great black cat lurking out in the darkness.
“How many reports?”
“Eight in four days. But the first one was reported in the paper, so you’re average black moggie on the skyline and a bit of imagination is probably the answer.” The policeman said nonchalantly.
He turned and looked at me.
“Sorry to disturb you sir, as I said we thought the place was empty.”
The policewoman turned round and even in the dim light I could see that she was a stunning beauty.
“Anybody in the house?”
“Not yet, but I’m having it restored.”
She glanced down the drive.
“Are you having a burglar alarm fitted?”
“Of course.”
She scanned the grounds.
“Probably need a dog as well, better than alarms. They tell you in advance if there are nasties about.”
She nodded in the darkness and they climbed back into their car and drove off leaving me standing in the cold enfolding darkness wondering about rather large black cats that are known to pounce out of the darkness.
The following morning winter had arrived with a vengeance and all thoughts of driving to London disappeared from my mind as I listened to the traffic reports on the radio. Instead when Yolande arrived I ushered her into the Land Rover and set off for Ipswich Station. I’d driven the Rover round the block a couple of times and it had a certain mechanical charm, but it also bucked like a bronco, had no power steering and enough torque to spin the wheels on a dry surface let alone a slippery one. Nevertheless the trip to the station was uneventful and I wondered if I should have used Fiatimo, except that I didn’t want to leave it in a car-park. I bought two first class tickets to London (why not?) and soon we were thundering our way to the big city.