by Ivan B
“Not any more, call me Jennifer.”
Mrs Du Pres tapped the wing of the Rover.
“Well young man must we talk in a cold garage?” My heart rate must have been keeping me warm for I felt not a chill, not a temperature chill that is, I certainly felt the chill of the unexpected. I went to take them upstairs and she wagged a finger at me.
“I’d rather talk in the house.”
So I hobbled up the drive with a million questions in my head, not the least of which was concerning my inheritance, or lack of it. Once in the kitchen they took off their expensive coats and tossed them onto some cardboard boxes as if they were made of cheap plastic.
She settled herself on a kitchen stool and I put the kettle on as Jennifer wandered off. Mrs Du Pres stretched out her legs.
“At least the place is warm.”
“I’ve had central heating installed and we’re trying it out; I believe it’s called a soak test.”
She gave a sly smile.
“The old skinflint would never let me have central heating, he said it was for wimps.”
Jennifer returned and I dished out some mugs of coffee wishing that I had a bone-china tea-set. Jennifer sniffed her coffee and said quietly, in an accent I couldn’t quite place.
“Sorry for the shock, but mum wanted to come.”
I replied dryly that I had a strong heart and neither laughed. Mrs Du Pres glanced around the kitchen.
“So you are renovating the old place?”
“It was rather run-down.”
She sniffed.
“Always hated the place, too big, too cold and too much like him.”
I waited, I knew she must have a reason for coming; so I waited; waited to hear her say that the house was hers. In the end she gave me a shrew like smile;
“Guess you’re wondering what I’m doing here?”
I could only nod; she grinned again.
“As you’ve probably guessed we faked our deaths. We did it to get away from him, bastard. He always was a control freak, but he was getting worse. You either did it his way or suffered the consequences and I mean suffered. I couldn’t take it any more neither could the children, especially when I found out about that Mathu woman. So I arranged a holiday with him as a birthday surprise and said that I’d leave the children with my brother in France. In reality we flew to Holland and then onto America, land of the free.”
She smiled and I knew she was lying, whatever Jennifer’s accent was it wasn’t American. I took a deep breath, I had to know.
“So why come back?”
She cackled.
“Not to take this place off your hands that’s for sure, you’re welcome to it and all his money.”
She must have seen the surprise on my face as she sneered at me, “I’ve got my own and I married well.”
Jennifer put her hand over her mother’s.
“She means she married for love and her husband more than doubled her fortune in the first five years.”
I still could not place the accent. Mrs Du Pres nodded.
“Second time lucky.”
She sipped her coffee, I suspect more out of etiquette than pleasure.
“So young man you can keep the house; I’ve come for Sophie.”
Now I was perplexed.
“Sophie?”
Jennifer smiled as if to humour her mum.
“Sophie was her first child, but she was born ten weeks premature and died. Mum used to have her ashes in a blue vase, but I have told her that it’s probably long gone.”
I looked her in the eye.
“Sparkly blue vase with a fluted neck?”
She virtually jumped off of her stool, surprise and glee written all over her old face.
“You have it?”
“There’s a blue vase in the safe downstairs, but I fear it is empty.”
She shook her head.
“It just looks empty. I made the vase myself and Sophie’s ashes are in the base, I didn’t want him to find them and I didn’t think she’d mind being in a furnace twice round.”
Now I was surprised.
“You mean he didn’t know?”
“He knew that she’d been cremated, but didn’t know that I’d retrieved the ashes before the crematorium disposed of them in the manner he wished.”
I was mystified.
“Then why would he keep the vase, and in the safe?”
“He was like that, he used to take the children’s favourite things and hide them for months, said that it gave them backbone. Rotten swine decided that the vase was Danielle’s favourite and took it off her just before we went to France.”
I heard the soft crunch of gravel and paused for a moment to drink my coffee. Yolande walked in on us and stopped dead with her eyes practically out on stalks. Mrs Du Pres said, none too kindly I thought;
“Who’s this?”
“This is my right hand woman Yolande.”
Mrs Du Pres began to look very uncomfortable and I guessed the reason. I brought Yolande up to speed and she cottoned on and turned to Mrs Du Pres.
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep your secret.”
Mrs Du Pres looked around furtively.
“Anyone else likely to drop in?”
“No, I live alone.”
She relaxed slightly and then barked.
“Do you have a working toilet in this place?”
I nodded.
“They all work, but the downstairs one is the closest.”
She left for the downstairs WC and we all watched her leave. Jennifer turned to me.
“Please don’t mind mum, she was desperate to see if Sophie was still around, but she’s terrified of being found out.”
Yolande shrugged.
“But he’s dead.”
Jennifer smiled and said softly.
“She married again before he died and her husband doesn’t know, he thought that she was a widow.” She hesitated and then went on, “In fact three of us children are married and all on false papers so if the cat was let out of the bag we’d all be in trouble.”
Yolande bit her bottom lip.
“You must all have really wanted to leave.”
Jennifer gazed out of the window and into the past.
“It was hell. He was overbearing, self-opinionated and a bully. I can only remember him shouting at me and giving me the strap.”
“So no regrets?”
Jennifer shook her head.
“My only regret is that we could take so little otherwise we would have aroused his suspicions.” She sighed, “I suppose you didn’t find anything?”
Yolande and I looked at each other and she explained about the seven tin trunks, I noted that she omitted the part about bearer bonds. Mrs Du Pres returned and Jennifer told her the story of the trunks and she fixed me with a fearsome stare.
“And you buried them in a graveyard?”
“It’s not a graveyard yet and I didn’t know what else to do as the intention of the trunks was obvious, well at least I thought it was obvious.”
Jennifer looked extremely rattled.
“And he put our teddy bears in the trunks?” She said softly.
I somehow felt for her after all these years learning that there was something of her past buried in my field.
“One in each, if the table-tennis bats were yours then there was also a portly dark brown teddy bear in the trunk.”
She turned away and didn’t speak. After a minute Yolande asked her if she would like to see her old room and they left the kitchen. I smiled at Mrs Du Pres.
“And of course your name isn’t Mrs Du Pres and hers isn’t Jennifer and you don’t live in America.”
She had the grace to smile.
“I’m sorry young man, but we can’t afford to be too careful, even my husband doesn’t know we are here.”
“Suppose I need to contact you?”
“You won’t we’re dead.”
She stood up.
“Now young man will yo
u give me back my Sophie?”
I took her downstairs to the basement taking extra care on the steep stairs both for her sake and that of my ankle. I opened the safe and passed her the vase; she held it to her chest and her eyes became moist. I murmured.
“Worth the risk?”
She nodded, obviously lost for words, and we went back upstairs. After a moment she fixed me with her stare.
“She your intended?”
“I hope so, time will tell.”
“Well don’t wait too long, she’d be good for you.”
Before I could reply Jennifer and Yolande returned and the two visitors picked up their coats to leave. I decided to try a long shot.
“Before you go, there are some papers I can’t find like the registration documents for the Rover and Metropolitan. Did he have any favourite hidey-holes?”
Mrs Du Pres gave a short cackle like laugh.
“He used to stuff papers all over the place. You can try under the Aga, there’s a loose flagstone under there. Or you can look in the bottom of the safe – there’s a plate in the bottom that covers the bolts that go into the concrete; he used to put stuff under there. Or you can try and radios he’s got loaned out to museums, he used to seal them with wax so they couldn’t be opened and put all sorts of rubbish in them.”
She turned to go and turned back to me.
“And we were never here.”
They left with her clutching the vase as if it were made of gold. I made Yolande a cup of tea and we sat down.
“Could you place Jennifer’s accent?”
“She’s Danish.”
She showed me a small business card for Mrs Susan Brook, IT Consultant with an address in Copenhagen. I whistled.
“If her mother knew that you had that she’d go ape.”
Yolande smiled that knowing female smile of hers.
“Jennifer, or Susan as she really is, told me about the escape. Her mum booked the flight on a day when she knew Mr Grant couldn’t go and after they took off they flew to Brussels and then travelled to Amsterdam by train. From there they flew to New York only to board a cruise ship to Oslo eight days later. From Oslo they travelled by train and ferry to Copenhagen. Her brother apparently met them in New York to give them all their new passports and they became a Danish family. They’d all chosen their new names and it was a total family conspiracy, they must have loathed him a great deal.”
“Why did she give you the card?”
“I said that I’d e-mail her if we found anything else.”
Yolande got up to go.
“I’d better go home and have dinner, be back at four OK?”
“Can’t wait.”
I intercepted her before she reached the door, gave her a kiss and held onto her.
“Mrs Du Pres reckons that I shouldn’t let you go.”
She kissed me back, “Sounds like a wise woman.”
Yolande didn’t leave for at least ten minutes.
I spent the early afternoon practicing the piano. I’d set myself the task of learning Brahms Piano Concerto No 1 and was labouring with the long first movement. I got so lost in the task that I was startled when Yolande appeared beside me and offered me a bowl of hot-pot. I tell you they were both welcome. She removed the empty dish from me and grinned.
“So what did you find?”
“Haven’t looked, thought I’d wait for you.”
We started in the kitchen and as Mrs Du Pres said there was a loose flagstone under the cooker. It took some effort to remove and we were rewarded with a child’s bracelet and a set of spare keys for the Rover. The basement was next and frankly I didn’t expect much. Yolande unscrewed the base plate in the safe and under it, nestling between four huge bolt-heads were no less than seven envelopes and a set of keys. Yolande screwed down the base-plate and we retreated to the kitchen, I was all of a wobble. “You open them.”
Yolande left the envelopes on the table for me to stare at and made us a cup of tea. We then sat side by side as close to each other as possible and she picked up the first envelope. At first we thought that it was empty, but on a closer inspection it contained a small newspaper clipping containing a brief report on the mysterious disappearance of Mari Mathu. Across the bottom in an almost illegible scrawl were the words ‘all is lost.’
Yolande said quietly.
“His family ran away and faked their deaths to be rid of him, I wonder if she did the same; ran away to be rid of him that is?”
The second envelope contained the registration documents for the Rover and the Metropolitan plus the invoice for the first restoration of the Metropolitan.
The third envelope contained all his certificates starting with his O level and working through to his degree in Electrical Engineering. Yolande sniffed.
“He only got a pass degree. The guy makes a fortune out of radios and he only got a pass degree.”
“His strengths were probably elsewhere.” I cockily replied, that is assuming the chap had any strengths, so far we’d only heard about his weaknesses.
The fourth envelope held one beautiful photograph of Mari Mathu. She was leaving a hotel and striding down the steps; she looked like a million dollars and doubtless that one photograph stirred the hormones of many a young man. Yolande murmured.
“Wasn’t she beautiful,” and I detected a longing in her voice.
I murmured that beauty was in the eye of the beholder and that she was just as beautiful to me; I was rewarded with a kiss.
The fifth envelope held a black and white grainy photograph of Mari Mathu on the steps of some concrete and glass building. It could have been taken anywhere, but on the back small neat handwriting proclaimed that it was in Vientiane, Laos in March 1987. There was also a photocopy of a marriage register, but it was in an Lao and incomprehensible. I checked the back of the photocopy and just found a date, once again 1987.
The sixth envelope held five bearer bonds that were exactly like the others we had found except that one of them had a neat ring from a coffee cup in the centre. I could have screamed with delight, five bonds that was another £74,088.65 for the bank account and a reasonable cushion for expenses to come.
Yolande picked up the seventh envelope and tipped out four passports. All had a photograph of Mr Grant on the back page and none of them were in his name. One had been used for trips to America, one for trips to South Africa, one was blank and one had been used for trips to Laos. None had stamps in them after 1988. Yolande spent a minute of two looking at them and then announced in a sort of awed voice.
“I think he used two of these looking for his family – he must have suspected that they were not dead. Remember Mrs Du Pres spun you a yarn about going to America, well he went there no less that twelve times in two years, each time to a different airport.”
She picked up the other used passport.
“He went to Laos once in late 1988, I think the stamp says November.”
We both knew that that visit had been after Mari Mathu, but he had been looking in the wrong country. Yolande sighed.
“I wonder if he ever saw the 1993 article about Mari Mathu in Vietnam with her boat-building husband?”
I didn’t answer and Yolande put the passports back into the envelope and said.
“Aga?”
“Be for the best.”
She slipped off her stool and fed the passports to the ever hungry flames of the Aga. She then crouched down and reached under the Aga to test the solidity of the other flagstone that resided beneath it. She grunted, picked up a screwdriver and using it as a lever prised another flagstone out of it’s socket. She put her fingers underneath and groped around successfully fishing out a white A4 sized paper bag and two postcards. She removed the screwdriver to replace the flagstone and brought her prizes to the table.
“Thought I’d try the other stone, men are so unimaginative.”
The postcards filled in a little more of the picture of the last years of Mr Grant. The first one was dated July 1985 and w
as postmarked New York. It was of some friend of his called Jason who said that he was having a wonderful time and had been surprised to see Mr Grant’s wife and family doing the tour of the Statue of Liberty, but hadn’t been able to get close enough to talk to them. The second was a business type postcard with the address on one side and a message in small typeface on the other. It was stark and simple and obviously from a firm of private investigators. It confirmed that Mr Grants family had arrived in New York by air from Amsterdam; it also said that there was no record of their departure from New York by either air or sea. It also remarked dryly that America had an extensive rail network and that passengers were not obliged to give names and addresses. Yolande looked at me.
“So he knew that they were alive; why the trunks?”
I had no idea and was itching to see what was in the paper bag. “Not a clue; perhaps he made them up before he got the postcard.”
She looked doubtful and reached for the paper bag; I held my breath. She extracted a flimsy air-mail letter that had obviously been much read. Yolande read it and muttered to herself, I was disappointed it wasn’t a bearer bond, but dead curious.
“Come on, what is it?”
“It’s a letter from Mari Mathu to Mr Grant.”
She started reading, “Dear John, I hear on the grapevine that you have been searching for me and staying in Vientiane. Please do not do this any more. What we had was wonderful, but it could not last and I would rather treasure the memories of the fabulous times we had together than meet you and realise that we are now apart. I have chosen a different way of life and am happy and content and, as you probably know, am married to a good man whom I do not intend to cheat on. Thank you for the wonderful times we had. Remember to enjoy a real life and not let it slip away while your looking elsewhere. Love Mati.”
She turned it over, “It’s postmarked Cambodia January 1989.”
We sat in silence for a few moments and she slipped the letter back into the paper bag. She sighed, “What now?”
“How are you at taking the backs off radios?”
Chapter 19
Just Crusin' Along
Despite the need to convert the bearer bonds into cash it was a week before we managed to get to London. The Prime reason for this was the weather as by Tuesday morning it had really closed in and snowed with a vengeance, so much so that Yolande couldn’t make it out to the rectory in her van and I had to pick her up and return her using the Rover. By Thursday even that was getting too dodgy and Yolande stayed at home. Saturday brought slight relief as the snow turned to sleet and then rain. By Sunday afternoon the roads were clear, but covered in sheet ice in the mornings. Sunday evening I drove to Church and almost immediately got sucked in to playing the organ as the usual organist had not arrived. As I expected the St James organ was a magnificent beast and I knew that I would enjoy playing it. After the service the vicar came and sat beside me on the organ bench while I finished off a fugue. As the notes died away and I turned the blower off he told me in a sort of bewildered tone that someone had dug up my tin trunks.