Account Rendered & Other Stories

by Marjorie Eccles

  Hugo met Mary Treadwell for the second time, this time at the cottage on Boxing Day, at her request. He didn’t care for women police, or women at all for that matter, and this one he sensed was sharp and intuitive. He repeated his previous statement to her: Sharon had exaggerated the extent of the quarrel he’d had with his mother, whom he certainly hadn’t seen again after that visit to her on Christmas Eve morning. Then, unable to stand it any longer, he made a beeline for the back recesses of the cottage and the shelf where the figurine had stood. He gave a yelp. He cried in anguish, ‘The Chelsea piece, it’s gone!’

  ‘What Chelsea is this?’ Mary asked. ‘Tell me about it.’

  He launched into a precise and loving description. According to Hugo, it had been an exceedingly fine and rare composition, a pair of rustic figures on one simple base, a shepherd and shepherdess. Tears came into his eyes at the thought of it. Perfect in every respect, superb quality, of the much-desired Red Anchor period, with rich, bright colours that blended perfectly with the soft-paste glaze. Worth—oh, my God, Hugo couldn’t bear to think about it!

  There were other things missing, too, he added, looking round, bits and bobs, a few small pieces of silver . . .

  ‘Is that so? Perhaps you’d give me a list,’ Mary said casually over her shoulder, as though the framed Hathaway letter which she was facing and reading was of more importance. She turned round, smiling slightly. ‘Where did you come across this?’

  Hugo swung into the usual glib explanations, about finding the letter when they’d had the mistaken idea of taking down the wall, while she moved interestedly around the cottage interior, coming to a halt by the rebuilt wall, as the flow of words finally came to a stop.

  ‘Well, I daresay it’ll do for the tourists, but I don’t believe a word of it,’ she said cheerfully.

  ‘Oh,’ said Hugo.

  ‘You don’t really expect people to swallow that, do you?’ she asked, though plenty of people had. ‘Cavity walls, for one thing—in a house this age?’ she went on, laying her hand on the wall in question. ‘Hardly likely, I’d have thought. Nice piece of fakery, though, that letter. Your own work?’

  ‘It wasn’t difficult,’ Hugo declaimed modestly, after a small silence. But he was beginning to sweat, even though the forgery was harmless, nothing actually illegal, as his mother had said often enough.

  The policewoman had bright blue eyes which regarded him with interest. She removed her hand from the wall, rubbing it fastidiously. ‘Feels clammy. No wonder you bricked up the room behind again.’

  Oh, God, this was it. Despite her apparent casualness he was suddenly, absolutely, convinced that she knew. Somehow, she’d sussed it out. The police never took anything on face value—she must have been listening to gossip in the village . . . His glance slid hopelessly away, and her eyes sharpened.

  Hugo wasn’t a clever man. Astute, like his mother, when there was money to be made, but not very intelligent in the long term. But it was apparent, even to him, that retribution, the thing he’d dreaded for twenty-five years, was snapping at his heels. He should have told the truth in the first place, never mind his mother’s advice. Well, it was too late now for those sort of regrets, and his mind began to seek for other ways out.

  Dimly, he reasoned that if the police knew he was being honest with them now over this, however belatedly, it would go better for him in the matter of his mother’s murder. Better to confess rather than let them find out.

  Because they surely would find out. He knew with terrible certainty that this woman inspector had put two and two together, and that they would dig under the flags of the room behind the wall, and when they did, they’d find the bones of Vera Neasden.

  He hadn’t meant to kill her. He’d been only fifteen. She’d been sniping at him and he’d pushed past her, a big clumsy youth who didn’t know his own strength. And she’d fallen and hit her head against the iron-bound corner of the oak chest . . . The words tumbled out as he explained, years of pent-up guilt fell away. ‘It was an accident,’ he said, ‘an accident.’

  Mary Treadwell sat down abruptly on the nearest chair as he began, and thereafter listened in silence.

  It had been his mother who’d said they must hide Vera in a cupboard at first, until they could think what to do with her, telling him that the police would never in a million years believe it had been an accident. Hugo would have done anything she said, he’d been so terrified. Then she’d come up with the idea of burying the body under the flagstones of the cold-store room, of pulling down the wall to give more credence to what they were doing if anyone should enquire, and at the same time gaining themselves a little more much-needed living-space. When the old lady asked what all the noise was, downstairs, his mother had replied, ‘Spring-cleaning. I’m afraid Vera wasn’t always as meticulous as she should have been.’

  ‘It would seem there were a lot of things Vera wasn’t. One of them was grateful,’ the old lady said sharply, fingering the note her daughter had left behind, the note which, at his mother’s command, Hugo had forged in Vera’s handwriting. He’d always had the knack of being able to copy anything, had carried on a brisk trade at school in forged sick notes, dodgy bus passes, pop concert tickets, anything, really. It was a facility that had come in very useful later, too, when he began to deal in antiques, in faking documents of provenance and the like. But his success in fooling old Mrs Neasden had unfortunately given his mother the idea for ‘finding’ the Hathaway letter.

  He’d always known that little piece of unnecessary deception would land them in trouble one day.

  Unfairly, his mother, the instigator of it all, was beyond punishment now. Despite the fact that it was she who’d forbidden him to go to the police when Vera died, had told him what to do and helped him to bury her. Despite the pillow she’d held over the face of Mrs Neasden as soon as was decently possible after she’d changed her will.

  When the policewoman had questioned Hugo carefully over every detail, she was silent for a while, then asked him to accompany her to the station to make an official statement. ‘Before we go, I must tell you that we’re questioning Kevin Cartwright in connection with the murder of your mother. He left his fingerprints all over the place, and he’s also confessed to breaking in.’

  Hugo reeled. What had he done? Had he delivered himself into her hands—confessed to a crime when there was no need to have done so? With no guarantee that his claim that it had been an accident would be believed, either. He felt ill. His asthma was coming back.

  ‘The Cartwrights started celebrating Christmas early, and Kevin was drunk enough to think he could get the Chelsea figurine back,’ the inspector was continuing. ‘He got in through the back window, but couldn’t find what he’d come for. While he was searching for it, he heard your mother’s key in the lock and rushed out, knocking her over. He thought she was only stunned, but he wasn’t sure—’

  ‘So he put the plastic bag over her head to make certain she wouldn’t recover and name him,’ Hugo intervened quickly

  ‘Not quite. He couldn’t find what he came for because it had already gone, hadn’t it? You came back after your quarrel with your mother, knowing she’d be out doing her Christmas shopping, broke in at the back and lifted the figurine, together with more bits and pieces to make it look like a genuine robbery—’

  Hugo’s breathing became noisy.

  ‘Then you heard Kevin getting in, kept out of sight while he began to search—until he heard your mother’s key in the lock, in fact, and rushed out. You followed him, but by the time you reached the door, he’d gone and you found your mother lying there, unconscious. It was you who suffocated her with the plastic bag.’

  He hadn’t, after all, fooled Detective Inspector Treadwell for one minute by that clever piece of play-acting over the disappearance of the Chelsea piece. He didn’t bother to ask her how she knew it had happened exactly as she said. Had it been anyone else, he’d have accused her of making wild and unfounded guesses, but you never kne
w with women. They had mysterious powers beyond his ken. Her instincts had probably told her, though he had to admit it was probable she had some sort of proof as well—his prints on the plastic bag, he supposed dully, he’d been in too much of a hurry to think about that. It didn’t matter. All that really mattered was that he was for it, one way or another.

  Hugo was crushed. Women had bedevilled him all his life. He’d never been able to follow the labyrinthine twists and turns of their minds, to understand in any way what they might be thinking. But now, he knew exactly how Anne Hathaway must have felt when she discovered she’d been left only her husband’s second-best bed.

  He’d risked everything for a piece of porcelain. Furious at his mother’s threat to cut him out of her will, he’d returned to the cottage and taken the figurine and the other trifles, as the policewoman had guessed, reckoning on certain outlets he knew about where he could later secretly sell the porcelain.

  He should have known better. Even dead, his mother had followed him and exacted her revenge. As he fumbled for his door key, the Chelsea piece had slipped through his sweaty palms on to the expensive, imported Etruscan tiles in the entrance hall to his flat, and smashed into a thousand pieces, utterly beyond repair.

  ‘Shall we go?’ asked Mary Treadwell.

  PERIL AT MELFORD HOUSE

  It was nearly six months since I’d last visited my elderly aunts, Marigold and Lydia, at Melford St Bede, and I was rather ashamed of the fact that it had been so long. I’d been so preoccupied with practising and studying for my final exams—not to mention returning my engagement ring to Freddie—that it only belatedly occurred to me I hadn’t seen my family since Christmas, when I’d gone home to stay with them at Melford House and we’d spent the holiday as cheerfully as one could in post-war Britain, with shortages of everything still apparent, and food still rationed, despite the war having ended three years ago.

  Lydia met me at Leverstead station with the car which she had, as usual, parked outside the station entrance, blocking the narrow High Street with lofty disregard for all traffic regulations. She seemed to feel she had a special dispensation to park wherever she wished, confident that the police would recognize the car and not make a fuss. And of course they could hardly fail to recognize it—a pre-war Baby Austin which Jimmy Cole at The Garage had resprayed a cheerful bright yellow to her instructions—and, naturally, they wouldn’t make a fuss, knowing the car belonged to Miss Crowe from Melford St Bede. Since the war, people no longer doffed their caps to the gentry, Jack was as good as his neighbour, but here in the small town of Leverstead, just as in Melford village itself, people had long memories, and the Crowe family were still kindly regarded for their benevolence and their participation in local affairs. Even my grandfather, Nathaniel Crowe, irascible and autocratic as he was, had been respected during his lifetime, if not loved. It was only behind his back that Melford House had been referred to as ‘Old Crowe’s Nest’.

  By the time Lydia had wedged her stout, tweed-costumed body behind the wheel and we had stowed my cello and my bags alongside a great deal of shopping and a large, ungainly parcel from Postleford’s, the butcher’s, there wasn’t much room left in the tiny car.

  ‘Shove that parcel to one side,’ Lydia ordered, in her abrupt way ‘Only sausages, and bones for Hector.’ The statement was accompanied by a large wink, from which I understood the parcel also to contain something from under the counter to supplement the human rations, dragooned from Bert Postleford, or obtained in exchange for a hot tip for the 2.30: Lydia was mad about horses, hunting and racing, and her little flutters were a byword in the family. ‘Wonderful to see you, Vicky!’ she added gruffly, attacking the engine and setting us off with a kangaroo jump.

  I glanced at her in surprise. My Aunt Lydia was not one to voice her emotions so openly. Her straight, iron-grey hair was cut short and brushed back from her face in the same old-fashioned, uncompromising style she’d worn for years, but I fancied the set of her chin was a little less determined than normal, and as we climbed the hill towards Melford I realized she was driving her car even more erratically than was her wont—which was to say I thanked the Lord above that we encountered no other vehicle.

  Melford St Bede is a lovely village, standing on a hill overlooking a deep valley, and the road from Leverstead winds up through the woods that clothe the hill. We were nearly at the top, where the road takes a sharp right turn, when Lydia stopped the car and switched off the engine. I was happy that she pulled in to the side first and didn’t simply stop in the middle of the road, as she was quite likely to do.

  ‘Vicky’ she began, ‘something you should know. I’ve moved back to the Grange.’

  ‘Goodness!’ The Grange belonged to Lydia, a largish house in the centre of the village, with stables attached where she kept several hunters, but she’d returned to Melford House to live with Aunt Marigold since Marigold’s stroke the previous year, and had seemed since then to accept the arrangement as more or less permanent. The Grange, though not the stables, had, in fact, been on the market for months. ‘But why? What about Aunt Marigold? Why didn’t you let me know? And what—?’

  ‘Whoa, there, old thing—’ she said, much as she would have addressed Winston, her favourite horse. ‘One question at a time.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, more calmly. ‘Which one would you like to answer for a start?’

  ‘First one, I suppose,’ she answered after a moment’s pause. ‘You asked me why. Why I went back to the Grange after Christmas. That was when he came.’

  ‘When who came, Aunt Lydia?’ I asked the question gently, and took her capable hand in mine, because it was, incredibly, trembling. A tear, even, rolled down her weatherbeaten cheek.

  ‘Why, Malcolm Deering. Nurse Wilcox’s stepbrother.’ Her voice hardened, and she brushed the tear away angrily. ‘But, of course, you haven’t met him yet. Suppose you’ll be like everyone else—especially Marigold—and think he’s charming! Butters her up shamefully and she just laps it up, thinks he can do no wrong. Then I had an offer for the Grange, but when it came to the point, I couldn’t face the thought of actually selling it, and then Marigold became impossible and so I went back home to live. Realized my mistake too late! Only thing to do now, I suppose, is go back to Melford House and stay with Marigold until all this is cleared up. Oh, Vicky, if only your mother had still been alive! Always the one who knew the right thing to do, you know. But you’re so like her, I’m sure you’ll be able to help.’

  My mind reeled, trying to sort all this out. My mother, Grace, I should explain, was the youngest of the three Crowe sisters by many years, the only one who had married, though Marigold, I had always suspected, had had her moments when she was younger, even accounting for the exaggerated stories of what she liked to think of as her colourful past. My mother had fallen in love with my father, a penniless young academic, when the war came, he was chagrined not to be able to serve in the forces because of his poor eyesight, and had to be content with a job in the Air Ministry. We lived in a flat nearby, but soon the Blitz started and despite my protests, I was sent away from the dangers of London to live with my mother’s family at Melford St Bede. Two months later, both my parents were killed when a bomb dropped on our flat and demolished it, and Melford House became my permanent home. I was fourteen years old, and I would never forget the love and kindness shown to me by my aunts during this terrible time—and even, in a less demonstrative way, by my grandfather.

  Not that it was all sweetness and light, living with my relatives. My grandfather, as I have said, was an old curmudgeon, and tight-fisted at that. He enjoyed tyrannizing over his little empire and, as far as his two elder daughters were concerned, had seen off one suitor after another as not being good enough, or rich enough, though perhaps he also realized that neither of them was really cut out to make a good wife. Lydia was too devoted to her horses and dogs, and Marigold to herself. My mother, his youngest and his favourite, had been allowed to go her own way with only token o
bjections.

  As for the aunts . . . they had a great deal of affection for each other, but they could scarcely have been more different, and, needless to say, their temperaments often clashed. Their squabbles were usually short-lived, due no doubt to their very wise decision after Grandfather died to keep separate establishments, but there was always some ongoing drama between them which I believed they enjoyed as adding a little spice to life.

  Marigold was the elder, though only by about eighteen months. She was devoted to the arts, especially to music, and I had her to thank for encouraging me to work for a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, as a first step towards making music my career. She was no mean pianist herself, and she also painted. Before the war, as she never let anyone forget, she had been in with the Bloomsbury set, numbering Virginia Woolf among her friends; she had even, at one time, until stopped by my grandfather, attempted to surround herself at Melford St Bede with arty types, rather fancying herself as another Lady Ottoline Morell, I suppose. She had always been delicate, and was still very pretty, rather vain, and perhaps a trifle shallow.

  Whereas Lydia . . . plain, blunt old Lydia, she was the one who’d worked tirelessly during the war with the Women’s Voluntary Services, taken charge of the billeting arrangements for evacuees and done her stint as a firewatcher. When the war ended, she went back to occupying her time with her horses, her dogs and riding to hounds. Lydia in hunting pink was a sight to make strong men quail. She’d always been formidable, and to tell the truth there were times, as a child, when I’d been more than a little afraid of her. At the same time, she was eminently sensible, so that her attitude now was all the more disturbing.