Fate Worse Than Death

by Sheila Radley

  When her father died, Con had faced the prospect of looking after her ageing mother. She knew that she was far more fortunate than most middle-aged women in her situation, in that she had no financial need to go on working, but she enjoyed her job and valued the company of her colleagues. And so she sold up the house in Woodbridge and moved her mother with her to a small house in Ipswich not far from the library, so that she could hurry home every lunch-time to attend to the old lady.

  It was at this stage in her life that her much younger brother Robert, Martin’s father, had succumbed to a heart attack and left his wife and schoolboy son almost penniless. Con was already paying her nephew’s school fees and expenses: Robert had relied on his father to pay for the boy to follow the family tradition and go to Framlingham College, and Con had taken over that responsibility – without her nephew’s knowledge – after the old man died. And on her brother’s death she immediately arranged, with her mother’s agreement, that his widow should receive the whole of the proceeds from the sale of the Woodbridge house.

  Robert’s death in early middle age had put Con in mind of her own mortality. Accordingly, she had made her will in her nephew’s favour and she told her sister-in-law what she had done; but she had never until now made any mention of the amount of money involved.

  Throughout her financial transactions, Con had instructed her accountant to keep a clear distinction between the money she regarded as her own (her salary, and after she retired her pension); the family money (a small bequest from her father, and anything she handled on her mother’s behalf or inherited after the old lady’s death); and her godmother’s money. This was the point that she tried to make to her nephew as he sat opposite her at the kitchen table, white-faced, still clutching a fork to which clung some cold scrambled egg.

  ‘You see, I’m not talking about my own money, Martin. Or about family money. The £350,000 grew out of money that George Simpson, my godmother’s husband, made from his fishing-fleet. It has no connection at all with the Taits, and I don’t think we have any moral right to go on keeping it in our family. It ought to be used to help those in peril on the sea, and so I’m going to give it to the RNLI. When you think of the tremendous work the lifeboats do without any government grants, and the bravery of the volunteers who risk their lives – give their lives – to save others … well, you can see why I’ve made this decision, can’t you?’

  Martin unclenched his jaw and attempted to speak. The muscles of his throat were so tight that he felt close to suffocation. He thought perhaps – hoped fervently that – he was dreaming.

  ‘Family money?’ he heard himself croak. ‘You mentioned family money?’

  ‘Why, yes.’ Con was growing increasingly nervous. She hadn’t looked forward to having this conversation with her nephew, but she had been completely convinced by her own logic. It had never occurred to her that Martin would be so shocked by the news.

  ‘All that’s left of the family money,’ she gabbled brightly, ‘and my money, of course, will come to you after I’m dead. My accountant did a valuation for me last month. It’s not an awful lot, I’m afraid. But it will buy you a good car, and perhaps an exotic holiday. I’ve always thought that it would be interesting to go to China …’

  A car? A holiday? When she’d just mentioned £350,000 … Martin dropped his fork and gripped the edge of the table. ‘How much?’ he demanded hoarsely.

  ‘Er –’ Con’s encouraging smile faded. The amount that she would be leaving her nephew, though surely acceptable to a bachelor, was nothing in comparison with her godmother’s fortune. She knew now that she should never have mentioned the £350,000. She had done so because Martin was an intelligent and responsible man – a police officer, no less – and she had felt that he would be sure to agree with her that such a large sum must be put to a worthy use. But although she was still convinced that logic and morality were on her side, she could see that the amount she was offering him must seem insultingly small.

  ‘Um – well, about £10,000 –’

  Her nephew stared at her, the shocked whiteness of his skin changing to an indignant red. ‘Ten thousand?’ he repeated. ‘You’re not serious, Aunt Con. You can’t be! You can’t possibly –’

  He paused in mid-sentence, his face beginning to clear but his voice still wary. ‘Oh, but of course – you’re talking just about cash, aren’t you? There’s this house, too. And the one on the Horkey road –’ He did a quick mental estimate; yes, with luck he might still come out with something approaching £100,000. Nothing like that tantalizing £350,000, but almost what he‘d originally expected. Not good, but not too bad either.

  But his aunt was shaking her head. ‘I’m afraid not. I didn’t spend much of my godmother’s money, but I did buy these two houses with it. Their value is included in the £350,000. And you see, I need every penny of that to buy a lifeboat.’

  ‘You’re going to buy a lifeboat?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The thought of what she planned to do restored Con’s confidence and enthusiasm. ‘That’s what I’ve set my heart on. I’ve checked with the RNLI, and they’ve told me approximately what it will cost to build and equip a boat. Not one of the biggest, they cost half a million; but the kind that was lost with all its crew off the Cornish coast a few Christmases ago. If I buy a new boat, the RNLI will let me name it in someone’s memory, and that’s what I intend to do. The money came from my godmother, so I shall name the boat the Alice Simpson. It’ll be a jolly good memorial to her, won’t it?’

  Martin pushed himself away from the table and began to stride about the kitchen, his mind in a turmoil. Then he turned on his aunt, his eyes gleaming with anger, his voice rising. ‘But what happened to the family money, for God’s sake? My grandfather was a man of property – there was that big house in Woodbridge, and a scattering of smaller houses and shops in the centre of the town. Grandfather must have left a small fortune. And that was Tait money, it should have come to me!’

  Con rose uneasily to her feet and backed against the sink, alarmed by the change in her nephew. This was an aspect of his character that she had never seen. ‘Don’t shout, Martin, please. Yes, your grandfather did once own a lot of property, but he sold it some years before he died. He left what at the time seemed to be a substantial amount of money – but you must remember that property values were a great deal lower then than they are now. And when your father died, your mother had to be provided for. Her house and the bookshop were bought with your grandfather’s money, and I expect you’ll eventually inherit them. And then there was your grandmother –’

  ‘Granny? What did she want with money? She lived with you for years, and she was virtually housebound. Good God, she was ninety when she died! What did she want money for?’

  Con faced him, her back straight, her eyes and voice bleak. ‘It was the nursing home,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget that your grandmother spent her last five years in a private nursing home. That was what took all the money.’

  ‘But why the family money?’ Martin exploded. ‘You had all that capital of your own: why did you use up money that should have been kept in the family? I’m the only grandchild, the only living Tait, and one day I shall marry and have children to carry on the name. I had an entitlement to grandfather’s money.’

  ‘But your grandmother had a prior entitlement,’ snapped Con, angry in her turn. ‘My father left me with the responsibility of looking after my mother in her old age, and with the means to do so. That was how he intended his money spent. It never occurred to me to use Alice Simpson’s money for that purpose. It wouldn’t have been right. The pity was, of course – from everyone’s point of view, including her own – that your grandmother should have lived so long in the nursing home.’

  ‘And that’s another thing,’ stormed Martin. ‘Why did Granny have to go into a nursing home at all? I know she was frail, but she wasn’t actually ill. A bit muddle-headed, perhaps, but I remember her as a nice little old body, no trouble to anyone. You looked af
ter her for long enough while you were working – surely you could have gone on doing so after you retired? Good grief, Aunt Con, she was your mother. How could you shove her away in an expensive nursing home? Christ, how can you talk about it not being “right” to use the money your godmother left you? Was it right to put your own mother away? Was it right to use up all the family money in order to get rid of her, just because the poor old dear was a bit of an encumbrance?’

  Con flinched as though he had struck her. ‘Martin,’ she pleaded, ‘you don’t understand –’

  ‘No I bloody well don’t! I’ve always thought you were kind and generous towards the family, but I’m beginning to see things differently now.’ He strode to the open door. ‘Well, you must do as you please with all your money. But if your conscience tells you to give a third of a million to charity and only a measly ten thousand to your own flesh and blood, don’t expect me to help you in your old age. You can die alone for all I care.’

  He swung out of the cottage and along the darkening path towards the front gate, too furious to see or hear an eavesdropper scuttle away behind the cover of a rose hedge to the garden of the cottage next door.

  Martin Tait’s first thought was to go to the Flintknappers Arms and get drunk. But he was a cerebral man: too clever to pickle his wits in alcohol, he sat alone in a corner of the noisy bar room, brooding over one small gin and tonic.

  His thrusting stride through the woods between Fodderstone Green and the Flintknappers had worked some of the blind fury out of his system. Now he was cold, resentful, calculating.

  And what he calculated was that there was still time to retrieve his rightful fortune. He didn’t know whether his aunt intended to give her money to the RNLI while she was still alive, or leave it to them in a new will; but from what she had said, it seemed as though the money was still in her possession. It ought to be possible, then, for him to devise some way of extracting it from her. It must be possible. His whole future, the way of life that he had planned for himself, was at stake.

  He made a decision, and went to the bar. The man behind it, loud-voiced, catfish-moustached, shifty-eyed behind tinted spectacles, was presumably Phil Goodwin the landlord.

  ‘I suppose you wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of champagne I could buy to take away?’ Tait asked.

  His bucolic fellow-customers stared and sniggered. A potbellied darts player missed the double, lost his match and swore roundly. Tait ignored them.

  Phil Goodwin, mentally and physically exhausted after a difficult day out, and angered by his wife’s nagging over his lateness, shouted in astonishment. Unlikely as it seemed, he did have some champagne. The crafty brewery rep, taking advantage of Phil’s inexperience to increase his own sales commission, had persuaded him that he would need to stock some for the Christmas trade in his first year at the Flintknappers; but of course no one had bought it. Ordinary local people didn’t drink champagne, and the rich could always get it cheaper by the case elsewhere. Half a dozen gold-foiled bottles, representing a wasted investment of pounds of Phil’s inadequate capital, were gathering cobwebs in his cellar.

  ‘Seriously?’ he demanded, ‘For cash?’ The fair-haired, posh-voiced stranger sounded genuine, but Phil had learned enough about pub-keeping and about customers’bloody stupid jokes to be wary of outlandish requests.

  ‘Seriously,’ confirmed Tait, pulling his wallet from his hip pocket. ‘In fact make it two. And is there a telephone I can use?’

  Five minutes later Martin Tait left the Flintknappers, a slight smile on his face, two bottles of champagne under his arm, a complete plan of action on ice in his mind.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Con felt utterly wretched. She had been so sure that what she intended to do with her godmother’s money was both fair and reasonable, but now she was in a complete muddle, not knowing right from wrong. Was she treating Martin shabbily? She had always, from her schooldays, been notorious for her clumsiness. Had she, in her effort to do good, made a monumental hash of everything?

  As for what her nephew had said about her treatment of her mother: he was too young, too inexperienced to understand. What he had shouted at her was cruelly unfair. And yet …

  He didn’t understand and he wasn’t being fair, but she knew in her heart that he was right. He had voiced the reason for the guilt that had been her constant companion for ten years. Acknowledging it, overwhelmed by regret and the sense of failure, Con found that only the Fauré ‘Pie Jesus’ – that ravishingly tender combination of organ and woodwind, strings and harp and treble innocence – could give her any comfort. She had played the Requiem almost continuously ever since Martin had walked out.

  And now he was back. Con flinched as she heard him approach, dreading another row. She hadn’t known that he had so much anger in him.

  But astonishingly – thankfully – the anger had all gone. Martin was himself again, courteous, charming, abjectly apologetic. He’d even brought a bottle of champagne!

  He stood with his hands behind his back, as he used to do when he was in trouble as a boy, and made a speech that he had obviously rehearsed. ‘Inexcusable behaviour … unjust, abominably rude, thoroughly ungrateful. You’ve been a splendid aunt to me, always. And Grandpa and Granny were wonderfully kind and generous to my mother and me. Can’t expect you to forgive me … deeply ashamed … And now I’m going to pack and clear off.’

  He made for the stairs, but Con couldn’t let him go. He had so much of his father about him, and just as she had always found it impossible not to forgive her brother Robert, so she couldn’t not forgive his son. After all, her nephew’s failings were nothing in comparison with her own.

  ‘Martin!’ she called. ‘Don’t leave – stay and finish your holiday, please.’

  He hesitated, then turned. ‘If you really mean that …?’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ she said, her face brightening. ‘Oh golly, yes, I do.’

  ‘Then of course I’ll stay,’ he said, smiling a boyish smile.

  During the next twelve hours Martin Tait took every opportunity to devote himself to his aunt. He carried the boxes of burnable rubbish from her bedroom to the garden, washed up the supper things, chatted to her amusingly and made her a late-night cup of Ovaltine.

  The following morning he was up and about soon after six, unrefreshed after an airless, wakeful night. The day promised to be as hot as ever. He watered the garden thoroughly, mowed the grass and took his aunt an early morning cup of tea. Then, as he had promised, he attended to her car.

  The tranquil appearance of Fodderstone Green had been preserved by keeping the twentieth-century residents’ cars and garages out of sight at the far end of their long, leafy gardens. Martin backed the white Escort out of his aunt’s discreet timber garage and on to the dirt lane that gave access to the road through the Green. He drove to the village garage, and explained to the mechanic how Mrs Schultz wanted the engine to be adjusted. When the work had been completed to his satisfaction he filled the tank with petrol, paying for it out of his own pocket rather than putting it on his aunt’s account. And after he returned the car to her he drove her, again as he had promised, to the property she owned in the Horkey road.

  The cottage, standing entirely alone beside the quiet country lane, with harvested fields on either side and a belt of woodland at the back, had no name. Surprisingly, it had a number instead. Built at the same time as the cottages on Fodderstone Green, number 15 had once been part of the first Earl of Brandon’s estate.

  As it was not a showpiece, the cottage had been plainly built, with no porch, pantiles instead of thatch, and a serviceable mixture of brick and rough flint for the walls. Even so, the front door and windows had been constructed in the Regency Gothic style, and it was this architectural quirk – together with the absurdity of the number on the door when there was not another building in sight – that had made Con Schultz fall in love with the cottage and decide to rescue it from dilapidation.

  She had spent plenty of money
on it, that was obvious. Tait glanced sourly at the renovated roof, the renewed woodwork, the recent paint. An extension at the rear, presumably containing a new kitchen and a bathroom, had been architect-designed to be in sympathy with the rest of the cottage.

  The garden, though, was showing signs of neglect. The grass was shaggy. Roses, geraniums, lobelia, clematis, were all wilting from lack of water. And on the cottage door, the original brass numerals that had been worn thin by a century and a half of polishing were now dulled.

  ‘Oh crumbs,’ sighed Con. ‘What a shame … My own fault, of course. When I used to let the place to summer visitors, I took the trouble to look after things. But it was a frightful bind, rushing over between lets to clean the house and keep the garden tidy. I was jolly relieved when Sandra Websdell and her fiancé decided that they wanted to start their married life here, and I haven’t done a thing since I gave them their key. And then when Sandra disappeared, I was so concerned about her that I didn’t even notice the garden when I came over here with Beryl and the detective. Oh, those poor thirsty plants …’

  ‘Don’t worry, Aunt Con,’ said Martin. ‘I’ll water them. And then I’ll cut the grass –’

  He took the key from her hand, unlocked the door and held it open for her. She went in, giving the numerals an apologetic rub with her handkerchief in passing. A stone-paved lobby, with a staircase bending up from it, opened on to what had originally been the only ground-floor room of the cottage. It was furnished comfortably enough, but the narrow pointed Gothic windows with their leaded panes gave the room a dim, ecclesiastical air – not unpleasant on a hot day, but in more typical English weather it would almost certainly seem gloomy. A passable place, Tait thought, for a short secluded honeymoon, but a dump to live in.