Fate Worse Than Death (11 page)

Con put two slices of bread under the grill. ‘Well, it's my car –'

‘
Not
still the same white Ford Escort?' Martin was always amused by his aunt's reluctance to spend her money. All the more for him, eventually; but he felt that he could well afford to be generous with it. ‘Go on, be a devil and get yourself a new model!'

‘What ever for? She's usually a very reliable car, and that's all I need. But I've just had her serviced, and I'm not entirely happy with the result. When I slow right down, or go into neutral, the engine tends to stop.'

‘Sounds as though the timing needs adjusting. It'll have to go back to the garage.'

‘That's what I thought. I've booked her in for 8.30 tomorrow morning. But dear old Mr Rudge who used to be their mechanic has retired, and I'm not very good at explaining things to the new man – he's very young and impatient. So I'd be awfully grateful if you'd take the car in for me, and before you bring it back make absolutely sure that the engine won't cut out when it's in neutral. Do you mind?'

‘Not a bit. Glad to help. Hey, watch it, the toast's burning –'

‘Oh
gosh
,' said Con. She made it sound like a major disaster. Martin laughed, until he saw how her hands were shaking as she turned the bread over. If it wasn't absurd to imagine that anyone would ever make a production number out of two slices of burnt toast, he could have sworn that she was very close to tears.

Revived by a second glass of sherry, Con scraped the toast, buttered it and piled it with rubbery scrambled egg. They ate at the kitchen table, using limp linen napkins, clumsily hemmed, that had once been part of a tablecloth; another of Con's endearingly absurd economies.

‘Right,' said Martin, eager to get his aunt organized so that he could pursue his own affairs. ‘I'll carry your boxes of rubbish down to the garden after supper, ready for your bonfire. And tomorrow morning I'll get your car seen to. What else can I do for you while I'm here?'

‘Well, I
would
like you to come with me to look at the furniture in the cottage on the Horkey road. I know you said you don't want any of it, but I shan't be easy in my mind until you've seen it. Perhaps we could go there as soon as you bring back the car from the garage? But after that, you must go and fly your aeroplane and enjoy yourself. Did you find the telephone number you wanted, by the way?'

‘No, I didn't. I met a girl at the Flintknappers – I expect you know her, Annabel Yardley. She asked me to ring her, but forgot to give me her number, and it doesn't seem to be in the book. Do you think she's ex-directory?'

‘Annabel Yardley?' Con looked wryly amused. ‘I've never met her, but I know who she is. She won't be in the book because she's living here only temporarily – she's a friend of the Seymours. They're away in New Zealand, and she's come down from London to look after their horses. You'll find her number under their name – the address is Beech House. Actually she has family connections with Fodderstone, because she was born a Horrocks. Her father is a brother of the present Earl of Brandon and her great-grandfather, the third Earl, was the last of the family to live at Fodderstone Hall. But I imagine she's deliberately keeping quiet about her connections because there's an uncouth Horrocks, Charley, still living in the village.'

‘You seem to know a lot about her,' said Martin, trying to conceal his elation at the prospect of becoming intimately acquainted with the niece of an earl. He wasn't entirely surprised by his aunt's knowledge because she had always taken a lively and respectful interest in those members of the aristocracy who lived in Suffolk. She knew none of them personally but she had – still had, apparently, despite her forgetfulness about more pertinent matters – an extensive knowledge of who was related to whom, how and when their peerages had been obtained (mostly in the nineteenth century, after they'd made fortunes from brewing beer or manufacturing carpets) and their reported social activities. Her table linen might be tatty, but she enjoyed spending money on glossy magazines like
Country Life
and
Harpers & Queen
.

‘Oh well, I know the Seymours slightly. I usually help with Elizabeth Seymour's fund-raising events for the RNLI,' said Con. Having been brought up near the coast, she had always taken an interest in the lifeboat service. ‘Annabel Yardley's married,' she went on, offering her nephew a word of caution. ‘Her husband's abroad with the army.'

‘I'm glad she
is
married,' said Martin. ‘I couldn't possibly afford to keep a woman like her entertained on a regular basis. But it could be amusing to see something of her during my leave.'

Con put down her knife and fork. Her long narrow face was earnest, her eyes slightly unfocused. ‘You haven't a regular girlfriend, then?' she asked.

‘No,' he said without hesitation.

‘And no foreseeable plans to marry? I'm not just being inquisitive, I do have a good reason for asking.'

He laughed and crunched burnt toast with his strong teeth, enjoying the knowledge that he had no ties, no encumbrances, and in the long term no financial problems. ‘
Definitely
no plans of that kind!'

‘And yours is a good career, isn't it?' Con persisted. ‘I mean, as a senior police officer you'll be well paid? And eventually you'll get a comfortable pension?'

He'd never given much thought to it, knowing that he had his aunt's money to come. He shrugged cheerfully, ‘Oh – we never think we're well paid, considering the responsibilities society puts upon us. But at Chief Constable level the money's not bad – and if I become Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police I can always make a small fortune when I retire by selling my memoirs.'

‘Oh good …' said Con seriously. She had abandoned the greater part of her supper and was now concentrating her attention on some spilled grains of salt, pushing them about the table with her bony forefinger.

‘You see, Martin … the thing is this: if you had a steady girlfriend and were planning to marry, I might feel that I was being unfair to you by altering my financial arrangements. As I'm sure your mother has told you, I made a will in your favour when your father died. You were still a boy, and I wanted to make sure that your education would be safeguarded if I fell under a bus.

‘But the situation's different now, isn't it?' She raised her eyes and peered at him anxiously, urging him to agree with the logic of what she was saying. ‘You're independent. You're well established in your career, and you've a brilliant future. And now you've set my mind at rest by assuring me that you have no commitments, I'd better tell you what I've planned.' She took a breath, and plunged. ‘I'm not going to leave you my godmother's money after all.'

Martin's jaw stilled in mid-chew. He stared at her, rigid with disbelief.

‘I'm not cutting you out of my will, don't think that,' Con assured him with a nervous laugh. ‘But, well, £350,000 is an awful lot of money to leave to any one person, isn't it? It doesn't seem right, when it could be put to good use in helping people in distress, and saving lives. So now I know that you really aren't in any need of the money, I feel a sort of moral obligation to give it to charity instead.'

Con had given a great deal of thought, over the years, to the problem of what to do with her embarrassing inheritance.

Her godmother, Alice Simpson, had been one of Con's mother's oldest friends and the wife of the owner of a large fishing-fleet that had sailed out of Lowestoft in the heyday of the herring. On her husband's death, Alice had taken shrewd advice and sold up the fleet while the herring was still king. Childless, and with no near relatives, she had made a sizeable bequest to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution for the purchase of a boat in her late husband's name, then willed the remainder of her fortune to her god-daughter Con Schultz,
née
Constance Alice Tait.

When Con had inherited the money in middle age, she was astonished and alarmed to find that it amounted to over £200,000. She had known that her godmother intended to leave her something, and she had thought in terms of buying herself a car, and perhaps travelling a little. But £200,000 was more than she knew what to do with.

At the time Con was living in the family home in Woodbridge, where she had returned after her brief marriage to help her mother care for her ailing father. She was able to meet all her living expenses from her salary as a deputy librarian, and though she bought a small car for journeying to work in Ipswich, and took holidays-of-a-lifetime with an old schoolfriend in Venice, Florence and Athens, she used very little of her godmother's money. Her greatest extravagance had been to retain the services of a good accountant and a stockbroker. With sound investment advice, and the conscientious re-investment of most of the interest over a period of twenty years, her godmother's money did nothing but grow.

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.'