It contained an old but never used blue bunny rug, a huge single crystal of some clear mauve stone, seven cut glass tumblers still in their cardboard cylinders, a white marble model of a baby’s hand and arm up past the dimpled elbow, and literally many dozens of little savings bank books.
Toby reached in and took out a handful of the bank books, flicked each one open, studied it in disbelief.
“Jesus!” he exclaimed. “Every one of this lot holds about a thousand pounds, which is the amount you can have in a savings account free and clear, without anybody allowed to ask questions.”
In all, we counted over a hundred of them, though we didn’t go on opening them. Why, when the answer was plain enough? There was a system involved, simple yet arduous. She never used the same bank twice, which meant that she had accounts in every branch of every bank that Sydney owned. As the last twenty years wore on, she had to go farther and farther afield, until she was plonking a thousand quid in Newcastle, Wollongong and Bathurst banks. What did she do with Flo when she travelled all day long?
“Well, Flo certainly isn’t going to want for a thing,” Toby said as he packed the bank books neatly into an empty carton, wrapped it in brown paper and tied it with string—she’d saved miles of string as well as sheaves of brown paper, carefully smoothed out, then folded again.
“Flo might never get to see a penny of it or own The House,” I said grimly. “The Government might end in collaring the lot—we haven’t found Flo’s birth certificate.”
Nor did we, though we renewed our search with redoubled energy. No will, no birth certificate, no name of any law firm. No wedding certificate either. Nor, it turned out when we quizzed her, could Pappy swear that Flo really was Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s child—she’d spent two years in Singapore trying to discover her father’s relations. It was after she came back that she brought Toby to The House, so he was no help. Whichever way we headed, we ran into a blank wall. It was just as if Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz had entered the world fully grown, never married, or had a child. One didn’t dream that such things could happen in this day and age, but they could. She was proof of it. How many people existed without the Government ever knowing they did? There were no tax records either, just a simple account book which recorded the minimal rents for 17c. No receipts for property rates, water bills, electricity bills, gas bills, repairs.
“She paid everything in cash,” said Klaus, who looked winded.
The last thing we tackled—we had to go through the front room to get there—was the little cupboard outside on the balcony where she kept her Glass and her cards and her heavenly spheres. They were all it contained, not one thing more. We riffled through the ephemeris, examined every horoscope sheet, turned it over, held it up to the light—we even took the tarot deck apart card by card. No birth certificate, no will, nothing.
“All right, let’s put it all back.” I sighed.
But Pappy gasped, grabbed my arm urgently. “No, Harriet, no! Don’t do that! Take it all downstairs and hide it in your flat.”
I stared at her as if she’d gone mad. “I can’t do that!” I said. “These belonged to her, they’re part of her estate. The Glass is immensely valuable—she said if she sold it, she’d be able to buy the Hotel Australia.”
Toby saw what I didn’t. “Pappy’s right, take them.”
I said no, he growled in exasperation at my stupidity.
“Don’t be a fool, Harriet! Use your head! The first people likely to inspect these premises will be from the Child Welfare, and what do you think they’re going to say when they find this stuff? Especially with all those bank books. If you want custody of Flo, then her life—and her mother’s life!—must look as ordinary and humdrum as possible. We can’t stop them thinking the old girl was eccentric, but for God’s sake, Harriet, don’t hand them ammunition like this!”
We piled the occult paraphernalia into another carton and we fled down the stairs to my flat at a gallop, terrified that we’d hear the door bell ring.
But it didn’t ring until five o’clock, which seemed an odd hour for the Child Welfare to arrive. I left Klaus busy at my stove cooking us a meal and went to answer it—we’d locked the front door yesterday, and now we kept it locked.
Duncan Forsythe was standing on the verandah.
“I won’t come in,” he said. “My wife is waiting in the car.”
He looked even worse than he had at Chris Hamilton’s wedding—thin and bent, defeated. His hair had hardly any red left in it, but he hadn’t salt-and-peppered. Broad streaks of white were mixed in with streaks of grey, very striking. His eyes were exhausted, but they gazed at me with such love that my heart twisted.
I peered over his shoulder and saw the Jaguar sitting within our cul-de-sac with its nose pointed at the kerb right where the Missus could watch everything that happened on 17c’s verandah. Taking no chances, the Missus.
“Your wife received a letter written in copperplate on very expensive paper,” I said. “It told her that you were in the grasp of a whore—a vulgar, common trollop not fit to live in this world but not fit to enter the next. Its dates were inaccurate, and it implied that we were still seeing each other.”
“Yes, exactly,” he said without surprise. “It came in this morning’s post.”
“Further to go,” I said. “The one to my father got to Bronte on New Year’s Eve.”
That did hurt him, he drew a long breath. “Oh, Harriet, my dear! I’m so sorry!”
Oh, how much had happened! I seemed to look at him through a network of strands of pain and worry I hadn’t felt until I saw him there, yet none of the strands was pain belonging to him, worry on his account. I had moved on to some other place, and, looking at him, I wondered if I could ever return to what had been our place. Before murder. Before they had taken my angel away to die.
So I answered him coolly. “Well, Duncan, if it’s any sort of consolation, there won’t be any more of these letters. Harold wrote them, and Harold’s dead. Now I only have to wonder if old Sister Agatha got one.”
“I am afraid she did. She phoned me this morning.”
I shrugged. “Too bad. What can she do? Sack me? Not in this day and age, she can’t. The worst she can do is take me off Cas and put me on routine chests, but I don’t think she’s that stupid. I’m too good at my job to waste on routine chests.”
He was staring at me as if I was as different from the old Harriet Purcell as I felt inside me. I put my hand on his arm and patted it, making sure that the Missus could see. “Duncan, you didn’t have to come and see me, truly. I am all right.”
“Cathy insisted,” he said, looking hunted. “I am to tell you that she’ll ignore our affair and will support both of us by denying the story to anybody who gets one of these letters.”
Crikey, what a cheek the woman had! My detachment evaporated as I felt the anger mounting. How dare she patronise him! How dare she patronise me! As if her say-so has the power to render anything insignificant! “Big of her,” I said. “Mighty big of her.” Growl, roar, snarl, out with the claws!
“I’ve given her my word that I’ll never speak to you again.”
That was the last straw. I butted Duncan aside with the point of my shoulder and strode to the car, grabbed the passenger’s door handle and had the door open before the Missus could find the lock. I reached in, fastened my hand in a French couture shoulder pad, and yanked Mrs. Duncan Forsythe out of her seat, onto the pavement. Then I backed her against the railings of 17c and towered over her—why do tall men always marry women with duck’s disease? She was terrified! It just hadn’t occurred to her that in forcing Duncan to come here with her riding shotgun, she’d meet Jesse James.
“Listen, you,” I snarled, my face inches from hers, “stay out of my life! How dare you patronise me! If you’d done your duty and given your husband a bit of nooky occasionally, he wouldn’t have strayed. You’re only in it for the meal ticket, but you don’t pay your debts. I do, and this is a debt I owe your husband for being a decent man and a wonderful lover! It isn’t his fault that you’ve cut his balls off, but you leave him alone, hear me?”
