About winding up her affairs. I seem to be the only one of the family left by now.’
‘Pity she hadn’t got a fortune to leave you,’ said Tuppence.
‘If she had had a fortune she’d have left it to that Cats’ Home,’ said Tommy. ‘The legacy that she’s left to them in her will will pretty well eat up all the spare cash. There won’t be much left to come to me. Not that I need it or want it anyway.’
‘Was she so fond of cats?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose so. I never heard her mention them. I believe,’ said Tommy thoughtfully, ‘she used to get rather a lot of fun out of saying to old friends of hers when they came to see her “I’ve left you a little something in my will, dear” or “This brooch that you’re so fond of I’ve left you in my will.” She didn’t actually leave anything to anyone except the Cats’ Home.’
‘I bet she got rather a kick out of that,’ said Tuppence. ‘I can just see her saying all the things you told me to a lot of her old friends—or so-called old friends because I don’t suppose they were people she really liked at all. She just enjoyed leading them up the garden path. I must say she was an old devil, wasn’t she, Tommy? Only, in a funny sort of way one likes her for being an old devil. It’s something to be able to get some fun out of life when you’re old and stuck away in a Home. Shall we have to go to Sunny Ridge?’
‘Where’s the other letter, the one from Miss Packard? Oh yes, here it is. I put it with Rockbury’s. Yes, she says there are certain things there, I gather, which apparently are now my property. She took some furniture with her, you know, when she went to live there. And of course there are her personal effects. Clothes and things like that. I suppose somebody will have to go through them. And letters and things. I’m her executor, so I suppose it’s up to me. I don’t suppose there’s anything we want really, is there? Except there’s a small desk there that I always liked. Belonged to old Uncle William, I believe.’
‘Well, you might take that as a memento,’ said Tuppence. ‘Otherwise, I suppose, we just send the things to be auctioned.’
‘So you don’t really need to go there at all,’ said Tommy.
‘Oh, I think I’d like to go there,’ said Tuppence.
‘You’d like to? Why? Won’t it be rather a bore to you?’
‘What, looking through her things? No, I don’t think so. I think I’ve got a certain amount of curiosity. Old letters and antique jewellery are always interesting and I think one ought to look at them oneself, not just send them to auction or let strangers go through them. No, we’ll go and look through the things and see if there’s anything we would like to keep and otherwise settle up.’
‘Why do you really want to go? You’ve got some other reason, haven’t you?’
‘Oh dear,’ said Tuppence, ‘it is awful being married to someone who knows too much about one.’
‘So you have got another reason?’
‘Not a real one.’
‘Come on, Tuppence. You’re not really so fond of turning over people’s belongings.’
‘That, I think, is my duty,’ said Tuppence firmly. ‘No, the only other reason is—’
‘Come on. Cough it up.’
‘I’d rather like to see that—that other old pussy again.’
‘What, the one who thought there was a dead child behind the fireplace?’
‘Yes,’ said Tuppence. ‘I’d like to talk to her again. I’d like to know what was in her mind when she said all those things. Was it something she remembered or was it something that she’d just imagined? The more I think about it the more extraordinary it seems. Is it a sort of story that she wrote to herself in her mind or is there—was there once something real that happened about a fireplace or about a dead child. What made her think that the dead child might have been my dead child? Do I look as though I had a dead child?’
‘I don’t know how you expect anyone to look who has a dead child,’ said Tommy. ‘I shouldn’t have thought so. Anyway, Tuppence, it is our duty to go and you can enjoy yourself in your macabre way on the side. So that’s settled. We’ll write to Miss Packard and fix a day.’
Tuppence drew a deep breath.
‘It’s just the same,’ she said.
She and Tommy were standing on the front doorstep of Sunny Ridge.
‘Why shouldn’t it be?’ asked Tommy.
‘I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have—something to do with time. Time goes at a different pace in different places. Some places you come back to, and you feel that time has been bustling along at a terrific rate and that all sorts of things will have happened—and changed. But here—Tommy—do you remember Ostend?’
‘Ostend? We went there on our honeymoon. Of course I remember.’
‘And do you remember the sign written up? TRAM-STILLSTAND—It made us laugh. It seemed so ridiculous.’
‘I think it was Knock—not Ostend.’
‘Never mind—you remember it. Well, this is like that word—Tramstillstand—a portmanteau word. Timestillstand—nothing’s happened here. Time has just stood still. Everything’s going on here just the same. It’s like ghosts, only the other way round.’
‘I don’t know what you are talking about. Are you going to stand here all day talking about time and not even ring the bell?—Aunt Ada isn’t here, for one thing. That’s different.’ He pressed the bell.
‘That’s the only thing that will be different. My old lady will be drinking milk and talking about fireplaces, and Mrs Somebody-or-other will have swallowed a thimble or a teaspoon and a funny little woman will come squeaking out of a room demanding her cocoa, and Miss Packard will come down the stairs, and—’
The door opened. A young woman in a nylon overall said: ‘Mr and Mrs Beresford? Miss Packard’s expecting you.’
The young woman was just about to show them into the same sitting-room as before when Miss Packard came down the stairs and greeted them. Her manner was suitably not quite as brisk as usual. It was grave, and had a kind of semi-mourning about it—not too much—that might have been embarrassing. She was an expert in the exact amount of condolence which would be acceptable.
Three score years and ten was the Biblical accepted span of life, and the deaths in her establishment seldom occurred below that figure. They were to be expected and they happened.
‘So good of you to come. I’ve got everything laid out tidily for you to look through.
