Death of a Dormouse

3

‘First the bad news,’ said Mr Ashburton. ‘Harold Brightshaw is dead.’

‘Who?’

‘Mr Brightshaw of Six Mile Farm, Grindleford, the witness in the accident case. I told you he had a stroke shortly afterwards. He never recovered, poor chap.’

‘I’m sorry. Does it make a difference?’ asked Trudi.

‘Oh yes. He made a statement but now he can’t be cross-questioned on it. It’s my information that the police will be charging the tanker driver with one of the lesser offences, driving without due care and attention perhaps. That won’t help us, even if he’s found guilty.’

‘Even if?’ exclaimed Trudi. ‘Surely there’s no defence!’

‘There’s always a defence,’ said Ashburton drily. ‘Mud on the road left by Mr Brightshaw’s tractor – a hint there that Mr Brightshaw’s statement might be a little biased. And they’ll use the post-mortem findings too, I’ve no doubt.’

‘What findings? And I thought that the fire …’

She didn’t finish.

Ashburton said gently, ‘Yes, I know. Beyond recognition; but an internal examination was still possible. Would you like some more coffee, Mrs Adamson?’

‘No thanks. Go on,’ said Trudi.

‘Two things then. There was a fairly high alcohol level in the blood stream, just about on the legal limit. And there were present in the coronary arteries, let me see, atheromas, lesions in the arterial wall. In a phrase, coronary arteriosclerosis which eventually could lead to your husband having a heart attack.’

‘But Trent died of his injuries, not a heart attack!’ protested Trudi indignantly.

‘No one will contest that. What the defence will be looking for is some way of suggesting that there was contributory negligence on your husband’s part. If for instance a sudden spasm of pain caused him to stop unexpectedly or a sudden dizziness, say, leaving his car not parked safely on the verge, but slewed across the road …’

‘Because he was drunk, you mean, or sick? I never saw Trent drunk in his life! As for being ill, he was always in the best of health. Surely Mr Brightshaw’s statement doesn’t say his car was slewed across the road?’

‘No, but it doesn’t say it wasn’t.’

‘But the truck driver …’

‘Hitherto I gather his memory of things has been vague. It would not surprise me, however, if now it began to sharpen up,’ said Mr Ashburton. ‘I fear that our hopes of a good out-of-court settlement are fading, Mrs Adamson. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not right, Mr Ashburton,’ said Trudi angrily. ‘It’s not just the money, though I could do with it, but it’s just not right that people should be able to get away with this sort of thing. What can we do to stop them?’

‘Not much, I’m afraid. Evidence of your husband’s excellent state of health could be useful. Perhaps his last doctor could help there. Why don’t you contact him and get a certificate of some kind? Now, on a happier note, as I told you on the phone, one of my clients, Mr Stanley Usher, a man of many interests, mentioned to me the other day that he’d taken over a small export business and felt in need of some bilingual secretarial help. I mentioned your name to him. It would be part-time and it wouldn’t make your fortune, but if you’re interested …’

‘Yes, I am,’ said Trudi firmly.

‘Good. Here’s the address. Mr Usher will be there now. It’s just a short walk. Down past the cathedral, turn left down the hill, then left again and there you are.’

He handed Trudi a business card. On it was printed in bright red letters CLASS-GLASS with the address underneath in blue and Stanley Usher: Director at the bottom in a flowing black script.

The building she arrived at was under multi-commercial occupancy. Class-Glass was on the first floor. She knocked at the door. A voice called, ‘Enter.’ She turned the handle, stepped inside and stopped dead.

It was like being in a funfair Hall of Mirrors except that here there was no distortion. There was however a fragmentation almost as disturbing from the mirrors which covered every inch of the walls. They came in all shapes and sizes and they all had pictures and words printed on them, some advertising old drinks which had disappeared years ago, others referring to new and up-to-date products.

‘Mrs Adamson? Come in, have a seat. Don’t worry, you’ll soon get used to the mirrors, unless you hate the sight of yourself!’

Stanley Usher was a tall dark man with a spare lean frame and a rather cadaverous face. She put his age at about forty. He was expensively suited in traditional charcoal-grey worsted and the only touch of colour about him came from the two rings he wore on his left hand, one a ruby, the other an emerald. His voice had a slight under-accent which might have been Australian.

Trudi sat on a hard office chair on one side of a typist’s desk which carried a gleaming new electronic typewriter, the sight of which filled her with dismay. She was definitely pre-microchip. Usher sat on the typist’s swivel chair opposite her. The only other furniture in the room was a filing cabinet.

‘Let me explain the set-up, Mrs Adamson,’ said Usher. ‘This job might be owt or nowt, as they say in these parts. Probably the latter. These are hard times. Little businesses are going down like ninepins. What I do is buy them as they tumble, and their prices tumble too, of course! Then I use my own cash and know-how to see if anything can be retrieved from the wreck. If it can’t, tough. I usually make as much as I put in. You follow me?’

‘I think so,’ said Trudi.

‘Great. Class-Glass exports mirrors, these kind of mirrors, ornamental advertising. Only it didn’t. Export many, I mean. So it failed, I bought it. Now I’m using my know-how and continental contacts to see if there’s any life in the corpse, right? What I need is someone who can deal with the mail, in and out. I’ve got a smattering of Frog and I can buy a drink in Kraut, but that’s it. So what I want is this. You come in on Mondays and Thursdays. Open the mail. Translate it. Deal with anything you can deal with. Leave a note and translation with anything you can’t. I’ll be in from time to time. You’ll find letters from me to be translated into the appropriate language, typed, dispatched. OK?’

‘OK. But …’

‘Let’s say forty pounds for the two days, see how we go from there? I’ll get Ashburton to deal with the payment and any paperwork. Let’s see how we go, then even if this folds, there may be something else. Right! Now, let me show you round, not that there’s much to show except for these bloody mirrors!’

‘And what did he show you?’ enquired Janet. Trudi, feeling she had been rather rough on her friend, and also having a favour to ask, had phoned her that same evening.

‘Nothing much. There’s a tiny washroom. A storeroom full of all kinds of mirrors. A filing cabinet, almost empty. And that damned typewriter. I noticed an instruction book in the desk drawer, thank God. I’ll need to spend my first couple of days learning how it works!’

‘You’ll cope, I’m sure,’ said Janet.

For the first time, a certain strain in her friend’s voice registered with Trudi.

‘Jan, are you OK? I mean, you’re not still annoyed about lunch time?’

‘Of course not. No, you’re the one entitled to be annoyed. I know I’m too pushy sometimes. No, the thing is, when I got home this afternoon, I found the house had been broken into.’

‘Oh Janet! How awful.’

‘Well, I’m trying not to make too big a thing of it; I mean, the place was a bit untidy, but he wasn’t one of the dirty ones, thank God. Doesn’t seem to have taken anything either, the police reckon he was looking for money. But even so, it shakes you up a bit.’

‘I bet it does. And me rabbiting on about my job. I’m sorry.’

‘No. That’s really good news, that cheers me up a lot. I look forward to hearing about your new exciting commercial life next Wednesday.’

‘Yes. Oh by the way, I wondered, well, would you mind going for a drive next week? Down into Derbyshire? I thought we could have a bar lunch, my treat.’

‘Why, yes, of course,’ said Janet, slightly puzzled. ‘That would be nice.’

‘Lovely. See you next Wednesday then.’

The following Wednesday was a bright but chilly December day. Janet picked her up at midday and by one o’clock they were tucking into a substantial bar lunch in the small village of Grindleford.

‘I hope you’re not planning an afternoon’s hiking,’ said Janet, refilling their glasses from the bottle of hock Trudi had insisted on buying.

‘No,’ she assured her.

‘Good. Now tell me about the House of Usher!’

There wasn’t much to tell.

‘I spent my first day, last Thursday that was, working out that damned typewriter. On Monday, Usher showed up. There were a few letters to translate and type. And that was it. Fortunately I’d taken a good book along.’

‘And Usher? Did he pounce?’

‘No! He bought me a drink at lunch time though.’

‘Aha!’ said Janet gleefully. ‘You want to watch him!’

‘I don’t think he’s interested in me like that,’ said Trudi slowly.

‘What other way is there?’ mocked Janet.

Trudi smiled but didn’t answer. This time she didn’t need her friend to suggest that she was being neurotic.

After lunch, Trudi surprised Jan by taking charge of navigation, using an os map. Janet followed, with puzzlement which might eventually become protest, the uncertain route laid out for her along a skein of narrow roads, many unclassified. The sun was still bright, but low now in the winter sky, sending long shadows from leafless trees.

Suddenly Trudi said, ‘Stop here!’

Janet brought the car to a halt and Trudi was out of it before she could speak. They were on a straight and undulating stretch of narrow road running between thick hedgerows of hawthorn and blackthorn, alongside which marched a spindly line of telegraph poles. About a hundred yards ahead one of the poles looked newer than the rest and there was a long gap in the hedge, repaired with stakes and wire. Beyond the hedge to the left was a ploughed field rising diagonally with the swell of the ground, like the birth of a wave caught with an artist’s brush.

Trudi walked along the road a little way till she came to an old wooden gate, badly in need of repair, set between two pillars of rough-hewn stone which looked as if they could have been raised there by Druids. She pushed back the gate far enough to let her through and set off across the field, following the rising diagonal.

From time to time she stopped and looked back. The first time she could not see Janet’s car at all. The second time she could see the line of its roof and Janet’s face regarding her with what she guessed was bewilderment. And on her third stop, high up the field, she could see the car and also the long line of the road where it continued its arrow-straight run on the far side of the ridge to another distant crest.

A truck coming down there would be able to reach a tremendous speed, she told herself. Downhill, an empty road ahead, foot on the accelerator, and then the exhilaration of the sudden upward swoop apparently into nothingness over the brow of the ridge on which she stood.

And immediately, panic! No longer an empty road but not very far ahead a stationary car leaving only a narrow passage. The foot instinctively hitting the brake pedal, the wheels locking, the tyres starting to skid across the gleaming muddy surface, and suddenly the steering wheel as useless as a broken rudder in a storm-tossed sea.

She looked up to the sky. It was a mistake, the world began to reel, she felt herself in danger of being shaken off into that cold blue emptiness and her atoms, each one printed with her terror and loss, scattered forever through the universe. She closed her eyes and dug her nails deep into her palms till the earth stood still. Then she turned and walked back down to the car. Janet’s face was full of questions, but when Trudi got in and said, ‘Let’s carry on. Over the hill there should be a track to the left,’ she obeyed silently.

The track was there, a farm road signposted Six Mile Farm.

The track’s surface was rutted and pot-holed and Janet had to concentrate to pick out the least damaging line. Trudi was mentally doing the same and finding it even more difficult. The woman she was going to see would be grieving with a nearer and probably deeper grief than her own. Trudi was suddenly astounded at her arrogance in even thinking of intruding on her at this time. The car was entering a farmyard. She wanted to tell Janet to turn straight round and head back for the road, but it was already too late. The tall stone building had an abundance of small narrow windows, as though the builder lacked the art to make them double and had compensated by making them frequent. As they drove through the entrance, Trudi glimpsed a face pressed against one of these and before the car had come to rest on the cobbled forecourt, the farmhouse door was open and a woman emerged.

Saying to Janet, ‘I won’t be long,’ she got out.

The woman remained in the doorway, for which she was grateful. She wanted to explain her business out of Janet’s hearing.

‘Mrs Brightshaw?’ she said.

The woman nodded. She was tall and muscular, with a weather-beaten face, a sharp chin and nose, steely grey hair and deep-set, watchful eyes. She looked about sixty, or perhaps a well-preserved seventy.

Trudi said, ‘I’m sorry to trouble you at this time, Mrs Brightshaw. I was sorry to hear of your husband’s death.’

‘You knew Harold?’ she said in a flat Derbyshire accent.

‘No,’ Trudi said. ‘Not personally. My name’s Adamson. Trudi Adamson. I don’t know if you recall the accident on the road back there in the summer. Mr Brightshaw was a witness. It was my husband who was killed.’

The woman considered this, then, ‘You’d better come in,’ she said, stepping aside, adding as Trudi went by, ‘What about her?’

Presumably she was referring to Janet.

Trudi said, ‘No, no. She’ll be all right.’

Mrs Brightshaw closed the front door and ushered Trudi into a long, high living room.

Sitting down in an old wing chair before a huge fireplace in which flickered a tiny fire, Trudi said, ‘Look, Mrs Brightshaw, if you don’t feel like talking about your husband, please say so and I’ll go.’

The woman answered, ‘I reckon if you can talk about yours, I can talk about my Harold. And if I don’t feel like it, I’ll shut up. What do you want to know?’

Trudi began to explain and found herself rambling.

Impatiently Mrs Brightshaw said, ‘Let’s get it straight. These lawyers are trying to say your man might’ve had a bad turn and stopped his car sudden like, so it was blocking the road?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And if the court believes that, it’ll affect your compensation?’

Trudi had not mentioned money, and now she reacted against the imputation of a merely mercenary motive.

‘I just want the truth, Mrs Brightshaw,’ she said firmly.

‘Truth! Aye. That,’ said the woman. ‘Did he leave you all right, your man?’

Belatedly, Trudi realized this was the key to whatever the woman could tell her. Shared grief could not bring them together; shared poverty might!

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘He left very little. I’ve taken a job again after twenty-five years.’

‘Oh yes?’ said the woman with a slight sneer. ‘That’d be hard for you!’

‘Yes,’ said Trudi seriously. ‘Not working, but finding work, that’s what’s hard. At my age, in these days.’

The farmer’s widow nodded as if she had at last heard a potent argument. Then she blew her nose, picked up a poker, stirred the tiny fire.

Finally she said, ‘Well, you needn’t worry. He was parked proper all right. As tight up against the hedge as you could ask.’

Trudi found herself as much puzzled as pleased by her emphasis.

‘You’re certain?’ she asked. ‘Your husband told you that?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He did.’

‘And would you make a statement to that effect?’ asked Trudi. ‘In writing I mean.’

Mrs Brightshaw looked suddenly uneasy.

‘Would I have to go to court?’

‘I don’t know,’ Trudi said. ‘To be quite frank, Mrs Brightshaw, I’m not really sure about the law as it applies here. But it would be a great help to me personally, that’s quite certain.’

The woman continued to look so doubtful that Trudi’s surprise began to turn to suspicion.

‘You are quite certain that’s what your husband told you?’ she asked.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t like to think you were just trying to cheer me up,’ said Trudi hesitantly. ‘And …’

‘And, come to think of it,’ said Trudi in a rush, ‘it does sound rather an odd thing for Mr Brightshaw to have been so emphatic about, particularly as he doesn’t seem to have felt it was worth mentioning in his statement.’

The old woman nodded and said, ‘That’s the kind of thing them fancy lawyers would say, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose so. If it came to questioning.’

‘I don’t doubt it would,’ she said fiercely. ‘And I’d have to take an oath?’

‘In court, yes,’ said Trudi, bewildered and by now a trifle uneasy.

‘Then you’d better hear what I would have to tell them, Mrs Adamson,’ she said with an air of decision. ‘Then you can make up your mind. What my husband told me wasn’t what he told the police. Don’t misunderstand me, he didn’t lie, he just kept it simple. He told them he’d no idea how long your man’s car had been stopped on the road when he noticed it. And the crash happened shortly after.’

Trudi’s uneasiness was now a constricting pain beneath her breast bone.

‘Truth was,’ Mrs Brightshaw continued, ‘he’d noticed the car arrive twenty, thirty minutes earlier. Then another car came and stopped behind it. He heard doors slamming. Then he saw someone move from the second car to the first. It was a woman. Harold was working with his tractor you understand, not just standing gawking. But a bit later on, he saw the second car move off. And it wasn’t long after that that the accident happened.’

Trudi made two false starts before she could speak.

‘Why didn’t he say anything about this in his statement?’ she managed in the end.

‘He was a kind man, my Harold,’ said the older woman softly. ‘He reckoned that if there was nothing in it, the other driver would come forward soon enough. But if it was what it looked like, there was no point in adding to your troubles by letting all and sundry know your husband was parked out in the countryside to meet his fancy woman.’

She raised her eyes and regarded the younger woman steadily.

‘But there’s one thing for sure,’ she said. ‘A man doing that doesn’t leave his car lying halfway across the road.’

Trudi took a deep breath. She was almost too bewildered to be distressed. She heard herself saying wretchedly, ‘It was definitely a woman, was it?’

‘It was,’ said Mrs Brightshaw. ‘He told me he could see her head clearly above the hedge. She must have been a tall lass. Blonde hair he said, I remember that. Bright blonde.’

A tall lass. Bright blonde hair. Trudi felt the information register. Then she asked, ‘And her car? Did he say anything about that?’

‘Yes, he did, as a matter of fact. He said it was a little red thing with a kind of flag on its aerial. He mentioned how small it was, particular, because that seemed likely the reason this blonde lass went to the other, which was bigger. More room for that sort of meeting. He wasn’t making a joke, just giving me his reason for keeping mum. When the police came for his statement, he asked if there was a wife and when they told him yes, that made up his mind. He thought you’d be hurt enough. Like I say, he was a kind man.’

‘Yes, yes, he sounds like a kind man,’ Trudi echoed, rising. She now felt surprisingly calm. ‘How will you manage now that you’re by yourself?’ she heard herself asking, calm and concerned as the vicar’s wife on a parochial visit.

Mrs Brightshaw let the question hang, smelling more patronizing by the second, till she had shown Trudi to the door.

‘I’ve been managing ever since Harold took his stroke,’ she said finally. ‘Managing’s easy. It’s wanting to manage that’s the hard bit. But you’ll have found that out yourself, I daresay.’

The door closed behind Trudi and the bolt rattled home.

Slowly she returned to the car, moving in time to the childish jingle which had risen unsummoned into her head.

Three blind mice … see how they run … they all ran after the farmer’s wife … she cut off their tails with a carving knife …

‘OK?’ said Janet, compressing a whole catechism into the question.

‘Fine,’ said Trudi. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You don’t look fine. You look terrible,’ said Janet. ‘Come on, what do you really feel like?’

‘I feel like a widow,’ said Trudi savagely. ‘I feel like a fucking widow!’

4

Trudi told Janet nothing of her discovery about Astrid Fischer till they got drunk together on Boxing Day.

She had made a token protest when Janet invited her to spend Christmas in Oldham.

‘It’s your first Christmas together,’ she said. ‘And it’s a family time.’

‘Family! What family? Mine’s halfway across the world, and Frank’s good for half an hour of Santa Claus with his grandkids, then it’s King Herod time. He’ll be glad of an ally.’

This had turned out to be true. And on Boxing Day, Frank had taken further advantage of her presence by going off to play golf with a clear conscience.

‘Fair dos,’ said Janet. ‘He put golf at the top of his interests on the bureau form. I don’t mind. Golf’s good for a marriage. Man with his eye on the ball doesn’t have much time to look at anything else.’

She grinned broadly as she spoke. Their lunch of cold turkey washed down with a bottle of hock was being rounded off with liqueur chocolates and brandy.

Relaxed but not yet somnolent, Trudi said, ‘I think you did well there, Jan. Mebbe mail order’s the best way!’

‘You didn’t think so at first,’ said Janet slyly.

‘Didn’t I? I don’t know what I thought. I wasn’t quite right in my mind for a while you know. I mean, it’s hard. You don’t know what you’re like till you’re not like it any more.’

She giggled and held out her glass for a refresher.

Janet said, ‘Dormouse philosophy is it now? Not to worry. Another shot of this and I’ll be able to pour you back in the teapot!’