The Office of the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

suits and shirts.
    ‘No hard feelings,’ I lied. ‘I’ll let you have some money.’
    He looked across the room at me and smiled rather sadly. ‘What money?’
    ‘You know something?’ I said. ‘When I saw you on top of that cow, your bum was wobbling around all over the place. It was like an old man’s. The skin looked as if it needed ironing.’
     
    In the four months after I found Henry doing physical jerks on top of his widow, I wrote to Janet less often than usual. I sent her a lot of postcards. Henry and I were moving around, I said, which was true. Except, of course, we weren’t moving around together. In a sense I spent those four months pretending to myself and everyone else that everything was normal. I didn’t want to leave my rut even if Henry was no longer in there with me.
    Eventually the money ran low and I made up my mind I had to do something. I came back to London. It was February now, and the city was grey and dank. I found a solicitor in the phone book. His name was Fielder, and the thing I remember most about him was the ill-fitting toupee whose colour did not quite match his natural hair. He had an office in Praed Street above a hardware shop near the junction with Edgware Road.
    I went to see him, explained the situation and gave him the address of Henry’s solicitor. I told him about the photograph but didn’t show it to him, and I mentioned my mother’s money too. He said he’d see what he could do and made an appointment for me the following week.
    Time crawled while I waited. I had too much to think about and not enough to do. When the day came round, I went back to Fielder’s office.
    ‘Well, Mrs Appleyard, things are moving now.’ He slid a sheet of paper across the desk towards me. ‘The wheels are turning. Time for a fresh start, eh?’
    I opened the sheet of paper. It was a bill.
    ‘Just for interim expenses, Mrs Appleyard. No point in letting them mount up.’
    ‘What does my husband’s solicitor say?’
    ‘I’m afraid there’s a bit of a problem there.’ Mr Fielder patted his face with a grubby handkerchief. He wore a brown double-breasted pinstripe suit which encased him like a suit of armour and looked thick enough for an Arctic winter. There were drops of moisture on his forehead, and his neck bulged over his tight, hard collar. ‘Yes, a bit of a problem.’
    ‘Do you mean there isn’t any money?’
    ‘I did have a reply from Mr Appleyard’s solicitor.’ Fielder scrabbled among the papers on his desk for a few seconds and then gave up the search. ‘The long and the short of it is that Mr Appleyard told him your joint assets no longer seem to exist.’
    ‘But there must be something left. Can’t we take him to court?’
    ‘We could, Mrs Appleyard, we could. But we’d have to find him first. Unfortunately Mr Appleyard seems to have left the country. In confidence I may tell you he hasn’t even settled his own solicitor’s bill.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Not a desirable state of affairs at all. Not at all. Which reminds me …?’
    ‘Don’t worry.’ I opened my handbag and dropped the bill into it.
    ‘Of course. And then we’ll carry on in Mr Appleyard’s absence. It should be quite straightforward.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘By the way, your husband left a letter for you care of his solicitor. I have it here.’
    ‘I don’t want to see it.’
    ‘Then what would you like me to do with it?’
    ‘I don’t care. Put it in the wastepaper basket.’ My voice sounded harsh, more Bradford than Hillgard House. ‘I don’t mean to seem rude, Mr Fielder, but I don’t think he has anything to say that I want to hear.’
    Walking back to my room along the crowded pavement I wanted to blame Fielder. He had been inefficient, he had been corrupt, but even then I knew neither of these things were true. I just wanted to blame somebody for the mess my life was in. Henry was my preferred candidate but he wasn’t available. So I had to focus my anger