Reginald Hill: Child's Play

He heard the water running from the bath. Quickly he returned everything to the bag. He had no doubt that Sharman would emerge all provocatively naked and he rehearsed his own coldly scornful response as he demanded explanations.

The door opened. The boy came into the room, his hair spiky from washing, his slim brown body enveloped in Wield’s old towelling robe.

‘God, I enjoyed that,’ he said. ‘Any chance of some cocoa and a choc biscuit?’

He sat on the sofa, curling his feet up beneath him. He looked little more than fourteen and as relaxed and uncalculating as a tired puppy.

Wield tried not to admit to himself he was postponing a confrontation but he knew that it was already postponed. By his old standards this was a mistake. But he had felt all the old parameters of duty and action begin to thaw and resolve the moment Pascoe had said there was a call for Mac Wield.

One word, one phone call. How could something so simple be allowed to change a whole life?

He stood and went to put the kettle on.

‘Lexie! Lexie Huby! Hi. It’s your cousin, Rod. Remember me?’

‘Oh. Hello,’ said Lexie.

She wished that Messrs Thackeray etcetera would invest in some lightweight phones. These cumbersome old bakelite things were not made for small hands, nor for heads whose ears and mouth were not a foot apart.

‘Hello to you too,’ said the voice.

‘What do you want?’

‘Well, I’m up here again, didn’t expect to be so soon after the funeral, but sometimes things work out that way, don’t they? I’ll tell you all about it when we meet.’

‘Meet?’

‘Yes. We didn’t have much chance to talk after the funeral and I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to have lunch and a tête-à-tête with my little cousin Lexie.’

‘What do you want to talk about?’

‘Well, old times, the sort of thing cousins do talk about,’ said Lomas, sounding a little hurt.

What old times? wondered Lexie. Their blood relationship was so tenuous as to make the title cousin an unwanted courtesy. As for old times, they’d only met on those rare occasions when Mrs Windibanks’s hopeful forays north coincided with the Old Mill Inn Hubys’ monthly tea visit. Mrs Windibanks had always treated them like the lady of the manor acknowledging the peasants, and Rod ignored the two girls altogether. Prior to the funeral, the last time they’d met had been at Aunt Gwen’s sick bed some three years earlier. The old lady had suffered her first stroke shortly after returning from a trip abroad. Arthur Windibanks had died in a car accident only a fortnight later leaving his widow in dire financial straits, according to rumour.

‘Old Windypants was hoping to mend her fortunes with the old girl’s death!’ John Huby had chortled. ‘You should’ve seen her face when the doctor said she were on the mend!’

Rod Lomas, fresh out of drama school, had been as offhand as ever towards his young ‘cousins’, but some allowance had to be made for his black tie. Three years later he seemed ready to make amends and Jane, very susceptible to masculine charm, now reckoned he was lovely.

Lexie was not so easily won over, however.

‘Hello. You still there?’ inquired the voice.

‘Yes.’

‘Look. Do come and have lunch with me. To be honest, I don’t really know another soul in town and you’d be doing me a real favour.’

Three years in a solicitor’s office had taught Lexie to distrust openness above all things. But she was curious now and also she could hear her employer’s footsteps on the creaky stairs.

‘I only get an hour,’ she said.

‘Monstrous! They give them longer on the Gulag! So, a bar snack then, rather than a trifling foolish banquet. There’s a pub on the corner of Dextergate, the Black Bull, can’t be very far from you. Half an hour’s time, twelve-thirty?’

‘All right,’ she said and replaced the receiver as the door opened and Eden Thackeray appeared.

‘I don’t know why we have courts, Lexie,’ he said. ‘I could write out the verdicts if you just gave me a list of the magistrates. Have you been kept busy?’

Lexie followed him into his office. It was just what Hollywood required an English solicitor’s chambers to be, all oak-dark panelling and wine-dark upholstery, while behind tall cabinets of lozenged glass marched rank upon leathered rank of the army of unalterable law.

‘A few phone calls, Mr Eden,’ she said. ‘I’ve made a note. One was from a Mr Goodenough who said he was the General Secretary of the People’s Animal Welfare Society. He wanted to see you about Aunt Gwen’s will. He’s travelling up from London tomorrow afternoon, so I made an appointment for him to see you on Friday morning. I hope that’s all right.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘And there was another one to do with Aunt Gwen’s will. A Miss Brodsworth. She said she was something to do with Women For Empire and wondered if there’d been any developments.’

‘My God. Some people! Vultures. But Lexie, what must you think? I hope this hasn’t upset you. I’d quite forgotten you might find yourself dealing with dear Mrs Huby’s affairs when I asked you to step in for Miss Dickinson.’

Miss Dickinson, Thackeray’s regular secretary, had been rushed off to hospital with appendicitis and to the surprise of most and the chagrin of a few, Lexie had been elevated from copy-typing in the Inquiries office to this most prestigious of jobs in the firm of Messrs Thackeray etcetera.

‘No, it didn’t upset me,’ Lexie said in her small voice. ‘Only I couldn’t really help Miss Brodsworth as I didn’t know what was happening.’

‘No. Of course. Most remiss of me. Sit down and let me fill you in.’

The girl perched herself on the secretarial chair, built for and hollowed by much heavier hocks than hers.

‘Yes, the thing is, and you must have realized it, that though the world at large, and her family in particular, has lost your dear aunt, or great-aunt I ought to say, as far as the firm of Messrs Thackeray etcetera is concerned, she is still very much in existence. In law, a client is defined by his or her affairs and our duty now is to the estate which is likely to be almost as demanding as Mrs Huby in propria persona, so to speak.’

Thackeray enjoyed playing the stage solicitor. It was some compensation for having to put up with this gloomy mausoleum when privately he longed for strip-lights and computer terminals. But he could think of half a dozen very rich clients (Mrs Huby had been among them) who would probably flee indignantly in the face of such desecration.

‘So, let me see. Where’s the file? Ah, here it is. Naturally I wrote and informed the putative legatees of the terms of Mrs Huby’s will. You might care to examine their replies for yourself. First, the People’s Animal Welfare Society.’

He handed the girl a sheet of good quality white paper headed by a logo of the initials PAWS formed into an animal footprint and an address in Mabledon Place, London WC1. The letter was word-processed.

Dear Mr Thackeray,

I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your letter in reference to the estate of the late Mrs Gwendoline Huby. I shall be in touch again after consulting the Society’s legal advisers.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Goodenough (General Secretary)

‘Next CODRO, which is to say the Combined Operations Dependants’ Relief Organization.’

This was rather amateurly typed on pale blue paper heavily embossed with an address in Bournemouth.

My dear Mr Thackeray,

Thank you for the news of Mrs Huby’s most generous bequest. I gather from what you say that it is most unlikely that Mrs Huby’s son will be able to claim his inheritance but, alas, this will not help us all that much, as, by the very nature of things, the number of those who can claim relief from our Organization will have dwindled almost to non-existence by the year 2015. If, however, it were possible to effect an advance at the present time, however small, it could be put to very good use indeed.