Стивен Бут - Drowned Lives

I let my eyes close against a rush of anger. What on earth had Samuel Longden dumped on me? What gave him the right to impose on me like this? He’d even involved my next-door neighbour, encouraged her to poke her nose into business that I’d rather she didn’t know about.

‘There are some files,’ said Rachel. ‘And a box. Mr Longden said it was all to do with a project you were helping him with.’

I sighed. ‘I’m sorry if you’ve been put to any trouble.’

‘Oh, it’s all right. I liked the old chap. Not that I had much chance to talk to him. The taxi was waiting, and he had to rush off.’

I put the front door on the catch and walked round to Rachel’s house with her. I could simply have stepped over the low wooden fence that separated our front gardens, but it was too valuable as a symbolic barrier to be treated in such a dismissive way.

Sure enough, a black file and a bulging A4 folder sat on a long wooden box in her hallway. I felt her watching me carefully to see my reaction. I knew she’d want to know all about Samuel and the nature of the ‘project’. So I kept my face straight, trying not to show my despair at the weighty evidence of Samuel Longden’s invasion into my life.

I hefted the box file, which felt as though it was loaded with house bricks, and added the blue folder on top.

‘I’ll come back for the box,’ I said.

‘It’s all right,’ said Rachel. ‘I think I can manage that.’

‘No, no. Don’t try if it’s full like these.’

But she picked the box up anyway, without any apparent effort. ‘It seems to be empty.’

We trailed back to my house and I couldn’t stop Rachel following me into the front room, since I had no hands free to shut the door. I dumped the files on the dining table and she slid the box next to them.

‘It all looks very interesting,’ she said. ‘Is it a big story you’re working on? An investigation?’

‘To be honest, I’ve no idea what it is.’

‘Oh, but surely... Mr Longden seemed to think you’d know all about it.’

‘I wish I did. No — scrub that, I wish I didn’t know anything about it at all.’

She was starting to fumble at the lid of the file. She pressed the button and it sprang open, revealing a thickly compressed mass of paper under the metal spring that was supposed to hold it down.

‘I’ll look at it later, I think,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s probably confidential material.’

She withdrew her hand reluctantly, her curiosity simmering. ‘I suppose I’d better leave you to it, then.’

When Rachel had left, I lifted the lid of the file again and flicked through a few pages without actually reading anything. The file was crammed with papers, scrawled notes, cuttings from local newspapers and photocopies of pages from old documents and books. I pulled the elastic band off the folder and saw a stack of typewritten A4 sheets. It was a manuscript. So that was what it was all about — he was writing a book.

But my attention was drawn from the files to the box alongside them. It was an old box, made of something like oak, and about eighteen inches long by a foot deep, with a close-fitting lid bound in tarnished brass. In fact, it was a very old box, with the patina of age on it, the grain smoothed by many hands.

But the most curious feature was the three brass-plated keyholes on the front, only one of which contained an ancient iron key with an ornate handle. Three keyholes, but only one key.

Intrigued now, I turned the key. It moved slowly, but without sticking. I heard the lock click, but the lid wouldn’t move. I removed the key and tried to insert it in the middle of the three holes, but it wouldn’t fit. I tried the third, with the same result.

So it must need three keys to open the box. Why would anyone make an item like that? And what would they keep in it? I ran my hand over the surface. The whole object was solid and heavy, and the wood felt as though it was very thick. There were no screws at its corners, only perfectly fitting dovetail joints varnished and smoothed over. When I tapped the lid of the box, it gave a deep, hollow sound.

Was it really empty? Why would Samuel Longden have sent it to me if it was? Without the other two keys, there was no way I could find out without forcing the lid and destroying what might be a valuable antique. And did it matter anyway?

I put the box back down and I stared at the other items covering my table. I thought I could detect the same musty odour that had emanated from the old man himself when he sat in my car at Fosseway. Mouldy books in the cellar of a second-hand bookshop. It was the smell of age, of thousands of forgotten words buried in paper-bound graves, waiting for somebody to open their covers and reveal their secrets to the light.

I shook my head. Some people might be excited by that smell. I wasn’t one of them.

On Thursday morning I had my report to write up on the road meeting. But somehow the pile of files on the corner of my desk kept getting in the way. If not physically, then at least psychologically. They sat there reproaching me for not looking at them, until finally they’d irritated me beyond endurance. I picked the whole lot up and shoved them into a cupboard. The wooden box I couldn’t find room for, so I put it on the floor and pushed it under the sideboard with my foot. Out of sight, out of mind. A good philosophy, in my opinion.

When I left the house later on, Rachel was there as usual, timing her appearance to coincide with my departure.

‘Morning, number six. Are you all right?’

‘Yes, but I’m in a rush.’

‘I was wondering how you had got on with the files that Mr Longden left for you.’

‘Got on with them? I haven’t looked at them.’

‘You’re joking. Why not?’

‘I’ve got better things to do.’

‘Chris, surely you must have some curiosity?’

‘Of course I have. But all this stuff... it’s not something I can afford to spend my time on. They’re just the scribblings of some cranky old man.’

‘How do you know if you haven’t read them?’ she demanded.

‘Look, I’ve met an ancient eccentric who rambled on about a research project he wants me to help him with, and I’ve seen a great heap of files that he’s dumped on me totally uninvited. Therefore, the contents of those files are the scribblings of a cranky old man. No argument.’

‘They could be very interesting,’ she said.

‘ You read them then.’

She dropped her rake. ‘All right.’

‘No, no,’ I said hastily, not having expected her to take me at my word. ‘You can’t. I’m giving them back to him today.’

‘What? But that’s terrible. He’ll be really upset.’

‘I don’t care.’

She looked prepared to continue the discussion right there and then on the pavement, but I didn’t have time. As I drove off in the Escort, I reflected that I ought to be grateful for Rachel’s interference. She’d pushed me into making a decision. I would take the files and the box back to Samuel Longden, and I’d do it tonight. I wouldn’t even consider looking at them any further.

After all, Samuel meant nothing to me. Why should I concern myself with someone else’s past? It was the future that was important.

Yet for the rest of that day, there was an impression I couldn’t get out of my head. It was an indistinct image of my grandmother, Mary Buckley. Whenever I thought about her, her figure seemed to blur and change, and I was unable to bring her into proper focus. I couldn’t decide whether it was an actual memory, or a false picture produced by my imagination after listening to Samuel Longden’s ramblings about her. Whichever it was, her ghostly presence was unnerving.