Marcel Theroux - The Paperchase

Was that smart? I reversed the pencil and rubbed out the mark. I started to feel slightly guilty about the whole exercise.

A bang on my door made me jump. I looked up to see Nathan Fernshaw shading his eyes and peering through the kitchen window.

‘What’s up, Nathan?’ I said, overcompensating for my nervousness by being overfriendly.

‘My mom said you might need a hand.’

‘That was thoughtful,’ I said. I was trying to remember how I’d last behaved when I’d had nothing to hide. ‘You know what, it would be a big help if you could cut the grass — I’ll pay you.’

I took him down to the shed and showed him how to drive the mower. ‘Take your time,’ I said. ‘If anything gets caught in the blades, do not try to free it, come and get me. I don’t want you jeopardising your future as a concert pianist.’

He was excited by the chance to drive the mower by himself. I told him to go slowly: I would pay him by the hour. This small act of patronage made me feel better about my criminal activities. I also thought he might alert me if Officers Topper and Santorelli turned up unexpectedly.

For the next two days Nathan mowed and I went through the inventory, ticking off the items that would have appealed to a sharp-eyed thief. As the fictional burglar enriched his swag bag hourly and I, his accomplice, rummaged around the house aiding and abetting him, it became clearer that Bill Kelly had taken almost nothing apart from my money and travel documents. All the most precious objects remained untouched. Nothing had gone from the cabinets in the library or the packing cases in the cellar. I worked slowly, accumulating a stash of items which I hid in a sea chest in the attic. I erred on the side of caution, but still ended up with a fairly valuable-looking haul, including some nice silver pieces and jewellery. The pistols were less glamorous than the description in the inventory would have led you to believe. They were stubbier, less ornate, rusty and a little greasy. I cocked one and aimed at the wall. The hammer tripped with a satisfying click. The other was faulty and wouldn’t work at all.

I found myself often distracted by the things that I unearthed: photos of Patrick, a dozen different kinds of Chinese cricket cages, a Victorian toy theatre with a painted proscenium. Meanwhile, the lawnmower buzzed just out of conscious awareness.

On the second day, I heard the mower stop. It was around eleven-thirty in the morning. I was in the library, sorting through a drawer of cuff-links — the light was better in there.

Peering out of the window, I saw Nathan, still sitting on the mower, talking to a blonde woman in a frock and pointing towards the house.

I put the drawer back upstairs in Patrick’s bedroom and came back down when I heard knocking. I could see the woman’s shadow outlined on the mesh of the screen door. She was shading her eyes with her hand and trying to peer in.

The lawnmower started up again as I stepped out on to the porch. My first look at the woman was enough to disabuse me of the idea that she was a police officer. She was wearing too much make-up, and was too expensively and impractically dressed in a frock and a pair of heels. She had big sunglasses on, and crazy hair in blond corkscrews which were loosely tied back. She was nervous, I thought, but greeted me with an enthusiasm that bordered on the ferocious. ‘Well, hi! You must be Damien.’

I was taken aback. Something in her manner made me think of a little girl, but she was certainly over fifty.

‘Miranda Delamitri,’ she said, giving me her hand. ‘I was a friend of Patrick’s.’ She lifted her sunglasses with her free hand, exposing plenty of blue eye-shadow, and smiled at me. She had great teeth and the time-defying youthfulness of a well-loved vintage car.

‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ she said. She didn’t let go of my hand.

‘You’re a friend of Patrick’s?’ I said, feeling a little uncomfortable.

‘Uh-huh.’ She was looking me up and down. ‘You know, you remind me of him so much.’

‘It’s probably the clothes,’ I said. ‘They’re his.’

She gave a little yelp of pleasure. ‘Oh! That shirt was a gift from me! I’m so glad you’re wearing it.’

I’d found it in Patrick’s closet. Its quality had set it apart from all of the others. By now, Mrs Delamitri had stepped over the threshold into the kitchen. ‘Oh my,’ she said plaintively. ‘And everything’s just the same.’ She seemed overcome for a moment. ‘I’m sorry. It’s been a while since I was here. This is rather painful.’

I offered to get her some Kleenex but she pulled out an expensive handkerchief of her own and dabbed at the corner of her eye mournfully.

‘Would you like to be alone?’ I said.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Just give me a minute.’ She took a couple of deep breaths. ‘They say you should just let it out, don’t they?’

‘Let what out?’

‘The grief. The pain.’ She blew her nose silently. ‘How are you coping, Damien?’

‘I’m coping,’ I said, with a stab of guilt as I thought of the sea chest full of valuables in the attic. ‘One day at a time, you know. Remembering the good things.’

‘And there are so many good things,’ she said with passion. ‘That’s right. What are the good things that you remember?’

A voice in my head said: pair of early nineteenth-century English duelling pistols with chased silver handles.

‘His humour. His kindness. What about you?’

Mrs Delamitri took another deep breath. There was a slight catch in her voice as she said: ‘His mind.’

Through the window behind Mrs Delamitri’s head, I could see Nathan raking apples from under the apple tree as I’d asked. If they were left where they lay, they could clog up the blades of the mower.

Mrs Delamitri wandered into the dining room. ‘I’ve always loved this one,’ she said, gazing at a framed Mughal fan painted with a semi-erotic scene of a woman entertaining her moustachioed lover in a garden.

‘You’re welcome to take it,’ I said. As odd as she was, Mrs Delamitri’s grief about Patrick’s death exceeded anything that had been expressed by his own family.

She looked at me with amazement. ‘I could never do that. He wanted it all to stay together.’ She seemed overcome again. ‘I — oh my. Do you mind if I sit down?’

I got her a glass of water from the kitchen. Since she seemed disinclined to take off her sunglasses, I switched on the light.

‘Patrick and I were close,’ she said. ‘I just wasn’t able to come to the funeral. I hoped he’d understand.’ She dabbed her eyes again. ‘You’re probably wondering what on earth this crazy woman is doing in your house.’

‘Just slightly,’ I said as a joke, but she looked puzzled, so I put my arm on her shoulder to reassure her.

Her sob turned into a chuckle. ‘So like Patrick,’ she said wistfully, holding on to my sleeve as if it were a holy relic, and gazing at me through the big moons of her glasses.

‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you’ve come. Please excuse the air of chaos. I got burgled earlier this week.’

‘How awful,’ she said.

‘It’s more of an inconvenience. The police picked up the guy who did it, but he’s insisted he didn’t take anything. It’s all a big pain in the arse.’

We sat and talked in the library for about half an hour. In spite of her oddness, I couldn’t help liking her. She had met Patrick at a writing class he had taught during the summers in Westwich, she said. He’d had a reputation as a gifted teacher. All of this was news to me. She said he’d also commuted to the mainland to teach at a prison outside Boston, where he was popular with the inmates. Although she didn’t say so, I had the impression that Mrs Delamitri’s relationship with my uncle had eventually transcended literature, but I was trying not to think about the two of them in bed together.