Dead Letters Anthology (21 page)

Tragedy, as I was taught by my ridiculously attractive drama tutor Miss Anderson in boarding school, is defined by the protagonist bringing the calamity upon themselves.

* * *

When I retired to my room I opened the letter expecting something mundane. It was not. It was perplexing. Several Post-its, from a high-end hotel chain, had been stuck with red pointing arrows to locations on a ragged map of our area.

On each Post-it, in a rough ring, in the centre of which appeared our estate, was a person’s name, and a letter of the alphabet, either A or B. I confess to having felt a worm of excitement. Whether of pleasure or trepidation I can’t decide. My life is contented but it rarely has the extremes of dark and light that describe the thrill of being alive that I understand some other people experience, from having read accounts of their exploits. It was perhaps that the letter may have actually been connected to us in some way, and not just a delivery error, that ignited the part of my brain long buried from childhood, when I played solitary detective games in the grounds, picking up meaningless objects and constructing crimes and clues around their origins.

The addressee on the envelope was one ‘Allun Carver’. A strange spelling of a common first name, but not a mistake as the hand was careful, by a nibbed pen.

I opened my laptop and googled the street name on the address, a street in London. Then disappointment. A shabby, empty corner shop next to a bookmakers.

In truth there was nothing remarkable about this. But it niggled sufficiently to puzzle me, and there had been little else to do this last while, except fend off the exasperation of the household staff who appear to become hysterical when dealing with catering and parking arrangements. I had not been in London for months, so resolved to go almost immediately. I would visit and investigate, just as I had done when aged seven, when I found the bare footprints before the party, just by the summer pavilion, that really had no business being there in the mud.

I resolved to pack lightly and head off in the early hours. If I timed it right I would be long gone before the Amusantes had eaten their sullen breakfast in a fog of their own failure.

* * *

It doesn’t take long for a person of my standing to get what I want. Even before I arrived on the train the estate agents named on the To Let board had been alerted to my interest in the vacant shop and one of their representatives was waiting for me as I stepped out of the cab. He was a young man whose skin and features suggested an Arab origin, but with a personal grooming style currently fashionable in the less affluent boroughs of London. His hair was slicked down like a licked newborn calf and the sharp suit he wore was of a garish pastel powder blue that any decent tailor would pay to have removed from his workshop under cover of night.

He unlocked the security grating, pushed open the peeling front door and we entered. I’m not certain what I expected to find, but the dusty empty shop floor was a crushing disappointment. A quick glance told me this had been an electrical appliances store. Catalogues of fridges and TVs lay in untidy piles, and a few cardboard boxes still contained odd cables and plug attachments.

The empty shelves were fringed with Day-Glo labels proclaiming special offers on selected computers.

I quizzed the estate agent as to the previous owner, and he told me it had been a British Indian gentleman who had now gone out of business. I asked if the gentleman had perhaps had a business partner, but drew a blank and in addition a sideways glance of suspicion that perhaps I was not a straightforward businesswoman looking for a vacant shop let. I asked if I could survey the back premises. Having lost interest in me he opened the office behind the counter and then began tapping into his phone and staring out of the window.

I opened the door onto a grimy office, as dusty and empty as the shop, but on the floor lay some in-trays. On the top to the left, the unopened mail, perhaps a dozen or more letters, of one Allun Carver.

How very disappointing. The answer straight away. No trail to follow. No secrets to uncover. Just a man who worked in a shop, who didn’t open his mail and must have left before the last one arrived. Why it had come our way may be perfectly well explained, but it seemed as though I was to be thwarted in adventure. The child detective in me wilted but while my bored companion gesticulated at the sky with a loosely flapping hand as he droned in a monotone to someone on the phone, I nevertheless scooped up all the envelopes and slid them into my bag.

Since the occupants had taken everything of value it seemed no great crime. It would be something to read later in my room at the club.

* * *

The tiresome Wilkinson sisters were staying in town and so it was no hardship to leave the dining room, these days full of city women with flattened-end false fingernails, to their braying and take supper upstairs.

I started at the bottom of the pile, eleven letters in all, and began to open them in order, bottom to top. There is no point in dragging this out. Mr Allun Carver was clearly an invited guest to Grandfather’s summer party. There was the invite, or should I say three of them, right at the bottom of the pile. There were the familiar bronze tissue-lined envelopes, gold-trimmed, finest hand-spun cards, and punch-stamped lettering, requesting the RSVPs by, well by next Wednesday as luck would have it. The most curious thing was they had been sent in the same packet, only one short month after last year’s celebrations. Affording Mr Carver and his two mystery companions a good clear eleven months to respond seemed not only excessive, but highly unusual since our invites did not go into the post until May.

The other pieces of mail were an enigma. Three names. Callum Dale, Olive Channing, Shirley Fog. I looked at the postmarks. Each one had arrived within a month of the other. A piece of paper with three names, and a reminder that there was ten months to go, then nine and so on.

Only the one I had intercepted contained the map and the arrows and, as I realise now, the ‘by Wednesday’ note. It must surely only refer to the party itself. On reflection, the last returned letter had an unusual air of urgency about it, as though the sender had been perplexed at the others not having been acknowledged.

It suggested the sender had been staying at various outposts of this high-end hotel, posting out regular reminders, doing little else other than counting down to a date. Only this last missive conveyed a palpable sense of anxiety.

In fact on examination only the first one had the Squire-966 on it, and one can only surmise that it must be a postbox number for Bosmaine, otherwise how would it have arrived at our door?

So if I did not send this, then it can only have been Grandfather.

I realised that I had wished for some rare detective treat to unfold and found myself childishly disappointed that it had not led to something grisly and sinister. The dull part was that I simply had to go home now and ask Grandfather what it meant.

I had dreamt of trails of clues, secrets unfolding, but here I was once again, the solitary grandchild of a solitary man, dreaming of adventure in the musty bedroom of a gentlewoman’s club in Bloomsbury, with nobody to share my dreams. Opening the mail of a stranger for thrills and receiving none.

What had I secretly hoped for? Perhaps that dear Grandfather was a serial killer or a Satanist? How very predictable. Slaughtered innocents? Secret cult members being invited to parties to perform rituals?

I almost yawned at the prospect. This was the stuff of the English tabloids. I would frankly be disappointed if none of Grandfather’s cronies had dispatched the odd orphan or danced naked except for antlers and a cape. It took not the slightest flight of fancy to picture half the board of governors on his Trust engaged in such a thing at this very moment.

The horrible truth was that I had been excited at the prospect of a more intriguing mystery. It was my loneliness I suppose. There. I will admit to it. I am lonely.

It embarrassed me where this solitude-induced weakness had led. All that was left was to return to the country the next day and have Grandfather recount some dreary tale why a dreary man in London gets letters every month reminding him about the summer party. A caterer perhaps? The man who provides the generators for the marquees? He’d moved on a year ago and his mail was delivered while the shop stayed open, but since it had closed his letter came back.

I felt a fool. Looking for adventure when none was present. I glanced down at the map again, and the letters written neatly under their names.

Olive Channing A-

Shirley Fog B-

Callum Dale AB+

Blood groups. Blood.

* * *

I had a good two hours before my direct train, and I used them to return to the shop on Caledonian Road. It was locked and shuttered again. I entered the bookmakers. It was not a smoky and squalid den, but had the feel of a dowdy airport lounge. Two men stood staring at a TV screen high on the wall, an older woman sat at a machine and a young man attended the screened-off counter.

I approached him.

‘May I ask if you knew the gentleman who ran the shop next door?’

The young man stood up straight, and plucked at his tie. ‘Nah. Sorry, love. I don’ know ’bout that.’

‘Do you know when it closed?’

‘Nah. Was closed when I started.’

‘Thank you.’ I turned to go.

The woman looked up. ‘You asking about Saheed’s place?’

‘The electrical shop. Next door.’

She nodded. ‘Yeah. Saheed. Been gone two months now.’

I moved to her and sat down unbidden.

‘Why you asking?’

‘I had some mail for a man who may have worked there. A Mr Carver.’

She narrowed her eyes, thinking. ‘Can’t place him. Nah. Saheed was a nice man though. Nice and polite. Do anythin’ for ya.’

‘Do you know why he left?’

The woman rubbed at the back of her neck. She smelled faintly of rose water and urine. ‘Kept gettin’ visitors like.’

‘Visitors?’

She nodded. ‘I never saw ’em. But he said he didn’t care for ’em.’

‘Tax men? Gangs?’

She blinked up at me through smeared spectacles. ‘Visitors. I just said, didn’t I?’

The two men had turned to look at us, irritated that their concentration on a greyhound race was being disrupted.

‘Thank you,’ I said kindly.

I decided a coffee and cake in the station would be a more valuable use of my time than speaking further to a woman with mental health issues. I left as quietly as I’d entered.

* * *

We entertain in grand style only once a year. The summer party is everything. I have little involvement. I have a handful of friends, well acquaintances really, that I formed at Cambridge. I always ask them but they rarely attend. They are married with families and busy lives, or live abroad, and after years of being turned down I mostly leave the guest list to Grandfather, who enjoys the company of celebrities of every hue.

But what I have been accustomed to is the calmness of Grandfather’s demeanour preceding these events. He is perturbed by very little.

However, on the occasion of my return from London this was far from the case. My sole living relative was pale, distracted, almost wringing his hands at every turn. His temper was short and his attention shorter.

In such a mood it was perhaps not wise to bother him with questions about the returned letter.

However, Grandfather’s mood was so out of character, so tense, so tetchy, that he caught me short in the great hall.

‘Sarah!’ he bellowed. ‘Are you completely at a loss?’

I was not quite sure what to make of this. At a loss? Did he mean idle? A tiny wound I had hitherto been unaware of opened in my heart, but small as it was it was sufficient to change my mood. I replied with ice in my voice.

‘Something amiss, Tather?’

I should say at this point that we have pet names. When he is in my favour he is always Tather, an inheritance from my mispronunciation at toddler level. He in turn calls me Podge, which is exactly as it seems, an affectionately impolite reference to my build. That he had called me Sarah indicated he was annoyed.

‘Everything.’

‘Then perhaps we should have a whisky. It’s not too early.’

He sat down heavily in the chess chair. I poured our drinks and sat opposite him.

He gulped his down.

‘I have a question for you, Tather.’

He was barely paying attention, fidgeting and shifting.

‘Do we know an Allun Carver?’

The crystal decanter set was a wedding present to my parents. I was sorry to have lost one of the six glasses as Grandfather dropped it on the hearth, but I was sorrier still to see the raw, primordial fear that rendered his familiar face as unlovely as it was unrecognisable.

* * *

Adam had helped Grandfather to his room and he had been quietly resting for over an hour when he appeared at my door. He was still putty white, but there was a new, composed nature to the man.

‘Sarah. Let’s walk in the garden.’

We said nothing at all until we were well away from the house, through the laburnum walk and down to The Pearly Gates, the plot of meadow where all the family dogs have been buried over the years.

I am patient, and I waited for him to speak first. He continually glanced here and there, as if expecting company, but in such a secluded spot it was unlikely. He looked at me with rheumy eyes.

‘We are not as small a family as you think.’

‘What do you mean? Since Uncle Oswald and Lottie died there’s only us.’

‘No. No. They are legion.’

‘Please, Tather, sit down.’

His madness was frightening me. I guided him to the stone bench we had carved for Meg, the insubordinate wire-haired fox terrier we had both loved, and he sat like a child.

Grandfather then took my hand, a gesture I had never experienced. It was awkward but the tightness of his grip let me no choice but to endure it.

‘I shall keep this simple, Podge. We haven’t much time.’

I shifted uneasily.

‘My great-grandfather. A taste for the slaves we owned back then. Fathered many, many children.’