Mr George Robert Buxton, encouraged by the hour to dream of biscuits and coffee, and ladies in negligées, came straight in on finding the front door unlatched.
Clapper would not have been everyone’s idea of a lawyer’s clerk. Rather on the bouncy side, and self-indulgent in respect of dress, which usually included a bow-tie and fancy socks, he dealt with the clients in so confident a manner, and with so little sign of deference, that many at first supposed him to be the mysterious Lovelace or, at any rate, one of the Partners. He never corrected these little misunderstandings; indeed, as time went on, he himself came to be persuaded that the corporate wisdom and authority of the firm, after gradual transmigration from persons of greater title but lesser worth, now resided fully within his own breast.
“Are you there, dear lady?” inquired Mr Buxton loudly from just inside the front door.
Receiving no reply, he proceeded at once from room to room on the ground floor until he discovered Zoe in the kitchen. She was eating the first of three slices of fried bread and reading a newspaper.
“Ah, so this is where we are, dear lady.”
Zoe put down the paper, but not the bread, and elbowed some sundries to the back of the table. “Cup of tea?”
Clapper glanced at where the negligée should have been and saw a kind of goalkeeper’s jersey. Of biscuits, the table was innocent. “Tea?” he repeated, dubiously. She did not respond. Or coffee. He raised his hand in token of high-minded abstinence, then busied himself with the catch of his briefcase.
“Sit down,” invited Zoe, through a mouthful of fried bread. “Here—shove your stuff on the table.”
From outside came the buzz and clatter of a motor. Mrs Claypole could be seen through the window, mowing the lawn. At the turns, she had to circle at a run to keep up with the machine. She looked hot and somewhat distressed.
Zoe watched Mr Buxton withdraw a sheaf of papers from his case and lay it carefully before him.
“That’s the old spondooliks, is it?”
“I think,” he said, “you can take it that we have here the final testamentary disposition of your, of the late Mr Loughbury.”
“His will, you mean?”
Clapper sucked in a little air. “Will? Yes—oh, yes, will. You could call it that.”
Zoe reached over and tugged free one of the pages. She felt the stiff thickness of the parchment and squinted at its elaborate engrossment.
“Good grief,” she said, softly.
Clapper looked pleased. “It will be subject to probate, of course, but I do not anticipate any great difficulty.”
“I should think not,” said Zoe. “It would be a poor do if a solicitor couldn’t make his own will.”
From Clapper came “Ha ha.” It sounded as if he were reading it.
“As the late Mr Loughbury will perhaps have told you,” Mr Buxton said, “you are virtually the sole beneficiary. Certain bequests have been made in other directions, naturally, but they amount to very little proportionately.”
“You mean I more or less cop the lot,” Zoe deciphered.
Clapper said nothing, but scratched his nose and looked again at Zoe’s unpromising woollen garment. From a point level with his nose, his finger then descended, slowly tracing one of the deep runnels in the clerks long, gaunt face. He was debating whether he ought to chance his arm with a risqué remark.
Zoe took his silence to mean yes. She nodded, ran her tongue between teeth and cheeks in pursuit of fried bread fragments, and picked up a second slice. “Well, that’s all right, then. Oh, by the way...”
“Mmmm?” purred Mr Buxton, with a smile that hinted at a dissolute other self. He had never interviewed a lady client at breakfast before.
“I’ve fixed up with this bloke to do a proper pricing job on Dick’s bits and pieces.” She saw his smile fade. “His collection. The pictures and that.”
After the smile, a frown. “Bloke?” Clapper repeated, not at all seductively. “What bloke?”
She told him, while she poured herself another cup of tea.
“I’m not at all sure,” said Mr Buxton, “that the Partners would have advised you to do that.” His sudden adoption of a disapproving attitude had the curious effect of stiffening even more the crop of thick greyish-yellow hair that grew, brush-like, atop the long, flat-ended head.
“That’s all right. They’re not going to be asked.”
“I’m not sure that Mr Richard would have cared for the idea, either. Some of his collection involved transactions of a fairly delicate nature.” A moment went by. “Or so I understand,” Clapper added carefully.
Zoe looked round the table for tomato sauce. She spread some on the last slice of bread.
“You mean he got them by a fiddle?” she inquired, equably.
“I mean nothing of the kind.” Clapper was sitting so erect that his chair creaked. The point I wished to make is that the Partners have their own arrangement in respect of valuation business.”
Zoe licked some sauce from her forefinger, which she then poked into Mr Buxtons chest. “You thought you’d get a back-hander from the assessors, right?”
He stood. He was very angry. He grasped the briefcase, open, in his left hand, his intention to sweep the documents into it with his right. He had not noticed that the teapot had been set down by Zoe on top of the will. He now waited magisterially for her to remove it. She didn’t.
After a while, she said: “Not that I was thinking of selling any of the boodle. You need it in a house like this one.” She looked about her. “There’ll be a lot more entertaining to do from now on.”
Tight-lipped, Clapper moved the teapot himself. He picked up the documents and was about to put them in his case.
“Right,” said Zoe, wiping her mouth with one hand and suddenly tugging the will away from him with the other, “let’s see what the fairies have left, shall we?”
Chapter Eight
Sergeant William Malley, coroner’s Officer, kept his inquests upon three shelves on the dry south wall of the room he occupied in the basement of Flaxborough police headquarters. They were in excellent condition, even the earliest of them, daring back to just after the war, when the coroner had been old Amblesby with his clicky teeth and his free weighs on the morgue scales.
The written records—the depositions, medical reports, coroners notes—were kept in strong, flat cardboard boxes. In these, too, were interred photographs and the more manageable exhibits, together with references to the whereabouts of items too cumbersome or too unsavoury to remain in a small office.