A Conspiracy of Aunts Read online

  A CONSPIRACY OF AUNTS

  A black comedy of mayhem, murder and duplicate bridge

  Sally Spencer

  © Sally Spencer 2017

  Sally Spencer has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2017.

  This edition published by Endeavour Media Ltd in 2018.

  Table of Contents

  PART ONE: The Deal

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  PART TWO: The Queen of Clubs

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  PART THREE: The Queen of Diamonds

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  PART FOUR: The Queen of Hearts

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  PART FIVE: The Queen of Spades

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  PART SIX: Grand Slam

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  For more information about Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher, please visit www.endeavourpress.com

  For weekly updates on our free and discounted eBooks sign up to our newsletter.

  Follow us on Twitter and Goodreads.

  PART ONE: The Deal

  1

  My mother was swept out to sea one moonless night, shortly after my ninth birthday. She was not washed up onto the shore again for several days, by which time she was, of course, quite dead.

  But though she is gone, she is far from forgotten. I had, back then (and still have now) a most remarkable memory, and not a single word of the sage advice and honest common sense that Mother imparted to me has ever been lost. I carry this philosophy – this World According to Jennifer Bates, as I sometimes fancifully think of it – around in my head, and it has been as essential to me as a good guidebook is to a tourist who suddenly finds himself lost in a strange foreign land. In fact, I would put it even more strongly than that. It has served as a lantern to light my way along the darker paths of life – a lantern which circumstances have sometimes, most regrettably, forced me to use as the proverbial blunt instrument.

  But wait! Before going any further with this narrative of mine, I have a confession to make. When I said I remember everything, I was not being entirely accurate, and that, in Mother’s eyes, would have been almost the same as lying. For though I have total recall now, there was a period – nearly twenty years, in fact – when, apart from the occasional dream-like flashback, the last few days of Mother’s life were almost a complete blank to me.

  Yet isn’t such a single lapse excusable? The person who made up most of my universe had been taken from me. What could be more natural than that I should block out the circumstances of her death? The gap, then, was not cognitive, but traumatic. And, as I said, I’ve got those memories back now. Oh yes, thanks to the merciless probing of Rosalyn, my late fiancée, I’ve got them all back.

  I can pin down the period of my blackout exactly. It started the moment that I climbed excitedly into the taxi which was to whisk us away on the initial stage of our last, fateful holiday in Cornwall – and it ended with the convocation of the aunts.

  2

  My first impression on this side of my memory gap is of standing in the hallway of the small terraced house that Mother and I shared with Grandfather. It was raining outside, though not heavily, and only the occasional raindrop was foolish enough to go into a kamikaze dive and end up spattered against the panes of coloured glass in the front door.

  ‘Your aunts are waiting for you,’ whispered Mrs Kowalski, a neighbour who, I now remember, had been looking after me during the funeral.

  My aunts? I thought in a panic.

  My aunts?

  Those strange women who my mother had often talked about, but who were all still completely unknown to me?

  Mrs Kowalski knocked softly – almost reverently – on the door. Standing beside her, my eyes only just level with the handle, I was suddenly afraid, not only of what lay on the other side of that door, but also of what had lain beyond another door, many miles away, on the wild Cornish coast.

  Mrs Kowalski knocked again, louder this time.

  ‘Yes?’ called out a voice as grating as a ragged fingernail being scraped down a blackboard.

  Our neighbour opened the door and ushered me in.

  ‘I bring the child,’ she explained.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the owner of the grating voice.

  I looked across the room at her. She was a tall, gaunt woman, dressed in black from her scrawny neck to her blue-veined ankles, and she had not only invaded our living room, but was even now occupying Grandfather’s favourite chair. I was outraged at the usurpation – but I didn’t show it, because that would have been rude.

  ‘Other people may forget their manners, but that’s no excuse for you forgetting yours,’ Mother used to say.

  ‘If there is anything else I can do …’ Mrs Kowalski mumbled.

  ‘Nothing,’ Buzzard-neck said dismissively, ‘nothing at all.’

  ‘If you’re sure …’

  ‘Thank you. You may go.’

  Mrs Kowalski backed out of the room. I listened to her footsteps retreating up the hall, and heard the click of the front door as she closed it behind her, leaving me alone to face my last four surviving relatives.

  ‘I am your Aunt Catherine,’ the black-clad spectre announced.

  Mother had told me all about her. She was the oldest of my aunts, a widow, and she ran an evangelical mission somewhere in Wales.

  ‘How do you do, Aunt Catherine?’ I said politely.

  ‘And that,’ she said, pointing to a short, wiry woman sitting on the sofa, ‘is your Aunt Jacqueline.’

  ‘Hello, Aunt Jacqueline,’ I said dutifully.

  Aunt Jacqueline snorted what may have been a reply, took a heavy drag on her untipped cigarette, and blew some smoke from her nostrils. Her hair was closely cropped, and had it not been for the fact that she was wearing a skirt instead of trousers with her hound’s-tooth check jacket, I might have mistaken her for a man.

  I had expected to be introduced to the other woman on the sofa next, but Aunt Catherine – always a believer in pecking orders – pointed instead to the round figure almost curled up in Mother’s armchair.

  ‘That’s your Aunt Peggy,’ she announced.

  ‘Oh … err … hello,’ Aunt Peggy said vaguely, then turned her head away as if she were about to take a nap.

  She kept cats, Mother had told me – hundreds
of them. I’d always imagined that she resembled a cat herself, but it was still quite a surprise to discover how closely she conformed to my fantasy. With her fat little body and the ginger hair which cascaded over her eyes, she looked like nothing so much as a big, spoiled moggie, lying in the sunshine and watching lazily as a parade of birds and mice passed it by.

  ‘And she,’ said Aunt Catherine, pointing with some distaste at the other occupant of the sofa, ‘is your Aunt Sadie.’

  What can I say about Sadie – other than that before I met her, I’d thought Mother was the most beautiful woman in the world?

  Sadie had long hair, the colour of ripe corn, and eyes that were as blue as the most enchanting lagoon. Her skin had an almost translucent quality, her lips invited kisses, and her delicate jaw gave her a vulnerability which was almost irresistible. Is it any wonder then, that even as a young child, I was captivated?

  I felt an urge to run across the room to her and bury my face in her silky hair, but even though her eyes were kind and inviting, other eyes, far more hostile, were fixed on me too, ordering me to stay where I was – and I couldn’t summon up the courage to defy them.

  ‘Hello, Rob,’ this golden goddess said to me. ‘It’s really lovely to meet you at last.’

  I wanted to tell her it was lovely – wonderful – to meet her, too, but the only words which would come out of my mouth were, ‘Where’s Granddad?’

  Sadie looked at each of her sisters in turn, and I think there were tears in her eyes.

  ‘He doesn’t know,’ she said. ‘The poor little mite doesn’t know.’

  Each aunt met her gaze in a different way. Peggy looked vaguely embarrassed, Jacqueline merely annoyed, and Catherine totally unmoved. Then, from somewhere in the folds of her black dress, Aunt Catherine produced a large pocket watch and made a great show of studying it.

  ‘If the British Railways Board is following the Good Lord’s injunction to run on time, then my train for Llawesuohtihs leaves in three hours and twelve minutes,’ she said. ‘And in those three hours and twelve minutes, there is a great deal to be settled.’

  Sadie turned her attention back to me. ‘Would you do something for me, Rob?’ she asked.

  ‘What, Auntie?’ I replied, knowing, as she spoke, that whatever her request – be it to get her a glass of water or throw myself under a bus – I would have done it willingly, because I was already her grateful slave.

  ‘Would you go and sit quietly in the corner, next to the standard lamp, while we have a talk?’ Sadie said.

  ‘Yes, Auntie Sadie.’

  ‘What a good boy you are.’

  What a good boy you are!

  I have been awarded international Bridge trophies to thunderous applause. I have seen the adoring fans of my television programmes literally throw themselves at me. And nothing – nothing! – has ever had the same effect on me as those six words Aunt Sadie spoke on the morning of my mother’s funeral.

  ‘Is it wise to have the boy in the room?’ asked fat Aunt Peggy, emerging temporarily from her lethargy. ‘I mean, if we’re going to talk about … talk about … well, you know … shouldn’t he be sent upstairs?’

  ‘Waste of time, sending him upstairs,’ Aunt Jacqueline snapped. ‘Only a child. Won’t understand a word.’

  ‘You’re right for once, Jacqueline,’ Aunt Catherine said.

  Ah, dear Aunt Jacqueline, dear Aunt Catherine – how you both always underrated me! If only you’d credited me with just a little more intelligence then, you might still be alive today.

  3

  A frozen tableau: me, short-trousered and grey-wool-stockinged, sitting cross-legged under the standard lamp; my four aunts, on their various chairs, as rigid as waxworks’ dummies.

  Outside, the rain was becoming more confident, and began to beat out a tattoo on the bay window – rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat – but inside, there was only silence.

  ‘Well, isn’t anyone going to make a start?’ Sadie asked finally.

  The other aunts said nothing.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Sadie sighed.

  It seemed to be the opening that Aunt Catherine had been waiting for. ‘Goodness!’ she repeated. ‘There is very little goodness in this house.’

  Aunt Sadie tugged nervously at her skirt, pulling the hem down over her beautiful knees. ‘Please, Catherine,’ she said, ‘I don’t really think it serves any useful purpose to—’

  But Aunt Catherine was warming to her theme, and was not to be interrupted. ‘God is not mocked,’ she thundered, ‘and neither is He cheated. As sure as Tesco stays open for late-night shopping on Thursdays, had Jennifer left home as the rest of us did – as even you did, Sadie – this shameful tragedy would never have occurred.’

  ‘We shouldn’t talk about it!’ Sadie said, her tone a mixture of earnestness and alarm. ‘For Rob’s sake, we should come to an agreement, right now, that none of us will ever tell him exactly how his mother died.’

  I heard the words – “exactly how his mother died” – and they came as no great shock. So though I had no memory of Mother dying, or of her being buried, part of me at least must have known that she was dead.

  ‘Will you promise?’ Sadie persisted. ‘All of you?’

  ‘Promise?’ Aunt Catherine repeated. ‘There’s no need to promise. I would never soil my lips with such filth.’

  Aunt Peggy shifted uncomfortably in her chair. ‘Me neither,’ she said. ‘I mean, I just couldn’t. I wouldn’t know where to put myself.’

  Sadie turned to Aunt Jacqueline. ‘And you? Do you promise, too?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said my chain-smoking aunt impatiently. ‘Now let’s get back to what we’re here for, shall we? Which of you is going to take the boy?’

  ‘Which of us?’ Aunt Peggy asked. ‘Oh no, you don’t get away with that, Jacqueline. I mean, if he’s the responsibility of any of us – and I’m not saying that he is, mind you – then he’s the responsibility of all of us.’

  Sitting, shivering, under the standard lamp, I knew what I wanted to happen. I wanted Aunt Sadie to hug me and take care of me.

  But it was not to be.

  ‘I’d look after him,’ my beautiful aunt said. ‘I’d really like to. But living in France …’

  ‘Don’t see why that should stop you,’ Aunt Jacqueline interrupted. ‘Very educational place, France – bags of culture. Live by the sea, don’t you? Fresh air would be good for him.’

  Sadie shrugged her pretty shoulders. ‘If I had a permanent base, it might be different,’ she said. ‘But I don’t. In my work, I have to move around a lot.’

  Aunt Jacqueline laughed – a nasty, rasping laugh which carried with it the evidence of a million cigarettes.

  ‘Course you move around a lot,’ she said. ‘Clients expect it, don’t they? If they wanted somebody who just lay there like a sack of potatoes, they might as well stay at home with their wives.’

  I didn’t understand the remark, nor could I see why it should make Sadie blush as she did, but the odd, incomprehensible comment from an adult was the least of my worries at that moment. Sadie couldn’t take me, so it would have to be one of the others – roly-poly Aunt Peggy, bony Aunt Catherine or masculine Aunt Jacqueline.

  None of them seemed a very attractive prospect – but what was the alternative? I’d read Oliver Twist – not in a simplified, sanitised version for kids, but with its full adult horror – and anything, it seemed to me, would be better than that.

  ‘Why couldn’t he live with you, Catherine, dear?’ Aunt Peggy asked.

  ‘Me?’ demanded the senior aunt, as if the suggestion were both unreasonable and obscene.

  ‘Why not?’ Aunt Peggy asked, stalking her sister as cunningly as I would later see her numerous cats stalking sparrows. ‘I mean, you’re always saying what a good Christian you are, aren’t you? Well then, here’s your chance to bring another soul to Jesus.’

  But Aunt Catherine was too wily a sparrow to
be caught like that.

  ‘I am engaged in the Lord’s work,’ she told her fat sister, ‘and, like the work of the little yellow heathens at the Chinese take-away, it is almost never-ending. The boy would be to me as a window-shopper is to trade – an obstruction.’

  ‘You take him, Peggy,’ Aunt Jacqueline said. ‘Got hundreds of cats already. A kid’s no more trouble. Plate of meat, saucer of milk, and that’s it.’

  A woolly look came to Aunt Peggy’s face. ‘They’re so helpless, cats, aren’t they?’ she said reflectively. ‘But so demanding, too. And they will keep on having babies, won’t they?’

  The Angel, the Scarecrow and the Dumpling having turned me down, all eyes were suddenly fixed on Aunt Jacqueline.

  ‘No,’ she said with absolute determination. ‘Don’t want a child. Got my bridge tournaments to think of.’

  ‘Well, somebody has to take the poor boy in,’ Aunt Sadie protested. ‘We can’t just abandon him.’

  Couldn’t they? From where I was sitting, that looked like exactly what they were intending to do, and I felt the shadow of Dickens’ beadle already hovering over me.

  Aunt Catherine consulted her watch again. ‘Time is passing,’ she said, standing up. ‘We must get about our business.’

  ‘Get about our business!’ Sadie protested. ‘Isn’t Rob’s future our most important business?’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ Aunt Catherine agreed, ‘but unlike most commercial enterprises, the boy has no closing time.’ Her right hand disappeared into the vast leather handbag, and when it emerged again, it was holding two cheques. ‘This is the balance owed to the caterers,’ she said, passing the first to Sadie, ‘and this is the amount still due to the solicitors,’ giving it to Aunt Peggy. ‘I will go and see the undertaker myself. The flowers drooped during the funeral. They were an insult to the glory of God, and I shall certainly demand a discount.’

  ‘What about Jacqueline?’ Aunt Peggy demanded peevishly.

  ‘Jacqueline will be as the floorwalker is to his merchandise, and the Lord is to his flock,’ Aunt Catherine told her.