The box

I was given the box in a dream by a woman I knew to be dead. It was a highly distinctive box with two hearts entwined on the lid and a lock. I held it in my hands right up to my awakening and then it dwindled in my grasp until there was nothing.

Oh well, just a dream, forget about it.

I couldn't. In an idle moment in the office, I found myself doodling on a notepad. I am no artist but it was the box I had drawn, badly.

The dead woman was my aunt Sasha who had lived in a two-room flat in Norbury. It was my job to clear out her things. It felt bad interfering with her possessions. It was a bit like burglary except there was nothing worth stealing.

Aunt Sash always talked to me. Most recently I had seen her at a family wedding. She sat beside me and favoured me with her unedited opinion on everybody who came in. She thought she was whispering but her poor hearing meant that her whisper could probably be heard in Normandy.

Did anyone mind? Certainly not. It was “only Aunt Sash” after all.

I had a number of black plastic bags and the detritus of her life was steadily making its way into them. Indeed a dirty old box would probably have joined the throng but something made me wipe it with a tissue. It was *the* box.

I didn't have the key but I did have a screwdriver. I opened the box and immediately wished I hadn't. Inside there was a severed human finger.

When I summoned up the Chutzpah to touch it, I realised that it was covered in wax and had been used as a candle. What I could not imagine was what Aunt Sash had wanted to do that for.

Aunt Sash was a meticulous keeper of receipts. I had consigned a number of these to the fire but there were still quite a few to examine. They were in a drawer with a notebook which appeared to be full of gibberish.

It took me the rest of the day to sift the receipts. I put aside the ones which seemed a bit odd. I won't bother you with all of them but the one which is relevant was for £5 which was a lot of money in 1953 and it was made out to a self-styled “Old Curiosity Shop” in the Laines in Brighton. I eventually deciphered the description of the object which Sash had purchased. It was described as a “hand of glory”.

I searched online for a definition. (I imagine you've done the same) So you know that a “hand of glory” is a candle made from the hand of a murder victim or a murderer who had been hanged. It was supposed to have various magical properties. Clearly Aunt Sash – who was a lifelong sceptic – had believed that some of its magical properties would actually work.

The Old Curiosity Shop, which was closed long ago (I checked) had clearly short-changed my aunt by giving her the finger.

At the thought of murder, my mind immediately leapt to the questionable death of my uncle Karlo.

Karlo had been married to Aunt Sash for about six years. Apart from being the sort of person who gives obnoxious skinflints a bad name, he seemed to have cast a spell over Aunt Sash and he could do no wrong in her eyes.

When I say his death was “questionable” I mean that I had only started questioning it when I opened the box. Back then I thought old people just died and that was that. Among Aunt Sash's papers was his death certificate. His death was attributed to heart failure with no further explanation. It came as a surprise that Karlo had a heart at all but one should not speak ill of the dead.

Karlo was what we might call “morbidly obese” but in those days he was just fat and jolly or in his case just jolly fat. He smoked untipped Capstan full strength. In short, he was an overweight elderly male smoker – a heart attack waiting to happen.

I remembered my mother's comment on Uncle Karlo. After every visit, she would say: “Why be awkward when with a little effort he could be ruddy impossible.”

Had Aunt Sash finally broken under the strain and used the Hand of Glory (I noted that it had only been used once) to hasten the inevitable and cash in Karlo's chips for him?

Another question which someone who loved Aunt Sash had to ask was whether it was actually a crime? If she had imagined she could bring about someone's death by supernatural means that didn't make her a killer.

I talked it over with my sister over a few drinks.

“Good old Auntie Sash,” was her response.

Did I mention that Uncle Karlo was not the family's favourite person?

Then she gave me a further thought. The date of the purchase was 1953. And Uncle Karlo's scarcely lamented demise was in 1960. They were only married for six years. It would take some forethought for Auntie Sash to gather the means to destroy a husband she had not yet met.

“And what about Grandad?”

We both fell silent at that thought. We had no idea how Grandad had met his maker. At the time we both put it down to 'old age' which will kill anybody in the end.

Auntie Sash could hardly have killed the old man for his inheritance. Grandad had left precisely nothing once his funeral had been paid for.

Moreover, Auntie Sash had long moved away from home so any resentment she may have felt for his patriarchal tendencies ought to have faded or at least not been worth committing murder about.

With these thoughts revolving in my head, I went home to sleep off the prodigious drinking session with my sister.

It was without surprise that I found Auntie Sash sitting by my bedside in what I now realise was another dream.

“Cedric,” she said sternly, “I can read your thoughts and I am disappointed that you think such terrible things about me. Disappointed and amused to be honest with you. You know women don't commit murder and get caught, you silly boy.”

Her stern mood had gone and she was her usual self again. She chatted about the family for a while. She seemed to know everything which had gone on since her death and she had an opinion about everything of course.

Before she left she said one thing.

“Have you tried the diary?”

“It's all gibberish,” I complained.

She just laughed at that.

Now there is one thing about Aunt Sash which I know and you don't. I expect you'd like me to tell you. During the war, she worked at Bletchley Park. She never let on because she had signed the Official Secrets Act but her name is on a list on public display there now. That got me thinking.

The book, as I said, was gibberish but I noticed that all the words were of the same length. At the beginning of the book were three numbers. These were suspiciously like the settings of the three rotors in the Enigma machine.

I am sure it is possible to buy an Enigma machine for a small fortune, for example on eBay. However, it is rather easier to go to an online simulation of an Enigma machine and do that. So that is what I did.

I was very excited when I decrypted the first word, "YHMIA ZIJQR“ which of course was “Uneventful”. However, that word set the tone for the diary really. The full day's reading was “Uneventful day at work. Liver and bacon for tea with some spinach which I had to defrost.” I remember Auntie Sash being delighted with the second-hand fridge she had acquired although she was the last in the family to get one, she talked about it constantly for a while.

So I will spare you the details of my deciphering until we get to something interesting.

“Today I found a box with a motif showing two intertwined hearts. It was hidden in Karlo's shed on his allotment. I wasn't being nosy. I was just taking an interest. When I looked inside the box I thought of a number of questions. I eventually got the story out of Karlo about the box and its contents.”

“He had dabbled in the dark arts but, typical Karlo, he had completely misunderstood the mumbo jumbo. A “Hand of Glory” or in his case a “Fickle Finger of Fate” can be used in various magical contexts and each is about as effective as the others.”

“The poor deluded fool was under the impression that I had been attracted to him because of his mystical machinations. I didn't like to tell him that I was attracted by the fact that he had a pulse.”

“There was also his large post office savings account but it turned out the reason he had a lot of money was that he was, shall we say, very careful with money. He might have been Ebenezer Scrooge's meaner brother.”

“Those words in the marriage ceremony, 'for better or worse' spring to mind but as mum used to say I've made my bed so I must lie in it.”

“I don't think my family are quite right to label him a heartless skinflint. Not quite but close enough.”

The End