Timing is Everything

Patsy

The morning after the office mid-winter Christmas party, sober again, I faced the reality of what I’d done. I didn’t mean to push Jeffrey into the harbour. Not consciously, anyway. He shouldn’t have been standing so close to the edge, the state he was in, but something on the water had got his attention and he was concentrating so hard on it that he wouldn’t have seen me roll my ankle and fall towards him. He’d had as much to drink at Dockside as anyone in the group and was none too steady on his feet as we headed, in twos and threes, along the waterfront. Was there some part of me that meant to do it? Did I deliberately fall against him when my ankle gave way? Did my ankle give way? That’s what I’m telling myself but honestly, I’m not sure what happened. I do know, however, that afterwards, I simply picked myself up and carried on walking behind the others. That was a deliberate choice, and I don’t feel good about it. But once I had failed to act, I was committed. Jeffrey disappeared without a sound, followed by a muted splash a moment later. I looked around, expecting to hear cries of alarm and a flurry of activity, maybe familiar faces from the office displaying emotions of shock. Instead, I saw unruffled pedestrians deep in conversation or admiring the brightly lit panorama of the Wellington waterfront and its reflections in the still, icy waters of the harbour. Jeffrey had gone and no one had noticed. I hesitated a beat too long (because after all, having Jeffrey out of the picture could only be good for me), and my decision was made. The snap audit that Jeffrey wanted had spelt disaster for me. I didn’t know if he was just being cautious or suspected something amiss. Now my indiscretions with the accounts would remain hidden, at least in the short term. Hopefully Jeffrey’s unfortunate accident meant I had time to cover my tracks.

We were all sitting with our drinks at Mac's Brewbar before anyone wondered where he was. I said I thought he was coming along behind me when we left Dockside, but I hadn’t seen him since we passed TSB stadium. It was the truth, as far as it went. Later, once his body was found and the police were involved, I told the same story. What else could I do?

Only two days later, Peter rang from Auckland with the news Uncle Jack had been found dead in his garden. He had died from a massive stroke. The timing was perfect. Here was an excuse to get away from the office and the police for a while, let things calm down. And Uncle Jack was rich! He was single, no children, his siblings older and long gone. We were all the family he had. He had lived quietly and saved his money for the last thirty years. But how would he dispose of it? He was always big on being fair and honest, but what would he consider fair?

We left for Auckland that evening.

Sara

All I could think of, was that the flowers weren’t right. Uncle Jack’s garden overflowed with a riot of old roses, granny’s bonnets, bluebells, and pansies. The church on the other hand was spiky with yellow and orange architectural flowers and glossy leaved palms. I wondered who had decided on the flowers. If only I had been included. But Aunt Patsy and Dad-the surviving niece and nephew-had been the ones to meet with the funeral director. I supposed the flowers were Aunt Patsy’s idea. 

There was something wrong about Aunt Patsy. Whenever she came to Auckland to visit, she was spiky and sharp-tongued, like the flowers, but this time she also had a manic energy that seemed out of place. I wondered what was up with her. Maybe it had to do with her office colleague, whose body had been pulled from Wellington Harbour a few days ago? She claimed she didn’t really know him, had no idea what had happened. Hers was a big office so that was quite possible. But she could be lying, too. The idea of Aunt Patsy involved in a scandal seemed fitting for some reason. Was she having an affair with him? Maybe his wife had found out? Or Aunt Patsy had spurned him and overcome with misery, he took his own life? I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine her arousing that sort of passion in anyone.

I could still picture Uncle Jack (actually my great uncle) as I found him last Saturday. Uncle Jack had been like a parent to me and my brothers after Mum died six years ago. It was still hard to believe that he was gone forever. He lay amongst his roses on the crumbly black soil he had proudly nurtured, now his final soft bed. He had fallen across the precisely trimmed box hedge and crushed several plants. He would have been horrified to see the broken branches, leaves, and smears of dirt scattered over the raked gravel. I went back once the police and emergency vehicles had gone and tidied up for him.

A detective had come to talk to us later that night, from the Wellington police, which was odd. He said it was just a routine inquiry, conducted in all cases of sudden death, but once he confirmed our relationship with Aunt Patsy, he seemed more interested in talking about her and her dead office colleague than anything else.     

Dad was coming to the end of the eulogy we had written together. The funeral was all but over.

Peter

From the corner of my eye, I could see Sara sitting with her brothers on the wooden pew in front of me. Speaking about my Uncle Jack in front of all these people was torture. ‘I will always be grateful for the years of care and love Jack gave to my children after we lost their mother. I know they messed up his neat and tidy life more than just a bit.’ A polite chuckle rippled around the crowded little church. I looked up but the sea of faces unnerved me, and I quickly looked back to the lectern. I didn’t need to read what was written on the pages lying there, I knew what I was going to say, but it was better than looking at the church full of people staring back at me. The last few days were a blur. Sometimes it seemed a century ago, and other times just yesterday, that Sara had called me at work in tears to tell me about Jack's collapse. From then on time had passed in a rush of phone calls, with my sister Patsy in Wellington, friends, funeral directors, the church, the florist. Patsy had insisted that I, who knew Jack best, read the eulogy. It was fair enough, there was no one else. Except maybe Sara but I couldn’t ask that of her. It was bad enough that she had found him, her and the boys.

At last the formalities were over. Outside we stood awkwardly behind the hearse for a time, and I watched as Sara placed a basket of rose petals, gathered with love from Jack’s garden, in the back. Patsy sniffed.

‘You needn’t have bothered with that, Sara. The funeral home has provided soil.’

‘I wanted something familiar for Uncle Jack, something he knew,’ said Sara. ‘He loved his roses.’

‘He did indeed,’ said Patsy, ‘so much so, that he wouldn’t even leave them to visit his family.’

Sara grimaced. ‘Uncle Jack felt totally lost away from his garden, Aunt Patsy. If you wanted to see him, you had to go to him.’

‘Yes, well,’ said Patsy, ‘easy for some, who live a couple of streets away. We couldn’t manage it, with small children. It would have been nice if he had come to us occasionally. Much easier for one person to travel.’ She spotted her children and hurried away to fuss over the ribbons in their hair. Sara bit her lip and blinked, and I wrapped her in my arms. What was up with Patsy? And why had the police been asking so many questions about her, and her office accountant? The spoilt baby sister, she had always got her way in everything. Because she was so much younger we didn't have a close relationship, and I couldn’t read her now.

Patsy

It was a relief to get the funeral out of the way. Peter had managed the eulogy adequately, his precocious children subdued for once, although Sara looked daggers at me every chance she got. Why do I feel such animosity for this child? Or maybe I feel it from her. I can’t decide, but I’m quite sure she senses some dark vibe of what I’ve done.

The will was read the day after the funeral. I sat waiting with Peter in the lawyer’s plain office, a padded leather chair each. A huge, curved desk took up most of the room, heaped with bulging manila folders scribbled with the names of strangers. Everything was bright and clean, and the clutter of files gave the room an air of bustle and busy-ness. Peter stared absently at the window, but I could hardly sit still. The office door swung open, and the lawyer, dapper in a tailored suit, entered the room.

‘Good morning,’ the man said as he came in, closing the door softly behind him. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’ He introduced himself and squeezed behind the massive desk, drawing a manila folder from the top of a haphazard pile. ‘J W Walters, LW&T’ was written on it in black felt.

 ‘Shall we get down to business then?’ 

‘Thank you,’ murmured Peter. I said nothing. My lips felt glued shut. I didn’t know what to expect. Jack’s home was mortgage-free, as far as I knew, and with its large section and desirable location it should be worth two or three million, Auckland prices being the way they were. With Jeffrey’s audit indefinitely on hold, all I needed now was a quick injection of capital to square up the accounts again. A share of Jack’s estate, and my god it didn’t even have to be an equal share, and my secret would be permanently safe.

‘It’s a very simple will. I will read it in full in a moment, but in summary, firstly, Jack is leaving his residential property in St Heliers Bay Rd to the three children of his brother Peter, namely Sara, Jon and George.’

‘But they’re minors! That can’t be right surely?’ I pushed myself up in my chair, fingers sinking into the padded leather arms.

‘The property will be held in trust until the youngest boy, that would be George, I believe…?’ He looked at Peter for confirmation, and Peter gave him a brief nod ‘…reaches the age of twenty one. Jack names his brother Peter as executor ….’

‘Oh, of course he does.’ I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. I sat back down with a thump.

Peter sighed, in that patient, irritating way he had, and I rolled my eyes. ‘Uncle Jack was close to the kids, Patsy. Sara in particular was like a daughter to him. I can’t say I’m surprised.’

‘Well you wouldn’t be! I suppose you’ve been cooking this up for years.’

At the end of his army career, Uncle Jack had come back from a grueling overseas tour which changed our fun-loving uncle into a silent, taciturn stranger. He was not fun anymore. Despite still living in Auckland, I kept away; his silences and long face were poor company. Eventually marriage and career took me to the other end of the island. Peter, however, had hovered over his favourite uncle. Much later, when the children were born, and later still when their mother died, Jack became a kind of nanny and spoilt them rotten. My own two girls, equally family, have been ignored all this time. Peter and his children had looked like becoming Uncle Jack’s surrogate family and his will confirmed it. It was a mortal blow.

The lawyer held up a hand, kept talking. ‘There’s more if you would like to hear it,’ he said. ‘The rest of Jack’s estate, consisting mainly of shares in a number of companies, is to be divided among his surviving siblings and their children.’ He opened the folder with a flourish. ‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘You are both about to become extremely wealthy.’

That made me sit up. “What do you mean?’

‘Jack had a very substantial holding of blue-chip shares, as well as a number of term deposits. On today’s market, the total value is in the region of nine million.’

‘Dollars?’ I choked. Was I really hearing this?

Peter turned from contemplating the window but otherwise didn’t react.

How wonderful it was! How lucky that dear old Jack had no other family. How fortunate that he had lived simply and kept it all intact. How typical that he divided it up with scrupulous fairness. How sad that he was dead. I fished out my hanky. ‘Dear Jack! Gone too soon.’

I felt light and free for the first time in years.

Peter

Patsy led the way down the tiled steps from the old building’s impressive front foyer. On reaching the footpath she swung to face me. She was somewhat theatrically holding her hanky, still dry and neatly creased, to her face. Typical Patsy. ‘Well! That’s a turn up for the books! Who’d have thought our dear old uncle had all that stashed away?’, she said. She was bubbling over but I didn’t feel like that. I just felt desperately sad for Jack, that his whole life came down to this.

‘Kind of cancels out what he did with the house then, don’t you reckon?’, I said. I immediately regretted the sarcasm, but she was staring down the street and didn’t hear, her attention fixed on a police car pulling over to the curb. I recognised the detective who had spoken to Sara and me after Uncle Jack’s death. With him was a uniformed constable, who remained several steps behind the detective as he approached Patsy.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Longford’, he said. Patsy tossed her head.

‘Good afternoon, detective. You’re a long way from home.’

Grim-faced, he wasn't interested in small talk. ‘We have some further questions to ask you about the events in Wellington. We would like you to accompany us to the station for this purpose.’

‘What, now?’ said Patsy, somehow looking down her nose at the man although he was a head taller than her. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be convenient.’

‘The convenience or otherwise is irrelevant. If I told you the questions related to security camera footage from the Wellington waterfront the night that Jeffrey Speight died, as well as certain account information found on Jeffrey’s computer, would that persuade you to come along voluntarily?’

Whatever this signified, it was obviously a huge shock for Patsy. Her face instantly lost the happy flush that had been there since she heard the lawyer say, ‘nine million’. A nervous tongue flicked across her upper lip. But, trust her, she refused to back down.

‘There’s no way you’re dragging me to the station,’ she blustered. ‘I have told you everything I know already.’ Her voice shook, just a little. Oh lord, Patsy, you little minx, what have you done?

‘If that’s how you want it, then so be it’, said the detective, and nodded at the constable, who fumbled at her belt to unhook a pair of handcuffs. ‘Patricia Longford, I am arresting you for the murder of Jeffrey Speight, and also for theft as a servant while in the employ of Central Engineering Services…’