THAT AFTERNOON, I stuck my head through the door of the waiting room to see a large female figure draped in a canary yellow shawl, with a cardboard box on her knee.
“Phyllis? Are you okay?”
She looked up. “I was wondering if you had five minutes? It’s not urgent or anything.” But the anxiety in her brown eyes belied her words.
“Sure. Of course. Come on into the front.”
She followed me into the front office still carrying the cardboard box, nudging the door closed behind her with her large rump. She placed the box on the desk.
“Look,” she said breathlessly. “Tell me where to go if you like, but you were the first person I thought of. These are Marguerite’s things from the shop.”
“I see.”
“She was desperate for leaving things lying around, personal things – keys, bills, that sort of thing – so I gave her a drawer. And I only got around to clearing it out this morning. There’s not much, but I hadn’t the foggiest idea who to give the contents to. I mean, I’d give them to the guards but I’ve heard they’re not investigating her death any longer.”
“No. That’s true,” I said. “Although I’m sure they could still help.”
“Maybe,” she said doubtfully. She looked crestfallen.
“Her belongings should really go to her daughter,” I said. “Did you try to contact her?”
“I did. She was staying at the Atlantic, so I rang them on Saturday, but she had already checked out. She left straight after the funeral, apparently. She’s gone home, wherever that is.”
“Yes, I heard. She didn’t stay very long.”
“No. That’s what I thought. And well …” she said sheepishly, “I sort of overheard you saying at the funeral that you were Marguerite’s solicitor.”
I stood by the window with my arms crossed. “I see.”
“So I decided you might be the next best person to give them to. I thought at least you would know what to do, or who should have them.”
I did, I knew exactly what I should do: I should pass Marguerite’s possessions on to the guards because I certainly had no right to hold on to them. But I knew, too, that if I did that, then all they would do was contact her daughter and destroy the items if she didn’t want them, which more than likely she wouldn’t. I suspected that Phyllis knew that too, so I suppressed my conscience and followed my gut. Somewhere in this box there might be a clue as to why Marguerite had died.
“Okay, Phyllis,” I heard myself saying. “Leave them with me, and I’ll see if I can contact her daughter.”
Phyllis’s expression lightened considerably. “Oh, thanks, Ben, that’s such a relief. I’ll let you know if I find anything else.”
As she turned to leave, I called her back. “Before you go, do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Do you remember the other day, when you said you thought that people should pay their respects in death no matter what happened in life?”
She looked away, avoided my gaze.
“What did you mean by that?” I said.
She seemed to hesitate, and for a second, I thought she was going to tell me … but the moment passed.
“Oh, nothing really.” She smiled guiltily. “I have to learn not to gossip.”
When I returned to the reception area with the cardboard box in tow, Leah was on the phone. She beckoned me over and put the call on hold.
“It’s Brendan Quinn. Can you have a quick word with him before you see Iggy McDaid?”
“Iggy McDaid?”
She grinned. “He’s back. Want me to handcuff him to the seat?”
“Don’t rule it out,” I said. I put the box on the reception desk and took the handset. “Brendan, how are you? Did you get to see my client?”
“I did,” he replied. “I saw him first thing this morning and he was perfect. Like a twenty year old. So I suggest that if you want to see him, that you do so as soon as possible today, and I can complete an affidavit for you.”
“That’s great, Brendan. Thanks a million. I just have one person to see now and then I can head down straight away. I’ll talk to you soon.”
I was just about to hang up when I heard him clear his throat. “Em … just one other thing.”
“That matter we were talking about the other day – the exit counseling? I’ve done a bit of looking into that. If you’re interested, we could meet up and discuss it.”
“That would be great.” I couldn’t hide my surprise. “When suits you?”
“As it happens I have to be in Glendara to see some patients at the hospital on Thursday, so I could call up to your office then, if you’d like?”
Glendara has a small community hospital full of long-term geriatric patients – although I had been there myself after a mishap a few months before.
“Sure. That’s great, Brendan. I appreciate it.”
I hung up, deep in thought. My last conversation with Brendan Quinn had been like pulling teeth. So why had he changed his mind about talking to me all of a sudden? I placed the box Phyllis had given me on top of one of the filing cabinets. My curiosity about both would have to wait. I had a client to see.
When I had finished seeing Iggy I made the trip to Letterkenny – and this time I managed to get the will drafted and signed. My first opportunity to examine the contents of the box Phyllis had left in my care came that evening. After I had eaten, I evicted an indignant Guinness from the armchair in front of the fire and deposited him firmly on the sofa, poured a glass of wine, and settled myself in his place with the cardboard box on the coffee table in front of me.
Opening the top flaps, I immediately felt a stab of conscience: I was about to invade Marguerite’s privacy in a way that she might not have been happy about. But I could not ignore this box. It was as if fate had delivered it into my hands. I had convinced myself that my duty to Marguerite extended beyond her death. And since I had failed her in life, I was going to try my damnedest not to fail her now.
I peered inside the box. A sapphire-blue scarf was strewn on top and from it a light fragrance drifted towards me. I took it out and placed it on the table. Underneath was a selection of paperbacks – autobiographies mostly, all with their prices pencilled in Phyllis’s handwriting inside the front flap. I took them out of the box one by one and placed them on the table with the scarf. When I had done that, the box seemed almost empty, although a variety of small items remained scattered across the bottom.
I picked up a pack of Gauloise cigarettes, half full. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Marguerite smoke. I sniffed them; they were slightly stale. I wondered where she would have been able to buy such an exotic brand of cigarettes in Glendara, until I saw the duty-free label on the side of the pack. I placed them to one side.
I removed the remaining items and laid them out in front of me, then put the box under the table. They consisted of a medium-sized cosmetics bag, a tiny desk clock, a box of herbal tea bags – peppermint – and some pens and pencils. That was it. Not much to go on. The fact that there didn’t seem to be anything of any great value lessened the guilt I felt at not handing everything over to the guards, at least for the moment. But as I picked up the cosmetics bag, my discomfort returned. It seemed so personal, such an invasion to go through its contents. But I suppressed my doubts, unzipped the main compartment, and emptied everything out on to the table. There wasn’t much – a brown mascara, a lipstick, a compact with a mirror, and some charcoal-gray eyeshadow.
But with all of its contents now removed, the bag was still bulky. I turned it over in my hands – there seemed to be something in the zip compartment at the side. I unzipped it and with some difficulty pulled out a bundle of envelopes that were held together with a rubber band.
Immediately the rubber band snapped in my hand, and the bundle fell apart, scattering the envelopes on to the carpet. I picked one up. It was a letter, the address handwritten. I recognized Marguerite’s handwriting from the slip of paper she had given me in the office. The address was the same:
It was a letter to her daughter. I turned the envelope over; it was sealed. I looked at the front again. To the left of the address was an inked stamp. I fetched my laptop and turned on Google Translate. Not known at this address. Return to sender.
I gathered up the other envelopes. Most of them were similar; sealed and with the same addressee, with postmarks stretching back a year or so. All were marked not known at this address, or return to sender or both. I couldn’t bring myself to open any of them. That seemed a step too far.
There were three other envelopes, opened envelopes this time and addressed to Marguerite. They were bills, by the look of them: a mobile phone bill, an electricity bill, and a credit card bill. I opened the credit card bill first. It was for the month of June and it contained only two items – a charge to Aer Lingus for €149 and another to a hotel booking website for €250. This must have been the holiday Phyllis had talked about, I thought. But where had Marguerite gone? To see her daughter?
I withdrew three sheets from the next envelope – it was Marguerite’s mobile phone bill for July, a long itemised bill. So long, in fact, that the sum due seemed rather low, until I realized the charges related mostly to texts. I scanned through the list; there were over a thousand of them, sent at all hours of the day and night. It didn’t take me long to work out that one number came up more often than any other.
I sat back and stared into the fire, the bill in my hand. The most likely scenario for such regular and consistent texts was a lover. I had been there, I knew. But if I was right, then who was Marguerite’s lover? David Howard’s words came flooding back to me: He doesn’t usually go to the funerals of his women. Could it have been Simon? Should I ring the number and find out? What would I do if he answered?
I searched for my mobile phone until I remembered I’d left it at the office. But I had Simon’s number at the office too – he’d given it to me when he’d come by, so I didn’t need to call, after all. I could just compare the one he’d given me with the number on the bill. I pulled Guinness on to my knee where he curled up contentedly. Had Simon been lying to me about how well he knew Marguerite?