The Ely Testament (3 page)

Then, passing the open door to Lye's office, he observed that this was one of those occasional days when the aged partner put in an appearance. He was sitting at his cluttered desk. Mr Ashley the senior clerk was standing beside Lye, bending forward slightly, his forefinger indicating some place on a document in front of them. Lye had a quill pen in his hand. Ashley glanced up at Tom, his brow even more furrowed than usual.

Tom walked on. He heard Lye sneezing, violently. Then there was a thump as if a heavy object had fallen from a shelf. He heard Ashley utter some words that sounded like ‘Oh for heaven's sake.' Tom stopped. He looked round. Ashley stuck his head out of the door. He was gazing directly at Tom but seemed unaware of his presence.

‘Is something wrong, Mr Ashley?'

‘For heaven's sake.'

Tom walked back. By now Ashley had emerged into the passage, muttering the same phrase several times over in an irritated tone. No one else was in the passage. Tom peered round Lye's door. He saw the dust motes dancing in the shafts of sun, the smeared windows between their heavy drapes. He saw shelves with books arranged any old how and the desk covered with heavy legal volumes and beribboned sheaves of paper, with blotters and inkstands and pen-holders. In the centre of all this clutter, he saw the mottled dome of Alexander Lye. It was positioned on the desk like a ball. Mr Lye had fallen forward on his nose, fallen very neatly in the single clear space but on top of the document which he had doubtless been about to sign. His right hand grasped the quill pen. Tom thought that Lye must be the only person in Scott, Lye & Mackenzie still to be using a quill rather than a metal dip pen. He also thought that Lye would never again be using a pen of any sort.

Mr Ashley came back into the room. ‘Oh for heaven's sake!' he said once more.

Helen Gets a Commission

‘
H
e was shocked,' said Tom to Helen that evening. ‘It's the first time I've ever seen old Ashley put out. He kept repeating himself as if he was irritated or angry that Lye had dropped dead in front of him. But I think it was his way of showing how distressed he was.'

‘Mr Ashley has been with the firm longer than anyone now that Alexander Lye is gone,' said Helen. ‘I find it hard to believe Mr Lye really is gone, though. He seemed ageless.'

The Ansells were sitting after supper in the small drawing room of their rented house in Kentish Town. The evening was dank and Helen was glad that she had asked Hetty, their maid-of-all-work, to light a fire before it got dark. On an otherwise unoccupied evening Tom and Helen would have been reading, Tom perhaps casting his eye over the newspaper or the
Cornhill Magazine
while Helen might have been working her way through the latest novel by Mrs Braddon. But this evening they were preoccupied by the death of Alexander Lye and, while there was not much to say about it, they nevertheless felt they ought to say something and then to go on saying it.

Helen had known the old lawyer ever since she had been a little girl. For his part Tom had hardly known Lye at all but, because he was the first on the scene apart from Mr Ashley, he had to repeat the story several times over to other people in the firm. He restricted himself to the bare facts: the sneezing, the sound of Lye's head as it struck the desktop, the utter suddenness of the event.

In the moments following the death Tom took charge because Ashley seemed incapable of doing anything. No one else had yet appeared. After another glance around, Tom shut the door to the dead man's room and ushered the senior clerk back to his own office. There he gently instructed him to sit down before going off to find David Mackenzie who was, as usual, wreathed in pipe smoke behind his own desk.

The firm's only surviving partner was grateful for Tom's calm manner and his discretion. Once Mr Mackenzie had arranged things – sending another junior lawyer, Will Evers, round to the undertaker's; seeing that Mr Ashley was fortified with a brandy and water while trying to get him to return home for the rest of the day (Ashley refused to go, respectfully); attempting to subdue the more excitable accounts of Lye's death which were already circulating round the chambers – once David Mackenzie had done all this he clapped Tom on the shoulder.

‘Thank you.'

‘I haven't done anything much, Mr Mackenzie.'

‘Then thank you for what you didn't do. Didn't go telling the first person you saw but came to me, didn't go encouraging a gaggle of people to crowd round poor old Lye's door and stare and gawp. Instinctively you knew that decorum ought to be preserved.'

Then there was a pause before he said, ‘I've known Alexander Lye for longer than I can recall.'

‘His death must be a great shock to you.'

‘No doubt I shall feel it in the course of time,' said Mackenzie in quite a cheerful tone while struggling to relight his pipe which, by Tom's reckoning, had remained unlit for almost an hour – a record. ‘But at the moment I feel as Brutus felt about mourning for his old friend on the fields of Philippi: “I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time.” The Bard of Avon, you know.'

Now Tom said to Helen, ‘And once he'd quoted Shakespeare, Mackenzie referred to Lye as a “wily old bird”. An odd thing to say about your friend and partner just after he's dropped dead, don't you think?'

‘I don't suppose it will be inscribed on his tombstone,' she said. ‘It doesn't mean that Mr Mackenzie is unfeeling.'

‘Well, I'm afraid I didn't feel very much,' said Tom. ‘There was a definite excitement in the office, though, especially when Mr Lye's corpse was being carried out by the undertaker's men. Not much work was done for the rest of the day. I certainly didn't do much.'

‘Poor Mr Lye,' said Helen, then, ‘I had a letter today, Tom.'

It took Tom a moment to realize that his wife was deliberately changing the subject. He looked expectant and got up to stir the dying embers of the fire with the poker.

‘It was a letter from Arthur Arnett. He is the editor of
The New Moon
.'

‘
The New Moon
?'

‘It's a periodical – a monthly periodical, as the title indicates.'

‘I don't think I've seen it.'

‘That is because the first issue has yet to come out. But plans are well advanced and I believe it is appearing imminently. Mr Arnett has promised me an advance copy.
The New Moon
will be a magazine for town and country, Mr Arnett says, and it will be a publication for men and women equally.'

‘Wide ranging then,' said Tom, rattling the poker so as to start a few feeble spurts of flame among the embers.

‘He has asked me to contribute to it. He read my story in
Tinsley's Magazine
and obtained our address from Mr Tinsley himself. In his letter, Mr Arnett was kind enough to compliment me on my eye for detail, and my facility at description.'

‘You're going to write another story for him?'

‘No. He has asked me to compose a factual piece on any town or city I like, London aside. He stipulates only that it must be a place of inner beauty so I suppose that rules out an industrial town. He wants me to visit it and then to describe its buildings and byways, its corners and curiosities. I am to convey the quintessence of the place to the reader. Mr Arnett says that, by such means, we may introduce the inhabitants of these British Isles to one another. After all, we are sometimes more informed about the furthest outposts of the Empire than we are about our own backyards.'

Tom bent forward to kiss Helen, to plant a chaste kiss on her pale forehead. He did this partly to avoid having to comment directly on what she'd just said. The way she recited the editor's words – so many of them! – suggested she had read his letter several times over. Tom sometimes thought these literary types had a very convoluted way of expressing themselves, with their quintessences and inner beauties and their plans for introducing British citizens to each other. Even so he was glad for Helen. He had been proud, very proud, when she had a story entitled ‘Treasure' published in
Tinsley's
. It pleased him to see the name of
Helen Ansell
set in italic type almost as much as it pleased her.

‘Mrs Helen Ansell,' he said, ‘intrepid reporter from our own backyards.'

‘Be careful, Thomas.'

‘Or should that be intrepid
reportress
? Seriously, though, may I accompany you on one of these visits?'

‘That depends on your attitude.'

‘Where are you going to choose? What place shall we visit?'

‘I don't know yet where
I
shall go, Tom. I will have to think about it. Mr Arnett does not need the article for a while. He also said that he could not offer me much money.
The New Moon
is still very new, you see.'

Tom was not surprised to hear this but he did not say so. Instead he gave Helen another, longer kiss, and then, because the fire was losing its warmth and the night drawing on, they went upstairs to bed.

Mr Lye's Deed-Box

W
hen Tom arrived at Furnival Street the next day, he was greeted in the lobby by Mr Ashley. The senior clerk had evidently been waiting for him to appear. It was unusual, almost unheard of, for Ashley to be found out of his office. If he wanted to see anyone, that person was expected to visit him. Yet here he was, waiting for Tom in the lobby. Graves, the ex-military man who was the doorman and general factotum for the offices of Scott, Lye & Mackenzie, looked on in surprise, especially when Ashley drew Tom to one side.

‘Mr Mackenzie wishes to see you – urgently,' he said. ‘
He
was here before eight o'clock this morning despite the weather.'

This sounded like a comment on Tom's slightly late arrival in the office. It was a foggy morning, which somehow had the effect of retarding the traffic even though things seemed to bustle along as usual.

‘Do you know what he wants to see me about?'

‘Confidential, very confidential.'

An odd way of being confidential, thought Tom, to be intercepted by Ashley and then whispered at in a corner of the lobby where they might be seen by the doorman as well as anyone passing. It crossed his mind to ask Ashley if he had recovered from the events of the day before but he decided not to. Instead, he thanked the clerk and made his way to David Mackenzie's office.

He knocked. Rather than being told to enter, the door was almost immediately opened. Mr Mackenzie stood there, a portly figure. Tom usually thought of him as monk-like on account of his shape and the benevolence of his countenance as well as his tonsure of white hair. On this occasion, Mackenzie looked drawn rather than benevolent and what little hair he had was sticking up in tufts instead of being arranged in a sleek ring. The only thing which was as normal was the cloud of pipe smoke that filled his room.

‘Come in. Come in and sit down.'

Mackenzie retreated behind his desk, which was much more orderly than Lye's cluttered surface. Tom sat down on the other side. There was a silence. Tom's curiosity was piqued. What was so urgent that it called Mr Mackenzie to the office at eight o'clock? What was so troublesome that it had left him, by the look of things, deprived of a night's sleep?

‘How well did you know Mr Lye, Tom?'

Mackenzie's use of his first name was a sign that whatever he wanted to discuss was likely to be more personal than business.

‘Hardly at all, sir. I spoke to Mr Lye when I first joined the firm. It was you who introduced us. And the other day we exchanged a few words, outside his room.'

‘What did he say? Anything of interest?'

What had Alexander Lye said? Something about documents and dust. Interesting in a vaguely philosophical way perhaps, but that surely wasn't what Mackenzie meant.

‘He advised me to make sure my affairs were in good order,' said Tom. ‘That I had made a will and so on.'

‘Very sound advice,' said David Mackenzie, drawing deeply on his pipe. He was obscured by a cloud of smoke. The fug inside matched the thin brown fog nuzzling the window panes outside. It was a contrast to the previous sunny day, the day of Lye's death, and the room was dim despite the gas lighting. Mackenzie removed his pipe and seemed about to say something further but no words emerged. Tom filled the gap.

‘I don't know anything of Mr Lye's domestic circumstances. He was married, wasn't he?'

‘A widower. His wife died at least ten years ago.'

‘Children?'

‘No,' said Mackenzie. ‘Or none that I am aware of. No legal issue, let us say.'

‘Any other immediate family?'

‘Immediate? Alexander lived with his sister near Regent's Park. A large house, for just the two of them. They did not get on, so perhaps it's as well they had plenty of space not to get on in.'

Tom sensed that there was more to come but that the senior partner was reluctant to say it. Even the information given so far seemed to have been imparted only half willingly. After a moment, Mackenzie said, ‘Tom, I know I can rely on your discretion.'

Tom nodded. David Mackenzie pushed himself up from his chair and went to the far side of the room. From the floor he retrieved, not without effort, an oblong metal container, a deed-box. Holding it by the small handles at each end he brought it back to the desk before turning it round so that Tom could read the words ALEXANDER JAMES LYE stencilled in small yellow capitals along the side. There was a keyhole above the name. The box was little more than a foot in length and about half as high and deep.

‘Fortunately the key for this was on Lye's key-chain,' said Mackenzie. ‘I would not have cared to break it open although it wouldn't have taken much effort to do so. The box was inside the safe in his own office. The safe was easy to open too. Lye made no particular secret of the combination: seventeen-eighty-nine.'

‘The French Revolution?'