The Mystery of the Cupboard (9 page)

But I rejected the call. I would not hear it.

Exactly one week after I had stolen the earrings, I left my basement rooms to walk through the streets to the shops. I remember every detail of that day: the weather, my clothes, the look of my hand in its old kid glove as I handed over a penny for an evening newspaper. I remember the newsboy's face.

I glanced at the front page. And there was Matthew.

Matthew photographed on his wedding day, in a top hat and morning dress, with Maria, a radiant bride, on his arm. And before I could brace myself I had read the words under it, the words that burst that evil bubble of elation and shattered my peace for ever.

Half paralysed with horror, I read on. But what was written in the paper was obviously only part of the story. Why should Lottie have run out into the street, making Matthew run after her, straight under a taxi cab? It made
no sense — I couldn't take it in. “It's a mistake! A mistake!” I kept thinking. Matthew, dead! It was unthinkable!

I ran in blind panic to a telephone. Maria's maid, Millie, answered. She said what she always said, “Mr Darren's residence,” and then burst into tears.

“Millie, Millie! It's Mrs Darren's sister, tell me what happened, please, tell me at once!”

“Oh, Miss Driscoll, it's too dreadful! I can't tell you!”

“Do as you're told, girl!” I shouted at her down the line.

My sudden anger made her control herself. She lowered her voice, still shaken with sobs.

“It was them earrings, Miss. The bluey-green ones Mrs Darren set such store by. They was lost, Miss. She couldn't find them. And it seems no one could have taken them except Miss Lottie.”

Something seemed to burst in my head. I nearly fainted where I stood. Lottie!
Lottie
take the earrings! What madness was this? My Lottie?

“Mrs Darren let her play with her jewels sometimes for a special treat. She said Miss Lottie was the only one who knew the secret of the hiding place where she kept the key. She called the child into her room (I was in the room next door, I couldn't help but hear, Miss, really I couldn't!). She questioned her, and poor Miss Lottie kept crying and saying she never took them and Mrs Darren said she wouldn't be angry if she'd own up, but she wouldn't, and all of a sudden she run straight out of the room and down the stairs.

“Mr Darren was just coming in through the front door, and Miss Lottie - she was crying something awful, Miss, crying and shouting out ‘I didn't, I didn't, I didn't!' hysterical-like, and she run right straight out through the front door under her father's arm, and down the steps into the street! And her father run after her calling her to come back. And then there was a kind of screech in the road as the cab tried to stop, and a thump, and then it was all over.”

I hadn't breathed. But now I did, in gasps. I cried out, “And did she come back - Miss Lottie - is she safe at least?”

And Millie said, “Yes, Miss, Miss Lottie is safe and sound. But the mistress is near to going out of her mind. The doctor's given her something to make her sleep, but God knows what will happen to us all when she wakes up.”

Omri stopped reading and looked out over the garden. The view was peaceful and beautiful, nine days of holiday lay ahead, Patrick was coming. But Omri saw and thought of none of it. He was inside Jessica Charlotte's head, feeling what she must have felt when she learnt that by stealing the earrings, she had killed Matthew. That was how she would look at it. And through Lottie! Through suspicion falling on Lottie, the person she loved best.

It was too awful. He couldn't bear to think of how she must have felt.

He tried to read on but he couldn't, partly because he was so wound up and partly because the writing on the following page was suddenly very faint. Perhaps Jessica Charlotte had left the notebook open in the sun, because the ink had faded almost completely. He managed to decipher a few words: ‘alone'… ‘wandering'… ‘despair'… ‘river'… ‘coward'… ‘never'. And then, again, ‘alone'.

He turned the page, cautiously, as if afraid of what he would find there. And he gasped with surprise.

The writing was strong again - stronger and clearer than it had ever been. But it was quite different!

It was written with a different pen, one with a thicker nib, and blue ink instead of brown. It was surely a man's handwriting, sharp, hard, and full of jutting points and steeply sloping lines.

Omri felt almost sick. Someone else had taken over the writing! Had she died - Jessica Charlotte - just at that point? Was he never going to find out now the secret of the cupboard?

I
am Frederick Anthony Driscoll. I was born in this house nearly fifty years ago, the son of an unknown father. I am a plain businessman who does not pretend to any talent for this kind of writing. I do it only because my mother is dying and has made it her last request.

She has sent for me because she wants this account she has begun completed, and she is no longer able to hold a pen. She says there is no one else.

I am aware of my debt to her, and that I have not been the son she would have wanted. We have never got along. It is a sad thing to say, but it is the truth and she
acknowledges it as she lies there. We are different kinds of people.

Everything I write here will be read to her. I am to write nothing behind her back, and add and alter nothing after she dies. That is our agreement.

She asks me to write something of my childhood, but I cannot bring myself to do it. I did not start living until I became independent, when I was about twenty-three. Following my mother about during her so-called stage career, and living, in between, in a dismal succession of sordid lodgings and rooms blighted my childhood.

I acknowledge that my mother made many sacrifices for my education, but the school she sent me to at such expense was - though for some childish reason, I never told her till now — a place of loneliness, hardship, and suffering, where I was brutally beaten for trifles, half-starved, and bullied. As for college, I consider it taught me nothing of any practical value. My real school was the school of life and of business.

I entered the metal trade as a young man. I started — I am not ashamed to say it, though my mother, who had expected me to enter one of the professions, was scandalised at the time - as a scrap-metal dealer, later getting work at a foundry, where I soon became a supervisor and later, manager of the plant.

By the time I was thirty-seven I had my own small factory. I made what were commonly called “tin soldiers”
(in fact, made of lead) and many other metal toys. (My mother has just drily suggested that I was in search of my lost childhood. Poppycock. I was in search of a
respectable
livelihood.)

On the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the government ordered me to turn my factory over to the production of ammunition for rifles. I did not want to do this. I was keenly interested in the toy business. But it would be useless to deny that from a commercial point of view, the war was very good for me. With state money I was able to enlarge my premises. Raw materials were no problem. I had an abundance of cheap labour, mainly women, and once they were trained they were very capable, and patriotically eager to work hard. Of course everything we produced was instantly bought by the armed forces.

By the time the War ended, I was well-off. Some called me a war profiteer. Poppycock again. I did essential war work. Could I help it if the deprived conditions of my early childhood had made me unfit for active service?

When the government informed me that I might once again return to peacetime operation, I had no thought but to go back to manufacturing toys, as I had before. It was not to be.

I had been so taken up with my war production that I had not kept up with the times. In particular, I was unaware that a new material had reared its ugly head, which was
about to revolutionize the toy industry, and bring me and my business to ruin.

I refer, of course, to plastics.

My mother wants me to admit that my attitude to this accursed new material was in some way exaggerated. I do
not
admit it. I do not approve of anything, especially emotions, being overblown. Anyone in my position would have been bitter and angry to have his livelihood ruined by this cheap and nasty stuff.

I will acknowledge that I hated it. I hated it in all its forms, and I never have, do not now, nor ever will in the future, have anything made out of it in my home. When I encounter it, I turn away my eyes. Metaphorically I spit on it. The only time I ever handled it unnecessarily was when, exasperated by my mother's inability to understand my point of view, I brought her some early plastic model toys to compare with those I used to manufacture before the War.

My workers were craftsmen. Each soldier's uniform, gun, horse, and flag was hand-painted. The moulds for them were made from miniature sculptures, modelled in clay in intricate detail by dedicated artists.

These beautiful and realistic little lead models were heavy to the hand, well-balanced, infinitely rewarding to set up — and to knock down in the excitement of mock battle, when children's voices would bring the little cannons to life, marbles flew for cannonballs, and the bright, sturdy ranks were scattered in a scene of realistic
carnage… Those were true playthings, bringing joy and education to a thousand thousand young ‘generals'…

One day my models will be found in museums and be collectors' pieces. Even now they grow rare. They are becoming too valuable to be played with — they must be sheltered behind glass, or buried in boxes and drawers. And those who made them are ruined, cast aside, their skills displaced by - what?

By cheap, mass-produced, ugly, lightweight rubbish. Trash. Cast from carelessly made moulds, many of the figures not even coloured, their density so low they need no more than a tremble of the floorboards, the vibrations from a child's shout, to topple them. A sneeze can blow them over! Children play with them — yes. They know no better. There is no comparison! I pity them.

My mother has noticed my slight agitation. She bids me be calm, and keep to my narrative. “Tell the tale, Frederick,” she says in her husky voice out of her face like a skull… I confess I find it hard to look at her now. She used to be a fine looking woman.

I have turned the cupboard away. It does her no good to keep looking at her face in its mirror. She insisted on locking it first with that strange little key she keeps round her neck on a red ribbon… She lies now as white as her pillow, the two ends of red ribbon vanishing into her fist where the key is clutched… And there is something else, under her pillow, that she keeps reaching her free hand up to touch. When I ask what she hides there, she murmurs,
“The little people”. Ah, yes, of course - the fairies! The poor woman's mind is wandering…

Yes, Mother, very well. The tale.

There is not much more to tell, of myself. I went bankrupt, but they could not keep me down. I could have gone two ways — I could have capitulated and gone into plastic toys (never!) or I could have gone back, in a humble way at first, to honest metal. And that is what I did.

I joined a firm making metal boxes of all kinds: filing cabinets, small medicine cupboards, document boxes, trunks for travellers to the tropics, cake and biscuit tins, and cashboxes. I am proud of my products, and in no way ashamed of my life. It was not my destiny to marry and have children. Considering my own beginnings, I am not sorry. A man who had no father to pattern himself on cannot be a good one.

I have read the above to my mother. After all, a few tactful omissions were necessary.

She is not satisfied. She insists that I tell about a certain foolish action she persuaded me to. The only irrational act of my life.

I have asked what this writing is for, who will read it. I do not wish to make a fool of myself in the eyes of some stranger. But she has sworn that no one shall read it till after my death. Well then, what do I care? We all have our follies, even the most sane of us. I will do as she wishes.

All my life I have been embarrassed by my mother's
interest in the occult. This fortune-telling nonsense grated on my nerves. I know it paid for my schooling, which made it worse, but worse still was her insistence that I had inherited some of her ‘Gift' as she calls it - her supposed supernatural powers.
Poppycock.

After my toy business crashed, a great, consuming rage came upon me. It seethed within me, demanding an outlet. It kept me awake at nights, and even by day I felt it, gnawing on my mind like a rat. I lost weight, I lost concentration, no doctor could help me. And when my mother said she had a remedy, in sheer desperation I said I would put myself in her hands.

This was her bizarre advice.

“You must put your anger into something. Make a container and put your anger into it, shut it and have done with it.”