Adverse Report Read online

  ADVERSE REPORT

  Gerald Hammond

  © Gerald Hammond 1987

  Gerald Hammond has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1987 by Macmillan London Limited.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  NOTE

  Chapter One

  If that letter, with its severe, legal letterhead and discouraging typeface, had reached me at any other time, I would probably have written back with instructions to sell immediately and to send me the money as soon as possible, and have put the whole thing out of my mind until the money arrived. After all, I had never known Uncle George well. One childhood visit hardly cements a relationship.

  But London was roasting. The Azores high had stretched its hot hand northward to clasp Britain and most of Europe, and for once it was not pulling back like a nervous cat but was tightening its grip. Heat shimmered in the fuming streets. Even the parks were dry and dusty except for humid couples flopping on the grass. Everybody I knew had fled to somewhere cool, like the moon.

  And I had broken with Stella. Or, rather, she had broken with me. Perhaps the heat had had more than a little to do with it. We had cohabited happily for a year or more, but life with a skinny, brown-haired and ginger-bearded writer already in his mid-thirties, modestly prolific but subsisting not far above the failure line, must have had few charms for a failed model and part-time swinger. As the heat arrived, so she had left.

  I was surprised at how little I missed her, except at night. She had been out every day, chasing work and God alone knew what else, leaving me to my writing between bouts of trying to keep the house, or rather my grotty little flat, up to the standard which she imposed. Left to myself I had been free to let it revert towards the comfortable male slum which it had been before her arrival. But it was a hot, breathless, sweaty male slum and I loathed it.

  Then came the letter, from an address in The Square, Newton Lauder.

  Dear Mr Parbitter,

  As you may know, your uncle, George Hatton, farmer, of Kirkton Mains Farm in East Lothian, died recently as the result of a tragic shooting accident.

  He also owned Tansy House, near Newton Lauder, and bequeathed it to you by codicil to his last will. This is a small house, built of stone and slate late in the last century, and comprises a living room, kitchen, bathroom and three bedrooms (or two bedrooms and a study). The property also includes 50 acres of agricultural land which he was in the habit of letting. I append such further details as I have to hand.

  Please let me know your intentions. If you wish me to dispose of the property on your behalf, I will do so. Otherwise, as your uncle’s executor, I will proceed with the conveyance.

  Yours sincerely,

  Ralph Enterkin, WS.

  The enclosures were a photograph of a house on a hill, backed by trees and looking pleasantly cool and fresh; and a page about such matters as Rateable Value and Feu Duty which I found slightly less comprehensible than the Dead Sea Scrolls.

  I dabbed at the sweat on my face and upper chest, looked out of my window into some back gardens where a fat woman was reclining under a pink umbrella, and thought about it.

  The lease on the flat would soon be up. For some time I had nursed a vague feeling that Town would be a good place to live outside. Not far out – Surrey perhaps or Kent – but far enough out that I could get to know my neighbours without depending on them for secondhand breath and petrol fumes. But Stella had been a town girl and a move had been out of the question during her time in residence, even if I could have afforded to compete with the civil servants and men of finance who had snapped up everything within commuting distance and beyond.

  But . . . Scotland?

  Perhaps, just as a summer retreat, if I could afford to keep it on.

  No harm, I thought, in going to look. There was a roof and it would be cooler – if not bloody cold, as I remembered. The prospect of being bloody cold was perversely attractive. I had dim memories of paddling up a cold stream under trees and of walking on springy grass between huge rocks; of a mile of empty beach; of kind voices with an accent which had ever since struck a chord; of houses with tight railings, filled with the smell of baking and of unfamiliar polishes.

  It would be a good time to go. I was bled dry of ideas and nobody seemed desperate to have me ghost an autobiography. My last format for a television series seemed to have gone plop into some bottomless pool, lost for ever.

  Stella had wanted me to keep a car, some suitable symbol of status and mobility and masculinity. A car in London is only an expensive way of ensuring that you get plenty of exercise. But a motorbike can slip through traffic and be parked almost anywhere, and because the yobbos can identify with it they leave it alone. I got the Yamaha out of the shed behind Benny’s store, packed the panniers and in the morning I was away.

  Some of the heat was left behind in the city streets and, as the wind of my going blew the rest away, I wondered for the umpteenth time why, other than from habit, I stayed on in dear, horrid old London. To be near my agent? I saw him perhaps once a year. My various publishers preferred not to see me at all. To be near the big libraries? My small local library obtained any book I wanted. Museums, theatres, concert halls? I visited them rarely, if dragged. Stella had dragged me, but Stella was gone.

  I could have made it in a day, by arriving after everything had closed. I imagined that Scotland was dead after the time for high tea. Derek Onslow, the oldest of my few friends, was a lecturer at Newcastle. I spent the evening with him and borrowed a bed for the night.

  *

  I seemed to have left the motorways behind. I rode on, sometimes through farmland and sometimes between heather-clad hills, half expecting to fall over the further edge. Less than an hour after crossing into Scotland I came across the sign for Newton Lauder. It failed to surprise me. I had the usual belief of the non-Scot that Scotland comprised a few acres of heather surrounding Glasgow. If I had turned the pages of the road atlas I would have seen that Scotland continued north for as far as the distance from London to Land’s End or Blackpool. The sign indicated, by means of a huge D-shape, that if I cared to accept the hospitality of Newton Lauder the same road would return me to the trunk route to Edinburgh and points north.

  But it was Newton Lauder I wanted and, after a couple of miles through a valley of what I judged, ignorantly but correctly, to be good farmland, I came to a town of stone and slate, gardens on the road and trees looking over rooftops. An old town, small in scale, almost cosy, self-contained. The Square, which was really an elongated triangle, was dominated by the only tall modern building – the Town Hall, I assumed, wrongly. It housed the police and I was to become familiar with its interior.

  I parked the bike among a row of others, some very expensive wheels among them, and stripped off my leathers while I looked around, tasting the atmosphere. The Square was ringed with shops, mostly the small, specialised shops which seemed to be disappearing in the South. And something was missing. Crowds. The kind of crowds which make your skull shrink would have been unthinkable there. Loving my fellow man only in small numbers, I felt the knots of years unwinding. The few people in sight were individuals. Their clothes were behind the times. I was dress
ed to melt into a Chelsea crowd, but here I would have stood out if there had been more than a few souls to stand out from.

  The solicitor’s brass plate was in a corner of The Square. I climbed a narrow stairway to where a dried-up old trout guarded an outer office. She looked at me over her half-glasses and sniffed. I had expected a solicitor in a small backwater to be available to clients but she seemed shocked at the very idea. Mr Enterkin, she said, had a client with him; and I could hear voices from the inner room, so this was not a ploy to impress me. She could fit me in, she said, ‘at the back of two’, unless I cared to wait? I am one of nature’s non-waiters – I will not queue for the Second Coming and I said as much.

  In the hotel there was a bar lunch within my means and the beer was surprisingly good. Some of the customers looked at me sidelong, curious rather than hostile.

  A middle-aged local shared my table. He was fishing inside his suit and saw me looking at him. ‘Lost my gallowses,’ he explained. I thought that he said ‘glasses’ – I was hardly to know that gallowses were braces – and told him that they were on his nose. He was vastly amused, once we had resolved our misunderstanding, and insisted on giving me a short course in Scots vocabulary.

  I was back at the solicitor’s office shortly after two.

  Mr Enterkin, a fat little porker with a jovial expression and no discernible accent, received me in a room which would have been stark but for mounds of files and loose papers. He seemed prepared to chatter indefinitely, about my life and my recollections, faint as they were, of Uncle George and to reminisce about his own dealings with the deceased. I used the first break in his monologue to drag the conversation back to the subject of my legacy.

  He looked at me reproachfully. ‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t let me ramble. You’re here in good time.’

  ‘I was glad of the excuse to come away,’ I said. ‘London’s like an oven.’

  ‘Very likely,’ he said. ‘But I was expecting a letter rather than an immediate visit.’

  ‘You asked for instructions. Did you expect me to decide without seeing the place?’

  His eyebrows, which made up at least a third of his total crop of hair, went up. ‘You think you might keep it on? Well, time enough to decide. Where are you staying?’

  I told him that I had made no arrangements. ‘Could I occupy Tansy House?’ I asked. ‘Is it furnished?’

  He paused and made a face while he thought about it and then he took a ring of keys out of a box-file. ‘I see no reason why not,’ he said. ‘All the contents will come to you anyway.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I have another client due to descend on me shortly, but if you care to wait or to return I’ll take you out and see you installed.’

  I said that I would be quite capable of finding the place, given adequate directions.

  ‘So be it. I should explain that the place is much as your uncle left it. He had been staying there for the few days immediately preceding his accident. I saw to it that any perishable food was removed – it seemed prudent to switch the electricity off, which would have negated the functioning of the fridge and freezer – and I removed a shotgun, the partner to the one which he was using at the time of his death, and some papers which I deemed necessary for my purposes or for the continued running of the farm. Otherwise, nothing has been touched.’

  From his letter, I had guessed that Tansy House had been kept for summer letting, but it seemed that I was wrong. ‘You’d better tell me a bit more,’ I said.

  He snorted. ‘I was endeavouring to do so when you cut me off,’ he said stiffly. ‘I will try to fill the gaps while being as terse as you seem to wish. You do know that he was one of a family of four – all now deceased? And that he never married? His main residence was the farm in East Lothian. He was a keen shot and he had friends in this area, so when he was left Tansy House by his widowed elder sister, Alice, he decided to retain it. He had previously been in the habit of seeking a bed from her, you see, whenever he had a shooting engagement hereabouts.’ Here Mr Enterkin’s manner began to show a certain embarrassment which I was not to understand until later. ‘It became his habit to come here for – ah – for a break whenever time permitted, bringing with him the occasional – umm – guest, leaving the farm to be managed by his foreman under the occasional supervision of your cousin – who now inherits it.

  ‘I acted as executor under his sister’s will and that seemed to remind him to make a will of his own. In the will which I drew up he left everything, after a few minor bequests, to your cousin Alec, the only son of his brother John. Later, when he called to see me about a tenancy matter, he remarked that he had another nephew, Simon Parbitter, to wit yourself, living in London. The idea that one of his kin should be forced to reside in what he referred to as “The Great Wen” seemed to distress him.

  ‘Until this heatwave,’ I said, ‘I lived in London because I liked it.’

  Mr Enterkin nodded solemnly. ‘I explained to him that that was probably the case but he seemed unconvinced. Indeed, he must have been unable to believe that anyone would live in London from choice, because he modified his will. Unfortunately, he did so by codicil and without asking my advice, with the result that the codicil is worded with less than legal precision. It merely refers to the house and outbuildings “and all their contents”.

  ‘It could be argued – and frequently is argued – that “contents” are the furnishings pertaining to the house itself and not the owner’s personal trivia. But in my view the words “and all their contents”, coupled with the lack of any mention of personal trivia elsewhere in the will, suggested that the testator intended you to have everything which was in the house at the time of his death. I put the point to your cousin and he agreed, and in writing. So the matter is settled.’

  ‘Nice of him,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed. Although I did point out that if he wished to dispute my interpretation I would feel it my duty, in fairness to the other beneficiary – yourself – to reconsider such questions as the proper ownership of your uncle’s Land-Rover, which would have been a content of one of the outbuildings had he not taken it with him to his death. He may also have been motivated by a disinclination to be saddled with clearing out another house, in addition to Kirkton Mains Farm. Your uncle was not in the habit of discarding anything for which a use might be found.’

  ‘I suppose I could hire somebody to clear the place out,’ I said. ‘Or call in a junk dealer.’

  His eyebrows shot up again. ‘I should have a care,’ he said. ‘Your cousin may not have realised the value of some of your uncle’s possessions.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as a set of ivory-backed hairbrushes. Such as gold studs, cufflinks and watchchain. A very good wristwatch by Harrison, which he never wore when shooting in case the jolt of recoil should damage its mechanism. And a shotgun which, I am assured, is of some value, despite the fact that its twin seems to have caused his death.’

  ‘I only know what was in your letter,’ I said. ‘What did happen?’

  He shrugged. ‘I know little more myself. No doubt we shall hear the facts tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  He stared at me. ‘Naturally I had supposed that your precipitate arrival was because of the Fatal Accident Enquiry tomorrow. I assumed that you must have heard or even, conceivably, been called; but apparently not. In normal course, the funeral will follow a few days later. I shall, of course, attend the Fatal Accident Enquiry. And you?’

  ‘An inquest, do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘We do not have coroners’ inquests in Scotland. Just an enquiry in front of the sheriff, if the procurator fiscal deems it necessary.’

  The enquiry itself would no doubt be reported, and I could see little benefit in learning the facts a few hours earlier. On the other hand, a writer must always be absorbing backgrounds and local colour. ‘I’ll be there,’ I said. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Linlithgow, that being the sheriffdom where it happened. You have a
car?’

  ‘I’ve a motorbike.’

  He clicked his tongue. ‘You must let me give you a lift. I’ll call for you at eight.’ I blinked at that and he nodded sympathetically. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘A damnable hour, but we’ll have a long road before us. One of the witnesses will be with us. And, if you’ll forgive my mentioning it, I would suggest something a little less exotic in the way of clothing. Perhaps one of your uncle’s suits? You look to have been much of a size . . .’

  We had no time for more. His next client arrived and seemed to take precedence, although, from the glimpse I had of him in the outer office, he was no more than an elderly scarecrow in a worn-out kilt. Which, come to think of it, was the first kilt I had seen around Newton Lauder.

  *

  The solicitor’s directions turned out to be both clear and accurate. I left the town on a road that climbed the eastern side of the valley past a small hospital, crossed a ridge draped with moorland in full flower and descended again into farmland. There, shortly beyond the crest and within three or four miles of the town, I found Tansy House, perched on a slight rise and facing south across the road from which it was separated only by a narrow strip of rockery.

  The photographs had shown little but the rather prim and self-satisfied-looking two-up, four-down, neither a cottage nor a mansion. Illogically, I had envisaged neighbours and a street scene. The solitude caught me unprepared until I saw that the fields which stretched to the next line of hills were dotted with farmhouses. Behind the house, beyond a surprisingly well-kept walled garden and a small field, rose a tall wood. There was a recent concrete garage where the Yamaha would be safe and sheltered.

  The house, when I managed to find the right key among several others, had the derelict smell peculiar to houses which have stood unventilated in hot weather, overlying a comfortable scent of old pipe tobacco. I did a tour, opening the sash-and-case windows as I went. Tansy House seemed to have been furnished many years before in a style which was comfortable and nothing more – neither modern nor antique, not art deco or anything else – and to have remained unchanged except for the addition of a television set and an inexpensive music centre. It was hardly spacious, but it was several times the size of my London flat.