Widow's Weeds

The elderly Volvo lurched along the frozen ruts of the unmade lane. The driver hunched tensely over the wheel, struggling to keep the car away from the deep ditches on either side. There was no standing snow, but a thick hoar frost clung to every surface. Dark clouds moved overhead. The heater whined at full strength.

The passenger in the front seat was sitting in a more relaxed way, leaning back with a laptop on his knees. He was scanning his emails, which he had picked up earlier in the day before leaving the hotel in Brighton.

The car was towing a trailer, painted with bright colours and depicting playing cards, an opera hat and cane, a magic wand, some dice and many stars. Painted in flamboyant letters on both sides, as well as the rear, were the words Oliviera – The Master of Magic.

The driver halted the car outside two high wrought-iron gates. The trailer skidded as he braked, swinging around at an angle behind the car. The passenger, the master of magic Oliviera, whose real name was Dennis O’Leary, closed the lid of the laptop and put it carefully into his overnight bag.

“You sure this is the place, Rick?” he said, looking doubtfully through the windscreen, which was smeared with frozen droplets of mud.

“I entered the postcode in the satnav. Can’t fail.”

“Oh, yeah.” O’Leary wound down the window on his side and craned out to see beyond the gates. The cold air gripped him about the face. There was a glimpse of a steep slate roof, part of an upstairs window reflecting the sky.

“Last chance,” Rick, the driver, said. “Are you really going to go through with this?”

“Ten thousand pounds will last us until summer. That’s the guaranteed minimum.”

“Rather you than me.”

“Yes, but you haven’t seen her photograph,” O’Leary said, who had.

He climbed out, opened the rear door. He put his overnight valise on his shoulder, then pulled out a larger case. He set the case on the ground next to the car, slammed the door, and walked across to the gates. Peering through, he could see a display board just beyond, mounted beside the driveway. It was supported on two stout timber legs, had a border of astronomical signs, and was fronted with a sheet of clean glass.

At the top, in clear cursive lettering, were the words: The Atchievements of Mme Louisa de Morganet. Beneath were several more lines, but a gust of cold wind sent down a shower of frost particles from the tree above, and he backed off. O’Leary returned to the car to collect the case.

“What do you suppose an ‘atchievement’ is?” he said. “With an extra ‘t’?”

Rick was leaning across towards him, from the driver’s seat.

“A spelling mistake? Look, close the bloody door. You’re making the car cold.”

O’Leary slammed it, but the window was still open. He leaned down beside it.

“The pub is about a mile further on,” he said. “The Shepherd and Dog. Keep the expenses down, okay? You might yet be right about this being a scam.”

“You’re seeing sense at last.”

“Come on, Rick. You stand to gain too.”

The two men gripped hands through the window, but they were too familiar with each other to make it seem forced. O’Leary backed off and stood away as the car and its trailer resumed the erratic course down the icily furrowed lane.

O’Leary carried his luggage to the gate and went through. The drive curved between the trees. On each side were lawns, under the frost for now, but they and the flowerbeds around them were neatly maintained. He paused by the display board to read it properly. Beneath the large heading was the following:

Mme de Morganet is well qualified in, and a skilled tutor of, the following atchievements. Please enquire for more information, and the rates that apply.

Musicianship (including Composition), Foreign Languages (including Translation and Interpretation), Literary Endeavour, Oil Painting, Saddlery and Equestrianism, Astronomy, Aquatic Sports, All Domestic Accomplishments (including Kitchen Skills, Crochet, Needlepoint, Embroidery, Knitting, Sewing), Oratory, Marksmanship, Actuarial Calculations, Tax Returns, Law of Probate, Law of Property, Law of Torts...

Finally certain that he had come to the right place, O’Leary continued along the drive, chilled by the wind. The house was a large one, probably Victorian, but in good condition and with up-to-date features. The windows had been tastefully double-glazed, and on the far corner there was an outlet for a central heating boiler. White condensation was whisked away by the wind. He pressed the bell button beside the door.

There was a long wait, longer than he expected, while the chill wind blustered around him, sweeping down from the overhanging hills. The house was situated at the foot of the South Downs, but in this weather the hills gave no shelter at all. Flurries of fine snow were seeding the wind, stinging his cheeks. Uncertainties ran briefly through him: the right address but maybe the wrong day; perhaps he should have phoned ahead...? Finally the door eased open, giving a glimpse of a hallway, a flight of stairs. Warm air flowed out at him.

A woman was there, wearing a thick pullover and jeans and a tweed cap.

“Mr O’Leary, I believe? Otherwise known as Oliviera, the magician?”

“I am,” said O’Leary.

“You are most welcome, Mr O’Leary. Madame is expecting you, and has asked me to show you into the drawing room. She will join you as soon as possible.”

While she said this she held the door open wide, and O’Leary stepped in. She closed the door swiftly behind him, sealing the house against the wind. A feeling of comfort and welcome swirled invisibly around him. The woman took his coat and his overnight bag, but O’Leary kept hold of his case of magic materials. He never let it out of his sight.

He said yes, he would enjoy a cup of tea, and went through into the drawing room.

As the double doors closed behind him he realized he was in a mausoleum of the past. The enormous room was filled to cramming point with objets d’art: busts, sculptures, stuffed birds of prey in domed glass cases, huge screens and lanterns, four immense bookcases, piles of unsorted books on every level surface, a hand-wound trumpet phonograph, a tall birdcage holding several brightly coloured parakeets, two pianos, one of them a concert grand, a harpsichord and several wind and string instruments, two or three music stands, a variety of thick-piled carpets with oriental designs. Swords, lances, shields and ancient firearms were mounted on every wall. In the spaces between were the trophy heads of wild animals: a cheetah, an antelope, an antlered deer. Bric-a-brac had been placed on every remaining surface. The air was suffused with a rich, clean smell: furniture polish, good wood, leather, paper, varnish.

He saw two large armchairs and a settee placed around a hearth. The fireplace was dominated by an enlarged black-and-white photograph of a man in old-fashioned clothes. O’Leary wound his way through the elegant clutter of the room, sat down in one of the chairs, and awaited the arrival of Madame de Morganet.

The house, the circumstances, were not entirely what Dennis O’Leary was expecting, although there had been a clue in the address. This was a select area of Sussex, the strip of land between the South Downs and the Weald, wooded and fertile, with several large houses. An undefined sense of financial well-being had always been detectable in his exchanges with Madame de Morganet, but the opulence of her home was still a surprise.

A middle-aged unmarried man, O’Leary was often lonely when not touring, but loneliness was not a habit he wanted to keep. His career had become a sequence of mild successes – he was a good-enough illusionist and his skill brought pleasure to his audiences and a more or less steady income. He still depended on bookings at clubs and business functions, because he had not done well on television. Two or three of his tricks were unique to him, so he guarded their secrets with care. They were his most valuable properties, but he could not live on secrets.

When not touring, he lived in a small room at the top of a terraced house in Leicester, his car and trailer parked at the rear by arrangement with his landlady. Rick, contentedly married but always hard up and complaining about the meagre wage O’Leary paid him, lived close by. The previous winter, during one such break in work, he had happened upon Mme de Morganet on one of the more restrained internet contact sites (Responsible Adults seeking Mature Friendship). At first he had deliberately not selected her link – her self-description made her sound eccentric, or desperate, or weird, and probably all three, while her photograph was ambiguously shadowed.

Rick, when he found out, egged him on. “At least she sounds exotic,” he said. “Might cheer you up a bit.”

After paying the fee, O’Leary exchanged several tentative emails with her. They elicited enough information from each other to feel a meeting should follow. It took several weeks to arrange, because soon after they made contact, O’Leary began a tour in the north of England. She was a harmless distraction while the work went on. He grew fond of her sometimes bizarre messages, which came as a welcome change in his workaday life.

O’Leary told her all the facts about himself that he knew to be true: that he was unmarried, not rich but not hard up, healthy, sane, not saddled with onerous debts or obligations, and that he was at an age she might consider suitable.

He learned that she was a childless widow, that she had been grief-stricken by the loss of her husband, but that he had left her well-provided-for with a house and an investment income from family securities. She described herself as interested in O’Leary’s skill as an illusionist, and said she would love to learn from him. More touchingly, she said that she was lonely and anxious to find a long-term partner. O’Leary told her, shyly, much the same.

Sitting alone in her drawing room, surrounded by the huge collection of antiques, he felt more ill at ease than he could ever remember. But then, unannounced and without any fuss or sense of ceremony, Mme de Morganet entered through the double doors. A gust of warm air followed her in and circled around him, bearing with it the merest hint of patchouli. He stood up to meet her.

They shook hands conventionally, exchanging names, then Mme de Morganet drew back from him. They stood apart, regarding each other frankly and intently, but not discourteously. Both smiled. Neither of them appeared to feel uncomfortable with this exploratory staring, nor that they were embarrassing the other.

That she was a handsome woman was instantly in no doubt. She appeared to be in her late thirties, although at first sight O’Leary could not be sure. Her raven hair, with a touch of silver, was set off by a bold streak of purple. Her stance was upright but informal, her long gown of dark-grey satin made sombre but also more feminine by black and purple ribbons. She wore a veil, pushed back above her face so that it rested on her hair. She wore black satin cocktail gloves, fingers exposed, with long lacy armlets. Her fingers were heavy with rings, all of them white gold or silver. Their claw settings held dark gems. She had put something on her face, too pale, while her eyes were lined too darkly. Her lips were glossed and deep red.

“Well, Mr O’Leary,” she said soon enough. “This is my house and I am pleased to welcome you to it.”

“Thank you,” he replied. “I am delighted to meet you at last. I’m sorry it has taken so long to arrange, but I enjoyed your emails.”

“And I yours. Please, let’s dispense with formalities. You must call me Louisa, and I shall call you Dennis.”

He nodded his acceptance of this and they smiled broadly. In spite of the attempt to break the ice, she spoke in measured, almost formal tones, as if reciting aloud, or addressing someone who might not understand. However, far from being intimidated by her, now that he was standing close to her O’Leary felt a sudden mad urge to sweep her into his arms.

She sat down on the settee with a deep rustling of satin, indicating he should sit beside her. He did so, but stayed at the far end. They began to converse, at first remarking conventionally on his journey and the unusually cold weather. The woman who had opened the door to him came in with a tray of tea things. Her tweed cap had disappeared. As they started on the buttered scones and delicate little cakes, O’Leary felt the atmosphere growing more cordial by the minute.

A quiet joy was rising in him. Louisa de Morganet was a mature, beautiful and intelligent woman, a romantic individualist in the way she liked to dress, but obviously modern and open-minded in outlook. Years of experience, and his own deceptive profession, had taught him never to accept at face value anything seen or quickly learned. He resolved to keep this in mind for the time being.

They asked questions about each other. O’Leary had rarely spoken about himself to anyone before. His harmless revelations about his past felt awkward and unnatural at first, but Louisa’s manner was so welcoming and candid that his inhibitions began to fade away.

She was in return forthcoming about herself. She told him how she had met her late husband, François, a Frenchman who worked in the London City branch of a Parisian bank. She indicated the framed photograph above the fireplace. François had a moustache, goatee beard and long sideburns, and was posed stiffly wearing a dark frock coat and with a cane in hand. He looked irritated by being photographed, and glared at the camera, ill at ease.

François, she said, had swept her off her feet, married her, taken her to his family home in Provence, where she discovered he came from a long line of aristocrats. They went on an extended tour of European countries, far to the east – Roumania and Bessarabia – thence to countries bordering the Mediterranean: Lebanon, Turkey and Greece. It was, she said, from meeting members of his family that she developed her taste for knowledge, the learning from others of practical and artistic skills. The de Morganets were academics and professionals, all polymaths. The family was extensive and widely dispersed.

When she and François returned to England they bought this house. She spoke warmly but distantly of him, and O’Leary realized that she must still be feeling her loss.

François de Morganet had contracted tuberculosis while they were on their travels. It afflicted him severely and he died within a year of their return.

Louisa looked mortified by her memories. “He was in so much pain, day and night, terrible discomfort. And the blood – so much blood! I shall never forget, never! Mon pauvre mari, mon chéri!”

She was staring into her lap, but then she raised her head, looked at the photograph above the fire.

O’Leary saw tears welling in her eyes, unnerving him, so he left the settee and wandered around the crowded room, easing his way between the many pieces. Soon, Louisa composed herself. She was standing when he turned back to her. She lightly touched his hand as they resumed their seats, and encouraged him to sit a little closer.

Outside, the dark of the evening had closed in, the wind blustering around the gables and roof pinnacles. The open fire, a mound of logs, blazed cheerfully. The serving woman quietly entered the drawing room and went around lighting the lamps, a number of gas mantles, but there were candles too. Once these were alight more scented essences drifted through the room.

“Mrs Acland – did you show our guest to his room?” Louisa said.

The woman was about to leave the drawing room. “No, madame, I brought him straight in here, as you asked.” She nodded, then closed the doors.

“Why don’t you let her show you where you will be sleeping?” Louisa said to O’Leary. “You must need a rest after your journey and then we will meet for dinner. You will hear the gong.”

O’Leary wanted to say that he was not feeling at all tired – indeed, he was energized and alert – but he decided against it.

“Do you like to dress for dinner?” He shook his head, but vaguely, feeling his way. “I prefer to,” Louisa went on. “But it’s up to you.” She glanced at his case of magical effects and apparatus. “I assume this is not your overnight case?”

“No. These are the tools of my trade. What you asked me to bring.”

“Excellent. This evening we shall relax after we have dined, and come to know each other more. But tomorrow I shall be intent on learning about your conjuring. You need have no worries about secrets. I honour all confidences in my quest for knowledge.”

“You wish to become a magician?” O’Leary said.

“I intend to add the art of illusionism to my atchievements.”

She pronounced the word deliberately, her tongue briefly touching her teeth, making the small but distinct dental sound of the ‘t.’ She was looking closely at him, as if to judge his reaction.

O’Leary headed for the stairs, clutching his case of magic. Mrs Acland, who had been standing in the hall, courteously swung the doors open to allow him to pass through. She led O’Leary to the room on the top floor where he would sleep.

A log fire had been set in the grate and was burning cheerfully. A gas mantle gave a steady but weak white light into the room. As he entered, O’Leary groped instinctively for an electric switch. One was there on the wall beside the door, and a shaded fitting hung on a flex in the centre of the ceiling, but no light issued from it.

A change of his own clothes was laid out for him, in fact the sharply cut suit that he wore when he was performing. Never normally to be worn in daily life, the royal-blue suit had an inner lining that was a secret network of hidden pockets and slits, loops of thread, elastic bands.

The bedroom was under the steep roof of the house, well-proportioned, clean and furnished in traditional style. The bed stood high off the floor. The dormer window, built out of the sloping roof, was heavily curtained with dark green damask, satin stripes worked into the thick fabric, reaching to the floor, tasseled. A small shower room and toilet lay beyond a white-painted door.

He could not gain a signal on his mobile; no text messages had arrived since he left Brighton earlier. He pressed the handset to the window, hoping to enhance whatever network signal there might be, but there was nothing. He had wanted to contact Rick, tell him how things were working out, but it was not to be.

He booted up his laptop, but there was no wi-fi within range. He looked around the room for a cable connector, without success. He knew that Louisa had repeatedly emailed him, so there must be a landline connection somewhere in the house.

He sat on the edge of the bed, his legs dangling. A stuffed owl, inside a glass case on a low shelf, stared at him with wide orange eyes. O’Leary could still smell patchouli, where a trace of it had transferred to his hand. He ran his fingers beneath his nostrils, smiling to himself. He rolled back across the bed and pedalled his feet in the air with pleasure.

An hour later, when he heard the gong sound from the stairwell below, O’Leary walked downstairs for dinner, dressed in his stage suit.

There was nothing to be seen of Louisa the next morning when O’Leary went early to breakfast. He ate alone, sitting at a long, highly polished oak table. It was in a windowed conservatory, heated by circulating pipes and filled with exotic trees and shrubs. They stood in calm array around him, while outside the trees in the garden and in the woods beyond were bent and battered by a chill, sleet-bearing easterly wind.

When Louisa appeared later in the drawing room, she made no comment or apology. He went in to join her, as she went to the grand piano. She raised the lid, momentarily adjusted the height of the stool, then began playing. She played from memory, without sheet music. Within moments she was entranced by the music, rocking her head to and fro, her eyes tightly shut. O’Leary sat down a short distance behind her, unable to recognize the piece but astonished by her virtuoso skill. At the end she identified it as Liszt’s first Liebestraum nocturne.

She moved to a music stand, put some music in place, clearly hand-drafted, then picked up a violin. After briefly checking that the instrument was in tune she opened with a dazzling solo, a series of darting clusters and arpeggios, each counterpointing the one it had followed. The piece ended with a shift to a slow, melodic lament, exquisitely beautiful and melancholic.

O’Leary clapped his hands, but Louisa smiled him to silence.

“I am not a show-off, Dennis,” she said. “But I want to tell you that I composed and arranged that piece myself. I am not trying merely to impress you, even though the composing and performing of music is one of my many attainments, my atchievements.” Again, the deliberate dental sound of the extra letter. “It is important to me that you understand the nature and extent of my atchievements.”

He said, “Well, I am extremely impress –”

“No – allow me to demonstrate more. I do have a purpose, to help you understand what might become possible between us.” She carefully laid aside her violin, closing it inside its case. “I am a woman of many attainments. I am an avid and successful learner. I executed most of the paintings you can see on these walls. I am an adventurous cook. I am a mathematician, a geologist, a strong swimmer. Would you care to witness my skill as a sharpshooter?”

“I think not.” But she was intent upon this purpose. Nothing that passed between them, during the long evening they had spent together the night before, had given him any idea she would act or perform in such a way. Yesterday she seemed gentle, sensitive, enquiring about him, quietly interested in everything he said. Now she was assertive, dominant. “I should love to hear you play again,” he said. “Do you know any more instruments?”

She reached behind her, then held out a flute in one hand, an oboe in the other.

“Enough of music,” she said, laying the instruments aside again. “I am adept in six European languages and can make sense of half a dozen more. I fashioned many of the collectible pieces you see in this room: I am a skilled potter and porcelainist. I am also a cabinet-maker, and for example I built the side-table on which you are now resting your hand.”

She moved towards him and raised her face towards his.

“My dear Dennis, if I may speak to you candidly. I am not seeking to impress you. I am trying to clarify the position in which I have found myself, and now in which you find yourself.” Once again he heard the weird incantation of her formal way of speaking, at odds with the more relaxed words they had exchanged yesterday, not to speak of her body language, which he found provocative.

“I am, as you know, a widow,” she went on. “In the common parlance of the world I knew with my husband, I would be called a house to let. I seek a partner to join me, because the house I have to let is haunted. Yes, haunted by the past, Dennis! I must find someone to be with me, to protect me from the past. Until then I remain in mourning. I am required to wear the widow’s weeds, this purple, this black, these shrouds of grey and silver.

“Outside this building I display, as you noticed when you arrived, my atchievements. Inside, as a house to let, I work constantly to perfect the skills and acquire fresh ones. Until I find the right one to join me, I collect accomplishments.” Her face grew ever closer to his and her voice became softer, a bare whisper. “I am a wealthy woman and I seek attainments. I do not mind what I have to spend to make these atchievements. I also seek a partner in life, a shield against the past. Could that man be you?”

Her parted lips were almost upon his. He could feel her breath on his cheek, the light touch of her fingers against his, the closeness of her delicious flesh wrapped in the satin gown. Her dark eyes were narrowed, her lips were moist.

“Yes, I believe so,” he said quietly.

“Then what you wish for will be yours! Anything at all, no matter how expensive, or how profound, reckless or shocking!” She swept back from him, staring intently at him. “Teach me how to atchieve the secrets of magic.”

The first lesson did not go well. Nor the second, after lunch, even though Louisa was, as she promised, a keen pupil. He felt her magnetic presence so keenly that at first O’Leary had to force himself to concentrate.

He always began with a performance of the illusion, then followed it by revealing the secret. She laughed with delight at each effect, but as soon as he began to show her how the trick was done – the sleight of hand, the concealment, the pass, the false shuffle, the fake, the force, the substitution – she was unable to follow. He reassured her that most magicians take years to perfect their skill, and that many went on practising and rehearsing until the end of their careers, but she was frustrated by her failure to learn.

They took a light salad for lunch, seated again at the long table in the conservatory. She sat close beside him, contriving several times to touch him or brush her hand against him. O’Leary was alive with awareness of her. They sat drinking wine together after the meal, all the initial awkwardness between them now gone. A thin mantle of snow lay on the glass panels in the roof, filtering the weak daylight. The wind was still gusting strongly, but it was warm in the house.

“I realize how difficult it is for you to reveal secrets,” Louisa said. “You are too used to secrecy. You don’t mean to, but you are holding back. Only when you truly want to yield your knowledge will it pass across to me.”

“I have been telling you everything,” O’Leary said. “It’s what I’m here to do.”

“I believe you, but you are not yielding. We both seek atchievements.” She squeezed his hand, then lifted it towards her, resting it briefly on the square of firm bare flesh above her breasts. “Tomorrow it will be easier, I promise you that. When you are willing to yield to me everything I want, then I shall reward you. And I am not talking about money.”

She lowered her gaze, and allowed his hand to lift away from her.

They persevered with the magic techniques, but by mid-afternoon they were both tired and agreed to halt for the day. O’Leary locked the various pieces of apparatus into his case. Louisa left the room without saying anything. Some time later, when she still had not returned, O’Leary took a book from one of the piles, then spread himself comfortably on the settee in front of the fire.

They met again for dinner, but Louisa seemed listless. At the end of the meal, when they had moved to the settee and were hand-warming their balloons of brandy, Mrs Acland came in.

“I am about to retire for the night, madame,” she said. “I have placed the package in Mr O’Leary’s room, as you asked. I trust that will be all?”

“Yes, thank you. Goodnight, Grace.”

“Good night, madame; good night, sir.”

The doors closed. O’Leary, pleasantly relaxed after a meal and a day of concentration on his techniques, and by Louisa’s heady presence, held up his brandy towards the nearest gas mantle and peered through it, swirling the liquor slowly.

“What package did she mean?” he said.

“Let’s call it your atchievement. Tomorrow I shall have mine.”

They sat in silence for a while, hearing the sound of Mrs Acland moving around on the floor above. O’Leary was remembering the £10,000 that had been mentioned long ago during their email period, the fee that had been promised once but never mentioned since. He still wanted it, but just at that moment, money no longer seemed a priority.

At last the house was still. Louisa suddenly revived.

She placed her glass on the table before them, then took O’Leary’s and placed it next to hers. She leaned towards him, her lips parted. They kissed. She quickly guided his hand to her breasts, pressing her body against him, encouraging his fingers to explore the curve of her bodice, then to slip gently inside. O’Leary closed his eyes, his senses loaded with her fragrances, the quiet sibilant rustling of her gown, the warm softness of her flesh. She leaned further and further towards him, pressing him back, easing him down to the horizontal. With her weight upon him, she raised her face away from his.

“Tomorrow?”

“What? Yes! But why not now?”

“Because I have not atchieved. Tomorrow, we will both be satisfied. I have promised.” Outside, the wind suddenly intensified, rattling the windows and sending a surge of air down the chimney flue. The smouldering logs flared briefly into flame, and a billow of smoke pushed into the room. “Let’s hasten tomorrow on!” she said.

She straightened and stood up with a smooth movement. Smiling, she tidied the front of her gown, quickly closing the two buttons that his hand had forced apart.

Still aflame, O’Leary said, “I don’t understand, Louisa.”

“Soon you will.” She was already progressing around the room, turning down gas mantles, snuffing candles. A soft darkness began to spread through the room, from the far wall, to the corners, circling around the fireplace.

The photograph, with François’s glaring face, was briefly picked out by the remaining light.

With the fire once more glowing with embers behind the wire guard, she returned to him. He raised his arms to take hold of her, but she warded him off.

“Good night, Dennis,” she said. “I asked Mrs Acland to stoke up the fire in your room.” She brushed his cheek with her fingertips. “At least that freezing wind has stopped. To hasten our meeting tomorrow, I ask you to sleep naked. Sleep on your back. Sleep deeply.”

She twitched an eyebrow suggestively, then slipped away from him, across the shadowed drawing room, stepping around the crowded objets and antiques, then through the doors and into the hall. O’Leary collected his case of apparatus and hurried after her. There was no sign of her out there.

The bedroom felt warm when O’Leary entered. It was as yet much earlier in the evening than the time he normally went to bed. He stood in agitation and frustration for a while, wondering what the hell she was playing at, but eventually he calmed down. He sat in front of the fire in an easy chair, poked the logs a few times to get them flaring again, then read more of the book he had picked out downstairs. He warmed his toes in front of the fire.

Later he went for a shower and came back shivering into the main part of the bedroom. He stirred up the fire again and added another big log. Flames burst from the bark in a satisfactory way. Wearing only his dressing gown, O’Leary stood before the fireplace, feeling the heat on his back.

When he looked in his valise he discovered a large padded envelope had been squeezed inside. He opened it eagerly and immediately saw several bundles of banknotes. Each wad was wrapped in a paper sleeve imprinted with a bank’s logo. With his dressing gown hanging open, O’Leary counted the first of the wads: it was a mixture of £20 and £50 notes, and totalled £1,000 in all. He found another nine, identically wrapped.

There was more. Deeper inside the padded envelope was a small cardboard box, sealed with tape and a note wrapped around it with an elastic band. He put it to one side, because below it, even deeper inside, were many more wads of notes, in their paper sleeves.

He unwrapped the slip of paper and opened the cardboard box. There was a small glass bottle inside, stopped with a cork. The paper had a handwritten message. He sat down beside the fire so that the light from the nearest gas mantle fell on the words. He read:

My darling Dennis – We agreed a transaction, and here is what I promised you. As money does not interest me, and because you have suddenly become special to me, I have in fact trebled the amount we agreed.

This bottle you have found contains a tincture I formulated myself. I should like you to drink about half of the mixture, and spread the remainder of it across the parts of your body you and I no doubt consider most sensual. There is nothing for you to worry about: the mixture is a light alcohol distillation, much diluted, with some special herbs and a few secrets I learned from my dear husband. You will adore what this tincture will do to you, and what it will do for me.

As soon as you have read this, apply the mixture as I have described, then take to your bed in the way I asked. There you will wait for tomorrow to come, because tomorrow is when we shall both atchieve what we most desire.

Louisa

The tincture had a sharp taste, but there was so little of it in the bottle that a mouthful was easily consumed. It left hardly any aftertaste. Discovering the package and the note had made him feel somehow observed in that room, and therefore self-conscious. He drank only half the contents and did not follow the second part of Louisa’s instructions. He pushed back the cork and placed the bottle on the bedside table. He put his wristwatch beside it, with the face visible. It was now a few minutes before midnight.

He was still not sleepy and wished there was a tv in the room. It was warm now and he lay on top of the bedclothes, his dressing gown open, his back propped against pillows. He turned off the gas light above his bed, and lay waiting for sleep. He heard the calendar wheel of his wristwatch click to the next date, as midnight passed.

Suddenly, Louisa was there. He thought he must have drifted off, because he had not heard her open the door. But there was no mistaking her presence in the room.

“It is midnight,” she said. “Tomorrow is today! Let us atchieve!”

She was standing between him and the open fire, which had become the only source of light in the room. He could see the radiance of the fire through the material of what she was wearing – it was some kind of nightgown or shift, made of diaphanous white fabric. He could see the silhouetted shape of her legs, then as she hurried towards him, heading for the side of his bed, he glimpsed the rest of her. The gown barely covered her.

She seized the bottle, shook it.

“You have not used it all,” she said, and waved it at him in mock scolding.

“I drank most of it,” O’Leary said, amazed and thrilled by her arrival. He was acutely aware of lying exposed before her, even in the half-light. He sensed her perfume, could make out her loosened hair falling about her face, watched her quick hands as she pulled the cork from the bottle. The gown was falling carelessly from her shoulder, revealing one of her breasts. He yearned to have her.

“It must be on you too,” she said, and immediately turned over the bottle and sprinkled it across his naked legs, chest and groin.

O’Leary took a sharp intake of breath, because the liquid stung as it landed on him. It was not unpleasant. He was already aroused.

“Louisa ...”

“No. Say nothing.”

She clambered up on to the bed, straddled him, raised her gown to her waist and squatted across his body. He reached up to take her breasts in his hands, groping and caressing her beneath the gown, while she found him and eased him into her.

What followed was unhurried.

For most of the time O’Leary had his eyes closed, his senses sated by the physicality of the woman and the fragrances of their lovemaking. But towards the end, while his heart was racing and his breath was rasping in his throat, Louisa suddenly yelled.

“Is he there?” she gasped. “Can you see him?”

O’Leary opened his eyes. The logs had shifted in the grate, bright flames were darting. Across the room, back from the bed and close to the glowing fire, stood the figure of a man. He was young, tall, erect. He held an ebony cane. He was wearing grey trousers and a dark frock coat. His hair was short, tousled, black. He had long sideburns and a goatee beard. He was glaring angrily at O’Leary, and raised his cane.

“Is François there?” she cried again. Her back was turned away from the apparition. O’Leary could say nothing, terrified by the sudden manifestation, but knowing he was at the very moment of climax. “Can you see him?” she said again. “That is what haunts me!”

Their lovemaking came rushing to an end. O’Leary felt the familiar increase of tension, the exciting suspense, the release, but it was more intense than ever he had known it, a voiding, an emptying, a draining, a flow from a deeper source. Where their bodies pressed together, where the tincture had fallen, he felt an almost electrical discharge of energy. Louisa was twisting herself against him, pressing and moving herself deliberately against those parts. O’Leary continued to ejaculate, beyond passion, beyond sexual union, a decanting of himself into her.

From the other side of the room came a man’s voice, hollow, dismissive, loudly filling the small room: “Adieu, monsieur le prestidigitateur!”

And Louise whispered, “Au revoir, mon brave.”

O’Leary’s consciousness began to fade and the apparition of the dead husband drifted away. Louisa’s bodily weight slumped down hotly across him, moist with perspiration, soft and shaking with her climax. Her long hair tangled wetly about him, covering his face and chest. He could not breathe, he was in fearful dark, his senses dying.

He heard her shout, “This house to let, on s’occupé encore une fois, François, mon chéri. I am occupied again.”

Then there was silence, a muting blackness.

The elderly Volvo lurched across the ruts of the unmade lane, throwing up mud whenever its wheels spun as it momentarily sought traction. The thaw had set in during the night. Pools of water lay everywhere, and on each side of the lane the ditches were full. The driver, Rick, struggled with the steering wheel, nervous of accidentally sliding to one side or the other. White clouds moved slowly overhead in a sky of wan sunlight.

He came to the gates of the house, but almost passed them by. Since his last visit, a mass of ivy and other creeping plants had grown across the twisted railings. Rick briefly thought that this was not the right place, that it was another entrance, perhaps one that led to an abandoned or derelict house, but he squinted across at the satnav, where confirmation of his destination was shown. He slammed on the brakes immediately, causing the painted trailer behind the Volvo to skid on the muddy surface, swinging around to the side.

He left the car where it had halted and pushed open the gate. He walked up the waterlogged drive, stepping over several fallen small branches. On each side of the drive the bushes and plants were overgrown and drooping, with weeds springing up all over the surface of the driveway. To one side, what looked as if it had once been a lawn with surrounding flowerbeds was a riot of tumultuous weeds, mostly bare and brown in the winter air.

The house, which he could see ahead, did not look ruinous, but it was clearly in need of urgent repair work. Some of the bricks were loose, with many gaps in the mortar, the painted doors and window frames were peeling, and several slates were missing from the roof. The windows were dull, as if they had not been washed in years. One was broken and had been roughly repaired with cardboard.

There was no sign of a doorbell, so he hammered on the door with his fist. After a long pause the door eased open. Someone peered at him through the crack, then scraped the door wide open.

It was a woman, wearing a woollen pullover, blue jeans and a tweed cap.

“I have come to see Madame de Morganet,” Rick said. “I was told she has a package for me.”

“And you are – ?”

“Rick. Just say it is Rick.”

“May I have your surname?”

“Rick will do. She knows who I am.”

“Oh, yes. Of course.”

The woman turned away and bent down, and almost immediately came back holding a valise, which Rick recognized as being Dennis’s.

“Madame de Morganet is resting and is not receiving visitors today,” she said. “But she has instructed me to tell you that the bag contains everything Mr O’Leary brought with him, as well as what was agreed. You will have to sign for it.”

“That’s all right.”

She handed over a pen and a blank scrap of paper, on which Rick dutifully tried to scribble, resting the paper against the peeling wall of the wooden porch.

“Madame has asked me to convey her sincere thanks to you, Rick,” the woman said while he was still trying to get the pen to write. “She was pleased and satisfied with your arrangements.”

“Is Dennis here?” he said, as he handed the pen and paper back to her.

“Mr O’Leary left the house during the night.” She stared at him noncommittally.

“Left? Where did he go?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. It’s a matter for Monsieur and Madame.”

He hefted the valise on to his shoulder. “Look, should Dennis turn up, would you ask him to phone me as soon as possible?”

But the door was already closing, the warped old wood scraping against the stone flags. He heard her say, just as the door closed with a double push from inside, “Mr O’Leary’s phone is inside the bag.”

Rick set off down the drive. As he walked, he eased open the top cover of the valise, and reached inside. He felt the hard weight of the laptop, the plastic case of the mobile phone, clothes and a bathroom bag. He groped deeper and found what he was seeking: many neatly packed wads of banknotes, satisfyingly crisp, down at the bottom of the bag.

He walked past Madame de Morganet’s display board, but did not glance at it. He opened the passenger door of the Volvo, put the valise on the front seat, then went back to look.

Unlike the untidy, weed-filled state of the garden, the sign looked clean and cared for, the glass shining in the wintry sunlight. He read her claimed list of ‘atchievements,’ then noticed the final line:

...Actuarial Calculations, Tax Returns, Law of Probate, Law of Property, Law of Torts, Illusionism and Prestidigitation...

There was a blank area near the bottom, as if to leave room for more skills to be added, then a telephone number.

Rick climbed back inside the car, started the engine and waited for the heater to warm him up. He reached deep into the valise, tossing Dennis’s possessions on the car floor, then removed all the wads of notes and counted them. Each one contained £1,000 in mixed notes, and there were thirty of them in all.

He put the money away, out of sight, and sat in the car, thinking. He inspected the laptop, which booted normally when he tried. The mobile phone’s battery was low, but nevertheless the handset switched on. There were no text messages for Dennis, he had no missed calls.

Finally, he climbed out of the car and took all Dennis’s clothes and personal possessions and placed them inside the trailer. He folded the royal-blue suit neatly. He then locked the trailer, unhooked it from the car and left it where it was, askew across the muddy lane. He put the old Volvo in gear and drove away slowly along the lane, past the weed-filled grounds of the house, beneath the winter-bare trees, against the rising green shoulders of the South Downs, under a brightening sky.