Past Tense Read Free

solemnly being read by an elderly solicitor to the assembled family in the library came, as far as Janet was concerned, straight from Hollywood.
    â€˜Uncommon but not unknown,’ added Simon Puckle.
    â€˜Is that because it’s got something in it saying that if someone didn’t turn up for the funeral they mightn’t get anything?’ suggested Janet. She wasn’t sure if that came from Hollywood, too, or from fiction borrowed from the library shelves labelled ‘Romance’.
    â€˜That could be one reason, although,’ the solicitor paused and went on carefully, ‘I would expect any professional adviser to have counselled against making any such…er…unusual provision.’ He hesitated before adding, ‘Especially one that could conceivably lead to difficulties. So, Mrs Wakefield, I must remind you, would be the…er…premature disposition of any of the possessions in her room.’
    â€˜There’s not many of them, I can tell you,’ responded Janet smartly.
    â€˜The very old don’t need a lot,’ murmured the solicitor, a veteran in these matters.
    â€˜So we won’t know anything at all, then, until after the funeral,’ concluded Janet, aware that he hadn’t said whether or not the firm of Puckle, Puckle & Nunnery had actually drawn up the aforementioned will. She sighed. ‘There’s so much we don’t know about Bill’s Great-Aunt Josephine.’
    It was only at the funeral itself, though, that she began to realise quite how much that lack of knowledge amounted to. Resolutely heading for her place in the front pew as the chief mourner, Janet, who had dressed carefully in an ambiguous mixture of mauve, black, green and cream, had dutifully followed Tod Morton and the coffin into the church at Damory Regis.
    The first thing of which she was aware was the odd assortment of people in the congregation. This was something she hadn’t expected. Certainly the notice of the death of Josephine Short and the time and place of the funeral had been well published to the wider world but no one had been in touch with her. Firmly occupying the pew behind the one reserved for the family was a cohort from the Berebury Nursing Home led by the matron, Mrs Linda Luxton, and on the other side of the church she spotted Simon Puckle, the solicitor.
    Further back were a couple of women obviously so familiar with the church and its ritual that they exuded the feeling of being regular members of the congregation. And on the opposite side of the aisle were two men and some women, who might or might not have come from the Rowlettian Society. Scattered about the church were several other men, mostly oldish, and some more women – only one young, her auburn hair standing out in a sea of grey heads. At the back, handing out service books, hovered a churchwarden and a sidesman.
    Ahead of her now and after the organ voluntary had come to a stop, the vicar, robed in full canonicals, was pronouncing the words ‘“We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out…”’
    Janet Wakefield had no quarrel with these sentiments as far as the late Josephine Short was concerned. Detailed examination of the bedroom in the nursing home had been singularly unrevealing, her possessions there few and far between. Certainly there was everything present in the room that one bedridden old lady could or would possibly need, but nothing whatsoever to shed light on the personality of that same old lady – not even anything about the Rowlettian Society. There were some rather worn black and white photographs in a torn brown envelope in a bottom drawer but they had had no names on them that had meant anything to her and Janet had left them where they were.
    As the vicar began the Sentences ‘“I know that my Redeemer liveth…”,’ and while the coffin was being set upon the waiting trestles, Janet