Three Things About Elsie(79)

We’d usually stretch out our afternoons as well, but it felt like less of a holiday and more of a game, and I had this funny feeling we were on our last roll of the dice. All through the taxi ride, I could hear Jack breathing through his mouth and Elsie talking to herself. When we finally pulled up outside the address I’m sure the taxi driver felt as relieved as we did.

The house was flat and silent. I could have sworn there was no one at home. It’s odd how you know a house is empty, just by looking at the outside. If there are people in there, it seems to warm a building up. All the laughter and the conversation seems to leak into the bricks. I was wrong, though, because the noise of Jack’s walking stick on the front door had only just stopped ringing in my ears, when there was movement behind the bubbled glass, and the sound of someone turning a key.

‘Local history?’ The woman was so wrinkled, it looked as if her face was trying to fold itself up and disappear. ‘Who exactly are you trying to trace?’

She only opened the door a fraction. I would have been the same, mind you. Three strangers standing on your front step with the most unlikely reason for being there.

Jack explained to her. ‘We’d be so grateful for anything you can tell us,’ he said.

I could see Jack’s charm finding its way into the house. It was a gentle charm. A harmless one. You could imagine what he had been like as a young man. A boy whose eyes creased when he smiled, with slightly stooped shoulders and a good heart. A boy who wasn’t as symmetrical, as obvious, as the others, but a boy who women would remember in years to come, when their lives became ironed out with middle age. A boy they’d wish they had given a chance to.

‘Francis sent us,’ I said. ‘He has very blue eyes.’

The woman’s grip on the door relaxed just a little bit.

‘I suppose you’d better come in, then,’ she said. ‘But don’t be thinking you can con me out of anything. I might be old, but I’m not an idiot.’

Jack smiled. ‘I wouldn’t, dear lady, imagine that for one second.’

And for the first time, she smiled back. ‘You can call me Agnes,’ she said.

The cat was still on the windowsill. It watched us with pencil-point eyes, as we shuffled ourselves around the lounge. It was a fisherman’s cottage and the room was very small. Perhaps because people had smaller lives in those days, and they filled their space up with thoughts and conversation, rather than with sideboards and coffee tables. Agnes didn’t offer us a drink. She told us that in exactly fifteen minutes, her television programme was starting and she had absolutely no intention of missing it, even if the Queen of England happened to knock on the door. She sat in a dining chair, and refused to be swapped, even when Jack stood up and made a big fuss of pointing out the settee.

‘So, who is this man you’re trying to trace?’

We told her what we knew. We left Ronnie out, because he always complicated everything, and there didn’t seem a reason to bring him into it. I did think about it at one stage, but Elsie shot me a look from the other side of the room and it made me change my mind.

‘And why are you so keen to find him?’ As Agnes spoke, the cat leaped from the windowsill and landed on her lap. They’re so clever, cats. They always seem to know exactly where they want to go, and the easiest way to get there.

‘Well?’ said Agnes.

Even Jack’s charm was thrown. ‘We just wanted a chat with him.’ The words stumbled out of his mouth. ‘There’s something we think he could help us with.’

‘Is it about money?’

‘Oh, gracious no. Nothing like that,’ he said.

‘Because if it is, I want no part in it.’

I couldn’t say for definite, but I thought I heard the cat hiss at the back of its throat.

‘I can assure you it’s nothing to do with money.’ Jack cleared his throat. ‘It’s more of a personal matter.’

‘Because there are plenty of people who’d want a word with Gabriel Honeyman about money,’ said Agnes.

‘So you knew him?’ I said.

‘You couldn’t live in Whitby in those days and not know him. Especially around the racetracks.’

‘He was a gambler?’ said Jack.

‘The biggest gambler I’ve ever known.’ Agnes stroked the cat’s head, and it started to knead its claws into her skirt. ‘All the money he made playing that piano, he threw at the horses.’

‘So he was poor?’ I leaned forward. I was in the kind of armchair that seemed to have straw for stuffing, and it felt a bit like sitting on an upholstered hay bale.

‘Perhaps he made a killing and no one knew,’ said Jack.

‘Win big, lose big. Although whenever Gabriel did win, he’d give it away. He gave money to people he didn’t even know, just because they told him some sob story. He’d write all his money-making schemes down on the back of his sheet music. He was famous for it. There were more ideas on there than words to the song. I heard tell one of his investments finally paid up recently. Just a pity he’s not around to reap the benefits.’

Jack looked over at us. ‘The music shop,’ he said. ‘That’s why Ronnie was so interested. He wanted to check Gabriel hadn’t written anything useful on the back of one of his songs.’

I could tell Agnes was taking all this in. She followed the conversation, back and forth, but she didn’t comment. ‘He was always giving money to strangers and their hare-brained schemes,’ she said. ‘They won him over so easily. He was one of those people who seemed to walk around advertising what a soft touch they were.’