A Town Like Alice

Chapter 1-2

One afternoon in January 1948 I got a telegram from Ayr. It read,

Regret Mr. Douglas Macfadden passed away last night please instruct re funeral.

Doyle, Balmoral Hotel, Ayr.

I had to search my memory, I am afraid, to recollect through the war years who Mr. Douglas Macfadden was, and then I had to turn to the file and the will to refresh my memory with the details of what had happened thirteen years before. It seemed rather odd to me that there was nobody at Ayr who could manage the funeral business. I put in a trunk call to Ayr right away and very soon I was speaking to Mrs. Doyle. It was a bad line, but I understood that she knew of no relations; apparently Mr. Macfadden had had no visitors for a very long time. Clearly, I should have to go to Ayr myself, or else send somebody. I had no urgent engagements for the next two days and the matter seemed to be a little difficult. I had a talk with Lester Robinson, my partner, who had come back from the war as a Brigadier, and cleared my desk, and took the sleeper up to Glasgow after dinner that night. In the morning I went down in a slow train to Ayr.

When I got to the Balmoral Hotel I found the landlord and his wife in mourning and obviously distressed; they had been fond of their queer lodger and it was probably due in a great part to their ministrations that he had lived so long. There was no mystery about the cause of death. I had a talk with the doctor and heard all about his trouble; the doctor had been with him at the end, for he lived only two doors away, and the death certificate was already signed. I took a brief look at the body for identification and went through the various formalities of death. It was all perfectly straightforward, except that there were no relations.

“I doubt he had any,” said Mr. Doyle. “His sister used to write to him at one time, and she came to see him in 1938, I think it was. She lived in Southampton. But he’s had no letters except just a bill or two for the last two years.”

His wife said, “Surely, the sister died, didn’t she? Don’t you remember him telling us, sometime toward the end of the war?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “So much was happening about that time. Maybe she did die.”

Relations or not, arrangements had to be made for the funeral, and I made them that afternoon. When that was done I settled down to look through the papers in his desk. One or two of the figures in an account book and on the back of the counterfoils of his cheque book made me open my eyes; clearly I should have to have a talk with the bank manager first thing next morning. I found a letter from his sister dated in 1941 about the lease of her house. It threw no light, of course, upon her death, if she was dead, but it did reveal significant news about the children. Both of them were in Malaya at that time. The boy Donald, who must have been twenty-three years old at that time, was working on a rubber plantation near Kuala Selangor. His sister Jean had gone out to him in the winter of 1939, and was working in an office in Kuala Lumpur.

At about five o’clock I put in a trunk call to my office in London, standing in the cramped box of the hotel, and spoke to my partner. “Look, Lester,” I said. “I told you that there was some difficulty about the relations. I am completely at a loss up here, I’m sorry to say. Provisionally, I have arranged the funeral for the day after tomorrow, at two o’clock, at St. Enoch’s cemetery. The only relations that I know of live, or used to live, in Southampton. The sister, Mrs. Arthur Paget, was living in 1941 at No. 17 St. Ronans Road, Bassett—that’s just by Southampton somewhere. There were some other Paget relations in the district, the parents of Arthur Paget. Mrs. Arthur Paget—her Christian name was Jean—yes, she was the deceased’s sister. She had two children, Donald and Jean Paget, but they were both in Malaya in 1941. God knows what became of them. I wouldn’t waste much time just now looking for them, but would you get Harris to do what he can to find some of these Southampton Pagets and tell them about the funeral? He’d better take the telephone book and talk to all the Pagets in Southampton one by one. I don’t suppose there are so very many.”

Lester came on the telephone to me next morning just after I got back from the bank. “I’ve nothing very definite, I’m afraid, Noel,” he said. “I did discover one thing. Mrs. Paget died in 1942, so she’s out of it. She died of pneumonia through going out to the air raid shelter—Harris got that from the hospital. About the other Pagets, there are seven in the telephone directory and we’ve rung them all up, and they’re none of them anything to do with your family. But one of them, Mrs. Eustace Paget, thinks the family you’re looking for are the Edward Pagets, and that they moved to North Wales after the first Southampton blitz.”

“Any idea whereabouts in North Wales?” I asked.

“Not a clue,” he said. “I think the only thing that you can do now is to proceed with the funeral.”

“I think it is,” I replied. “But tell Harris to go on all the same, because apart from the funeral we’ve got to find the heirs. I’ve just been to the bank, and there is quite a sizable estate. We’re the trustees, you know.”

I spent the rest of that day in packing up all personal belongings, and letters, and papers, to take down to my office. Furniture at that time was in short supply, and I arranged to store the furniture of the two rooms, since that might be wanted by the heirs. I gave the clothes to Mr. Doyle to give away to needy people in Ayr. Only two of the budgerigars were left; I gave those to the Doyles, who seemed to be attached to them. Next morning I had another interview with the bank manager and telephoned to book my sleeper on the night mail down to London. And in the afternoon we buried Douglas Macfadden.

It was very cold and bleak and grey in the cemetery, that January afternoon. The only mourners were the Doyles, father, mother, and daughter, and myself, and I remember thinking that it was queer how little any of us knew about the man that we were burying. I had a great respect for the Doyle family by that time. They had been overwhelmed when I told them of the small legacy that Mr. Macfadden had left them and at first they were genuinely unwilling to take it; they said that they had been well paid for his two rooms and board for many years, and anything else that they had done for him had been because they liked him. It was something, on that bitter January afternoon beside the grave, to feel that he had friends at the last ceremonies.

So that was the end of it, and I drove back with the Doyles and had tea with them in their sitting-room beside the kitchen. And after tea I left for Glasgow and the night train down to London, taking with me two suitcases of papers and small personal effects to be examined at my leisure if the tracing of the heir proved to be troublesome, and later to be handed over as a part of the inheritance.

In fact, we found the heir without much difficulty. Young Harris got a line on it within a week, and presently we got a letter from a Miss Agatha Paget, who was the headmistress of a girls’ school in Colwyn Bay. She was a sister of Arthur Paget, who had been killed in the motor accident in Malaya. She confirmed that his wife, Jean, had died in Southampton in the year 1942, and she added the fresh information that the son, Donald, was also dead. He had been a prisoner of war in Malaya, and had died in captivity. Her niece, Jean, however, was alive and in the London district. The headmistress did not know her home address because she lived in rooms and had changed them once or twice, so she usually wrote to her addressing her letters to her firm. She was employed in the office of a concern called Pack and Levy Ltd., whose address was The Hyde, Perivale, London, N.W.

I got this letter in the morning mail; I ran through the others and cleared them out of the way, and then picked up this one and read it again. Then I got my secretary to bring me the Macfadden box and I read the will through again, and went through some other papers and my notes on the estate. Finally I reached out for the telephone directory and looked up Pack and Levy Ltd., to find out what they did.

Presently I got up from my desk and stood for a time looking out of the window at the bleak, grey, January London street. I like to think a bit before taking any precipitate action. Then I turned and went through into Robinson’s office; he was dictating, and I stood warming myself at his fire till he had finished and the girl had left the room.

“I’ve got that Macfadden heir,” I said. “I’ll tell Harris.”

“All right,” he replied. “You’ve found the son?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve found the daughter. The son’s dead.”

He laughed. “Bad luck. That means we’re trustees for the estate until she’s thirty-five, doesn’t it?”

I nodded.

“How old is she now?”

I calculated for a minute. “Twenty-six or twenty-seven.”

“Old enough to make a packet of trouble for us.”

“I know.”

“Where is she? What’s she doing?”

“She’s employed as a clerk or typist with a firm of handbag manufacturers in Perivale,” I said. “I’m just about to concoct a letter to her.”

He smiled. “Fairy Godfather.”

“Exactly,” I replied.

I went back into my room and sat for some time thinking out that letter; it seemed to me to be important to set a formal tone when writing to this young woman for the first time. Finally I wrote,

DEAR MADAM,

It is with regret that we have to inform you of the death of Mr. Douglas Macfadden at Ayr on January 21st. As Executors to his will we have experienced some difficulty in tracing the beneficiaries, but if you are the daughter of Jean (née Macfadden) and Arthur Paget formerly resident in Southampton and in Malaya, it would appear that you may be entitled to a share in the estate.

May we ask you to telephone for an appointment to call upon us at your convenience to discuss the matter further? It will be necessary for you to produce evidence of identity at an early stage, such as your birth certificate, National Registration Identity Card, and any other documents that may occur to you.

I am,

Yours truly,

for Owen, Dalhousie and Peters,

N. H. STRACHAN.

She rang me up the next day. She had quite a pleasant voice, the voice of a well-trained secretary. She said, “Mr. Strachan, this is Miss Jean Paget speaking. I’ve got your letter of the 29th. I wonder—do you work on Saturday mornings? I’m in a job, so Saturday would be the best day for me.”

I replied, “Oh yes, we work on Saturday mornings. What time would be convenient for you?”

“Should we say ten-thirty?”

I made a note upon my pad. “That’s all right. Have you got your birth certificate?”

“Yes, I’ve got that. Another thing I’ve got is my mother’s marriage certificate, if that helps.”

I said, “Oh yes, bring that along. All right, Miss Paget, I shall look forward to meeting you on Saturday. Ask for me by name, Mr. Noel Strachan. I am the senior partner.”

She was shown into my office punctually at ten-thirty on Saturday. She was a girl or woman of a medium height, dark-haired. She was good-looking in a quiet way; she had a tranquillity about her that I find it difficult to describe except by saying that it was the grace that you see frequently in women of a Scottish descent. She was dressed in a dark blue coat and skirt. I got up and shook hands with her, and gave her the chair in front of my desk, and went round and sat down myself. I had the papers ready.