‘At the moment, Mrs Holland, we’re prepared to believe anything of anyone. But I’d have to say I don’t see this as being linked to sordid coinage. We haven’t been able to trace any family, by the way. Except for the elderly aunt – great-aunt, I should say – and even the wildest stretch of imagination couldn’t cast her as first murderer.’
‘I do know Trixie used to visit that aunt in the holidays,’ said Francesca thoughtfully. ‘But I believe she’s at least ninety. I shouldn’t think she could even manage the journey to Ashwood, let alone anything else.’
‘I shouldn’t think so, either.’
And so, taking it all in all, it looked as if there was no one prepared to shoulder the responsibility for Trixie’s things. Fran thought she would make a start on Friday afternoon, go along to Quondam Films on Saturday as requested, and finish the sorting out on Sunday. It would be a bit of a nuisance to have to break off midway through the weekend, although she was intrigued by the prospect of seeing Alraune.
She had consigned the dogs to the care of the RSPCA with stern instructions that they must be found a good home, and the home must be for all three of them together. Trixie would never forgive Fran if her beloved dogs were split up, and Fran thought there was enough to contend with as it was, without risking being haunted by a peevish and accusatory ghost, purely because the ghost’s dogs had not been found sufficiently luxurious homes.
The actual sorting out was not as time-consuming as she had feared, and by Sunday lunchtime she was more than halfway through. As she worked, she thought about yesterday’s viewing of Alraune. She had found it disturbing but rather moving.
Trixie had not been very tidy, but at least she had not been a magpie keeping bundles of old letters or postcards, or even photographs. There were a few photographs though, mostly pushed haphazardly into a couple of large manilla envelopes on top of a wardrobe. Fran, who rather liked old photos, even when they were of other people’s families or friends, put these to one side thinking she would look through them later, although it was rather sad if Trixie had had so few stored-away memories of her life. On the whole it was probably better not to surround yourself with sentimental fragments, but it meant a lot of the romance of the past got lost. It was not so many years since you could practically piece together entire lives from faded letters, or construct long-ago love affairs from theatre programmes and dance programmes or scratched gramophone records.
But she could not see today’s teenagers squirrelling away posters from pop concerts or print-outs of text messages. This strengthened her resolve to destroy everything from that disastrous marriage: Marcus’s letters and some theatre tickets, and the hotel bill from where they had spent their first romantic weekend, when they had not got out of bed until it was time to go home. Some romance, thought Fran cynically, and with the idea of forcing Marcus and his perfidy out of her mind, she worked doggedly on, making an inventory of furniture and the contents of drawers and cupboards. If you had no family, did you simply become just a typed list of saucepans and crockery and cretonne-covered chairs?