It had been Alice who was with her father on the day he suffered the fatal heart attack; according to her sister, she had rung for an ambulance which then took over an hour to get to the small village. By the time the paramedics turned up, her father had lain there suffering as Alice said she was unable to give any resuscitation or medicines, and would have passed away on the old patterned carpet where he had been laying had it not been for the attention of his old stray cat; the cat seemed to be keeping him alive somehow – that was until Alice threw a book at it. By a miracle, her father had survived this only to have what Alice called a tragic accident, whilst recuperating at her old town house. A fall on the stairs, and Elizabeth still recalled the awful phone call to tell her this. She had been planning a visit to bring him home. Elizabeth knew better than to ask all the questions but they stayed there, in her mind, and now with Alice gone, perhaps she would never know the answers.
The sound of the old clock ticking away on the mantelpiece brought her back to the present. It had belonged to her Father all those years, handed down to him from his father, so she supposed it was a family heirloom. At first, when she had gone down to the old family home, meeting up with Alice, she had not wanted anything and was glad to see it all go in a house clearance; the lady who took that job on, from the village antiques shop called, rather oddly she thought, The Beehive, had given them a fair price for it all, even buying some things for herself. The clock had been one such item, so it was with great surprise when Elizabeth accepted a parcel from the postman, to find it contained the very same clock! The note inside explained:
I hope you don’t mind me returning this to you? You’ll think me daft but it seemed to be telling me something (to do with the ticking!) and I even thought I ‘saw’ what happened to your Dad. Very strange, and do forgive me I don’t mean to upset you.
I think your Dad must have wanted this clock to be with his daughter now.
Kind regards,
Pamela
The BeeHive
Village Antiques.
Whatever the clock had prompted Pamela to see or hear, Elizabeth noticed nothing unusual, and liked to hear the steady sure ticking. If anything it seemed to be saying, ‘got the money’ ‘got the money’ – and to be sure, she had! The Will that had left everything to Alice, unchanged by her Father who had left it too late to do so, had of course all come to her anyway. And, it seemed, this woman Pamela might throw some light on what really happened that day. Now, if only she could shake off this last piece of Alice, the property for sale, that would be the end of it.