House of Secrets

By Roy Jenner

Terror and violent death are loose in the Catlins of the South Island.  An animal's only reason for killing is food. The Catlin's killer is not an animal, but a monster with another reason to kill. What is that reason? Gloria Stuart's dead body is found in her remote farmhouse in the Clutha Valley; brutally murdered, stabbed to death in a savage attack. In the main bedroom the unconscious form of her husband Angus is found, covered in blood and reeking of alcohol. The jury's verdict is delivered in a short time. Guilty as charged; 'life imprisonment,' said the judge. The one child of this marriage was son Andrew, sixteen years old and in his first year of extended study at University. Since the cradle father and son had been at odds with each other and on many occasions Angus had invited Andrew to leave home. 'Don't come back, ever.' With the death of his mother Andrew had more reason to hate his father. He broke from school and travelled the world. Angus serves fourteen years of a life sentence before being freed. He returns to his home, the scene of the crime where a week later  he is found hanging dead in the hallway. A note to his son begs for forgiveness. Andrew's love for his mother was unequalled. He returns with bitterness in his heart unable to forgive. His purpose is to claim his heritage and sell the land with its derelict home, but he is puzzled by the fact someone has been tending his mother's grave. Andrew finds death and fear stalk the valley. The Otago towns have been troubled by the disappearance of children and strangers are met with the same distrust as that extended to locals. He finds his land is a sought after commodity and stalls over an offer from a local land baron who has had ownership of the land on a perpetual lease since the killing. Andrew is reunited with his sole surviving relative, Blind Robbie, a blind banjo picking grandfather who settled in the Catlins as a pioneer in the days of steam and logging. As Andrew learns of his family history from Blind Robbie the house of secrets on the banks of the Clutha burns and Andrew is drawn deeply into another disappearance which threatens the new relationships he is establishing.

Fee

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lawrence Davidson
• Release date: Dec 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9780179941823

Roy Jenner

Roy Jenner is the author of fourteen novels such as this one. Each reflects his experiences as he travelled the world from his homeland of London England to eventually settle in the Antipodes and make Auckland New Zealand his home.  Each page of each book is flavoured with the knowledge and understanding of life’s experiences gleaned along the way. Three years service with Her Majesty’s armed forces prepared him for life away from the docklands of London’s East End, where he was born, to taste the arid and vital atmosphere of Egypt and its controversial Suez Canal Zone where he served two years on active service. Forty years in the meat industry were superseded by twenty years of equal success in the real estate sales.   He was thrilled in later years to become involved with the magic of Nashville and Memphis Tennessee and venture into the challenges of the Australian Outback, being always pleased to return  to the security of his home in New Zealand. A strong family man he has four sons, eight grandsons, three granddaughters and now five great grand children. He continues to write for your pleasure.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Andrew Stuart brushed aside the tangle of spider webs that ghosted across the door jamb to reach the faded wooden panels that had slammed shut in his wake two decades before. He was almost surprised by the numbness in his fingers. Struck by the biting cold they fumbled with the door key, senseless, void of feeling, as he sought to cram the steel shaft into the deadlock chamber. He’d been a little more than sixteen then and ready to leave, yet always scared of leaving. In the fading light it was obvious no one had crossed this porch in a while.

‘And don’t think about coming back, ever!’

Those words had rocked his brain then and a thousand times since, and as expected they chose this moment to echo around the archaic porch way of the deserted Stuart family home. He’d always known the price of re-admittance would be the same old song, but he was ready; he was prepared. He thought he was ready; maybe not. Today would be the tester.

He gave a grunt of surprise as the key bedded home and turned easily. The old man hadn’t changed the locks; that was a surprise. Andrew would have put money on it. You can’t win them all, however, and he gave a second grunt, this time of satisfaction, as the hinges creaked in protest and the door swung inwards to reveal a parade of ghostly images in a darkened hallway, all obscure yet familiar. He was looking at his past now, his family heritage, as it invited him across a threshold he had vowed never to cross again. It was the same threshold he had stubbornly defied and been denied for a damning eternity; or so it seemed.

‘Ever! Don’t think about coming back! Ever! Ever! Ever!’

They were echoes that had fashioned his future and continually condemned his past and he’d never considered coming back, especially now his father, Angus Stuart, was dead. He’d been dead five years and Andrew’s first reaction on learning of this had been, ‘so he’s dead at last, good riddance.’ They were words delivered from a bitter, vengeful heart, a remnant of his immature youth that had chosen to hold a grudge and be totally unforgiving. It was his lack of forgiveness in his immaturity and in its spite that served only to punish Andrew. It had taken many years, many tears and a new relationship to inject understanding into his thinking and to counter a wild ego that had wrestled with all who came close to knowing him. A lonely, hard road he’d travelled to lose most of everything he’d loved along the way. Now he was back with no one to love. The old man was dead, long gone and he’d never loved him anyway, though he had tried and found him too hard to love. No, there was no love lost there at all.

Andrew drew the key from the lock, but lifeless fingers, still affected by the low temperature, lost control and it slipped from their grasp. It produced a dull thud as it hit the door sill and a metallic clink as it came to rest balanced on the grill of the storm water drain, adding to his frustration. He bent to retrieve it  and too late he watched it drop into the drain. The one key, the only key, and the key he’d carried for more than a score of years; now gone. There would be others in the house. There had to be, tucked away in a drawer, or on a nail in the outside dunny were probabilities that sprang to mind. Keys mattered in this day, in this age, more than they had then, a score of years ago. As a kid Andrew had little recollection of the house ever being locked. This was cow cockie country and people didn’t lock doors; there was no need. This was a door that most times had stood open during the warmer weather and a door that had invited only a friendly nudge when closed to repel the bite of the Otago winter. Seldom locked then, yet locked now and sealed since the death of his father Angus Stuart.

Angus had been free from prison for four weeks when he was found hanging in the hallway of his Benhar homestead. He’d served fourteen years of a twenty year sentence for murder and had seemed determined to die having made two attempts before satisfactorily strangling the life from his spent frame with a rope secured to the landing banister rail. Society saw it as no great loss. The taxpayer had paid out enough and he was a vicious sod. He should have done it long before was the opinion of some. It was winter time. His front door had been closed, the low temperature being sufficient to preserve the body for the full ten days it hung there before being found. Angus’s farewell to the world was a silent one in the form of six brief words scrawled in classroom crayon on a page ripped from an exercise book, unsigned.

‘Forgive me son. Please forgive me.’

It took a year for the authorities to find that son, Andrew, in a Romany existence in Spain. Even so he chose to ignore their requests to return. He remained unaffected by his father’s passing other than  thinking, good riddance. Sole ownership of the Stuart farm had passed to Andrew on the death of his mother Lorna Stuart. Neglect of the dwelling over the years allowed it to move into a derelict condition, but the land retained its value and was leased to a local farmer with the house out of bounds to all. Andrew continued to take bitter pills, never coming to terms with the death of his mother and with his father in prison the taste of his compassion failed to improve.

Forgiveness for a father who had murdered his mother? He thought not, yet eventually he’d decided to return to New Zealand and salvage the remnants of his youth. He’d awoken one morning at the bottom of a spiritual downward spiral in a remote Scottish fishing village on the east coast. Cellardyke was his grandfather’s birth place and Andrew struggled with the subconscious reasoning that had guided him to his heritage when outwardly he vehemently rejected any association with his father, a man he was determined to hate; hate even though dead. I’m safe now, thought Andrew. He can’t touch me. I should go home. Where’s home? Benhar was home.

It was a slow process that saw him leave Scotland at the start of a British summer and arrive in the Antipodes in the depths of the New Zealand winter. Beneath its mantle of snow the house seemed not to have changed with the years. It wasn’t a ruin, but it was close. The kauri weatherboards told the elements they were not in need of synthetic veneer, thank you. Their paint had peeled and waned in the face of the strong southerly allowing nature’s cedar grain to shine through. Standing alone in a clustered tree line the building looked lonely, as it always had in the heart of two hundred and ten hectares of rolling pasture.

The wheels of Andrew’s off road vehicle had carved savage impressions into the frozen wrapper of chill, breaking the ground of a long established driveway which had been leased back to nature, seemingly forever, possibly not. With trepidation he entered the house. Twenty years on now from the killing he grew suddenly aware of the implications of his first time back. He seated himself on the stairway, not feeling the cold, and suddenly found his grief and allowed himself to mourn the passing of his parents, to mourn the deprivation of youth, the loss of a mother he adored and the father he hated. Tears flowed and head in hands his body shook as he finally accepted and declined to reject the memory of what had occurred in this wretched building, in this very hallway years ago, in his absence.

It all happened at the wrong time, although it would be stupid to suggest there could be a right time. He was in his mid teens and exiled from his home, but completing his first year at University of Otago. Always fit and a keen sportsman he was one hour into an exam to further a degree in sports psychology when he was summoned urgently to the office of the dean. This was where his university education ended and the school of life took control as his personal life plunged into a trough of horror.

The dean was never a man to be stuck for words. Today he was. On Andrew’s appearance he immediately vacated his office to leave him in the company of two police officers whose dubious task it was to inform him of the tragedy which had struck at his Benhar home in the early hours of that morning. An anonymous phone call had summoned the police to the property at 4am where they found the house a blaze of light, lights which apparently had burned all night. Loud music blared from  within, yet there was no response to the demands of the police.

A forced entry revealed the bloodied corpse of Lorna Stuart in a naked heap at the foot of the staircase. Stab wounds to the chest and throat contributed to her death. A trail of blood led to an upstairs bedroom and to the only other occupant of the house. The scantily clad form of Angus Stuart was discovered unconscious on the floor. His chest and thighs were coated in blood. Alcohol had played its part in this drama as evidenced by the bottles of spirit, drinking glasses, some broken and strewn around the room that showed obvious signs of a struggle. Angus was found to be in an advanced state of intoxication and could not be revived at the scene. Carried from the house on a stretcher he was never to return. A twelve centimetre meatwork’s boning knife was found on the landing and doors that were seldom locked were shown to have been locked front and rear.

On the third day following the incident Angus Stuart was charged with the wilful murder of his wife. As murder trials go it was very straight forward. Despite much reference to a secret witness no such person appeared. Much attention was paid to the victim’s diary with particular reference to regular meetings with a person named Elsie, however, this lady was never found. Lorna Stuart’s diary clearly showed a meeting with Elsie at four in the afternoon prior to her death. The last entry in the diary said, ‘tell all to Andrew about Elsie.’ Below it in the same hard ball point, circled furiously and terminated by an oversize question mark was written, ‘dare I tell Angus?’ Andrew was questioned vigorously by detectives, but he could only confirm he had no knowledge of anyone called Elsie. His mother had left messages on his answer phone saying she had something really important to tell him; and to tell his father. She gave no clue to what it was, but she was stressed and said she was scared to tell Angus.

‘Mr Stuart, do you think your mother was having an affair?’ he was asked by the police.

‘Why would I think that? What does it matter what I think?’

‘There were eleven entries in her diary of the name ‘Elsie’. Do you think your mother was having, maybe, a lesbian relationship?’

Andrew’s opinion of the police began a serious decline at that stage. Following a trial lasting nine days it took a jury of eight women and four men three hours to find Angus guilty of murder and he was despatched to prison for twenty years. From the start he protested his innocence and continued to do so until the day he was released, insisting he had no knowledge of what happened in that house of tragedy. Andrew felt only revulsion for his father, yet wondered when it was he had taken to drink. Up until the time the old man had kicked him out of the house at sixteen it was common knowledge Angus Stuart refrained from alcohol.

Lorna Stuart was forty six when she died. She’d never come to terms with Andrew having to leave home; her only child, just a boy. Andrew had gone to never to come back, ever, he’d told both parents

‘How can you be so cruel, Angus? He’s still a child. He needs me, us,’ she’d raged and pleaded.

‘Well he doesn’t need me. He’s shown that enough times and I’ve had it with him. He can go. If he stays, I go. Simple.’ He exercised no control over his temper.

Despite that situation, the strength of the mother and son relationship had more than enough power to withstand the cleft that formed. Between the two they shared something special which tended often to exclude any input from Angus and from Andrew’s early years, unintentionally, or not, the father had become an island; often an observer.

Andrew delighted in college and the freedom of severed paternal ties. He shared digs with two roommates and revelled in premature adulthood where his responsibilities were restricted to a pittance of a rent for a hovel of a room which gave him the ability to contribute to the weekend’s alcohol bill and other substances in which he chose to indulge. He had never been a lover of alcohol, but he was fickle and a very quick learner.  Mother was never far away; she was always there and the thought of her even more so. Mothers have a way of keeping their offspring afloat, never allowing them to drown, but often not allowing them the opportunity to swim and once a week, sometimes twice, Lorna would drive the sixty kilometres into Dunedin and lunch with her boy. If not at the Conservatory Restaurant it would be the university cafeteria where the sight of Andrew dining on a regular basis with a beautiful blonde woman more than twice his age, was known to stimulate outrageous remarks from fellow students.

‘Nice tits, Andrew It looks like she’s got a few bob as well.’

‘It’s my mother. Leave it out.’

‘Yeah, right!’

It was only when Lorna’s joint bank account was closed following her demise that the steady flow of cash was stemmed. The monthly banker’s order that had sustained his independence ceased to be, but at that stage he had ceased to care. In the bank he had a student loan which he had never touched; a loan which he had no intention of repaying and following the sentencing of his father it had paid his way to Australia and fields further. But he had no mother. She had phoned him the day before her death saying she had something important to tell him, but the substance of that call he would never know. She was gone and he’d never felt this much alone.

Twenty years on Andrew had no reason to feel differently about anything that had happened then. He sat now in the ruin of a house within doors that had not been opened in five years and were closed for the previous fourteen. With local services unconnected the place was a dungeon. Above him the broken bannister railing told the story of his father’s first attempt to hang himself. Andrew shuddered at the thought. It took a brave and determined man to have a second go; a first go even. Did that describe his father, a brave man? Determined, most certainly and always confrontational.

Seated on a bottom stair the exposed wooden flooring of the hallway before him retained the dark signature of Lorna Stuart’s blood. In twenty years it had mellowed into the grain, but those who knew the story would find it easy to recognise. Andrew leaned forward and placed a flat palm on the dirty surface. He was touching his mother through the years, reaching out, feeling the bond.

He sobered and stood, dismissed the moment then ventured further into the gloom around him. Nature had many times laid claim to the interior of the home as with each changing season she sought to sow her seed, foster her field mice and house her rats and opossums within the sanctuary of its walls. The signs were there to see for the place was a tip. Collective filth of two decades clung to every surface. The scrim lining of the walls hung in rippling folds as the wind found access through loosened boards and lifting roof iron. Cobwebs hung from everything. Birds’ nests, rats’ nests were evident; dead creatures even. Creatures who had found this a good place in which to live in the absence of man, to infest, to raise their families, empty their bowels, then obviously found it a good place to die. Despite all this squalor, beneath the grime and degradation, regardless of the filth and refuse of time, Andrew was able to confer with the familiarity of home.

Such familiarity wasn’t required to breed contempt. Contempt had been ever present since Andrew set foot in the building, requiring him to tip toe tentatively from the first level to the next, from room to room, discouraging him from making contact with any items on display. The rotting carpets seemed to dissolve beneath his feet and repelled him, causing his skin to itch with growing discomfort beneath his heavy clothing. There was only one way to go and that was out of here. He’d already made the decision. He would torch the place; but not today. There was nothing of value here. A few sticks of furniture and a dusty display of bric-a-brac whose value would not justify the time and petrol to cart them out.

He’d lock the place for the night and maybe tomorrow would gift the house to the fire brigade for a controlled burn. It occurred to him he had no key. Would it matter if it were left unlocked? Yes, he thought, it would. He laid hands on a tangle of keys in a sideboard drawer, but not one that fitted. No problem, there was a place. The outside dunny housed a key, on a nail, on a beam known only to Andrew and his mother. It was their key, placed there by Lorna for an emergency. It had never been used in all the years and was now probably forgotten

‘Our little secret, Andrew,’ she had said, ‘for you and me, just in case.’

One of the idiosyncrasies of a mother, thought Andrew, but today it would come into its own and justify its place after thirty years. Outside the house it was colder and darker with less than a half hour of daylight remaining. Andrew crunched his way through knee deep snow around the side of the house to the outside toilet. It stood like a sentinel, a challenging distance to the rear, an Edwardian backyard convenience with door tilted open at an angle to survive on one broken hinge. The snow had drifted to half its height to coat a pruinose long-drop that reached for an immeasurable depth into the bowels of the earth, its hard grained wooden aperture having long ago accommodated its last pair of buttocks. Snow fell once more. Andrew ran his fingers along the low stud and was pleased to feel them snag on the nail. ‘Thanks mum,’ he muttered with confidence, but there was no key. This was hard to accept. Only she and he knew of this key. Why would she remove it without telling him? Still, it had been twenty years and a lot could happen in that time. A lot had happened.

Disgruntled, he ploughed his way through the drifts back to the house. He decided to leave it unlocked. What would it matter? The storm water drain down which he’d lost his key was in the centre of the front porch clear of any weather and with a second thought he thought to give it a shot.  Not more than a foot in diameter its grill lifted with surprising ease. One attempt otherwise the place can stay as it is, unlocked, thought Andrew. With jacket off, wrist watch off and shirt sleeve rolled to the bicep the Otago winter said hello again to his bared flesh. On his knees he braced his right arm against the door frame and plunged his left arm into the opening. He was surprised. No icy water as expected. His fist stopped an elbow’s length into the ground and his groping fingers could detect only silt, matted leaves and stones, but yes, the key. Jackpot! First time! He flushed with success as he withdrew his arm with his prize firmly grasped in the fist.

Then there came bewilderment. This wasn’t the key, however he recognised it immediately; this was the dunny key. Amazing! For Andrew there could be no mistaking the DisneyLand motive on the key ring. This was his mother’s key. What a coincidence. So when had she dropped it in the drain?

His arm was cold and cramped and he decided he’d had enough of this game, yet he went down again to forage in the mire. This time two fifty cent coins before withdrawing a handful of slime which contained something really personal to him. This was heart stopping. The memory of his mother’s fortieth birthday took control of his mind in an instant. He recalled clearing his bank account that day to buy her a set of pearl earrings. They were long, barbed settings on gold chains; beautiful, stunning. One of them lay before him now in the mud. He wanted to vomit. It seemed he could never rid himself of the priceless memory of her. He was forced to wonder, where was the other earring?

His hand was numb, but he found his key and replaced the grid of the drain, then plunged his tingling fist into a trouser pocket seeking warmth. It was time to go and he wondered why he’d ever returned. He’d return tomorrow, maybe, but in the meantime as dusk was ready to claim the banks of the Clutha River, he secured the door, turned his back on the house and allowed the wheels of his vehicle to forge through light falling snow, reclaiming the tracks it had laid on its way in. His mind was full of his mother as he hit the main road and he was in no hurry to reach his bed and breakfast digs.

The key! The earring! What a coincidence! What a find.

Again he was bugged by thoughts of his swine of a father and wondered again when it was he took to drink; which reminded him of the tip-off phone call. Who made that call? Was that person ever identified?

Chapter  2

‘A re we Stuart with a U, or Stewart with an EW, sir?’

‘We are Stuart with a U,’ said Andrew.

He’d booked ahead by phone and now watched with little interest as the receptionist at the B&B crossed out Stewart in the ledger and made a firm entry with the correct spelling. It was a common error with which he was familiar; it happened all the time. With snow to the door of the brick villa he’d trodden the frozen path through dormant rose beds with a purpose. He knew the building well, having stayed there on many occasions in his youth. He’d never been able to take any girlfriend home to share with his family, but the double beds of Lesmahagow, at twenty dollars a night, had allowed him to keep his choice of partner to himself and satisfy the growing desires of puberty. It was an affordable exercise in those days of permissiveness when it was quite common for his lady of the moment to contribute her share towards expenses. He’d never been proud.

‘Have you been a guest here before, Mr Stuart?’

Louisa, the duty manager, was alert and hospitable. Tall, slim, well formed, she reminded him of Peg. Much younger, though. Of Peg who, ten thousand miles away, was in all probability sprawled on a beach in southern Spain at this moment. No, not right now, not at 6am. That would be the time up there on the Med. What was it about the girl that reminded him of Peg when every girl he met reminded him of her? Was it her hair or the direct eye contact, maybe? Or was it just the tilt of her head and come hither smile? It was a silly thought, really, for Peg was much older. Andrew signed the register.

‘I was here before, Louisa. Twenty years ago, give or take.’

Her eyes widened and her smile was broad. She liked the use of her name.

‘Goodness me, that’s before I was born.’

Just before, thought Andrew. He knew then it was the smile, the welcoming smile of Lesmahagow. Lesmahagow, a classic brick villa of Victorian vintage crested a hill on two hectares of land five miles to the north-east of Balclutha. At the birth of the twentieth century, when the exodus of migrants from Scotland was at its height, many folk living in the Clutha district were as much Scottish as those left behind in the Caledonian hills. Not all came to Otago, but they were enough in numbers to inject the Glaswegian flavour into every tussock of grass and each cobblestone on the winding road, far beyond bag-piping distance of Dunedin. The gold fields, brick factories and timber mills of the southernmost extremity of the South Island indeed became a home from home for the many of the struggling working class families who dared to venture to the Antipodes from north of the Anglo Scottish border.

Many of these hopeful souls were lured to New Zealand by local businessman Peter McSkimming in his search for labour to man his new venture, which was the manufacture of bathroom products and in particular, lavatory pans. His  red brick home, the Lesmahagow dwelling on the hill at Benhar was typical of his stone factory which was not more than a brisk walk away on the valley floor. Having endured the frustrations of gold mining further south McSkimming had brought his business skills north for, as the number of workers increased, so too did the demand for housing in the area. In that way the hamlet of Benhar became a bigger dot on the map of the Clutha Valley.

1914 was the year he built for himself the brick villa Lesmahagow, imprinting his personal Scottish heritage onto the countryside in lairdish fashion allowing the esteem of the tennis court, croquet green and sunken gardens to elevate his station and keep him one cut above the servile community. To Andrew Stuart the building today looked much as it had then with its rugged lines and return verandas. It had served for many years as a bed and breakfast boarding house under a steadily changing chain of owners. Today its exterior remained 1914, but its interior had been comfortably refurbished with extra bathrooms, yet it retained the ambience and tradition of a hundred years before.

‘There’s a fire in the lounge if you want to go through,’ said Louisa, ‘and dinner will be served in an hour. Roast beef and Yorkshire tonight and there’s coffee on the hob.’

The lounge was as he remembered it from his visits in his youth with the cheer of a blazing log fire justifying the existence of winter. A ceiling to floor double bay window coated in heavy drapes drew a Maginot line of compromise with the chilled external elements. Leather chairs and sofas socially placed on plush carpeting supported the dominance of academia proffered by the rows of books lining two walls. Seven hundred and fifty square feet of floor space, Andrew remembered; total comfort, always warm and inviting.

The furniture was the same, yet new and much thought had been given to retaining the Edwardian character. Other than that he accepted nothing much had changed in the years and he surrendered to the depths of a studded leather armchair. From a bevelled wooden frame above the fireplace the laird, old man McSkimming frowned his disapproval down upon all. Undeterred Andrew succumbed to the heat of the fire, stretched his legs, eased his aching back and almost dozed. He wasn’t aware of Louisa's approach to Louisa until she spoke.

‘A hot toddy,’ she said, ‘in the house. There will be just four of us for dinner if you count you and me. I put your bags in your room.’ A steaming brew in a clay pot was forced into his hands; its spiritual aroma roused his taste buds. ‘We don’t get many wayfarers this time of year. You might want to wash up.’

She withdrew giving him no time to thank her. He got the feeling someone was taking charge and it wasn’t him. He spared a smile. That wasn’t hard to handle. Peg used to take charge and it wasn’t all bad. He spared a thought as to whom the girl he’d left behind would be taking charge of in his absence. As much as he loved her and as much as she had supposedly loved him he knew she wasn’t the kind to be alone for long. The evening meal at Lesmahagow, no matter what the season, followed a regular pattern. Hosts Leon and Louisa Wallace shared a hospitable table with whosoever was guest in their house at the time. No matter who was passing through, there was a place at their table for them; at a price. Added to family numbers, which were three, there was seating for five of those who chose to expand on the bed and breakfast reservations and dine in the typical fashion of exiled Brits.

Tonight Leon was carving and the roasted beef was falling from the bone in the warm convivial atmosphere of the Wallace dining room. Andrew sat opposite daughter Louisa feeling welcomed into the personal conversation of what for the Wallaces was everyday life. Mantovani and Chardonnay formed a strong support team and the aroma of the roast was quick in making him aware he hadn’t eaten since leaving Auckland that morning. Airline cheese and biscuits, amounting to nothing, had sufficed for an appetite destroyed by the experiences of the afternoon, an appetite that was easily inflamed by the bite of horseradish sauce and the crispness of potatoes and parsnips that still glistened with the fat of the oven tray. Years had passed since Andrew had confronted food of this nature. Leon Wallace was talking and Andrew hadn’t been listening. He apologised and asked him to repeat.

‘I asked if you were passing through. You’re not from around here, obviously.’

‘Yes and, yes,’ smiled Andrew, ‘passing through, yes, but yes, from around here, many years back.’ Leon seemed a decent chap. There was no point in playing games. He’d tell him as much truth as was needed to be known. What was to hide? Just a cupboard full of skeletons and it was harder to lie than tell the truth.

Leon’s wife was listening, yet at the same time chastising her daughter.

‘You nicked my name badge again young lady. Where’s your own?’

‘Not sure,’ was the retort, ‘I think I must have put it in the wash.’

Here was a good opportunity for Andrew to change the subject.

‘It must be confusing with two Louisas in the family. You threw me.’

Leon’s reply was coated with humour. ‘Believe me Andrew, it’s more than confusing with just one, but I’ve managed to survive through the years. Lucky, I guess.’

‘Lucky alright,’ chirped his wife who then defined the difference between namesakes. ‘Call me Lou. Everyone does. Lucky, as I said, you’re lucky to have me and lucky I put up with all your nonsense all these years.’

‘There’s a wealth of Stuarts around here,’ remarked Leon, ‘are you related, anywhere?’

The testing moment of truth presented itself and what was to be lost in truth?

‘I have a grandfather, in the Catlins. He’s knocking on a bit. I doubt he would remember me, but I thought I’d look him up all the same; if he’s still around.’

Leon was interested. ‘I know a Stuart down there, in Owaka, Robbie Stuart. He’s a legend.’

‘He could be the one.’

‘Blind Robbie Stuart.’

‘Sounds like the one.’

‘He’s in his nineties.’

‘I know he’s old.’

‘Banjo Robbie, Blind Banjo Robbie.’

‘Grandpa played the banjo. Must be him. How come you know him?’

‘Most folk in these parts know him.’

It was a