It's Still Life

Dead Men Don’t Drown: #14

(catch-up with all episodes here)

Clive doesn’t look surprised when I return with Jacob Macleod’s ring in an envelope, which is either professional discipline or proof that solicitors are born knowing how badly families behave.

He opens the insurance bundle again, dips his pen though he has nothing to write, and says, “Your grandmother wasn’t simply declared a widow, Miss Macleod.”

Across the oak desk he slides a sworn statement, three pages long, each corner softened by age, and each line typed with the dreadful confidence of a machine that never had to live with what it said.

Mary Macleod had signed to say her husband was aboard the trawler when it sailed, that he had no reason to leave Rye Harbour except for honest work, and that no letter, loan, nor private arrangement suggested otherwise.

Beside her signature, the witness had written that she understood false declaration might constitute fraud, and Clive lets one finger rest there until the room seems to lose what little air it had.

“So,” he says quietly, “either she believed every word, or she made certain the law would.”

Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “loan”.  Some images created with Midjourney; all writing is authentically my own original work.

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