Miss Alma looked at the envelopes on the desk, and her sour expression softened to one of apology if not despair. “I am so sorry, missus, that you’re having to deal with that snake, and everything else Master George left you with.”
“If by everything else,” Margaret said, “you mean yourself, and Coral, Mr. Rufus, Magnus, Mr. Banner, Maisie, and everyone here at Sugar Hill, then there’s no reason for regret. You’ve all made me feel so at home. As to young Mr. Griffiths...” She shrugged. “Into every sunny garden, a little rain must fall.”
“If by rain, you mean snake venom, then I caution you to be careful, ma’am.” Miss Alma’s brown eyes reflected decades of intimate—dark—knowledge about the Sweeney family. “That boy’s always been mean and spiteful. He’s like his mama, who’s always done carried her nose so high it’s a wonder she hasn’t sucked up all the bugs in Georgia by now. I know when she was young, she was just trying to be like her daddy so he’d like her—like attracts like, you know. But that don’t excuse how she is, now her daddy’s dead and gone.” She pursed her mouth, frowning. “I wouldn’t trust her, or her son, with my worst enemy’s dog.”
“Well.” Margaret forced a smile. “Good thing I’m not a dog, then, isn’t it?”
THE LETTER FROM ASCOTT, Griffiths, and Gowdy, as it transpired, was a notice of eviction. Included with it was notice that the law firm was in possession of a Last Will and Testament purportedly handwritten by George in January 1916 that revoked all previous wills, including the one granting Margaret Sugar Hill. The alleged new will instead left the entirety of George’s estate to Barrister Cyril Griffiths, with an annuity of five hundred dollars granted to Margaret Anne Millicent Sweeney.
“I don’t know what to say, Mrs. Sweeney,” Lyons murmured when she arrived in his office an hour after opening the letter, his greying eyebrows drawn in scholarly regret. “I would have to look at the new will to confirm it as valid or forged. Even then, if the writing is similar to George’s...You could sign an affidavit confirming the signature on the letter that I received, allegedly from you, requesting transfer of Sugar Hill records to Ascott, Griffiths, and Gowdy, as forged. “Even with that, however, I can’t promise that I can convince a judge that the new will is also a forgery.”
“They claim this new will was found tucked in some of Sugar Hill’s files when they were preparing them to send back to you.”
He nodded, his expression grave.
“Is that possible?”
“Anything is possible. Whether it’s provable is the crux of our dilemma.”
“Can you get a hold of this other will to verify its authenticity?”
“I could ask Judge Fairview to look it over—”
“Is he a graphologist?”
“Graphologist?”
“Yes. Someone experienced in the study of handwriting, who’d recognise forgery.” She smiled when he raised his eyebrows. “As a teacher, you learn to distinguish your student’s handwriting from that of a sibling, peer, or parent. And if you’re me, you take interest in reading about a science dedicated to identifying written fraudulence.”
“I’ve heard of the practice,” he said. “But have not met anyone associated with it, though I’ll get Roberts on it today. In the meantime, I’ll file a brief with Judge Fairview requesting a postponement of eviction, or any other action, until both wills are reviewed and a decision is made on the validity of each. I must caution you; this letter is signed by Emerson Ascott. He’s as straight as they come. He would never countenance signing off on an eviction notice or will founded in forgery.”
“Unless he was not aware?”
Lyons nodded slowly. “Barrister’s had over half a year with Sugar Hill’s files, so he’d have access to a great deal of George’s correspondence. It is in the realm of possibility he acted without Ascott’s knowledge and slipped the forged will between files where it would be found. It’s a stretch, but one I’m willing to extend myself on, on your behalf.”
“It’s no more a stretch than George changing his will after we married, Mr. Lyons. He told me he planned to dedicate the rest of his life to making me happy. We even talked about...children.”
She cleared her throat, remembering how she’d fled from him—from his offer to adopt a child—because she was too cowardly to risk the heartache that accompanied rejection should another adoption attempt fall through.
Drawing a deep breath and shaking off the regret, she met Mr. Lyons’s sorrowful gaze with an enquiring smile. “Does that sound like a man who’d leave everything to a nephew he hardly knew—and to hear Mr. Banner tell it, didn’t even like—and so little to the woman he loved?”
“No, it does not,” he agreed. “You’re right. He despised Barrister Junior. Wasn’t too fond of Esther, either. The only one of the Griffiths family he truly liked was Barrister Senior.”
“Which is why I feel so strongly that Barrister Junior is acting in bad faith.”
“If he is, and we’re able to prove it, he’ll be disbarred.”
“That is not my problem, Mr. Lyons. And thank you,” she added with sincerity. “You’re an honourable man. I hate to drag you into this, but I really don’t know who I can trust besides you and Mr. Banner.”
“Don’t apologise, Mrs. Sweeney. I considered George more than a client—I thought of him as the son I never had.” He reclined in his chair and clasped his hand over the gold-paisley waistcoat stretched tautly over his abdomen as his face took on a contemplative look. “He used to come to me, not only for official business, but to seek my counsel on issues better defined as personal. You see, after his mother died and his sister married, he was quite isolated, despite the many people at Sugar Hill. His father, Cyril, was a...difficult man to say the least. He had high expectations of George. And when I say high, I mean he expected his son to be like him in every way. Of course, that was like asking a cottontail to think and act like cottonmouth. They might share a common prefix, but they’re unrelated in every other way.”
“Yes,” she said. “Miss Alma and Mr. Banner enlightened me about his father. And grandfather.”
“Then you know. Cyril Sweeney, like his father Terrence, was quick, and deadly when crossed. He spared no one, least of all his family. But George was his most frequent target. That boy could do no right from the day he was born second to a girl. When I met him, he was nine years old. I was twenty-five and a bona fide lawyer, looking to set up shop. But on that day, I was fishing. George happened along and asked me if I’d caught anything. I said not yet, but I was sure if kept at it, I would. He asked me how I could be so sure, and I told him, “Because if you keep at anything long enough, you’re bound to achieve it.” He seemed to find that inspiring because he asked, “So if I keep wishing my pa was dead, he’ll die?’”
Lyons reached for a glass of water on his desk and sipped and swallowed before resuming. “I was grateful I had my back to him at the time, because had he seen my shock, he might not have shared what he did, and we may not have struck up a friendship. As it was, I pretended I was concentrating on my jig whilst I considered a reply. I remember feeling grateful for my legal schooling because it had prepared me, albeit in raw manner, to control my responses until I’d formulated an adequate rebuttal or new line of questioning. In this instance, however, I pursued neither. Instead, I asked him what would change for him if his father died. His reply was immediate: ‘My mother would be happier.’
“That seemed to open some sort of dam, because after I asked, ‘Your mother is unhappy?’, he spoke nonstop for ten minutes. I learned things that broke my heart, naive and youthful as it was despite my conviction that I was a mature and learned man. He was a deeply unhappy and lonely boy who feared daily for his mother’s life, and with good cause as it turned out. He was ten when she was laid to rest after a fall down the stairs at Sugar Hill.”
“Oh, how dreadful,” she murmured. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to talk about his mother with her. “But you don’t believe she fell?”
&n
bsp; “She never even made it to the stairs,” he said. “Cyril claimed he was in his study working late when he heard a crash about eleven o’clock and found her bruised and bleeding but alive at the bottom of the stairs. He carried her back to bed at her insistence and went to bed himself. When he woke up in the morning, he found her dead next to him. But George had heard his father yelling at his mother in their bedroom. He’d heard him slapping her, and her begging him to stop. Then there was a crash, followed by silence. Ten minutes later, his father left his room and, seeing George peeking out of his door, yelled at him to get back in bed. Which he did. He awoke to Miss Alma’s keening in the morning.”
She clasped a hand to her mouth. “But...why wasn’t he arrested?”
“Cyril?” Lyons huffed a sardonic laughed. “Who was going to contradict his story? He was the master. No one spoke against him, certainly not his son. He was terrified of Cyril. He stayed quiet and hidden as much as physically possible. It was only at the fishing hole he felt safe to talk. I’m just eternally glad I was there that first Sunday and made it my routine to go every Sunday afterwards. George didn’t always show, but when he did, he revealed bits of himself, and more about his father. I grew to detest even a mention of the man. I only went to his funeral because George asked me. I was surprised by the amount of people that did show, until I realised most were less interested in paying their respects than they were in introducing their unmarried daughters to George. They assumed because he was soft-spoken and reserved, he was a dullard ripe for their money-hungry plucking.” Lyons abruptly straightened in his chair, his expression apologetic. “Forgive me, Mrs. Sweeney. I do tend to wax on sometimes. Now, about this injunction...”
Fifteen minutes later, Margaret exited his office into a peach-coloured afternoon. The midday sun cast a shimmer over the storefronts of white-trimmed brick buildings and the green leaves of cherry trees lining the boulevard. She paused to drink it in and appreciate the prettiness of the town, so vastly different from the ugliness of some who had, and still did, call it home.
“Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in.”
Margaret turned to find one of her thoughts had manifested in corporeal form. She forced a smile.
“Mr. Griffiths.”
He flicked a glance at Lyons’s office-building door. A reptilian smile curved his mouth as he brought his gaze back to her. “Got the letter, I see.”
“I’m afraid that upon the advice of counsel, I must decline to speak with you. If you’ll excuse me.” She looked at Magnus, who was waiting with the coach. “I’ll be a few more minutes.”
Barrister frowned as she swept past him on the walk.
“Discuss what with me?” he demanded. “It was an eviction notice. Not an invitation to parlay. You’ve got ten days to get out.”
Head up and shoulders straight, she pulled open a door two down from Lyons’s office. Stencilled on the front window were the words Bellman County Sheriff’s Office.
Chapter 19
Between Scylla and Charybdis
ASH PUFFED BENEATH Joe’s boots, and soot begrimed him from head to foot, forming inky trails along his arms and abdomen as it mixed with the sweat streaming off of him. Straightening, he swiped his forearm across his brow and arched his back, wincing with each popping crack of his vertebrae.
Like Joe, Big Ray had a chequered bandanna tied around his mouth and nose, and like Joe, his bare upper body glistened with sweat and streaks of soot. Unlike Joe, he was built like the coal-fired locomotive he resembled, huge and packed with dense muscle that bulged his blue-black skin. He glanced over.
“Something wrong, boss?”
Joe shook his head and, adjusting his gloved grip on his shovel, resumed scraping up ash to toss in the hole in the earth at the epicentre of what had been his home for ten years—the only home Maisie had known prior to moving into the big house. Not that that the manor was her home now. It was simply a place to stay for all of them until more permanent accommodations were decided on.
“I presume, from your advising Miss Maisie of my desire to help her learn braille, that you intend to stay, Mr. Banner?”
“It never crossed my mind not to.”
Guilt twanged through him at the ease with which he’d offered up that lie to her. But maybe it wasn’t a lie.
Why else had he drafted his resignation letter, and two letters of inquiry to the plantation owners who’d asked him to contact them should he ever think of leaving Sugar Hill—one in Savannah and one in Florida—and left them all in his desk for a month, undated and unsigned?
Now all three were specks of ash swirling around his ankles like the black fury in his chest threatening to choke off his air every time he scooped another spade full.
Huffing a grunt of frustration, he flung more charred chunks into the three-quarters-full hole and immediately glanced right when a flash caught his eye. Frowning, he watched the spot in the trees, but the flash didn’t appear again.
“Boss?” Big Ray was second in seniority to Jericho. Joe had left Jericho to oversee the fields when he’d dragged Big Ray away from the plough and fallow field Mrs. Sweeney had agreed could be put into production to help him get the cottage debris buried.
“I thought I saw something...Don’t look,” he added when Big Ray started to turn as the flash flared again. “I think someone’s watching us, but I don’t want them to know I’ve seen them. Pretend we’re talking.”
Big Ray obliged by leaning on his shovel as he assumed the relaxed posture of someone engaged in conversation.
“Someone what works here?” he murmured.
“Can’t tell.” Joe folded his hands on the shovel’s handle. “But who here would skulk around in the bushes rather than come over and give us a hand?”
“Want me to go see?”
“No. You keep working. I’ll head up towards the main house and then double back behind the hedge.”
Big Ray nodded and went back to work, while Joe set aside his shovel and started towards the main house. As soon as he was past the hedge, he turned and followed it down the treeline before weaving his way silently through the woods to where he estimated the onlooker to be hidden. Through a gap in the trees he could see Big Ray kneeled at the creek, his bandanna pulled down to his neck as he scooped water with his hand to drink.
The watcher crouched, focussed on Big Ray. Joe nabbed him by the shirt collar. The boy whipped around, his arms winging out and one hand opening to drop something. Joe glanced at it, then at the boy.
“Little Ray?” he said, more confused than angry. “What are you doing spying on your pa and me?”
Raymond Marks, Jr., or Little Ray as he was called to distinguish him from his father, sputtered and glanced towards the creek where Big Ray was on his feet and returning to the heap of ash and debris.
“Come on.” Joe grabbed what the boy had dropped and then guided him out of the trees. Big Ray looked over.
“Ray?” he said.
Little Ray returned his father’s frown with wide-eyed anxiety. He still possessed a rounding layer of baby fat over his cheeks that was incongruent with his bony frame and made him look about three years old, when Joe knew he’d turned eight earlier that year.
Joe glanced at the object Little Ray had dropped and Joe had retrieved.
Its metal housing had been scorched by fire and one side rubbed clear to expose the brass, but its shape remained unchanged: a dachshund. The head flipped up and back to expose the flint roller. Joe rasped his thumb over the metal cylinder, eliciting a spark.
“Where did you get this, Little Ray?” he asked cautiously, despite a faint sense of triumph humming through him.
Little Ray’s stalk-like neck pulsed.
“Go ahead, boy, answer.” Big Ray tapped a huge index finger on his son’s close-shaved skull.
Tremors rattled Little Ray’s small body and sent an earthquake of shame through Joe.
Crouching, he said softly, “It’s all right, Little Ray. Tell us where
you got this, and you won’t get any trouble from me.”
Little Ray glanced at his father, clearly debating how much trouble he might yet be in with his father. Then he darted a look at the charcoal ruins before exhaling a long breath.
“There.” He pointed. “The man who...who set the fire, dropped it.”
“Set the fire?” Joe was careful to keep his tone curious, without accusation. “You saw who set the fire?”
Little Ray darted another look at his father, who returned his son’s questioning glance with an expression of implacable expectation.
Little Ray met Joe’s gaze.
“He...dropped it, sir, when he lit the kerosene. The flame jumped up and bit his hand, and he dropped it. I was over there,” he said, pointing to the trees, “hunting chicken o’ the woods like Gran sent me to do. I was crouched down, picking some, when I saw someone over here. He was pouring from a can, and then he stuck his hand out, and then the fire blew up all around him, and he...he dropped something and ran away.”
“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Joe asked with surprising calm given the storm of outrage building inside him.
My One True Love Page 18
