Gerald Stanton planted his elbows on the desk, and pressed his fingers against his forehead. Once he had returned from seeing Maggie Marsh, the whole of the rest of the night lay before him in which to draft and type out a substitute will. Nothing could have been more useful than Doctor Lang’s request that he should go over now to Edgehill Court. It was vital to the substitution plan that the copy of the unsigned genuine will should be removed from Sir Miles’s desk tonight. The drawer in which he had been instructed to put it had been unlocked. Maggie? Gerald considered Maggie Marsh, and finally dismissed the idea of her having investigated her employer’s private papers. He had known her for over ten years in her present post: she was just not that sort of woman. But she had daily help, and there were strange nurses in the house now. Obviously he must act tonight. Somehow he must ensure that he talk to Maggie in the study, and get her out of the room for as long as possible.
He got out his car and started off for Edgehill Court like an automaton, his thoughts wholly absorbed by these and other practical considerations. Suddenly, as he drove along the deserted ridge road, the significance of this preoccupation was borne in on him, and horror at himself overwhelmed him. In a flash, however, his mind provided an antidote. Of course, he reasoned, Uncle Miles was a very old man suffering the after-effects of an appalling shock. Roger LeWarne, destined to carry on the family tradition of involvement with Corbury, was dead. Perfectly understandable that Uncle Miles could now think of nothing but compensating the town for its loss, and had taken the shortest cut to this end. Had he been his normal balanced self, he could not have failed to see that the best solution was to install his god-daughter, Corbury born and bred, at the Court in Roger’s place.
The idea was convincing, and proliferated rapidly. By the time Gerald drew up outside Edgehill Court it had established itself in his thinking.
Maggie Marsh let him in, a pathetic figure with her tear-stained face and bulbous eyes full of anxiety. To his satisfaction she led him unhesitatingly to the study. The unattended fire had sunk to a heap of grey ash, and she hastily dragged forward an electric heater. Once they had sat down, the floodgates of her speech were opened.
‘It’s good of you to come, Mr Stanton,’ she repeated. ‘It’s not that I wouldn’t do anything in the world for Sir Miles, as God knows. But it’s the responsibility — feeling there’s not a relative to turn to, now that Mr Roger’s gone.’
‘But Maggie, you’ve got me to turn to,’ Gerald reassured her. ‘I should have been here hours ago if Doctor Lang had been able to contact me: I was out for the evening, you see. You know that I’m Sir Miles’s solicitor. He has put all his affairs in my hands, and I can deal with any problem that comes along. You’ve only to ring the office during working hours, and my house in the evenings. And I’ll look in regularly.’
She released a long unsteady sigh.
‘Oh, sir, that’s a real weight off my mind. It’s been the thinking about what I’d do if he were to go.’
‘If Sir Miles died, all the necessary arrangements would be my responsibility. But from what Doctor Lang said to me just now, I don’t think we need take quite such a gloomy view, you know, Maggie. In fact, he assured me that Sir Miles would be perfectly capable of signing his will tomorrow as arranged, so I’ll be over again at half past ten.’
Skilfully he led the conversation on to practical details such as the arrangements for household expenses. Presently he glanced up at the clock. Maggie Marsh gave a start.
‘Oh, sir,’ she exclaimed, ‘and I’ve never thought to ask you if you’d care for anything, and at this hour of the night, too!’
‘Well, now you mention it,’ he said, smiling at her, ‘I could do with a cuppa and a sandwich. It seems a long time since supper.’
‘I’ll get you a nice little snack right away sir,’ she told him, and immediately hurried out of the room.
Perfect, he thought, that the suggestion which left him alone in the room should come from her. He was over at the desk in a flash, pulling open the bottom left-hand drawer. He scrutinised it intently, and was positive that its contents had not been touched. He remembered, when he had put in the copy of the original will, how he had slipped it under a folder, and one corner had projected slightly. He swiftly extracted the will and put it into the pocket of his sheepskin car coat. Then he made a rapid examination of the contents of the other drawers. Everything was orderly: classified receipts, insurance policies, reports of charitable organisations, unused stationery .... all quite impersonal. No unanswered letters, no notes on the proposed changes in the will. The memory of Sir Miles throwing his rough list of revised legacies into the fire returned reassuringly. He looked carefully all round the room and returned to his chair as sounds heralding Maggie’s reappearance came from the hall.
A quarter of an hour later he was on his way home. The absolute ease with which his immediate aims had been fulfilled produced in him an almost hypnotic sense of destiny moving inevitably to fulfilment. But ahead of him were some hours of concentrated work. The actual drafting of the will to be substituted for the original presented little difficulty. The legacies were unaltered, except that Shirley’s name must be removed from the list. Then, instead of the clauses dealing with the bequest to Corbury Borough Council, there must be a much briefer section designating her as residuary legatee. Care was needed here. It was important that the new will should appear to have roughly the same number of pages as the old. The elderly and the sick were sometimes surprisingly observant of detail.
It was nearly five when all was finished. Gerald stood up, stretching his cramped limbs. In spite of the central heating, traces of the damp cold of the November night had seeped into the closely curtained room, and he felt chilled. Bracing himself for a final effort, he tore the two copies of the genuine will and the rough notes of the redrafting he had been doing into tiny pieces. These he disposed of in the downstairs lavatory, flushing the cistern twice. Finally he put the two copies of the substituted will into his briefcase with some other papers, poured himself out a stiff whisky which he swallowed neat, and went upstairs to bed to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep in what remained of the night. As he undressed he found himself convinced that he was doing for Sir Miles what the old man would obviously have done himself, had he been in his normal state of mind.
He awoke to find the same conviction dominant in his mind, and it was further strengthened by the matter-of-fact reaction of his young partner to the news of Sir Miles’s stroke, and the impending signing of the will. For a brief moment on the drive over to Edgehill Court he panicked, visited by a horrific flash in which he saw himself discovered, ruined and imprisoned. But the casual question of one of his clerks about a wholly different matter dispelled the nightmare, and the sight of Dr Lang’s car parked in the drive restored the invincible certainty that everything was working out according to plan, because Shirley’s inheriting had been meant to happen.
Sir Miles’s bedroom was full of morning sunlight. Doctor Lang, standing by the bed was breezy.
‘Oh, here you are, Stanton,’ he said. ‘My patient’s in fine form this morning.’
Unexpectedly finding it more of an effort than he had expected, Gerald went to the bedside. The slightly distorted mouth managed a smile.
‘Glad to see you, my boy,’ it said, thickly but intelligibly.
‘Very sorry about this, Uncle Miles. We’ll soon have you up and doing, though.’
‘Of course we shall,’ interposed Doctor Lang. ‘Now then, nurse, if the pillows are raised just a bit. There’s a table over there for you witness chaps to write at.’
The nurse dealt with the pillows. The two clerks retreated to the far side of the room, and stood watching awkwardly. Gerald Stanton opened his briefcase and extracted the will which he had typed in the small hours. By a judicious spacing he had contrived that there was little besides the preamble to the testator’s signature on the last page. He folded back the overlying pages.
‘I’ve fille
d in the date, Uncle Miles,’ he said. ‘Here’s your own pen, so if you’ll just sign your name here, while the witnesses look on...’
He helped the nurse steady the blotter. The signature was unexpectedly firm.
‘That’s done,’ the twisted mouth said, more distinctly this time. ‘Don’t forget the copy in my desk. Look after ’em both. I don’t want to bother … any … more.’
‘I’ll do that thing,’ Gerald assured him, and took the document across to the two witnesses.
A few minutes later he was walking downstairs in the euphoria of things falling into place for him like the conclusion of a well-rung peal of bells. There followed, with complete naturalness, a short conversation with Doctor Lang before the latter hurried off, and some reassuring words with Maggie in the intimacy of the kitchen. Finally came the visit to the study to collect the copy of the will at Sir Miles’s request.
On returning to the office he was at once immersed in the morning’s business held up by the visit to Edgehill Court. At lunchtime he sent out for sandwiches and ate them in the solitude of his room, in the atmosphere of slight unreality that characterises a return to normal routine after a holiday. He considered at length what he should say to Shirley. Most fortunately, as he had told Sir Miles, she had an unusual sense of professional propriety. Her speculations would be kept to herself. He decided to talk freely about the signing of the will, and intimate that eventually it would make a difference to her.
She had promised to ring him as soon as she arrived home in the afternoon, and each time a call was put through to him he expected to hear her voice. At a quarter to four, the buzzer went again.
‘Doctor Lang would like to speak to you, Mr Stanton,’ his secretary told him.
Suddenly taut, he picked up the receiver.
‘Stanton speaking,’ he said.
‘Lang here. LeWarne’s gone. In his sleep, half an hour ago.’
Chapter 3
Bernard Lister learnt of Sir Miles LeWarne’s death on the following Saturday from the Corbury Courier. The news was splashed across the front page and there was a leader entitled THE END OF AN ERA FOR CORBURY. He was surprised at his sense of personal loss. Probing into it, he decided that his reaction underlined the unhappiness of his early years in the town. If life in the Plowman household had been even moderately happy, the occasional kindnesses of Sir Miles would hardly stand out like beacons in his memory.
At once he began to regret the diffidence which had deterred him from keeping in touch with his benefactor. The familiar sense of his ineptitude in personal relationships descended on him like a black cloud. As he read the lengthy obituary, a reference to Shirley Stanton as the deceased’s godchild infuriated him.
‘Bitch,’ he muttered. ‘The old chap never meant a bloody thing to her.’
The thought that Shirley would almost certainly have been left a legacy added fuel to the flames. He sat clenching and unclenching his hands, his lips drawn back unpleasantly. Suddenly he shouted aloud a string of abusive epithets, which seemed to hang and vibrate in the air around him. Then, as always after one of his emotional storms, he felt degraded, and sank into self-depreciation.
Presently, in an effort to rally himself, he picked up the Courier again. The sight of the most recent list of subscribers to the Millenary Fund was a welcome distraction. He had by no means abandoned his intention of looking into the authenticity of the Corbury charters. At the moment he was fully occupied with the proofs of his forthcoming book on post-Conquest agriculture in England, and a series of articles for one of the historical journals. But he should be relatively free after Easter, and the Millenary was still nearly two years ahead.
His book was published at Easter, and its favourable reception in academic circles was a tonic to his self-confidence. He took the busy summer term in his stride, and allowed himself a fortnight’s austere but pleasurable holiday, spent in visiting lesser-known Romanesque churches in France. Refreshed by this break, he returned to his flat in Warhampton and took up the research on Corbury with renewed zest.
He was now concentrating on the text of the charters, and soon found that the first recorded enrolment, or official registration in Chancery of these, dated only from 1450. This enrolment cited a series of earlier charters from the thirteenth century onwards, but none of these had been registered. Bernard Lister was highly elated to find this suggestion of possible forgery by Corbury burgesses of the fifteenth century, anxious to obtain such rights as quittance of their feudal dues, and exemption from tolls on the sale of merchandise.
Following a hunch, he looked up the texts of the charters granted to other towns by Henry I and his successors, and immediately made a breakthrough. He discovered that those of the county town of Alchester were almost identical in wording with those cited in the Corbury enrolment of 1450, even to the names of the witnesses. The correspondence was so overwhelming that he could hardly believe his eyes. He was well aware that perfectly genuine charters often included clauses copied from those of other towns, but surely the Corbury-Alchester situation went far beyond this? Was it possible, he speculated, that the men of fifteenth-century Corbury could really have got away with it? He came to the conclusion that they could. It was a period of political confusion arising from the York-Lancaster rivalries. Chancery clerks had been demonstrably slack over checking previous enrolments in other cases. And of course there was the obvious explanation of bribery, both at Alchester and in London.
So far so good, he thought, but to commit himself to taking the matter up publicly he would need practically incontrovertible evidence. He had no intention of sticking his neck out. He decided to go down to Alchester and spend the last week of the vacation studying the originals of both the towns’ charters.
On the following day he made the journey by car, and put up at an hotel in Alchester’s cathedral close. The City Archivist, an elderly man, was welcoming and there was a flattering touch of respect in his comments on Agricultural Changes in Post-Conquest England. The City Records Office was quiet and well-found, and every facility for Bernard Lister’s investigations was made available: the atmosphere was congenial. Before he settled down to work he wandered around, scrutinising the shelves, delighted by the wealth of historical material. Parish registers, deeds, wills ... mute witnesses of generations of human happiness and misery, with unrecognised consequences stemming right down the centuries into the present, he thought.
Presently he established himself at a secluded table and carefully extracted a small packet wrapped in soft paper from an envelope bearing an index number. Inside it was a folded parchment, Alchester’s first charter, granted by Henry I in 1110. It was exquisitely inscribed in the Chancery hand of the period, in the fadeless medieval ink compounded of oak gall and iron. The parchment was discoloured, but perfectly legible, and the cords from which the impression of the Great Seal of England had been lost, still bore traces of the wax. With a touch of emotion Bernard Lister began to study the wording of the document.
It was on his third day in the Records Office that the Archivist came along to enquire into his progress, and stood looking over his shoulder at papers on the table.
‘I see you’re just starting on the Alchester Edward III,’ he said. ‘That’s the one that vandal John Todd had the effrontery to emend. Look at that! ’
He pointed to a superimposed alteration of a personal name, and a margin note in faded blue ink.
‘Who was the blighter?’ Bernard Lister asked indignantly.
‘A nineteenth-century amateur historian of this city. He seems to have spent his time delving into records of local families, and discovered that the name of the witness given as Robertas le Skinner should have been “le Spinner”. The clerk who wrote out the charter obviously made a slip, and it got by. So Todd waded in, and staked a claim to immortality on a signed note in the margin. We were curious about the alteration a year or two ago, and tried the violet lamp on it.’
Bernard Lister caught his breath.
> ‘Hold on a minute,’ he said, and reached for the Corbury charter of 1450. ‘My God, it’s “Robertas le Skinner” in this one! ’
The Archivist whistled.
‘You’re as home and dry as you’ll ever be, aren’t you?’
Like many insecure people Bernard Lister overreacted to success as well as to failure. After entertaining the clearly impressed City Archivist to lunch, he left Alchester feeling exhilarated, his mood intensified by the cloudless sky and mellow sunshine of a perfect autumn afternoon. Suddenly he was seized with the astonishing idea of making a detour to Corbury. Twenty years ago, he had sworn to himself never to enter the place again. He debated, and found the prospect of strolling in its streets, conscious of now being able to debunk its absurd pretensions, quite irresistible. His foot increased its pressure on the accelerator. A few miles further on, and with a sense of unreality at his action, he took a right fork.
He drove fast, and the relentless Roman road fell away rapidly behind him. Soon, with an irritating slight constriction at his heart, he saw the distant blur on the edge of the downs which was Corbury. All too swiftly the blur resolved itself into the familiar skyline dominated by the tower of St Gundryth’s church, and the variegated spill of buildings down the scarp into the plain below. He could see that the town had expanded appreciably at this lower level. Now he could pick out Plowman’s Pottery, and wondered with sudden savagery how that beefy oaf Mark was making out. One thing was certain: the traffic was ten times what it used to be. He ground up the High Street in bottom gear in the wake of an oil tanker ... shops, some familiar, more new and brash ... where best to park? Remembering the spacious forecourt of St Gundryth’s he turned right at the top of the hill but found closely packed lines of cars in front of the church. As he hesitated a man drove out, and he hastily ran his car into the vacant space.
Buried in the Past Page 4
