Untimely Death

by Cyril Hare

  Pettigrew was a common law man to the marrow of his bones, and when, a few weeks later, he pushed open the door of Chancery Court VI, he wished with all his heart that it was Queen’s Bench Court IV just round the corner. The whole atmosphere was alien. The very usher’s shoes squeaked equity. For all the superficial familiarity of his surroundings, he felt a stranger in a strange land.

  At least, there were plenty of familiar faces in the body of the court. Not without surprise, he saw Mrs. Gorman sitting in a corner near the back. Her quiet, patient face seemed in some way altered, but he could not determine in what the change consisted. He looked round for Mr. Joliffe, and found him in the opposite corner, at the furthest possible remove from his daughter that was consistent with sitting in the same row. They were ignoring one another’s presence with an intensity possible only to close relations. Further forward, just behind counsel’s seats, was Tom Gorman, stiff and uncomfortable in a new suit. Sitting with Tom was another, smaller man with a strong family likeness to him. He was whispering to a man with a bright-red west-country complexion whom Pettigrew took to be the solicitor from Wiveliscombe. Then Mallett appeared silently in the doorway and padded quietly down to take his seat behind Tom. Mallett seemed out of place in these surroundings. Still more so did the man who followed him—a plain-clothes policeman if ever Pettigrew saw one.

  The stage seemed to be set. Pettigrew, waiting patiently for the curtain to go up, wondered what the play was to be about. He had forfeited the opportunity of finding out, because, from a mixture of motives which he had never brought himself to analyse, he had declined Mr. Fitzgibbon’s pressing invitation to give him a proof of his evidence. He was attending obedient to his subpoena to testify in a cause the nature of which he could only guess. Even the parties were uncertain. The cause list stuck up in the corridor outside the court told him that the Plaintiff was Gorman, R. P., and the initials meant nothing to him. He derived a certain amusement from the situation.

  Manktelow came in, talking to another counsel, evidently his opponent, whose face was unfamiliar to Pettigrew. While his clerk deposited on the desk in front of him a formidable brief and half a dozen volumes of Law Reports, he looked round the court and caught Pettigrew’s eye. But before he could do more than smile his recognition, the door at the back of the bench was opened, and the court rose as Mr. Justice Pomeroy entered to take his seat.

  *

  “May it please your lordship,” said Manktelow. “In this case I appear on behalf of the Plaintiff, Mr. Richard Petherick Gorman, who is a party interested in the settlement to which I shall have to refer your lordship in a moment. My learned friend Mr. Twentyman appears for the Southern Bank Ltd., who are the trustees of the settlement and the first Defendants in the action. The second Defendant, Mrs. Edna Mary Gorman”—he lowered his voice to break the shocking news—“she, my lord, is not represented. She has entered an appearance but taken no further part in the proceedings. She appears here in person.”

  “In person, Mr. Manktelow? In a case of this nature, that is very unusual.”

  “Unusual and unfortunate, my lord. I think I should tell your lordship that those instructing me have more than once urged Mrs. Gorman to take advice in the matter. So far as the costs were concerned my client was prepared to give an undertaking——”

  “Is Mrs. Gorman present?”

  “I am here, my lord.”

  Mrs. Gorman stood up, a not particularly good-looking woman, dressed in country-made black clothes, her low voice barely carrying across the court. Once more, Pettigrew was struck by a change in her appearance. He could not determine what it was, but for some reason or another she seemed a far more impressive personality now than he remembered her.

  “I am here, my lord,” she repeated.

  “Mrs. Gorman, I understand——”

  “As this gentleman says, I haven’t got a lawyer,” Mrs. Gorman went on as though the Judge had not spoken. And for some reason her calm insistence on saying her piece in complete disregard of the fact that he was addressing her did not seem to savour of disrespect. “I don’t think I need a lawyer, seeing that all I want is for the truth to be known. I’m sure you’ll help me over that, my lord. I only hope the truth won’t hurt my children, but if it does it can’t be helped.”

  She sat down again. There was an awkward little pause. Then the Judge cleared his throat and said, “Very well, Mr. Manktelow.”

  “As your lordship pleases. My lord, if I may come at once to the point of this action, it is to determine the order in which two of the persons named in the settlement died. One of them is Gilbert Amos Gorman, and he died, according to his Death Certificate which is before me, on Sunday, September the 10th. My lord, no question arises as to that death. It was a natural one—polycystic disease of the kidneys, I observe—and nobody doubts that he did in fact expire on that date. The other person is John Richard Gorman, the husband of the second Defendant, and the cause of his death is described as shock and internal haemorrhage, the date being recorded in the Certificate as Tuesday, September the 12th. My lord, the contention of the Plaintiff is that that date is wrong. His case will be that John died on or before Saturday, September the 9th.”

  “You say that the Death Certificate is wrong, Mr. Manktelow?”

  “My lord, I do, and in order that I may put the difficulties before me as clearly as possible, let me add that the Certificate was issued in accordance with the instructions of the coroner after an inquest with a jury. My task is to persuade your lordship that the coroner was wrong. I say that he was wrong, that the witnesses, lay and medical, called before him were wrong, that they were deliberately misled and deceived in the interests of the second Defendant and to the prejudice of my client, the Plaintiff.”

  The judicial eyebrows shot up. “You say that Mrs. Gorman did all that, Mr. Manktelow?”

  “My lord, I do not. It is, of course, not necessary to my case to affix responsibility to anybody, provided I prove my contention, but incidentally I shall call evidence indicating who in my submission is responsible.”

  “Very well. Perhaps you will come to the settlement now?”

  “If your lordship pleases. My lord, those instructing me have prepared a table shewing the pedigree of the various persons involved, and if your lordship has it beside you when the settlement is being read, it will perhaps be of some assistance.”

  Manktelow’s instructing solicitors had not been niggardly in the matter of providing copies of the pedigree, and Pettigrew with a little manœuvring was able to obtain one. He was disappointed to find that it did not give in full what he knew to be the almost endless ramifications of the Gorman family but confined itself to those with whom the settlement was concerned. None the less he found it not without interest:

  “In preparing the exhibit, my lord,” Manktelow was saying, “I have ventured to substitute for. the baptismal names of the characters the names by which they were habitually known, in order to avoid confusion. Thus John Richard Gorman is Jack and Richard Petherick is Dick.”

  “I guessed as much, Mr. Manktelow.”

  “Your lordship is very good. If I may now turn to the settlement….”

  Pettigrew had no settlement to turn to, but he was able to follow the story adequately enough from Manktelow’s narrative. All the older characters in the pedigree, with their picturesque scriptural names, were long since dead. The proceedings concerned the trust created years before by Samuel, the oldest and, no doubt, by far the wealthiest of the Gormans. It was his hand that stretched out from the grave to manipulate the destinies of his descendants and collaterals.

  Clearly, Samuel had been a believer, as the country phrase goes, in “tying his property up”. Indeed, he had tied it up about as tightly as the law allowed. In the process of doing so, he had shewn a complete disregard for the interests of the female members of the family. So far as this document was concerned, they might not have existed. His object appeared to have been to preserve the property intact and to pr
eserve it in the male line. Like every lawyer, Pettigrew had met with this unamiable eccentricity before, but there was a peculiarity about these particular dispositions which he did not understand until Manktelow made it clear.

  “I may summarize the limitations in the settlement as follows,” he said: “to his son Gilbert for his life, and on Gilbert’s death to his brother Eli for his life. On Eli’s death——”

  “Can you explain, Mr. Manktelow, why there is no provision for Gilbert’s children? I am aware that in the event he died unmarried, but he was only a young man at the time of the settlement, and the settlor must surely have contemplated that he would have issue.”

  “My lord, that is exactly what the settlor did not contemplate. As the result of a disease of the kidneys contracted in his youth Gilbert was rendered to all intents incapable of marriage, and his father in making the settlement disregarded the possibility.”

  “I see. Pray continue.”

  “If your lordship pleases. On Eli’s death, then, the property is to go to Eli’s eldest and other sons successively in tail male. I shall have occasion to say something on what I submit is the effect of that provision in the events that have happened, but at this point I should draw your lordship’s attention to the fact that Eli, who was of course alive at the date of the settlement, died before his brother Samuel, and that he in fact left one son only, Jack.”

  “So far, then, the effect of the settlement is—to Gilbert for life and on his decease to Jack.”

  “To Jack in tail male, my lord.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Please go on, Mr. Manktelow, and don’t waste time.”

  “Your lordship is very good. Proceeding, then, we find that the settlement provides that on the failure of Eli’s—that is to say Jack’s—male issue the property is to be settled upon the junior line. The limitation is similar—to Job for his life and upon Job’s death to his eldest and other sons successively in tail. And once more the position is simplified by the fact that Job predeceased his brother Samuel, and left one son only—Dick.”

  The Judge yawned.

  “It all seems remarkably simple, Mr. Manktelow, so far. I don’t at the moment appreciate why it should be a matter of concern whether or not Gilbert predeceased Jack. The limitation being to males, and Jack having left daughters only …”

  “I think that your lordship will see the significance of the question when I tell your lordship that two years ago, that is to say during the lifetime of Gilbert and without his consent, Jack by deed barred his entail.”

  Once, many years before, Pettigrew had had the good fortune to find himself in the company of an aged ornithologist at the very moment when a hoopoe descended from the sky on to the lawn outside his drawing-room window. He had never forgotten the varied expressions on his face at that moment—the look of blank incredulity merging into excitement as certainty succeeded doubt, the excitement itself subsiding into blissful contentment at the achievement of a lifelong ambition. With astonishment he realized that Manktelow’s prosaic words had produced exactly the same effect on Mr. Justice Pomeroy as the hoopoe had on the birdman all those years ago.

  “Barred the entail, Mr. Manktelow?” he was saying. “Is it your case that Jack created a base fee?”

  Manktelow was smiling proudly. It was his hoopoe, all right, there was not a doubt of it. “Precisely, my lord,” he said.

  “Bless my soul! A base fee! How remarkable! I don’t know when I last—— A base fee! This is really very interesting indeed! Pray go on.”

  I wish, thought Pettigrew, that I had paid more attention to those lectures on real property when I was a student. I wish I had gone into Chancery chambers—no, I don’t really, of course, but I wish I had at least learnt a little about what goes on inside them. Above all, if I am to give evidence in this damnable piece of litigation, I wish somebody would condescend to tell me what it is all about.

  Even as he suppressed an insane desire to jump up and demand an explanation, there was an interruption from a bench behind him. Mrs. Gorman, untrammelled by the inhibitions that kept Pettigrew speechless, was doing that precise thing.

  “Excuse me,” she said in her quiet but forceful voice, “but what are you talking about? You’ve been saying a lot, but it doesn’t mean anything—not to me, it doesn’t. Of course I’ve known about Uncle Sam’s money ever since I was married and what he did with it, but all this stuff——”

  By this time, the usher, the associate, three solicitor’s clerks and both counsel were uniting in an attempt to suppress her. Support for her came from an unexpected quarter. With all the geniality to be expected of a man who has a hoopoe actually under his eyes on his lawn, Mr. Justice Pomeroy not only condoned the interruption but seemed to welcome it.

  “Let Mrs. Gorman come forward,” he said.

  With Mrs. Gorman standing before him in the well of the court, he proceeded: “I quite understand your difficulty, madam. The position is a little complicated and unusual, but it is perfectly clear. Since you have no advocate, let me explain. This property was settled in such a way that on Gilbert Gorman’s death it would pass to your husband for his life and on his death to his son, if any. If your husband were to die before his cousin, it would go to that son direct, of course.”

  “I know all about that, sir.”

  “I am usually addressed as ‘my lord’, but no matter. Now there is a process known to the law as ‘barring an entail’, by which the man in possession—your husband, let us say, after Gilbert’s death—can alter that arrangement, so that the succession to the property is no longer limited to sons. Once he has barred the entail, he can leave it to whom he likes—his wife or daughters. Do you follow me?”

  “Indeed I do, sir—my lord. That was what my husband did when he left me two year ago. Made a will, he did. My father made him do it, so that my little girls would be looked after. He said if he didn’t do that he’d prosecute him for taking all that money out of his shop.”

  “Very well. Now comes the really fascinating part of the story,” his lordship continued, licking his lips. “That is to say—I recognize that its fascination may not be readily apparent to you, but it is a really interesting position none the less. The effect of that disposition of your husband, made in Gilbert’s lifetime and without his consent, was that if he survived Gilbert the property would pass as he directed by his will, but if he died before Gilbert, it would all go away from his family to the next in succession, who is his cousin Dick.”

  “Why?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, Why?—my lord.”

  “Well, really, I don’t know that I can answer that question. That is the law, and has been for many hundreds of years. You must take it from me that that is so.”

  “It seems an odd sort of law to me,” observed Mrs. Gorman dispassionately. “After all, Gilbert had been a sick man for years, no one thought he’d live as long as he did, and Jack was young and strong as a horse——”

  “No doubt, madam. That would perhaps explain why your father took the course he did. But those are hardly circumstances that affect the position in law.”

  “I suppose not.”

  Mrs. Gorman looked very lonely, standing there looking up at the bench. As though for the first time Pettigrew realized that she was the only woman in that assemblage of men. At the same time, he realized something else that gave him the answer to a lot of problems.

  “May I ask you one question, my lord?”

  “Certainly.”

  “If this child I’m carrying now turns out to be a boy, what happens to the money then?”

  “Edna!”

  Mr. Joliffe, who up to that moment had been sitting listlessly watching the proceedings as though they did not concern him, suddenly rose to his feet, his face scarlet.

  “You shameless girl——” he began. He got no further.

  “Sit down,” said Mr. Justice Pomeroy.

  He spoke quietly, but Mr. Joliffe sat down as though his leg
s had been pulled from under him, his red face suddenly pale.

  His lordship turned to Mrs. Gorman as though the interruption had not occurred.

  “I understood you to say that your husband left you two years ago,” he said.

  “True enough, my lord. But he came to me on the Friday night, the night before he was killed. It wasn’t the first time either, though my father never knew. He wanted money, of course—he always did—and I had little enough to give him. But he was my husband, and what I had, I gave.”

  “What you had, you gave?” the Judge repeated quietly. “I see.”

  There was silence in the court for a moment. Pettigrew was seeing once more the farmyard of Sallowcombe in the half-light of dawn and the blended shadows of a man and a woman at the window opposite his own. He marvelled that he should ever have been so blind as not to guess the truth.

  “Mr. Manktelow,” said the Judge, “this raises rather an interesting question, does it not?”

  “My lord, it does. This has taken me entirely by surprise. I need hardly say that those instructing me were quite unaware——”

  “So I should have imagined.”

  “If your lordship would be good enough to grant an adjournment to allow me to consider the position …”

  “I don’t see the necessity for an adjournment, Mr. Manktelow. The situation is unusual and involved, but I think it is perfectly clear. If this child proves to be a girl, nothing is changed. Matters remain in statu quo ante. But if it should be a boy”—Mr. Justice Pomeroy licked his lips—“it is a really delightfully complex proposition, Mr. Manktelow—he will preserve the base fee for his mother’s enjoyment, will he not?”

  “I should apprehend so, my lord.”

  “Preserve it, that is, so long as he lives——” he went on in a rising tone of excitement. Manktelow caught his mood, and chimed in: