by Ellis Peters
Miranda bristled, adding one more to the tale of legacies to be deducted from her fortune. Susan swallowed a gulp of suprise, and then shrugged off the astonishment philosophically. A small conventional acknowledgement to an employee, that was all it could be.
‘I’ll go along with the rest, then. Why not tonight, and get it over?’
‘Very well,’ said Neil. ‘As soon as we’ve finished dinner I’ll fetch it. I’ll have a word with Herr Mehlert, and make sure we can have this room to ourselves.’ He had not, Susan noticed, asked Laurence his views; presumably Miranda was considered to have spoken for both of them.
Neil went up to his room, and brought down the long envelope that contained Antonia’s new will. McHugh, grinning, finished his coffee and pushed back his chair. ‘Well, this lets me out. If any of you lucky people likes to buy me a double brandy later, I’ll be in the bar.’
He closed the door with a brisk slam, and they were left tensed over their coffee cups, watching one another covertly across the table, and quivering to the rustling of the thick paper as Neil unfolded the will. In the long, close passages they caught glimpses of Antonia’s fine, affected hand, perfected as a part of her public character, and a source of amusement to her in her private one. ‘It will look magnificent in the biographies,’ she used to say complacently, dashing off the same accomplished signature at the end of a letter. The witnesses to it in this case had been the manager of the hotel and the chambermaid. I suppose I might have known, thought Susan, by her not asking me, that I was going to be a beneficiary. She felt herself quivering with the others, and was alarmed. How easy it was to fall into the habit of coveting money, once it was dangled within reach.
‘There are several minor bequests to old servants and so on,’ said Neil, ‘but I’d better read the whole of it.’
He began in a dry voice, purposely detaching himself from them. A hundred pounds to the old woman who had been her dresser for years, the same to the housekeeper of her house in Kent, a great number of personal souvenirs to scattered friends. He came at last to the meat, and the tone of his voice stiffened perceptibly, their nerves stretching with it.
‘“—to my secretary, Susan Conroy, the sum of one hundred pounds—”’
Susan breathed again, blessedly neither elated or disappointed. A new outfit for job-hunting, she thought contentedly, and leisure to look round; that was nice of the old girl, and more than I could have expected even if I’d expected anything. And so readily does the mind adjust itself to self-interest that she almost ceased to listen until she heard the names of Trevor Mason and Dr Randall coupled closely together. ‘“My friend and manager—”’ ‘“—Dr Charles Randall, to whom I am indebted for many years of devoted care—”’ She had left them five hundred pounds each, without a word of warmth or the gift of one personal possession. Trevor’s comedian’s mask had grown long and pale with offence. He had not expected to get her collection of letters and manuscript music, not while Richard was alive, but he had hoped for the Sargent portrait of her as a girl; she had known, none better, how much he loved it.
‘“—to my niece, Miranda Ruth Quayne, the sum of one thousand pounds—”’ ‘“—to her son, my great-nephew Laurence Quayne, the sum of one thousand pounds—”’
It sounds quite a lot of money, provided you have not been looking forward confidently to a quarter of a million, and security for life. Miranda drew a gasping breath, and Laurence caught her by the arm under the tablecloth, and dug his fingers into her flesh so hard that she winced. His eyelids were lowered over the hazel eyes, and his face was alert and still; it was impossible to guess what he was feeling, apart from the ferocity with which he was willing his mother to keep her mouth shut.
‘“—all the residue of my real and personal estate whatsoever and wheresoever I give, devise, and bequeath to my dear friend Richard Hellier absolutely; and should the said Richard Hellier predecease me or die intestate, the said residue shall be divided equally between the following five legatees: Susan Conroy, Trevor Amphlett Mason, Charles Randall, Miranda Ruth Quayne, and Laurence Quayne.”’
That, in effect, was all, and more than enough. Only the cold paralysis of shock kept Miranda quiet while Neil’s carefully restrained voice read to the end. There was a stupefied silence, which Richard was the first to break. His thin, lined face was drawn into a mask of bewilderment and consternation.
‘But why? What possessed her?’ he said helplessly. ‘She knew I had enough. She knew—’ He stopped there, suddenly clenching his hands on the arms of his chair and thrusting himself to his feet. He looked round at them all, and saw envy and resentment staring back at him, and for a moment the sum of those looks felt very like naked hate. ‘I think I’d better withdraw to the bar, too,’ he said bitterly, ‘so that you can talk about me in comfort.’
He was already at the door when Laurence found his voice.
‘Richard, don’t go! I should like—’
But Richard was gone, and the door had closed decidedly after him.
CHAPTER IV
But why think of death?
’Tis far from hence!
Act 2
They were all talking at once, but Miranda was the loudest, shrillest, and angriest, and her lament rode high above the more temperate complaints of Trevor and the doctor. She was on her feet, trembling with rage, and shaking off Laurence’s restraining hand violently.
‘Mr Everard, this is monstrous! She must have been out of her mind to make such a will, and it’s my belief it could be upset by the courts, and ought to be, in mere justice. It isn’t right! Is this my reward for years of devoted service? It was always understood that she would at least make reasonable provision for her own. What right has that old man to filch a fortune from under the noses of her relatives?’
‘Mother, do be reasonable, Richard hasn’t filched anything, he’s as staggered about it as you are, you heard him. Even if she did turn her back on you, it isn’t his fault. He’s just as upset as anyone else—’
She turned on him like a fury. ‘Upset? It’s all very well to profess to be upset when you’re a quarter of a million better off. It costs nothing at all to sound righteous about it. Don’t tell me he knew nothing about it. And don’t touch me! I won’t be hushed! Her own niece, to be rebuffed at the end like this! Her own flesh and blood, her only female relative! In very decency her jewellery should have come to me. Mr Everard, I insist that you take this up with your uncle. You must see that it can’t be left like this. She was not in full possession of her faculties—’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Neil stiffly, folding the will back into its envelope, ‘that you’ll have very considerable difficulty in upholding that argument. I saw a great deal of Mrs Byrne during the last days of her illness, and I had Dr Randall’s advice throughout. She was perfectly clear and entirely capable when she dictated the terms of that will, and I assure you it will stand up in any court. I sympathise with your disappointment, but there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s not for me to try to influence my clients, only to ensure that their wishes are clearly expressed and properly carried out.’
‘I’m afraid, Mrs Quayne,’ said Dr Randall flatly, ‘that you are contending only with a capricious old woman, not a feeble-minded one. There’s no legal protection against ingratitude.’
‘But her jewellery!’ Tears of frustration and yearning were running down Miranda’s powdered cheeks, the elaborately waved head trembled uncontrollably. ‘That at least should have stayed in the family, it isn’t decent to will it away like that. The archduke’s diamonds not even mentioned! The only honourable thing the wicked old woman could have done with them was to hand them on to her own relations, and she doesn’t even say one word about them. I demand that you take some steps to contest this iniquitous will, or at the very least to point out to Mr Hellier the impropriety of accepting the archduke’s diamonds. He has an absolute obligation to release them to me, he’ll surely see that.’
‘Mother,’ said Lauren
ce desperately, ‘for God’s sake leave the damn’ will alone, we don’t need her money—’
‘Don’t be a fool!’ she snapped at him furiously. ‘It isn’t just the money, it’s the principle of the thing. Those diamonds—’
‘My dear Mrs Quayne,’ said Neil, controlling his detestation as well as he could, ‘you’re living in a fool’s paradise if you’re relying on those legends about diamonds.’
‘Nonsense, everyone knows she had them. They must be in the safekeeping of your firm, it’s useless to deny it.’
‘I see it is, but nonetheless I do deny it. I have never seen them, Mrs Byrne never discussed them or even mentioned them in my presence. My father discounted the stories, and very certainly never had any such stones through his hands. He did not believe in their existence, and neither do I. Is that plain enough for you, Mrs Quayne?’
It was more than she could bear. All her life she had been waiting hopefully in the conviction that the diamonds existed, and that some day they would come to her. If they were no more than a flourish in a garbled story, then the very earth was crumbling under her feet. Rather than believe that she would clutch at any alternative, however monstrous. She took a frantic step forward, flourishing her bony fists in Neil’s face.
‘They did exist! If they’re nowhere to be found now, it’s because you’ve made away with them – misappropriated them to your own use—’
‘Mother!’ bellowed Laurence, suddenly releasing all his hoarded anguish in one outburst of rage. ‘Shut up!’
She turned on him a face of ludicrous astonishment, and drew breath to annihilate him, but he caught her by the shoulders and shook her before she could get out a word. ‘Shut up, I said. You’re making an unpleasant fool of yourself. If you feel like apologising to Neil for what you just said, all right – otherwise be quiet. The whole thing’s over and done with – you understand? She could leave her own property to anyone she fancied, and she has done, and that’s that.’ He bit off the consonant viciously, and looked at Neil over her quivering shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Neil! I apologise for my mother, she’s hysterical.’
‘Don’t give it a thought,’ said Neil quietly. ‘I promise I shan’t.’ He turned and stalked out of the room, his back rigid with forbearance, and in a moment they heard him climbing the stairs.
Miranda began to cry noisily, the hard, disfiguring tears of rage. She pushed Laurence away from her, hitting at him weakly. ‘Much support I ever get from you! You’re just like your father! Why did I ever bother about you?’
‘Mother, please control yourself. It’s no use going on like this. Hadn’t you better go to bed?’
‘I will not go to bed,’ she shrilled. ‘You heartless, ungrateful boy, where would you have been without me? Haven’t I the right to expect some loyalty from you, after all I’ve done for you? And now you’ve turned out good for nothing, just like your father!’
He took his hands from her and stood back, pale as wax, breathing hard. ‘Maybe the best thing I can do is take to drink, like my father, too,’ he said in a very quiet voice. ‘At least you’d get a kind of satisfaction out of that.’ And he swung on his heel and marched out of the room without another glance at her, and made for the bar as though his life depended on it.
It was wonderfully noisy and wonderfully good-humoured in the warm, panelled room among the villagers of Oberschwandegg. Great earthy voices conversed at full pitch in a dialect he could not follow, but he felt their exchanges to be closer and more welcome to his heart than any English he had heard since Antonia had died. Except, perhaps, Susan’s blunt voice saying that she believed him, and that he needn’t shout about it. He leaned an elbow on the bar, and ordered a large schnapps, and the very voice he had just been remembering said gently over his shoulder: ‘Make it two!’
He looked round at her apologetically.
‘We had a date, remember?’
‘So we did,’ he said, and managed a slightly mangled smile. When he passed her glass back to her he was astonished to find that his hand was shaking absurdly; and even after she had installed them both in a corner by the great stove of unglazed white ceramic, with its indented radiation eyes glazed in amber, he sat trembling with nervous tension for some minutes before he could talk to her.
‘I saw my father hit her,’ he said at last in a low voice, twisting the glass round and round on the scrubbed table. ‘Three times in his life. I used to think he was a brute. Now I wonder!’
‘Cheer up!’ said Susan simply. ‘You didn’t hit her. It’s all over now.’
‘Bar the shouting,’ said Laurence bitterly. ‘That I shall be hearing for some time. Bloody lucky if I ever hear the last of it.’
She did not care to say what was obvious, that he ought to get away from her. Clearly he knew it without being told. Maybe he would have done it, if Antonia had seen fit to leave her a competence, but now even that was out of the question. Somebody had to keep Miranda, she would never be able to earn her own living, and what was a mere thousand pounds? Susan could think of nothing more practical to do in this situation than carry his empty glass back to the bar and bring him a second schnapps. What did it matter if he got a little tight? Things might look better to him that way. He downed the second as promptly as the first, and recovered a little of his colour.
‘Christmas Eve!’ he said. ‘Poor old Trevor didn’t get much of a Christmas box, either, did he? And I happen to know he could use a little margin at the moment, too. He hasn’t always been as careful for himself in the markets as he was for Aunt Antonia. Funny it should work that way.’
Susan looked through the crevice of the shutters and saw the swathes of snow pale in their own lambent light along the village street, and a knot of stars through torn cloud. ‘It’s stopped snowing. Would you like that breath of air?’
‘Would I!’
‘Run and get your coat, then. I’ve got mine down in the hall already.’
He went with alacrity, like a boy let out of school. When he came down she was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs, straight and dark in the candlelight from the hanging wreath, her hands deep in the pockets of a boyish duffle coat, and the collar turned up to her ears. Their footsteps rang together hastily on the bare boards of the floor, and because they went with their chins on their shoulders, apprehensive of being called back into the dining room if they did not make good their escape quickly, they walked full tilt into McHugh, who was just emerging from the open doorway of the little terrace room opposite the bar.
He had a liqueur glass in his hand, and a puzzled grin on his face, and he, too, was looking back over his shoulder. At one of the small tables by the glass wall Richard sat writing, a large beer mug before him, and the fellow of McHugh’s brandy glass at his elbow, also plainly waiting for his attention. The snow looked in at him, glittering with cold, though the little room was warm and snug.
‘Fairly knocks you!’ confided McHugh, recovering his balance and deftly swinging his glass out of danger. ‘What d’you think the old boy’s just told me? Comes into the bar upset as the devil, and downs one litre like a professional and asks for another and some writing paper, and off he goes in there by himself. I just took him the fellow to this tot here, and he gets talkative. He’s properly upset about this legacy. Says what on earth did she do a thing like that for, without saying a word to him. Says she knew very well he had enough of his own, and didn’t want any more.’
‘I know,’ said Laurence shortly. ‘I hope to God he isn’t going to start fretting about it.’
‘I never thought of a quarter of a million as something you’d have to get over,’ said McHugh. ‘And know what that is he’s writing? His will! He’s making a will! He’s just asked me if I’ll be one of his witnesses when he’s finished it. Says he’ll make damned sure nobody cherishes any hopes of his dying intestate!’ He shook his head helplessly over the incomprehensible actions and reactions of his troublesome cargo, and drifted away into the bar, still grinning.
Laurenc
e moved on towards the outer door, but in an instant checked again and looked back at the solitary old man bent over his pen. The silver fringe of hair round his bald crown caught the glitter of frost from outside the window. The long profile, still clear and handsome, stood sharply outlined against the half-opaque whiteness of the glass, and on the steadily writing hand the small pink glow of the table lamp hung motionless, a spotlight drawing down the whole drama of Antonia’s death and its repercussions into one small sheet of paper.
‘Will you wait for me a moment?’ said Laurence abruptly, and was off into the room before she could answer, threading his way resolutely between the tables. She stood in the doorway and watched him as he came to Richard’s elbow. His voice echoed back to her clearly, a little constrained but very determined.
‘Mr Hellier, I just wanted to congratulate you, and to tell you I’m glad. I’m glad my aunt knew an honest man from a shark when she saw one. I’m glad she didn’t feel obliged to leave her money in the family if she didn’t want to. She didn’t owe me anything, and I didn’t count on anything from her. I just wanted you to know, and – not to feel bad about it.’
Richard had looked up to arm himself, and now was unexpectedly disarmed. ‘My dear boy!’ he said somewhat blankly. ‘My dear boy!’ But Laurence had already turned and was heading back to the doorway with a heightened colour and an elastic step, as if he had cast some part at least of the weight of his depression.
‘Come on!’ he said with considerably more self-confidence than he would have shown five minutes earlier, and took her arm very firmly and marched her out into the sparkling night. They fell into step together instinctively, and drew great breaths of the cold, clear air. Around them there was an enormous, grateful calm. The temperature was only a degree or two below freezing, and with first light there would surely be heavy cloud and renewed snow; but now it was lucid and still, and full of soft, dilated stars.
The snow was a metre deep and more on the open green, where it was undisturbed, and narrow paths, cut down cleanly through the fall, linked every house to the broader track which was all that remained of the village street. Under the low, jutting eaves the half-shuttered windows shed bars of tinted light like golden ladders along the snow, and evergreen wreaths hung on the doors. Somewhere a very small band, perhaps five or six musicians, was playing ‘Maria auf dem Berge’ and shrill little voices were singing:
