Days Without Number

by Robert Goddard

  That was one reason why Nick persisted in the search. He was looking for something more than financial records and reckoned he would find it. Properly speaking, he should have moved on to the computer and checked through its files, but what he sought lay much further back in time than his father’s relatively recent conversion to modern technology. Besides, Basil’s hunt for the desk key had now taken him out of the study, so for the moment Nick had the room to himself. Doing his best to avoid the flinty gaze of its former occupant from one of several framed photographs around the walls, Nick pressed on.

  In the bottom drawer of the cabinet, he found it: a bulging manilla file with his name written in faded black felt-tip on the leading edge of the folder. He heaved the folder out on to the desk and leafed apprehensively through the contents. As he had feared, it was all there: letters to and from his college and the hospital he had been sent to, tracking his breakdown and subsequent treatment over a five-year period. There were bills too, substantial ones, from his psychiatrist.

  But they were one tranche of financial documentation Baskcomb had no need to see. Nick closed the folder and leaned forward, his hands pressing down on the cover as he shut his eyes and winced at the sudden rush of memories. Then they were past and behind him. It was a sensation he had at one time experienced frequently and now realized he had almost succeeded in forgetting altogether. It was foolish to have supposed it would never recur. In the wake of his father’s death, it was bound to, even without Elspeth’s unintentional prompting. He opened his eyes and pulled open one of the unlocked desk drawers in search of an envelope large enough to hold the contents of the folder. They would be leaving with him and reaching no other hands.

  In his haste, he yanked the drawer out as far as it would come. A slew of paperclips, rubber bands, pencils, stray strands of tobacco and assorted envelopes slid forward with the momentum, leaving the rear of the drawer empty. Except, Nick noticed, for a short strip of black insulating tape, stuck to the base. There was an object held beneath it. He stretched out his hand and ran his fingers over the small bulge. It felt like what it undoubtedly was: a key.

  Nick prised the tape loose with his thumbnail, picked up the key and slid it into the keyhole of the locked drawer. The lock released at the first turn. He sat slowly down in his father’s worn old leather swivel-chair and pulled the drawer open.

  Inside there was just one object: a large white envelope, bearing the words, written in his father’s hand, Last Will and Testament. Nick lifted the envelope out. The flap was folded in, but not sealed. He raised the flap and slid the contents out. There was a single sheet of paper. It was certainly his father’s will. But it was not the one lodged with Baskcomb. And the date on it was much more recent.

  The document was handwritten, succinct but legalistically worded, and utterly shocking.

  This is the last will and testament of me Michael Godfrey Paleologus of Trennor Landulph Cornwall which I make this fifteenth day of January 2001 and whereby I revoke all previous wills and testamentary dispositions.

  I hereby appoint my cousin Demetrius Andronicus Paleologus of Palazzo Falcetto San Polo 3150 Venezia Italy to be the sole executor of this my will.

  I give my house the aforementioned Trennor Landulph Cornwall and all its contents to my cousin the aforementioned Demetrius Andronicus Paleologus absolutely.

  I give the remainder of my property real and personal in equal shares to my children.

  Nick stared at the words, transfixed. His father had written them. There was no doubt about it. And he had signed his name beneath them. Two witnesses had also signed.

  Signed by the testator in the presence of us both present at the same time who at his request in his presence and in the presence of each other have hereunto set our names as witnesses.

  Frederick Davey of 3 Butcher’s Row Tintagel Cornwall retired quarryman.

  Margaret Davey of 3 Butcher’s Row Tintagel Cornwall housewife.

  Nick had never heard of a cousin Demetrius, nor of retired quarryman Fred Davey and his wife. They were strangers to him. But one of those strangers, if this will was valid and genuine, as it certainly appeared to be, was now the rightful owner of Trennor.

  ‘Keyless in Trennor isn’t a lot better than eyeless in Gaza,’ said Basil, re-entering the study. ‘But such is our—’ He stopped, the stillness of Nick’s posture behind the desk seizing his attention. Is something wrong?’

  ‘I found the key,’ said Nick.

  ‘Splendid.’

  ‘You won’t think so when you read this.’ He held up the will.

  Basil walked across to the desk and took the sheet of paper from his brother’s hand. As he read it, the sunlight beyond the window vanished behind a cloud and the room seemed to fill with darkness.

  ‘My, my,’ said Basil when he had finished.

  ‘What do we do?’ Nick asked.

  ‘What do we do?’ Basil smiled. ‘We ask Irene, of course.’ The vacuum cleaner was roaring somewhere in the house. ‘I’ll fetch her.’

  Basil dropped the document on the blotter and hurried from the room. Nick sat where he was, studying the copperplate loops and uprights of his father’s handwriting. Then, suddenly, he noticed the dog-eared folder with his name on it lying on the desktop just to his left. For a moment, he did not know what to do with it. He knew only that there was little time to do anything. He jumped up, carried the folder to the cabinet he had taken it from and dumped it back in its pocket. Then he noticed the silence. The vacuum cleaner had stopped.

  A moment later, Irene bustled into the room, Basil lagging a few yards behind. ‘What’s this about a will?’ she demanded.

  ‘See for yourself.’ Nick passed her the sheet of paper.

  It took no more than two or three seconds for Irene to grasp the significance of what she held in her hand. In those seconds Nick saw her expression move from irritation to something midway between fear and anger.

  ‘The will. Baskcomb has dates from a few months after Mum died. This is far more recent. It’s dated just last week.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Basil.

  ‘Is it valid?’

  ‘Signatures of the testator and two witnesses are all that’s required, I believe. And there they are. It’s clearly not a forgery. So, the answer to your question must be yes.’

  ‘But it’s not been drawn up by a solicitor.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of a cousin Demetrius.’

  ‘Nor have I,’ Nick joined in.

  ‘Which makes three of us,’ said Basil. ‘Three of us who had not heard of him. Until now.’

  ‘Who are these people?’ Irene continued. I’ve never heard of the Daveys either.’

  ‘No doubt we shall find out in due course.’

  ‘ “The remainder of my property real and personal”. What will that amount to?’

  ‘Without Trennor, very little.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ But what Irene really meant was that she did not want to believe it. ‘Why would Dad do this to us?’

  ‘To prevent us selling the house to Tantris,’ said Nick.

  ‘And to punish us for trying to force him to,’ concluded Basil. ‘It seems the only thing we talked him into doing was disinheriting us.’

  ‘You think so?’ Irene glared down at the will, as if she could somehow wish its contents out of existence. ‘Well, we’ll see about that.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’ asked Nick.

  ‘It’s handwritten. So, there’s no copy. And no solicitor’s involved. The only living people who know of the will’s existence are we three plus the Daveys. And the Daveys may not even know what’s in it.’

  ‘Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?’ enquired Basil.

  ‘What do you think I’m suggesting?’

  ‘Something deeply criminal. Besides, how can you be sure no-one else knows? Dad may well have advised cousin Demetrius of his intentions.’

  ‘But cousin
Demetrius isn’t here. We are. As is the will.’

  ‘Even so—’

  ‘Call Andrew and Anna.’ Irene was much calmer now, Nick noticed. She had absorbed the blow and already was preparing to strike back. ‘I think a family conference is in order.’ She dropped the will back on to the desk in front of him. ‘There’s a great deal to discuss before we do anything.’

  Anna’s shift did not end until mid-afternoon and Andrew was likely to be out and about on the farm until dusk, so the conference Irene had decided to convene could not feasibly take place before early evening. She went back to Saltash to open up for lunchtime at the Old Ferry, confident that she would be able to arrange for Moira and Robbie to cover for her later. Nick engineered a solitary moment in which to stuff the contents of the file about his breakdown into an envelope and take it out to his car. Then he accompanied Basil into Cargreen on foot. They were to call on Pru and tell her she could resume cleaning duties at Trennor whenever she wished.

  There was an ulterior motive for their visit, of course. That was to tap the old lady for information about their father’s activities on 15 January, the date he had recorded on the will. The fifteenth was Monday of the previous week, recent enough for Pru to remember the Daveys of Tintagel calling round.

  But they had not called round. Persuaded to review her employer’s activities for the week on the grounds that they might yield signs he had been doing too much, Pru was adamant that he’d had no visitors from outside the family circle and had gone out only on Monday the fifteenth.

  ‘He left not long after I got there and hadn’t got back by the time I left. He didn’t say where he was going, but there was nothing out of the ordinary about that. Twas no concern of mine, when all’s said and done.’

  ‘Which means,’ Basil soundly reasoned after they had adjourned to the Spaniards, ‘that he took the will up to Tintagel for the Daveys to witness. Irene’s idea that they might be unaware of the contents strikes me as even less plausible now.’

  ‘But who are the Daveys, Basil?’

  ‘I don’t know. Dad used to take us to Tintagel quite often during the holidays, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. We’d get long lectures on archaeology when all we wanted to do was scramble around the ruins.’

  ‘Quite. But I don’t remember those lectures ever including mention of a quarryman called Fred Davey. Could he have been employed on the dig, do you suppose? Quarrying’s a similar line of work.’

  ‘In the ‘thirties, you mean? If so, he must be at least as old as Dad, possibly older.’

  ‘Yes.’ Basil stared thoughtfully into his cider. The same generation. Like cousin Demetrius.’

  ‘Grandad was obsessed with genealogy. Why didn’t he know about Demetrius? He must have been his cousin too, right?’

  ‘Or nephew. Except that Grandad was an only child, so he didn’t have any nephews. He had uncles, though. One of them could be Demetrius’s grandfather. Or he could be a more distant cousin. Who knows?’

  ‘Dad did, apparently. Why did he never tell us about him?’

  ‘Perhaps he only found out about him recently.’

  ‘And was so bowled over by the experience that he decided to leave him the house? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘But it did make sense, Nick. Oh my word, yes. It made very good sense to Dad. The question is: why?’

  But there was a more urgent question still, which Basil raised on their way back along the lane to Trennor through the thin sunlight of early afternoon.

  ‘What are we going to do about the will? You do realize what’s in Irene’s mind, don’t you, Nick?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Andrew and Anna will agree with anything she proposes that spares us having to hand over the house—and hence as much money as Tantris can be persuaded to pay for it—to our mysterious Venetian cousin.’

  ‘Pretending we never found it is the only way to do that.’

  ‘Precisely. And destroying the evidence is the only way to sustain that pretence.’

  ‘Is that what you meant by “deeply criminal”?’

  ‘How else would you describe it? Merely unethical, perhaps? Or not even that?’

  Nick sighed and glanced away across the field beyond the hedge towards a patch of woodland, where rough-throated rooks were cawing and flapping among the leafless branches of the trees. ‘I don’t know, Basil. That’s the honest, useless truth. I have absolutely no idea what we should do. Or what we will do. Which mightn’t be so bad, but for the fact that I know we’ll—’

  A car horn blared behind them and they turned to see Andrew’s Land Rover trundling down the lane towards them. ‘Well, well,’ said Basil. ‘It seems I’m to be granted an earlier opportunity than I expected to gauge the accuracy of my prediction.’

  Andrew waved at them through the windscreen as he approached and smiled broadly. ‘He looks in a good mood,’ said Nick.

  ‘It won’t last.’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose it will.’

  Andrew drove them the rest of the way to Trennor. He had not heard from Irene and had travelled over from Carwether merely to see how their document hunt was progressing. He had heard from Tom, however, who would be coming down at the weekend. He was clearly relieved about that.

  But his relief gave way to seething disbelief when they told I

  him about the will. Actual sight of it seemed to make him even less capable of understanding how their father could have done such a thing. And as for forgiving him

  ‘The devious, scheming, treacherous old bastard. He sat here on Sunday making all those acid-drop remarks about how we’d sell up as soon as we had the chance knowing that he’d done his best to make sure we’d never get the chance. Who in God’s name is this cousin Demetrius?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Nick.

  ‘And these witnesses—the Daveys.’

  ‘We don’t know them either.’

  ‘How could he do it? Why would he do it?’

  ‘I fear that’s all too obvious,’ said Basil.

  ‘Yeah. I suppose it is. Well, he isn’t going to get away with it.’

  ‘Isn’t he?’

  ‘Of course he bloody isn’t. You’re not seriously suggesting we let this scrap of paper stand in our way?’

  ‘It’s rather more than a scrap of paper.’

  ‘To you, Basil, maybe. The way I see it, Dad missed a trick. He should have stuck this in a safe-deposit box at the bank or had Baskcomb put it in his office safe. But he didn’t. He left it here for us to find. And now we have. So, what happens to it is up to us and no-one else.’

  ‘You have a suggestion?’

  ‘Damn right I do. And I reckon you must know what it is.’

  ‘I have a shrewd idea.’

  ‘Don’t get moralistic with me about this, Basil. Just don’t.’

  ‘Irene will be back later,’ Nick temporized. ‘We’ll phone Anna as soon as she gets off work. Then we can all sit down together and discuss the situation.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Andrew. ‘Let’s discuss it. I don’t mind. But you two may as well know right now that there’s no way—no way in this world—that I’m knuckling under to this.’ He turned the sheet of paper round in his hands and held it lightly in his forefingers and thumbs, as if about to tear it in half. His gaze flashed from Basil to Nick and back again. He seemed to be daring them to protest. Neither said a word. Then he let the sheet of paper fall on to the desk. ‘We’ll hear what everyone has to say. Then we’ll burn the bloody thing. And to hell with cousin Demetrius. OK?’

  ‘I know we’ll regret whatever we do.’ That was what Nick had been about to say to Basil in the lane when Andrew had sounded his car horn at them. The conviction set dully within him as the afternoon progressed. Obey the letter of their father’s most recent will and they would wonder for the rest of their lives why they had been so compliant to his whim. Destroy it and they might reap other, bitter consequences of his devising. Nick could not rid himself of the suspicio
n that the old man had deliberately bequeathed them this dilemma; that he had given them a stark but by no means simple choice; and that he had been certain of what they would choose.

  When the time came, it was Anna, given less warning of the issue than any of the others, who nonetheless presented the clearest case.

  ‘If we take this to Baskcomb, he’ll have no choice but to abide by it. Maybe we can contest it, maybe not. Even if we did, we might lose in the end and have nothing but a fat legal bill to show for it. This is our house, our home. Dad inherited it from Grandad and we should inherit it in turn. I don’t think Dad had the right—morally, I mean—to leave it to some long-lost cousin we’ve never even met. We should stand by the earlier will. We should destroy this one. Even if the Daveys—or cousin Demetrius—know what’s in it, they can’t know for certain that Dad didn’t destroy it himself some time after writing it. The fact that he left it here suggests he might have had second thoughts. So, let’s give ourselves the benefit of the doubt.’

  Doubt there certainly was in Nick’s mind as he listened to Anna and studied the expressions on his siblings’ faces. Irene looked perfectly calm, but he knew that meant nothing. The deep furrows on Andrew’s forehead and the set of his jaw told a more accurate story. As for Basil, leaning back far enough in his chair to bury his eyes in shadow, he was already halfway to dissociating himself from the decision they were manoeuvring their way towards. In this room of flickering firelight and thick-shaded lamps, the memories were ranked close about them. Only three days before, their father had sat there too, deriding their arguments and scorning their achievements. Anna was right. The old man had gone too far. But what worried Nick was the thought that they were about to do the same.