by Anne Morice
“No, not at all, not in the least; purely representational. Original is what you are meaning to say, perhaps?”
“Yes, perhaps.”
“Well, I am afraid we cannot sell you any tickets for it. We should be in hot water if you were to pull out your own number.”
“And I have a horrid feeling I might. Is there some more of her work on display?”
Tara shook her head: “No, that is the only one, so you are scotched again. But still, if you’re interested, I have one or two at home. Why not come and have a cup of tea one day and see them?”
“Yes, I’d like to very much. When can I come?”
“To-morrow, if you like. My elder daughter will be at home then. She is bursting to meet you.”
“That’s very kind of you. I have a matinée to-morrow, so I couldn’t be there before five. Would that be too late?”
“No, certainly not, but you have reminded me that I also have an appointment this afternoon at five o’clock, so now I shall love you and leave you,” Tara said, gathering up her shopping basket, plus a leather bag the size of a junior portmanteau, and clumping off in her heavy brown shoes.
“May one ask what that was all about?” Vi enquired when she had gone. “You can’t really be keen to see more of those dreadful paintings?”
“No, but I feel curious about Alice, you see. I don’t know her at all. Someone pointed her out to me once, but that’s as near as I’ve got to meeting her.”
“It’s as near as most people would want to get,” Marge remarked.
“And why this curiosity?”
“Oh well, I suppose because she’s a sort of mystery woman, in her small way,” I explained, making it up as I went along. “I mean, no one has a good word for her, so far as I can make out and yet she must have some admirable qualities to have risen to be Matron of a hospital, wouldn’t you say? And now she turns out to be an artist as well. I do think people who paint must have something special about them, don’t you agree?”
All this was sheer rubbish, of course, but the best I could do on the spur of the moment, not feeling inclined to confess that my interest in Alice Dilloway lay principally in trying to find out whether she had frightened her sister to death.
“Well, she’s special in another way now,” Marge said. “I daresay we shall be seeing quite a different Alice in future. To go from rags to riches overnight must change people’s outlook, particularly if they were not expecting it.”
“How do you know she wasn’t expecting it?”
“Helena told me. Vi thinks it was rather indiscreet of her, but personally I can’t see that it matters.”
“And how does Helena know?”
“Through Robert, her husband, of course. He acted for both of them. Drew up their wills and did the conveyancing for this little semi-detached Alice has moved into. He told Helena that Alice never had the slightest idea that she had expectations, or might one day be able to afford a better sort of house.”
“Although, presumably, if she had known in theory, it wouldn’t have made any difference? There must have been a good chance that the expectations would never be realised. They were about the same age, weren’t they?”
“No, Alice is a year or two younger. Besides, she’s been forced by necessity to lead an austere and healthy life, whereas Edna’s was one long self-indulgence. It is not at all surprising that Alice has outlived her.”
“So how much will she get for her pains?”
“Fifty thousand, so we’re told.”
“Coo! As much as that? And the same for Tilly?”
“So they say. Ferdy and Camilla come off even better, of course.”
“What’s their share?”
Vi tried to intervene:
“How would it be, Tessa, if you were to take a couple of these books with you? You might unload a few on Toby, so long as you keep fairly vague about the prize, and I expect you’ll be able to flog some to your friends in the theatre. But mind you don’t forget to write their names clearly on the counterfoils. That’s most important.”
“Oh, if you say so,” I replied without enthusiasm. Luckily, Marge was on my side:
“I really can’t see what harm there is in telling her, Vi. It will all be published in The Times eventually; or she could find out for herself by going to Somerset House.”
“So save me the bother,” I suggested. “How much are Ferdy and Camilla likely to collect?”
“Robert told Helena that after tax and other deductibles the estate will come out at anything up to three hundred thousand, so you can work it out for yourself.”
“I’m too dizzy to cope with even such a simple sum as that.”
“And you’re not the only one, I daresay. Ferdy and Camilla must be feeling a bit dazed too. I know I would be.”
“In fact,” Marge added thoughtfully, “you could say that if the poor woman had to die she chose the best moment to do it.”
“Oh, could you?” I asked, the dizziness passing in a flash. “Why’s that?”
“Oh well, you know how she was continually changing her will, or threatening to? No, perhaps you don’t, but you won’t be surprised to hear that it was one of her favourite pastimes. A lovely way of bringing her entourage to heel when they showed an inclination to stray. If I were being really unkind, which thank God I’m not, I should guess that this was what chiefly inspired Camilla to dig herself in at Farndale after Edna had her first attack. She may have felt it wasn’t the moment for taking chances.”
“And if you were being doubly unkind, which thank God you never are,” Vi remarked, “you could say exactly the same of Ferdy. For all his sweet and feckless ways, he certainly jumped to it when the old lady started to go downhill.”
“You couldn’t say it of Alice or Tilly though,” I pointed out. “Seeing that Alice is reputed not to have known she was in the running; and one couldn’t impute such base motives to Tilly.”
“Perhaps not,” Marge agreed placidly, “though it’s amazing what the smell of fifty thousand can do to the most upright character and presumably she had some incentive for putting up with Edna so nobly for all those years. Well, personally, I do thank God I’m not unkind and I’m glad it’s turned out like this. On the whole, I’d say they’d earned their luck and it must be such a comfort to them to know how well they all behaved at the end.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Back at the Chapel again for the evening performance, I found an envelope on my dressing table addressed simply to TESSA in large capitals. Inside were three coins and a note from Ferdy, inviting me to meet him for a drink after the show, at the Jolly Angler. I interpreted this as merely a civil gesture on his part, assuming that he would not care whether I turned up or not, but since there is something anti-climactic about going straight home to bed when the curtain comes down and it is quite pleasant to indulge in some gentle unwinding in between, I took him at his word.
However, it soon became clear that I had not been invited there to hear some perfunctory compliments on my lovely performance, for Ferdy had no sooner bought a beer for himself, a brandy and soda for me, borrowed the money to pay for both and carried them over to the quietest corner of the saloon bar than he announced that he wished to obtain my advice on a tricky and delicate subject.
Experience having taught me that problems in this category invariably spring from financial roots and that he was hoping to borrow a little something to tide him over until he got his hands on a hundred thousand pounds, I explained that I was a bit short myself until the end of the week, but was willing to give him a lift home if that would solve the immediate difficulty.
Surprisingly, this offer provoked a good deal of merriment and when he had finished giggling over it, he announced that the trouble lay not in how to acquire money, but, on the contrary, how to get rid of it without rocking the boat.
“You wouldn’t be referring to your inheritance, by any chance?”
“That’s right,” he agreed, after a glance to left
and right, as though to make sure we would not be overheard. “Clever of you to guess!”
“And you want to get rid of it? Give it away, you mean?”
“No, not exactly. The trouble is, I’m not even sure it’s mine to give. What bothers me, you see, Tessa, is that I don’t believe I’m strictly entitled to it.”
“Why not? The will’s perfectly valid, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s not that.”
“What then?”
He remained silent for a minute or two, slowly drinking his beer and frowning, so that I thought his mind had begun to wander from the point, until he said:
“Look, Tessa, would it be okay to go and sit in your car while we talk? This place is going to close down soon and it’s rather a long story.”
“All right,” I agreed, “but we can do better than that. I’ve got two shows tomorrow, so I don’t want to stay up late. I’ll drive you home and you can tell me as we go along.”
As things turned out, there was a bit of just sitting and talking, after all, although this took place outside the gate of Farndale House, for it really was a long story and only half told by the end of the three mile drive. This was partly due to his being a slow speaker, who took a long while getting to the point, but partly also to my frequent interruptions.
He began by explaining that, as joint executors to the will, he and Camilla had spent the previous two days attempting to sort out Edna’s belongings, a formidable task and nowhere near completed yet, owing to her tiresome habit of hoarding every scrap of paper which came into her hands, from her birth certificate right down to two- and three-year-old receipts for milk bills. Furthermore, Tilly, who nominally speaking, was Edna’s secretary and thus far better equipped for the job had been too immersed in her household duties to help. Her suggestion that Camilla might take over the shopping and housekeeping for a few days had been turned down flat, Camilla nobly insisting that they had all imposed on Tilly for far too long and that it was up to her to manage on her own, for once.
“It was really a joke too, the way she went at it,” Ferdy remarked at this point, “I never saw her work so hard at anything before. I think she must have been hoping to turn up a few fivers or something. She was a proper old whirlwind. It’s slackened off a bit to-day, but she’s nowhere near ready to pack it in.”
“And did she turn up any fivers?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” he replied, after another of his lengthy pauses, then added: “We divided the work up, you see. Separate compartments. It was her idea. She was to go through all Edna’s stuff and I’d deal with my father’s. Seemed sensible.”
“Sensible, you say? I call it daft! Surely there can’t be anything left to do with his things? He’s been dead for years.”
“I know. I expect that was Camilla’s idea too, privately, you know. That would be why she gave me the job, wouldn’t it? Letting me feel I was being useful, but only where I couldn’t make a mess of things. Trouble was, it didn’t turn out like that. I haven’t told her so, of course.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’d be livid and probably feel a bit of an ass, as well; riffling for hours and hours through all those old film magazines and Christmas cards of about fifty years ago; and here’s me, with the only really interesting bit sort of more or less falling into my lap.”
“How did that happen?”
“Accident, really. All my father’s papers were stacked away in that hideous old desk in the library and, like you said, there was nothing to be done. He was a methodical sort of man, not like any of his wives, and any loose ends had been tidied up by Tilly ages ago. The whole lot could have gone on the fire, if my stepmother hadn’t been such a miserable hoarder. Does this bore you?”
“No, not at all because I’m all keyed up for the moment when you tell me about finding the secret compartment in one of the drawers.”
I couldn’t see his face because I had switched off all but the sidelights, but his voice sounded amused:
“No, I didn’t. It’s just a boring old Victorian desk and I don’t suppose it has any secret compartments, but you’re getting warm. The middle drawer, the biggest one in the whole outfit, was locked and no key.”
“‘Aha!’ you said to yourself!”
“I didn’t, you know. To be frank with you, Tessa, I was relieved more than anything. ‘Well, that lets me out’ is what I said to myself.”
“But then?”
“But then it hit me that I’d really had it so dead easy, compared to all that load of rubbish Camilla was stuck with, and that I ought at least to jump about a bit, so I asked Tilly if she had any idea where the key was.”
“And had she?”
“Not one, but you know Tilly. She’s such a conscientious old beaver that she wasn’t going to give up till she’d ransacked the entire place from cellar to roof. She finally ran it to earth in one of Edna’s bags, the last one she’d been using before she got so ill, and that should have given us the clue.”
“To what?”
“Well, I mean, what it pointed to was that she used this drawer all the time and didn’t want anyone else to know about the secret things inside it. If you see what I mean?” Ferdy added on a not particularly optimistic note.
“Of course I do, I was only wondering if it had given you a clue as to what these secret things might be?”
“No, and I bet you’d never have guessed either, even though you are so brainy. For instance, did you know that old Edna fancied herself as a writer?”
“No, I must admit that’s something I never would have guessed. What sort? Poetry? Fiction?”
“Sort of half and half really. It was written like a novel, none of the ‘I this,’ ‘I the other’ business, but you could tell it was really a sort of diary.”
“How could you tell?”
“Well, this character, this heroine, I suppose you could say, is called May, goodness knows why but I suppose it was an easy one to spell, and she comes out as very rich and well dressed, full of wisdom and sharp observations, only not too popular because of the witty way she has of putting people down. Even I got the message.”
“I see. And is it revealing in other ways too?”
“I don’t know about that. Later on there’s another character in it called Greta, who’s frightfully spoilt and conceited, and there’s one called Mattie, who’s pretty boring too, so you can see she had a pretty low opinion of us all, if we hadn’t known it already. Is that what you meant?”
“No, it wasn’t; and listen, Ferdy, fascinated as I am by the fantasy life of E. Mortimer, I must point out that it’s getting on for midnight and I still haven t heard one good reason why you should contest the will. If it’s because you now have written evidence that she didn’t think too highly of you, I should forget it because I doubt if that would cut much ice with the legal profession.”
“Oh no, that has nothing to do with it. I got led away by you asking so many questions. The real point is that she was drawing up a new will and I found it, tucked away underneath the diaries. I haven’t told anyone about it, except you, and I can’t decide whether I ought to or not.”
“When you say she was drawing it up, Ferdy, what does that mean exactly? Was it in her own handwriting?”
“No, all typed out in the proper jargon, a straight up lawyers’ document. There were one or two blanks, which she’d filled in with a pencil and there were things scribbled in the margin, including some rude remarks. I suppose it was what you’d call a draft.”
“Dated?”
“Not the actual day. June of this year.”
“In other words, after she’d had at least one attack?”
“Yes, I suppose it must have been.”
“Well, come on, Ferdy, let’s have it! How was the money carved up?”
“Dead simple. The charities got the same as before, all the rest went to her sister, Alice.”
“How about Tilly?”
“Nothing. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”
“And nothing for you or Camilla either?”
“Not a penny. We weren’t even mentioned.”
He faded away into silence again, which this time I welcomed, for I too had much to ponder. Finally I said: “Well, I see your problem, Ferdy, but it’s a moral and not a legal one, isn’t it? Legally you’re entitled to the money, but if you decide to do the decent thing and hand it over to Alice, that’s your business, I should say.”
He sighed: “It’s not all that simple. I wish it was. Personally, I’m not particularly keen on getting lumbered with all that money. I’d probably grow to love it after a bit and then I’d start worrying that someone was going to come and take it away again. If it was just up to me, I’d as soon get rid of it before it becomes an addiction.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“Oh, can’t you see? There’d be no end of a racket if I did that and everyone would try to talk me out of it. It would drive me dotty and, in the end, I’d find myself telling them about this new will and how Edna had meant to cut me out, just to shut them up, and then we really would be up the creek.”
“Because of Camilla, you mean?”
“Right. Tilly too, in a way, but Camilla’s the main problem. She’s one of those people who really need money more than anything and she was brought up to believe she’d have loads of it. It would be a rotten trick to play on her.”
“I don’t see why. She’d be under no compulsion to follow your example.”
“I know that, but she might feel she was, or that people would expect her to. Even if she didn’t do anything about it, can’t you see how it would spoil things for her? She’d feel she was behaving less well than someone else, not like a true blue, stainless heroine, and she’d hate that.”
It struck me as unlikely that Camilla would have shown as much sensitivity to his feelings, had the boot been on the other foot, or that any little wound to her amour propre would not soon be healed by the acquisition of a hundred thousand pounds, but I did not consider it worth while passing these reflections on to Ferdy and I said: “Well, I hardly see what advice I can give you. It boils down to this: on the one hand, you go against your own grain by accepting the money; on the other, you offend Camilla’s susceptibilities by rejecting it. I think you will just have to make up your own mind which is the more important.”