Heirs and Assigns

by Marjorie Eccles

  Except for her own bedroom on the ground floor, and two small attic rooms, one empty and the other occupied by Verity Lancaster, Mrs Knightly’s guided tour of the house showed the other bedrooms to be on the first floor, all with easy access to Penrose Llewellyn’s. Any one of the occupants could have crept into his bedroom in the silence of the night and held him down until he stopped breathing. Theo and his wife had one bedroom. Ida occupied a room further along, and Huwie an adjacent one, and the shared bathroom was at the end of the corridor, opposite the door to Pen’s bedroom, near a short flight of stairs that apparently led to Verity’s attic room. ‘She was his favourite, poor lamb,’ the housekeeper said, her eyes filling with sympathetic tears. ‘She’ll be the one who feels it most.’ She hesitated. ‘She’s in her room now. Do you want to see her?’

  ‘Not just now. If you’ve somewhere we can use as a temporary office, we’ll see everyone downstairs.’

  ‘There’s Pen’s study, you could use that. You’ll be needing a telephone, I expect, and we’re the only ones in Hinton with one, apart from the doctor.’

  ‘Seriously?’ asked Gilmour.

  ‘No one else has much use for them round here,’ she said simply. ‘And we always managed without, too, until Pen had it put in.’

  Reardon thought perhaps it might have been preferable to have used somewhere else as a base, away from the house, but the likelihood of finding anywhere else in Hinton seemed remote, and the telephone clinched it. ‘The office will do nicely, Mrs Knightly.’

  He hadn’t expected to find anything much in Pen’s bedroom, nor did they. The bed had been stripped, except for a white coverlet spread across it, the furniture shone with polish, the medicine cupboard in the small adjoining bathroom had been cleared out. The room had been divested of both its late occupant’s possessions and any indication of his personality. Even his clothing had gone from the wardrobe, and all the drawers had been emptied. The need to get rid of painful reminders of the deceased was understandable but Reardon was taken aback at the speed with which it had been accomplished. Mrs Knightly explained that both she and Mrs Douglas had agreed that the longer the task was put off the more distressing it would be. They had done it together, the day after he died. When of course the question of an unnatural death hadn’t yet arisen.

  Hearing male voices, and Mrs Knightly’s, at the bottom of the stairs, Verity held her breath. That would be the police. She waited for the knock that didn’t come. They were evidently not ready for her yet. Still, she shivered, the gooseflesh rising on her arms, and she wrapped them tighter around her knees, trying to hold in the warmth. There was no fireplace in this little room and it was very cold, a room used in former times for storage or as a bedroom for a maid, like the other attic room across the landing. But she’d loved it as her own special place ever since she was a child, when she’d spent long holidays here at Bryn Glas. Lately it had come to feel like a refuge, somewhere she could escape to, where she could shut out the rest of the world. She didn’t mind that you banged your head on the sloping ceiling if you sat up in bed a bit too quickly, nor did she usually mind the cold too much. Today she’d wrapped herself up in the blue and white Welsh quilt from her bed and huddled on the little cushioned seat under the dormer window. She’d cried so much the source of her tears had dried up, but the awful pain was still there and had formed itself into a hard, indigestible knot somewhere in her chest. She’d tried valiantly not to dwell on what had happened to her uncle – the man who had been more of a father to her than the one who disappeared over the horizon when she was ten. But Uncle Pen’s image refused go away. Not the vibrant presence he’d been in life but stiff, cold and dead. And someone had apparently done that to him.

  A great surge of self-pity welled up from inside her. They could none of them feel as she did – her Uncle Theo, or the other one, Huwie, whom she’d never met before. Her mother. At the thought of Ida, panic once more made her heart beat faster, like the jackdaw that had got itself trapped in the chimney last week, beating its wings hopelessly in an effort to escape.

  She hated her mother, she told herself. Ida probably hated her. At any rate Verity knew with a dreary certainty that Ida was irritated by her, must have been ever since she was born, when Ida was thirty-six and had stopped believing she would ever be saddled with a child. I hate her. Unbidden, a half-formed picture flitted across her unwilling memory: mumps, and Ida sitting up with her all night, putting warm ginger poultices on her swollen glands, feeding her sips of something warm, sweet and soothing to ease the pain of swallowing. She shoved the memory away, angrily. It was so long ago it didn’t count. And anyway, Ida had never been the sort of mother in whom you could confide, and now that the unbelievable had happened and Pen, her dear Uncle Pen, had gone, she couldn’t turn to him just when she needed him most. Curling herself into an even tighter ball, she hugged her huge misery to her. Why couldn’t it have been her, Verity, instead of Pen?

  The night he died, feeling wretched and unable to sleep, she’d lain staring at the ceiling, listening to the familiar sounds of the night: the scratch against her little window of the huge pyracantha which had outgrown an acceptable height in its search for the light; the occasional small, sharp crack as the old timbers of the house settled; from somewhere in the fields outside the scream of a rabbit caught by a fox. The creak of the floorboards as someone walked on the landing below to visit the bathroom. Except there had been no water-sound like the rush of Niagara, no thumping and gurgling of the old water pipes. Instead, footsteps: slithering, cautious footsteps, but the old floorboards creaking despite that. The soft closing of a door. Her mother’s? Oh, please God, no.

  Ida, who was always chronically short of money and who had no scruples.

  ‘I suppose,’ Huwie Llewellyn asked his brother, ‘you wouldn’t mind running me to somewhere I could pick up a train?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Oh, this afternoon. I have some, er, business in town,’ Huwie answered unconvincingly.

  Theo gave the short sharp bark that constituted his laugh. ‘You should have gone while you had the chance – you don’t suppose they’re going to let you go now, the police?’ He fixed Huwie with his dark, melancholy stare. ‘Or any of us, for that matter. You realize we’re all suspects? Although you, I should say,’ he added nastily, ‘are probably the chief one.’

  ‘Here now, that’s a bit thick!’

  ‘Why did you come back if not to screw something from Pen? You stay away, nobody hears a dickey-bird from you for decades and then suddenly – here you are, large as life. You were actually invited to join the celebrations? Pull the other one!’ Theo’s lips twisted. ‘Then Pen puts the cat among the pigeons by announcing he’s going to get married again, which means it’s almost certain he’ll be changing his will, and the next morning there he is, dead.’

  ‘You think I believed he would have left anything to me?’ Huwie asked bitterly. ‘The outcast, the one who killed his mother which he’s supposed to have done – even though you were not exactly blameless there, either? Yes, I did come to see him, as a last resort … though I might have thought otherwise if I’d known he was planning a bloody party, with all of you lot here!’ he went on, goaded. ‘I don’t mind admitting I’m on my uppers, brother. The sort of people you don’t want to know about are after me for money and if they don’t get it, I’ll probably end up in the Thames wearing cement shoes.’

  Theo laughed again but didn’t reply.

  They were at the bottom of the garden, leaning over the sandstone wall that marked the place where the grassy slope finished and the precipitous cliff began its descent. You couldn’t see the river below, but you were always aware of it, the indolent grey snake, sliding under the overhang. A tributary of the Severn and its occasional but unpredictable, dangerous surge. Those boyish exploits about climbing the cliff recalled at the supper table that night had been told for amusement, with no mention of the punishments meted out for disregarding rules created for their safe
ty.

  Money, thought Theo. No prizes for thinking that had to be why Huwie had finally returned. In spite of the trouble which had been the cause of his abrupt departure from Bryn Glas, he had been left his fair share when their father had died. There hadn’t been much to leave by that time, but Gwilym’s moral principles had compelled him to see to it that what there was would be scrupulously divided between his children – and that included Huwie. Ida’s husband had spent most of what she’d inherited before leaving her and Verity for another, younger woman. For Theo, his share had been a drop in the ocean as far as keeping up the lifestyle Claudia considered her due. It was only Pen who had used it wisely, starting off small and gradually building a little empire. And Huwie? God only knew what Huwie had done with his.

  ‘Well, unless you did bump Pen off, you’ll be all right. He’s left nearly everything to us, his family, including Verity,’ Theo said, with an unusual air of buoyancy. ‘You’ll get your cut, though maybe not as much as you’d hoped.’

  His brother’s shoulders sagged, a burden lifted, but he asked, ‘How can you be sure? Oh, I see. You’ve drawn up his will.’

  ‘It’s always been in both our interests for me to give him legal advice over the years. In exchange for being put in the way of certain … investments.’

  ‘Feathering your nest as usual,’ Huwie sneered.

  ‘If that’s so, it hasn’t done me much good,’ Theo answered, his gloom returning. ‘I don’t have Pen’s Midas touch. I think there might be more of Father in me than I like to admit – hopelessly inept with money.’

  ‘I don’t think,’ said Huwie, ‘that you’ve ever been inept with anything.’

  Theo threw him a glance from under those slanted dark eyebrows that could sometimes look devilish. Then they both fell silent. Their father’s shadow lay between them.

  Gwilym had on the whole been a tolerant father, something of a dreamer except for that Puritan streak which demanded the utmost probity from his children – the same trait which indeed had prompted him to abandon the family coal-mining and other business interests, and take up a simple, sober and God-fearing life at Bryn Glas. Which had turned out to be, if not disastrous, very nearly so as far as his children’s inheritance was concerned.

  Theo asked curiously, ‘What have you been up to, Huwie, all this time?’

  Since his arrival, Huwie had been oddly silent, parrying questions to which everyone was dying for answers. ‘Oh, this and that,’ he answered vaguely. Then his voice sharpened. ‘Never mind me, what about this woman Pen was going to marry? Presumably she knew what she was taking on? Prepared to do it because of what she’d get out of it, was she? What do you know of her, apart from the fact that she lives in Hinton and runs her own business?’

  ‘Don’t you remember her? Anna Goodridge, lived on the Townway? One of those who used to come up and play with us sometimes? No, you’d be too young. She left Wyvering when she got married and came back here about ten years ago, after her father died. I think her husband died early on. I’ll give her this, she seems to have made a success out of that gardening business of hers,’ Theo admitted grudgingly. ‘As for her getting anything from Pen … Well, under the present will she gets nothing, but I spoke to him on the telephone last week and he told me he wanted to make changes. I must admit I hadn’t seen that one coming though – getting married again, at his age.’ He plucked absently at the velvety moss growing between the cracks of the sandstone wall, his dark face lengthening even more. ‘She’s deep, that one.’ He amended this. ‘I mean, she plays her cards pretty close to her chest. She could have brought those accusations merely out of spite because she knows she won’t be getting anything now.’

  ‘They’re not without substance though, are they? You’ve said yourself, suspicion’s bound to fall on us. All his family in the house when he died, no one else here.’ Huwie’s voice rose.

  Theo’s hand shot out. The knuckles as he grasped his brother’s arm showed white. Huwie tried to shake it off but the grip was too tight. Theo’s flat measured tones didn’t change but there was no mistaking the threat. ‘You keep your lip buttoned, do you hear? If you didn’t have anything to do with it you’ve nothing to fear, have you? Nor have any of us.’

  There was a silence. The wind blew across the valley, through the scrub on the cliff below and eddied up over the wall. It had an icy bite to it.

  ‘That’s what they always say, don’t they?’ Huwie answered bitterly.

  EIGHT

  The house consisted of a series of small consecutive rooms, some of them knocked through to make larger ones. A corridor ran the length of the house and additional wings jutted out towards the back at either end, providing respectively the kitchen quarters and the room previously used by Penrose as an office.

  The latter proved to be a nondescript room, its windows overlooking the side of the house. It was a little bit scruffy compared with the rest of the immaculately kept house, Mrs Knightly or the girl, Prue, evidently not allowed in here often. It wasn’t large, and taking up much of its available space was a vast desk, the sort known as a partner’s desk, with drawers back and front and two straight chairs facing each other across its top. The desktop was clear, but a small table set to one side was home to a large, heavy-looking typewriter. The office had either been cleared since he died, or Pen Llewellyn had been a tidy worker. Reardon tried each of the multiple drawers in the desk, and found them all locked. If they should be full, going through them was likely to take some time. A job for Gilmour, he decided, keep his mind off Maisie and his coming fatherhood for a while. The only other furniture, a low table and a couple of cracked leather armchairs with the stuffing escaping from the arms, seemed like discards from the rest of the house. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers on one wall made a startling contribution.

  They spent time working out a plan of action and had almost finished when the smiling girl, Prue, who’d been working in the kitchen when Reardon had first arrived, came in with a tray laden with cold beef sandwiches, slices of Dundee cake and a large earthenware pot of tea. Mrs Knightly was going to see they didn’t starve while they worked here. ‘Draw up to the fire,’ Reardon said, when she had closed the door behind her. Bryn Glas, it hadn’t taken long to discover, was a draughty house and the room was chilly, despite the small but blazing fire and a well filled log basket to keep it so.

  After they’d eaten, while Gilmour went to seek out family members to be interviewed, Reardon wandered around the room, hands in pockets. An avid reader, gravitation towards the bookshelves in the fireplace alcoves was inevitable. He was disappointed to find the slightly dusty shelves were sparsely filled and the selection of reading matter, by his standards, uninspired. True, there was a nod to a few classics but mostly it was a collection of contemporary authors, a mixture of fact and fiction with nothing particularly outstanding. Until his eyes came to rest on one shelf which held promise of something more interesting. Here the books were evidently old, possibly even falling into the antiquarian class. Some of them had obviously seen better days, but others were leather-bound and gleaming, with gilt lettering on their spines. Holding a beautifully made book, its structure and fine bindings paying tribute to the contents within, was to Reardon one of life’s greatest pleasures; his fingers itched, his hand went out to pick one up to examine it more closely, but before he could do so the door opened and a woman came into the room. She was tall and striking looking, with heavy chestnut hair coiled in a bun low on her neck, perfectly made-up and seductively perfumed. She looked expensive. Doubtless this was Theo Llewellyn’s wife, easily recognizable from the description given by Mrs Knightly.

  ‘Looking for a book to read?’ she enquired in a slow drawl. ‘I was on the same mission. I’m simply bored to tears, though I doubt there’s anything here worth reading.’ She looked him up and down.

  ‘I was admiring these old books. Mr Llewellyn must have been something of a connoisseur.’

  ‘Connoisseur? Pen?’ She laughed. ‘He knew nothing
about them, they were bought as an investment on Theo’s advice. He’s the one who’s the collector. Theo is my husband,’ she added, sitting down in one of the leather armchairs and crossing elegant legs. ‘I am Claudia Llewellyn. And you are the policeman.’

  Reardon gave her a steady look, followed by his own name and rank, took the chair at the desk that faced the room and indicated the other. Since she was here, he might as well start with her, and putting her across the desk from him gave him an advantage he felt he might need. But before she could move, the door opened once more and Gilmour stepped inside, another woman beside him. ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize …’ he began. ‘This is Mrs Lancaster, sir.’

  ‘Come in, both of you. No reason I can think of why we shouldn’t see you two ladies together.’

  Claudia Llewellyn lifted a graceful shoulder while Ida Lancaster crossed the room to take the other armchair. She immediately lit a black Russian cigarette, a thin, nervy, raddled-looking woman who was obviously not happy without one between her painted lips. The brittle veneer of sophistication made her the antithesis of her brother’s elegantly well-dressed, self-possessed wife. Nevertheless, Reardon instinctively felt he would prefer to deal with her, rather than her sister-in-law, who addressed him with a sort of languid amusement, as though he might be a stage policeman. Gilmour she did not address at all.

  He dealt with both women quickly. Their versions of the evening before Penrose’s death were substantially the same: there had been a pleasant supper party which had, however, broken up fairly early. Pen had seemed in good spirits but had tired rather quickly, and after he had gone to bed they had all dispersed to their various rooms, except for Verity, Mrs Lancaster’s daughter, who had not been feeling well and had already gone up. They had neither of them been aware of any noise or disturbance during the night.

  A little probing into their finances didn’t get him very far with Claudia, although it was pretty obvious that money would be essential to oil the wheels of her lifestyle. As for Ida, she stated rather grandly that she was considering an offer she had just received for her ‘millinery establishment’, as if it were in great demand, not as though she was itching to grab the offer, which Reardon, reading between the lines, thought was more likely to be the case. Neither of them, he surmised, would be exactly averse to a windfall arising from Pen’s death.