Dear Trustee

by Mary Burchell

  Uncle Algernon said. “Tcha!” again, with impressive emphasis. “You’re my ward, aren’t you?”

  “Not exactly.” Cecile was becoming quite good at the distinction between a guardian and a trustee. “You’re a trustee, on my behalf, of an almost non-existent estate. I don’t think that constitutes much of a claim on my part.”

  “Well, if you haven’t much estate, you’ll need money, won’t you?” Uncle Algernon pointed out triumphantly. “How are you going to get it?”

  “Work, of course. Like millions of other people,” Cecile said cheerfully. “I learned typing and shorthand when I was at finishing school. We all had to do something practical, as well as the frills. And I have two good languages and a smattering of another. With a refresher course of some sort, I don’t think I’ll have much trouble getting some sort of secretarial job.”

  “She’s a girl after my own heart,” remarked Uncle Algernon to Maurice. “You’d better marry her. She’d make a man of you.”

  “Thanks.” Maurice pressed his lips together and looked annoyed, as though he were taking all this too seriously, Cecile could not help thinking. “But I’ll manage my own affairs, if you don’t mind.”

  “You can’t,” retorted Uncle Algernon. “You aren’t a manager by nature. She is. She knows what she wants and she goes straight for it, which is more than you’ll ever do.”

  Then, while Maurice looked glum, he turned back to Cecile and said, “If you’ll ring that bell, you can have some tea. Mrs. Frinton makes good teas. Not that I can eat anything much, myself,” he added, and shook his head in gloomy self pity.

  “I expect you can, if you have congenial company,” replied Cecile, in her most bracing tone. But she rang the bell, and presently a maid appeared, wheeling in a tea-trolley, which looked well laden.

  Over tea he made several other unkind remarks to Maurice, who struggled manfully to remain good-tempered and amiable under what was, obviously, familiar behaviour. And he made only one more reference to his position as Cecile’s trustee, and that was to say he hoped she wouldn’t bother him with too much business. Then, very soon after tea was over, he told them it was time they were going.

  “I have to have a rest before dinner,” he stated firmly. “Doctor’s orders. But come again soon.” This was addressed exclusively to Cecile. “And find out what you can about my great-niece and Gregory Picton.”

  “I’ll come again soon,” Cecile promised. But on the second point she did not commit herself before saying goodbye.

  They were seen off the premises by Mrs. Frinton, who looked as though she might count the teaspoons as soon as they were gone. And, as they drove away from the house, Cecile turned to Maurice and said, “Is he always like that?”

  “Most times,” replied Maurice gloomily.

  “But, Maurice, don’t you think it might be better to stand up to him a little? He seemed to like that with me.”

  “Only because you are a girl—and a novelty.” Maurice seemed depressed. “Anyway, I can’t afford to take risks. And he knows it.”

  “Of course he does. That’s what makes him so cantankerous. Like a naughty child who knows he has his parents half scared. Give him a back-answer occasionally and see what happens.”

  “Then he’d go and alter his will.”

  “So what? He would probably alter it back when he reflected on the enjoyable novelty of having you stand up to him.”

  “Not he! He’d go and die before he could change it back again,” declared Maurice. “He’s that sort.”

  “Well, he certainly seems cranky enough for anything.” Cecile laughed. Then she looked curiously at Maurice. “Tell me—do you know anything about this great-niece of his?”

  “Felicity? Yes, of course. She is a sort of cousin of mine. Although I call him Uncle Algernon, the old man is my great-uncle too, you know. Felicity is the daughter of my aunt, and really rather a favourite of his.”

  “And what,” asked Cecile, with rather elaborate carelessness, “was the story about her and Gregory Picton?”

  “I don’t really know. It was while I was away up north. He acted for her over something to do with fraud in connection with her late father’s affairs, and it seems he got very friendly. According to Uncle Algernon, he ran after her like mad, but she wouldn’t have any of him. Kept him dangling, you know, just for the fun of showing she had the celebrated Gregory Picton on a string. She’s a bit like Uncle Algernon, really, now I come to think of it.”

  “She sounds like it,” Cecile agreed with feeling. “And then? What happened after that?”

  “Oh, she went off to the States, on some pleasure of her own. She can afford to—” a note of envy crept into Maurice’s voice—“she belongs to the wealthy side of the family.”

  “Well, cheer up. She doesn’t look any the happier for that,” declared Cecile, remembering the faintly discontented line of Felicity’s well-cut mouth.

  “Sorry.” Maurice grinned, and seemed to recover his spirits suddenly. “Uncle Algernon always has that effect upon me. But I must say you were a success. It would be rather fun if he ended by leaving you a packet, wouldn’t it?”

  “It would be very embarrassing,” replied Cecile drily.

  But Maurice laughed almost as unbelievingly as Uncle Algernon at that.

  During the next few days, Cecile’s future began to take more definite shape. Mr. Carisbrooke summoned her to a further interview, and explained that, now the financial situation was clearer, it seemed there would be an income of about two hundred and fifty pounds a year available.

  “in addition, of course, there will be the capital value of the house—if you are able to sell it,” said the cautious Mr. Carisbrooke. “There is also the small cottage adjoining, which, I understand, used to be a gardener’s cottage, but is now empty.”

  “Yes. That will do for Florrie and Stella—the two elderly maids—” began Cecile.

  “It will reduce the value of the house and grounds when they go up for sale,” interrupted Mr. Carisbrooke quickly.

  “I can’t help that. They have to live somewhere, don’t they?” Cecile was firm about that. “They wouldn’t know what to do if we simply gave them notice. They’re over sixty, both of them, and they were with us for over twenty years. If they have the cottage and a hundred and fifty a year between them—”

  “My dear Miss Bernardine! that is three-fifths of your income,” cried the scandalized Mr. Carisbrooke.

  “Three-fifths of my unearned income,” Cecile corrected, with a smile. “I’m going to get a job very soon, Mr. Carisbrooke. Don’t worry about that.”

  “At present you are living expensively at an hotel,” began Mr. Carisbrooke.

  “Soon I am going to live, less expensively, with my mother,” retorted Cecile good-humouredly.

  There was a slight silence. Then Mr. Carisbrooke coughed and said, “M’yes. I had heard about that. I am surprised that Mr. Picton agreed.”

  “I think he was too.” Cecile smiled slightly. “But we had a long talk about—about the unhappy affair of his sister, Mr. Carisbrooke. It’s all been such a mystery, and so fiercely taboo as a subject for so long, that I think he was surprised to find there could be another viewpoint on it.”

  “And can there be another viewpoint on it, Miss Bernardine?” enquired the solicitor drily.

  “Well—yes. I think there can. I’m not going to pretend my mother was blameless, and I hold no brief for anyone who uses another woman’s husband to further her own ambition. But why should she be assumed to have been the driving force in that unhappy affair? From all accounts, he was a forceful, charming man, well able to get his own way and know his own mind. Why shouldn’t he have been active on his own behalf, without much prompting from her?”

  Mr. Carisbrooke gave Cecile a long, reflective look, and for a moment he did not speak. Then he said slowly, “It’s odd you should say that. Picton said something the same to me in this very office, only yesterday.”

  “You mean he made
excuses for my mother?” She flushed with the extraordinary sensation of surprise and joy which swept over her at the thought that Gregory’s deeply rooted and bitter resentment might be softening.

  “No. He didn’t go as far as that.” Mr. Carisbrooke smiled thinly. “But he said, ‘I always took it for granted that Hugh—’ that was the name of the brother-in-law, Hugh Minniver—‘that Hugh was urged on to his divorce by Laurie Cavendish. But, suppose that were not so, Carisbrooke,’ he said. ‘Suppose that were not so. It does alter the picture rather.”

  “He—he said that?” Cecile bit her lip because it trembled suddenly. “That was generous of him! Because it must have been difficult for him, after all these years, even to try to reassess the facts.”

  “I think, Miss Bernardine,” Mr. Carisbrooke gave that dry smile again, “that perhaps you reassessed the facts for him.”

  “Well, perhaps.” Cecile smiled in her turn. “But it is true, you know, that none of us knows, really, how much the husband acted of his own free will, and how much because of anything that—that Laurie did.”

  “When do you propose to start living with your mother, Miss Bernardine?” enquired Mr. Carisbrooke.

  “As soon as it suits her. I’m going to see her today, and I hope to settle it then,” Cecile explained. “Then I’d better go up north for some days and settle up things there. Most of the furniture can be sold, and Florrie and Stella can be told of the new arrangement—”

  “If the trustees agree, Miss Bernardine.”

  “Well, make them agree, Mr. Carisbrooke,” Cecile retorted impatiently. “You’re much cleverer at this sort of thing than I am. I want the house cleared and put up for sale. I want Florrie and Stella settled in the cottage, with what furniture they need, and the assurance that they will have their little pension. The sale of the furniture will give me some ready money, I suppose, and on that I’ll take a business-training refresher course, and be ready to face life on my own. That’s all, I think. Except that if and when we do sell the house, it will give me rather more capital to play about with.”

  “To invest, Miss Bernardine,” corrected Mr. Carisbrooke austerely.

  “All right. To invest.” Cecile smiled at him. “I’ll do whatever you all want about that, if I can have my own way over Florrie and Stella.”

  Mr. Carisbrooke forbore to point out that she was also having her own way over her place of residence. And, having promised Cecile that he would do his best to see that her wishes were met, he bade her a not unfriendly goodbye.

  It was rather late in the afternoon, but Cecile decided there was still time to go and see her mother. She had not been there since their telephone conversation about her evening with Gregory, and she wondered, with a half nervous sort of curiosity, what her mother’s attitude would be.

  As Laurie greeted her, however, there was nothing in her manner to suggest that, she even remembered the quick, half-broken phrases with which she had recalled the past. And when Cecile explained that she wanted to know how soon she might come to live in the flat, her mother said,

  “Then you really are coming?”

  “Yes, of course. I told you—Gregory agreed. And neither of the other trustees will want to interfere.”

  “No. I suppose not.”

  At first, Cecile thought there was not going to be any further talk of what had happened between herself and Gregory. Then, rather as though she could not help it, her mother said, “How did you persuade him, Cecile? Was there a very unpleasant scene?”

  “Oh, no! It wasn’t a bit like that. First of all, he told me his version of the story. About his sister and brother-in-law—and you.”

  “Making it all sound pretty sordid, I suppose?”

  “No. He made it sound simple and tragic—for all three of you. Naturally his own point of view was coloured by the fact that he loved his sister. But that didn’t prevent his listening to what I had to say. In the end, he accepted the idea—at least, I think he did—that it was not for us to guess how much this—this Hugh Minniver acted on his own initiative, or how much he was prompted.”

  Her mother stared at her with bleak, speculative eyes, as though the very name of Hugh Minniver raised ghosts.

  “And aren’t you going to ask me which it was?” she asked bitterly.

  “No,” Cecile said. “And don’t try to tell me. Probably you can’t even say yourself, at this date. It’s over, Mother. For good or ill, it has been over for fifteen or sixteen years. Please, please put a line under the past, and be happy in the present, with me.”

  Laurie was silent for a long moment. Then she said slowly, “I’ve never believed that one can bury the past. I’ve always supposed that somehow it works its way to the surface again. But—when you talk in that innocent, vehement way—I wonder. You are such an extraordinarily hopeful creature, Cecile. I don’t know why. Your father was not. And neither am I.”

  “Perhaps you would have been, in other circumstances.” Cecile put out her hand and the other woman took it and held it tightly for a moment.

  “I am going up north—back home—for about a week,” Cecile said. “I hope to get things more or less settled in that time, and leave the sale of the house and the furniture to take its course. After all, I’ll come back. May I come to you then?”

  “You can come whenever you like,” her mother replied. And perhaps in token of that, she allowed Cecile to hug and kiss her with eager affection, before she finally dismissed her, as it was getting near the time for her to go to the theatre.

  When Cecile got back to the hotel, she found to her surprise—and her unexpected pleasure—that Gregory Picton was waiting for her. He was sitting in a chair in the lounge, writing, and he did not notice her until she came right up to him.

  “Hello.” He jumped to his feet. “I was just scribbling a note to you. I had decided you weren’t coming in, after all.”

  “I went to see M—Laurie. Did you want to see me about something special?”

  “I dropped in to see Carisbrooke, just after you left, and found he had forgotten to get your signature to two papers in connection with your father’s estate. I offered to bring them along!”

  “How nice of you.”

  “Not at all. It is the business of a trustee to see his ward sometimes,” he retorted, a little mockingly.

  “Oh. Then it is a business visit?”

  “It’s whatever you like to call it, Cecile.” He stood smiling down at her. And suddenly she remembered her conversation with Mr. Carisbrooke.

  “Gregory,” she put out her hand quickly on his arm, “Mr. Carisbrooke told me that he had a talk with you yesterday. He repeated something you said. And it seemed that, for the first time, you questioned the certainty of—of Laurie’s complete guilt. Was this so?”

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I can only tell you that, for the first time, I did not want to reject the idea that there might be extenuating circumstances.”

  “Oh, Gregory,” she came quite close to him, “why was that?”

  “Why do you suppose, my sweet child?” He looked down at her, half mockingly, half tenderly. “Because you are a good, loyal, courageous fighter in an almost lost cause, of course. And if ever I had to stand at the bar of public opinion for judgment,” he put his arm around her, “I wouldn’t ask for a better Counsel for the Defence. Now, are you going to sign these papers?”

  “Y-yes, of course.” She was aware that his arm tightened round her for a moment before he let her go. Then, in a brisk and businesslike manner, he produced the necessary papers and handed her his own fountain-pen.

  “Here, and here.” He indicated the places for her signature as officially as Mr. Carisbrooke might have done, and Cecile signed, a little unsteadily.

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes. That’s fine.” He was screwing back the top on his fountain-pen, with some deliberation. “I hear you are going up north in the next day or two.”

  “Yes. I hope to get at least the preliminaries se
ttled for the disposal of the house and furniture. Mr. Carisbrooke will tell you about the way I would like things arranged.”

  “I know. You want to give away rather more than half your unearned income.” He was his smiling, half-mocking self again. “Don’t actually sign anything without consulting us first. That’s all I ask.”

  And then he bade her goodbye and went away.

  Cecile did not see him again before she went north two days later. And of Maurice too she saw a good deal less, since he had already started in his new job.

  There were not very many people travelling on the morning she left. And, having arrived at the station in good time, she had no difficulty in securing a corner seat. She sat watching the other would-be passengers hurrying along the platform as departure time drew near, and, five minutes before the train was due to leave, she suddenly saw a familiar figure pass the window.

  Even as she recognized Felicity Waring, the other girl glanced back, saw her, hesitated a moment, and then, as though suddenly making up her mind, she came back and entered Cecile’s compartment.

  “Hello.” She tossed her small, but expensive-looking case on the rack. “How far are you going?”

  “To York, where I change on to a branch line,” Cecile explained.

  Felicity, it seemed, was going no further than Peterborough. But, even so, Cecile rather wondered what they would talk about for an hour and a half. And she also wondered why Felicity had sought her company when she could just as easily have smiled and passed on.

  A few minutes later the train started and, for lack of anything else to say, Cecile began to tell Felicity of her visit to Uncle Algernon and her discovery that the other girl was his great-niece.

  “Oh—you know Uncle Algernon?” For the first time, Cecile saw a smile of real amusement on Felicity’s face. “He’s an extraordinary old fellow, isn’t he? And you say he is one of your trustees?”