Dear Trustee

by Mary Burchell

  “One of them,” Cecile amended. “I have three.”

  “Good heavens, what a bore!”

  “It is rather. Or perhaps I should say, I was afraid it was going to be. But things seem to be working out more or less as I want them now.”

  Felicity gave her an odd, not very friendly little glance at that and said, “How do you get on with Greg?”

  “Quite well,” said Cecile sedately, ignoring earlier storms in favour of the better understanding they now seemed to have reached.

  “He’s not exactly an easy person.” The other girl smiled, with an aggravating assumption of superior knowledge. “But then I think that early tragedy rather—hardened him.” And then, as Cecile was silent, “Did you know about that?”

  “I—knew there was a tragedy in his family,” admitted Cecile, dismayed to find herself involved in this discussion.

  “His sister, whom he adored, took an overdose of sleeping tablets, you know, because her husband wanted to go off with another woman.”

  “It—it wasn’t certain that she did it on purpose.”

  “Oh, there wasn’t much doubt about it.” Felicity shrugged. “Though I believe there was an open verdict. But everyone knew that this other woman had been hounding the husband to get a divorce.”

  “It was not known for certain that she used any pressure at all.”

  “Indeed it was!” Felicity laughed scornfully at the idea of Cecile actually querying her information. “And, in any case, I had the oddest confirmation of it myself, less than a year ago.”

  “Con-confirmation?” stammered Cecile. “How could you?”

  “I’ll tell you.” Felicity leaned forward, her eyes alight with interest, her expression curiously like that of Uncle Algernon. “It was the most extraordinary thing. Gregory’s brother-in-law—he was called Hugh Minniver—emigrated to the States, as soon as the whole miserable business was over, and no one here ever heard any more about him, as far as I know. Well, when I was over there—sometime last summer—I went to stay with some friends in a small place in New England. A Hugh Minniver, who had lived in the place for about a dozen years, had died a few months before, and his home was being sold by auction—”

  “You couldn’t know it was the same one,” Cecile interrupted quickly, “even though the name is unusual.”

  “Wait a minute. I was curious and I went to the sale, and among the things there was a writing desk which I took a fancy to. Seventeenth-century English and in very good condition. I bought it—not for any connection with Hugh Minniver, but because I liked the desk. But when I got it back to my friend’s house, I went over it carefully. I know something about old furniture, and after a while I found there was a secret drawer. And what do you suppose was in that drawer?”

  “I—I don’t know.” Cecile’s eyes were wide and frightened, and she literally drew back from the girl sitting opposite her.

  “There was a bundle of letters, all signed with an ‘L’—the initial of the woman in the case. I suppose she must have meant a lot to him, in spite of what had happened, for he had kept them all those years.”

  “Did you destroy them?” Cecile asked huskily.

  “No, of course not. I read them. And there wasn’t much doubt of the pressure she employed. She holds a pistol to his head on every page.”

  “But—after you had read them—surely you destroyed them then?”

  “No,” Felicity retorted carelessly. “I thought Gregory would be interested. But I haven’t had an opportunity to show them to him yet.”

  CHAPTER V

  “You mustn’t show Gregory those letters!”

  Cecile had no idea of the sharp terror in her voice until she saw the other girl staring at her in, astonishment.

  “Why not?” Felicity spoke coldly. “What is it to you if I show Gregory letters—or anything else, come to that?”

  “N-nothing, of course,” stammered Cecile, placatory in her desperation. “Only—don’t you see?—you will awaken all that old bitterness and unhappiness. He has managed to outlive the past. You can’t cause anything but misery by raking up these wretched events again.”

  “Really,” Felicity laughed scornfully, “I think you must allow that I know Gregory a great deal better than you do. And I don’t need to be told how to act toward him. As a matter of fact, there is no question of awakening any past bitterness. It is all still there.”

  “No, it isn’t! Recently it has become less.”

  “Recently?” There was no mistaking the hostility in the other girl’s voice now. “What should have happened to Gregory recently to make him feel differently about anything?”

  “I can’t explain. But—don’t show him those letters. You will only cause a great deal of unhappiness.”

  “To Greg?” Felicity shook her head contemptuously. “Don’t you believe it. In a way, he will be almost glad. He was fond of his brother-in-law, and I think he has always tried to believe that he acted under pressure and was less to blame than one might suppose. He’ll be glad to find he was right.”

  “How can old letters prove anything now? Alone, and out of their period and context, they may give a subtly wrong impression. It isn’t fair to do that!” Cecile cried.

  “Of course it is.” Felicity laughed scornfully. “What is all the fuss about, anyway? If these letters help Gregory to think a little better of his brother-in-law—”

  “At the expense of someone else,” Cecile put in quickly.

  “Who cares?” Felicity shrugged. “She has passed out of the picture.”

  “Gregory would care,” Cecile retorted, with cold conviction. “He is a just man, and he wouldn’t want to be led on the wrong track—again.”

  “No one is going to lead him on the wrong track, you extraordinary girl. These letters speak for themselves, I tell you,” Felicity said impatiently.

  “But they can’t tell the whole story. It’s just—just brutal to tear them out of the past and—and highlight them. They can’t fail to give a false impression. I beg you to destroy them.” Cecile clasped her hands together in the intensity of her feeling. “You will only do harm by showing them to anyone. The woman who wrote them is still alive, even if Hugh Minniver is dead.”

  “Yes, of course. I know. She is a well-known actress. Everyone in the Minniver set knew who she was. I have heard my mother speak of her often. As a matter of fact, she was in the play we both saw the other night.”

  “I know,” said Cecile dully. “She is my mother.”

  “Your—mother?” Felicity gasped and put her hand to her lips. And Cecile saw that this was indeed news to the other girl, although until that moment she had thought it possible that Felicity knew the whole story and was merely playing a sort of cat-and-mouse act with her.

  There was silence for a whole minute, except for the rumbling of the train wheels. Then Felicity said, though without friendliness, “I understand why you didn’t want Greg to see those letters.”

  “Yes.” Cecile pushed back her hair wearily. “I didn’t want to use that argument too. Because, of course, I am nothing to you and there’s no reason why you should study my feelings—except for common decency.”

  Felicity pressed her lips together, and Cecile greatly feared that common decency did not mean very much to the other girl, if her own interests or her own malicious wishes were involved.

  “What an extraordinary thing that Greg should be made one of your trustees—with that between you,” Felicity said at last.

  “No, not really, I am afraid my father thought very badly of my mother, and, in selecting the trustees to look after me when he had gone, he chose the one man he knew would not encourage me to see anything of her.”

  “And—have you seen her?” Felicity looked curious.

  “Yes. Of course. I’m going to share a flat with her when I return to London from settling up my home in the north.”

  “With the agreement of the trustees?” Felicity asked, staring at her.

  “Yes.”
/>
  “How did you make Greg agree to that?” The other girl narrowed her eyes slightly.

  “I tell you—his bitterness is less than it was. He seems anxious to take as objective a view as possible. He withdrew any opposition he had. That is one reason why it would make things so miserable for me, as well as my mother, if the whole wretched business were to be dragged out of the past again.”

  “I see.”

  But Felicity did not offer any easy reassurances. She sat there silent, opposite Cecile, evidently turning over the situation in her mind and looking at it, Cecile felt sure, entirely from her own point of view.

  At last Felicity stirred and said, “Well, I certainly won’t show them to him until I’ve thought it all over. I promise you that.”

  “But—won’t you please destroy them?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Cecile pressed, though she hated herself for sounding so much as though she were pleading.

  “Because I never believe in destroying anything which might one day be useful,” replied the other coolly.

  “Useful?” Cecile stared at her aghast, and Felicity had the grace to flush. “Useful? How could they possibly be useful to you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Felicity, unmoved. “Not at the moment, at any rate. But one never knows. Sometimes these things acquire a certain value, as circumstances alter.”

  “Do you mean a sort of blackmailing value?” asked Cecile, coldly and incredulously.

  “No, of course not.” Felicity laughed angrily. “They just might be—useful.”

  Inevitably, the rest of their shared journey was uncomfortable. And Cecile had never been more glad to see any place than she was to see Peterborough.

  It was early evening when she finally arrived back at her old home, to be warmly welcomed by Florrie and Stella, whose austere elderly countenances relaxed unbelievably at the sight of her.

  “Eh, it’s been quiet without you, Miss Cecile,” declared Florrie, as she proceeded to set a large and appetizing “high tea” before Cecile. “Not that you were ever one for noise, like some of today’s rubbish, with their jazz and their junketings. But this is a big house for two old folk to be alone in.”

  “I’m sure it is.” Cecile smiled. “But I had to go and see about the new arrangements, you know.”

  “Yes, naturally.” Florrie looked anxious. And at this moment Stella found some excuse to insinuate herself into the room. “Are there going to be big changes, Miss Cecile?”

  “There are bound to be.” Cecile was frank about that. “But if you will both sit down, I’ll tell you what I have in mind.”

  She felt sure Mr. Carisbrooke, and possibly Gregory too, would have deplored her “committing” herself, as Mr. Carisbrooke would have said, at this early stage. But she was not going to have her two faithful old servants worrying about their future an hour longer than was strictly necessary.

  And so, while Florrie and Stella sat on the edge of their chairs—for they belonged to a vanishing race who thought it unbecoming to their own dignity to sit comfortably in the presence of their employer—Cecile outlined her scheme for their future.

  “You mean, have the cottage and a pension for doing nothing, Miss Cecile?” said Florrie at last.

  “No, not for nothing,” Cecile corrected firmly. “For years of faithful service to my father and to me.”

  At this, both of them produced large, clean pocket-handkerchiefs.

  “It won’t be an awful lot,” she explained hastily. “Certainly not enough to shed tears about. But I hope that with your old age pensions and the garden, where you can grow things, and so on, it won’t be too difficult.”

  “You’ll be selling the house, then, Miss Cecile?” Stella returned her handkerchief to her pocket first.

  “Yes. I couldn’t possibly keep up a place like this.”

  “No. Florrie and me were saying the very same thing. ‘Miss Cecile will be going away to London, you’ll see,’ I said. ‘This is no place for a young girl on her own,’ I said.”

  “But I’ll come back and see you both sometimes,” Cecile promised, with a smile.

  “Whereabouts in London will you be going, Miss Cecile?” enquired Florrie, who thought poorly of the capital, having gone there once on a day trip and, owing to train complications, seen little but the Euston Road.

  There was a moment’s hesitation. Then Cecile said, “I shall be going to live with my mother, in a flat near Hyde Park.”

  “Your mother, Miss Cecile?” they echoed in chorus, and they exchanged a glance of something like consternation.

  “Yes. I—I met her again.” Cecile tried to make that sound as natural as possible. “We—liked each other. And I am going to live with her.”

  Again there was silence. Then Florrie said slowly.

  “I liked her too. I was real sorry when she went away.”

  “Oh, Florrie—” Cecile gazed at the elderly maid, as though she would somehow see, through the eyes of the older woman, the Laurie whom she remembered. “Were you, really? Do you remember her well?”

  “Yes, Miss Cecile, Better than Stella will.” Florrie could not resist this claim to superior knowledge. “Because I was here when your mother came as a bride. Such a pretty girl, she was, and very gay. Gayer than you, but very like you.”

  “I’ll tell Mother that you remember her—like that,” Cecile said. “She will like to hear it.”

  “You might give her my respects too, Miss Cecile,” added Stella, in an offended sort of way. “I remember her very well, too, even if I did come three years later than Florrie.”

  “I will,” Cecile promised. “I will.” And professional pride appeared to be satisfied by this.

  She stayed over a week, in the end, sorting and packing and arranging. Fortunately, her father had always been the neatest and most orderly of men, so the task was not as formidable as it had at first appeared. And she kept in close contact with Mr. Carisbrooke, both by letter and, once or twice, by telephone—which Florrie considered ruinously extravagant, and Stella rather dashing.

  At last, however, everything which required her personal attention had been looked after, and she felt justified in leaving the rest in the hands of the very capable house agent and auctioneer whom Mr. Carisbrooke had recommended.

  Cecile returned to London with the cheering conviction that this part of her life, at least, promised few complications.

  But, as she neared London once more, the anxiety which she had contrived to crowd into the background of her mind during the past week began to take possession of her again, and the menace of Felicity, and her damaging knowledge, hovered threateningly in the background.

  If only those letters had never been found!

  Without them, life with Laurie had begun to promise well, for Cecile had felt certain that it was in her power to be a real help and pleasure to her mother. After years of being virtually an outcast from her family, Laurie was going to have an affectionate daughter for company. Something which could not fail to make her see life in warmer, softer tones.

  And all this was to be accomplished without opposition from Gregory, after all. A major victory had been won there. And, suddenly, Cecile realized how very much that meant to her. She had been prepared to fight Gregory, or anyone else, for the chance of making her mother happy. But how very good it had been to find that, after all, they were on friendly terms—that she had not to regard him as a permanent source of opposition.

  “It was that moment in the theatre box which first gave me the idea that he might be a friend, instead of an enemy,” she thought reminiscently. “And then—one couldn’t be indifferent to his generous effort to be objective, after all these years. He is generous. It could all be so happy and hopeful, if only Felicity had not found those miserable letters.”

  And Felicity, of all people!

  Even without knowing her well, Cecile knew instinctively that she was cold and at least a little unscrupulous. That meant that she would be quite unpre
dictable, because one would never know what she might decide to do in what she considered to be her best interests.

  “It’s a sort of jealousy, I believe,” Cecile told herself, in puzzled realization. “She actually resents the idea that I am, in some way, Gregory’s responsibility. It’s ridiculous, but it is a fact. Though why I don’t know. She had the chance of his whole heart’s devotion, it seems, and she chose to reject it. Why be jealous of my small position now?”

  Cecile had not found the answer to this by the time she reached London. But, as though her very thoughts might have conjured him up, Gregory was almost the first person she saw as she stepped out on to the platform.

  She recognized his tall figure with a degree of pleasure which surprised herself. And as his glance lighted on her, she smiled and waved, with the odd feeling that home was here, just as much as in the north, where she had lived all her life.

  “Hello! What are you doing at King’s Cross at just this hour?” she asked, as he came up to her.

  “Meeting you, of course.” He took her case from her, and put his arm round her to shield her from the crowd. “What else?”

  “You mean—you came on purpose to meet me?" She stopped and looked up at him, while the crowds eddied round them, and for a strange moment it seemed to her that they stood alone—an entirely complete and self-contained unit.

  “Most certainly. Is it so surprising?”

  “Yes, I think it is. How did you know I was coming today, and by this train, for one thing?”

  “I found out from Carisbrooke.”

  “You did?” There was a note of pleased surprise in her tone. And then suddenly this was succeeded by anxiety, and she asked quickly, “For any special reason, Gregory? Has—has anything happened?”

  “No, of course not, you funny child. What should have happened? Except that perhaps I missed my ward a little while she was away.”

  “Oh—Gregory—” She laughed, and she could have kissed him in her relief, and for the strange pleasure it gave her to have someone personally concerned about her. It had never happened to her before. Her father had hardly ever noticed if she came or went.