Days Without Number (12 page)

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.'

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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. 1 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.'

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'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 suspicion 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 101

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 maneuvering 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.

'I agree with Anna,' said Irene. 'Besides, I don't think Dad actually meant to go through with it. I suspect he intended merely to threaten us with disinheritance and use this document to persuade us he meant it.'

It was a neat line of reasoning, Nick had to admit. But he did not believe it. Nor did he believe that Irene believed it. Their father had never bluffed. What he had threatened he had always delivered.

'I don't care whether he meant it or not,' growled Andrew. 'Anna's put her finger on it. He had no right to try to do this. Once the will's gone, no-one can prove anything. It's obvious what we should do. I don't know what we're waiting for.'

For everyone to have their say. That, of course, was what they were waiting for. Nick cleared his throat uneasily, struggling to find the words to replace the only ones that came into his head. 'We want the money. And we mean to take it.' No, that would not do. That was not what any of them wanted to hear. Instead, all he could say - and all he needed to say was, 'I agree.'

'That we should destroy the will?' Irene's tone was mild but insistent.

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'Yes.'

'Basil?'

'Ah.' Basil leaned forward. 'My turn, is it?'

'Here we go,' muttered Andrew.

'Fear not,' said Basil, with a sidelong glance at his brother. 'I shall not attempt to dissuade you. I have already made it clear that I will decline my share of the proceeds from the sale of this house.'

'Yeah. You're the man with the clean hands all right.'

'Please, Andrew,' said Irene. 'Let him speak.'

'OK, OK.' Andrew raised his hand in mock surrender.

'I believe,' Basil continued, 'that when President Nixon's advisers came to him to report some damaging leak to the press, he was wont to ask, not whether the particular allegation against his administration was true or false, but whether it was deniable. Well, to apply the Nixon test, is destroying the will deniable? The answer, obviously, is yes.'

'Does that mean you agree?' asked Anna.

'It means I regard its destruction, given the circumstances of its discovery, as inevitable.'

'We should be clear,' said Irene. 'Once we've done this, there's no turning back. We must behave as if we've never heard of a cousin Demetrius or a Mr and Mrs Davey. We must forget the will ever existed. I shall say nothing to Laura about it and you must say nothing to Tom, Andrew, nor you to Zack, Anna. Now ... or ever.'

'Agreed.'

Tn fact, none of us must breathe a word to anyone.' There were nods of assent, even, albeit tardily, from Basil. 'We draw a line under the whole business. All right?' There was another round of nods. 'That's settled, then.'

'Good,' said Andrew, jumping up and plucking the will, now restored to its envelope, from the coffee-table. 'As the eldest, I think this is my prerogative.'

He tore the envelope and its contents into four, took two strides to the fireplace and tossed the fragments in amongst the blazing logs, stooping to hurry their extinction along with 103

a few prods of the poker. The paper curled and blackened and flamed . . . and was gone.

'Feel better now?' asked Basil as his brother turned away from the fire.

Andrew smiled grimly. 'Much.'

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Irene had drawn a line for them all to toe. Over the next couple of days arrangements were finalized for the funeral and a headstone was ordered. Baskcomb took delivery of the financial documentation they had assembled and set about the protracted business of probating what he believed was his late client's only will. Nick telephoned an assortment of his father's friends and former colleagues to determine who would and who would not be attending the funeral. He was kept busy with the administrative minutiae of death, though not so busy that he could not have found time to visit the chapel of rest to take a private farewell of the deceased - had he wished.

But he did not wish. And he did not go. His father continued to intimidate him from that halfway ground where he dwelt between death and burial. They had posthumously defied him. But had he found a way, also posthumously, to defeat them? Or was the will he had left in the desk drawer just a macabre joke, a way of guaranteeing himself the last laugh? Nick could not stop thinking about it, partly because he was forbidden to talk about it.

Yet his nerve held. Until the funeral, he was bound to play his part, with gritted teeth. After that, he would be free. The dull normality of his other life beckoned comfortingly. It would not be long now before he could return to it.

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Meanwhile, he had to move out of the Old Ferry to make way for Laura and live for several days at Trennor. He did not relish the prospect and secretly planned to spend as little time as possible there. On Friday, he drove up from Saltash with his few belongings.

Pru had made up a bed for him in his old room and was still on the premises when he arrived. He kept her chatting over a pot of tea for as long as he reasonably could, but by mid afternoon she was gone.

Shortly afterwards, Nick was also gone, almost on a whim, driving west through the rain-washed back roads to Liskeard, where he bought a serviceable black tie for the funeral, then on west along the lanes to St Neot.

The church was open but he was the only visitor. The cloud-filled winter light seemed warmed and gilded by the stained glass. He sat in a pew in the south aisle, gazing at the Creation Window beyond the rood-screen ahead of him. This and the other windows, maybe the Doom Window too, had endured for five centuries. Generations of parishioners, poor as well as rich, had preserved the glass, sometimes at considerable personal risk. None of them had done so for profit or gain. They had acted out of a combination of religious faith and artistic sensibility, motives that made his family's involvement in the strange history of the St Neot glass seem venal and ignoble. They would profit from it. They had destroyed a solemnly executed last will and testament to make sure of that. And they would have their reward, Nick along with them, whether he wanted it or not.

A churchwarden eager to lock up with dusk coming on soon obliged Nick to take his leave. He drove slowly back to Landulph through thickening, wind-slanted rain. When he reached Trennor, the house's dark and empty present seemed to him a feeble reality to set against its teeming past. He entered through a thicket of memories, switched on lights in every room and turned one of his mother's Maria Callas CDs up loud on the hi-fi.

Pru had left him a casserole to put in the oven, apparently

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convinced that he was unable to cook for himself. He set it to warm, then lit the fire in the drawing room, listening to the wind keening in the chimney and remembering, almost against his will, giving cack-handed assistance to his father during the fitting of an H-pot to the chimney a quarter of a century or so before. Yet the event felt as close as yesterday in that instant - his father barking instructions at him as they perched vertiginously on the roof, his mother watching anxiously from the garden below.

With the fire going, Nick hunted around the kitchen and scullery for a bottle of wine, but drew a blank. He was, in one sense, unsurprised by this, supporting as it did his theory that his father had gone down to the cellar specifically to fetch some wine. Nick had not been down there since the old man's death. It was time, he decided, to cross that line.

The cellar was still and silent, the walls and floor coated with grey masonry paint that made it resemble the hull of a ship. Most of the storage space was taken up with the racks in which Michael Paleologus had kept his stock of chosen vintages. The stock was thinner than had once been the case, Nick noticed. The old man had been running it down, factoring the approach of death into his ordering. Nick smiled at the thought, typifying as it did his father's cast of mind. He would not have wanted to spend money on wine he would not live to drink, even though he was unlikely to spend the money on anything else.