Читать книгу Child’s Play - Reginald Hill - Страница 12

‘Lexie! Lexie Huby! Hi. It’s your cousin, Rod. Remember me?’

‘Oh. Hello,’ said Lexie.

She wished that Messrs Thackeray etcetera would invest in some lightweight phones. These cumbersome old bakelite things were not made for small hands, nor for heads whose ears and mouth were not a foot apart.

‘Hello to you too,’ said the voice.

‘What do you want?’

‘Well, I’m up here again, didn’t expect to be so soon after the funeral, but sometimes things work out that way, don’t they? I’ll tell you all about it when we meet.’

‘Meet?’

‘Yes. We didn’t have much chance to talk after the funeral and I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to have lunch and a tête-à-tête with my little cousin Lexie.’

‘What do you want to talk about?’

‘Well, old times, the sort of thing cousins do talk about,’ said Lomas, sounding a little hurt.

What old times? wondered Lexie. Their blood relationship was so tenuous as to make the title cousin an unwanted courtesy. As for old times, they’d only met on those rare occasions when Mrs Windibanks’s hopeful forays north coincided with the Old Mill Inn Hubys’ monthly tea visit. Mrs Windibanks had always treated them like the lady of the manor acknowledging the peasants, and Rod ignored the two girls altogether. Prior to the funeral, the last time they’d met had been at Aunt Gwen’s sick bed some three years earlier. The old lady had suffered her first stroke shortly after returning from a trip abroad. Arthur Windibanks had died in a car accident only a fortnight later leaving his widow in dire financial straits, according to rumour.

‘Old Windypants was hoping to mend her fortunes with the old girl’s death!’ John Huby had chortled. ‘You should’ve seen her face when the doctor said she were on the mend!’

Rod Lomas, fresh out of drama school, had been as offhand as ever towards his young ‘cousins’, but some allowance had to be made for his black tie. Three years later he seemed ready to make amends and Jane, very susceptible to masculine charm, now reckoned he was lovely.

Lexie was not so easily won over, however.

‘Hello. You still there?’ inquired the voice.

‘Yes.’

‘Look. Do come and have lunch with me. To be honest, I don’t really know another soul in town and you’d be doing me a real favour.’

Three years in a solicitor’s office had taught Lexie to distrust openness above all things. But she was curious now and also she could hear her employer’s footsteps on the creaky stairs.

‘I only get an hour,’ she said.

‘Monstrous! They give them longer on the Gulag! So, a bar snack then, rather than a trifling foolish banquet. There’s a pub on the corner of Dextergate, the Black Bull, can’t be very far from you. Half an hour’s time, twelve-thirty?’

‘All right,’ she said and replaced the receiver as the door opened and Eden Thackeray appeared.

‘I don’t know why we have courts, Lexie,’ he said. ‘I could write out the verdicts if you just gave me a list of the magistrates. Have you been kept busy?’

Lexie followed him into his office. It was just what Hollywood required an English solicitor’s chambers to be, all oak-dark panelling and wine-dark upholstery, while behind tall cabinets of lozenged glass marched rank upon leathered rank of the army of unalterable law.

‘A few phone calls, Mr Eden,’ she said. ‘I’ve made a note. One was from a Mr Goodenough who said he was the General Secretary of the People’s Animal Welfare Society. He wanted to see you about Aunt Gwen’s will. He’s travelling up from London tomorrow afternoon, so I made an appointment for him to see you on Friday morning. I hope that’s all right.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘And there was another one to do with Aunt Gwen’s will. A Miss Brodsworth. She said she was something to do with Women For Empire and wondered if there’d been any developments.’

‘My God. Some people! Vultures. But Lexie, what must you think? I hope this hasn’t upset you. I’d quite forgotten you might find yourself dealing with dear Mrs Huby’s affairs when I asked you to step in for Miss Dickinson.’

Miss Dickinson, Thackeray’s regular secretary, had been rushed off to hospital with appendicitis and to the surprise of most and the chagrin of a few, Lexie had been elevated from copy-typing in the Inquiries office to this most prestigious of jobs in the firm of Messrs Thackeray etcetera.

‘No, it didn’t upset me,’ Lexie said in her small voice. ‘Only I couldn’t really help Miss Brodsworth as I didn’t know what was happening.’

‘No. Of course. Most remiss of me. Sit down and let me fill you in.’

The girl perched herself on the secretarial chair, built for and hollowed by much heavier hocks than hers.

‘Yes, the thing is, and you must have realized it, that though the world at large, and her family in particular, has lost your dear aunt, or great-aunt I ought to say, as far as the firm of Messrs Thackeray etcetera is concerned, she is still very much in existence. In law, a client is defined by his or her affairs and our duty now is to the estate which is likely to be almost as demanding as Mrs Huby in propria persona, so to speak.’

Thackeray enjoyed playing the stage solicitor. It was some compensation for having to put up with this gloomy mausoleum when privately he longed for strip-lights and computer terminals. But he could think of half a dozen very rich clients (Mrs Huby had been among them) who would probably flee indignantly in the face of such desecration.

‘So, let me see. Where’s the file? Ah, here it is. Naturally I wrote and informed the putative legatees of the terms of Mrs Huby’s will. You might care to examine their replies for yourself. First, the People’s Animal Welfare Society.’

He handed the girl a sheet of good quality white paper headed by a logo of the initials PAWS formed into an animal footprint and an address in Mabledon Place, London WC1. The letter was word-processed.

Dear Mr Thackeray,

I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your letter in reference to the estate of the late Mrs Gwendoline Huby. I shall be in touch again after consulting the Society’s legal advisers.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Goodenough (General Secretary)

‘Next CODRO, which is to say the Combined Operations Dependants’ Relief Organization.’

This was rather amateurly typed on pale blue paper heavily embossed with an address in Bournemouth.

My dear Mr Thackeray,

Thank you for the news of Mrs Huby’s most generous bequest. I gather from what you say that it is most unlikely that Mrs Huby’s son will be able to claim his inheritance but, alas, this will not help us all that much, as, by the very nature of things, the number of those who can claim relief from our Organization will have dwindled almost to non-existence by the year 2015. If, however, it were possible to effect an advance at the present time, however small, it could be put to very good use indeed.

I await your reply hopefully,

Yours sincerely,

(Lady) Paula Webb (Hon. Treasurer)

‘Finally Women For Empire,’ said Thackeray.

This was handwritten in spindly writing, strong at first but failing towards the end, on pink writing paper with the address in Gothic script, Maldive Cottage, Ilkley, Yorkshire. Across the head of the sheet a rubber stamp had printed in purple ink Women For Empire.

Dear Sir,

I was much distressed to hear of Mrs Huby’s death. She was an old and valued member of Women For Empire and I was touched that she should have remembered us in her will. I myself am not in the best of health. Happily I am fortunate enough to have a young and vigorous assistant in the onerous task of running the affairs of Women For Empire. She is Miss Sarah Brodsworth, who has been vested with full authority in this and all other WFE matters. I will pass your letter on to her and doubtless she will get in direct contact with you.

God save the Queen.

Sincerely yours,

Laetitia Falkingham (Founder and Perpetual President WFE)

‘Well, Lexie,’ said Thackeray when she finished the last letter. ‘What do you think? You have the advantage of having spoken to two of the people concerned. What did you make of them, by the way?’

‘Mr Goodenough was Scottish and sounded, well, sort of down-to-earth, businesslike.’

‘And Miss Sarah Brodsworth?’

She hesitated, then said, ‘Well, she was businesslike too. Youngish but hard, sort of aggressive, but it was just a voice and some people on the telephone …’

‘No. I fear you may have heard all too accurately, Lexie,’ said Thackeray. ‘Silly old women and their unpleasant little organizations can attract some very dubious people when there’s money involved. Well, that’s the way the world wags, I’m afraid. Question is, what do you think will happen next?’

Lexie said, ‘I don’t rightly know, Mr Eden.’

‘Come now! I have a better opinion of your intelligence. Why do you think I asked you to take Miss Dickinson’s place?’

‘I’m not sure,’ she said ingenuously. ‘To tell the truth, when you sent for me, I half thought, what with Great Aunt Gwen dying …’

She let the sentence fade and Thackeray burst out indignantly, ‘My God, you didn’t imagine I was going to sack you, did you?’

‘Well, I thought, maybe, as I only got the job because of Aunt Gwen in the first place …’

A phenomenon often observed by Thackeray in his clients was the greater the guilt, the greater the indignation. It was a reaction he understood now, for there was no denying that without her great-aunt’s influence, Lexie Huby would never have done for Messrs Thackeray etcetera. Not that she lacked qualifications, but she was awkward of manner, careless of appearance, spoke what few words she managed to get out with a strong Yorkshire accent, and looked like a twelve-year-old. But when old ladies of great wealth pronounce, old lawyers of good sense take heed, and Lexie had been taken on and hidden away in the nethermost reaches among the storage cabinets and deed boxes so that she would not besmirch the Messrs Thackeray etcetera image.

That had been three years ago. Only a month after she joined the firm, old Mrs Huby had had her first stroke. Had it proved fatal, there was little doubt in Thackeray’s mind that after a decent interval, little Lexie might well have been urged to seek a job more suited to her taste and talents.

But the three years that passed had seen a change, not so much in the girl herself who seemed almost indistinguishable from the odd little creature who had first arrived, but in Thackeray’s conception of her. Observation and report had slowly convinced him there was genuine intelligence here. Checking back, he had seen that her school references all said she could have stayed on after O-levels, but family pressure had been brought to bear. That awful man Huby! Thackeray shuddered every time he thought of him. It was partly as an anti-Huby gesture, partly because he liked to toss the occasional cat among the complacent office pigeons, but mainly on the basis of true desert that he had elevated this little sparrow to Miss Dickinson’s perch.

‘Lexie, I won’t deny your aunt’s influence helped you get the job, but it’s your own abilities that will keep you in it,’ he said rather tartly. ‘Now, what do you think of these letters?’

‘Well, they’d all like the money sooner rather than later, but from the sound of the letter and from him coming all this way to see you, this Mr Goodenough at PAWS is the one who’ll do something about it.’

‘Excellent. Yes, even before he telephoned, I guessed that Mr Andrew Goodenough was going to be the focus of action.’

‘You don’t seem bothered, Mr Eden,’ said Lexie in a puzzled voice.

‘Bothered! I’m delighted, Lexie. Merely administering the estate until 2015 would be very dull. Not unprofitable, of course, but dull. But if we have to act on behalf of the estate against an attempt to overturn the will, that could be both lively and extremely profitable. Instant money too, always welcome. So, bring on the lawsuits I say!’

He sat back, pleased at being able to show this naïve young thing what a sharp and worldly fellow he really was.

The naïve young thing, far from looking impressed, was glancing at her watch.

‘Am I keeping you from something, Lexie?’ he said sharply.

‘Oh no. I mean, I’m sorry, Mr Eden, it’s just that I’ve got an appointment in my lunch hour and it’s nearly half past twelve …’

She looked so distressed, his sternness dissolved instantly.

‘Then you must run along,’ he said.

She left, darting from the room with the swiftness of a wren. An appointment? Hairdresser perhaps, though that close crop of indeterminately brown straight hair didn’t look as if it owed much to the coiffeur’s art. Dentist, then. Or boyfriend? Alas, least likely of all, he suspected. Poor little Lexie. He could see her growing old in the service of Messrs Thackeray etcetera. He must do what he could for her. Getting her out of the Old Mill Inn and away from the influence of that awful father of hers would be the first step. But how to manage it?

He sat quietly, applying his mind to the task. It was a good mind and it enjoyed the business of manipulating other people’s destinies.

He heard the building emptying. His nephew and junior partner, Dunstan Thackeray, stuck his head round the door.

‘Coming to the Gents, Uncle Eden?’ he asked.

This was not the odd inquiry it sounded. The Gents was the familiar abbreviation of The Borough Club For Professional Gentlemen, the prestigious Victorian institution which had had a Thackeray on its founding committee and of which Eden was the president-elect. As a liberal modernist, he deplored and detested it. As a senior partner in Messrs Thackeray etcetera he had to keep his mouth shut. But he was not in the mood for the usual Gents diet, conversational as well as culinary, of traditional stodge.

‘Later. I may be in later,’ he said.

He heard his nephew’s feet descend the stairs. Then all was silence. He fell into a reverie which a casual observer might have mistaken for a doze.

When he opened his eyes, it took him a few seconds to realize there actually was a casual observer to make the error.

Seated before him where Lexie had perched a little earlier was a man. There was something familiar about him, and not very pleasantly familiar either.

Suddenly it came to him. This was the same sunburnt intruder who had disturbed Gwendoline Huby’s funeral.

He jumped up, alarmed.

‘Who are you? How did you get in? What the devil do you want?’

The man stared at him as if looking for something in his face.

‘You are Eden Thackeray?’ he said.

He spoke with a certain hesitancy, like a man reassembling old ideas, old words.

‘Yes, I am. And who are you?’ repeated Thackeray.

‘Who am I?’ said the man. ‘In my passport and in my life for the past forty years, it says that I am Alessandro Pontelli of Florence. But the truth is that I am Alexander Lomas Huby and I have come to claim my inheritance!’