about it. Lisa’s money of course. No relatives.’
‘Will Guy Leet —?’
‘No, Guy has no claim. I think Lisa’s estate will now go according to her will to Mrs Pettigrew.’
‘In that case,’ said Miss Taylor, ‘she will, after all, have her reward.’
Mrs Pettigrew had her reward. Lisa’s will was proved in her favour and she inherited all her fortune. After her first stroke Mrs Pettigrew went to live in a hotel at South Kensington. She is still to be seen at eleven in the morning at Harrod’s Bank where she regularly meets some of the other elderly residents to discuss the shortcomings of the hotel management, and to plan various campaigns against the staff. She can still be seen in the evening jostling for a place by the door of the hotel lounge before the dinner gong sounds.
Charmian died one morning in the following spring, at the age of eighty-seven.
Godfrey died the same year as the result of a motor accident, his car having collided with another at a bend in Kensington Church Street. He was not killed outright, but died a few days later of pneumonia which had set in from the shock. It was the couple in the other car who were killed outright.
Guy Leet died at the age of seventy-eight.
Percy Mannering is in an old men’s home, where he is known as ‘The Professor’ and is treated with special respect, having his bed put in an alcove at the far corner of the dormitory — a position reserved for patients who have known better days. His granddaughter, Olive, sometimes visits him. She takes away his poems and letters addressed to editors; she types them out, and dispatches them according to Percy’s directions.
Ronald Sidebottome is allowed up in the afternoons but is not expected to last another winter.
Janet Sidebottome died of a stroke following an increase in blood pressure, at the age of seventy-seven.
Mrs Anthony, now widowed, had a legacy from Charmian, and has gone to live at a seaside town, near her married son. Sometimes, when she hears of old people receiving anonymous telephone calls, she declares it is a good thing, judging by what she has seen, that she herself is hard of hearing.
Chief Inspector Mortimer died suddenly of heart-failure at the age of seventy-three, while boarding his yacht
Eric is getting through the Colston money which came to him on the death of his father.
Alec Warner had a paralytic stroke following a cerebral haemorrhage. For a time he was paralysed on one side and his speech was incoherent. In time he regained the use of his limbs; his speech improved. He went to live permanently in a nursing home and frequently searched through his mind, as through a card-index, for the case- histories of his friends, both dead and dying.
What were they sick, what did they die of?
Lettie Colston, he recited to himself, comminuted fractures of the skull; Godfrey Colston, hypostatic pneumonia; Charmian Colston, uraemia; Jean Taylor, myocardial degeneration; Tempest Sidebottome, carcinoma of the cervix; Ronald Sidebottome, carcinoma of the bronchus; Guy Leet, arteriosclerosis; Henry Mortimer, coronary thrombosis …
Miss Valvona went to her rest. Many of the grannies followed her. Jean Taylor lingered for a time, employing her pain to magnify the Lord, and meditating sometimes confidingly upon Death, the first of the four last things to be ever remembered.
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