Asvina shook her head. 'I wish I could say it was only that. The fact is, there are some peculiarities in the provisions of the existing will that makes it rather a bugger to execute, not to put too fine a point on it. Although it's not a particularly large estate in terms of absolute value.'
Maggie shot Jimmy a half-smile, who returned a look suggesting he was thinking the same thing as she was. Not a particularly large estate. In Asvina Rani terms, that probably meant no more than nine or ten million pounds.
'And who benefits from the will?' she asked. 'There are twin daughters I seem to remember?'
'Yes there are,' Asvina said. 'And they're identical twins too. Pixie and Posy. Not their given names by the way, but ones they adopted several years ago when they began their careers in the public eye.'
'Elspeth and Kirsty,' Jimmy said, his voice signalling disapproval. 'That's their real names.'
'Do you know them then?' Maggie asked him, surprised.
'I've met them,' he said. 'Once.' By his expression, it was evident he didn't mean to give anything else away.
'That might prove useful,' Asvina said brightly, not giving Maggie the chance to ask the obvious question, being how he knew them. 'There is also Roderick Macallan's estranged wife to be considered too.'
'That's the twins' mother?' she asked.
'No,' Asvina said, 'Alison Macallan is the Commodore's second wife. I should have said that his first wife, the mother of his three children, died in very tragic circumstances. But I guess you'll know all about this Jimmy?'
'Aye, I do,' he said. 'Although it's pretty much in the public domain, courtesy of the twins. They mention it a lot on their channels.' From his tone, Maggie guessed that once again he didn't approve.
'Their mother died in child birth,' Asvina explained. 'This was in Canada, where their father was on secondment at the time, somewhere over on the West coast, Vancouver I think. So as I understand it, the first twin was delivered perfectly normally. But then there were terrible last-minute complications with the second baby, something about how she was lying in the womb I believe. So as a result, the doctors had to do an emergency Caesarean, but the mother had already lost a lot of blood and they were terribly worried about the outcome. I think in the end it may have come down to them choosing between saving mother or baby. Whatever the truth of the situation, they managed to deliver the second twin about half an hour later, but sadly Phillipa Macallan died on the operating table.'
'God, how horrible,' Maggie said. 'But you say his second wife Alison is estranged from the Commodore? Does that mean they're not divorced?'
'Not yet. The break-up was acrimonious, let's put it this way, and we had only recently started with the formal proceedings before he died. Which of course, just adds to the complexity of the matter, as I've eluded to already.'
'It does sound very interesting,' Maggie said. 'So you mentioned some peculiarities in the will. What are they all about?'
Asvina smiled. 'Yes, as I said, it's all rather complicated. In fact it goes back to late Victorian times, when one of Roderick Macallan's ancestors built the Ardmore estate. Sir Archibald made his fortune in shipbuilding and more or less invested all of it in building the house and laying out the grounds. I think it was true to say it became the love of his life. Which brings us to the covenant in the will.'
'A restricted one I'm guessing?' Maggie said, nodding sagely. In her days as a trainee solicitor, immersed in the mundane conveyancing work that was the lot of the junior, she'd come across many of these clauses and knew what a pain in the backside they could be. Which was of course the intention when they were drawn up in the first place. They weren't called restricted for nothing.
'Yes, exactly,' Asvina said. 'As I said, it had been the love of Sir Archie's life and so he took precautions to ensure it could not be sold off and broken up once he'd passed away.'
'And that's what the covenant tries to enforce?'
'Yes, it does. It lays out that in the event of the death of the current incumbent, it must pass, intact, to the oldest offspring- the oldest surviving issue in lawyer-speak. Specifically, it states that the estate must not be sold off in order to split the proceeds between the surviving beneficiaries. Over the years of course there have been attempts by the family to have the covenant overturned, but the courts have always held firm. And as the house and grounds have been listed for several decades now, it makes it even more unlikely that it could ever be successfully challenged.'
'I understand,' Maggie said, thinking out loud. 'So I think I begin to see the complication. Because this time, the next in line to inherit happens to be twins, and I'm guessing that eventuality was never considered in the original provisions.'
'Well no, it wasn't,' Asvina said, 'that's true, but in fact that in itself isn't a problem. Legally speaking, the estate would be inherited by whichever of the twins was first-born. And it's that which is providing our current little complication.'
'How do you mean?' Maggie asked.
Asvina gave a wry smile. 'Each of the twins is claiming it is she who is the first-born, and we are finding it impossible to verify the truth one way or the other.'
'What?' Maggie said, puzzled. 'But surely there must be records? You know, birth certificates and the like? Particularly since they were born about half an hour apart, which must be unusual for twins.'
'Well yes I guess it is, and yes there are records of course. But in Canada at that time, the register of births only stated the date of birth, not the time. We checked that.'
'But what about family?' Maggie asked, then remembering that both their parents and their older brother were dead, she realised it was quite
