windows. They all sat straight up, feet together on the carpet and their hands folded in their laps, except for the Lunns. Mattie’s great hands, seemingly so rough yet none more gentle with horses’ mouths, hung at her sides and demonstrated the unusual length of her arms. Her brother, small, lean and furtive-looking, held his chauffeur’s peaked cap on his knee.
‘I shall not need to keep you long,’ said the solicitor, looking at them benignly over the top of his spectacles, ‘but you will like to be told of your expectations, however small, under the late Mrs Leyden’s last Will. You must not expect your little gifts immediately, but I shall release them to you as soon as I can. In the Will, the sum of one thousand two hundred and forty pounds has been set aside for you by the testator in the following proportions: to Mrs Plack three hundred pounds; to Miss Maybury two hundred and fifty pounds; to Mr Lunn two hundred pounds; to Miss Buskin one hundred and fifty pounds; to the two Miss Trewethens one hundred and twenty pounds each; to Miss Hills one hundred pounds. Miss Matilda Lunn receives no lump sum, but is told that the three horses in the late Mrs Leyden’s stable are hers.’
Mattie’s heavy face was transfigured. She beamed. Her eyes shone. She got up from her chair, crossed the intervening stretch of carpet and shook the astonished solicitor warmly by the hand.
The servants could hardly have reached the green baize door before their excited chattering began. Apart from Mattie, the most astonished and delighted person was the kitchenmaid.
‘I never expected to get nothing, being only with her a matter of three weeks,’ she said.
‘Ah, my gal, I reckon you got me to thank for your hundred pounds,’ said the cook. ‘So you just mind as you don’t go and blue it all on useless frippery. Missus asked me, when you’d been here a fortnight, how you was shaping, so I said none better, a good, willing, hardworking gal, I told her, and biddable in all respects.’
Mattie said to her brother as they walked across the downland turf, ‘I reckon it’s coals of fire when I think of all the names I called her in private when she turned me off. What do you think to your two hundred? Satisfied, like, be you?’
‘Ah, specially if Mrs Porthcawl gets the house and keeps me on.’
‘Wonder if she’d rent me the stables for a bit till I gets my riding-school going?’
In the dining room there was a nervous, anticipatory silence. The solicitor cleared his throat.
‘Shall we resume?’ he said. The family and dependants hitched their chairs a little nearer the table. Parsifal licked his long lips. Garnet scratched his nose. Ruby smiled brightly around with the air of one who knew that for her there were no surprises in store. She was mistaken.
‘This is the last Will of me, Romula Grace Leyden of Headlands, Gorsecliff, Veryan Bay, in the Duchy of Cornwall. I hereby revoke all previous Wills and testamentary dispositions hertofore made by me,’ read out Mr Monaker. The Will continued by appointing him and his partners the executors and then what to the hearers was the important part was reached. ‘… in the following proportions,’ went on the level, emotionless voice: ‘to my daughter and sole surviving child Maria Charlotte Porthcawl, I leave the house and estate known as Headlands and forty per cent of my fortune for her use and its upkeep, with the proviso that if I die before Ruby Pabbay has concluded her musical education, the said Maria Charlotte Porthcawl shall maintain her in the style to which I have accustomed her, neither better nor worse, until such education be concluded and Ruby Pabbay be launched upon her career.’
There was a cry of protest from Ruby. ‘That’s not right!’ she shouted. ‘I was to have been left enough money to keep myself and pay for the rest of my training! It was to have been
‘A fortnight ago,’ said the solicitor, ‘and, if you please, Miss Pabbay, I shall be obliged if you will reserve your questions until I have finished.’
Ruby pushed back her chair so clumsily that it fell over. She rushed out of the room and banged the door behind her so that the windows rattled.
‘Please go on,’ said Maria quietly.
‘Very well. To my grandson Garnet Wolseley Porthcawl I leave twenty per cent of my fortune, the same to his sister, Bluebell Wendy Mildred Leek, my granddaughter. Of the remaining twenty per cent: five per cent to my friend and erstwhile companion, Fiona Griselda Bute, and five per cent each to Gamaliel Leek, adopted son of Parsifal and Bluebell Leek, Quentin and Millament Bosse-Leyden, the children of Rupert and Diana Bosse-Leyden, to be held in trust for all three children until they shall attain the age of eighteen years, and provided that the said Rupert and Diana remain man and wife.’
There was a lengthy peroration at the end which referred, after the servants’ little legacies had been repeated, to the rights and duties of the executors, but nobody listened. As soon as the non-committal voice ceased, Garnet put the question which everybody wanted to ask.
‘Have you any idea,’ he said, ‘of the cash value of my grandmother’s fortune? — the actual money, I mean?’
‘In round figures,’ replied the solicitor, ‘it amounts to about four hundred thousand pounds.’
‘Well, your grandmother has sewn us up in a nice parcel!’ said Diana, as she and Rupert drove back to Campions. ‘What are we to do about it?’
‘Stay married and enjoy our other relationships as we do at present, I suppose. We can hardly bounce Quentin and Millament out of their inheritance. The ten per cent between them will amount to a considerable sum if wisely invested.’
‘Six years’ accumulated interest, yes. Ten per cent of four hundred thousand is forty thousand. Their future is secure.’
‘If we don’t botch it up. What do you say?’
‘The same as you, of course. Who wants to chuck away forty thousand pounds? Money talks much louder than illicit love affairs.’
‘I will give up Fiona if you will give up Garnet. We could have another go at our marriage, perhaps.’
‘“Money is the true fuller’s earth for reputations, there is not a spot or a stain but what it can take out,” ’ quoted Diana gaily.
‘We loved one another before the children were born.’
