humor. Pentrip picked up the offensive letter, and was about to tear it across before committing it to the waste- paper basket, when his hand froze. The document he held was a crisply typed acknowledgment of his of the third instant and promising a speedy consideration of the points detailed therein, and signed C. J. Williams of Mitchin, Mitchin and Barlow. Miss Coule’s straggling scribble had faded without a trace.
Pentrip was roused by his secretary with his mid-morning coffee. Brenda with her blond curls, Delft-blue eyes and surplus twenty-eight pounds of puppy fat, at least belonged to this world. Pentrip passed off his slumped posture as a headache and demanded an aspirin. Brenda cast a curious glance over her shoulder as she left. Obviously she had reservations about the explanation, and Pentrip stifled an inclination to smack her fat bottom— not playfully as fantasy usually dictated, but viciously to pass on his own hurt.
Gulping his hot drink he tried to concentrate into logical order thoughts that timorously skittered in all directions. With all its guilty secrets a lawyer’s office was an obvious setting for a ghost. But what guilty secrets? Better not dwell on them in case more ghosts be raised. Nonsense! What would a ghost be doing here among the expensively leased furnishings? The place for a ghost would be one of the crazy garrets in the old quarter where crumbling attorney’s offices huddled together for fear of falling down. One might expect to encounter a specter among cobwebs and black tin boxes; but certainly not amid the glass and teak of a modem tower block. And could such a phenomenon as a nonexistent letter be counted ghostly—even when seeming to come from Miss Coule?
A mouthful of sticky syrup at the bottom of his cup reminded the solicitor that he had forgotten to stir his coffee. Brenda reappeared with a glass of water in one chubby hand, and an aspirin bottle in the other.
“Feeling poorly, Mr. Pentrip?” she asked brightly. “You do look ghastly.”
Her employer grunted and swallowed two pills.
“Get me Roger Coule on the phone,” he growled. “If his office says he’s in conference, try the golf club. This is urgent.”
As he waited for the call to come through, he doodled in the margin of the draft in front of him. He was hardly in the right frame of mind for working on a last will and testament. His scribbles developed into a flock of flying birds. Damn Miss Coule! Why had he ever agreed to draft her will? Anyway she had merely passed on before it could be properly signed and witnessed: unfortunate but not unusual. A complicated series of bequests takes time to arrange. Accuracy takes time; and Miss Coule had been ill when she first sought legal advice. Who was to blame if she died too soon? Hugo Pentrip had done nothing unlawful, nothing really unprofessional. Miss Coule’s estate had merely gone to her next of kin. Pentrip was convinced nephew Roger treated those feathered friends with the consideration his aunt would have wished for. Not perhaps so far as to establish a bird sanctuary, but that would have been unnecessarily ostentatious. Besides hadn’t the old lady herself now remembered Roger? No, she had not. The dead cannot remember anybody. Whoever heard of a posthumous bequest? The birds in the margin were no more than pencil marks, but they worried Hugo Pentrip. He buzzed his secretary. Where the devil was the call he had asked for?
Roger Coule had not been located. Messages had been left for him at the office, at the club, at his home. Pentrip waited for the reply. And waited. Roger Coule was not available at office, club or home that day. Or the next.
While he waited Pentrip worked on other wills. Probate formed the greater part of his professional routine. Other partners in the firm had their own specialties—conveyancing, company law, divorce—but Pentrip had just the right attitude for intimations of mortality. His workaday solemnity was tempered by his pink rotundity and a cultivated twinkle in the eye; just as his somber suiting was livened by an almost frivolous choice of shirt and tie. If witnessing a will reminded the testator of our universal destination, Pentrip was ready with a mild quip, folding up and filing away such funereal notions along with the legal documents. He was present, too, after the melancholy event, evenly weighing congratulations and condolences, and ready with advice on investments. Pentrip was an expert on glossing over grim realities; so after a few days Roger Coule’s non-availability became a matter for self- congratulation. How fortunate the man had not replied: what might have been conjectured about a solicitor whose imagination conjured up such figments as letters from deceased aunts? Too much indulgence in a different sort of spirit, eh? Pentrip thanked the circumstances that had kept Roger Coule out of touch.
Until the crossed line.
It is not an unknown experience to be cut off in the middle of a telephone call. It is not unusual for the ear to be filled instead with a jumble of clicks, crackles and garbled chatter. But it is unusual for a clear voice to emerge from the chaos and remark, “I am so glad the garden went to the right person. I believe Roger will be happy there. Don’t you, Mr. Pentrip? But I have just recalled…”
Pentrip slammed down the receiver. He sat rigid until the ice, which had so suddenly congealed around his heart, began to thaw and his protesting lungs reminded him to draw breath. Although the telephone rang persistently afterwards, he refused to touch the instrument. Was that why there had been no response from Roger Coule? Was he, too, afraid to hear the old lady’s chirping?
One half of Pentrip feebly protested. What had he done to deserve such persecution? His other half briskly reminded him. A procession of episodes flashed before his mind’s eye like a drowning man’s reputed recall.
He remembered Miss Coule’s first appearance in his office—arriving solidly through the open door after making an orthodox appointment. He remembered her perching on the edge of the chair facing him. He could almost see her now with wispy gray hair escaping in sprays from underneath her period-piece of a hat (wobbling insecurely with her continuous nodding); her parchment skin crumpling into a hundred wrinkles as she smiled her painted smile; her long brown fingers, wasted with illness, laced together in an attitude of patience. She had cajoled her doctor into admitting that she had at most a few months to live: but she was thankful for breathing space in which to tidy her affairs. A will was an urgent necessity.
Pentrip, after noting her wishes with regard to various charities, had tactfully brought up the question of next of kin—a suggestion treated with scant consideration by Miss Coule. Her nephew was capable of looking after himself: her birds were not. Pentrip had diplomatically stifled his contrary opinion that, with bankruptcy impending, Roger was patiently incapable of looking after himself, whereas every sparrow mastered the art on leaving its nest.
Later, Pentrip appraised Roger Coule that his expectations were about to fade like a mirage. Touched by his friend’s distress, Pentrip had paid for the next round of drinks. Moreover, drawing Young Coule’s ear closer to his lips, he had breathed a message of hope. Ambiguously worded to the effect that there were more ways of killing a chicken than by wringing its neck, he had intimated that—without promising, you understand—all was not lost. In his turn Roger had intimated that Pentrip might count on a tangible expression of gratitude.
Pentrip recalled how, thereafter, he had demonstrated every aspect of the law’s delay: appointments had proved difficult to make but easy to break; clauses had been queried; precedents and authorities had proved elusive—we don’t want anything to go wrong afterwards, do we? A contested will is such an embarrassment to the firm that drew it up. In the end Pentrip’s stamina had proved stronger than Miss Coule’s—after all his life-span had not been limited to a few weeks.
Strangely, considering there had been no contract, Roger Coule
Until now.
Brenda clattered into the office, investigating the lack of response to her ringing. Had the telephone gone wrong again? More sympathetically, after a glance at her employer: was Mr. Pentrip feeling poorly again? There must be a bug going about.
Hugo Pentrip abruptly left the office, ordering Brenda to clear up the mess of cancelled engagements. He had only a hazy idea of what he was to do next, but a conference with Roger Coule had priority.
Pentrip made for Coule’s home. Roger and his wife had moved into his aunt’s vast Victorian villa after completely redecorating the place. Inga Coule fancied herself as a designer. An article with before-and-after photographs had even been incorporated into the new decor: the rest had gone to the salesroom, where they had considerably increased the size of Miss Coule’s estate. Having swept through the house from cellar to attic (the former becoming games-room-with-bar and the latter Inga’s studio), Roger’s wife was now well advanced in her campaign to tame the garden.
