‘Mathew always had a weak heart. Unable to handle the stress of running a failing business and unable to stomach the bitterness arising from his imagined grievances against Dad, he too succumbed.
‘At the final hearing, it turned out to be a no-contest case. Within minutes, the court struck down Mathew’s challenge. But it had cost us years, and had engendered needless acrimony in the family. At the end of it, Michelle, Richie and Dora had been left penniless.
‘That’s when I did something I hope I will not regret. After the court had passed the order, I publicly pledged that I would provide for my nephew and nieces. I vowed to give them pieces of what I had inherited from my father. Manu would get the lion’s share as was rightfully due to him, but his cousins too would get something.
‘I wrote a will bequeathing parts of the Greybrooke estate to Michelle and Richie, and a Bangalore property to Dora. Some other locals here also received smaller bequests. I left my paintings collection to Phillip, whom you will meet shortly. He is an artist I’ve known for seven years, and he happens to be a major contributor to my collection. You will see a number of his paintings in the gallery. My antiques, of course, go to Manu. Similarly, I left some money and a small piece of land to a local church run by Father Tobias. A Coonoor hospital gets some money, and a number of charities receive grants.
‘I wrote this initial will about a year ago. But soon, I found reason to change it. After lengthy discussions with Varadan, I cancelled the earlier will and wrote the two wills that are now in force–one that will come into effect if I die naturally, and the other if I die of unnatural causes.
‘I sent copies of my revised will to Michelle, Richie and Dora. This is the one that takes effect if I die of natural causes. In this will, Michelle gets a part of the Greybrooke estate as before, and Dora gets the same Bangalore property. But Richie no longer gets a part of the estate. Instead, he gets a twenty-year cash annuity. At the end of twenty years, he gains control of the corpus.
‘The reason I made this change was this: I’ve come to realize that Richie is wayward and a spendthrift. His judgement is terrible, and he has habits that he cannot support. If he gains control of a property, he will sell it immediately and squander the money. Similarly, he would fritter away any large chunk of money I might leave him. The best way to protect him against himself is to give him a cash annuity, the corpus of which he cannot touch until he is older, and hopefully wiser.
‘When I sent them copies of this will, I also made it clear that there was another will that would supersede this one should I die of unnatural causes. I explained what “unnatural causes” meant, but I did not reveal the contents of the second will. Even Manu is unaware of it.
‘This, Mr Athreya, is a summary of the woes that have plagued my family. Any questions?’
‘Several,’ Athreya replied softly, ‘but the one that is foremost on my mind is why you chose to write two conflicting wills. Does it have anything to do with the legend of Greybrooke Manor?’
‘The one about all future owners of the mansion dying violent deaths?’
Athreya nodded.
‘It’s probably true that some of the British owners of the mansion died violently. My own view is that their deaths were the result of how they had conducted themselves. Dad’s death, on the other hand, was an accident. The idea that future owners will die violently is just bunkum. Hogwash!’
‘Yet,’ Athreya said slowly, ‘you seem to expect that you may die unnaturally. Why?’
Bhaskar inhaled deeply and let out a long sigh.
‘That’s because something started happening immediately after I wrote my initial will a year ago.’
‘The one in which you unconditionally bequeathed portions of your assets to your nephew, nieces and neighbours?’
Bhaskar nodded slowly. His arms were lying limply on the cushioned armrests of his wheelchair.
‘Yes … yes. It occurred to me that someone was not idly waiting for me to die. He or she was trying to hasten it.’
‘Hasten it?’ Athreya asked. ‘In what way?’
‘Within a month of writing that initial will, death began to stalk me. Of course, they may just be coincidences or tricks of my imagination, but peculiar things began to happen.
‘My car’s brakes failed in a surprising manner–a rubber hose had been cut with a sharp blade. A venomous snake appeared in my bed out of nowhere. I was almost run over in Coonoor by an apparently out-of-control van. And to top it all, there was a break-in at this mansion. Disregarding valuable items that he could potentially have stolen, the intruder made straight for my room. That’s when I began thinking about writing two conflicting wills.’
‘What happened to the intruder?’ Athreya interposed.
‘I shot him. Varadan will tell you that I am a pretty good shot. I could have killed him if I wished to, but I thought it better to wound him so that I could find out whom he was working for. I shot him in the leg. Unfortunately, he broke the glass of my room’s French windows and escaped. I had been lying in bed when he came, and couldn’t follow him. Had I been in my wheelchair, I would have pursued him. By the time Sebastian and Murugan heard the gunshot and came to me, the man was gone. It was after that that I had bars put on my room's French windows too.’
‘It should not have been difficult to find a wounded man,’ Athreya protested. ‘Especially in a place like this. Did you check with the local doctors?’
‘All of them in Ooty, Coonoor and
