Tim taken in? Probably not – but women never admitted that sort of thing. Timothy must be quite comfortably off. He’d never been a spendthrift. However, the extra would not come amiss – not in these days of taxation. He’d probably had to retrench his scale of living a good deal since the war.
Mr Entwhistle transferred his attention to George Crossfield, Laura’s son. Dubious sort of fellow Laura had married. Nobody had ever known much about him. A stockbroker he had called himself. Young George was in a solicitor’s office – not a very reputable firm. Good-looking young fellow – but something a little shifty about him. He couldn’t have too much to live on. Laura had been a complete fool over her investments. She’d left next to nothing when she died five years ago. A handsome romantic girl she’d been, but no money sense.
Mr Entwhistle’s eyes went on from George Crossfield. Which of the two girls was which? Ah yes, that was Rosamund, Geraldine’s daughter, looking at the wax flowers on the malachite table. Pretty girl, beautiful, in fact – rather a silly face. On the stage. Repertory companies or some nonsense like that. Had married an actor, too. Good-looking fellow. ‘And knows he is,’ thought Mr Entwhistle, who was prejudiced against the stage as a profession. ‘Wonder what sort of a background he has and where he comes from.’
He looked disapprovingly at Michael Shane with his fair hair and his haggard charm.
Now Susan, Gordon’s daughter, would do much better on the stage than Rosamund. More personality. A little too much personality for everyday life, perhaps. She was quite near him and Mr Entwhistle studied her covertly. Dark hair, hazel – almost golden – eyes, a sulky attractive mouth. Beside her was the husband she had just married – a chemist’s assistant, he understood. Really, a chemist’s assistant! In Mr Entwhistle’s creed girls did not marry young men who served behind a counter. But now of course, they married anybody!The young man, who had a pale nondescript face and sandy hair, seemed very ill at ease. Mr Entwhistle wondered why, but decided charitably that it was the strain of meeting so many of his wife’s relations.
Last in his survey Mr Entwhistle came to Cora Lansquenet. There was a certain justice in that, for Cora had decidedly been an afterthought in the family. Richard’s youngest sister, she had been born when her mother was just on fifty, and that meek woman had not survived her tenth pregnancy (three children had died in infancy). Poor little Cora! All her life, Cora had been rather an embarrassment, growing up tall and gawky, and given to blurting out remarks that had always better have remained unsaid. All her elder brothers and sisters had been very kind to Cora, atoning for her deficiencies and covering her social mistakes. It had never really occurred to anyone that Cora would marry. She had not been a very attractive girl, and her rather obvious advances to visiting young men had usually caused the latter to retreat in some alarm. And then, Mr Entwhistle mused, there had come the Lansquenet business – Pierre Lansquenet, half French, whom she had come across in an Art school where she had been having very correct lessons in painting flowers in water colours. But somehow she had got into the Life class and there she had met Pierre Lansquenet and had come home and announced her intention of marrying him. Richard Abernethie had put his foot down – he hadn’t liked what he saw of Pierre Lansquenet and suspected that the young man was really in search of a rich wife. But whilst he was making a few researches into Lansquenet’s antecedents, Cora had bolted with the fellow and married him out of hand. They had spent most of their married life in Brittany and Cornwall and other painters’ conventional haunts. Lansquenet had been a very bad painter and not, by all accounts, a very nice man, but Cora had remained devoted to him and had never forgiven her family for their attitude to him. Richard had generously made his young sister an allowance and on that they had, so Mr Entwhistle believed, lived. He doubted if Lansquenet had ever earned any money at all. He must have been dead now twelve years or more, thought Mr Entwhistle. And now here was his widow, rather cushion-like in shape and dressed in wispy artistic black with festoons of jet beads, back in the home of her girlhood, moving about and touching things and exclaiming with pleasure when she recalled some childish memory. She made very little pretence of grief at her brother’s death. But then, Mr Entwhistle reflected, Cora had never pretended.
Re-entering the room Lanscombe murmured in muted tones suitable to the occasion:
‘Luncheon is served.’
Chapter 2
After the delicious chicken soup, and plenty of cold viands accompanied by an excellent Chablis, the funeral atmosphere lightened. Nobody had really felt any deep grief for Richard Abernethie’s death since none of them had had any close ties with him. Their behaviour had been suitably decorous and subdued (with the exception of the uninhibited Cora who was clearly enjoying herself ) but it was now felt that the decencies had been observed and that normal conversation could be resumed. Mr Entwhistle encouraged this attitude. He was experienced in funerals and knew exactly how to set correct funeral timing.
After the meal was over, Lanscombe indicated the library for coffee. This was his feeling for niceties. The time had come when business – in other words, The Will – would be discussed. The library had the proper atmosphere for that, with its bookshelves and its heavy red velvet curtains. He served coffee to them there and then withdrew, closing the door.
After a few desultory remarks, everyone began to look tentatively at Mr Entwhistle. He responded promptly after glancing at his watch.
‘I have to catch the 3.30 train,’ he began.
Others, it seemed, also had to catch that train.
‘As you know,’ said Mr Entwhistle, ‘I am the executor of Richard Abernethie’s will –’
He was interrupted.
‘I didn’t know,’ said Cora Lansquenet brightly. ‘Are you? Did he leave me anything?’
Not for the first time, Mr Entwhistle felt that Cora was too apt to speak out of turn.
Bending a repressive glance at her he continued:
‘Up to a year ago, Richard Abernethie’s will was very simple. Subject to certain legacies he left everything to his son Mortimer.’
‘Poor Mortimer,’ said Cora. ‘I do think all this infantile paralysis is dreadful.’
‘Mortimer’s death, coming so suddenly and tragically, was a great blow to Richard. It took him some months to rally from it. I pointed out to him that it might be advisable for him to make new testamentary dispositions.’
Maude Abernethie asked in her deep voice:
‘What would have happened if he hadn’t made a new will? Would it – would it all have gone to Timothy – as the next of kin, I mean?’
Mr Entwhistle opened his mouth to give a disquisition on the subject of next of kin, thought better of it, and said crisply:
‘On my advice, Richard decided to make a new will. First of all, however, he decided to get better acquainted with the younger generation.’
‘He had us upon appro,’ said Susan with a sudden rich laugh. ‘First George and then Greg and me, and then Rosamund and Michael.’
Gregory Banks said sharply, his thin face flushing: ‘I don’t think you ought to put it like that, Susan. On appro, indeed!’
‘But that was what it was, wasn’t it, Mr Entwhistle?’
‘Did he leave me anything?’ repeated Cora.
Mr
