The letter arrived on a Tuesday, three weeks after Eleanor Vane had been informed, in terms both brisk and legally precise, that her services as archivist at the Lytherington and Crane Solicitors' office were no longer required.
She found it waiting on the hall table of her modest lodgings at Mrs. Pemberton's boarding house, propped against the chipped porcelain figurine of a shepherd that had been there since before her tenancy began. The envelope was heavy, cream-colored, and bore the name and address of a firm she did not recognize: Greaves, Pemberton and Whitfield, Solicitors, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. A second line, in smaller script beneath, read simply, Greylake Manor, Cumberland.
Eleanor set down her reticule, removed her gloves finger by finger, and stood for a moment in the narrow hallway. Dust motes drifted through the weak autumn light from the fanlight above the door. Somewhere on the floor above, a board creaked, and Mrs. Pemberton's cat made its ponderous descent from wherever it had been sleeping. The house smelled of boiled cabbage and lavender polish, a combination Eleanor had long since stopped noticing and had, in some dim way, come to associate with the particular texture of her own diminished circumstances.
She slit the envelope with her thumb.
Inside lay a single sheet of thick paper, engraved at the head with the same firm name, and beneath it, in a hand that was small, neat, and entirely without warmth, a communication that ran as follows:
Miss Eleanor Vane,
We write to inform you that our late client, Miss Adelaide Vane of Greylake Manor, in the parish of Greylake, in the County of Cumberland, departed this life on the fourteenth day of September last past. The said Miss Vane having made a will wherein you are named, and the same having been proved in due course before the Registrar of Probate, we hereby request, and would deem it a favor, that you attend at the offices of the undersigned on the second day of November next ensuing, at the hour of eleven o'clock in the forenoon, for the formal reading and execution of the said testamentary instrument.
The executors of the will, namely the Reverend Oswald Pemberton and Mr. Felix Albright, both of Greylake village, have instructed us to convey their respects and to assure you of suitable accommodation during your visit.
Your most obedient servants,
Greaves, Pemberton and Whitfield
The letter was signed in flowing copperplate by someone whose initials she could not quite make out, though the surname Greaves was clear enough. It was a good letter, in its way, the kind of letter that had been written ten thousand times to ten thousand grieving or curious or hopeful individuals across the long history of English probate. Eleanor read it twice, turned it over as though there might be something written on the back, and then folded it carefully and slipped it back into its envelope.
She crossed to the window of the small front parlor that served her as a sitting room and stood looking out at the wet street. A brewer's dray went past, the great hooves of the shire horse striking sparks from the cobbles. A woman in a faded bonnet hurried along the pavement with a covered dish balanced on her head. The lamppost at the corner was wrapped in a thin veil of mist.
Adelaide Vane.
The name stirred in Eleanor's memory like a stone dropped into still water, sending out rings that did not quite touch the banks. Adelaide had been her father's aunt, his father's eldest sister, a woman who had married, or refused to marry, or done some combination of the two, and removed herself at a comparatively early age to the family's property in the north. Eleanor had seen her perhaps four times in her life, and on each occasion Adelaide had been a tall, dry, faintly disapproving presence who spoke as though every sentence cost her something and demanded to know whether Eleanor had yet learned to read Greek.
She had not, in fact, learned to read Greek, and had been too proud to admit, even to herself, that she had rather hoped to be asked again so that she might, by then, have done so.
The will, however, was a different matter. That she should be named in the will of a great-aunt she had barely known struck Eleanor as improbable at best and faintly ominous at worst. The Vane family had never been notable for either their generosity toward one another or their willingness to die intestate. There had been wills, counter-wills, codicils, and at least one celebrated Chancery dispute that had bankrupted a great-uncle on the maternal side and supplied Eleanor's own childhood with the story of how, when the original family portraits had at last been sold to satisfy costs, the late Mrs. Vane had wept for a week and refused to speak to anyone named Whitcombe.
Eleanor Vane, at thirty-four, was the eldest daughter of a family that had once owned a good deal of Cumberland and now owned, in her own person, very little beyond a trunk of letters, a set of worn underlinen, and the lease on a single furnished room above a baker's shop in a town whose name she did not particularly care for. She had been trained as a secretary, had managed the household accounts at Ashford for six long years after her father's death, and had been turned out, eventually, by an aunt who had grown tired of her presence and a brother who had grown tired of being reminded of his obligations.
The archivist's position at Lytherington and Crane had been a rescue, of sorts, though she had not permitted herself to think of it in those terms. It had paid modestly, kept her hands and her mind occupied, and introduced her to the precise and quiet pleasures of cataloguing other people's forgotten papers. She had been good at it. She had been, she suspected, better at it than several of the partners had entirely approved of, though she would not have said so aloud and could not have proved it if she had.
Now the position was gone, and in its place had come this letter, smelling faintly of camphor and printed in a hand that might have been designed to discourage reply.
She sat down at the little escritoire by the window, took out a sheet of notepaper, and began to compose her answer.
Gentlemen,
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of the twenty-sixth instant, informing me of the death of my late great-aunt, Miss Adelaide Vane, and summoning me to attend the reading of her will at your offices on the second of November next. I shall hold myself at liberty to attend at the hour named.
In truth, she did not yet know whether she would be able to afford the journey. The fare to London and back, even by third class, was not a sum she could produce without thought. And after London, presumably, came the matter of Greylake itself, which lay somewhere beyond Penrith in the direction of the hills and was, by all accounts, as remote a corner of England as one could conveniently reach without a passport and a sense of adventure.
She set the pen down, read what she had written, and added, in a slightly firmer hand:
I should be obliged if you would convey my acceptance of the executors' kind offer of accommodation, and inform me whether it is intended that the reading should take place at your offices in Lincoln's Inn Fields, or at the family seat at Greylake.
She signed her name with a small, unadorned flourish, blotted the page, and set it aside to dry.
---
The journey, when she came to arrange it, proved less ruinous than she had feared. The clerk at the booking office, a thin young man with spectacles and ink-stained cuffs, looked up the various connections with an air of faint apology and pronounced that if she were willing to leave on the Monday evening and return on the Thursday morning, the total cost, inclusive of the excursion to Cumberland, would come to within a few shillings of three pounds. Eleanor hesitated, counted what remained in her purse against what remained in the small iron box at the back of her wardrobe, and decided that she could afford it if she did not eat between here and Penrith, and if she ate very little between Penrith and Greylake.
She wrote her acceptance, received a reply by return post that was as brief as the first letter had been, and found herself, on a damp Monday at the end of October, sitting in a third-class carriage on the London and North Western Railway, watching the outskirts of the town slide past the window in a long grey smear of chimney pots and laundry.
She had a small trunk with her, containing a black silk gown borrowed, with much embarrassment and many thanks, from Mrs. Pemberton's elder sister; a pair of fresh gloves; a packet of family papers that she had thought might, after all, prove useful; and a copy of the Book of Common Prayer that had been her mother's. The trunk stood on the seat opposite her, lashed into place with a strap she had purchased for the purpose. Her reticule was on her lap. Her hands, in their black cotton gloves, rested one upon the other in the manner that her father had always enjoined upon his daughters when they sat in company.
She had not told her aunt Beryl where she was going.
This was, she conceded to herself, a piece of cowardice for which she ought probably to be ashamed. Beryl Murchison, her father's elder sister, the longtime keeper of Ashford Manor, had a legitimate interest in any matter touching the Vane inheritance, and might, for all Eleanor knew, have been expecting a letter of her own from the same firm. The fact that none had arrived, so far as Eleanor was aware, was no proof that one might not be lying in wait at the post office at this very moment.
But Eleanor had not told her, and as the train drew out of the station and gathered speed through the brick-and-mortar suburbs, she found that she could not, even in the privacy of her own reflections, quite account for why she had not done so.
Perhaps it was that she had a superstitious hope, which she would not have admitted to anyone, of receiving some small and unexpected legacy from a great-aunt whose memory she had never been encouraged to honor. Perhaps it was that Beryl's letters, of late, had taken on a sharper edge, and Eleanor did not wish to be at hand when the next one arrived. Or perhaps it was only that the prospect of traveling to a place where she was not known, where she owed nothing and was owed nothing, where no one would ask her how the household accounts stood or whether she had yet heard from Roderick, had suddenly seemed to her as desirable as a window opened onto a summer garden.
Whatever the reason, the decision stood, and as the train rattled through Harrow and on into the open country beyond, Eleanor permitted herself to lean back against the worn green velvet of the seat and to close her eyes.
She did not sleep. She had never been able to sleep on trains, a circumstance which her father had once observed with the dryness that characterized his better remarks. Instead, she sat and watched the landscape unroll past the glass, and thought, in a desultory fashion, of all the things she had not been told about Adelaide Vane.
---
Greylake, when at last the omnibus deposited her at the tiny station and she had hired a trap to take her the remaining six miles up the hill, was not so much a village as an idea of a village that someone had once had and then half-abandoned. There was a post office that combined the offices of grocery and lending library; a stone-built inn called the Fisherman's Rest, whose front windows bore the cheerful announcement that beds were to let and that the postal deliveries were received daily; a kirk with a slate spire; and a row of whitewashed cottages climbing the slope behind, each with a cabbage garden at its back.
Beyond the village, at the head of a grey and solemn mere that gave the place its name, stood Greylake Manor.
Eleanor had her first sight of it from the rise of the lane, and she caught her breath, though she would have been hard put to say why. It was not a particularly large house, nor an architecturally distinguished one. It was built of grey stone, three stories tall, with a slate roof and two squat towers, one at either end, that might have been intended for ornament or might have served some defensive purpose in an earlier century. The windows were dark. The chimneys did not smoke. There was, however, a thin thread of smoke rising from a building lower down the slope, which the driver of the trap informed her was the dower house, tenanted by Dr. Albright and his housekeeper.
The house looked at her, she thought, with the long, unwinking gaze of a thing that has waited a long time for someone to come and read what was written inside it.
She was met at the door by a woman in black, whose face was long, whose manner was formal, and whose name, she was told, was Mrs. Drabble, and who conducted her, without unnecessary conversation, up the wide stone staircase to a bedroom on the first floor, where a fire had been laid but not yet lit. Through the window of the bedroom Eleanor could see the mere, and on its surface, that afternoon, a faint skin of mist that the wind could not quite lift.
She thanked Mrs. Drabble, was left alone, and stood for some minutes with one hand resting on the cold frame of the window, watching the light fade from the west and the shadows of the towers lengthen across the gravel drive.
Tomorrow, at eleven o'clock, the will would be read, and she would learn what Adelaide Vane had thought fit to leave her, and why.
She did not sleep well. The bed was hard, the linens smelled of lavender and something older, like the ghost of a drawer long closed, and every creak of the old house sounded to her like a footstep in the corridor outside. By midnight she had given up the pretense of rest, and sat instead in the chair by the cold hearth, wrapped in the woollen dressing gown she had brought with her, listening to the wind move through the chimneys above her and to the faint, arrhythmic complaint of the timbers of the roof as they settled in the night. Once, she thought she heard a door close somewhere on the floor below, and once she was sure she heard the sound of low voices, though when she rose and put her ear to the door of her room she could distinguish nothing clearly, only the murmur of the house itself, breathing in its sleep.
She lay down again at last, and must have dozed, for when she opened her eyes the first grey light of dawn was coming in at the window, and the mere below was white with mist.
She breakfasted, by preference, in her room, and Mrs. Drabble brought her up a tray with tea and toast and a soft-boiled egg, and stood by while she ate it, and removed the tray without having spoken a word. At half past ten, Eleanor rose, dressed herself carefully in the grey silk dress she had brought for the occasion, pinned her mother's brooch at her throat, and went downstairs.
The drawing room at the front of the house was large, and cold, and panelled in dark wood that had been polished to the colour of old honey. The furniture was heavy and uncomfortable, upholstered in green rep that had been fashionable forty years before. There was a round table in the centre of the room, and on it a brass tray with a decanter of port, six glasses, and a small leather folder. The fire had been lit, but was burning low, and gave out more smoke than warmth.
Beryl Murchison was already there. She sat in a high-backed chair to the left of the fireplace, upright as a blade, her hands folded in her lap. She wore black, as she had worn it every day for the last twelve years, and her steel-grey hair was drawn back from her face so tightly that it seemed to pull the skin at her temples. She did not rise when Eleanor entered, but inclined her head by a quarter of an inch.
"Miss Vane," she said.
"Mrs. Murchison," said Eleanor.
A silence settled between them like a cold fog. Beryl's pale eyes moved over the grey silk, the brooch, the composed expression, and catalogued each detail. Then she looked away, and said nothing more.
Eleanor sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, choosing a low chair that gave her a clear view of the door, and folded her hands in her own lap, and waited. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked. The fire spat. Outside, the wind had dropped, and the rain had begun again, drumming softly on the high windows.
A few minutes before eleven, there was the sound of a carriage on the gravel, and then the opening and closing of the front door below. Beryl Murchison's mouth tightened. Eleanor heard footsteps on the stairs, slow and deliberate, and a moment later the door of the drawing room was opened by a tall, thin man in a black frock coat, carrying a leather document case under his arm. He had a long, intelligent face, a high forehead, and the quiet, attentive manner of a man who has long been accustomed to listening to other people's troubles.
He bowed first to Beryl, who acknowledged him with a curt nod, and then to Eleanor, with a degree of warmth that suggested he was prepared to be civil, at least, to all parties.
"Miss Vane," he said. "Mrs. Murchison. I am Mr. Greaves, from the firm of Tilson and Greaves in Lincoln's Inn, solicitors to the late Mrs. Adelaide Vane. I must ask your patience for a few minutes more. The Reverend Mr. Pemberton is expected shortly, and the other beneficiary is not yet arrived."
"The other beneficiary," repeated Beryl, in a tone that could have curdled fresh milk. "You refer, I presume, to Mrs. Roderick Vane."
"I refer, Mrs. Murchison, to all the beneficiaries named in the will. There are several." Mr. Greaves seated himself in the chair beside the round table, placed the document case on his knees, and opened it with the unhurried precision of a man who has done so a thousand times before. "I have the original will here, dated the fourteenth of February of last year, together with two earlier testamentary documents which may, or may not, be relevant to our proceedings this morning. I shall read the last will and testament first, and we may then consider whether any further discussion is required."
"There will be discussion," said Beryl.
Mr. Greaves inclined his head. "I am sure of it, madam," he said mildly.
Eleanor, who had been watching the exchange with the quiet attention she gave to all negotiations, took note of the solicitor's tone. He was not afraid of Beryl Murchison, which suggested either considerable professional confidence or considerable prior experience of difficult clients. She suspected the latter.
The door opened again, and the Reverend Oswald Pemberton came in, slightly out of breath, his boots damp, his clerical hat in his hand. He was a stout man in his sixties, with a pink face and small, kind eyes that did not quite know where to rest. He bowed to Beryl, bowed to Eleanor, bowed to Mr. Greaves, and then, in some confusion, bowed to the room at large, as if to cover all possibilities.
"Forgive me," he said, "the carriage from the station was delayed by the state of the roads. I came as quickly as I could."
"You are very welcome, Mr. Pemberton," said Mr. Greaves. "Pray be seated. We are only waiting for Mrs. Roderick Vane."
They waited. The clock ticked. The fire burned lower. Beryl Murchison sat like a carved figure, and did not speak. The Reverend Mr. Pemberton sat on the edge of his chair and looked nervously at his hands. Eleanor sat quietly, and thought of her mother, and waited.
At twenty minutes past eleven there was the sound of a trap on the gravel, and a great deal of laughter outside, and the door below opened to a voice that was warm, and slightly hoarse, and very certain of itself.
"Iris, my darling, do close the umbrella, you are letting in the whole of Lincolnshire. No, no, I have it, give it to me, you will catch your death. I shall not have you dying of pneumonia before luncheon."
"My dear," said another voice, female, low, amused, "you are the one who insisted on the open carriage."
"I insisted on the fresh air, my love, not on the drowning of my wife. Where is the wretched house? Ah, here, splendid, splendid, very atmospheric, very Brontë, I am sure."
The drawing room door opened. Roderick Vane came in first, shaking the rain from his hat, his dark hair already disordered, his face alight with a kind of reckless charm that Eleanor had not seen in seven years. He was thinner than she remembered, and there were lines about his eyes that had not been there when he left, but the smile was the same, the easy, boyish, faintly apologetic smile that had always made it very difficult to be angry with him for long.
Behind him, his wife.
Iris Tallentire was perhaps five years younger than Roderick, perhaps ten; it was difficult to tell, and she gave the impression that she preferred it that way. She was a tall woman, and slender, and she moved with the easy, deliberate grace of someone who has spent a considerable portion of her life on a stage. Her hair was very dark, and very red at the lips, and her eyes were quick and bright. She wore a black dress of excellent cut, a single string of pearls, and a small black hat with a veil that she did not lift as she entered the room. She took in Beryl, the Reverend, Mr. Greaves, and Eleanor, all in a single glance, and gave a small, professional smile.
"I do apologize," she said, in a voice that was warm and unembarrassed, "the roads are quite impossible. I am Mrs. Roderick Vane, and this is my husband, who I am sure you all remember, though he has been so long away."
Roderick laughed, crossed the room to Mr. Greaves, and shook him by the hand with an enthusiasm that surprised the solicitor into smiling. "Greaves, my dear fellow, how splendid. Still with Tilson? Still the soul of discretion? You must forgive me for not writing. I have been, shall we say, detained by circumstances." He glanced at Beryl, and the smile faded slightly. "Aunt Beryl. You are looking very well."
"I am looking as I always look, Roderick," said Beryl. "It is you who look altered."
"Ah, well," said Roderick lightly, "time, travel, the usual business. May I present my wife? Iris, my aunt, Mrs. Murchison. My aunt has been so kind as to look after the house in our absence."
"Your absence," repeated Beryl.
"For many years," said Roderick, with a careful courtesy that did not quite conceal the edge beneath.
Iris placed a gloved hand on his arm. "My husband has told me so much of the family," she said, in a tone that was at once deferential and slightly overplayed, "and I am so glad, at last, to make the acquaintance of his dear relations."
Beryl's expression did not change. "I am sure," she said.
Eleanor, who had risen when Roderick entered, now came forward, and her brother turned to her with an expression that was, for a moment, genuinely moved. He took both her hands in his, and held them, and said nothing, and the smile was gone, and in its place there was something older and more tired.
"Ellie," he said.
"Hello, Roderick," she said.
He bent and kissed her on the cheek. His breath smelled of brandy, though it was not yet noon. She did not flinch.
"You are well?" he asked.
"I am well," she said. "And you?"
"Oh, you know," he said, and laughed again, and released her hands, and turned to Mr. Greaves, and the moment was over.
Iris, meanwhile, had seated herself in the chair nearest the fire, crossing her ankles with the ease of a woman who is accustomed to being looked at, and had arranged her veil so that it framed rather than concealed her face. She smiled at the Reverend Mr. Pemberton, who blushed scarlet, and then at Mr. Greaves, who did not blush, but who looked at her with the careful attention of a man who is used to assessing evidence.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Greaves, when the small social movements of the room had at last subsided, "if you will all be seated, I shall read the will."
Eleanor returned to her chair and sat with her hands folded in her lap, her face composed but watchful. The others settled into their places: Beryl at the far end of the sofa, spine rigid; Iris in her chair by the fire, one gloved hand resting lightly on the armrest; Roderick leaning against the mantelpiece, arms folded, the very image of a man who had decided to be amused by whatever was about to happen. Mr. Greaves drew a document from the leather case and unfolded it with care. The paper crackled, a dry sound like the rustle of autumn leaves.
"I should explain," he began, "that the will you are about to hear was executed by Mr. Cornelius Vane on the fourteenth of September, in the year of our Lord eighteen ninety-eight, and was witnessed by myself and by Dr. Felix Albright, who is present in this room."
Eleanor's gaze moved, as if of its own accord, to the tall gentleman in the wing chair, and Felix Albright inclined his head in acknowledgment. His face was broad and ruddy, creased about the eyes and mouth by years of country practice and country weather, and his spectacles caught the firelight as he lifted them, briefly, to regard the company.
A doctor, then. And present at the signing. Eleanor filed the fact away.
"Prior to this document," Mr. Greaves continued, "there exists an earlier will, executed in eighteen ninety-three, by which the bulk of the Vane estate, including Ashford Manor and its contents, was bequeathed to Miss Beryl Murchison, the testator's sister, with a legacy of five hundred pounds to each of the testator's children. That will, however, was explicitly revoked by the later instrument, and it is the will of eighteen ninety-eight which I shall now read."
Beryl's hand tightened on the head of her cane. The sound of the fire seemed suddenly louder.
Mr. Greaves read. His voice was level and unhurried, as if he were reading a train timetable rather than the disposition of a man's whole estate, and Eleanor listened, and made her notes in the margin of her mind.
To Dr. Felix Albright, in gratitude for years of friendship and faithful service: one hundred pounds, and the testator's gold watch, and the testator's medical library, comprising some forty volumes.
To the Reverend Oswald Pemberton, in recognition of long ministry to the family: fifty pounds.
To Winifred Drabble, housekeeper at Ashford, in recognition of twenty years of service: the sum of one hundred pounds, and the testator's thanks.
To Iris Tallentire, wife of the testator's son Roderick Vane: the sum of three hundred pounds, and the testator's hope that she would find happiness in her new situation.
To Roderick Vane, son of the testator: the sum of five hundred pounds, and the testator's forgiveness of certain debts, amounting in total to some four hundred and sixty-three pounds, fourteen shillings, and sixpence.
To Beryl Murchison, sister of the testator: the sum of one thousand pounds, and the lifetime right to occupy the dower house at the western end of the estate, with a quarterly stipend for its upkeep.
And to Eleanor Vane, eldest daughter of the testator: the remainder and residue of the estate, including Ashford Manor and all its contents, the land and farms pertaining thereto, and the sum of two thousand pounds in Consols, to be held by her absolutely and in her own right.
Eleanor's pen, which had been moving steadily, ceased to move. She sat very still, and looked at the page before her without seeing it.
Beryl rose. The movement was slow, and deliberate, and carried with it the weight of a verdict.
"No," she said, in a voice that was very quiet, and very clear. "No, I do not accept this."
Mr. Greaves looked up from the document. "Miss Murchison, the will is quite unambiguous."
"I know what it says." Beryl did not raise her voice. She stood with one hand resting on the head of her cane, and the other at her throat, as if steadying something that threatened to break. "I know what it says, and I say it is a forgery, or a fraud, or the work of a mind no longer competent. My brother, in his right mind, would not have left me in a dower house like a pensioned servant while he gave the whole of his estate to a girl who did not deserve it."
"Aunt," Eleanor said.
"Don't." Beryl's eyes flashed. "Don't speak to me in that conciliatory tone, Eleanor. I have lived in this house for forty years. I have managed it, and kept it, and given up my own life for it. And this is my reward."
The room was very still. Iris, in her chair by the fire, watched with bright, careful eyes. Roderick had gone pale under his theatre, and his mouth was a thin line. Felix Albright removed his spectacles, and polished them on his handkerchief, and replaced them, and said nothing.
"Miss Murchison," Mr. Greaves said, "if you wish to contest the will, you are of course at liberty to do so. The proper procedure is to enter a caveat within fourteen days. I should advise you to consult your own solicitor."
"I shall consult no solicitor," Beryl said. "I shall consult my Maker, and my conscience, and my memory of what was promised to me." She gathered her shawl about her shoulders with a movement that was almost violent, and turned, and walked out of the room. The door closed behind her with a precise, firm click.
No one spoke for a long moment.
Then Roderick exhaled, a long breath through his teeth, and said: "Well. That went rather well, I thought."
"Roderick," Eleanor said, in a voice that was not quite steady.
"Forgive me." He moved away from the mantelpiece, and crossed the room, and took the chair opposite her. His face, she saw, was working, the muscles about his mouth twitching, and his hands were not quite still in his lap. "Ellie, I am sorry. I know what she must have felt. She has lived her whole life in this house, and now, suddenly, she is turned out of it."
"I know," Eleanor said.
"She is proud. She is terribly proud. And she has been promised, I know she has been promised, by my father, that the house would be hers in the end. He told her so. I heard him, once, when I was a boy." Roderick's voice cracked, and he looked away. "I did not mean to hear it. I was behind the curtain in the study, and he did not know I was there. He said, 'Beryl, the house is yours, when I am gone. I will see to it.' He said it clearly. He said it twice."
Eleanor's hand, which had been resting on the arm of the chair, closed slowly.
"Did he," she said.
"Yes." Roderick looked at her, and his eyes were bright, and his voice was sincere, and Eleanor, who had known him all her life, did not know whether to believe him. "Ellie, I would not lie to you. Not about this."
"I know you would not," she said, and the words were a kindness, and also a question, and also, she thought, a test.
Felix Albright cleared his throat. It was a gentle sound, almost apologetic, and it drew the attention of the room.
"If I may," he said, "I should like to say a word about Miss Murchison. I have known her for thirty years, and I have known your father for forty, and I was present at the signing of that will, and I can tell you, Miss Eleanor, that your father was in full possession of his faculties. He knew what he was doing, and he did it of his own accord, and he did not do it lightly."
"Did he speak to you," Eleanor asked, "about his reasons?"
"He did." Felix paused, and looked at the fire, and then at Eleanor. "He said that he had considered the matter long, and that he had come to believe that the house should pass to the next generation, and that Miss Murchison, while she had served the family faithfully, should be provided for, but not made mistress of what was not hers by right. He was sorry for it, in his way. But he was resolved."
"I see," Eleanor said.
"He also said," Felix added, and his voice was careful, "that he was afraid, in his last years, of what certain members of his household might do, if they thought themselves disinherited. He asked me, specifically, to be present at the reading, so that I could testify, if need be, to the state of his mind."
Iris, who had been silent all this while, now spoke.
"Doctor," she said, in her warm, slightly over-modulated voice, "you must have known my husband as a boy. Was he always so, shall we say, dramatic?"
Felix turned his head, and regarded her over his spectacles, and his expression was not unkind, but it was not deceived, either.
"Mr. Roderick was a lively child," he said, "and I daresay he has not altered. But I should not like to comment on the characters of those in this room, Mrs. Tallentire. It is not my place."
"Of course not," Iris said, and smiled, and the smile was charming, and the eyes behind it were not smiling at all.
Eleanor set down her pen.
She looked at the document before her, and at the figures she had written, and at the sum of two thousand pounds in Consols, and the name of Ashford Manor, and the lands and farms, and she thought of the rooms above, and the cold corridors, and the tiles in the kitchen, and the debt to Mr. Crane, and the butcher's bill, and the wood that must be laid in for the winter, and she felt, very suddenly, the weight of what had been given to her, and the weight of what it would cost to keep it.
She thought of Beryl, in her room above, with her shawl and her cane and her grief, and of Roderick, with his brandy and his bright eyes, and of Iris, with her veil and her bright eyes, and of Felix, who had said more than he had said, and of Mr. Greaves, who would be taking the evening train back to London, and of herself, who would be left, alone, in the house, to begin the work of the morrow.
"Mr. Greaves," she said, and her voice was steady. "Will you be so good as to send me a copy of the will, in due course, for my own files."
"Certainly, Miss Vane," he said.
"And Dr. Albright, I should like, if I may, to speak with you further, on the morrow. About my father's last days."
"I shall be at your service," Felix said, and inclined his head.
"And Roderick." She looked at her brother, and her brother looked at her, and neither of them smiled. "You will stay, I hope, until after the funeral. There is a great deal to be done."
"I shall stay," Roderick said, and for once, he did not laugh, and did not embellish, and only nodded.
Eleanor rose, and gathered her papers, and inclined her head to Mr. Greaves, and to Felix, and to Iris, and she walked out of the drawing room, and across the hall, and up the stairs, and into the room that had been her father's, and that was now, by the strange alchemy of paper and seal and witness, hers.
She closed the door behind her, and stood for a moment in the dim light, and listened to the house settle about her, and to the wind in the elms, and to the distant, querulous note of a sheep on the hill, and she thought that the work of her life had begun.
And in the drawing room below, Iris Tallentire rose from her chair by the fire, smoothed her gloves, and said, in her clear, carrying voice, "Well, my dears, I think that went very nicely. Who is for a walk in the garden, before the light fails?"