The reading of the will was set for three o'clock in the drawing room of Ashford Manor, and by half past two every chair had been taken.
Rain had been falling since dawn, a thin English drizzle that turned the gravel drive to pewter and beaded on the mullioned windows. Inside, the house smelled of beeswax and something older, the particular must of a room that had not been properly aired in weeks. A fire had been laid in the grate, but it smoked, sending a grey haze through the afternoon light. No one had thought to open a window.
Iris Tallentire sat in the window seat, one gloved hand resting on the sill, watching the drops gather and run down the glass in crooked lines. Her reflection stared back at her, pale and faintly theatrical even without powder. She had chosen the dove-grey dress deliberately, severe enough to pass for mourning, flattering enough to remind the room that she was twenty-six and not yet done with the world. Her husband, Roderick, had wanted her to wear something brighter. She had refused.
Roderick himself stood by the fireplace, shifting his weight from one foot to the other in a way that made his trouser cuffs ride up over his boots. He was telling Felix Albright a story about a reviewer in Manchester who had once mistaken him for a different Roderick Vane, a clergyman of some sort, and had praised a sermon he had never written. The doctor chuckled in all the right places, his weathered face creasing into warmth, but his eyes kept drifting toward the door.
Across the room, Eleanor Vane sat very straight in a wing chair near the writing desk, her hands folded in her lap. She had not spoken more than a dozen words since arriving, and those had been directed at Iris, polite inquiries about the journey. There was a stillness about her that Iris found difficult to read. It might have been grief. It might have been the particular exhaustion of a woman who had been holding a crumbling house together with her bare hands for three years and had finally been told she could stop.
Aunt Beryl Murchison occupied the high-backed chair at the far end of the room, the one that had once belonged to Mr. Vane's mother. She wore black bombazine, her lace cap pulled low over her forehead, and her reticule sat on her lap like a small, affronted animal. She had greeted each arrival with a nod so slight it barely qualified as acknowledgment. When Iris had entered, Beryl's gaze had travelled from the feather in her hat to the tips of her boots and back again, taking inventory, and finding, Iris suspected, several deficiencies.
Marcus Greaves entered the room carrying a leather folio and a sealed envelope, and the murmuring ceased.
He was a tall man, somewhere in his middle forties, with the kind of neat, unremarkable appearance that solicitors cultivate as a kind of professional camouflage. His suit was dark, his collar starched, his shoes polished to a soft shine. He set the folio on the reading desk beneath the window and adjusted his cuffs before turning to face the room.
"Shall we begin?" he said. There was no particular warmth in his voice, but neither was there any impatience. He spoke the way a man lays down a hand of cards, one card at a time, letting each fall where it will.
The fire crackled. Somewhere in the upper floors of the house, a door shut with a sound like a distant gunshot. Iris watched Roderick flinch, then smooth his expression into something resembling nonchalance.
Greaves broke the seal on the envelope with a small ivory letter opener that he produced from his waistcoat pocket. The wax crumbled into red flakes on the desk. He drew out several sheets of heavy cream paper, unfolded them, and cleared his throat.
"This is the last will and testament of Cornelius Vane, late of Ashford Manor in the county of Hampshire, gentleman, deceased the fourteenth of November in the present year," he read. His voice filled the room without strain, the syllables falling into the shape of legal English. "I, Cornelius Vane, being of sound mind, though perhaps not of sound temper, do hereby revoke all testamentary dispositions heretofore made by me, whether by will or codicil, and declare this to be my sole and final testament."
He paused to turn the page. The rain had thickened against the windows. Iris could hear it now, a soft steady percussion on the glass, and beneath it the small sounds of the room adjusting: the creak of Beryl's chair, the whisper of Roderick's sleeve against the mantelpiece.
"To my eldest daughter, Eleanor Vane," Greaves read, "I leave the sum of one hundred pounds, and my blessing, which she has never required and which I suspect she will refuse."
Eleanor did not move. Her face was unreadable.
"To my son, Roderick Vane, I leave the sum of one hundred pounds, and the earnest hope that he will at some point in his life discover the difference between a living and a livelihood."
Roderick gave a short laugh, too loud for the room. "There's the old bastard," he said, half under his breath. Felix Albright touched his arm, a gentle caution, and Roderick subsided.
Greaves continued without looking up. "To my sister, Beryl Murchison, I leave the sum of five hundred pounds, and the contents of the linen press, which she has long considered her own and which I have long considered hers, and which therefore, in the interests of domestic peace, I confirm as her property."
Beryl's chin lifted a fraction. Her lips pressed together into a thin, bloodless line.
There was a pause then, a deliberate pause, the kind a reader makes when he is about to deliver the line that matters. Greaves turned to the second sheet. Iris found herself leaning forward, her gloved fingers pressing into the velvet of the window seat.
"The remainder of my estate, real and personal, including the manor house of Ashford and all lands, outbuildings, and hereditaments thereunto belonging," Greaves read, "together with all contents thereof, including but not limited to furniture, plate, pictures, books, documents, and effects of every description, I devise and bequeath in the following manner."
He looked up. His gaze passed across each face in the room in turn, lingering nowhere.
"I direct that the said estate and contents shall vest in such person as shall, within the period of one calendar month from the date of my death, demonstrate to the satisfaction of my trustee, the Reverend Oswald Pemberton of the parish of Greylake, a true and genuine connection to my late and most beloved wife, Edith Vane, née Ashford."
The fire popped. A log settled into the grate with a soft exhalation of sparks.
"In the event that no such person shall come forward within the said period, or that the trustee shall determine that no satisfactory claim has been made, then I direct that the whole of the said estate and contents shall pass to the Ashford Charitable Trust, to be administered by my said trustee for the benefit of such charitable objects as he, in his absolute discretion, shall determine."
Greaves set the paper down.
For a long moment, no one spoke.
Roderick recovered first. "A connection to Mother?" he said, his voice pitching upward. "What in heaven's name does that mean? We are her children. That is the connection. We were there when she was alive, and most of us were there when she died."
"Order, please," Greaves said mildly. "I have not yet concluded."
He turned to the final page. "I appoint the said Reverend Oswald Pemberton to be trustee of this my will, and I direct that his determination as to the existence and quality of any claim under this clause shall be final and binding upon all persons interested. I further direct that the costs of administering this clause, including any reasonable expenses incurred by the trustee in considering claims, shall be paid from the estate."
He folded the papers and replaced them in the envelope.
"That concludes the dispositive provisions," he said. "There are the usual directions regarding debts and funeral expenses. I shall deal with these separately with each of you in due course. For the moment, I am instructed to ask whether there are any questions."
Beryl Murchison rose from her chair. The movement was precise, almost ceremonial, as though she had rehearsed it. Her reticule clinked faintly against her hip.
"There is a prior will," she said. Her voice was cool and clipped, each word laid down like a card. "Drawn in eighteen ninety-four, in which my brother left this house and its contents to me. That will was never properly revoked."
Greaves inclined his head. "That will was indeed revoked by a codicil dated March of eighteen ninety-seven, Mrs. Murchison, which was in turn revoked by the present instrument. The codicil is in the folio and is available for your inspection at any convenient time."
"I was not notified of the eighteen ninety-seven codicil."
"The codicil was witnessed by two persons then resident in the parish and lodged with my predecessor, Mr. Harding, whose papers came into my keeping upon his retirement. I am satisfied as to its authenticity."
Beryl's gaze could have stripped paint. "I shall require a copy of the codicil forthwith."
"You shall have one this evening, if you wish. Now, if I may return to the matter in hand." Greaves surveyed the room again. "Are there any questions relating to the terms I have just read?"
Felix Albright cleared his throat. "The phrase 'true and genuine connection' is rather an elastic one, Mr. Greaves. Do we have any guidance as to what my late friend intended by it?"
Greaves shook his head. "Mr. Vane was not a man given to elaborate explanation, Dr. Albright. The will contains no definition, and no accompanying letter of wishes has come to light. We must take the words as they stand."
Roderick pushed himself off the mantelpiece. "Then it's a game," he said, his voice hardening. "A trick. He wants us to prove we loved her, and the house goes to some charitable basket if we fail. That is grotesque."
"It is what your father wished," Greaves said.
"My father was often whimsical in his later years."
"He was also, by all accounts, entirely lucid. Dr. Albright can speak to that."
Felix nodded slowly. "Cornelius's mind was sharp to the end. Sharp and, I would say, entirely his own."
Iris watched Eleanor rise from the wing chair. She moved to the desk and stood behind it, her fingers resting on the leather top, as though claiming it.
"Where is Mr. Pemberton?" she asked. Her voice was steady, calm, the voice of a woman who had spent three years asking practical questions of tradesmen and lawyers and had learned to keep all trace of feeling out of it. "If he is to be the arbiter, I should like to speak with him."
"He is expected tomorrow morning," Greaves said. "He has travelled from Greylake this afternoon and will attend at the church at ten o'clock. I have arranged for the family to meet him there, if that is convenient."
"It is convenient."
Roderick turned on her. "Ellie, you cannot mean to take this seriously. A month. We have a month to prove we are our mother's children. It is insulting."
"Then perhaps," Eleanor said, without looking at him, "it was intended to be."
She looked up then, and her gaze travelled across the room. It passed over Roderick without stopping, over Beryl with a kind of weary patience, lingered for a moment on Felix, who nodded as though in answer to some unspoken question, and came at last to Iris.
There was nothing hostile in it. Eleanor had never been hostile. But there was something watchful, something that measured and weighed and set aside.
"Mrs. Tallentire," she said. "You are the only person in this room who is not a blood relative of my mother. I wonder that my father did not think to exclude you by name."
"I wondered the same," Iris said. Her voice came out steadier than she had expected. "Perhaps he thought a hundred pounds was exclusion enough."
Eleanor's mouth softened, just at the corners. "Perhaps it was."
Beryl's reticule clinked again. "I shall require the key to the study," she said. "There are papers in the study that pertain to the linen press inventory, and I wish to begin my own inventory forthwith."
"The study is sealed," Greaves said. "By direction of the testator, the study is to remain sealed until the conclusion of the trust period, or until such earlier time as the trustee shall determine."
"On whose authority?"
"On the authority of the will you have just heard read, Mrs. Murchison."
Beryl drew herself taller. "I am the housekeeper of this house. I have been housekeeper for thirty-one years. I shall require that key."
"You shall not require it," Greaves said, with the first trace of sharpness in his voice. "Not from me, and not from anyone else in this house, unless Mr. Pemberton instructs otherwise."
A log fell from the grate onto the hearth tiles. The sound was sharp and sudden, and Roderick swore under his breath. Felix Albright rose, stiffly, and bent to push it back into place with the toe of his boot.
"I think," Felix said, straightening up and brushing his hands together, "That we might all benefit from a cup of tea. Mrs. Murchison, if you would permit me to ring for Hotchkiss?"
Beryl stared at him as though he had suggested something improper. Then she inclined her head, a fraction of an inch, and Felix crossed to the bell pull by the door.
The rain had eased. Through the window, Iris could see the gravel drive darkening as the clouds thinned, and beyond it the bare branches of the elms stirring in a wind that had not yet reached the house. Somewhere a dog barked, twice, and was silent.
She turned the phrase over in her mind. True and genuine connection. It could mean anything. It could mean nothing. It could be a piece of theatre, a final jest from a man who had spent his life arranging furniture and arguments and who had, perhaps, wished to arrange his ending as well.
Or it could be a trap.
She watched Eleanor Vane settle back into the wing chair, folding her hands again in that careful, patient way. Watched Roderick light a cigarette at the window, his hand not quite steady. Watched Beryl Murchison take her seat with the rigidity of a woman who has been promised something and has seen it snatched away.
And she thought, with the particular clarity that had kept her alive through three years of music halls and marriage to a man who could not quite decide what he wanted from her: there is something in this house that Cornelius Vane did not wish his children to find.
The bell in the kitchen gave a small, distant jangle. The sound seemed to travel through the house slowly, as though the walls themselves were listening.
The bell in the kitchen gave a small, distant jangle. The sound seemed to travel through the house slowly, as though the walls themselves were listening.
Hotchkiss appeared in perhaps three minutes, which was faster than she had expected. The old woman stood in the doorway in a dress that had been respectable twenty years ago and a shawl that had once been a christening present, and she looked at the assembled company with the resigned patience of a woman who had outlived her capacity for surprise.
"Hotchkiss," Felix Albright said gently. "Sit down, my dear. There is tea coming."
"Tea has been ready for some time, sir."
"Well, then. Sit down and have some."
Hotchkiss sat. Her chair was a straight-backed thing against the wall, and she perched upon it as though she suspected it might be taken from her. Her hands, knotty and dry, folded in her lap. She looked at Eleanor Vane with an expression that was almost apologetic, and then at Beryl Murchison with an expression that was almost defiant, and then at her own knees.
Roderick Vane finished his cigarette in three long draws and let the ash fall into the brass tray on the windowsill. He did not look at his sister. He was watching the door.
The tea came, carried by a parlourmaid whose name Iris did not catch and whose face she would not remember tomorrow. It was poured. It was sipped. It grew cold in cups held in hands that had forgotten to drink. Outside, the rain had stopped entirely, and the clouds were beginning to break apart in long grey rents that let through a thin, unconvincing light.
The silence in the room had weight. It pressed against the eardrums. It made the small sounds of the house louder: the creak of a settle somewhere in the corridor, the muffled tick of a clock on the landing, the papery rustle of Beryl Murchison turning the pages of the document in her lap as though she hoped repetition would alter its meaning.
Iris set her cup down on the side table and lifted her chin.
"Dreadful of me," she said, "to speak of practicalities at such a moment. But the will, Mr Greaves. You have been very patient with all our questions, and I suspect you have a great many more you have not yet asked. Would it help if we came to order?"
She smiled as she said it. The smile was warm and entirely false.
Eleanor Vane turned her head. There was something in her sister's eyes that Iris had not seen before, or had not noticed before, which amounted to the same thing: a flicker of surprise, perhaps even of gratitude, that someone had broken the silence with something other than another question.
Marcus Greaves inclined his head. He produced a second envelope from his case, this one thinner than the first, and set it on the table beside the will.
"This," he said, "is the personal letter to Miss Vane. Sealed by the deceased, and marked, in his own hand, Not to be opened by any other hand."
Beryl's head came up. "That is highly irregular. As the senior member of the household present at the time of my brother's death, I should have been permitted to inspect its contents."
"With respect, Miss Murchison, the deceased gave a specific instruction."
"Instructions given in extremis, to a sick man, are not always to be relied upon."
"The deceased," Greaves said, with the patience of a man who has said this particular thing before, "was in full possession of his faculties when he wrote that letter, and Mr Albright is prepared to attest to it."
Felix Albright gave a small nod. His face was grave.
"Then I demand," Beryl said, "that the letter be read aloud, in the presence of all concerned, before Miss Eleanor takes possession of it. Otherwise, I shall be obliged to lodge a formal objection with the probate court."
There was a silence. Iris could hear her own breathing. She could hear Roderick's breathing, quick and shallow, beside her. She could hear the faint whistle of Beryl's indignation, the small intake of breath through her nose.
"It is addressed to me," Eleanor said. Her voice was level. "In my aunt's handwriting. Whatever it contains was intended for my ears only."
"In that case," Beryl said, "you have nothing to fear from reading it aloud."
"I have nothing to fear from anything. I simply do not choose to perform my private correspondence for the entertainment of the family."
Beryl's mouth thinned. Iris watched her fingers tighten on the document in her lap.
"Eleanor," Roderick said, from the window. "Darling. Don't be ridiculous."
Eleanor turned her head and looked at her brother. The look lasted perhaps two seconds, and in those two seconds Iris saw something move across Eleanor's face like the shadow of a cloud over a field: a recognition, a weariness, and a decision.
"Don't call me darling," she said. "And don't tell me what to do with my own post."
Roderick's hand, which had been raised to light another cigarette, paused in mid-air. The match flared and guttered. He let it drop into the tray and laughed, a short sharp sound that had no humour in it.
"As you like," he said. "As you always like."
The letter lay on the table. It was a pale envelope, of the sort that might have held a calling card or a receipt, and it was addressed in a hand that was upright and slightly cramped: Eleanor Vane, Esq., Ashford Manor, in care of Marcus Greaves, Solicitor. The ink was black and still sharp, though the paper itself had the softness of something that had been written some days before. The seal was a wafer of red wax, impressed with what looked like a stylised V.
Iris watched Eleanor's hand move towards it.
She watched Roderick's hand move first.
He crossed the room in three long strides, the kind a man takes when he has been watching an opportunity and has decided to take it. His fingers closed on the envelope a half-second before Eleanor's touched it.
"Family privilege," he said.
The room stopped. Even the clock on the landing seemed to pause for breath.
"Family privilege," Beryl repeated. "There is no such thing in English law."
"There is in this family," Roderick said. He had the envelope in his hand, and he held it the way a child holds a found treasure, half-defiant and half-pleading. "Our father wrote it. It is, in some sense, an inheritance. The privilege of the eldest surviving son to inspect correspondence addressed to a member of the household before it is opened."
"There is no such privilege," Greaves said.
"There is," Roderick said, "in my father's house."
Eleanor had drawn her hand back. She did not look at Roderick. She was looking, instead, at Felix Albright.
"Doctor," she said, quietly. "You were there when this was written. Did my father say anything about the letter? Anything at all?"
Felix Albright was a long time before he spoke. He set his cup down with great care, and he folded his hands over his paunch, and he looked at the envelope in Roderick's hand as though he could see through it to the paper inside.
"He said," Felix said, at last, "that the letter was to be given to his daughter on the morning of the reading, and not before. He said he wished her to be steady when she read it. He said," and here the doctor's voice dropped a little, "that he had spent a long time deciding whether to write it at all, and that he would not have written it if he did not trust her to read it well."
He paused.
"He also said," he added, "and I confess I did not understand it at the time, that if anyone tried to take the letter from her before she opened it, he would not be surprised. He said it was the way of the family."
The silence that followed was of a different texture from the one that had gone before. It was thinner, and it had edges.
Roderick's hand, still holding the envelope, was trembling slightly. Iris could see it from where she sat. The tremor was not large, but it was visible, and it made the envelope flutter like a moth against his palm.
"Give it back, Roderick," Eleanor said. Her voice had not risen. "Please."
"I'm not trying to be unkind," he said. "I am trying to protect you."
"From what?"
"From whatever he put in there. Father had a way, Eleanor, you know he did, of writing things that sounded perfectly reasonable at the time and that turned out, ten years later, to be a knife. I am trying to spare you."
"Give it back," she said again.
Roderick looked around the room. He looked at Iris. He looked at Beryl. He looked at Greaves.
"If I give it to you," he said, "you must promise to read it aloud."
"No."
"Then I shall keep it."
"You shall not."
"Marcus," Roderick said, "tell her. Tell her the law. The solicitor must advise."
Greaves looked at the envelope in Roderick's hand. He looked, Iris thought, at the hand itself, and at what was behind it.
"The letter is the property of Miss Eleanor," Greaves said, "and she is under no obligation to disclose its contents. However, Mr Roderick is also within his rights to decline to surrender it, on the grounds that he suspects its contents may affect his own position under the will, and wishes to have it impounded pending further legal advice."
"He has no such right," Beryl said sharply.
"The letter, Miss Murchison, is not a part of the will. The deceased's instructions regarding it were specific, but they were not, technically, part of any legal instrument. Mr Roderick's position is not strong, but it is not frivolous."
"Then we are at an impasse," Beryl said.
"It seems so," Greaves said.
Roderick, with the air of a man who had won a point without knowing what it was worth, tucked the envelope into his breast pocket. He sat down on the arm of the nearest chair and produced his cigarette case again.
"Very well," he said. "We shall consult solicitors. Meanwhile, the letter remains with me, as a sort of hostage to fortune."
Eleanor did not answer. She was looking at her brother with an expression that Iris could not read, and then she looked away, and then she looked at Iris, and the expression that crossed her face then was one that Iris recognised from her own mirror, on the mornings after the music halls when she had woken to find the price of survival written in small print across her skin.
It was the expression of a woman who had understood, very suddenly, who was in the room with her.
The door had opened and closed while they were speaking, and Beryl Murchison had gone out into the corridor. Eleanor did not follow at once. She sat very still in her chair, watching Iris with that expression that was not quite pity and not quite fear, and then she rose, smoothing her skirt with both hands.
"Forgive me," she said. "My aunt has a way of leaving that suggests she expects pursuit."
She went out.
Iris counted to twenty, in the manner she had learned from her years in the music halls, where a performer must always know how long she had been invisible. She made it to twelve before she moved, and then she rose without noise, her silk skirt whispering against the chair, and crossed the room to the window.
The study faced the west, and the afternoon light came in low and amber across the desk, across the scattered papers, across the brass inkwell with its cap missing. She could see the gravel sweep below, and the laurel hedge, and the lilac bushes already budding for spring, and she could see, at the corner of her vision, the edge of the conservatory door, and two figures standing just within it.
Eleanor's dark head, and Beryl's iron grey, very close together. Beryl's hand was raised, the long fingers spread as if she were either about to strike or about to bless, and Eleanor's shoulders were drawn in the way that Iris's own shoulders drew in when she stood in doorways trying to decide whether to step through them.
She could not hear what they said. The glass was too thick, and the distance too great, but she could see Beryl's lips move, and she could see Eleanor's hand come up and close over Beryl's wrist, and she could see Beryl pull free, and turn, and walk away down the conservatory with that stiff-backed gait that suggested the devil himself might be following.
Eleanor stood for a long moment with her hand still raised, as if she had forgotten what she meant to do with it. Then she let it fall, and she turned, and she came back into the study, and Iris stepped away from the window, and waited.
Eleanor shut the door behind her and stood with her back against it.
"She has warned me," Eleanor said, to the room at large. "My aunt has warned me that this house holds secrets, and that I should leave before something else happens. She used almost those words. Something else. As if the last week had been a preface rather than a plot."
She looked at Iris, then, and the warmth was still there in her face, but the gentleness had been laid over something else, something more watchful.
"I have not asked you," Eleanor said, "and I do not mean to pry. But my aunt does not warn without purpose, and she has never in her life spoken to me out of sisterly feeling. If you know what she is afraid of, I would be grateful if you would tell me. And if you do not know, I would be grateful if you would say so plainly."
Iris thought about her options. She had, she discovered, very few of them that did not require her to lie, and she had never been a good liar, only a quick one.
"She is afraid of being found out," Iris said. "That is the part I can speak to. The rest I cannot, because I do not know it. Not yet."
Eleanor considered this, and her mouth did the thing that was not quite a smile.
"Found out for what?"
"For something she did," Iris said, "or something she did not do, when my husband was a child in this house. I do not know which. I know that it concerns him, and that she is afraid of you, and that the two fears are connected."
Eleanor said nothing for a long moment. The clock on the mantel marked out the seconds in its small dry voice, and somewhere in the lower parts of the house a door closed, and the pipes gave their familiar shudder.
"You are a very honest woman," Eleanor said at last. "Or a very clever one. I have not yet decided which, and I suspect it may be both."
"I am not clever," Iris said, "only practical. There is a difference."
"There is. And the difference is the difference between us, perhaps. I have been clever all my life, and it has not served me. You have been practical, and you are here, in a room that is not yours, at a reading of a will that does not favour you, and yet you are the one who told me the truth."
"I had nothing to gain by telling you a lie," Iris said. "That is all."
"It is not all," Eleanor said. "But it is enough for now."
She moved away from the door, and crossed to the desk, and began, with great care, to gather up the loose papers that the will's unboxing had scattered. She set them in a neat pile, and squared the edges, and placed a paperweight upon them, and Iris watched her hands, and thought of her own hands, and of what they had done and not done.
"My aunt," Eleanor said, without looking up, "believes that my father promised her the house in an earlier will. She has believed it for twenty years. I do not know whether it is true. I have asked her, and she has refused to say. I have asked my father's solicitor, who was Mr Greaves's predecessor, and he is now dead, and the question died with him. I have asked the housekeeper, Mrs Drabble, who has been here since before I was born, and she says she knows nothing, which may or may not be true."
She set down the last paper.
"What I know," she said, "is that my father changed his will three times in the last decade of his life. I know that my aunt believes herself cheated. I know that my brother has come home, for the first time in seven years, and that he has brought his wife, and that his wife is not what she seems."
"I am what I seem," Iris said, before she could stop herself.
Eleanor looked at her then, and the smile came back, and it was a real one this time, warm and a little crooked.
"Yes," she said. "You are. That is the trouble, is it not? You are precisely what you seem, and that is so unusual in this house that it unsettles me."
The door opened, and Felix Albright came in, carrying his hat in his hand, and looking like a man who has just come in from a long walk in bad weather. His face was ruddy, and his spectacles were steamed, and he had the look of one who has seen something he does not care to speak of.
"I have been to the gate," he said, to no one in particular. "The Reverend Pemberton has just arrived. He is in the hall, talking to Mrs Drabble, and they are both looking as if they have swallowed something that disagreed with them. I thought you should know."
"Is Percy with him?" Eleanor asked.
"No. Percy went up to the village on an errand. He will be back within the hour, I expect. But the Reverend has brought his umbrella, and his expression, and his sister, and he is asking for Mr Greaves."
He looked at Iris then, and took off his spectacles, and polished them on the tail of his coat, and put them back, and she saw that his hands were not quite steady.
"And Mrs Drabble," he said, "has been weeping in the kitchen. She says it is the onions. It is not the onions. I have known Winifred Drabble for thirty years, and I have never seen her weep at onions, or at anything else. Whatever has happened in this house has happened to her as well."
He sat down, heavily, in the chair nearest the door, as if he needed to be near the exit.
"I am an old man," he said, "and I have outlived most of the people I loved, and I have learned that the dead are best left to bury the dead. But I will tell you this, Miss Eleanor, because I think you have a right to know it, and because I think your father would have wanted you to know it before the end of the week."
He stopped, and looked at the floor, and then at the window, and then at Iris, as if he were measuring whether she could be trusted with what he was about to say.
"Your father," he said, "made a will in 1919, before my eyes, in which he left Ashford to his sister, Miss Beryl, and to his wife, jointly, with the proviso that the house should pass to Eleanor on the death of the survivor. That will was witnessed by myself, and by Winifred Drabble, and by a clerk from the solicitor's office who is also now dead. It was never revoked."
The clock on the mantel struck four, in its small dry voice, and the sound of it seemed to go on for a very long time.
"Revoked by what?" Eleanor asked, very quietly.
"Revoked by the will of 1926," Felix said, "which is the will Mr Greaves has been reading to you this afternoon. That will was witnessed by two clerks from the new solicitor's office. It left the house to you outright, and made provision for your aunt only as a life interest in the dower house. It is a just will, and a fair one, and your father had every right to make it. But the earlier will was never produced, and your aunt has believed, all this time, that it was hidden from her, and that she has been cheated. I did not tell her so. I did not tell her that it existed, and I did not tell her that it had been destroyed, and I have carried that weight for nine years."
"Who destroyed it?" Iris asked.
Felix looked at her.
"Your father," he said. "In my presence. On the night of his wife's death. He put it in the fire, and he watched it burn, and he said to me, 'Felix, I have done a wicked thing, and I have done a necessary thing, and I do not know which weighs more.' I have never told anyone, until now. I am telling you now because I believe that Beryl is about to do something that she will regret, and I would not have it on my conscience that I could have prevented it."
The door opened again, and Roderick came in, still with the envelope in his pocket, and Marcus Greaves behind him, and behind Marcus, very slowly, with the look of a woman who has been summoned and does not wish to come, Beryl herself.
"I have been told," Beryl said, from the doorway, "that Dr Albright has something to say to me. I have come to hear it."
Felix rose, and bowed, and offered her his chair, and she did not take it. She stood, very straight, with her hands folded, and her face like carved stone, and waited.
"I have told Miss Eleanor the truth about the will of 1919," Felix said. "I have told her that your brother destroyed it in my presence. I have told her that he did so on the night of his wife's death. I am telling you now, because you have a right to know that the wrong you believe was done to you was done by him, and by his choice, and that the choice was his."
Beryl did not move.
"Show her the letter," Roderick said, from the corner.
Beryl turned her head, and looked at him, and the look was so cold that Iris, standing near the window, felt the temperature of the room change.
"Give me the letter, Roderick," Beryl said. "Now."
"No," Roderick said. "Not until you have heard what is in it."
"Give it to me."
"It is not yours to keep. It is not yours to hide. It is a letter from my father, addressed to my sister, and it concerns a matter that you have made it your business to conceal for nine years. I have read it. I have read it twice. I will read it to you now, if Miss Eleanor permits, and then I will give it to her, and you may say what you will."
Eleanor, very pale, said: "Read it."
Roderick took the envelope from his pocket, and slit it open with his thumb, and drew out the single sheet of paper within, and unfolded it, and held it up to the light, and began to read.
"My dearest Eleanor," he read, and his voice was not theatrical now, but small and steady, "if you are reading this, then I am dead, and your aunt has done what I knew she would do, which is to claim that I wronged her. I did not wrong her. I changed my mind. I changed it on the night your mother died, when I understood that Beryl had been the one to tell her, by letter and in person, that I had kept a mistress in London for the last twelve years of our marriage, and that the mistress had borne me a son. Your mother did not know. She learned it from Beryl. She learned it three weeks before she died of the heart failure that Beryl's letter, and Beryl's presence at her bedside, did nothing to prevent. The mistress was not real. The son was not real. Beryl invented them, to drive your mother to her death, and to drive me to leave her the house, which she believed she deserved. I did not leave her the house. I left it to you. And I put this letter into the keeping of Mr Greaves, with instructions that it should be opened only after my death, and only if Beryl raised the question of the earlier will. She has raised it. You have read it. Forgive me, if you can."
The room was very still. The clock marked out the seconds, and the fire crackled in the grate, and somewhere below, in the kitchen, a woman was weeping over onions that were not onions.