A Rather Lovely Inheritance (18 page)

“Won’t take long. Mum is old-fashioned, and she wishes to see you once before you leave London,” Rollo said, looking visibly relieved. He really is afraid of his own mother, I realized.

There was nobody else in the car except the driver, who wore a chauffeur’s hat pulled low over his eyes. Rollo, strangely enough, sat up front with the driver and left me alone in the backseat. He acted as if it had been his mission to pick up a parcel for his mother from Harrod’s, and the job was done. From time to time the driver stared hard at me in the rearview mirror, as if he was checking to make sure that the parcel didn’t jump out.Which I was actually considering doing. By now, however, I had concluded that I should find out what Rollo and Dorothy were up to. They’d exposed Aunt Sheila’s secret; perhaps I could figure out their next chess move.

Great-Aunt Dorothy’s street was narrow and therefore a bit shadier and gloomier, but quite obviously moneyed in a smug, austere way. We pulled up before a fairly tall, dark building ringed by lots of black wrought-iron fencing with arrowlike, spiky tops that made me think of somebody in a horror movie falling out a window and being impaled. The front doors had windows laced with wrought iron, too, and heavy iron handles turned by a wizened old uniformed doorman who looked as if he’d been working there forever and was going to perform his one repetitive task slowly and deliberately until the end of time.

The elevator operator, also elderly and uniformed in navy blue with gold braid, had to haul heavy layers of wood doors and iron cages before the elevator took off with a rude lurch. Rollo just stood beside me, looking straight ahead, with an air of resignation, until we arrived with a thump.Then he led me to the apartment at the end of the hall, walked in ahead of me, and I followed him.

Great-Aunt Dorothy was seated regally in her parlor, perched literally on the edge of her high-backed chair with its padded armrests, which looked more like a throne, in gold and brown. All the pieces of furniture—three other chairs, two tiny flowered sofas, and various long, narrow tables littered with expensive knick-knacks—were placed well apart in this enormous room, like independent islands of free-floating opulence. The parlor was big and imposing and quite dark, since the heavy curtains were drawn. As my eyes adjusted I saw that the room was decorated in sunless tones of brown, beige and a rather mustardy yellow.

My great-aunt’s hand trembled a little as she gestured for me to sit in the chair opposite her. It was upholstered but hard as a rock, placed out in the open without a table nearby where I could plunk my purse or jacket, which nobody had offered to take from me, until a very old, tall female servant shuffled in and unceremoniously yanked my jacket away from where it lay folded over the arm of my chair, then shuffled off with it to another room. She was the kind of servant who didn’t bother to hide her resentment.

“Dear girl,” Great-Aunt Dorothy chirped in a high voice that someone might use with a little girl. Not being English, she had no accent. Just a slightly nasal purr of the American upper crust. “And how are you today? Good. And how do you like London? Good.”

“What can I do for you?” I asked politely.

She laughed a high, tinkly little laugh and said, “Why, darling, it’s what
we
can do for
you
. I feel so
very
badly about the way I behaved when we last saw each other. I am an old woman, and I tire easily, so you must forgive me. How very pretty you are. I hope you never have to suffer the ailments I do. Be young and healthy forever, dear girl.”

The servant shuffled back in, carrying a small black tray with a cut-crystal decanter of sherry and matching sherry glasses, and a plate of dry, unappetizing biscuits.

“Do join us for a drop of sherry, there’s a good girl,” Rollo said encouragingly.

The tray was placed on the longest table in the room, which was against the wall where Rollo had parked himself, as if he were holding up the wall. He poured one glass at a time, carrying the first to Great-Aunt Dorothy, who reached for it quickly. He handed the second to me, then kept the third for himself as he returned to his post of holding up the wall.

I sipped a bit of sherry after they raised their glasses to me, but it had a sweetish syrupy taste, like cough medicine. I was wondering uneasily how Dorothy would broach whatever it was they’d brought me here for, and she seemed to sense this, because she looked me straight in the eye now, waiting only for the sullen servant to shuffle off in her backless slippers, out of earshot.

“You can rest assured, Penny dear, that we all want to be fair. We feel it was right that your mother have the apartment.We
wanted
her to have it,” Dorothy said quietly.“Penelope always said that Nancy was such an intelligent, considerate girl.As you are, my dear. Please let your mother know that we feel that way. Beryl and Penelope weren’t crazy about having me for a sister-in-law, but then, nobody ever thinks any woman is good enough for her brother.”

I gulped, feeling unexpectedly disarmed. I didn’t know she was aware of how the elder ladies felt about her. But she seemed calm, without a grudge, delicately sipping her sherry and frugally gnawing at those indigestible biscuits as if these were her sweet treats of the day.

I start feeling sorry for people at the most inopportune times. I did so now, because there was something distinctly lonely in this atmosphere. It was suffocating and dusty, like an old folks’ home where the residents are not expected to live long enough to complain about the slipshod housekeeping.

Rollo came toward me, extending a cigarette case. “Smoke?” he asked suavely. I couldn’t help staring at the cigarette case. It was the ugliest, most ornate one I’d ever seen, gold, painted with a man in a turban riding an elephant. Both he and the elephant had eyes and drapery studded with gems. Rollo’s eyes were on me, and he smiled and said,“Fascinating, isn’t it? Bought it at auction. Unbelievably rare, but I had to have it.”

He pressed the latch and as it sprang open, a mechanism made the interior of each half, which contained cigarettes, rise up automatically to offer you a smoke. He beamed like a kid, looking proud. I realized that he was waiting for me to react in delight.

“How interesting,” I murmured, because he seemed so oddly vulnerable. Rumpled and paunchy as Rollo was, he was still too young to be stuck in a dark, smelly old-folks’ home, even if it probably was an expensive flat. And it seemed so important to him to have his trinkets admired.The thought flashed through my head that if I wasn’t careful, I could end up this way, lost in the past, drooling over crazy antique possessions, out of touch with the rest of the world.

“Are you sure? They’re handmade specially. My personal blend of the rarest tobaccos,” he said encouragingly.

“No, thank you, Rollo,” I said as gently as possible.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Rollo,” Dorothy said reprovingly. “Don’t bother the girl. She doesn’t want those dirty things.” Rollo’s happy expression visibly collapsed, and he obediently slunk into a chair. After this lapse of good cheer, Dorothy turned back to me, her tone calmer.

“So please tell your mother that I have only the family’s best interests at heart,” she said. “We simply think it’s awful that you and Rollo didn’t get a share in the villa.”

I’d been futilely searching for a place to park my sherry glass. “I don’t really think it’s wise for us to discuss these matters without our lawyers,” I said cautiously, not wanting to say something that the lawyers would scold me for later. “So if you have anything to tell my mother, you should probably do it through her attorneys—”

Dorothy laughed her tinkly laugh but turned to Rollo. “Did you hear that, Rollo?” she cried. “Isn’t she sweet? But Penny, this is about
your future.
”

“You’re young.You may not realize it, but this could change your entire life,” said Rollo in a kindly tone.

“We’ve seen this sort of thing happen a million times, particularly to women,” Dorothy warned.“The whole point, dear, is that we don’t want unscrupulous lawyers taking advantage of our own blood relatives. That young man Jeremy may mean well, but perhaps he’s fallen under the influence of his colleagues. If he
really
cared about this family, he wouldn’t object to having the estate divided up more fairly amongst
all
of you kids.”

“I think Aunt Penelope knew how she wanted her estate divided,” I said frankly.

“She was
old
,” Dorothy said bluntly. “Take it from me, old people do foolish things. Because we lose track of time . . . and money.” She smiled encouragingly. “So you and Rollo shouldn’t be fighting
with
each other; you should be fighting
for
each other,” she emphasized.

Rollo nodded and said in a milder but equally urgent tone, “Do let us help you. My lawyers could represent both of us together,” he offered.

I knew it was time to go, before anything more was said that could later be misquoted or misconstrued.“That won’t be necessary.Thanks very much for the sherry,” I said politely, relieved when the maid came in and picked up the tray so that I could hand off my glass to her.

Rollo looked at his mother and shrugged. But she was watching me. “You must come again very soon,” she called out in a quavery voice. “We want to get to know you better.”

“Thank you,” I said quickly. The main door opened now and a butler entered, carrying some dry-cleaning. With the door ajar, I saw a clear escape path, and I took it.

It wasn’t until I was in the elevator, halfway down, that I realized I’d left my jacket behind. “Damn!” I murmured aloud.

The startled elevator operator turned to me and said, “Sorry?” in that way that anyone and everyone does in England when they want you to know that they believe you are not conducting yourself properly. But I couldn’t help it. I liked that jacket.

So back up I went. Once the elevator operator dropped me off, and the elevator doors had rolled shut behind me, I screwed up my courage and approached Great-Aunt Dorothy’s door. I was searching for a bell to ring when I heard that little old lady hollering in a tone I’d never heard from her before. I paused.

“You
idiot
!” she was saying with unmitigated fury. “You might have
said
something to keep her here!” The contrast in her voice now, compared to earlier, was downright shocking. “Instead you go and offer her those filthy cigarettes!”

“Thought she might like a smoke to relax. Oh, Mother, what’s the point?” Rollo answered in a weary but annoyed grumble.

“The point is that
I
told you to contest both wills, but no, you couldn’t resist laying your miserable hands on that cash, every pound of which will only just pay off those thugs you call friends who keep
staking
your damnable trips to the casino.There won’t be anything left once you pay them off and you know it. And that insufferable girl is
never
going to be on our side!”

“Never mind the wretched girl! We don’t need her on board, and she’s no threat to anybody,” Rollo roared with unexpected vigor. “
She’s
not the problem. It’s Jeremy. He’s got her dazzled, same as he did with Aunt Penelope.”

“Listen to me, you lazy fool.That girl is going to be trouble. If you can’t convince her to do what we want, then you’ve got to dispense with her! Let the people we’ve hired take care of it for you,” Great-Aunt Dorothy said emphatically. I could feel the hair at the back of my neck stand up on end. I mean, it was a figure of speech, right? She was talking about the lawyers, surely? That old lady wasn’t actually talking about, you know,
bumping me off
, was she?

“Oh, Mother, for God’s sake, leave this to me,” Rollo said wearily. “I’ve already got the ball rolling.”

“What?” Great-Aunt Dorothy said skeptically.“What’s your plan?” I leaned in closer, holding my breath.

But Rollo was being cagey with his own mother, and relishing it.

“You’ll see.When all is said and done, I’ll get the big kettle of fish. And once I get it, I’ll never let anyone near it, not even you,” he added bitterly.

“You’re a
child
!” she cried.“You want to have your cake and eat it, too! These ne’er-do-wells of yours will get you into real trouble one of these days, and then where will you be? Oh, will you
look
at what that stupid maid did.
Now
she waters it. She’s useless.Where’s Clive?”

I didn’t think it was possible for Dorothy to raise her voice further, but she did.

“Clive! Clive!” she hollered. Footsteps hurried from another room. Dorothy said, “Clive, get that disgusting thing out of this room at once, now that Mary’s killed it dead. I told you to dispose of it this morning and it is STILL here and I hate it! I
hate
it!”

At this unlucky moment I heard quick, heavy footsteps coming toward the front door—and me. I reached out and rang the bell,just as the butler opened the door. He was carrying a dead potted plant.

Behind him, Rollo and Dorothy had gone so suddenly silent that they looked as if they’d murdered someone, stuffed the body in a lump under the carpet, and were trying, unsuccessfully, to be casual about it.

“I left my jacket,” I said quickly.“The maid took it. I’d like it back, please.”

Dorothy looked relieved, and waved her hand at the butler, who put down the dead plant, turned and went off, and came back with my jacket, which he held away from his body, as if it were a dead mouse that he was holding by the tail. I took it quickly and turned to go. This time they didn’t try to stop me as they chorused another fond farewell.

When I returned to Aunt Penelope’s house, it was cold, because the sun hadn’t warmed it today. I peered at the phone. No calls on the answering machine. Shivering, I made a pot of tea and tried to decide whom to call about my visit with Rollo and Dorothy. I phoned my parents, but they were out. I knew perfectly well where they were. Out shopping together, buying food they’d cook side by side, making each other laugh at silly, private jokes.