At Bertram's Hotel - Agatha Christie [30]
“And they haven’t been where you wanted to go?”
“No, I didn’t mean that. They’ve been quite all right. I mean they’ve been more or less where everyone else goes.”
“I see.”
“But I don’t know anything about myself, I mean what money I’ve got, and how much, and what I could do with it if I wanted.”
“In fact,” said Egerton, with his attractive smile, “you want to talk business. Is that it? Well, I think you’re quite right. Let’s see. How old are you? Sixteen—seventeen?”
“I’m nearly twenty.”
“Oh dear. I’d no idea.”
“You see,” explained Elvira, “I feel all the time that I’m being shielded and sheltered. It’s nice in a way, but it can get very irritating.”
“It’s an attitude that’s gone out of date,” agreed Egerton, “but I can quite see that it would appeal to Derek Luscombe.”
“He’s a dear,” said Elvira, “but very difficult, somehow, to talk to seriously.”
“Yes, I can see that that might be so. Well, how much do you know about yourself, Elvira? About your family circumstances?”
“I know that my father died when I was five and that my mother had run away from him with someone when I was about two, I don’t remember her at all. I barely remember my father. He was very old and had his leg up on a chair. He used to swear. I was rather scared of him. After he died I lived first with an aunt or a cousin or something of my father’s, until she died, and then I lived with Uncle Derek and his sister. But then she died and I went to Italy. Uncle Derek has arranged for me, now, to live with the Melfords who are his cousins and very kind and nice and have two daughters about my age.”
“You’re happy there?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ve barely got there. They’re all very dull. I really wanted to know how much money I’ve got.”
“So it’s financial information you really want?”
“Yes,” said Elvira. “I’ve got some money. Is it a lot?”
Egerton was serious now.
“Yes,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of money. Your father was a very rich man. You were his only child. When he died, the title and the estate went to a cousin. He didn’t like the cousin, so he left all his personal property, which was considerable, to his daughter—to you, Elvira. You’re a very rich woman, or will be, when you are twenty-one.”
“You mean I am not rich now?”
“Yes,” said Egerton, “you’re rich now, but the money is not yours to dispose of until you are twenty-one or marry. Until that time it is in the hands of your Trustees. Luscombe, myself and another.” He smiled at her. “We haven’t embezzled it or anything like that. It’s still there. In fact, we’ve increased your capital considerably by investments.”
“How much will I have?”
“At the age of twenty-one or upon your marriage, you will come into a sum which at a rough estimate would amount to six or seven hundred thousand pounds.”
“That is a lot,” said Elvira, impressed.
“Yes, it is a lot. Probably it is because it is such a lot that nobody has ever talked to you about it much.”
He watched her as she reflected upon this. Quite an interesting girl, he thought. Looked an unbelievably milk-and-water Miss, but she was more than that. A good deal more. He said, with a faintly ironic smile:
“Does that satisfy you?”
She gave him a sudden smile.
“It ought to, oughtn’t it?”
“Rather better than winning the pools,” he suggested.
She nodded, but her mind was elsewhere. Then she came out abruptly with a question.
“Who gets it if I die?”
“As things stand now, it would go to your next of kin.”
“I mean—I couldn’t make a will now, could I? Not until I was twenty-one. That’s what someone told me.”
“They were quite right.”
“That’s really rather annoying. If I was married and died I suppose my husband would get the money?”
“Yes.”
“And if I wasn’t married my mother would be my next of kin and get it. I really seem to have very few relations—I don’t