Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [15]
At the end of a long morning, Norbert pushed back in his chair with a sigh and stood. “Time for another cup of coffee,” he pronounced, and went out of the door. I heard him speaking with his secretary for a moment, heard too the flush of distant waters a minute later. He returned with the secretary on his heels.
He poured the watery brown liquid, offered cream, sugar, and biscuits, then settled for a carefully measured five minutes of closing conversation. I broke it after one.
“Mr Norbert, I have to say you've done wonders with the entire estate. It couldn't have been easy, at this distance.” I laid my spoon into the bone-china saucer. “However, that makes it all the more puzzling that the house has been allowed to go to ruin.” I told him the outline of our adventures the previous evening, and he produced little noises of distress at our meeting with the police. I ended by repeating my comment about the state of the house, which observation he met with a sympathetic shake of the head.
“Terrible, isn't it?” he agreed, looking not in the least shame-faced. “Such a pity. But I hadn't much of a choice, really; the will was very clear on that.”
“The will,” I repeated.
“Yes, your father's will. Parents', I should say. Don't tell me you haven't seen it?”
“When I was fourteen, I must have done. Not since then.”
“Oh, my, no wonder you're a little confused. And here I was hoping you might enlighten me on the matter. Hold on just a sec.” He reached forward to toggle a switch on his desk-telephone, and said into the instrument, “Miss Rand, would you please bring me a copy of the Russell will?”
Miss Rand duly appeared with the bound document, handing it to Norbert, who passed it over to me. He sat back while I undid the ties and settled in to read it.
It proved to be one of the odder such that I had ever read. I went through the document closely, wondering why I had not seen it before—I was certain that it had not been among the stack of papers I had gone through when I had taken over my father's estate at the age of twenty-one. My eyes lingered on the two signatures at the bottom, my father's strong and unruly, my mother's neat as copperplate, and then went back to an earlier page.
“What does this mean, ‘to ensure that no one unaccompanied by a member of the immediate family be granted access to the house for a period of twenty years after the date of this signing'?”
“Just that. It's actually quite straightforward, as these things go: If your father died, your mother inherited. If they both died, as sadly happened, you and your brother would inherit the house, however, no one else other than you, your spouses, and your children would be allowed to set foot in it except in your presence for twenty years after the—what was the date of signing?—yes, the fifth of June, 1906. It goes on to say that the house is exempt from the remainder of the disbursements until, as I said, the fifth of June, 1926—a little over two years from now. Now you're here, you and your husband are welcome to do what you like to the house. Except permit others inside without your being physically present, or to sell it before the given date.”
“But why?”
“My father, who of course drew up this will, did not see fit to tell me the reasoning behind its details before he died,” he replied, with the bemused attitude of one who had himself written so many odd wills that he no longer questioned them. “However, the requirement of the codicil is crystal clear, although it leaves to the discretion of this legal firm the means of ensuring that the house remain undisturbed. Within days of your father's unfortunate demise, my father, as head of the firm, arranged for a single lady relative of his to take the house across the street, Agatha Grimly is her name—she's my great step-cousin or something of the sort. Miss Grimly was later joined by her unmarried nephew. She was a schoolteacher most of her life, so she's got eyes in the back of her head. The nephew is a little dim-witted, but quite clear as to