A FAMILY AFFAIR (Part 1 of 3)
by Richard Banks
We
were early intending to be the first to arrive, but by the time we did, my
Wyngate cousins had already laid claim to the only guest room fit for the
purpose. Invited by our host, Aunt Flora, to take our pick of the third floor
bedrooms in the East Wing, Teddy and myself finally settled on one less
neglected than the others with a ceiling so far unstained by the ingress of
rainwater. What the late arrivals had to put up with I shudder to think,
although in the case of the Beck-Cooper’s I derived great pleasure in imagining
them being rained out of their bed or bitten by one of the many small mammals
contesting ownership of the old ruin; it was no more than they deserved.
Having previously visited Brookvale I
had come prepared and within my suitcase packed half a pound of cheese, four
sturdy mouse traps and an aerosol labelled ‘Bugkill’. These I unpacked along
with our bathroom things leaving everything else within our suitcases where I
judged they would be better off than out. After performing our ablutions in the
cloudy waters of the only functioning tap in the bathroom we ventured down to the
Great Drawing Room in which our fellow guests were beginning to assemble.
It was the usual crowd and we did the
usual thing of pretending to be glad to see them. They reciprocated in similar
fashion. We made the usual small talk, exaggerated the achievements of our
teenage children and swanked about foreign holidays to exotic places that some
of those present had only seen on TV or the web. Our conversations, while
scrupulously avoiding any mention of money, were intended to give the
impression that we had rather more of the stuff than we needed; fortune hunters
we were not, and we professed an affection for Aunt Flora and Brookvale that
fully justified our presence in this family gathering of her nearest and
dearest.
The least fortunate of her guests was Eric,
the grandson of Aunt Flora’s youngest sibling. It was he who would inherit
Brookvale and the death duties that would bankrupt him unless, come the time,
he could persuade the National Trust to take the property off his hands in lieu
of said duties. This was an outcome he daily prayed for and which would have
been as welcome to him as the commutation of a death sentence. Unfortunately
for Eric the almost derelict condition of the house and the sale of much of its
estate had made Brookvale an improbable candidate for public ownership.
If Eric’s prospects were bleak to the
point of despair Aunt Flora’s other guests had nothing to lose and the
tantalising possibility of improbable gain. For this they had Uncle Hector to
thank. Hector was the first born son of his father Joseph Entwhistle a
self-made millionaire from Quebec
who had hit upon the idea of marrying Hector into the English aristocracy. It
was to be a loss maker that would raise the prestige of his once impoverished
family, into the starry orbit of a noble and ancient family, with a proven, if
distant, connection to Royal persons living and deceased.
The deal when struck, over fifty years
ago, was that the eldest son of Hector’s marriage with Aunt Flora would inherit
the family title and in return Henry would write the cheques that kept
Brookvale afloat. This he did for seven childless years, finally delivering an
ultimatum that unless his son and daughter-in-law got on with their side of the
bargain he would cease all future payments into the Brookvale estate. As Hector
had no significant funds of his own we can only imagine that he redoubled his
efforts at fatherhood, but with no more success than before. The monthly
payments duly ceased and in an unfatherly act of abandonment Joseph remade his
will leaving his great wealth to his second son. The only mention of Hector was
now a bequest of ten dollars included only to show that his disinheritance was
the firm intention of the testator rather than the oversight of an elderly man
of increasing eccentricity.
However, it was rumoured that Hector’s
father had not entirely abandoned his elder son and that he had sent him over a
million dollars in a wooden chest labelled ‘tea’. This he had done on the
solemn understanding that none of it was to be frittered away on maintaining a
crumbling property no longer relevant to the aspirations of the Entwhistle
family.
What happened next was also rumour
until the discovery of a bill of sale by Aunt Flora. Uncle Hector anxious to
conceal his father’s clandestine gift from official scrutiny used the money to
purchase two diamond necklaces which he no doubt reasoned could be concealed
about the house or grounds until such time as Brookvale was somehow disposed
of. This, however, was never going to happen in Aunt Flora’s lifetime. For her,
ownership of Brookvale was a sacred trust that she would never relinquish even
though the folly of remaining there was becoming increasingly obvious. Uncle
Hector’s hopes of deriving any material benefit from his father’s gift therefore
depended on him outliving his wife which he spectacularly failed to do by
falling off the battlements and drowning in the moat.
So,
here we all are, three years on, solemnly assembled to commemorate an event
that’s still the common tittle-tattle of the county. Our motives for being at
Brookvale were undoubtedly mixed. Of course we all loved Uncle Hector and were
saddened by his unfortunate passing but a mystery has an attraction which is
difficult to resist and the possibility that one of us might somehow find the
fabled necklaces was a magnet somewhat stronger than grief. Not that any of us
were going to admit this, after all to do so raised the question of what we did next with said diamonds. For now no one in the assembled company mentioned
them, not a single word, which confirmed my suspicion that their thoughts were
not so very different from my own. Having all been descended from Donald the
Duplicitous, the seventh Marquis, we were, of course, all cut from the same
cloth. Ditto for Aunt Flora, but in her case this family trait was remarkably
absent. Indeed in old age she had acquired a kind, almost saintly aura that
suggested that she would soon be a candidate for Chief Angel. Clearly she had
no need of diamonds in the next life and would only use them in this one to
shore-up an ancient estate that was a lost cause. Our discovery of the
necklaces, if by chance that happened, was therefore likely to raise a moral
dilemma requiring subtle and complex reasoning. Inevitably this would raise
many questions such as what would Donald the Dup have done? But I’m getting
ahead of myself, first of all we must find the necklaces.
The same thought was very much in the
minds of Aunt Flora’s other guests and if the last two years were anything to go
by their modus operandi would be both varied and enterprising. Try as we may no
one was quite able to conceal that intoxicating feeling that one of us would
soon discover what we should not be looking for.
The welcoming refreshments consumed,
the guests were free to walk the grounds or play croquet with the only mallet
and ball that could be found. For now there was nothing for me to do but relax.
My search would begin at midnight but for others, the hunt was already on and
they were determined that not a moment should be wasted. What exactly each of
them was up to was less than clear, although I soon became suspicious of cousin
Hugh’s new walking stick which emitted faint but discernible bleeps that he
tried to muffle by humming loudly on his lengthy perambulations of the front
and back gardens. Hetty and Arthur retired to their room for an afternoon nap
which they appeared to abandon in favour of a noisy rearrangement of its
furniture, and Eric departed to the woods, spade in hand, to dig, so he said,
for truffles.
My preference was for the spirits and
on a coolish afternoon, I was more than content to wile away the several hours
until dinner with a large G&T in the conservatory. It was while observing a
strange plant of Triffid like proportions that I inadvertently made the
discovery that my fellow guests were attempting by more active means. In the
intestines of this transparent monster was not only the necklaces but a hoard
of gold coins that I took to be the fabled pieces of eight.
(To be continued)
Copyright Richard Banks
