Pentrip, after noting her wishes with regard to various charities, had tactfully brought up the question of next of kin—a suggestion treated with scant consideration by Miss Coule. Her nephew was capable of looking after himself: her birds were not. Pentrip had diplomatically stifled his contrary opinion that, with bankruptcy impending, Roger was patiently incapable of looking after himself, whereas every sparrow mastered the art on leaving its nest.
Later, Pentrip appraised Roger Coule that his expectations were about to fade like a mirage. Touched by his friend’s distress, Pentrip had paid for the next round of drinks. Moreover, drawing Young Coule’s ear closer to his lips, he had breathed a message of hope. Ambiguously worded to the effect that there were more ways of killing a chicken than by wringing its neck, he had intimated that—without promising, you understand—all was not lost. In his turn Roger had intimated that Pentrip might count on a tangible expression of gratitude.
Pentrip recalled how, thereafter, he had demonstrated every aspect of the law’s delay: appointments had proved difficult to make but easy to break; clauses had been queried; precedents and authorities had proved elusive—we don’t want anything to go wrong afterwards, do we? A contested will is such an embarrassment to the firm that drew it up. In the end Pentrip’s stamina had proved stronger than Miss Coule’s—after all his life-span had not been limited to a few weeks.
Strangely, considering there had been no contract, Roger Coule had proved to be grateful. Generous even. He had been well able to afford it, of course, Miss Coule having died better off than anyone had suspected; but gratitude and generosity are not encountered so often these days. Roger Coule’s token of esteem had been managed very discreetly, giving Pentrip every reason to be satisfied with his Fabian tactics.
Until now.
Brenda clattered into the office, investigating the lack of response to her ringing. Had the telephone gone wrong again? More sympathetically, after a glance at her employer: was Mr. Pentrip feeling poorly again? There must be a bug going about.
Hugo Pentrip abruptly left the office, ordering Brenda to clear up the mess of cancelled engagements. He had only a hazy idea of what he was to do next, but a conference with Roger Coule had priority.
Pentrip made for Coule’s home. Roger and his wife had moved into his aunt’s vast Victorian villa after completely redecorating the place. Inga Coule fancied herself as a designer. An article with before-and-after photographs had even been incorporated into the new decor: the rest had gone to the salesroom, where they had considerably increased the size of Miss Coule’s estate. Having swept through the house from cellar to attic (the former becoming games-room-with-bar and the latter Inga’s studio), Roger’s wife was now well advanced in her campaign to tame the garden.
Pentrip half expected to glimpse her flourishing secateurs as he crunched over the drive’s clean gravel. Instead a curtain twitched as he approached the front door. This was the only acknowledgement of his presence. No one answered his ringing or even, after an impatient five minutes, his more determined knocking. At last he was reduced to shouting through the letter box.
“It’s all right,” he called, somewhat irritably. “It’s only me.”
There was no reply: only the click of a door somewhere inside, and the twitching of a different curtain.
Pentrip reapplied himself to the letter box, stressing that his errand was of the utmost urgency and that he refused to go away until he had been granted an interview. Even this declaration was greeted with silence. Having made it, though, he felt he could not ignominiously withdraw. If he was not to be admitted through the front door, he would lower his social status and apply to the Tradesman’s Entrance.
As that was not open either, he rattled at doors round to the back of the house until he peered in at the French windows. To Hell with the Coules! He would show them. All may be locked and still, but he was convinced someone was about. He had said he would wait, so he would wait. While he waited he circumnavigated the garden. All was newly laid out and orderly except for a little wilderness at the far end; and an attack had been made recently even on that. Rough ground had been broken up behind unpruned bushes.
“I wish my nephew to enjoy my garden,” Miss Coule had said. Pentrip shuddered. Bright sunlight on the early bulbs was not enough to dispel that memory. Suddenly the solicitor wanted nothing more to do with gardens.
Then a bedroom window crashed open, and a woman was screaming at him. “Go away. Go away.” As he approached her, Pentrip was shocked by the change in Inga Coule’s appearance.
“Mrs. Coule?” he murmured. Even as he spoke he comprehended that the words might have been more carefully chosen. Who else but Mrs. Coule should be leaning from her own bedroom window? His inflexion had implied that he had failed to recognize the poised, chic, sophisticated blonde (as the article had described her) in this hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked, tousle-haired sloven waving wild arms at him from above. He hastened to put himself right. “Is your husband in?”
“No,” she cried, after a banshee screech. “Go away.”
“Mrs. Coule, this is critical,” he insisted. “It really is.” He was aware that he was treading on the thinnest of conversational ice. Was Inga Coule cognizant of the tacit arrangement between her husband and himself? Could she keep a secret? “If I can’t talk to Roger, perhaps I can talk to you. About his aunt.”
Her reply was a scream that sent starlings fluttering from the trees at the bottom of the garden. The window slammed shut. Behind it she could be seen gesticulating and, the solicitor could have sworn, gibbering.
This was as good an answer as any. Obviously Inga Coule knew something of Roger’s aunt, and the memory was not pleasant. The solicitor thoughtfully left. He had enough unpleasant memories of his own.
And they were probably responsible for his nightmares. He dreamed of that rough patch behind the shrubbery. The lumpy soil heaved and shuddered like bedclothes over an uneasy sleeper, while Miss Coule’s voice chattered on—“I leave my nephew to the garden.” Hugo Pentrip woke in a lather. Not only that night, but night after night as the dream recurred.
Brenda was concerned. With the unself-consciousness of the young, she wondered if Mr. Pentrip might not be working too hard. Why didn’t he relax occasionally? Pentrip smiled wanly at her concern; but at the same time recognized that, as an experienced seducer of secretaries, another triumph was within his grasp. How odd that he should need to thank Miss Coule for anything. He would play the strong man in need of ministering angel.
His erotic daydreams were rudely dispelled by reading an unexpected clause in an otherwise impeccably typed draft. “Believing that a woman should always be provided for, I bequeath to my nephew’s widow a permanent residence with constant attendance.”
Jeopardizing his romantic progress, he buzzed furiously for his secretary, and when she appeared, explosively demanded what the hell she thought she was doing. She indignantly defended her work, insisting that the words had been committed to paper exactly as Mr. Pentrip had dictated. To prove her point she produced the relevant tape, which had not been wiped. She was disconcerted when no trace of the intruding clause could be found. She was so sure that she had heard it. She even replayed it to check. Tearfully, she insisted that if she hadn’t heard it, how could she have known what to type? She would never have invented anything so absurd. If she’d been having a joke it would have been funnier than that.