The Wilt Inheritance (13 page)

‘You can send the body to me at Sandystones Hall, Fenfield,’ she told the undertaker. ‘We will be conducting a private committal in the Estate cemetery. I’ll pay you for the coffin and transportation costs now. No, there’ll be no flowers required nor any sort of ceremony. The Colonel was not a popular man.’ And having written out a cheque, she gave it to the owner.

‘Blimey, we get some extraordinary customers,’ he told his assistant after she had left. ‘Fancy having a burial ground on your own estate. No flowers, no ceremony, and from the way she spoke it sounds as though there will be no mourners either. Still, she must be rolling in money. Paid up without a murmur.’

In the street Clarissa changed her mind about not bothering further with her uncle’s alleged bugging of her room. The hotel manager had seemed wholly convincing in his denials that it had taken place, but to make sure she decided she ought to see her uncle’s solicitor. The Colonel had once or twice mentioned the man’s name. It would be as well to check the old devil’s will while she was here.

She went back to the hotel and asked for the number of the solicitor’s firm. She then rang and asked the receptionist for an appointment with Mr Ramsdyke.

‘Are you a present client of Mr Ramsdyke’s?’

‘How can I be present if I’m here?’

‘Here where?’

‘Here, not there, you stupid girl. Tell Mr Ramsdyke that I am Lady Clarissa Gadsley, wife of Sir George, the magistrate, and that if you do not fix me an appointment to see him immediately, you will both have cause to regret it.’

Twenty minutes later she was shown into Mr Ramsdyke’s office and offered a seat.

‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ she told the man with a grey moustache sitting behind the desk. ‘My uncle, Colonel Harold Rumble, has died. I presume he left his will with you.’

‘Colonel Harold Rumble? How do you spell the name?’

‘Like “grumble” without the “g”.’

‘Nobody of that name …’ Mr Ramsdyke began, and then hesitated. ‘Now that I come to think of it, someone called Grumble did consult us a year or two ago. I think it was about suing a motorist … or was it a boarding house? I remember he didn’t seem at all well and I advised him then to make a will. Did your uncle have a wooden leg?’

‘Yes, that’s right. And what I came to see you about was his will. He’s just died.’

Mr Ramsdyke’s face fell as he realised he wasn’t about to acquire two wealthy new clients. ‘In that case, he must have died intestate because he rejected my suggestion. Unless, of course, he went to another firm of solicitors. Although he claimed to have nothing to leave.’

‘Nothing stored in boxes?’ Lady Clarissa persisted. ‘For you to keep in your strongroom?’

‘Good gracious, no,’ said Mr Ramsdyke. ‘As a matter of fact, we don’t have a strongroom as such. Safes, yes, but actual room, no. Though we do have lots of room for new clients …’ he added in a last pitch for Lady Clarissa’s business.

‘Frankly, I’m surprised you have any clients at all,’ she said, rising to her feet and banging the door loudly behind her.

Lady Clarissa left the solicitor’s office with mixed feelings. On the one hand, her uncle had evidently made something of a fool out of her. But on the other, he’d very conveniently drunk himself to death, very rapidly. Wonderfully consoled by this thought, she collected her car and began to drive back to Sandystones Hall.

Down at St Barnaby’s School, the Headmistress still had no idea who had clambered up to her bedroom to plant the condom and pants in her double bed. When she’d crept round the dormitories to check on them, the Wilt quads weren’t giggling but were apparently fast asleep. They had been her first suspects but she still had no evidence. She had questioned the prefects, though for obvious reasons hadn’t gone into too much detail, merely stating that a prank had taken place in her house. The prefects were as puzzled as she was.

‘Something’s up,’ one of them said. ‘It’s probably to do with her husband. He’s always drunk when he comes back from wherever he’s been away to.’

‘But she asked about the girls in the dormitories,’ said another.

‘Could be he’s tried to sleep with one of them.’

‘He’d be mad to do that!’

‘Anything’s possible. He always gets so drunk when he goes to Horsham on business.’

In the end they concluded that they really had no idea what the Headmistress had been so agitated about, although they rather suspected the ghastly Wilt girls were involved in it somewhere.

A furious phone call from Ms Young, who had finally made it to Inverness, only added to Mrs Collinson’s bewilderment. Ms Young told her she was staying in Scotland and resigning from her teaching post forthwith. The Headmistress knew her to be an excellent teacher, almost certainly the best in the school. She couldn’t afford to lose her.

‘But why? If it’s a matter of your salary, I’d be happy to increase it substantially.’

‘My decision has nothing to do with what I earn and everything to do with those four fiendish girls! I can’t prove it, but I swear they tampered with my car to such an extent that I missed my cousin’s wedding. I could well have been killed in an awful accident in the Dartford Tunnel.’

‘Good gracious me, how dreadful! And you’re certain they were responsible?’

‘I told you, I haven’t any direct evidence but, yes, I am certain they were responsible. Ever since they
came to the school, they’ve created havoc time and time again. Surely you must realise that? They ought to be expelled.’

The Headmistress hesitated. What Ms Young had just said was perfectly true. Until the Wilt quads had come to St Barnaby’s there had been no serious trouble in the school, only a few minor quarrels and the occasional fight: matters she could deal with easily and certainly nothing that warranted expulsion.

‘You may well be right,’ she admitted. ‘But unless we have definite proof, I don’t see how we can expel them. If we can find that proof and they go, will you return? Naturally with the increase in salary I’ve already mentioned.’

Ms Young said she’d consider it and put the phone down. Left to herself, the Headmistress tried to think what to do next. She could not expel the quads without good reason, and in spite of her growing suspicion that they had been responsible for putting those revolting objects in her bed, couldn’t for the life of her imagine where they had obtained the things. At the same time she was determined to retain the services of Ms Young. She would have to find a way of getting the wretched girls out of the school without officially expelling them. But how on earth could she do it? She’d already written to Mrs Wilt to warn her that unless her daughters changed their behaviour and used less disgusting language she would be forced to ask her to remove them from the school.

She decided to prepare a further letter, to be sent straightaway, and would also hand a copy to whichever Wilt came to collect their delinquent offspring, saying that owing to increased overheads the school was having to raise its fees substantially again.

Surely that ought persuade the parents to take them away, she thought sitting back in her chair with a smile.

She was certain the Wilt family were already having a hard time meeting the quads’ school fees. They’d entered the girls for every scholarship the school offered – even the one for single parents, with Mrs Wilt arguing that her husband was so useless she may as well be on her own. They’d won nothing, of course, although there had been something of a near miss when Penelope’s drawing of her three sisters in minute anatomical detail in the Life Studies class had hugely impressed one of the school governors. Fortunately the man had had to stand down in some disgrace when he was later arrested and charged with lewd behaviour after exposing himself in the local park.

What a ghastly handful those girls were! Goodness knows what the father must be like, to have sired not one devilish daughter but four of them.

Up at Sandystones Hall Wilt was oblivious to the fulminations of his daughters’ headmistress. He was finding that he was having a more interesting – if peculiar – time than he’d expected. He’d risen on the
first morning to find that Sir George was in court all day and Lady Clarissa was confined to her room with what Mrs Bale described as a ‘general poorliness’, which he rather suspected had something to do with drink. And once again the elusive Edward was nowhere to be found. As a result Wilt was able to explore the house and grounds, happy in the knowledge that he would not have to spend the day listening to his host grumbling about his step-son whom he called ‘the blithering idiot’ – or indeed himself attempting to teach the blithering idiot A-level history. Instead Sir George had lent Wilt an old bicycle and told him that, for all he cared, Wilt could go into town and have dinner in a restaurant.

‘I don’t want to be disturbed when you come back either,’ he’d said, to Wilt’s delight. This was slightly diminished when Sir George added that Wilt may well come across the little bastard Edward skulking somewhere on the Estate, and to look out for low-flying missiles if he did.

So in fact Wilt was enjoying what amounted to a holiday, and had decided to start it by exploring the house more fully. It proved to be even more peculiar than the ancestral portraits on the staircase and the enormous beds had led him to expect. In search of something interesting to read that evening – having tired of the causes of the First World War – he went into the library. It was a big room lined with the shelves around all four walls. These were filled with
dusty old books which didn’t look as though they had been opened for years.

But it was the furniture that held his attention. It was all Indian, and not the contemporary sort manufactured in Birmingham or some sheet-metal works in the Midlands, which he’d occasionally seen in suburban houses and pretentious high-street stores. This was authentic nineteenth-century furniture: dark teak sideboards, lots of highly ornamented fretwork screens, and even rattan or bamboo extending chairs, which Mrs Bale helpfully told him later were known as Bombay Fornicators because they could be pulled out so far that one (or two) could lie down on them.

A whole host of miniature carved elephants and other animals cluttered the floor between chairs and screens, so much so that Wilt felt he had wandered into a museum of Imperial relics. This odd menagerie was as visually unsettling as the exterior of the Hall.

He turned away and desperately searched the bookshelves for something light to read, but military history seemed to be this family’s obsession, with an emphasis on the 1757 struggle between the British and the French.

Needing to escape, Wilt went to the front door. He crossed the drawbridge and strolled around to the walled kitchen garden and the cottage in which they were going to stay. Once outside it, he decided the cottage looked perfectly acceptable if to his mind rather small. He began to wonder whether he could
persuade the Gadsleys that he ought to remain living at the Hall and not in the cottage with Eva and the quads. After all, he would be engaged upon important work – always provided he found the elusive Eddie – and ought not to be pestered and distracted by four raucous girls. In fact, five raucous women since Eva was every bit as noisy and demanding as the fast-maturing quads. No, he couldn’t possibly be expected to tutor the boy if he had to endure their horrendous music and violent quarrels all day and all night: he would put this to Lady Clarissa when he saw her and felt sure she would agree.

Having settled that in his own mind, Wilt decided not to bother with the bike but instead went for a walk deep into the woods. It was there that he discovered a caravan, well hidden near the wall which screened the Hall from the road and set behind some shrubs and young fir saplings. He could hear someone moving about inside it and presently an extraordinarily fat and short woman came out with some clothes, which she hung on a makeshift washing line. When she went inside again, Wilt crept back the way he had come. Something about that van and the way it was partly camouflaged had made him feel uncomfortable. He decided not to go near it again. Instead he crossed the lawn to the lake and sat down on a bank to gaze across at the architectural fright show that was the Hall.

After half an hour spent basking in the sun, he went
back into the house and through to the kitchen to talk to Mrs Bale. He found her supervising two surprisingly plump young women who were cleaning the staircase and corridors. The three women together were so large there was actually no possibility of his getting round them to his room so Wilt reached a sudden decision.

‘Good morning, Mrs Bale. I wonder if you could tell me if Lady Clarissa is up yet?’

‘I’m afraid not, Mr Wilt. Her ladyship has suffered a bereavement … although it isn’t my place to talk to you about it as I don’t believe in gossip. Anyway I don’t think we will see her for a good while yet, Mr Wilt. She was very, very upset when she got back late last night, and by the state of the drinks cabinet I’d say that she had to have a drink or two … to console herself. Not that I’m one to gossip, you understand.’

‘Of course not,’ he said hastily, thinking that at this rate he’d be stuck in the corridor for ever. ‘Bereaved, you say? How terrible – I do hope it wasn’t her uncle.’ He continued quickly before Mrs Bale could confirm or deny the matter, ‘Well, then, may I ask whether Sir George is back yet, and if so whether he’d mind my having a quick word with him?’

‘He is, and provided it’s not about his step-son, I’m sure he’d be pleased to see you.’ Mrs Bale turned around with some difficulty to pry apart the two cleaners who had become wedged together in the
doorway. Wilt went the long way round to the study and knocked on the door.

‘Come in,’ Sir George called out, and glanced somewhat critically at Wilt as he entered. ‘If it’s about my step-son …’ he began, but Wilt shook his head.

‘No. I thought you should know that there’s some sort of caravan, parked in the woods. It seems to be partly camouflaged by saplings and shrubs.’

‘Caravan?’ asked Sir George, turning rather crimson. ‘Don’t know anything about a caravan. Whereabouts is it?’