A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(73)

Margaret sighed. She observed her son and noted for the first time how much he actually resembled his father. She also noted how much he did to play down that resemblance, cropping his hair drastically so Guy’s curls weren’t visible, dressing badly, shaving close to his skin to avoid anything that remotely resembled Guy’s neatly trimmed beard. But he could do nothing about his eyes, which were so like his father’s. Bedroom eyes, they’d been called, heavy-lidded and sensual. And he could do nothing about his complexion, swarthier than the average Englishman’s. She went to him where he stood near the fireplace with his father’s friend. She linked her arm through his. “Sit with me, darling,” she said to her son. “May I steal him from you, Mr. Ouseley?”

There was no need for Frank Ouseley to respond because Ruth had closed the drawing room door, indicating that all relevant parties were present. Margaret led Adrian to a sofa that formed part of a seating group near the table on which Guy’s solicitor—a reedy-looking man called Dominic Forrest—had set out his papers.

Margaret didn’t fail to notice that everyone was attempting to look as unanticipatory as possible. This included her own son upon whom she’d had to prevail to attend this meeting at all. He sat slumped, his face expressionless and his body a declaration of how little he cared to hear what his father had intended with his money.

This made no difference to Margaret because she cared. So when Dominic Forrest put on his half-moon spectacles and cleared his throat, she was all attention. He’d made sure that Margaret knew this formal reading-of-the-will situation was extremely irregular. Far better for beneficiaries to be made aware of inheritances in a setting that allowed them the privacy to absorb the information and to ask any questions they might have without the delicacy of their situation being revealed to parties who might have no vested interest in their individual welfare. Which, Margaret knew, was legalese for how much Mr. Forrest would have preferred to be able to make arrangements to see each beneficiary separately in order to bill each one individually later. Nasty little man. Ruth perched birdlike on the edge of a Queen Anne chair not far from Valerie. Kevin Duffy remained at the window, Frank at the fireplace. Ana?s Abbott and her daughter came to sit on a love seat where the one wrung her hands and the other tried to tuck her giraffe legs somewhere where they wouldn’t seem so obtrusive.

Mr. Forrest took a seat and shook his papers with a flick of his wrist. The last will and testament of Mr. Brouard, he began, was written, signed, and witnessed on the second of October in this current year. It was a simple document. Margaret didn’t much like the way things were developing. She steeled herself to hear news that was potentially less than good. This was wise on her part, as things turned out, because in extremely short order Mr. Forrest revealed that Guy’s entire fortune consisted of a single bank account and an investment portfolio. The account and portfolio, in accordance with the laws of inheritance in the States of Guernsey—whatever that meant— were to be divided equally into two parts. The first part, once again in accordance with the laws of inheritance in the States of Guernsey, was to be distributed evenly among Guy’s three children. The second part was to be given half to one Paul Fielder and half to one Cynthia Moullin. Of Ruth, beloved sister and lifelong companion of the deceased, there was no mention made at all. But considering the properties Guy owned in England, in France, in Spain, in the Seychelles, considering his international holdings, considering his stocks, his bonds, his works of art—not to mention Le Reposoir itself—none of which had even been mentioned in his will, it was no difficult feat to work out how Guy Brouard had made his feelings about his children crystal clear while simultaneously taking care of his sister. God in heaven, Margaret thought weakly. He must have given Ruth everything while he was still alive.

Silence, which was stunned at first and which only slowly turned to outrage on Margaret’s part, greeted the conclusion of Mr. Forrest’s recitation. The first thing she thought was that Ruth had orchestrated this entire event to humiliate her. Ruth had never liked her. Never, never, never, never once had she liked her. And during the years in which Margaret had kept Guy from his son, Ruth had no doubt brewed a real hatred of her. So what true pleasure she would be getting from this moment when she was able to witness Margaret Chamberlain get her deserved comeuppance: not only being sandbagged by learning that Guy’s estate was not as it had seemed but also having to witness her son receiving even less of that estate than two complete strangers called Fielder and Moullin. Margaret swung on her sister-in-law, ready to do battle. But she saw on Ruth’s face a truth she didn’t want to believe. Ruth had gone so pale that her lips were rendered in chalk, and her expression illustrated better than anything could that her brother’s will was not what she had expected it to be. But there was more information than that contained in the combination of Ruth’s expression and her invitation to the others to hear the will’s reading. Indeed, those two facts led Margaret to an ineluctable conclusion: Not only had Ruth known about the existence of an earlier will, but she had also been privy to that will’s contents. Why else invite Guy’s most recent lover to be present? Why else Frank Ouseley? Why else the Duffys? There could be only one reason for this: Ruth had invited them all in good faith to be present because Guy had at one time left each of them a legacy.

A legacy, Margaret thought. Adrian’s legacy. Her own son’s legacy. Her vision seemed occluded by a thin red veil at the realisation of what had actually occurred. That her son Adrian should be denied what was rightfully hi s...That he should be in effect cut out of his own father’s will, despite the fancy dancing Guy may have done to make it seem otherwise...That he should be placed in the humiliating position of actually receiving less than two people—Fielder and Moullin, whoever the hell they were—who were no apparent relation of Guy’s...That the vast majority of his father’s possessions had obviously already been disposed of...That he should thus be literally set adrift with nothing by the very man who had given him life and then abandoned him without a fight and then apparently felt nothing in that abandonment and then sealed whatever rejection was implied in the abandonment by having his way with his only son’s lover when that lover was on the verge—yes the verge— of the kind of commitment that could have changed his life forever and made him whole at last...It was inconceivable. The act itself was unconscionable. And someone was going to pay for it.