The Heiress

The office of Mr Kettering, the only solicitor in Marlow Cross, occupied the first floor above the chemist's, and it always smelled at once of camphor from below and sealing wax from above. Mr Kettering himself was small and bald, with pink ears that glowed against the window like petals, and a way of speaking as though every word cost a guinea and he had no intention of giving them away for nothing.

The reading of the will had been fixed for Monday at four — immediately after Doyle had taken Edwin's tools and returned to Gwendolyn the keys to the front of the shop. The back room remained sealed: across the doorway where the oak door had hung that morning, two strips of paper bearing the seal of the county police now made a cross.

Gwendolyn arrived first. She sat on the edge of a leather armchair by the window in a black dress she had bought in Hartford on Saturday, because she had brought only greys and blues from London, and she still felt the dress belonged to someone else. Then came Maureen — with the same handbag, which she clutched like a lifebelt. Then, to the surprise of both women, Edwin.

"I was invited," he said, awkwardly removing his hat. "In writing. I've no idea why."

Last of all, at four o'clock precisely, came the Reverend Pembry. He greeted everyone without looking anyone in the eye, and sat down in a corner with his hands folded on his knees so tightly that his fingers went white.

Mr Kettering cleared his throat and opened a folder.

"The last will and testament of Oscar Albert Renwick," he began, "drawn up and witnessed in this office on the twenty-third of last month."

Maureen gave a barely perceptible start.

"The twenty-third?" she asked. "But… Mr Renwick made his will six years ago. I was a witness."

"Quite right, Miss Cobb." The solicitor looked at her over his spectacles with something like sympathy. "The earlier will has been revoked. Mr Renwick made a new one three and a half weeks ago. I shall continue, if I may."

He read slowly, with pauses, the way one reads documents in which a single comma may cost someone their fate. A bequest to the parish of St Michael for the repair of the roof. Money for the upkeep of his sister's grave. One hundred pounds to Miss Maureen Cobb, "with deep gratitude for twenty-two years of loyalty I did not deserve". A silver pocket watch on a chain to Edwin Hale, "the only man who understood that a mechanism is also a form of honesty".

And then:

"'The building on Marlow Street, the shop with all its contents, and the remainder of my estate, real and personal, I leave to my niece, Gwendolyn Ellen Renwick, daughter of my late sister Ellen, the only one of our family who had the courage to tell me the truth to my face.'"

Gwendolyn sat motionless. She did not know what to say, and she did not know what she felt. Inside her chest it was empty and ringing, like a room from which the furniture has just been carried out.

"There is one further provision," the solicitor went on, and his tone changed. "Mr Renwick insisted that I read it verbatim, in the presence of all those invited. 'My archive, kept in the back room of the shop, is not to be sold, destroyed or given to any third party. It may be opened only by my niece Gwendolyn together with Edwin Hale, and only when both are ready to hear the truth from which I have hidden for too long. If what they are looking for is not in the cabinets, let them remember where I always kept what was most precious: where no one looks at it, because everyone is looking up.'"

Mr Kettering closed the folder.

For a few seconds nothing could be heard in the office except, from downstairs in the chemist's, the bell above the door.

"'The truth from which I have hidden for too long,'" Edwin repeated slowly. "What does that mean, Mr Kettering?"

"I'm a solicitor, Mr Hale, not a confessor." The little man spread his hands. "Mr Renwick didn't explain. He was… very agitated that day. He said he was already several decades late and didn't want to be late for his own death as well."

In the corner a chair creaked softly. The Reverend Pembry rose — abruptly, clumsily, the way people rise when they suddenly find it hard to breathe.

"Forgive me," he muttered. "I… need some air."

And he went out without saying goodbye. His footsteps sounded on the wooden stairs for a long time — heavy, uneven, an old man's steps.

* * *

Maureen did not cry. She sat clutching her handbag and staring at her hands, and Gwendolyn, who had already stood up to go to her, stopped short, because she saw her face.

There was no resentment in it, and no envy. There was fear.

"Miss Cobb," Gwendolyn said softly. "The earlier will… what was in it?"

Maureen raised her eyes to her — red, dry, inflamed.

"The shop," she said soundlessly. "He was leaving the shop to me. Six years ago. He said I had nobody but these clocks, and he had nobody but me. That your mother would never come back to Marlow Cross, and you didn't even remember him."

"I didn't know. I swear I didn't know."

"I know you didn't." Maureen stood and straightened her cardigan. "I'm not angry, Miss Renwick. Truly. I don't need the shop. I needed him to be alive."

She went to the door and on the threshold stopped. She stood holding the handle, and then said, without turning round, so quietly that only Gwendolyn and Edwin heard:

"The twenty-third. He changed his will on the twenty-third. And on the evening of the twenty-second, for the first time in twenty-two years, he asked me to go home early. And he shut himself in the back room with someone. I heard voices."

"With whom?" Edwin took a step towards her.

But Maureen was already going down the stairs — quickly, almost running, as if someone were treading on her heels.

* * *

That evening Gwendolyn could not bring herself to go back to the boarding house. She went to the shop — her shop, as everyone now said, although the word "her" still jarred — switched on the lamp above the counter and sat on the tall stool on which her uncle had sat for forty years.

Edwin came half an hour later. He knocked on the glass — three short, two long — and she let him in without asking who it was.

"There's something I haven't told you," she began, as soon as he had shut the door behind him. "Or the constable. Perhaps I should have."

She took from her handbag a sheet of paper folded in four and handed it to him. Edwin unfolded it under the lamp. Sharp letters slanting backwards. "Come, Gwen. I need someone with my blood in their veins. There is a matter here I must finish, and I don't want to finish it alone."

"He wrote that in August," said Gwendolyn. "I came three weeks later. For two months I sorted old receipts and dusted snuffboxes, and he never once told me what the matter was. Never. Whenever I asked, he said, 'Not yet.' And now…" her voice broke for the first time in three days, "now it will never be time, Mr Hale. He called me here to help him put something right. And I didn't even get the chance to understand what."

She wept — quietly, without sobbing, her face hidden in her hands, the way people weep who are not used to being looked at. Edwin stood beside her, big and awkward in the narrow shop, not knowing what to do with his hands. Then carefully he laid one on her shoulder — the way he used to lay it on his daughter's shoulder, before she left for Canada and while she still let him be her father.

"You'll have the chance," he said. "We will. He didn't write the two of us into his will together for nothing. He knew you couldn't open it alone. And neither could I. He loved puzzles, your uncle. But he never set a puzzle that couldn't be solved."

Gwendolyn wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

"'Where no one looks at it, because everyone is looking up,'" she repeated. "What could that be?"

"I don't know. Not yet. But the back room is sealed, and until Doyle lifts the seal we can't go in. Tomorrow I'll go and see Maureen. She heard voices on the twenty-second. She knows more than she's saying, and she's afraid of it."

They sat for a long time under the lamp — the old locksmith and the young heiress — and talked about Oscar: about his theatrical voice, the pince-nez on the tip of his nose, the way he could tell the story of every silver spoon so that it made you want to cry. And for the first time in three days Gwendolyn laughed, and the laughter was very like tears.

* * *

And a few streets away, in a small room above the cobbler's, Maureen Cobb sat at her kitchen table without turning on the light.

In front of her lay a notebook — small, in a worn brown binding, with a metal clasp. She had found it on Friday morning, in the drawer under the counter beneath a pile of old receipts, when she went there for her smelling salts while everyone was waiting for the constable and Miss Renwick had not yet come back from Mrs Hobbs's. She had found it by chance — and at once recognised the sharp, backward-slanting hand on the first page.

She had shown it to no one. Not to the constable, not to Miss Renwick, not to Mr Hale. Because on the first page, beneath the date of the twenty-second, Oscar had written just one sentence. And for three days now that sentence had been turning Maureen's hands cold.

"If anything happens to me, Maureen knows where to look. Only she must trust no one. Not even those who hold keys."