“And I get nothing except a hundred dollars and the right to live in the house?”

“You get nothing, unless the condition is fulfilled which brings thetrust to an end. If, and when, that condition is fulfilled and you are still living in this house, you receive a life interest in your mother’s estate. Bequests are made to the two servants, Ethel Colman and Doris Black, which will be payable when the condition is fulfilled. Laura Pottinger receives a bequest of the testator’s collection of Rockingham china. The Cathedral Church of St Nicholas will receive all of the testator’s holdings in certain telephone and transportation stocks.

“There is a condition attaching to this latter bequest. Until the Cathedral gets the telephone stock, the Dean is to preach, every St Nicholas’ Day, a special sermon on some matter relating to education, and these sermons are to be known as the Louisa Hansen Bridgetower Memorial Sermons. If there is any failure in this respect, the bequest is forfeit.”

Solly still looked puzzled. “And all of this hangs—?”

“It all hangs on your having a son, Mr Bridgetower. When and if, you and your wife, Pearl Veronica, nee Vambrace, produce male issue, who is duly christened Solomon Hansen Bridgetower, he becomes heir of all his grandmother’s estate save for the bequests I have mentioned. But you are to have a life interest in the estate, so that he will not actually come into possession of his inheritance until after your death.”

“And if we have a child and it is a girl?”

“The trust will remain.”

“But it’s fantastic.”

“Somewhat unusual, certainly.”

“When was this will made?”

“I read you the date. Your mother made this will less than three months ago.”

“It puts my wife and me in a pretty position, doesn’t it?”

“It does not put anyone in an enviable position, Solomon,” said Mr Snelgrove. “Did you not notice what it does to me? I am not an executor, though as an old and, I believed, valued friend of your Mother’s, I might have expected that confidence; I am named solely as solicitor to the executors—a paid position. And the condition is made that if I have not settled all your Mother’s affairs within one year from the day of her death, the estate is to be taken out of my hands and confided to Gordon Balmer—a solicitor for whom your Mother knew that I had a strong disapproval. You did not perhaps notice her comment that she thought that my ‘natural cupidity’ would make me hurry the business through. ‘Natural cupidity’ is a legal expression which she picked up from me and has turned against me. Your Mother has given us all a flick of her whip.”

“These memorial sermons,” said the Dean; “they are to be preached until the Cathedral inherits? But what if the Cathedral never inherits? What if there is no son? I know many families—large families—which consist solely of daughters.”

“It will be many years before anything can be done to meet that situation, Mr Dean,” said Snelgrove. “Meanwhile the sermons must be delivered, in hope and expectation. Any failure could cost the Cathedral a considerable sum.”

The Dean wrestled within himself for a moment before he spoke. “Could you give me any idea how much?” he said at last.

“It would run between seven and ten thousand a year, I think,” said Snelgrove. All the executors opened their eyes at the mention of this sum.

“Then Mother was very rich?” asked Solly. “I never knew, you know; she never spoke of such things. I had understood she was just getting by.”

“There are degrees in wealth,” said Mr Snelgrove. “Your Mother would not seem wealthy in some circles. But she was comfortable—very comfortable. She inherited substantially from her own family, you know, and there was rather more in your father’s estate than might have been expected from a professor of geology. He had very good mining contacts, at a time when mines were doing well. And your mother was a lifelong, shrewd investor.”

“She was?” said Solly. “I never knew anything about it.”

“Oh yes,” said Snelgrove. “I don’t suppose there was anyone in Salterton who followed the Montreal and Toronto markets so closely, or so long, or so successfully, as your mother. A remarkable woman.”

“Remarkable indeed,” said the Dean. He was thinking about those sermons, and balancing another curate and new carpets against them.

Veronica had not spoken until now. “Shall we have tea?” said she.

They had it from a remarkably beautiful Rockingham service. Miss Puss, who said nothing all afternoon, eyed it speculatively. Veronica noticed that she did so.

“Yours, Miss Puss,” said she, smiling.

“Mine,” said Puss Pottinger, softly and without a smile, “if and when.”

“It was Christmas Day in the workhouse,” declaimed Humphrey Cobbler, pushing himself back from the late Mrs Bridgetower’s dining-table. Christmas dinner with Solly and Veronica had made him expansive.

“Shut up, Humphrey,” said Molly, his wife. She was a large, beautiful, untidy woman, always calm and at ease. She threw a grape at her husband to silence him, but it missed his head and set an epergne jingling on the built-in sideboard.

“No offence meant,” said Cobbler, “and none taken, I’m sure. I merely wished to convey to our young friends here, who have been studiedly avoiding the subject of Mum’s Will all through this excellent dinner, that we are privy to their dread secret, and sympathize with them in their fallen state. I was about to do so through the agency of divine poesy, thereby showing a delicacy which I could hardly expect you, my thick-witted consort, to appreciate.”

Raising his glass, he declaimed again:

“What have you been hearing?” said Solly. “You aren’t going to tell me that people are chattering about it already?”

“Not precisely chattering,” said Cobbler; “more a kind of awed whispering. Rumours reached me this morning, just before we celebrated the birthday of the Prince of Peace with a first-rate choral service, that your Mum’s Will was in the nature of a grisly practical joke, and that you are left without a nickel.”

“I thought it wouldn’t take long to get around,” said Solly. “Who was talking? There are only three people who know; they might have had the decency to keep quiet for a few days, at least. Who was it?”

“Calm yourself, my dear fellow,” said Cobbler. “You are—let’s see, what is it—twenty-seven. You really ought to have more worldly wisdom than to say that only three people know about your Mum’s Will. You and Veronica know, and the Dean and unquestionably the Dean’s wife; Puss Pottinger knows, and she is a mighty hinter; Snelgrove knows, and certainly his wife, and his partner Ronny Fitzalan, and probably at least two girls in his office who made copies of the will for the executory. Your excellent Ethel and Doris, who have hopes of legacies, have undoubtedly picked up a few things by listening at doors or hiding under your bed. That’s twelve people already. What I know I was told this morning by one of my tenors whom you don’t know, but who knows you. He heard it last night when he was carol-singing at the hospital. Your late Mum was notoriously a rich woman; everybody wants to know who gets the lolly.”

“I certainly didn’t know she was a rich woman,” said Solly.

“That sounds silly, but I believe it,” said Cobbler. “One never thinks of one’s parents with any realism. She was always pretty tight with money when you wanted it; probably she told you she hadn’t much, and you believed her, like a good boy. She came the penniless widow. You didn’t use your eyes. You didn’t look at this big house, full of hideous but expensive stuff; you didn’t reflect that your Mum lived in considerable state, with two servants, in an age when most people have none; you didn’t think that she had all this without doing any work for it. You didn’t think that it costs a lot of money to continue the habits of the Edwardian era into the middle of the twentieth century. Nothing is so expensive as living in the past. No; you believed what you were told. You accepted all this as a normal, poverty-ridden hovel. But everybody else in Salterton knew that your Mum was a very warm proposition, and they were all crazy to know how she would cut up when she was gone.”