The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“Mrs.—” He broke off. “Oh, Harriet.”

“Yes,” Hal said, slightly breathlessly. There was dust on her fingers, she saw, from the study, and she wiped them surreptitiously on the back of her jeans. “I was just passing the time in here until eight—Mrs. Warren said breakfast would be served then.”

“Well, you’d better come through,” Harding said. There was something awkward in his manner, and he coughed and picked an imaginary speck of dust off his blue golfing pullover before adding, “About last night, Harriet, naturally the news was a shock, but I hope you didn’t—”

“Please,” Hal managed. She felt a betraying flush rise up her cheeks. “There’s no need—”

But Harding was going to say his piece, no matter what, and Hal had no choice but to stand and endure a rather pompous little speech that basically amounted to an apology for his remarks last night.

“That’s not to say,” he finished up, “that I don’t still have some concerns about Mother’s state of mind. But I was wrong—very wrong—to suggest that that was any reflection on you, Harriet. If you have any involvement in this at all, it’s as an innocent bystander. Well, there we go.” He coughed and brushed at his sweater again. “Passing on to more pleasant things, I hope you’re feeling better?”

“Oh—oh yes,” Hal said, though her cheeks were still flushed. “Thank you. I feel completely fine. I’ll be able to travel today.”

“Travel today?” Harding raised his eyebrows. “There’s no question of that, my dear. Mr. Treswick needs to see all the beneficiaries in his office in Penzance, and in any case, there’s a great deal we need to sort out here.”

At the mention of the appointment with the lawyer, Hal felt her stomach lurch, as sickeningly as if the ground had dropped away beneath her feet. Of course she had known that there would be hoops and formalities, but somehow in her fantasies about how this would pan out, she had always imagined herself sending in her documents by post from a safe remove. That was before, though—when she had been imagining a legacy of a few thousand at most.

Now, with the entire estate hinging on her identity . . .

The prospect of having to go in person and actually stand there, heart thumping, while her papers were looked over, was not comforting. There would probably be questions too—specific ones that Harding, Abel, and Ezra had been too polite to put to her at their mother’s wake, and she would have no time to figure out plausible answers or pick her wording. What if Mr. Treswick realized his mistake while she was actually in his office? Would he call the police?

She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could find the right words, the door behind them slammed open, and Mrs. Warren appeared, stick in hand.

“Oh, Mrs. Warren,” Harding said, with an ingratiating smile. “We were just discussing breakfast. How kind of you to put out the toaster and so on—where can one obtain tea and coffee?”

“It’s not yet eight,” Mrs. Warren said stonily. Harding blinked, and Hal could tell he was doing his best not to look put-out.

“Well, I appreciate that, but it’s seven fifty-five—”

“What Harding means . . .” came a voice from behind them, and Hal turned to see Ezra standing in the doorway. He was unshaven and looked almost hungover, his clothes rumpled and his hair standing up on end; but as Hal watched, his mouth quirked into the most charmingly wry smile she could remember encountering, transforming his whole expression. “What he meant to say is, couldn’t we persuade you, Mrs. Warren, to let us take some of the work off your hands and see to our own tea?”

“Well,” Mrs. Warren said. She smoothed her hair with her free hand. “I don’t know about that, Mr. Ezra.” Her Cornish burr sounded suddenly stronger. “My kitchen is my kitchen. But I’ll see what I can do.”

She turned and disappeared back through the door at the end of the conservatory, and Ezra winked at Hal.

“Harriet. Good to see you vertical. That was quite a performance you put in last night.”

“I—” Hal felt herself flush. Quite a performance. The reference was clearly to her fainting fit, but the word was uncomfortably close to the truth. “I’m feeling much better.”

“Unusual to see you vertical at this hour, if it comes to that,” Harding said sourly.

“And very fortunate for you and your morning tea that I am, Harding. What’s the saying, something about flies and honey?”

“Flies be damned, she’s a cantankerous old bat. I don’t know why Mother put up with her all these years. I notice she’s walked away with her thirty thousand intact.”

“That’s hardly the point,” Ezra said. His smile had disappeared, and he looked at Harding with something pretty close to naked dislike. “And lower your voice, unless you want to have cold soup for the rest of the stay.”

“What do you mean, it’s hardly the point?”

“I mean, she was basically a carer to Mother for about fifteen years, for a peppercorn wage. You think we could have got a live-in nurse for the kind of money Mother paid Mrs. Warren? Thirty thousand seems like a pretty cheap price to pay to me.”

“It’s pretty rich to say ‘we’ could have got a nurse,” Harding said irritably. “I can’t see what you would know about the matter, given we haven’t seen you on these shores for the best part of twenty years. At least Abel had an excuse for cutting and running. Those of us who stuck around to see through our responsibilities—”

“You always were a sanctimonious shit,” Ezra said. He grinned, making a joke of the words, but there was no charm or humor in his expression this time, more the quality of a wolf baring its teeth. She held her breath, unsure of where this was going, but Harding didn’t reply; he simply rolled his eyes and turned away from his brother towards the breakfast room. When he got to the door, he held it open for Hal, standing punctiliously back until she had passed through.

Inside, Mitzi, Richard, and the two other children were seated at the end of the long table. Abel and Edward were nowhere to be seen.

“Harriet darling,” Mitzi said. She had put on lipstick this morning, and her mouth was incongruously cheerful against the muted, faded shades of the room, and the bleached morning light. “How are you feeling today?”

“Fine, thank you, Mitzi,” Hal said. She took the seat that Harding pulled out for her, between himself and Ezra, and sat down. “I’m not sure what happened last night—a mixture of cold and no food, I think.”

“Not to mention the shock,” Mitzi said. She pursed her lips disapprovingly as she reached for the muesli. “I don’t know what Mr. Treswick was thinking, springing the whole will situation on us like that.”

“Well, he had to tell us at some point,” Ezra said. He seemed to have recovered from his flash of irritation with Harding, and the smile was back in place, and more convincing now. “He probably thought it was better to rip the bandage off in one go, so to speak. Get it over with.”

“He should have prepared us,” Mitzi said stubbornly. “Particularly poor Harding.”

“Why poor Harding?” Ezra asked. He grinned across the table at Mitzi. “The rest of us are just as snubbed as him, you know. Or is it that much of a shock to be lumped in with us paupers?”

“Ezra,” Mitzi said, with the air of someone having her patience tested. “You haven’t been here, but Harding was certainly led to expect—”

“Tough when you’ve already put down the deposit on a new Land Rover,” Ezra said sympathetically.

“Now, look here,” Harding said, at the same time that Mitzi snapped, “Ezra, you are being deliberately provocative.”

Ezra only laughed, throwing back his head so that Hal could see the unshaven line of his jaw, and the hollow of his collarbone where his shirt was open at the neck.

Then he stood, threw down his napkin, and stretched until his shirttails came loose.

“Fuck it,” he said laconically, leaning across the table and picking up the piece of toast Richard was buttering on his plate. “This is a little more hypocrisy than I can cope with at breakfast. I’m going out.”