the piece of thin wire to be found on my desk. He knows what he can do with it.’
Surprised and more moved than I could say, I looked up from the last page and saw the smile in Malcolm’s eyes deepen to a throaty chuckle.
‘The lawyer chap thought the last sentence quite obscene. He said I shouldn’t put that sort of thing in a will.’
I laughed. ‘I didn’t expect to be in your will at all.’
‘Well…” He shrugged. ‘I’d never have left you out. I’ve regretted for a long while… hitting you… everything.’
‘Guess I deserved it.’
‘Yes, at the time.’
I turned back to the beginning of the document and re-read one of the preliminary paragraphs. In it, he had named me as his sole executor, when I was only his fifth child. ‘Why me?’ I said.
‘Don’t you want to?’
‘Yes. I’m honoured.’
‘The lawyer said to name someone I trusted.’ He smiled lopsidedly. ‘You got elected.’
He stretched out an arm and picked up from his desk a leather pot holding pens and pencils. From it, he pulled a wire about ten inches long and about double the thickness, of the sort used by florists for stiffening flower stalks.
If this one should get lost,’ he said, ‘just find another.’
‘Yes. All right.’
‘Good.’ He put the wire back in the pot and the pot back in the desk.
‘By the time you pop off,’ I said, ‘the price of gold might have risen out of sight and all I’d find in the wall would be spiders.’
‘Yeah, too bad.’
I felt more at one with him than at any time since he’d telephoned, and perhaps he with me. I hoped it would be a very long time before I would have to execute his will.
‘Gervase,’ I said, ‘suggests that you should distribute some of your money now, to… er… reduce the estate tax.’
‘Does he? And what do you think?’
I think,’ I said, ‘that giving it to the family instead of to scholarships and film companies and so on might save your life.’
The blue eyes opened wide. ‘That’s immoral.’
‘Pragmatic’
‘I’ll think about it.’
We dined on the caviar, but the fun seemed to have gone out of it.
‘Let’s have shepherd’s pie tomorrow,’ Malcolm said. ‘There’s plenty in the freezer.’
We spent the next two days uneventfully at Quantum being careful, but with no proof that care was needed.
Late on Tuesday afternoon, out with the dogs and having made certain that Arthur Bellbrook had gone home, we walked round behind the kitchen wall and came to the treasure house.
A veritable sea of nettles guarded the door. Malcolm looked at them blankly. ‘The damn things grow overnight.’
I pulled my socks over the bottoms of my trousers and assayed the traverse; stamped down an area by the bottom of the door and with fingers all the same stinging felt along to one end of the wooden sill and with some effort tugged it out. Malcolm leaned forward and gave me the piece of wire, and watched while I stood up and located the almost invisible hole. The wire slid through the tiny tube built into the mortar and, under pressure, the latch inside operated as smoothly as it had when I’d installed it. The wire dislodged a metal rod out of a slot, allowing the latch to spring open.
‘I oiled it,’ Malcolm said. ‘The first time I tried, it was as rusty as hell.’
I pushed the edge of the heavy narrow door and it opened inwards, its crenellated edges disengaging from the brick courses on each side with faint grating noises but with no pieces breaking off.
‘You built it well,’ Malcolm said. ‘Good mortar.’
‘You told me how to mix the mortar, if you remember.’
1 stepped into the small brick room which was barefy four feet across at the far end and about eight feet long, narrowing in a wedge-shape towards the door which was set into one of the long walls. The wider end wall was stacked to waist height with flat wooden boxes like those used for chateau-bottled wines. In front, there were two large cardboard boxes with heavily taped-down tops. I stepped further in and tried to open one of the wine-type boxes, but those were nailed shut. I turned round and took a couple of steps back and stood in the doorway, looking out.
‘Gold at the back, treasures in front,’ Malcolm said, watching me with interest.
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
The air in the triangular room smelled faintly musty. There was no ventilation, as I’d told Arthur Bellbrook, and no damp course, either.