Part 9
“Have you called her doctor?”
“No.”
“Good. She would hate that.”
“I know.”
Sophie drank half the coffee before speaking again. “Did Dad steal from her?”
“Yes.”
The word sounded less impossible in daylight, which made it worse.
Sophie stared into the cup.
“How much?”
“Approximately four million.”
She laughed softly.
Poppy looked at her. “What is funny?”
“Nothing, darling.”
“You laughed.”
“Sometimes grown-ups laugh when nothing is funny.”
Poppy sighed, as though the defects of adulthood were accumulating faster than expected.
Sophie lowered her voice. “What happens to my house?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You are executor of Dad’s estate.”
“Yes.”
“And director of the estate company.”
“Yes.”
“So everyone will expect you to choose.”
“Yes.”
“Between Celia and us.”
“No. Between continuing the concealment and dealing with it.”
“That is a clean way of saying the same thing.”
Nathan looked at his sister.
Sophie had Richard’s eyes, dark and direct. She had also inherited his tendency to turn fear into accusation before anyone else could use it against her.
“I am not making you homeless,” he said.
“You cannot promise that.”
“No.”
“Then don’t.”
She pushed back from the table.
Poppy held up her toast. “I’m not finished.”
“We are not leaving this second.”
“You stood up.”
“I can stand and remain in a room.”
Poppy looked at Nathan as though seeking confirmation. He nodded.
Sophie sat again.
For a few minutes, they listened to Poppy explain why Bernard disliked marmalade.
At eight thirty, Nathan telephoned a commercial disputes partner in Oxford whose name he found through an old university friend. By ten, the partner had arranged a video call with a trust specialist and a forensic accountant. They instructed him not to move or copy the original documents until they had agreed on a preservation process. They told him to stop all refinancing activity and secure the estate company’s electronic records.
They also told him he might face personal duties as a director and executor, despite having known nothing about the transfers.
Nathan wrote notes until his handwriting became unreadable.
Celia joined the call from the other end of the library. Her solicitor appeared on a separate screen. The formality between them was worse than anger. When asked whether she intended to bring an immediate claim, she said no, but reserved every right.
Nathan understood the necessity of the words. They still felt like a door closing.
Beatrice refused to attend.
At eleven, she entered the library without knocking and placed Richard’s framed photograph on the table beside Nathan’s laptop.
“Your father cannot defend himself,” she said.
Nathan muted the call.
“What are you doing?”
“Reminding you that evidence arranged by Edmund may not tell the whole story.”
“The ledger is in Father’s handwriting.”
“Richard kept records of everything. That proves nothing about motive.”
“It proves transfers.”
“It may prove loans.”
“With forged authorizations.”
“According to Celia.”
“According to Edmund.”
Beatrice looked toward Celia, who sat near the window with one hand beneath her belly.
“Edmund is frightened,” Beatrice said. “Frightened men make agreements.”
Celia’s solicitor was still visible on the screen. Nathan saw her lean forward.
“Mother, leave.”
Beatrice’s face colored. “You will not order me out.”
“This is a privileged legal call.”
“In my library.”
“Leave.”
The silence lasted long enough for everyone on the screen to understand that something private was happening.
Beatrice picked up Richard’s photograph.
At the door, she looked at Celia.
“You have wanted Nathan away from this house since the day you met him.”
Celia’s voice remained low. “I wanted him to have a life that did not require permission from a dead man.”
Beatrice went pale.
Nathan stood, but his mother had already left.
He closed the door.
Celia unmuted the call.
“Sorry,” she said.
The trust specialist looked professionally blank. “Shall we continue?”
By the end of the day, three boxes of records had been sealed in the presence of two independent solicitors. The estate office computers were imaged. Edmund provided an initial written account and agreed to return the following morning for a formal interview.
He arrived without the burgundy ring.
Nathan noticed but did not ask about it.
The interview lasted four hours. Nathan was not permitted to attend, which irritated him until the solicitor explained that his presence could affect Edmund’s evidence. He walked the grounds instead, crossing fields slick with rain.
At the north boundary, he found two estate workers repairing a fence.
They waved.
Nathan almost turned away. Then one of them, Martin, called out that the payroll system had rejected his overtime again.
Nathan stood in the mud and listened while Martin explained a problem Nathan would ordinarily have passed to the estate manager. The repair cost less than a dinner for four in London. It also mattered urgently to a man with two children and a van that needed new brakes.
Nathan called the office and stayed on the line until the payment was corrected.
As he put away his phone, he remembered Richard telling him that leadership meant learning which problems were beneath you and which only looked that way.
The memory arrived warm before the ledger returned to poison it.
That was the difficulty. Richard had not been false in every moment. He had been a father who taught Nathan to tie fishing knots, a director who knew every tenant by name, a thief who had described theft as temporary borrowing until the distinction no longer existed.
Nathan walked back to the house with mud above his ankles.
Celia was in the kitchen eating cereal from a mixing bowl.
“You hate cereal,” he said.
“I hate the smell of eggs today.”
He took off his wet coat.
“Did you sleep?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“That isn’t sleep.”
“It was unconsciousness in a chair. I’m counting it.”
Nathan filled the kettle. The kitchen staff had gone home, leaving bread dough beneath a cloth and a list of deliveries clipped near the pantry.
May you like
Celia watched him rinse mud from his hands.
“Your solicitor called mine,” she said. “They found another company.”
