Smallbone Deceased

“I don’t think I’ll tackle the file yet,” said Bob hastily. “It looks a very complicated business. I wondered—I mean, you used to look after these things for my father—”

“I just wrote down what I was told,” said Miss Cornel dryly.

“Oh, quite. Yes, of course. I just thought that perhaps father might have said something—given some opinion—”

“The only thing I can remember him saying about Mrs. Anthrax-Plumper was that she was a woman who would mortgage her own virginity, if she could persuade anyone she still possessed it—”

“She certainly mortgaged everything else,” said Bob, running a finger distastefully through the bloated file. “It’s this reversionary business I can’t quite get hold of. Perhaps I ought to go to Counsel—”

“You could do that, of course,” said Miss Cornel. “But the Consequential are very sticky about paying Counsel’s fees unless they have to.”

“Oh, well,” Bob sighed again. “I’ll see what I can ferret out.”

Miss Cornel turned to go, but relented at the last moment and said: “I seem to remember the same problem on double reversion cropping up—oh, about ten years ago. The client was Lady Bradbury. And that time, we did go to Counsel. There’s a copy of his opinion in the 1937 file.”

“I don’t know what I should do without you,” said Bob. He took a key-flap from his pocket. “What’s the number of Lady Bradbury’s box?”

“Seventeen.”

Bob thumbed through the ring. “Why the deuce they all had to have different keys!” he said. “Here it is.” He snapped the box open and picked out the file whilst Miss Cornel withdrew to the secretaries’ room to try and make up on her morning’s work. Five minutes later the bell went again. She suppressed an unladylike exclamation and picked up her shorthand book.

Bob had apparently abandoned Mrs. Anthrax-Plumper and was reading another letter.

“What do you think of this?” he asked.

Dismissing the temptation to say that she wasn’t paid to think, Miss Cornel dutifully perused the letter which was from Messrs. Rumbold & Carter, solicitors, of Coleman Street, and was headed “Stokes Will Trust”.

“According to your request,” it said, after the usual preliminary flourishes, “we endeavoured to contact Mr. Smallbone to secure his signature to the proposed transfer of Stock. We wrote to him enclosing the transfer form (in duplicate) on the 23rd February and sent him a further communication on the 16th ultimo and the 8th inst., in all three cases without receiving any answer. If Mr. Smallbone is absent abroad or indisposed possibly you could so inform us—”

“Isn’t that the funny little man whom father used to dislike so much?” said Bob.

“I don’t think your father and Mr. Smallbone got on very well,” agreed Miss Cornel. “Unfortunately they were co-trustees—”

“The Ichabod Stokes Trust?”

“Yes; otherwise I think he’d have refused to have anything to do with him. Seeing that he was a fellow trustee, though, I expect he felt he could hardly refuse to look after his private affairs too—”

“Did he have any private affairs? I mean—”

“He isn’t a person of very great substance,” said Miss Cornel, interpreting this remark accurately. “He was involved in some litigation just before the war, and we look after his annuity for him, and I think we made his will.”

“I remember the fellow,” said Bob. “A scrawny little brute with an eye like a rat. I could never understand how Dad put up with him.”

“I think,” said Miss Cornel, “that he found him very tiresome. If it hadn’t been that the Stokes Trust was such a big thing—and of course it was tied up with the Didcots and Lord Hempstead—I think he might have refused the trusteeship, rather than be forced to work with Mr. Smallbone.”

“As bad as that, is he,” said Bob. “It must be a deuce of a trust. What does it figure out at?”

“We’ve sold the real property now,” said Miss Cornel. “It’s all securities. At the last account they were worth just under half a million pounds.”

“I expect you can put up with quite a lot for half a million pounds. The point is, however, what’s happened to the little blighter?”

“He really is a hopeless person,” said Miss Cornel. “He never answers letters. Whenever we didn’t particularly want to see him he’d be round here every day, and when we did want him, when we were selling the real estate, to sign the big conveyances and so on, as likely as not he’d disappear altogether and go on a walking tour in Italy.”

“Italy?”

“Yes. He’s a great collector of pottery, though your father used to say he’s got as much knowledge of it as a market gardener. I believe that the two little rooms in the house in Belsize Park where he lives are full of urns and statuettes and heaven knows what.”

“Well,” said Bob. “I can only see one thing for it. If the mountain won’t come to Mahomet—you know. You’d better slip over to Belsize Park and stir him up.”

“What, now, Mr. Horniman?”

“Why not—go after lunch.”

“I’ve got an awful lot to do—”

“Take a taxi,” said Bob. “The firm will pay.”

“Yes, Mr. Horniman.”

IV