Ex Libris by Paula Guran

Author:Paula Guran [Guran, Paula]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: anthology, Fantasy, Short fiction, short stories, short story
ISBN: 9781607014904
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2017-08-06T04:00:00+00:00

The Inheritance of Barnabas Wilcox

Sarah Monette

Some four months after I attended the fifteen-year reunion at Brockstone School, I received a letter from Barnabas Wilcox. I was puzzled, for there was no love lost between Wilcox and me, but instead of doing the sensible thing and throwing the letter unopened on the fire, I read it.

Dear Booth (Wilcox wrote):

I’m writing to you because you know all about old books. The case is that I have recently inherited a house in the country from my Uncle Lucius, and there’s a stipulation in his will that his library catalogue should be made up-to-date. Would you care to come down with me this weekend and take a look at it? I don’t know anyone else who would even know where to begin.

Yrs,

And then an involved squiggle in which a “B” and a “W” were dimly perceptible.

It took no great leap of intuition to guess that Wilcox’s “Uncle Lucius” had to be the noted antiquary Lucius Preston Wilcox, and that lure overcame my dislike of Wilcox. Friday I took a half-day, packed my bag, and met Wilcox on the platform at quarter of three. He was a big, square, red-faced man, with thick, blunt-fingered hands and smallish, squinty hazel eyes. Despite my white hair, he looked easily ten years older than I; when we shook hands, I smelled liquor on his breath.

“How are you, Booth?” he said when we were settled in our compartment. “It’s good of you to come.”

“I, er,” I said. “ . . . I like libraries.”

“Well, old Uncle Loosh should keep you happy then. I remember, my brother and I used to think the books had to be fake, he had so many.”

I recollected in time that Wilcox’s brother had died in the war, and asked instead, “When did your uncle die? I don’t remember reading an obituary.”

“Daft old coot. He wouldn’t have one written. It was the first stipulation in his will, and he’d told his lawyer and his housekeeper and everybody about it. And, after all, there’s no law that says you have to publish one. It’s just that people usually do. But Uncle Loosh was crazy.”

“ . . . Crazy?”

“He got into some weird things. He used to write me these long letters saying he’d figured out how to cheat death and was going to live forever. I couldn’t understand half of what he said.”

“That’s not a very pleasant occupation.”

“Uncle Loosh wasn’t a very pleasant person. I can’t think why he left everything to me. We didn’t get along.”

The train began to move. With a muttered apology, Wilcox dug some papers out of his attaché case and settled in to work. I stared out the window and watched as the train left the city behind.

The estate of Wilcox’s uncle was called Hollyhill and was accurately named in both respects. The house stood on a prominence among the farms and woods of the gently rolling countryside, and was surrounded by as thriving a stand of holly trees as I had ever seen.

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