The Upstart by Read Piers Paul

Author:Read, Piers Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

Ten

With professional detachment I broke into Mark’s house the next evening. It was an over-decorated terrace house in Chelsea, once the hovel of a Victorian artisan, and it was easily entered. From the evidence of its furnishings it was used largely as a bedroom and as an investment.

My aim was not to rob him — though there was some silver and a Constable drawing from Lasterby — but to inform myself on certain matters, above all to find out that closest secret of an Englishman’s heart — what he was worth. His desk told me little — just that he was three thousand pounds overdrawn on his current account at Coutts Bank. I noted, however, from some correspondence about the purchase of the house, the name of his solicitors and was alarmed to see that the money on completion had been paid by trustees.

When I left the house I removed some candlesticks as cover for my true purpose.

On the next afternoon, it being a Sunday, I entered the offices of his solicitors in Lincoln’s Inn. I went there at about ten in the morning and spent two hours searching for any reference to the Metheralls. Eventually I found a black tin box which had been covered by several others. On it was written, in white, painted letters, ‘Sir Edward Metherall, Bart., and family.’

The box was not locked. I opened it and took out all the correspondence and documents relating to the Metherall family over the past fifty years. By four in the afternoon I had been through it all and had noted the following relevant facts: that at the age of twenty-five, Mark had been given complete control of his own fortune; that the Trust had been dissolved at the same time; that for the avoidance of death duties the estate at Lasterby, the house and all its contents, the farms in Northamptonshire and all the stocks and shares belonging to Sir Edward, had been made over to Mark; that Sir Edward had kept for himself the lease on the house in Belgravia and an annuity of ten thousands pounds a year; that thirty thousand pounds had been settled on Harriet and thirty thousand on Martha prior to this settlement; that Lady Clare retained possession of her own money but that it was not a substantial sum.

Attached to one of the letters was a valuation of all that Sir Edward had transferred to his son: added to the money that had accumulated in the Trust, it came to three hundred and twenty-three thousand pounds. In my mind I added ten per cent of this sum as a rough estimate of the gain that might have been made since this valuation; and on top of that there was the value of Lasterby, its collection of paintings and furniture, the estate and the agricultural land in other parts of England — all of which, I thought, came to at least half-a-million pounds.

I returned all these papers to the box, having copied down the figures I required, and left the solicitor’s office just as I had found it.

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