The Assize of the Dying by Ellis Peters

Author:Ellis Peters
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781480417793
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

AUNT HELEN

Chapter 1

It was turning out exactly like all the other abortive attempts to get Uncle Philip to see reason. He should have known better than to expect anything else. It had begun with a kind of forbearing tolerance, and was ending in anger. He stood with his shoulder turned on the older man, and stared hard out of the window at the delectable Easter greens of Helen’s garden, and the greenish silvery curve of the river bearing round towards the mill-wheel, but what he was seeing was the dwindling week of grace Lawson had allowed him in which to raise his share of the capital, and the priceless opportunity, slippery as silk and delicate as glass, falling through his impotent fingers for ever. He was being treated like an irresponsible child, though it was the whole course of his life that was at stake. He knew what he was about, he was as good a judge of a speculation as Philip, any day. He was twenty-two, and it was his money, and he wanted and needed it now, not in three years’ time, and it was damned unfair that Philip should be able to prevent him from handling it.

He said as much, the words bursting out of his lips furiously: ‘I’m not a child! I’m twenty-two!’

‘I’m glad you reminded me, boyo,’ said Philip, in that aggravatingly sweet and buoyant voice of his, ‘before I forgot myself, and took action that wouldn’t sort at all with the dignity of your years. And if I were you I’d be off now, before the exact figure slips my mind again. It’s the tantrums that take me back – first time bad luck ever dumped you in my lap you were purple in the face with temper – just like you are now!’

Bill Grant was startled into flashing one indignant glance towards the mirror that hung beside the window, and realised his folly and snatched his gaze away too late to avert the quiet chuckle with which his uncle scored up the point. He repeated doggedly: ‘I’m of age, and it’s my money.’

‘It’s your money, all right, and it’s my job to see that it’s still there for you when you’re twenty-five. And it’s going to be there, make no mistake about that.’

‘But this opportunity won’t be there, and you know it. I’ve told you over and over—’

‘You have, Bill, you have, I grant you that. It isn’t for want of hearing the facts I’m still saying no.’ Philip watched the boy’s sullen and desperate face impatiently, keeping the place in his half-corrected proof with a long forefinger. Two years of conscription did this sort of thing to even the best-balanced of young men, and he was willing to bear with the agonies of re-adjustment with a certain degree of philosophy, even with some sympathy. Not, however, to the extent of letting the young idiot ruin himself to line the pockets of a smooth character like this Lawson of his. ‘Your mother, bless her heart, must have had a premonition about you.

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