An Unpleasant Discovery

3

An Unpleasant Discovery

    “Ah, non! MERDE!” shouted Gilles Honoré Guy-Marie, Comte de Bellecourt, at the top of his lungs. “MERDE! JE DIS MERDE!”

    “There’s no need to shout, thank you, Gilles,” said Bertrand de Bellecourt in an icy voice in their native language. “I’m not in the next room.”

    Gilles had been staring out into the garden, fists clenched at his sides, until his outburst. He turned slowly, still clenching the fists, long mouth very tight.

    “Gilles—” said his mother anxiously, stretching out a hand to him.

    He gave her a bitter look. “Did you know?”

    “Not until now, darling: how could I?”

    There was a short pause.

    “And Papa?” said Gilles with difficulty to his late father’s cousin. “Did he know?”

    “No,” admitted Bertrand. “Well, when my uncle fell ill, we did think of... But then there was the War, and Guy was away with the FFL... There was no opportunity before he died,” he said, looking at him with, if Gilles had not been too furious to notice it, something like a plaintive apology in his eyes.

    Gilles took a deep breath. “No.”

    His mother watched him anxiously; his Papa’s elderly cousin watched him nervously. The family lawyer watched him even more nervously and wished silently that when Usines La Rance had grown the family had shifted their personal business away from Langlois, Ferry & Fils. Though the Langlois and Ferry of the time had thanked their lucky stars they hadn’t.

    The nostrils in the long nose that was about all Gilles had inherited from his dead father flared: old Bertrand de Bellecourt suppressed a wince, and Maître Ferry swallowed. Then the Comte turned back to the long windows and the two other men breathed stealthy sighs of relief.

    Gilles didn’t speak. They waited.

    Gilles de Bellecourt was a man of forty-nine years of age. Perhaps out of his normal setting no-one would have taken him for a representative and, indeed, the head of an old French family of good standing, for he took after his mother’s people. Roma McEwan de Bellecourt was an Englishwoman of Irish descent whom the late Guy de Bellecourt had married in England during the War when he was with De Gaulle and the Free French. Gilles had the high, bony cheekbones and the Celtic face of his mother’s people: wide across the eyes, with long cheeks tapering to a winged jaw and a rounded chin. It was a face full of cold decision and firmness. The Bellecourt nose only increased this impression: besides being long, it was rather large, with a tendency to the aquiline. The Comte had once been as fair as his mother, and his narrow, amber eyes were very like hers; but where the Dowager Comtesse de Bellecourt now had a head of short, charming silver curls, Gilles had gone bald very early and now wore what remained of his hair shaved very short. This did not in any wise mitigate the intimidating effect of that cold, hard, watchful face. The long, firm mouth could curl into a tender and charming smile, but these days only his mother was privileged to see it, and even she not very often.

    In his present setting, at the window of the small downstairs sitting-room of his family château, you would not have taken Gilles de Bellecourt for anything but the highly educated and frankly, somewhat arrogant Frenchman that his upbringing had made of him. Perhaps there was nothing to put one’s finger on in the clothes, but their cut was unmistakeably French. The fabric of the jacket was Harris tweed, true, but it had never come from the hands of an English tailor; while the fine fawn wool slacks could have come from nowhere but Paris and the accoutrements—narrow lizard belt across the flat belly, khaki woollen shirt buttoned to the neck, flat oblong gold watch on a lizard-skin strap, and highly polished brogues—all screamed “pour le shooting”, or words to that effect. The look was, in fact, the epitome of bon ton, bon genre. Gilles Honoré Guy-Marie de Bellecourt could have afforded to shop in Bond Street and Savile Row, had he so wished, for his gent’s country wear, but he did not so wish. Never mind the European Union: the Comte’s interests and inclinations did not move him to cross the Channel. In this he was, of course, no different from the mass of his countrymen. He spoke excellent, almost unaccented English: Bertrand, who had been his guardian ever since the death of Gilles’s father in 1944, had relentlessly sent him on holidays to his mother’s people throughout his childhood, and until he had been old enough for secondary school he had had a succession of English governesses. He also spoke excellent German, having learned it at school, and reasonable Italian, having decided that it would be useful to do so, and, although he was not interested in Germany or Italy per se, was far more interested in expanding ULR into Germany and Italy than he was in the British market.

    Since his divorce, some eight years earlier, his optimistic mother had had a succession of female second cousins and even more distant cousins and just friends of cousins over from England at times when Gilles was likely to be home, but Gilles hadn’t fallen for any of these English ladies. The attractive ones were generally not nice, and the nice ones were very, very dull. Besides, they were all English. He was not in need of feminine company: he had, as Roma de Bellecourt perfectly well knew, though they didn’t speak of the matter, an attractive mistress, a sophisticated, well-off Parisienne divorcée of around his own age and from very much the same social background as his own, who lived in a very choice appartement in Neuilly. And he had an heir: his cousin Mathieu, old Bertrand’s son, had produced three sons: Guy, now 26, Jean-Paul, 23, and Fabien, 18. So there was no fear that the line would die with him, even though his own marriage had produced only two daughters. The sentimental Roma was convinced that darling Gilles was lonely—and also convinced, though she did not make this point to her son, that he was in danger of turning into a hard, embittered man very like his grandfather, the old Comte. Gilles’s usual reaction when told he was lonely was a shrug.

    After a long silence the Comte turned from the windows and walked over to the fireplace. He stretched out a long hand to the blaze. His mother continued to watch him anxiously. Bertrand and the lawyer continued to watch him nervously.

    “Leaving aside for the moment the point that Langlois, Ferry & Fils appear to have knowingly compounded a felony for the past seventy years or so,” he said in an icy voice—Maître Ferry cringed—“may I be privileged to learn just why you have suddenly seen fit to impart this information, Bertrand?”

    “Gilles!” said his mother indignantly.

    Old Bertrand de Bellecourt’s nostrils dilated with temper but he said: “No—I suppose Gilles has a right to be angry.”

    Gilles’s fists had clenched again. He said nothing, however: just leaned an elbow on the mantelpiece and looked down at his “Oncle” Bertrand sardonically.

    “It appears there may be a claim,” said Bertrand at last. “We’ve had news from Australia.”

    “‘We’?” returned Gilles, raising his eyebrows.

    Maître Ferry coughed.

    “Do, pray, enlighten me further, Maître,” said Gilles courteously.

    Maître Ferry suppressed a desire to close his eyes in despair. “Monsieur, as—as Monsieur Bertrand is not, if I may express it so, getting any younger, we—we thought—eugh—that it might be best to—to ascertain precisely how the land lay before we... before we told you.” His voice had faded out: he swallowed convulsively.

    “Go on,” said the Comte grimly.

    Swallowing again, the lawyer continued: “It seemed so unlikely that any of the original signatories to the tontine agreement could still be living... Well, Monsieur Bertrand’s father would have been a hundred this year, had he lived... And of course we had heard absolutely nothing from Australia... Though it’s true that Hubert Frois’s sister did emigrate there before the War—I’m sorry, sir, he was a local fellow, one of the original signatories: in your great-uncle’s regiment, sir!” he gasped.

    “Et alors?” he said coldly, raising his eyebrows.

    “I’m sorry, sir. Eugh.... some time during the early Thirties, I think it was, there was some attempt by Frois and the Englishman, Foulkes, to contact the family, but—eugh—your grandfather—well, in short, monsieur, he refused to see them.”

    “You needn’t bother to wrap it up in clean linen, Ferry,” said the Comte grimly. “Grandfather knowingly brushed these people off, even though as possible heirs to this damned tontine affair they had every right to ask what had become of Great-Uncle Gilles’s share?”

    “Eugh—yes, that is substantially correct, monsieur,” said the lawyer miserably.

    “I remember the last time they tried,” said Bertrand. “I’d have been about sixteen: it was a bitterly cold winter that year. The Frois woman got the curé to speak to Maman—it was in this very room. I don’t think the man knew the full story at all. Maman didn’t have an inkling, either: she was very kind to the fellow and told him that if the Frois had some claim they’d better come up and see your grandfather and she’d arrange it. You can imagine what happened when she tried to. Oncle Fernand had the curé on the mat. There was a terrific shouting match—your grandfather at his worst,” he noted.

    Fernand de Bellecourt had died at the age of seventy-five, in 1965; therefore the present Comte replied coldly: “I remember Grandpère’s temper perfectly well, thank you, Bertrand, and I don’t particularly require a reminder of it. But perhaps you would just explain a little further, if you would, why it was that though he kept it from my father, you seem to have known all about this damned affair from a very early age?”

    Bertrand bit his lip. “Well, it was my father’s money... I mean, it was Papa who found the money to start the business. –Look, curse it, Gilles, I’d be obliged if you didn’t look down your damned nose at me like that! You know what my Oncle Fernand was like: well, Papa was apparently him twice over! He never had any intention of giving back anything he made out of the tontine money!”

    The lawyer made a strangled noise. Bertrand threw him an impatient glance. “For God’s sake, Maître, there’s only us here, I suppose we can speak frankly!”

    “Oui, monsieur,” agreed the man weakly, his eyes on the Comte’s cold face.

    Scowling, Bertrand said: “Oncle Fernand told me all about it when I was about ten. He said that Guy was too young to know about it and anyway it didn’t concern him, but I’d better know, as it was my father who’d put his name to this damned document.”

    “He told a boy of ten?” said Roma numbly.

    “Ten’s old enough,” returned Gilles in a hard voice.

    Bertrand shrugged. “Well, my grandfather was very ill at the time—it wasn’t long before he died—and Oncle Fernand himself wasn’t well, he’d had a bad dose of pneumonia; I suppose he thought someone besides the lawyers had better know, just in case. The Frois people had been kicking up a fuss and Grandpère was in a terrific rage.” He looked at his cousin’s son drily. “Both icy and furious. You put me strongly in mind of the old man at times, Gilles. You may think your grandfather had a temper, but I’d face ten of him sooner than face my grandfather in a rage.”

    “My great-grandfather knew all about it, then?” said Gilles numbly.

    “Of course he did! –Family first, my boy,” he said, eyeing him mockingly.

    Gilles took a deep breath but said nothing.

    “I—I do think you could have told my darling Guy, Bertrand,” said Roma in a voice that shook a little. “Not then, of course, but when you were both grown up.”

    Bertrand sighed. “My dear, there wasn’t any point. The War had broken out; we were both in uniform; France fell—who knew what was going to happen to the business? It was quite on the cards there’d nothing left for anyone to claim!”

    “Besides, if you had told him, he might have insisted you do something about restoring to these Frois people and the Englishman what was rightfully theirs!” said Gilles loudly.

    “Of course he would have!” cried Guy’s widow indignantly.

    At the same time. the lawyer began agitatedly: “Monsieur le Comte, I don’t think you quite understand—”

     Gilles held up his hand. “No, very well, Maître: I gather it’s more complicated than a question of simple inheritance.”

    “We must give it back,” said Roma with determination. “Guy would have insisted. I have to admit that you’re right, Gilles: of course that’s why you didn’t tell him, isn’t it, Bertrand?”

    Bertrand shrugged, “Very well, have it your own way. I’ll allow you that Guy was as honest as the day is long. But his father wouldn’t have thanked me for telling him, I can assure you!”

    “True. He was apparently as crooked as the rest of you,” said Gilles coldly.

    “That’s right, blame me!” said Bertrand bitterly. “I was a babe in arms when Papa and Oncle Fernand bought the factory!”

    Gilles eyed him mockingly. “Yes, and you were a babe in arms in 1944 when Papa died, and a babe in arms in 1964 when I turned twenty-one! And a year later, when the old man died. I can understand your not having the guts to stand up to Grandpère in his lifetime, Bertrand, but why in God’s name didn’t you tell me then?”

    Bertrand gave him a sour look. “By that time it was far too complicated to even contemplate sorting the mess out. And besides, we hadn’t heard from England, let alone from Australia, for years and years.”

    “He appears to think this gives him some moral justification for ignoring the whole thing!” said Gilles in feigned amazement to his mother.

    “Don’t, dear,” said Roma, swallowing.

    Gilles looked down at the fire, biting his lip. “I can see Grandpère and my Great-Uncle Gilles, yes... But my great-grandfather! Grandpère always used to quote him as the soul of probity!”

    “Like I said: family first,” said Bertrand sourly.

    “So it would appear,” he replied grimly. The long mouth tightened.

    There was silence in the cosy little downstairs sitting-room of the Château de La Rance. The other three looked anxiously at Gilles. The Comte stared down at the fire. Finally he gave a deep sigh. “Go on, please, Maître Ferry: tell me about this news from Australia,” he said sitting down heavily in his armchair by the hearth.

    The lawyer swallowed. “Oui, monsieur. Eugh—perhaps I should explain that we had lost touch with—with the Australian end of the business very early...”

    “I think I had got that: yes,” he said tiredly.

    Maître Ferry flushed. “I fear the family did not wish to—to be kept in touch.”

    “Quite. –Which one was it again, that went to Australia?” He held out the long strong, hand for the agreement of tontine: limply the lawyer passed him the document. “Miller? Sneed?”

    “No, sir: Frazer,” he said in a strangled voice.

    “Frazer...” Gilles echoed slowly. “Ah,” he said, looking up and giving the lawyer a hard stare. “You begin to interest me strangely, Ferry. Pray continue.”

    “You’re right, of course, monsieur,” said the man miserably. “My mother’s sister, Lisette Langlois, emigrated to Australia early in 1939 and—and married a Frazer.”

    “Why, yes: that’s right!” said Roma in pleased surprize. “Little Charlotte used to collect the Australian stamps—you remember, Gilles!”

    “No,” he said impatiently. “I don’t.”

    “My cousin, Charlotte Langlois, Monsieur le Comte. The family has always kept in touch with Tante Lisette, you see.”

    “Not quite. I think Frazer is a fairly common English name? –No, Scottish, surely? Yes, Scottish,” he answered himself. There was a very slight pause. “It was the same family, was it?” he said, looking at him hard.

    “Yes, sir,” said Maître Ferry in a strangled voice.

    “What an amazing coincidence,” he drawled.

    “Monsieur,” said the lawyer, going very red, “the situation was that Madeleine Frois, the sister of Hubert Frois—”

    “‘Hubert Marie Guy André Frois’,” read the Comte slowly, raising his eyebrows very high.

    “Yes, sir,” he said unhappily. “She—Madeleine—had been in correspondence with the man Frazer, and—and emigrated and married him out there; and I suppose she wrote home, sir: you know, about the country and so forth—and—and according to Maman,” he said, looking at him pleadingly, “Tante Lisette just took a fancy to go out there!”

    “Gilles, don’t persecute poor Maître Ferry. It’s hardly his fault,” said the Comtesse in a low voice.

    Her son’s mouth tightened fractionally: he didn’t reply but said to the lawyer: “I see, And very naturally your Tante Lisette went to find the only person she knew when she arrived in Australia.”—The man nodded mutely.—“Yes. And precisely which relative of—er—‘James John Ernest Frazer, private soldier of Kinross, Scotland’ was this person whom your aunt married?”

    “His nephew, Monsieur le Comte.”

    “Ah.”

    Maître Ferry bit his lip. “I know it must seem... But I’m positive it can only be a coincidence that it’s—it’s Tante Lisette’s grandchildren who stand to inherit, sir!”

    “I see,” he said neutrally.

    “Leave the man alone, Gilles!” said Bertrand irritably. “What does it matter who these damned Frazers are! –Are they Frazers?” he demanded of the lawyer.

    “Qu-qui ça, Monsieur Bertrand?” he stuttered.

    “These damned heirs,” said the old man tightly.

    The lawyer consulted his notes. “No. Their name is Müller. Their mother was a Frazer.”

    “Fascinating,” concluded the Comte, shrugging.

    Roma’s colour had risen. “Gilles, stop it instantly!” she hissed.

    “Very well, Maman. I agree it’s a pure coincidence that the children—no, I beg pardon—grandchildren of Maître Ferry’s aunt stand to inherit eighty percent of our family fortune. –I think I have that right, Ferry? Eighty percent?”

    “Eighty percent of what the original investment would yield at the time of the death of the last remaining signatory: yes, sir.”

    The Comte searched through the document for the relevant passage. “Ah: here. ‘Eighty percent of the total accumulated value as specified hereafter at the time of death of the said last survivor, to wit, the value yielded by the investment of the said amount or any part thereof and by any income or interest derived from the investment of the said amount or any part thereof and by any monies or properties real or personal in any way derived therefrom plus any portion remaining of the original sum...’ Yes, very clear.”

    “You’d better tell him the rest of the Australian news. And make it brief,” said Bertrand sourly to the lawyer.

    “Well, sir, I—I wrote very cautiously to Tante Lisette, on Monsieur Bertrand’s instructions,” he explained to the Comte with a nervous glance at the old gentleman, “making preliminary enquiries, you understand. And she wrote back to say that old James Frazer—yes, him, sir,” he said as the Comte turned back to the beginning of the document, “was still alive at the time of writing. At the age,” he clarified unhappily, unhappily, “of ninety-four.”

    “Ninety-four. Born 1897. And these Frazer grandchildren are his—eugh—where is it: ‘legal heirs’? –How legal these legal documents are, to be sure!” he said affably to his first cousin once removed.

    Bertrand de Bellecourt endeavoured to look down his aristocratic Bellecourt nose at him but for some reason the attempt failed utterly.

    “And did your Tante Lisette mention the agreement of tontine, Maître?” the Comte asked cordially.

    Maître Ferry winced. “Yes, sir, she did. She—she didn’t appear by any means to have all of the facts, or to have seized the full implications of it, but—but she knows of the tontine and that her grandchildren presumably will stand to inherit through old James Frazer, and—and that one of the original signatories was a Bellecourt. Though it does appear,” he added cautiously, “that the Müller family are not aware of it. Not when she wrote, at all events. Apparently old Frazer never mentioned it to them.”

    “No, well, possibly—but only, of course, if his family were as ruthless and greedy as mine,” he noted affably—“he might have felt it would give them a reason to see he—er—shuffled off this mortal coil before his appointed hour?”

    “Gilles!” gasped his mother.

    The lawyer only swallowed.

    “Mm,” said Gilles, lapsing into frowning thought.

    The fire crackled in the grate. Outside, a cold wind howled round the corners of the old house; a little rain blew against the long windows. Opposite the Comte, Bertrand de Bellecourt rested his fine-boned, aristocratic head against the back of his wingchair, and tried without success to look as if he were taking whole thing in his stride. On the sofa facing the fireplace Roma watched her son with a little troubled frown on the high, wide forehead that was very like his. At Bertrand’s right Maître Ferry shifted uneasily in his chair, watched the Comte nervously, and fiddled with the papers on the little table which had been placed at his elbow. He was a solid, prosperous-looking, florid man of only a few years more than the Comte’s own age, and he and Gilles de Bellecourt had known each other all their lives and played together as boys. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t wishing himself anywhere else at this precise moment.

    Finally Gilles said: “And Frazer is now dead?”

    “Yes, definitely, monsieur. After Tante Lisette’s letter we instituted further enquiries. He died in late January.”

    “I suppose he was the last, was he?”

    “The—the— Oh!” said the lawyer. “The last survivor, Monsieur le Comte?”

    “Yes. We had best know our enemy,” he said grimly.

    “Well—well, we have initiated enquiries in England, of course. Miller and Foulkes both died quite some time since, that’s certain.”

    “There was another Englishman, though, wasn’t there?” He looked at the document, frowning. “Sneed... Born in— Well, he must be dead, surely?”

    “Monsieur le Comte, we haven’t been able to trace him as yet.”

    “No death certificate at—eugh… Somerset House, is it?”

    The man shook his head.

    “Then you had better trace him, hadn’t you, Maître?” he said grimly. “Because I should hate to expend vast amounts—of time and energy, you understand—on fending off ces Frazer—no, very well, not Frazers: whatever!” he said as the man opened his mouth, “only to find that the real danger lay elsewhere.”

    Bertrand gave a sigh of relief. “So you do agree we must hush it up?”

    Gilles looked at him with dislike. “No.”

    Bertrand went very white. “But Gilles—dear boy, you can’t have thought!”

    “Don’t ‘dear boy’ me, if you please, Bertrand,” he said, using the formal “vous.”

    “Gilles, you fool,” he said tensely, leaning forward: “if this document can be authenticated, it’s almost the whole of the family fortune at stake! Eighty percent of our ULR holdings—!” His voice shook; he broke off, took out a handkerchief and pressed it to his lips.

    The Comte leaned back in his big chair. “Oh, quite,” he .said mockingly. “And not just eighty percent of our holdings in the company, but eighty percent of—what was the charming phrase again? ...Ah, yes: of ‘any monies or properties real or personal in any way derived therefrom.’ Charming. I think we may say that whatever honourable member of your profession drew up this document, cher Maître, he has pretty well covered all the bases—n’est-ce pas?”

    He had said “covered all the bases” in English. “Wh-what, sir?” stammered the lawyer.

    Kindly the Comte translated.

    “Yes, sir,” said the man glumly. “Of course, it will need to be looked at very carefully... But yes, it does appear to be—eugh...” His voice trailed away and he bit his lip.

    “Watertight,” said Gilles grimly. “Quite.”

    “But—but surely...” faltered Roma: “when Bertrand’s father died...”

    “No, Maman. The value—eighty percent of the total value—at the time of death of the last survivor. Eighty percent of everything Bertrand’s father’s original investment had brought in as of—this January, do I have that right?” he said to the lawyer, raising his eyebrows.

    Maître Ferry nodded dumbly.

    “Eighty percent of everything that derived from that original investment,” mused the Comte. He looked mockingly at Bertrand. “Think of it! Bertrand’s country house, and Mathieu’s country house—oh, and the family house in town, I was forgetting that! And Bertrand’s horses and the stables, and the vineyard we so wisely invested in back in 1947, and the villa outside Nice, and—well!” He shrugged. “Most of the furniture in this room, for a start. And Grandpère’s picture collection, of course. And I’m afraid most of your jewels will have to go, my dear,” he said mockingly to his mother. “You can give twenty percent of the pearls to Marie-Claire on her marriage, of course, but I’m afraid these Australian Frazers are legally entitled to the other eighty percent!” He shrugged again.

    “Don’t speak to your mother like that,” said Bertrand through trembling lips. He pressed the handkerchief to them again.

    Gilles got up and went over to a small cabinet. “I beg your pardon, Maman,” he said with his back to her.

    “Everything, Gilles?” she faltered.

    He trod steadily over to her with a glass of brandy in each hand. “Here. Eighty percent of more or less everything, yes. Well, not the house itself, and not the grounds immediately surrounding it. And some of the furniture predates the refounding of the family fortunes. –Drink this, Bertrand,” he said, giving him the other glass. “Maître Ferry?”

    “Thank you very much, Monsieur le Comte!” he gasped.

    Gilles fetched him a glass. “When I say the grounds immediately surrounding the house,” he said, sitting down again and sipping his own brandy, “I believe I am correct in saying, am I not, that a considerable amount of the land that had been lost in the late nineteenth century was bought back some time in the Twenties by my grandfather?”

    “Not precisely, sir,” quavered the family lawyer. “By your great-grandfather, I believe.”

    Gilles looked at him mockingly over the rim of his glass. “Ah. But of course. As soon as the factory started to show a profit, great-grandfather bought back the family lands, did he?”

    “So I am led to believe, Monsieur le Comte. Yes.”

    “Mm. –Family first,” he said to Bertrand, nodding.

    “Damn you, Gilles!” replied the older man angrily. He drank his brandy off, shuddering. “Mon Dieu! Eighty percent of everything!”

    “It really hadn’t dawned on you, had it?”

    “No, damn you, and I still don’t believe— We’ll get the best legal minds in the country onto it!” he said fiercely.

    “And you claim to be an educated man, Bertrand,” marvelled Gilles. “Don’t you know your Dickens?”

    “‘In Chancery,’” said Roma limply in English. “Oui. –Gilles means that we may well lose a fortune if we take it to court and the cas drags on for years, Bertrand. –My dear, are you quite sure that this isn’t too much for you?” she added in a low voice.

    “I’m perfectly all right, thank you, Roma,” he replied tightly.

    “Darling, he looks very pale,” she said anxiously to Gilles.

    Bertrand sighed. “I’m a bit run down after that damned cold I had last month. –The doctor’s advised me to go on down to the south,” he said drily to Gilles. “According to you that means I’m allowed to occupy twenty percent of the villa, doesn’t it?”

    “Something like that. –I’m sorry, Bertrand.”

    The older man’s fine, aristocratic features contorted in a painful grimace. “No: I apologize. I should have told you years ago. You’re right, I was afraid of the old man, of course,” he said tiredly. “And then— Well, it had gone so far; I just hoped it—it would never be dug up, I suppose.”

    “Yes, of course,” said Roma. “Darling, get your uncle another drink.”

    “He isn’t my uncle,” said Gilles. But he rose and fetched the Cognac bottle. “Would you care for another, Maître?” The lawyer refused regretfully: he was driving. Gilles said nothing, merely held out the bottle to his mother suggestively.

    “Not in the afternoon, thank you, dear. In fact,”—she looked at the pretty little clock on the mantelpiece—“I think perhaps we all should have a nice cup of tea. And Bernadette has made some delicious madeleines, Maître, I know you like those!”

    Gilles passed a hand wearily over his forehead. “Proust as well as Dickens,” he muttered, going over to replace the brandy. He wandered over to the window and stood there holding the curtain, staring out unseeingly at the wind and rain of a chilly March day in northern France. A few brave flags of green, battered by the wind, showed here and there on the trees, and on the damp lawn some scattered daffodils, planted by Roma, bowed to the ground. Gilles de Bellecourt was not a fanciful man but he felt vividly at this moment that the daffodils were mourning both the lost fortune and the lost honour of the crooked famille Bellecourt.

    Behind him Roma said with an effort: “Tell me about these Frazer children, Maître Ferry.”

    “Eugh—oh: the Müller family, madame? There are four: three girls and a boy, aged...” He searched in his papers. “Here we are: Lynette Müller, twenty-seven, unmarried; Rose Bayley, twenty-four, married with one child, James Müller, eighteen, unmarried, and Barbara Müller, sixteen.”

    “So two of them are still children.”

    “Eugh—legally the young man would be of age in Australia, madame.”

    “But just a boy in years,” she said, smiling at him.

    “WAIT!” shouted Bertrand, bounding up. He fell upon the agreement of tontine that Gilles had abandoned on the table by his chair, and searched it feverishly, muttering dates to himself.

    “James Frazer was the youngest, Monsieur Bertrand, but it does appear he was of age when he signed the document,” said the lawyer regretfully.

    Bertrand sat down again, biting his narrow lips. “Merde,” he muttered.

    Roma began to chat to the lawyer kindly about his family. He answered politely, but not without glancing nervously from time to time at the silent, frowning, fine-drawn features of Bertrand de Bellecourt and the Comte’s uncommunicative back.

    When they all had a cup of tea in their hands and the lawyer, at Roma’s urging, was eating one of the promised madeleines, Bertrand said abruptly: “There’s only one thing for it. Well, I agree we’ll have to check out that other English fellow, but logically he must be dead. No, as I say: only one thing for it: wait until they make a claim and then make them a reasonable offer.”

    Gilles set down his cup with an audible clink.

    “That seems sensible, Monsieur le Comte,” agreed Maître Ferry anxiously.

    “Wait until they make a claim,” he echoed slowly, looking hard at his relative.

    Bertrand’s narrow mouth tightened. “Précisément,” he said grimly.

    Gilles picked up his cup again. “So much for honour.”

    “Gilles, we’ve the family to think of! Dammit, your own daughters! And the boys,” he said anxiously.

    “Yes, well, I can promise you I shall do my best to see that the sins of the fathers—or rather, the grandfathers,” he noted pointedly, “are not visited on the children. Mathieu’s or mine. –By the by, does Mathieu know of this skeleton in the family closet?’

    “No, of course not!” said Mathieu’s father impatiently. “The fellow’s a fool!”

    “I’m very fond of him,” said Gilles mildly.

    “Then why are you so eager to beggar him, Gilles?” he replied nastily.

    “Pauline has money of her own: they won’t starve. But I grant you they may have to pull in their horns a little: give up either the Paris appartement or the country house,” he noted.

    Mathieu’s father’s nostrils flared angrily but he said nothing.

    “You could give up that place of yours, too, Bertrand,” he noted idly.

    “Very well. I’ll sell it if you think it’ll do any good.”

    “It depends how good a lawyer ces Frazer might have, doesn’t it?” he drawled.

    Unaware of the mocking glint in his cousin’s son’s eye, Bertrand replied eagerly: “Exactly! And that’s why we must get the best lawyer money can buy without delay! I’ll get onto Henri Béjart: he’ll know—”

    Béjart et Labouchère handled business matters for the family; Gilles replied coldly: “He will undoubtedly know. But I beg you will do no such thing, Bertrand.”

    There was a short silence. Bertrand’s still elegant hand clenched hard on his knee.

    “Must I remind you that I am the head of this family, Bertrand? And incidentally the major shareholder in ULR.”

    Bertrand was visibly controlling his temper; Roma looked at him anxiously.

    “Very well,” he said at last. “Very well. I beg your pardon, Cousin.”—Roma bit her lip.—“You’ll do it yourself, of course.”

    “Hire the best lawyers in France to see that ces Frazer are chiselled out of what is rightfully theirs? Yes, immediately.”

    “Au nom de Dieu!” shouted Bertrand furiously. “Think of the family!”

    “Curiously enough, Bertrand, I am thinking of the family. And I will certainly ask Béjart’s advice—though at this stage, merely about the validity of this document, and exactly how watertight it is.”

    “I suppose these damned Frazers do have a copy of it?” he said unguardedly.

    The Comte’s long mouth thinned. “That, my dear Bertrand,” he said deliberately, slowly putting down his cup and rising, “is going too far, even for you. –I will see you in my study, at your leisure, of course, Maître Ferry,” he said politely. “Please don’t hurry over your tea: I would like a little time to be alone. –Maman, please excuse me.”

    He went out.

    After a few moments Bertrand de Bellecourt said in a shaking old man’s voice that was very unlike his usual incisive tones: “I never thought to hear that boy vousvoyer me!”

    “Hush, my dear,” said Roma, biting her lip. “He’s very angry.”

    Bertrand blew his nose. “Oui. –Do have some more cake, Maître.”

    The lawyer jumped and sheepishly took a cake from the plate that the Comtesse, nodding encouragingly, was holding out to him. “Merci, madame,” he said automatically.

    Roma took a cake herself and refilled Bertrand’s cup. “Drink it, my dear, it will do you good.”

    Bertrand picked up his cup. “He’s right of, course,” he said dully.

    “About what, Monsieur Bertrand?” faltered the lawyer.

    “All of it,” said the old man, sighing. “About the eighty percent—I’m sure that’s right: he’s got a damned good head on him, I’ve never known him to misread a clause in anything;”—the lawyer nodded—“and about the moral point at issue.”

    “Yes,” said Gilles’s mother, sighing. “Oh, dear. Do you remember, Bertrand, my dear—it was when he was about ten— Oh, well, it doesn’t matter,” she said, biting her lip.

    “The—the incident of the stolen plums, madame?” ventured the lawyer.

    “Plums! Of course! I was thinking it was apples, but I had a feeling that was wrong. Of course, you were there, too, Maître!” she said with a little laugh.

    “I remember. You were all in it,” said Bertrand tiredly. “Gilles—he was the ringleader, of course—Mathieu and yourself, Maître, and one of the other boys from the village, wasn’t it?”

    “Two, monsieur,” the florid middle-aged man said respectfully. “Myself, my brother Georges, and our cousin, François Langlois.”

    “It wasn’t so very bad,” murmured Roma with a little reminiscent smile. “But Gilles’s grandfather was so terribly angry.”

    “Yes. He read him a lecture on the meaning of honour and the behaviour due to the family name, if I remember rightly,” said Bertrand on a bitter note.

    “Yes,” agreed Roma sadly. “Darling Gilles took it so much to heart, oh dear... He adored his grandfather, you know, Maître. And—and looked up to him so much, when he was a boy...”

    “I know,” said the lawyer, swallowing.

    “Didn’t I beat you all soundly at Oncle Fernand’s request—that the time?” said Bertrand.

    “Yes, indeed, sir!” said the lawyer with a little laugh. “Though I think you let François off very lightly, he was younger than the rest of us.”

    “That’s right. Laid into into the rest of you, though, didn’t I?”

    Maître Ferry nodded; for a moment the two men smiled at each other.

    Then Bertrand de Bellecourt said sourly: “I seem to remember I added a few words of wisdom of my own on the topics of honesty and respect for one’s neighbour’s property. My God, what must he be thinking of us? What a pack of complete hypocrites!” He gave a bark of unamused laughter.

    Roma swallowed. “Gilles is so like my darling Guy...” she murmured.

    Abruptly Bertrand got up and went over to stare out at the damp view. “Rubbish, Roma. I’ll grant you he’s got Guy’s probity, but Guy couldn’t have been that stiff-necked to save his life! Gilles gets that from his great-grandfather—sometimes I think he’s the old man reincarnated! –God, I wish Guy hadn’t died,” he said to himself, glaring out across the garden.

    Maître Ferry glanced anxiously at Guy’s widow, but she smiled gently at him and said to Bertrand: “Well, my dear, it was a long time ago. And we’ve all done our best with Gilles. I don’t think he would ever have had dear Guy’s temperament, even if Guy had lived to have a—a softening influence on him.” Her voice shook a little.

    “No. –Remember how he used to laugh?”

    At this Roma de Bellecourt’s eyes filled with tears, but she smiled at her husband’s cousin and said: “Yes, didn’t he? He was the happiest person I ever knew. –Come back to the fire, my dear, it’s chilly over there.”

    Bertrand sighed, and came back to the fire.

    There was a little silence.

    “You’d better go to him, Michel,” said the elderly gentleman with a sigh, using the familiar “tu” and forgetting to address the lawyer as “Maître”.—“I’m sorry about it all. Damned sorry.”

    The stolid Michel Ferry got up slowly, gathering up his papers, looking at him anxiously. “We took the decision together, sir, if you remember: yourself, my father, my uncle and I, when feu Monsieur le Comte died.”

    “Yes,” he said with a sigh, shading his eyes with his hand.

    Roma got up. “Come along, then, Michel, my dear,” she said, also using the familiar voice. “And I’ll just pop down to the kitchen and remind Bernadette to pack some madeleines for you: now don’t forget to collect them before you go!”

    She led him out, talking gently.

    Before the fire, Bertrand de Bellecourt continued to shade his eyes with his hand. Whether he was regretting most the family’s not having paid up like gentlemen when they were supposed to, the subsequent concealment, the fact that, however things turned out, they were bound to lose a substantial amount of the family fortune, his cousin’s boy’s discovery that he himself had feet of clay, or Guy’s death nearly fifty years ago, would have been very hard to say.

    In the study the Comte was sitting at his big desk frowning when Maître Ferry entered. “Sit down,” he said grimly.

    Michel Ferry concealed a sigh, and sat. He might have known that Gilles would still be on his high horse, he reflected glumly. If only— But he himself had only been a very junior partner at the time, twenty-seven years ago now, when the old Comte de Bellecourt died and Monsieur Bertrand and the family lawyers together took the decision to keep the whole business of the tontine from Gilles.

    “I can see,” said the Comte without preamble, “that you perceived yourself to be acting for the best in this business. Not to say following orders.”—Michel Ferry winced.—“And I can also see that your firm appears to have acted out of some sort of misguided loyalty throughout, so I shan’t immediately take our business away from you. Which I must admit was my first impulse.”

    “Oui,” he said faintly.

    “However,” said Gilles de Bellecourt, giving him a very nasty look indeed: “you understand, I trust, that it may come to the point where to allow the firm to handle my business any longer would be to compound the felony—or at least to give the impression of condoning it.”

    “Eugh… oui, monsieur,” he stuttered, looking bewildered.

    “Ferry,” said the Comte slowly, leaning forward: “don’t you understand? You have broken the law. Not only could you go to jail for what I have no doubt would be a substantial term, you would also quite undoubtedly be disbarred if your conduct were discovered.”

    The heavy-set man licked his lips and looked at him pleadingly. “I know it’s no excuse, but I, and indeed, my father and uncles before me, were merely acting under orders.”

    The Comte leaned back in his big chair and looked at him mockingly through narrowed eyes. “It was no excuse at Nuremburg, certainly.”

    “Monsieur Gilles, that is unjust!” he shouted, going very red.

    “I don’t think so, you know,” he said conversationally. “Bertrand de Bellecourt has never been the head of this family, and when my grandfather died it was most certainly your duty to apprise me of the situation with regard to this tontine.”

    The lawyer’s hands clenched and unclenched. The Comte just waited. Finally he muttered: “I know. But we hoped it would just—just die a natural death. –Monsieur, we assumed as time wore on that all the signatories must be dead and the whole thing had been forgotten!” he said urgently.

    “I think that will be enough,” decided Gilles de Bellecourt, looking at him with infinite distaste. “I have said what I wished to say, and I don’t wish to hear any more of your excuses.”

    “But—” He broke off.

    “You will bring me, as soon as possible, all of the papers relating to the original purchase of the first factory.”

    “But Monsieur Gilles, I haven’t got them!” he gasped. “All of the papers relating to the business went to Béjart et Labouchère.”

    “Then I suggest you get hold of Béjart et Labouchère, Ferry.”

    The man nodded dumbly.

    “Oui:..” said Gilles slowly to himself, eyes narrowing.

    The country-town lawyer watched him nervously. “Monsieur, are you—are you thinking that perhaps we might prove it was not the tontine money that founded the firm? Because—”

    “Not precisely,” he said with a curl of the lips. “I’m wondering how easy it will be for the opposition to prove that it was.”

    “Mais oui!” he cried, his eyes lighting up. “Surely it all hinges on that!”

    “Legally, yes. Morally, however, as the family—and your firm—are all perfectly well aware, there can be no question.”

    Maître Ferry stared at him blankly.

    “Ferry, perhaps I did not make it clear earlier,” he said, leaning forward again. “This thing will not come to court, and there will be no scandal. We shall settle out of court with these Frazers.”

    The lawyer made no further attempt to correct Monsieur le Comte’s continual “ces Frazer” to “ces Müller”; he just nodded dumbly.

    “On second thoughts, I’ll contact Béjart myself.”

    “Eugh—très bien, M. le Comte. Mais—”

    “Taisez-vous.”

    The middle-aged lawyer gulped, and was silent.

    “What I want from you,” said the Comte slowly, “is every damned piece of paper relating to the family finances since we bought the first factory. Understand? All the records of the purchases of furniture for the house and so forth. Everything. And all our tax records—for what they’re worth,” he added, shrugging.

    “Yes, but— I don’t understand, sir! What do you mean to do?”

    Little white dints showed beside the Comte’s nostrils. “I mean,” he said very grimly indeed, “to ascertain just how much of the family property was bought out of the income from the factories.—I’ll want all the records of Bertrand’s damned dealings, and the purchase of Mathieu’s house and so forth, too.—Then I mean to have the lot valued. Then I mean to give these damned Frazers their SHARE!” he shouted. “Is that CLEAR?”

    “Sir, you can’t!” he cried, almost in tears. “Not eighty percent—sir, the family will be ruined!”

    Gilles de Bellecourt stood up abruptly. “The family deserves to be ruined!” he shouted. “Everything we own is founded on theft! God help us, Ferry, hasn’t that dawned YET?”

    “But sir, the original investment was so small in comparison to— And it—it is the family who have built up the firm! You can’t let it all go down the drain!”

    The Comte sat down again. “I have no intention of letting it all go down the drain,” he said coldly. “If there were no other consideration to take into account, there is the fact that we have several thousand employees relying on the firm to feed their families. I intend to sell up every bit of real and personal property we own, in order to raise the eighty percent. –Oh, and put the château on the market, Ferry,” he added by the by.

    “Monsieur Gilles!” the man cried, bounding up. ‘‘You can’t!”

    “On the contrary: I believe there is no entail?” he said, raising his eyebrows.

    “That’s not what I— Monsieur le Comte! Please!” he begged.

    “What else do you suggest? It’s the only substantial thing we own that predates the damned tontine. There is some jewellery, of course. Get it revalued.”

    “It’s in the safety deposit in Paris, sir,” he said limply.

    “Mm? Oh, so it is.” He made a note on the pad in front of him.

    Maître Ferry took a deep breath. “Monsieur Gilles, I—I fully realise the moral position involved, but I must beg you to see reason! After all, could the original signatories to the tontine have envisaged that it wouldn’t be wound up for nearly eighty years? Surely not! They must have assumed that—that they would all die—um—well, perhaps in their sixties, or their seventies at the latest! After all, they’d all been through the War, and—um— Well, what I was thinking was that it’s unreasonable for these Frazers to expect eighty percent of things as they now are! Couldn’t we come to some arrangement whereby we—we— Well, I’m not sure: take the average life expectancy of a man born in—in—whenever it was? Surely these Frazers will settle for that; after all, it’s not as if they were expecting to come into the fort—” He broke off, gulping.

    “Actuarial tables for the year 1897,” said the Comte neutrally.

    “They must exist, monsieur,” he said doggedly.

    “I dare say there will be some way of finding out the average life expectancy, yes.”

    Maître Ferry looked at him hopefully.

    “This will in no wise alter either the legal or the moral positions,” he noted.

    “Um—no,” gulped the lawyer.

    Gilles passed a hand across his forehead. “But I suppose it may allow the family to escape with its fortune partially intact. Seeing that its honour is manifestly past saving.”

    The lawyer bit his lip and was silent.

    “Get on with it, then.”

    “Oui, monsieur. Eugh—the actuarial tables?”

    “Hein? Oh: that, too. But I meant the accounts and so forth. You’d better hire a team of accountants, or something. And make damn sure that word doesn’t get out as to what it’s all about. Tell them we’re having an audit or something.”

    “Oui, monsieur. But, eugh, had you thought of what that might do to the ULR share prices?”

    “Mais… non,” he said in a strange voice, staring at him. “I must admit I had not, Ferry. Surely you cannot be daring to suggest that we initiate an audit in order to bring the price down so as to justify our offering these Frazers less than is their due?”

    “Non, M. le Comte!” he gasped. “Of course not!”

    “Good. Because in any case, it’s the price at the date of death of this James Frazer that the shares will be assessed at.”

    Maître Ferry nodded weakly. “That wasn’t what I meant, sir,” he said faintly.

    “No. Well, if our share prices fall, we’ll only have ourselves to blame. They’ll pick up. But I feel sorry for the small shareholders,” he said detachedly.

    The lawyer nodded again. ULR, S.A. was a public company but the family was by far the biggest shareholder. Together their shares came to sixty-five percent. It had originally been fifty-one, just enough to give them a controlling interest, when the firm was first floated after the Second World War, but the canny Fernand de Bellecourt had assiduously bought up as many shares as he could. Just in case some scion of the family went mad and decided to sell out. As things now stood, Gilles de Bellecourt personally controlled thirty-five percent, Bertrand, who over the years had dabbled in more than one enterprise, only fifteen out of the twenty-five percent that had been his original portion as the only son of the original co-owner, and Bertrand’s son, Mathieu, and his three boys twelve percent between them (largely acquired for them by old Fernand). Gilles’s daughters, Marie-Claire and Annie, owned three percent between them. The subsidiary, Semences ULR, was wholly owned and operated by ULR.

    The Comte stood up. Hurriedly the lawyer scrambled to his feet.

    “Get on with it, then.” He hesitated. The man was looking at him humbly. “Ferry,” he said tiredly, “I am in no doubt you believed yourself to be acting in the best interests of the family.”

    “Yes, of course, sir! I only meant to—”

    “Don’t tell me you meant well, Ferry.”

    Maître Ferry looked at him pleadingly.

    “Go on, then. –No: wait.”

    The lawyer stopped, and looked at him nervously.

    “Give me all the information you have on ces Frazer,” he said, holding out his hand. “And don’t forget to track down the—eugh—Sneed who disappeared.”

    Maître Ferry scrabbled amongst his papers. “If I may just mention— There are several letters there from Tante Lisette, Monsieur le Comte.”

    “They will be returned to you.” He looked down at the papers, frowning.

    The lawyer hesitated, not sure if he had been dismissed or not.

    “That is all, thank you,” he said coldly, not looking up.

    Michel Ferry tottered out.

    When the door had closed behind him Gilles de Bellecourt laid the papers slowly on his big desk. He walked over to the window and leaned his forehead against the cool glass, sighing.

    “God save me from the well-meaning,” he said bitterly.

Next chapter:

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