The Tontine

2

The Tontine

    Investigation of every scrap of paper in the house, laborious translating combined with long-distance telephone consultations with Mémé Frazer, and Len’s careful collating yielded a fair amount of information. The French legal document that was the tontine itself, old Jim Frazer’s will, the death certificates and three letters were seen as the essential items. Though some of the newspaper clippings also provided helpful details.

    Old Jim’s will merely specified, though at length, that all his estate, real and personal, and including what was due from the tontine (which was described rather fully but in such awful legalese that it wasn’t much help) was to go to Linnet, Rose, Jimmy and Buffy. The property, both real and personal, was detailed at great length even down to, as Len and Dave had discovered, the shares that were in the tin box. The source of Jim’s original funds was also, somewhat puzzlingly, set forth very clearly as having been his portion of the original amount of the tontine. The will also made it very clear—also rather puzzlingly, but perhaps the poor old boy had felt bitter about her desertion of him—that Madeleine Bernadette Eugénie Louise Frazer, née Frois, had sunk no capital of .her own into the farm property. And of course specifically excluded the said Madeleine, plus her heirs and assigns, from any rights of inheritance they might have claimed to have had. Likewise excluding all of the other Australian Frazer relatives who were still living. There was even a passing mention to any heirs of Jim’s two sisters. A mention that they were out of it, too.

    “Well, ’e musta been the over-anxious type,” decided Dave Hordern, scratching his neat pepper-and-salt head, “’cos why else did ’e bother to bury the flippin’ bank papers under the mast?”

    Len agreed; they had found the bank papers—or rather, the unfortunate Andy and Kyle had found them—reburied. The ground had been rock-hard even where old Jim had once dug and the temperature hadn’t dropped the second day of the search. The bank papers were not, of course, details of the sort of huge mortgage that the Horderns and all of their friends and neighbours were burdened with, but Jim’s bank statements since the year dot, the deeds to the farm, and the records of the share purchases and transfers which had resulted in the wad of certificates in the tin box. The old bloke had apparently got in on BHP when it was in its infancy and hung onto the shares ever since—to mention no more. Though Dave did, with as much incredulous delight as if it had been his own family that was to come into them. As he said to Jimmy, the four of them could live off these for the rest of their lives—and don’t you dream of selling ’em, mind! Jimmy agreed meekly that he wouldn’t dream of selling them. He was, of course, a meek and obedient young man, but in any case he had far too much sense to dream of selling them.

    The tontine had been drawn up in 1918, at the end of the First World War, and of course in French, as an agreement between six young men. (Their dates of birth were mentioned in the document, as were their places of residence.) As the dictionary had revealed to Len and Dave, normally in a tontine the last survivor of those in the original agreement would get the lot. Uncle Jim’s tontine was more complicated than that.

    The young men had agreed that out of an original sum which was sufficiently large they would all take an equal share. Disappointingly, the source of this original sum was not specified but on the other hand the document’s silence on this point certainly tended to confirm the supposition that it was loot. Each participant was free to invest his share as he pleased. When they had all died but one, the heir to the tontine would not be that man but, on his death, his legal heirs.

    At this point Dave and Len had a wrangle as to what legal heirs were but finally, not without some intervention from Andy, Kyle and Jimmy, came to the conclusion that it must mean whoever the bloke had left his property to and that that was why old Jim had been so specific in his will.

    “That explains why the old joker didn’t go haring off and claim it for himself,” decided Len.

    “Yeah,” agreed Dave.

    The situation was further complicated by the fact that the eventual heirs to the tontine were to get only eighty percent of each share, each man being free to leave the other twenty percent as he pleased.

    “Do we only get eighty percent of the farm, then?” asked Rose.

    “NO!” they shouted.

    “Uh—hang on,” Dave then said. “Uh—no, that’s right,” he said sheepishly. “You get eighty percent of the other blokes’ shares in the tontine, but as Jim’s heirs, you get the whole of his.”

    “Strictly speaking we get the eighty percent of his share of the tontine as the heirs to the tontine, and the other twenty percent of that, plus anything Uncle Jim actually owned outside of it, as his heirs,” said Linnet mildly.

    “GEDDOUTAVIT!” howled Len.

    Dave had to concur, there. Too right.

    After a moment’s thought, Len said: “Hang on.”

    Dave hung on.

    “Yeah, wait a mo’,” agreed Jimmy.

    “There might be a question as to what the eighty percent consists of,” said Linnet detachedly, yawning.

    Len took a deep breath.

    “I’m going,” she said mildly.

    She went.

    After a moment’s heavy breathing and the remark that his eldest daughter would try the patience of a saint, Len said in a weak voice: “Um—what exactly does the tontine say, anyway? Do ya get the original amount that was invested, less twenty percent, or do ya get what it’s come to now?”

    “I was wondering that,” agreed Jimmy.

    They consulted the translation.

    “That’s all right,” said Len, sagging.

    “Yeah: we get what the investment has yielded,” agreed Jimmy. “Eighty percent of it, I mean.” He re-read Linnet’s translation, then he picked up the French original and laboriously found the place. His lips moved. His elders watched him anxiously. “It does say ‘yielded’,” he reported.

    “Great!” beamed the kindly Dave.

    “Good one,” agreed Len.

    They all beamed.

    After a moment, however, Dave said: “Hang on. Makes it a bit complicated in the meanwhile, doesn’t it?”

    “Eh?” said Len.

    “What?” said Jimmy.

    “Yeah: look. That thing was drawn up in nineteen-oh-dot, for Chrissakes!”

    “1918,” said Jimmy pedantically.

    “Right. What about the types that are hanging around waiting for their twenty percent in the meantime? I mean, Hell, what about the meantime?”

    “Eh?” said Len.

    “Oh...” said Jimmy slowly.

    “Yeah, look,” explained Dave: “what happens to all these other blokes’ shares over the intervening eighty-odd years?”

    Len began: “They invest—”

    “Not that, Dad!” cried Jimmy. “He means what happens when the original signatories to the agreement die but the last one still isn’t dead! Don’tcha, Uncle Dave?”

    “Yeah. What happens to the property in the meantime, Len?” he said.

    “Uh—well, it goes on increasing in value, isn’t that the whole point? Well, not this dump, so much, I grant you, but the BHP shares and them—”

    “No, ya clown! Look, say old Jim had dropped off the twig—well, any time these last eighty—no, well, say back in the 1920s or something while these other jokers were still alive. Here’s the property, just sitting here—and the shares in the tin box, right;” he added as Len tried to remind him of them: “who owns them?”

    “Well, his— Oh.”

    “It must have been the same with all the investments in England and France, Dad!” urged Jimmy.

    “I can see that, thanks,” he said sourly.

    “Are all these heirs and assigns and what-not hanging on to get their twenty percent in the meantime, or what?” pursued Dave.

    Len scratched his head. “See whatcha mean. Uh... no, look: It’d be like say I died tomorrow. I’ve left your mum a life interest in seventy-five percent of the property, poor old girl,” he said to Jimmy—Jimmy looked a trifle disconcerted, “but I thought you kids might need a few of the readies to tide you over, so I’ve left you the rest outright, between you. –What’s left after the bank’s taken its whack,” he noted. Dave nodded sourly.

    “Ye-ah...” said Jimmy dubiously.

    “What usually happens, see, in that case, when the money’s tied up in land or that, is that all parties agree to sell up—well, no way your mum could manage the place on ’er own, eh?”—Jimmy shook head—“and in your case, you and the girls’d take your bit as a lump sum, and the rest’d be invested for Marion to get the income for life.”

    “So that’s what must have happened, ya reckon, with all these other five shares?” said Dave slowly. “When each of these original blokes died, their heirs—their kids, I s’pose—woulda got twenty percent of what the tontine dough had made, and the other eighty percent’d go into the bank for the last man’s heirs to come into—right?”

    “Yeah. Well, maybe not the bank, s’pose they might appoint trustees or executors or something,” admitted Len. “Might be reinvested—but, yeah. That’s right.”

    Dave snapped his fingers. “That’ll be it! Gimme that will again, Jimmy.”

    Jimmy passed him old Jim’s will again and Dave turned its pages slowly. “Yeah,” he said to Len: “it’s all this bit at the back, goes on forever and a day, that we couldn’t make much sense of. Appointing trustees and so forth in the case that such and such. Well, maybe back in 1975 ’e thought there was just a chance one or two of the others might still be hanging on, eh? And a will has to cover every contingency. But that’s what it’s about: appointing that Sydney solicitor and this accountant type trustees of the eighty percent. –Blimey, why they can’t just come out and say what they mean!”

    Len took it off him and re-read it slowly. “Aw, goddit: there’s two bits.” He read over the other bit. “Practically identical, really, only this bit’s talking about in case old Jim dies while the kids are all still minors.”

    “Right. –Hang on, young Buffy is a minor; will that make any—?”

   Len turned back. “No, ’e covers that quite early on—quite usual, I think that sort of thing is. Nope, me and the solicitor get the job of trustees of her bit.” He grinned at him.

    “Lucky you. What if you drop off the twig?”

    “Thanks! Uh—’nother solicitor.”

    “They could get together and embezzle it,” worried Jimmy.

    “Bullshit! Well, I know there are crooked lawyers about, but with a big city firm like this they have auditors and whatnot!” returned his father witheringly.

    “Ye-ah...”

    “Anyway, I’m still in the land of the living, or hadn’t you noticed?” said Len pointedly.

    Jimmy grinned. “Sorry, Dad.”

    “Well, I’ll say this for this Sydney solicitor type, ’e seems to of thought of everything,” conceded Dave. “Ya better ring ’im, Len—first thing tomorrow, eh?”

    “Can’t: it’s Sunday.”

    “Eh? Aw—yeah. Well, all right, first thing on Monday.”

    “Not first thing,” objected Jimmy pedantically. “He won’t be at work. Even if they are half an hour ahead of us.”

    “Nine o’clock their time,” said Dave on a snide note.

    “Yeah, well, I plan to be halfway between here and Port Lincoln by then,” returned Len with a grin, “but yeah, something like that. Soon’s we get home, anyroad.”

    “You’re not thinking of staying on, then?”

    “What for?”

    “No, but... You’re not harvesting, are ya, Len?”

    “Nope; been there, done that,” he said, grinning at him. “Uh—no: we gotta get back. Well, Buffy’s term’s due to start in a ten days or so.”

    “Semester, Dad,” corrected Jimmy mildly. “There’s the paperwork, too.”

    “Well, yeah: exactly! Oh: ya mean for the orchard?” said Dave weakly.

    Jimmy nodded and Len admitted: “Yeah. Got a bit behind. Well, there was Christmas and New Year’s—we had Sue and Ross and their kids up from Tazzie, that kept us pretty busy. Nice to see them, mind you. And before that there was the crisis over Mim. And when she came out of hospital it was Felicity’s turn—cyst or something,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “Marion’s been running round like a cut cat, and I seem to of got more and more behind. Well, what with driving up to Townsville—” He shrugged.

    “Ya drove all the way?” said Dave limply. They were all used to driving huge distances, but...

    “Well, she flew up. But I drove up and collected ’er, yeah.”

    “Yeah, only then Felicity went into hospital,” explained Jimmy.

    Dave made a face.

    “Yeah,” agreed Len. “And of course with Mim out of commission— So Marion went up again. Well, mainly to stop Mim from rising from ’er bed of sickness, ya know what they are.”

    Dave nodded.

    “Yeah. Felicity’s little do was right in the middle of harvesting,” noted Len heavily.

    “Strewth.”

    “Yeah. Then Linnet’s job was canned,” added Jimmy.

    “That was before, you oaf!” corrected his father amiably.

    “What’s that got to do with the price of fish?” asked Dave.

    “Not much,” admitted Len. “Added to the general hoo-hah, of course. Though at least it meant she could give us a hand fulltime with the picking and packing. No, well, hadda be gingered up to look for another job, ya see. Then ’er mother got all worked up because the only one going was with CSIRO in Melbourne.”

    “No: two, Dad,” corrected Jimmy. “One in Melbourne and one in Canberra.”

    “Same difference,” he said glumly.

    “Both with CSIRO?” asked Dave with a twinkle in his eye that the Mullers missed.

    “Yeah,” they both said.

    “Gotcha,” he acknowledged mildly.

    “Took blood, sweat and tears,” elaborated Len glumly.

    “Yeah. All she was gonna do,” explained Jimmy with a sort of gloomy relish, “was send them her résumé:”

    “Uh—yeah,” said Dave weakly. “Thought that was what ya did, Jimbo?”

    “Nah!” he said with cheerful scorn. “’S not like that, these days. Ya have to write a proper letter of application, addressing the criteria in the job specification!”

    “Wouldja believe his Year Twelve at College had lessons in writing bloody letters of application?” said Len with a sort of gloomy pride.

    “Believe anything, these days,” he noted. “Uh—well, just as well ya sent ’im there, eh?” he conceded.

    Len sniffed slightly. “Yeah.”

    “Anyway, we hadda help her write it,” explained Jimmy.

    “Aw! Right, gotcha, Jimmy,” conceded Dave.

    “And ginger her up,” repeated Len heavily.

    “Yeah. Had a busy few months, then?”

    “Mm.”

    “Young Rosie okay, though?”

    “Yeah, fine,” said Len in astonishment.

    “Good. Just thought— Well, she was a bit down after Fergie was born, wasn’t she?”

    “Yeah, but she got over that ages ago,” replied Rose’s father cheerfully. “No, she’s all right. Her and Jimmy are both all right; always have been,” he noted grimly.

    “The supermodel’s been a bit of trial, I gather?” he said kindly.

    “You can drop that, ya bugger.”

    “She’s getting worse, Uncle Dave,” explained Jimmy earnestly.

    “Uh—yeah. Well, didn’t have that pink splodge on ’er head last time you were up here—no,” he admitted.

    “She buys all these dumb magazines and she’s been writing away for stuff and she goes to three different Jazzercize classes and does all these mad exercises in front of the TV and she’s been driving Mum barmy,” explained Jimmy.

    Dave looked cautiously at Len.

    “Mm. Well, Marion gets the brunt of it, ya see. Not so bad during term time, Buffy usually catches the bus straight after school, but it doesn’t get her home till nearly five. Got flamin’ Jazzercize in town one evening a week, but Linnet used to work late that night and collect her. But Marion or me usually have to pick her up from the other ruddy Jazzercize classes she goes to over in Stirling,” he admitted with a sigh.

    “On Tuesdays and Thursdays,” explained Jimmy. “I can pick her up if I haven’t got too much swot.”

    “Half the time he stays in at uni till all hours,” revealed Len with a sigh.

    “I have to, Dad!”

    “Yeah, I know. –Well, anyway, like I was saying, it’s not that bad during the term, only in the school holidays she’s got the blasted exercise videos going all the time. When she isn’t plastering her face with muck.”

    “I reckon the solution is to buy her a TV of her own and let her do her exercises in her room, Dad.”

    Len sighed. “Yeah, well, presumably she’ll be able to afford it, now.”

    “Good,” said Jimmy simply.

    “Too right,” agreed Dave. “Uh—s’pose these other blokes are dead,” he said for the umpteenth time.

    “They better be: me nerves won’t take another year of flamin’ Jazzercize in the lounge-room,” said Len grimly. “Well, let’s see...”

    They began going over the evidence again.

    In 1918 James John Ernest Frazer, private soldier, of Kinross, Scotland (aged 21), Hubert Marie Guy André Frois, private soldier and previously clerk, of Touques Le Minard, France (aged 29), Vernon Andrew Thomas Miller, private soldier, of Hammersmith, London, England (aged 22), Corporal Joseph William Sneed, previously baker’s assistant, of Southampton, England (aged 25), Capitaine Gilles Thierry Louis-Marie Honoré de Bellecourt, of Château de La Rance, near Touques Le Minard, and Rue St Honoré, Paris, France (aged 26) and Captain Peter George Meredith Foulkes of Yewdon House, near Chipping Ditter, England (aged 23), had drawn up an agreement of tontine, whereby each would invest as he saw fit what was in those days a considerable sum (but today would not have been enough to purchase that four-wheel-drive that Andy Hordern had his eye on), for the ultimate benefit of the heirs and assigns of the last survivor of the six of them.

    Was it that, the War being over, they felt they could look forward to long lives and untroubled times in which to let the investments mature? Or was it, on the contrary, that perhaps they had all suffered in some way from the War, possibly injuries or just as likely gas, and didn’t expect to make old bones but had hit upon this tontine idea so as one at least of their families would get something out of it? It was impossible to tell from the remaining evidence, though the Mullers, Bayleys and Horderns speculated on it at length.

    As to why six such oddly-assorted characters should have got together in this way... Well, two captains who were obviously gentlemen (“flamin’ aristocrats or something”, as Len Muller put it at one point), a clerk from, presumably, the country town near the residence of one of these gents, and a handful of nobodies from nowhere in particular? Well, Dave was pretty sure that Hammersmith was nowhere in particular, and though most of them had heard of Southampton, especially as it was the main port where the big passenger liners from Australia always used to dock in the good old days before jumbo jets, a baker’s assistant seemed a funny sort of mate for a pair of flamin’ aristocrats. Jimmy’s explanation was possibly the most likely: the Brits amongst the six had all been in the same regiment, see, and they’d got separated from the rest of their group, and these two Frogs musta joined up with them, maybe they’d been lost or something, and they’d all happened across this—um—treasure or something. All right, Dad, call it loot, if it’ll make ya any happier! Maybe they’d robbed a ruined church or something. Yeah, maybe they had committed murder, Buffy, if ya wanna be melodramatic about it, and shut up!

    The first of the six to die had been “Dusty” Miller, that seemed definite. Joseph Sneed and James Frazer had kept in touch, according to the letters in the old man’s house, right up to the Second World War. The letter that had enclosed a copy of the death certificate of Vernon Andrew Thomas Miller had been amongst the ones that Len had found in the farm office. It was dated 16th May 1926, so poor Private Miller certainly hadn’t made old bones.

Dear Jim,

   This is to apprise you of the sad news of poor Dusty’s death. Plse find, Enc., a copy of the death certificate.

    Capt. Foulkes wrote me like he said he would if Dusty kicked the bucket like we all thort and sure enough he did, poor old bugger. Bloody gas, his lungs was shot to blazes as you know. Capt. Foulkes was pretty cut up he come down some time after the funral and said sod the buggers and sod the bloody War and sod his bloody family and sod the bleeding class system. Which I couldn’t but agree, who gives a F— about all that and a pity the War didn’t get rid of all the buggers if you ask me and make a better world for all of us. Capt. Foulkes said his bro., you wouldn’t of met him he was Reg. Army, he has been in Germany on a walking tore and the place is still a bloody mess like you would not beleive and if some say as it serves them right for beleiving the Kaiser was going to win all I can say is poor bastards the same as us under the skin. Capt. Foulkes says the poor is getting poorer in Germany and mark his words there will be trubble from them again. Lets hope they have a B. revolushun like the Russkies then says I and he says here you turning Bolshie on us Joe and I said no I beleive in the capatallist sistem Capt., only when it is proper run, what this lot is not doing and he says do you mean ours or there’s Joe and I says both and he laffs. So I says how do the Roadhouse been doing Capt. and he tells me it has been turning a nice proffit and do I want to see the books which I must admit I would not mind so we go over the books and then he has a look at my books. The bakery like I wrote in my prevvious is doing good and the tea shop extra good this last year. I told Millie them ladies would take to those Froggy pastries she lerned up out of that book I got her and I was right we has never looked back since.

    The Capt. thinks I could open another bakery we was thinking of a 2nd tea shop but maybe he do have the right idea. Sneed’s Bakery Chain what do you think of that now Jim?

    He went up to Hamersmith to see poor Dusty’s family there is not much of them left as you know Jim. Old Mrs Miller was very cut up more especal as Anna you might not remmember her she was the only sister what came through the flue eperdemic, well she do be very porely the Capt. says it is undowtedly consumpshun only no-one is not menshuning it to old Mrs M., well that is understandabble Capt says I. So what will become of her if Anna goes says I and the Capt. says him and Muriel that is Mrs Foulkes they will persuede her to come down to them only if she is too bad by then they will see she is proper looked after. So he left his share of the Roadhouse what was not tyed up in Y.K.W. to them did he Capt.? says I. But no the Capt. says as he left it to him as he knowed he was not long for this world poor old Dusty and the Roadhouse do need all the capatal it can get. Which is sensabble.

    The Capt. has prommised to see the old lady and the sister right and he is a real gent, what will keep his word no fears on that score. After a bit Millie asks dellercate if there is any good news only the Capt. says no and he has had Mrs F. to a London specallist and the man says there is nothing organicall wrong. I supose we can beleive that or not, he is ready enough to take the Capt.’s money. Sad because she is a lady that loves children. And sent her very best to Millie and made young Liz a little dress with her own hands. Smocked and all. Millie says you never see anything half as good in the posh shops here and if Mrs F. was not a lady she could make her living doing fine sewing.

    Which remminds me Barney is of again on his travvels he never is going to settle by the looks of it and says he will look you up if his ship docks in Australia. He got Millie these table clothes at a place called Madeera just like the cake and you never seen anything like the lace. They are too good for the shop.

    Well there is considerabble more to tell like the Capt. and Dusty bought a new motor car toggether. Dusty did the drivving when he could poor Dusty. The Capt.’s leg not being too good. Reading between the lines as he do not let on. The Capt. says do I want a bran new Bentley it is going beging but I says not I Capt., you had better teach Mrs F. to drive so he says he will think about it. He give me Dusty’s watch for young Vern as he wanted him to have it. I have put it away til he is older. The case has still got that dent from the time that snypper’s bullet nearly collecked him maybe looking back it would have been better if it had, he would not of had the suffring after. But the Capt. says he went remarkabble quiet you will be glad to hear Jim.

    There is not no news from France but I have writ Hubert Frois like I prommised. The Capt. has tryed to get in touch with that Capt. Dee B. only he don’t reply to his letters. Well maybe says I he’s gone too didn’t he get a doze of gas but the Capt. says I am misremembering, it was Hubert Frois what had had the gas. The Capt.’s bro. will look them up next time he is on the Continent we had best know what’s going on. So he do speak says I and the Capt. says yes Roger is a good sort. And Mrs F.’s parents is reckernsiled to them being in the lisenced trade now. What did they imagern you was going to live of after the War Capt., says I if you did not have no income before it and your Pa was in debt up to his ears and Millie says to hush but the Capt. you know he is always the same, he only laffs and says he is D—d if he knows.

    Well I had best stop as Millie says I am boring on for ever and will be just like old Pa in a few years if I dont watch it. Pa and Ma is keeping well and sends there best like wise the kids send love to Uncle Jim. Vern is still dettermined he will come and visit you in Australia when he is growed so maybe you will see him one of these days. Millie says when are you going to stop playing the feild and marry a nice girl arnt there any nice girls out in Australia.

Your affectionate comrade,

Joe Sneed.

    “How come he can spell ‘affectionate’ but he can’t spell ‘field’?” wondered Jimmy.

    “He’d most probably have learnt to write a letter at school,” explained Len tolerantly. “They did back in them days. You know: the right way to begin and end and so forth.”

    “I get it. It’s interesting, isn’t it? I wonder who Barney was?”

    “Joe’s brother. He mentions him in some of the other letters. He was still in the merchant navy when the Second World War broke out. Drowned at sea in the early days of the War, poor bastard,” said Len, making a face. “And then young Vern—he mentions him in this one, doesn’t he? Yeah, that’s right: well, he was killed at Dunkirk.”

    “How dreadful,” said Linnet softly.

    “Was he a soldier?” asked Buffy.

    Len sighed. “Yeah.”

    “What about the Captain? Did he and Muriel ever have kids, Len?” asked Pam with interest.

    “Dunno. The Captain didn’t write much. Or if he did, old Jim didn’t keep the letters. Um—here: this pile over here. This one on top’s the important one—1928. Explains how in God’s name old Jim ever got mixed up with ruddy Madeleine with the mo’. More or less.”

    Pam seized it eagerly. Marion came to read over her shoulder.

My dear Jim,

    I trust all is well with you and that the farm is prospering. I see wheat prices are up again this year, which must be good news for you.

    I have finally managed to get over to France and have made contact with Hubert Frois. He has been very ill these last several years and has been unable to reply to our letters. I spoke to his sister, Mlle. Madeleine Frois, who seems a sensible woman. She speaks a bit of English but can’t write it. Fortunately Muriel speaks French so we were able to communicate without having to have recourse to my rusty rendition of Mademoiselle from Armentières!

    Frois has invested his share of Y.K.W. safely in French Government bonds and as the poor fellow is now incapable of managing it I have advised Mlle. Frois to keep it there.

    At this point Pam looked up and said: “Ugh. What would have happened to French government bonds when the Nazis invaded, Dave?”

    Dave made a sick noise and drew his hand across his throat.

    “Oh, dear!” cried Marion.

    “We dunno that they left the dough in the bonds,” said Len.

    “Let’s hope they didn’t,” noted Dave drily.

    “Yeah. –Hold on! Look, that’ll be why old Jim’s will made such a thing of Madeleine not putting any dough into the property! He was trying to indicate that she didn’t bring any of the tontine money out with her!”

    “Well, could be, yeah,” allowed Dave. “Bit of a pity, eh?”

    “Uh—oh, yeah. Woulda gone down the tubes, then. Bugger.”

    “Come on, Pam!” urged Marion.

    “Oh, right. Finished this page?” Marion nodded; Pam turned over.

    The news of the De Bellecourts is rather disturbing. Captain de Bellecourt died some years back. However, Mlle. Frois tells us the family regularly occupies their big country house just outside the village, and as that’s the address to which I’ve been writing, I would have expected to get some sort of reply. I think we might have to write off that share, Jim: the De Bellecourts seem to have welshed on the deal. Mlle. Frois tells us that they would!

    According to Frois the De Bellecourts were broke at the end of the War, but at the present time they are certainly not that. Mlle. F. tells us they are “richissime” (Frog for rolling in it) from knitted fabrics, if that’s worth anything. As I say, they seem to have welshed on the deal.

    Mlle. Frois has got the bit between her teeth now that she knows the full story, and will write to you herself to keep you up to date. Hope you can read Frog, Jim! She says she’ll find out what the De Bellecourts are up to, but I’d say she hasn’t got a hope. Muriel and I drove up there and spoke nicely to the man at the gate but though we could see the family were in residence the fellow refused to let us in. We left three telephone messages but to no avail.

    Let us know how things are your end, old fellow. The roadhouse is still going well, and those stocks and shares that Roger tipped me the wink about are going a bomb, so all is well here. Muriel sends her kindest regards.

Cordially yours,

Peter Foulkes.

    “I suppose it sort of explains... Well, Madeleine must have started writing to Jim,” decided Pam.

    “Pen-pal romance. Well, wouldn’t be the first, I suppose,” agreed Dave. “Could he read French, though?”

    “Yes,” said Linnet definitely.

    They stared at her.

    “Couldn’t he, Mum?”

    “Mm? Oh—yes, dear... I think I’ll just take another look…” She wandered out of the office.

    “Tell ’er she can have the ruddy writing desk, for Pete’s sake, before she drives us all barmy,” said Len to his offspring.

    “A quarter of it’s—”

    “SHUT UP!” he roared.

    Pouting, Buffy flounced out.

    “Mum doesn’t want it for herself, Dad: she wants it for Fergie,” Jimmy explained tolerantly. “Eh, Linnet?”

    “Yes. –Uncle Jim could definitely read French, Aunty Pam. But he could never speak it very well. I think he learned it out of books.”

    Len sighed heavily. “Well,” he said to his son: “go and tell her she can have it for Fergie. –Here, she doesn’t imagine she’s gonna do it up herself, does she?” he added in a voice of doom.

    “Why not?” said Linnet.

    “Hell’s teeth, Linnet, it’ll be the rocking-chair do all over again!”

    “Never mind. it’ll keep her mind off Buffy, the Supermodel,” said Jimmy tolerantly. “Okay, Dad, I’ll tell her. –’Tis all right with you, eh, Linnet?”

    “Mm.”

    Jimmy wandered out, yawning widely.

    “Isn’t it funny?” said Pam, re-reading Captain Foulkes’s letter. “It’s so… stiff. He doesn’t sound like the same man that Joe describes in his letter, does he?”

    Linnet had picked up the last of the Captain’s letters. “Joe could write and the Captain couldn’t,” she said, not looking up. “So much for English gentlemen. This letter’s from Aberdeen. 1942. I thought you said Captain Foulkes moved to Felixstowe, Dad?”

    “Yeah, he did. Bought a pub there. There’s a photo of it in one of those clippings.”

    “I wonder what he was doing in Aberdeen? He’s saying his brother Roger’s been killed, isn’t that sad, Dad? He must have stayed in the army.”

    “Yeah, I’d say so.”

    Dave picked up the Captain’s death certificate. “1943. So the War got him, too. He’d be Number... Three, right?

    “Um—no,” said Len. “Four.”

    “Four?” Dave began counting on his fingers. “First poor old Dusty Miller gets his, back in the Twenties—right?”

    “Uh—ye-ah... Well, De Bellecourt mighta been first, Dave.”

    “Yeah. Well, anyway, that’s two that go, fairly early on in the piece. So if the Captain bought it in the War—”

    “Nope. You’ve forgotten Hubert,” said Len. “The Captain woulda been Number Four.”

    “Oh—right,” agreed Dave. “Dropping like flies, aren’t they?” he added cheerfully.

    “Yes,” said Linnet. “This is the last letter about Hubert Frois: 1934. There’s only the death certificate after this; I expect Madeleine brought it with her.”

    Pam peered over her shoulder. “Well, go on, dear, read it!”

    Linnet sighed. She meant translate it. “You’ve already heard it once. Oh, all right,

My Angel,

    This may be the last letter I write to you from France. The investments are as I explained in my last letter. I do not think we can better them.

    The priest has done as I asked and been to see Mme de Bellecourt but to no avail. She and young Mr Bertrand were prepared to be co-operative and she said she would speak to the Count on our behalf to at least clarify the situation. However, after that the curé was not admitted at the château and three weeks later we received a letter from Maître Langlois threatening legal action if we approached the family again with what was described as a nonsensical claim. Clearly the Count is refusing to admit the situation exists. I do not like to put more exact details to paper so unless you advise me otherwise I will not write to the Maître.

    Linnet looked up. “That’s the lawyer: Mémé’s uncle, of course.”

    Len sighed. “Yeah, all right, it explains why your grandmother came out here in the first place. She’d heard about South Australia through old Madeleine and thought she’d give it a go: pastures new.”

    Linnet replied with the utmost calm: “Either that or she knew all about the tontine and thought she’d latch onto it.”

    “Linnet!” gasped Pam in horror.

    “She’s like that,” explained Len grimly. “She calls it being logical. Gets it from old Lisette.”

    “Well, she did work as a typist in her uncle’s law office,” said Linnet to Pam.

    “But dear—!”

    “Yeah. ’Tis logical, actually,” said Dave, rubbing his bony jaw. “Lisette knows old Hubert’s popped ’is clogs; and Captain de Bellecourt; and ten to one she had a pretty fair idea old Madeleine was past producing any offspring for Jim: so she hops on a boat and turns up at the Frazers’ bold and brass and twice as natural, and marries the closest relative of Jim’s that’s going begging.”

    “Dave Hordern!” cried Pam, scandalized.

    “Come on, Pam,” he said: “she’s hard as nails, old Lisette. Wouldn’t put anything past ’er. –And by cripes, it’s worked,” he said in awe. “Well, it’s not her and old John Frazer that are copping the lot, but it’s bloody well her grandkids!”

    “She was a slip of a girl of nineteen when she came out here!” she cried.

    “Too right,” said Dave, unmoved.

    “I think it’s very likely, Uncle Dave,” said Linnet calmly. “Mémé is very practical. But she made Grandad a good wife. I don’t think he was unhappy.”

    “Once he got used to having lace antimacassars on every available surface and having to take his shoes off before he came into his own flamin’ house—no,” agreed Dave drily. “—Oy, Len: you could tell Marion to pack up all them antimacassars of old Madeleine’s for the old bird. And them funny Froggy pillowcases.”

    Len eyed him drily. “Already has.”

    Dave went into a spluttering fit.

    “Um, well, go on, dear,” said Pam in a very weak voice to Lisette Frazer’s granddaughter.

    Obediently Linnet read on:

    My dear brother Hubert is still very sick, almost on his deathbed. As we know, the money will be yours after his death provided that the news from Great Britain is correct.

    She looked up. “This next bit’s where I had it a bit wrong before, Dad. Well, I had the emphasis wrong, I think.”

    “Mm? Aw—yeah. –Ya know, when ya look at ’er, she’s actually got a look of old Lisette,” he said numbly to the Horderns.

    They looked hard at Linnet.

    “Yeah,” agreed Dave.

    “No!” cried Pam.

    Jimmy had come back in time to overhear this last exchange. “Yeah, I’ve always thought so. Same nose. Buffy’s got it, too. –Mum’s getting Kyle to put that desk on the trailer,” he warned his father.

    Len sighed heavily but said nothing.

    “I told ’im he could put that flamin’ playpen on it too, while he was about it!” added Jimmy with some feeling.

    Len grinned. “Yeah. –Well, go on, Linnet, read out the rest of it. And before anybody says anything, the news from Great Britain, I’ve worked out, was that Joe Sneed had come down with something fatal. Only he got over it. Dunno why Madeleine thought the Captain was out of the running—well, maybe he was sick, too. There aren’t any letters from him from that period. Could be his gammy leg was playing him up. –Dead of winter, that letter must of been written,” he noted.

    “Yes: that’s why the family was at the château: Mémé said they used to come down for Christmas,” said Linnet.

    “Wha— The De Bellecourts?” he said limply.

    “‘Yes. Mémé remembers Mme de Bellecourt quite well. She wasn’t the Count’s wife, she was the Captain’s belle-soeur. I’ve forgotten the English word.”

    “Sister-in-law,” said Jimmy in a bored voice, yawning.

    “Oh, yes. Sister-in-law,” said Linnet placidly. “She was very beautiful. And Monsieur Bertrand was the Captain’s son. He was a bit younger than Mémé, I think. She said he was a beautiful young man!” she added with a smile.

    Jimmy raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

    “I wonder if he’s still alive?” said Pam thoughtfully. “He’d be in his seventies: it’s not impossible.”

    “Yeah, but he wouldn’t inherit, Pam: the Captain was one of the first to go,” said Dave with a sigh.

    “Oh, yes. Well, go on, Linnet, dear.”

    The Bellecourt family won’t have any claim. As the Count is refusing to recognize my dear brother I think that we can discount their claim!

    “ I think that’s more accurate,” said Linnet dubiously. “The rest of it’s all about the Bellecourt factories and so forth. She doesn’t actually say that they were founded by the tontine money but I think that must be what she means. She seems to have got this curé onto that as well. Priest, I mean.”

    “Yeah, well, that’s four of ’em out of it by the end of the War,” said Dave comfortably. “De Bellecourt, Dusty Miller, Hubert the Frog, and Captain Foulkes.”

    “Mm... Wonder if Joe Sneed bought it during the bombing, Dave: wasn’t Southampton bombed to blazes?” said Len.

    “You’re right. Would explain why there aren’t any more letters, wouldn’t it? Well, good: that’s five,” said Dave. “Leaves old Jim!” He grinned at them.

    “We don’t know that Joe Sneed’s dead, Dave,” objected Len uneasily.

    “No, we don’t,” agreed Linnet calmly.

    “Rats. He’d be—hang on, Linnet, when’s it say he was born, in the tontine?”

    Resignedly Linnet looked it up for him. “1893.”

    “Well, Jesus, ’e must be dead, he’d be ninety-eight!” he cried.

    “Or ninety-nine if his birthday’s in January,” said Jimmy pedantically.

    “Yes,” agreed Linnet.

    “Al} right,” he said crossly: “give ’im a couple more years and if we see ’im on TV getting a telegram from the Queen we’ll know he’s not dead!”

    “Better write to Southampton,” said Len uneasily. “Uh—get this lawyer type of old Jim’s onto it, I suppose ’ud be the ticket.”

    “A Sydney lawyer?” gasped Pam in horror. “Len, he’ll charge the earth!”

    “You reckon the Adelaide ones’d be cheaper?” he said in a hard voice.

    “Yeah, they reckon those lawyers at the State Bank Royal Commission pull down a thousand dollars a day!” agreed Jimmy.

    “Yeah, be cheaper to hop on a plane and nip over to Pongo yaself,” said Dave, grinning at Len. “You and Marion could go: give yourselves a bit of a holiday. She could look at them English gardens—oh, and antique rocking-chairs and writing desks,” he said with a wink at Jimmy, “and you could—uh—”

    “Kip on the tour buses,” said Jimmy.

    He and Dave went into sniggering fits.

    “It’s not funny. It could be terribly difficult to trace anyone in Southampton,” said Pam worriedly.

    “I’d try the phone book,” said Linnet mildly.

    Her father opened his mouth to wither her but thought better of it.

    “Yes, but dear, remember A Town Like Alice?” cried Pam.

    They goggled at her.

    “You know! Where she used to go ice-skating! She went back and all that was left was her skating boots!” she cried.

    “Buffy could try that instead of roller-blades: might not fall off them,” offered Jimmy.

    “Shut up,” sighed his father. “Uh—oh, I get it, Pam: you mean if the Sneeds’ place was blitzed out of existence?”

    Pam nodded vigorously. “Wasn’t her aunty’s house all gone?” she said to Linnet.

    “Whose?” she replied in bewilderment.

    “She didn’t watch it,” explained Jimmy tolerantly. “Or the repeats.”

    Dave was searching through the newspaper clippings. “There’s something—ah!” he grunted.

    “Don’t muck those piles up,” sighed Len.

    “I’m not. This is ya Sneed pile, right? –Well, here!” Dave waved a clipping at him.

    Sighing, Len took it off him. “‘Joseph Sneed opens new bakery’—big deal. Some local rag, by the looks of it. 1937. Very helpful, Dave.”

    “At least it gives you another address!” said Dave huffily.

    “Dave, it was over fifty years ago!”

    “Ye-ah... Only there’s a chance it wasn’t bombed. And if it wasn’t, the Poms won’t’ve pulled it down,” he said confidently.

    “Rebuilt most of London, haven’t they? Why shouldn’t they of rebuilt most of Southampton?” returned Len disagreeably.

    “What’s the point in arguing about it?” said Linnet calmly.

    Pam had opened her mouth to say something similar, only not quite as... Oh, dear. Len wasn’t far wrong, there was something of old Lisette Frazer in Linnet, wasn’t there? Sort of—cold, hard logic, or something. Swallowing, she said: “Mm. You’ll need to find out the facts for sure. Only it does give you a starting point, Len. Now, who’s for afternoon tea?”

    “Is there any?” said Jimmy.

    Pam laughed tolerantly. “Of course! I brought some over, dear! Now, do you want to go and find Kyle and Andy, Jimmy?”

    Jimmy departed obediently. Len ambled off to round up the others. Pam bustled out to the now startlingly clean, if shabby, kitchen.

    In the office Linnet wandered over to the window, and sighed. “I wish Little Roo hadn’t died.”

    “Eh? Aw, old Jim’s joey? Well, we all gotta go some time, Linnet,” said Dave kindly. “And ’e was only a kanga, after all.”

    Linnet chewed on her lip. “Mm.”

    “Probably illegal to keep him as a pet anyway,” he offered.

    “Who cares?” said Linnet fiercely.

    Dave swallowed a sigh. He endeavoured to suppress a guilty thought along the lines of: Did she care about any human being as much as she seemed to have cared about old Jim’s ruddy joey? Well, she’d been fond of the old man, that was true.

    “I’ve been thinking...” said Linnet slowly.

    “Uh—yeah?” he returned warily.

    She turned round, frowning. “If Captain Foulkes and Dusty Miller only owned a hotel, and we don’t know if the Captain still had that by the time he died, and if Hubert Frois’s share of the tontine disappeared when the Nazis invaded France, and if Joe Sneed’s property was bombed out of existence, doesn’t it seem likely to you that all that’s left besides this place is the Bellecourts’ investment? And if they’d nicked it as far back as the 1920’s, why should they give it up now?”

    Dave gulped. “Well—uh—something along those lines had occurred to me, yeah. Only—uh—look, love, don’t say anything to your father just yet, eh? He’s all fired up about it.”

    “Well, all right, I won’t,” said Linnet dubiously. “Though I can’t see why not. It’s not as if it was him that had inherited it.”

    Dave winced. “He’s excited because it’s his kids it’s coming to. Sometimes I wonder about you, Linnet.”

    “Do you? Mum often says that to me,” said Linnet detachedly. “I don’t seem to be able to see things the way other people do.”

    Dave winced again. “No,” he muttered.

    “I don’t understand why people can’t be logical,” she said, frowning.

    Dave sighed. “I got that, yeah.”

    “But if you think I shouldn’t tell Dad, I won’t.” She paused. “So shouldn’t I tell him ever?”

    Dave experienced a strong desire to rip his short, neat, pepper-and-salt hair out by the roots. Sort of feeling ya had just before ya really went troppo, tore all ya clothes off and rushed out starkers into the howling wilderness beyond the black stump in search of El Dorado—ya know? Two seconds before.

    “Just leave it alone, eh? He’ll find out soon enough,” he grunted.

    “Righto. –Those cuttings in French are all about the Bellecourt factories. ‘Usines La Rance.’ La Rance is the name of their château. Mémé says they’re the big company ULR, now.”

    “‘Ooh-ell-aire?’“ echoed Dave weakly.

    “That’s its initials. Yew, Ell, Ar,” said Linnet kindly in English. “They’re into fabric and garment manufacture, and artificial fibres. All over Europe, not just in France. They’re not nearly as big as Dupont or the other giant multinationals, of course.”

    Dave just looked at her numbly.

    “They’ve recently diversified into seeds.”

    “Eh?”

    “Seed production. It’s very big business. I think they got into it through their connections with European flax producers: linen,” she explained.

    “Linen?”

    “Flax produces both linen and linseed, Uncle Dave,” she said calmly.

    The farmer gulped. “Linseed. Gotcha.”

    “They’re experimenting with new strains of genetically improved linseed and mustard seed; I was reading about it in a journal quite recently.’“

    “Oh! I see!”

    “I didn’t know that ULR was anything to do with the Bellecourts, of course, at that stage.”

    “No.” He looked at her limply. “Yeah: it’s big business, all right, these days. Big and dirty, if what ya read about plant variety rights is anything to go by.”

    Linnet nodded seriously. “Yes.”

    “Suit them De Bellecourts down to the ground, if you ask me,” he said grimly. “Dirty pool seems to be their middle name.”

    “Yes. And it seems to me that if the original tontine investment did start the first Usine La Rance—the first factory, I mean—and if the eighty percent investment was never taken out of the business and set aside when Captain de Bellecourt died, which I’d say didn’t happen,” said Linnet dispassionately, “then we’d have a pretty good claim to eighty percent of ULR.”

    “Uh-huh. Hold on... Look, this could be really messy, Linnet! Is it a public company?”

    “I don’t know. But that had occurred to me, too. I suppose we could sue the Bellecourts for eighty percent of their holdings.” She eyed him a trifle drily. “And by the sounds of them they’d counter-offer with eighty percent of whatever the first factory was worth when Captain de Bellecourt died. Shortly after he put his money into it.”

     Dave gulped. “I’d say you’d hit the nail on the head, there, Linnet. And—well, shit! Huge rich European company...” He looked at slim little Linnet in her awful shorts and baggy blouse with her hair pinned up in an old metal clip. “You and the kids wouldn’t stand a chance,” he concluded. “Sydney lawyer or not.”

    “No,” said Linnet calmly. “I don’t think so, either, Uncle Dave. Only I can’t see how to persuade Dad to forget about it now he’s got the bit between his teeth.” She paused. “Can you?”

    Dave Hordern gulped. “No, love, I can’t,” he said frankly.

    “No,” agreed Linnet calmly. She went back to the window and looked out over old Jim Frazer’s dusty acres.

    Dave eyed her uncertainly.

    “People do things in such incredibly stupid ways,” decided Linnet at last, not turning round. “If Uncle Jim really loved me, why didn’t he just let me come out here and live with him and Little Roo and—and just be peaceful? Why bother with stupid wills and stuff? Rose and Jimmy and Buffy could have had the shares.”

    Dave passed a hand over his face.

    “I suppose he thought it wasn’t the right thing to do,” concluded Linnet vaguely.

    Dave passed a hand over his face again. “Yeah.”

Next chapter:

https://frazerinheritance1-adelaidesdaughters.blogspot.com/2024/07/an-unpleasant-discovery.html