We crossed a dark hallway, deeply carpeted in blue plush and shining with the gleam of mahogany, the glitter of brass and the wink of polished mirrors, and rose up a set of wide and shallow stairs. Somewhere, deep in the innards of Murray and Ettrick, at least a few typewriting machines were clacking away like crickets, but these front parts – the stairs and the cavernous room we were taken into at the top of them – were hushed and still, free of any modern trappings and looking, with their tall cases full of well-bound books and deep button-backed chairs, exactly like a club library, only less smoky.
I seated myself neatly on a hard bench just inside the door and watched as Mr Ettrick led Lollie to an armchair and settled her into it as though she were a grandmother. As he turned away from her, his frown deepened and he rubbed his palms on his trousers.
‘Now… Mrs Balfour,’ he said, once he had sat down on the other side of an imposing desk, and clasped his hands together on top of it. ‘First of all, please allow me to say how very sorry we are. Murray and Ettrick have long been honoured to serve the legal needs of the Balfour family and we feel in our small way some of the shock and disbelief this most dreadful event must have brought to you.’ The words were conventional, but Mr Ettrick was an old hand at it and the tone and expression were perfect. Then he faltered. ‘Let me say, dear lady,’ he went on, looking down at his hands on the desk, ‘that we did not draw up your late husband’s will, nor did anyone in this office co-sign it as witness. We merely held it. We… that is to say, I… no one read it until yesterday morning.’ At this point Mr Ettrick’s discomfort led him as far as to acknowledge my existence. He gave me a quick look and then glanced towards the empty chair beside Lollie. I rose silently and came to sit in it.
‘Very well then,’ he continued. He wore the usual tall stiff celluloid collar of the town solicitor and at that moment it appeared to be strangling him. He gulped once or twice, then took a pair of small spectacles out of his breast pocket and wound them onto his ears with some deliberation. He was a man in his fifties but just then I could see the twenty-year-old he had once been. He drew towards him the green paper folder which was the only item on the desk-top and opened it.
‘I, Philip James Balfour of 31 Heriot Row, Edinburgh, do declare this 5th day of March in the year 1926 that this is my last will and testament and renders all earlier testamentary documents bearing my name null and void.’ Mr Ettrick cleared his throat and gripped the paper a little tighter. ‘I hereby give and bequeath everything of which I may die possessed or which may be hereafter due to me, both heritable property and moveable assets, in their entirety, to my cousin, George Pollard, formerly resident in St Mary’s Square, Gloucester.’ The solicitor bent his head and I felt Lollie stiffen in the chair beside me. ‘This disposition of my estate is in recognition of and recompense for the iniquities meted out from my forebears to that branch of the Balfour family connected by marriage to the Pollard family and to which my esteemed cousin belongs.’
‘He can’t do that,’ I said, putting an arm along the back of Lollie’s chair. ‘Mr Ettrick, I must protest in the strongest terms to you subjecting Mrs Balfour to this performance. You know very well that under Scots Law the widow cannot be disinherited.’
Mr Ettrick was holding up a hand like a policeman stopping traffic.
‘If you would allow me, Miss er…’ he said, and bent his head to continue reading.
‘I request that this gift and bequest be paid not earlier than two calendar years after the date of my death until which time it shall be held in trust for the said George Pollard excepting the payment of funeral costs and other necessary expenses, for example but without prejudice to the generality, outstanding personal bills.’
‘But he can’t,’ I insisted. ‘This is nonsense.’
‘Please,’ said Mr Ettrick. ‘If you would have just a little patience. I am coming to it, I assure you. I appoint Bertram Ettrick, Solicitor, as my executor and overseer of the trust and request specifically that he expedite with all possible haste the removal from my house at Heriot Row all servants and other residents, including Miss Walburga Percival.’
‘What?’ said Lollie and I felt a jolt pass through her.
‘There’s a little more,’ said Mr Ettrick, his voice so quiet now that I could hardly hear it. ‘There’s a codicil, requesting that George Pollard, after the will is fully executed of course, ascertain the burial place of my wife, Josephine Beatrice Balfour née Carson, born 22nd August 1890 and died 10th July 1924, and erect there a monument, the choosing of which I entrust to him, assured of his affectionate attention in this matter.’
‘Who?’ said Lollie. She was sitting forward, straining out of her seat, almost keening towards him, trying to understand. Mr Ettrick, unable to bear the look upon her face, directed his gaze instead at me.
‘Who witnessed it?’ I asked and he nodded slightly, as though acknowledging the sense of my question.
‘It was witnessed by a Miss Margaret Anne Taylor and a Miss Jessie Armstrong Abbott. Neither are known to me.’
‘Abbott and Maggie,’ said Lollie, in a dazed voice. ‘My maids, Mr Ettrick. Two of my maids.’
‘Ex-maids,’ I said, furiously thinking what that might mean, for it had to mean something.
Mr Ettrick had risen and gone to a section of bookcase lower than the rest where a sherry decanter and glasses were set out. He poured himself a stiff measure, swallowed it in one gulp and then refilled his glass and two others. He handed mine to me with a grim look and then placed Lollie’s carefully into her hand, wrapping her fingers around it. She put it down into her lap without a glance, but I admit that I knocked mine back just as readily and as indecorously as Mr Ettrick had his first and, I saw, his second.
‘I thought you were a maid yourself, madam, at first,’ he said to me. ‘I do beg your pardon.’
‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘Now, Mr Ettrick, the question is this: is it legal? It’s perfectly wicked, but is it legal? Will it stand?’
‘Ah!’ said Lollie and she raised her hands as though at some spectacle laid out before her, letting her glass tumble down, spilling sherry over her skirt and stockings. ‘1924! And we were married in 1921. And so we weren’t married, were we? I see.’ She sounded relieved, happy to have sorted the puzzling words of the will into something that made sense to her; she even smiled a little, but no sooner had the smile left her lips than she swayed back in her seat and then in one fluid movement, like an eel, she slipped downwards and, unless I had caught her under her arms and held her, would have slithered onto the floor.
Mr Ettrick, sturdier after all than the strangulated neck inside the stiff collar suggested, easily took her weight from me and carried her over to a sofa against the far wall, where he laid her down and stood over her, shaking his head and breathing loudly.
‘If this earlier marriage to Miss Carson is right enough,’ he said, ‘and if she really did die in 1924 then, yes, I daresay it’s perfectly legal and I’ll have no choice but to execute it. The wording is not what I would have written myself, but – most unfortunately – it’s clear enough that any objections would be batted away as cavils. If I had known what was in it, it would have been a different matter, though, I can tell you. Murray and Ettrick have never been party to any such thing in eighty years of practice, Miss er…’