“The size of the inheritance,” said Julia, “is a matter of mere detail. Lilian is the specific legatee, under the will of her deceased uncle, of a complete set of the works of the late Captain W. E. Johns. The executors, Messrs. Stingham and Grynne, have failed and neglected to hand it over to her.”
“I don’t suppose,” said Cantrip, “that they actually wanted it for themselves. But let’s face it, if you appoint a snooty firm like Stingham’s to be your executors and then go and die leaving an estate worth twelve hundred quid, they’re not exactly going to give you top priority. If they get round to applying for probate by the turn of the century, you can think yourself jolly lucky.”
“The poor girl first sought advice from Henry, who told her that the matter wasn’t worth fussing about. He would naturally be reluctant to antagonise a leading firm of solicitors. In her despair, she turned to Cantrip.”
“Well, not in despair exactly,” said Cantrip, “but jolly miffed. She hadn’t actually seen this uncle of hers since she was a kid — he was one of those chaps who are always going off to make their fortune and turn up once in ten years or so to borrow a fiver — but she thought it was frightfully nice of him to have wanted to leave her these books and pretty rotten that she wasn’t getting them after all. It made a sort of bond between us, because that’s how I felt about the air gun my Uncle Hereward gave me on my fourteenth birthday, and it got taken away from me just because I broke a few windows.”
“And were you,” I asked, “able to assist her?”
“Oh, rather,” said Cantrip. “There’s a bird at Stingham’s called Clemmie Derwent who’s an old mate of mine — we were at Cambridge together. So I rang her and told her to get a move on, as a favour under the Old Pals Act, and they’re going to hand these books over any day now. So Lilian thinks I’m the greyhound’s galoshes, and Henry’s as miffed as maggots.”
“That,” I said, “must be extremely gratifying.”
“Well, in a way,” said Cantrip, with a look of sudden doubt. “The trouble is, though, that when Henry’s miffed he can make life a bit difficult. You suddenly find you haven’t got any fees coming in and the only work you’re getting is Legal Aid cases in Scunthorpe. What he’s done this time is put the kybosh on a rather jolly little spot of holiday I thought I’d got fixed up in Jersey. Clemmie Derwent wants me there on the Friday after Easter to advise the trustees of some settlement thing, and she wants me to stay over until the Monday, so I thought it would be a sound scheme to stop on for the rest of the week and sit on the beach and build sand castles. But Henry’s gone and accepted a brief in West London County Court on Tuesday afternoon, and he says he can’t give it to anyone else, so I’ve got to come back. I bet you anything he did it on purpose.”
“Are you saying,” said Julia in a curious tone, “that Clementine Derwent has instructed you in connection with a case in Jersey?”
“That’s right,” said Cantrip. “I haven’t the foggiest what it’s about.”
“I see — how nice,” said Julia, imparting to these words a degree of coldness which one might have supposed sustainable only by some more polysyllabic observation.
I was perplexed. Unless she had decided in the cause of Art to rehearse in propria persona the icy disdain which characterised her heroine, I could think of nothing to account for her sudden change of manner. Her tone had unmistakably been that used by a well-bred Englishwoman to indicate that if she were not well-bred, or not English, she would be making a scene. Had I not known how long it was since she and Cantrip had been on the terms sometimes productive of such a sentiment, I would almost have suspected her of jealousy.
“I say,” said Cantrip, “are you miffed about something?”
“No,” said Julia. “Of course not.”
“Yes, you are,” said Cantrip. “What are you miffed about?”
“My dear Cantrip,” said Julia, “I have already said that I am not miffed about anything.”
“All right then, what aren’t you miffed about in particular?”
“Since you ask, I am in particular not miffed about Clementine Derwent sending you instructions in connection with a case in Jersey. Clementine is entitled to send instructions to anyone she pleases, and I hope her clients will be as impressed as I am by the originality of her choice of Counsel.”
“Look here, Larwood,” said Cantrip, “what’s that supposed to mean?”
“You will forgive my saying, I hope, in view of our long-standing friendship, that you are not universally regarded as an expert in Revenue matters.”
“No, of course I’m not. Whenever I try to read a Finance Act I come over all wobbly and have to lie down, like you with a first-aid manual. What’s that got to do with me going to Jersey? No one’s said there’s a tax angle.”
“My dear Cantrip, in Jersey there’s always a tax angle. It’s the whole raison d’être of the place.”
“Just because it happens to be a tax haven—”
“ ‘Offshore financial centre’ is the expression generally preferred in polite circles.”
“Just because it’s an offshore what’s-it that doesn’t mean they can’t have cases about anything else. They have cows there, don’t they? It’s probably a claim for possession of a cow shed.”
“That would be governed by the law of Jersey, that is to say by the ancient customary law of the Duchy of Normandy, and would be dealt with by Jersey advocates. The services of English solicitors or Counsel are required in Jersey only in those cases where fiscal considerations are of major importance. That is why it is usual, you see, to instruct in such matters Counsel believed to have at least a nodding acquaintance with the Taxes Acts. Miss Derwent, in her less original moods, would normally instruct… myself, for example.”
My perplexity vanished. The chagrin of a woman displaced in her lover’s affections is as nothing compared with that of a barrister superseded in the favour of a leading firm of solicitors. Cantrip, now likewise perceiving what was amiss, made haste to soothe Julia’s wounded feelings with all the eloquence of which he was capable.
“Look here, Larwood, I’ve heard you talk a lot of bilge in my time, but the bilge you’re talking now just about takes the biscuit. Have a bit of sense, for heaven’s sake — even if Clemmie’d gone off you for her tax stuff, you don’t honestly think she’d send it to me, do you? Clemmie’s not an idiot — she’d go to someone else at the Tax Bar.”
“I suppose,” said Julia, beginning to be mollified, “that there is something in what you say.”
“What I think is that Clemmie’s going to land me with something so frantically boring, she can’t get anyone else to do it — going through two hundred files of correspondence in somebody’s beastly office or something like that. Let’s face it, I owe her a favour on account of her helping over Lilian, and when a solicitor you owe a favour to sends you to Jersey for four days, there’s got to be a snag somewhere. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with the place itself, is there? I don’t have to learn that funny Frogspeak they talk there?”
Julia confirmed that it would be unnecessary for him to master the local patois and that there was no other feature of the island which might be regarded as a drawback. She spoke, indeed, with such enthusiasm of its golden beaches and picturesque valleys, its imposing castles and charming manor houses, its abundant dairy products and tax-free wines and tobaccos as to present a picture of something little short of an earthly paradise.
“Unless,” she added, apparently as an afterthought, “you happen to be frightened of witches.”