At Bertram's Hotel (Miss Marple 11)

“No,” said Elvira, “I don’t think I’d be clever enough for that.” She paused before saying, “I suppose you’d have to agree to anything if I did want to do it?”

Egerton’s keen eyes focused sharply.

“I am one of your guardians, and a trustee under your father’s will, yes,” he said. “Therefore, you have a perfect right to approach me at anytime.”

Elvira said, “Thank you,” politely. Egerton asked:

“Is there anything worrying you?”

“No. Not really. But you see, I don’t know anything. Nobody’s ever told me things. One doesn’t always like to ask.”

He looked at her attentively.

“You mean things about yourself?”

“Yes,” said Elvira. “It’s kind of you to understand. Uncle Derek—” she hesitated.

“Derek Luscombe, you mean?”

“Yes. I’ve always called him uncle.”

“I see.”

“He’s very kind,” said Elvira, “but he’s not the sort of person who ever tells you anything. He just arranges things, and looks a little worried in case they mightn’t be what I’d like. Of course he listens to a lot of people—women, I mean—who tell him things. Like Contessa Martinelli. He arranges for me to go to schools or to finishing places.”

“And they haven’t been where you wanted to go?”

“No, I didn’t mean that. They’ve been quite all right. I mean they’ve been more or less where everyone else goes.”

“I see.”

“But I don’t know anything about myself, I mean what money I’ve got, and how much, and what I could do with it if I wanted.”

“In fact,” said Egerton, with his attractive smile, “you want to talk business. Is that it? Well, I think you’re quite right. Let’s see. How old are you? Sixteen—seventeen?”

“I’m nearly twenty.”

“Oh dear. I’d no idea.”

“You see,” explained Elvira, “I feel all the time that I’m being shielded and sheltered. It’s nice in a way, but it can get very irritating.”

“It’s an attitude that’s gone out of date,” agreed Egerton, “but I can quite see that it would appeal to Derek Luscombe.”

“He’s a dear,” said Elvira, “but very difficult, somehow, to talk to seriously.”

“Yes, I can see that that might be so. Well, how much do you know about yourself, Elvira? About your family circumstances?”

“I know that my father died when I was five and that my mother had run away from him with someone when I was about two, I don’t remember her at all. I barely remember my father. He was very old and had his leg up on a chair. He used to swear. I was rather scared of him. After he died I lived first with an aunt or a cousin or something of my father’s, until she died, and then I lived with Uncle Derek and his sister. But then she died and I went to Italy. Uncle Derek has arranged for me, now, to live with the Melfords who are his cousins and very kind and nice and have two daughters about my age.”

“You’re happy there?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ve barely got there. They’re all very dull. I really wanted to know how much money I’ve got.”

“So it’s financial information you really want?”

“Yes,” said Elvira. “I’ve got some money. Is it a lot?”

Egerton was serious now.

“Yes,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of money. Your father was a very rich man. You were his only child. When he died, the title and the estate went to a cousin. He didn’t like the cousin, so he left all his personal property, which was considerable, to his daughter—to you, Elvira. You’re a very rich woman, or will be, when you are twenty-one.”

“You mean I am not rich now?”

“Yes,” said Egerton, “you’re rich now, but the money is not yours to dispose of until you are twenty-one or marry. Until that time it is in the hands of your Trustees. Luscombe, myself and another.” He smiled at her. “We haven’t embezzled it or anything like that. It’s still there. In fact, we’ve increased your capital considerably by investments.”

“How much will I have?”

“At the age of twenty-one or upon your marriage, you will come into a sum which at a rough estimate would amount to six or seven hundred thousand pounds.”

“That is a lot,” said Elvira, impressed.

“Yes, it is a lot. Probably it is because it is such a lot that nobody has ever talked to you about it much.”

He watched her as she reflected upon this. Quite an interesting girl, he thought. Looked an unbelievably milk-and-water Miss, but she was more than that. A good deal more. He said, with a faintly ironic smile:

“Does that satisfy you?”

She gave him a sudden smile.

“It ought to, oughtn’t it?”

“Rather better than winning the pools,” he suggested.

She nodded, but her mind was elsewhere. Then she came out abruptly with a question.

“Who gets it if I die?”

“As things stand now, it would go to your next of kin.”

“I mean—I couldn’t make a will now, could I? Not until I was twenty-one. That’s what someone told me.”

“They were quite right.”

“That’s really rather annoying. If I was married and died I suppose my husband would get the money?”

“Yes.”

“And if I wasn’t married my mother would be my next of kin and get it. I really seem to have very few relations—I don’t even know my mother. What is she like?”

“She’s a very remarkable woman,” said Egerton shortly. “Everybody would agree to that.”

“Didn’t she ever want to see me?”

“She may have done…I think it’s very possible that she did. But having made in—certain ways—rather a mess of her own life, she may have thought that it was better for you that you should be brought up quite apart from her.”

“Do you actually know that she thinks that?”

“No. I don’t really know anything about it.”

Elvira got up.

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s very kind of you to tell me all this.”

“I think perhaps you ought to have been told more about things before,” said Egerton.

“It’s humiliating not to know things,” said Elvira. “Uncle Derek, of course, thinks I’m just a child.”

“Well, he’s not a very young man himself. He and I, you know, are well advanced in years. You must make allowances for us when we look at things from the point of view of our advanced age.”

Elvira stood looking at him for a moment or two.

“But you don’t think I’m really a child, do you?” she said shrewdly, and added, “I expect you know rather more about girls than Uncle Derek does. He just lived with his sister.” Then she stretched out her hand and said, very prettily, “Thank you so much. I hope I haven’t interrupted some important work you had to do,” and went out.

Egerton stood looking at the door that had closed behind her. He pursed up his lips, whistled a moment, shook his head and sat down again, picked up a pen and tapped thoughtfully on his desk. He drew some papers towards him, then thrust them back and picked up his telephone.

“Miss Cordell, get me Colonel Luscombe, will you? Try his club first. And then the Shropshire address.”

He put back the receiver. Again he drew his papers towards him and started reading them but his mind was not on what he was doing. Presently his buzzer went.

“Colonel Luscombe is on the wire now, Mr. Egerton.”

“Right. Put him through. Hallo, Derek. Richard Egerton here. How are you? I’ve just been having a visit from someone you know. A visit from your ward.”

“From Elvira?” Derek Luscombe sounded very surprised.