Short Fiction M. R. James (good book recommendations TXT) 📖

it turned out, of which he had the absolute disposal, and it was understood that we⁠—my cousin and I⁠—would share it equally at his death. In a certain winter, over twenty years back, as I said, he was taken ill, and I was sent for to nurse him. My husband was alive then, but the old man would not hear of his coming. As I drove up to the house I saw my cousin John driving away from it in an open fly and looking, I noticed, in very good spirits. I went up and did what I could for my uncle, but I was very soon sure that this would be his last illness; and he was convinced of it too. During the day before he died he got me to sit by him all the time, and I could see there was something, and probably something unpleasant, that he was saving up to tell me, and putting it off as long as he felt he could afford the strength⁠—I’m afraid purposely in order to keep me on the stretch. But, at last, out it came. ‘Mary,’ he said⁠—‘Mary, I’ve made my will in John’s favour: he has everything, Mary.’ Well, of course that came as a bitter shock to me, for we⁠—my husband and I⁠—were not rich people, and if he could have managed to live a little easier than he was obliged to do, I felt it might be the prolonging of his life. But I said little or nothing to my uncle, except that he had a right to do what he pleased: partly because I couldn’t think of anything to say, and partly because I was sure there was more to come: and so there was. ‘But, Mary,’ he said, ‘I’m not very fond of John, and I’ve made another will in your favour. You can have everything. Only you’ve got to find the will, you see: and I don’t mean to tell you where it is.’ Then he chuckled to himself, and I waited, for again I was sure he hadn’t finished. ‘That’s a good girl,’ he said after a time⁠—‘you wait, and I’ll tell you as much as I told John. But just let me remind you, you can’t go into court with what I’m saying to you, for you won’t be able to produce any collateral evidence beyond your own word, and John’s a man that can do a little hard swearing if necessary. Very well then, that’s understood. Now, I had the fancy that I wouldn’t write this will quite in the common way, so I wrote it in a book, Mary, a printed book. And there’s several thousand books in this house. But there! you needn’t trouble yourself with them, for it isn’t one of them. It’s in safe keeping elsewhere: in a place where John can go and find it any day, if he only knew, and you can’t. A good will it is: properly signed and witnessed, but I don’t think you’ll find the witnesses in a hurry.’

“Still I said nothing: if I had moved at all I must have taken hold of the old wretch and shaken him. He lay there laughing to himself, and at last he said:

“ ‘Well, well, you’ve taken it very quietly, and as I want to start you both on equal terms, and John has a bit of a purchase in being able to go where the book is, I’ll tell you just two other things which I didn’t tell him. The will’s in English, but you won’t know that if ever you see it. That’s one thing, and another is that when I’m gone you’ll find an envelope in my desk directed to you, and inside it something that would help you to find it, if only you have the wits to use it.’

“In a few hours from that he was gone, and though I made an appeal to John Eldred about it⁠—”

“John Eldred? I beg your pardon, Mrs. Simpson⁠—I think I’ve seen a Mr. John Eldred. What is he like to look at?”

“It must be ten years since I saw him: he would be a thin elderly man now, and unless he has shaved them off, he has that sort of whiskers which people used to call Dundreary or Piccadilly something.”

“⁠—weepers. Yes, that is the man.”

“Where did you come across him, Mr. Garrett?”

“I don’t know if I could tell you,” said Garrett mendaciously, “in some public place. But you hadn’t finished.”

“Really I had nothing much to add, only that John Eldred, of course, paid no attention whatever to my letters, and has enjoyed the estate ever since, while my daughter and I have had to take to the lodging-house business here, which I must say has not turned out by any means so unpleasant as I feared it might.”

“But about the envelope.”

“To be sure! Why, the puzzle turns on that. Give Mr. Garrett the paper out of my desk.”

It was a small slip, with nothing whatever on it but five numerals, not divided or punctuated in any way: 11334.

Mr. Garrett pondered, but there was a light in his eye. Suddenly he “made a face,” and then asked, “Do you suppose that Mr. Eldred can have any more clue than you have to the title of the book?”

“I have sometimes thought he must,” said Mrs. Simpson, “and in this way: that my uncle must have made the will not very long before he died (that, I think, he said himself), and got rid of the book immediately afterwards. But all his books were very carefully catalogued: and John has the catalogue: and John was most particular that no books whatever should be sold out of the house. And I’m told that he is always journeying about to booksellers and libraries; so I fancy that he must have found out just which books are missing from my uncle’s library of those which are entered in the catalogue, and must be hunting for them.”

“Just so, just so,” said Mr. Garrett, and relapsed