Priceless (5 page)

The following weekend, Louisa’s elder son, Mark, dropped by.

“What happened to the painting of me and Julian?” he asked the moment he stepped into the drawing room. “Where did you get that bloody awful dog picture? How much did it cost you? Tell me it isn’t—”

“It’s Berkeley and Blackwater Bess,” Louisa told him proudly. “Since my real children only visit when they want something, I decided to have my new babies on the wall instead.”

“Mother. For heaven’s sake.”

“It’s rather wonderful, don’t you think? The girl who moved into the cottage painted it. She trained in London and Florence.”

“I don’t care where she trained. I can’t believe you would take down a portrait of your own children and put a picture of your bloody rescue greyhounds in its place!”

“Well, you will be able to put yourself and your brother back up there when I’m gone,” said Louisa. “And don’t worry,” she added. “The dogs may have replaced you above the fireplace, but they haven’t replaced you in my last will and testament. Yet. You’ll have to keep visiting for a few more months, at least.”

“Years, more like,” said Mark, barely disguising his annoyance. “I have no doubt that you will outlive us all.”

CHAPTER 4

I
t turned out that Mark Trebarwen was wrong. Just over a month after that exchange, Louisa passed away in her sleep. It was Serena who found the body. She and Louisa had been planning to drive down to St. Ives together, to see a new exhibition at the Cornish outpost of the Tate. Thank goodness Katie was safely in a holiday rental in Newquay with her father, who had actually bothered to turn up to do his share of the half-term “babysitting.”

Serena was devastated. Like Louisa’s sons, she had assumed that she would have years yet in which to get to know her lovely neighbor. It was just too sad to lose her so soon.

The doctor called Louisa’s sons and told them the bad news. They arrived the following day and arranged the funeral with great alacrity. It was well attended. Louisa had been well loved. She would be much missed.

Serena met Julian Trebarwen, Louisa’s younger son, for the first time at his mother’s wake. She had noticed him as soon as he’d walked into the church, but it had seemed the wrong moment to make his acquaintance. Though Louisa had often said that Julian took after his father, there was plenty of his mother in his face. His eyes were the same, gray-blue and intelligent. Despite what she had heard of his fecklessness, Serena couldn’t help but feel instantly warm toward this man whose smile reminded her so much of her friend. When she happened upon him
alone in the kitchen, she introduced herself and offered her condolences.

“Drink?” he asked, topping up her glass without waiting for her answer.

“I don’t know if I ought to. I mean …” She was thinking,
This is a wake. I shouldn’t get tipsy
.

Julian drained his own glass and poured himself another. Serena put it down to grief.

“Mark told me it was you who found her,” said Julian. “What a terrible thing for a neighbor to have to go through. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” said Serena. “She wasn’t just a neighbor. She was a friend. I feel honored to have known her.”

Julian Trebarwen gave Serena an appraising sort of look. “I’m sure she was very glad to know you too.”

Inappropriate as it seemed to be thinking such a thing at a funeral, Serena wondered if he hadn’t just given her the glad eye.

Alongside her sadness at losing a friend, Serena felt a great deal of curiosity about the future of Trebarwen House.

Everyone in the village wanted to know what was going to happen to the place. It was the only topic of conversation in the grocery store, the post office, and at the school gates. There were so many beautiful things at Trebarwen. Louisa had spent a lifetime collecting wonderful art and ornaments. Serena wondered if Louisa’s sons understood the significance of some of those pieces. Would they appreciate their worth?

She needn’t have worried. Mark Trebarwen intended to know the value of every last stick in that house.

“Do you want any of it?” Mark asked his younger brother as they sat together in the grand drawing room after the wake.

“I’d love some of it, but I don’t have room for knick-knacks in my two-bedroom house.” Julian laid great emphasis on “two-bedroom,” to remind his older brother of the difference in their circumstances. “I don’t need more stuff. I need the money.”

“Me too,” Mark admitted. “Eldest looks like he’s going to fail his A levels, which means I’ll have to pay for a crammer. In any case, the inheritance tax is going to be crippling. I don’t see how we’ll be able to meet it without selling something. I’ll call Nat Wilde at Ludbrook’s. Get him to come down and take a look over the house. But I’ve got to go back to Singapore this weekend. Can you be here to let him in so he can tell us what’s worth putting up for sale? Sooner the better.”

Julian nodded. Though he had the feeling that Mark’s reasons for wanting cash had very little to do with inheritance tax or his son’s education. More likely, he wanted to fund a divorce from his hideous horse-faced wife. In any case, it wouldn’t be such a hardship for Julian to stay down in Cornwall for a few more days. It would mean at least that he wouldn’t have to deal with Mia, his most recent ex. She was taking the end of their relationship very badly, turning up in the middle of the night to try to persuade him to take her back. He had to admit he had been tempted. Mia may have been high maintenance, but she was very good in the sack, and Julian missed that. It was hard to maintain a sensible distance when Mia turned up in some low-cut top, specifically designed to showcase her fabulous tits. But she was as mad as a box of frogs, and there was a very real danger that if he took her to bed again, she would stab him to death as he slept. Julian needed to find a replacement shag as soon as possible to prevent him from slipping back into that crazy situation. As that thought crossed his mind, so too did a picture of the girl from the house down the lane. Serena. She wasn’t
at all bad-looking, and there had been no bloke in tow. Was she single? Divorced? Perhaps he should give her a call. Take her to the pub on the pretext of recompensing her for having had to deal with the corpse of his mother. See what happened next.

CHAPTER 5

N
at Wilde was delighted to hear from his old prep school chum Mark Trebarwen.

“Chubby!” he exclaimed, using a nickname that had been hard lost. “How the devil are you? How’s your dear old mother?”

“She’s dead,” said Mark shortly.

“Whoops. Sorry about that, old chap. Can’t believe I missed the announcement in the
Telegraph.”

Nat had his staff scan the death notices and obits every day. He had a file full of extremely tasteful condolence cards ready to be sent out to newly bereaved relatives at the drop of a hat.

“We didn’t put an announcement in,” said Mark, aware it was bad form to have forgotten. Still, his mother wasn’t such a stickler for form in her latter years, as that bloody painting of the dogs had proved.

“Oh, well. In that case I don’t feel quite such a chump,” said Nat. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure? Want to arrange some work experience for one of your children?” he suggested disingenuously. They both knew why Mark was calling.

“No. Not yet. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind coming down to Cornwall and having a look over the house. There are a few things that might be worth something. I really don’t know. I haven’t been able to look that closely. Mother’s death is still too, too fresh.”

“I understand,” said Nat, voice dripping with concern. “Well, don’t trouble yourself about it. You’ve come to exactly the right man. I’ll take care of everything. When would you like me to stop by?”

Nat was unusually accommodating. He and Chubby Trebarwen hadn’t been the best of chums at school, but Nat had sensed from very early on that the Trebarwen family had a bob or two. Mark Trebarwen senior had sent his driver and a Bentley to pick his two sons up at the end of each term. And when Louisa Trebarwen had graced her boys with her presence on speech and sports days, she had usually been wearing fur and been dripping in diamonds. Nat was almost salivating at the thought of what her house might contain.

“I can come down tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve always been of the opinion that when you suffer the loss of a beloved parent, you should deal with the grief by keeping on the move. It’s once you stop that the unhappiness hits you. But if they get straight on with sorting out their affairs, people usually find that by the time they’ve stopped moving, the pain has lessened a good deal.”

Nat didn’t mention that he’d also found that the more quickly you pushed bereaved families into putting up their loved one’s estates for auction, the more likely they were to agree with whatever you told them. Grief. Befuddlement. Despair. They all worked in Nat’s favor. Of the three Ds that kept the auction business going—divorce, debt, and death—death was definitely Nat’s favorite. And by far the easiest since the deceased couldn’t quibble about the sale of their treasured possessions. The
pressure of inheritance tax was also a great joy to the auctioneer.

“I will drive straight there. I know it’s a terrible thing that has brought us back into contact, Mark, but I’m very much looking forward to seeing you and catching up.”

“I won’t be there,” said Mark. “I’ve got to go back to Singapore. You’ll be dealing with my little brother.”

“Wonderful,” he said through gritted teeth. Mark Trebarwen was a known quantity, but Nat didn’t know Julian Trebarwen except by reputation. Hadn’t he been expelled from Radley for knocking another boy’s teeth out? “I’ll look forward to meeting him.”

Nat Wilde needn’t have worried about Julian Trebarwen foiling his plans to get Louisa Trebarwen’s estate into the salesroom at Ludbrook’s. When Nat talked to him on the phone, Julian Trebarwen was much friendlier than his brother had been. And he was obviously in need of money, Nat surmised the very next day, as he pulled his Range Rover into the grand drive of Trebarwen House and clocked the ancient BMW that was parked there.

This was to be a perfunctory visit. As well as making sure that he was in the running to sell the contents of the house, Nat wanted to be equally sure it was worth bothering with. As he followed Julian from room to room, ostensibly making small talk about their memories of prep school and friends in common, Nat was ruthlessly totting up the potential worth of the house’s contents. He may have appeared blasé, but in his head he was making a detailed valuation worthy of an insurance broker. There was much to salivate over, but like a real estate agent, Nat knew that it was important not to raise his potential client’s hopes too high. That way you could more easily exceed them. That was how reputations were built.

“I think we’ll be able to do something for you,” said
Nat. He handed Julian a glossy brochure detailing Ludbrook’s terms and conditions. “If you and your brother think that Ludbrook’s is the house for you, I’ll send somebody down to make a proper inventory at your earliest convenience.”

“Thank you,” said Julian. They shook hands cordialy on the steps to the house, but Julian had felt an instant distrust of Nat Wilde upon meeting him, and the feeling was absolutely mutual.

The next afternoon—Sunday—as he lay in bed in the green room, as the main guest suite at Trebarwen was called, Julian guiltily recalled the last time he had seen his mother, and how, having failed to extract any cash from the old girl that time, he had wished that the day when she finally shuffled off the mortal coil might come quickly.

Julian knew he had been his mother’s favorite, but for the past couple of years even she had refused to fund any more of his get-rich-quick schemes. General opinion was that everything Julian touched went belly-up. That wasn’t entirely fair. He had made a paper fortune before the dotcom crash. Likewise, his decision to open an estate agency just before the credit crunch took hold had been based on very sound accounting. And if his mother had shown more faith in him, perhaps Julian wouldn’t have felt compelled to commit the insurance fraud that had landed him in prison for three months.