A Well Kept Secret Read Free

done them with Alicia, and Alicia was dead and he didn’t want to do any of it any more. Certainly he didn’t want to go anywhere where he would have nothing to distract him from the constant grinding ache of bereavement.

    He reached for his whiskey tumbler again, and as he did so, his eyes fell on an envelope lying on his desk. Why one particular envelope amongst others should attract his attention he couldn’t for a moment imagine. It had obviously been opened, and it lay there with some papers partly protruding from within. Normally, he was a tidy and methodical man, but from the moment Alicia had died everything had become neglected. Papers, post, memos, assorted documents of every sort had simply been dropped on his desk, many of them unopened. He had scarcely been in his study from the time of his bereavement, except to raid the whiskey decanter, and he knew that he really should be dealing with matters.

    He brushed the newspapers aside, picked up the envelope and pulled out the sheets of paper that were within.   As he looked at them, he suddenly remembered what they were. It was a letter from his solicitor dated a good three months ago, along with some documents and other matters that had seemed important at the time. He suddenly recalled that he had actually been reading the covering letter when tragedy had struck, and from that moment, along with everything else, it had lain forgotten on his desk.

    In looking at the letter he recalled the gist of it. Matters had been so fraught after it had been received that he had done nothing about it; indeed, right up until that moment he had forgotten the matter entirely. The letter was from his friend and solicitor Charles Gordon, and referred to the will of his recently deceased uncle, Dr Henry Marston. Dr Marston was Martin’s late mother’s older brother, and as far as he could recollect, had been something of a recluse. The essence of the letter was confirmation that his late uncle had left Martin his house, together with the residue of his estate. Reading the letter again brought the whole business back to his mind.

    Martin sat back in his chair, holding the letter in one hand and the whiskey glass in the other. As far as he could recall he had only seen his uncle once, and he had been a small child of about five at the time. Apart from a few disconnected fragments, his memory of the man, his home, even the nature of the occasion of that visit was all now hopelessly lost in the mists of time. He wasn’t aware of the existence of any particular family disputes, yet his mother had hardly every referred to her brother, and certainly he had never given the man any thought himself. Why he would want to leave him the house and the residue of his estate was a mystery, presumably it was because he had no descendants of his own, and there were no other close family members.

    Being a man of considerable wealth, Martin had no need of an additional house, and in any case, from what little he could remember of the property it was a pretty old and secluded place at that. The value of the estate was not exceptional, comprising in the main of the house itself set as it was in about two acres of land, and he wondered if there were any other relatives his uncle never knew of who might have benefited more from it. He vaguely recalled that his uncle had been married, so perhaps there were relatives on his wife's side of the family who could do with the place?   His initial reaction on reading the letter again was to get on to Charles at some stage to arrange for him to dispose of the property if no other family member could be discovered who might benefit from it; he had more than enough to occupy his mind right then without worrying about such matters.

    Even as the thought appeared in his mind he pulled himself up abruptly. Mentally rejecting the legacy just like that was a bit like slapping the late Dr Marston in the face. Maybe he had never really known the man, and certainly