Somewhere in the House Read Free Page B

Aunt Cynthia, and so are their wives. So the estate is to be divided among us—Uncle Gavan, Aunt Cynthia, Seward, Rowe Leeder, Garth and me. Elena wasn’t born until after Grandmother died; she doesn’t come into it at all except through her father.
    â€œGrandmother had all the money, you know; she brought it into the family. By that time there wasn’t much left among the Clayborns—they never made money themselves, they married it and they spent it. Grandmother was quite used to being surrounded by fortune hunters, she rather liked them. They’re always attractive, naturally, and she could manage them.
    â€œShe managed everything, and after Grandfather died she simply ruled the house. Her last will was made in 1922, just after I married, to include Rowe Leeder. He amused her, they got on, and he had only his salary in the bond-selling business.
    â€œNow, of course, there won’t be so much to go around as she thought there would be. We’ll all have enough to live on, but we shall need every penny.
    â€œI ought to explain that the estate has been in trust until now, and the house kept up from a fund paid us annually by the executors; the sole executor now is the bank. One of the agents appointed in Grandmother’s will to administer the fund and all our allowances is Mr. Allsop, who was Grandmother’s lawyer—so was his father; that firm has been the Clayborn lawyers for generations.
    â€œWe’ve all lived on those allowances ever since Grandmother died, and we couldn’t possibly have lived anywhere else on them. We’re allowed vacations,” said Mrs. Leeder, with her dim smile, “but we must live here—until tomorrow, when the trust is wound up and the estate is divided among all the heirs. If we had tried to break the will the money would all have reverted automatically to that wretched Clayborn Quartette.”
    Gamadge said: “These restrictive clauses in wills are very trying, I might almost say iniquitous.”
    â€œYou don’t quite know how restrictive the clauses were. Nothing in the house was to be changed or removed, nothing done at all unless in the way of necessary repairs, and Mr. Allsop had to be consulted about those. You must understand that he isn’t concerned with our interests—all he’s concerned with is carrying out the provisions of the will. We never dared to try to break it—we never risked it. So here we are”—she looked vaguely about her—“and here we have been since November, 1924.”
    â€œYour grandmother must have had a tremendous feeling about the house.”
    â€œOh, it wasn’t that. It was all on account of Nonie.”
    â€œYou said she died thirty years ago.”
    â€œBut not for Grandmother. She was the apple of her eye. The rest of us are assertive in our different ways, all the Clayborns were; all but Nonie, who wasn’t except by birth a Clayborn at all. She was a phantom, or rather she was clay in Grandmother’s hands. From her infancy she had a little white room next to Grandmother’s, and Grandmother chose her clothes and her amusements, her friends and her books. She never went out alone; she was a delicate little thing, I believe. It was all shocking and not quite wholesome. She was Grandmother’s obsession, and had no life of her own.
    â€œExcept for her music. She had some talent for the piano, and Grandmother took it seriously. Not that Nonie would ever have been allowed to play professionally, of course, but she had the most expensive masters. And when Grandfather—who was the only person with any influence over Grandmother at all—when he complained of the eternal practising, Grandmother had a room at the top of the house sound-proofed at huge expense.”
    Gamadge asked suddenly: “Did the sound-proofing include bricking up a window?”
    Mrs. Leeder smiled a little. “Not much escapes you, Mr.