The Earl Maid

By Susannah Donim

Rob is a shy and reserved young man, but an unexpected inheritance suddenly makes him the centre of attention. His wife helps him find a way of hiding in plain sight.

Prologue

It was nearly one o’clock in the morning. The interview room was a grubby olive green, with condensation running down the walls. It was cold because it was late October, and in police stations, like all government offices, they don’t put the central heating on until the first of November. The steel-framed canvas chair certainly wasn’t designed for comfort, but the thick soft padding on my backside always made me feel like I was sitting on a cushion anyway.

The Inspector and his Sergeant regarded me quizzically. That was fair; I must have looked a sight. I’d lost my cap and most of my hair pins in the fight, and the permed greying hair of my wig was awry, large tufts floating wide. My dress was torn at the left shoulder, showing my bra strap. My apron was ripped and turned half way round my hips. My skirt had a gash from the hem almost up to my waist, revealing a long ladder in my tights.

“So, Madam,” the detective said, clearing his throat. “Despite your appearance, you maintain you are not the maid and housekeeper of Hadleigh Hall, but the Earl himself in disguise?”

He sounded incredulous, as well he might.

“That’s right, officer,” I said, in what I hoped was my normal voice, which I hadn’t had the opportunity to use for some time.

It didn’t come out as deep as I would have liked, probably due to the shouting and screaming I’d been doing to call for help for myself and my mistress, I mean, wife. Nevertheless, it was clearly deep enough to give him pause. He leaned forward to take a closer look at my face.

“I really don’t see how that can be,” he said. “You look exactly like this photograph I have of you – that is, of Miss Martha Manners.”

He paused. My bizarre claim had momentarily thrown him. He gathered his thoughts and started again.

“But whoever you are, you’re here to answer some serious questions, so that we can decide whether to charge you with murder or just manslaughter.”

 

Chapter 1

Twenty-something years ago, when I was little, my mother was unfaithful, but then so was my father. Unfortunately for her, he was an Earl.

They’d married young, very much against my grandfather’s wishes. He was sure they weren’t right for each other. He was no saint himself, but he knew his son was a selfish wastrel, and he believed my mother was a sex-mad gold digger from the wrong side of the tracks. It was true that she came from a poor family – her Dad was a miner who had died young from emphysema, and her mother was a cleaner – but my grandfather misjudged her motives. She didn’t care about money.

My parents met at a posh summer swimming party on the Estate. She and a friend had gate-crashed, relying on their bikinis and stunning figures to get in. There was skinny-dipping and Mum thought Dad was gorgeous as soon as she saw him naked. From that moment, she was determined to have him.

After a whirlwind romance, most of which was conducted in my father’s bedroom at the Hall, they were married in a big, traditional wedding. The honeymoon was at the Palais de la Méditerranée on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice.

That extravagance wasn’t typical of the old Earl. Unlike his son he was careful with his money and his property, and had his lawyers create a pre-nup so iron-clad that, if the marriage should break up, my mother would get next to nothing. Grandpa was determined that the inevitable divorce would have no impact on the Estate. My mother signed it happily. At that point she couldn’t imagine a time when she wouldn’t want Dad, but if that time ever came, she wouldn’t want his money either.

My parents began their married life in the Hall’s West Wing. My grandfather, a widower, kept himself and his occasional visitors to the other wing, but they all took their meals together in the big old dining hall, waited on by a butler and two maids. Those occasions were awkward at first, my mother said, but her happy-go-lucky attitude gradually wore down the old man’s scepticism and he eventually accepted her into the family.

The way she tells it, they had an amazing year, then a good year, then an OK year, then a year of yelling at each other, then a year of deliberately avoiding each other, before they eventually agreed to call it quits. She says now they had never really been in love, just madly in lust. This was borne out by the fact that even in the later years when they were at daggers drawn, they were still at it like rabbits every chance they could get. They both took lovers, but none of their affairs lasted, and they always returned to each other in the end, if only for the mind-blowing sex.

At some point my mother got pregnant with me, which brought an end to their strange way of life. She could never convince her husband that I was his, and he would have thrown us both out if it hadn’t been for the old Earl, who insisted that we were decently looked after. She and I moved to the upper floor of the East wing, out of my father’s sight, and closer to Grandpa. My mother says the old man would often watch me as I grew from baby to toddler, looking for any resemblance to the array of old baby pictures in his family albums. My father kept demanding a paternity test, but my mother and grandfather refused to cooperate; the Earl from fear of a scandal, my mother from fear that her husband might be right.

The night after my fourth birthday, my grandfather died. The day after that, my mother and I were packed off in one of the Estate cars to my widowed grandmother’s little house in the village. Mum and I shared the back bedroom in which she had grown up.

My father wouldn’t hear of divorce. He had no wish to remarry – once bitten, twice shy. Anyway he could get all the girls he wanted without marrying any of them, and could reject any pressures they might bring to bear on the grounds that he was already married. So my poor mother was stuck as a wife without a husband. She had no money for a divorce lawyer. In any case, her own infidelities would count heavily against her and she couldn’t hope to prove his. So she was afraid of taking him to court. There was little to gain because of the pre-nup, and the costs would just mean we would lose our little home.

So the old Earl’s foresight paid off. My mother could sustain no claim on the Estate and money was going to be tight for us. My grandmother had only her pension and the house, which she owned outright, from her husband’s disability compensation. My father paid us a modest maintenance allowance, mainly to avoid the scandal of his wife and maybe-son starving, my mother said. She would have to work if we were to afford anything beyond mere subsistence. With no qualifications beyond a couple of GCSEs, she became a cleaning lady like her mother before her.

As the Earl’s son I probably had rights, but my mother discouraged me from trying to get anything from him, because she knew he would stop the maintenance payments and make us both suffer (and, I realised later, he would probably insist on a paternity test which she couldn’t afford to allow). I wanted nothing from him anyway.

My mother and her best friend, Esme, cleaned for many of the homes in the village and several on the Estate, though not of course the Hall. None of their customers knew who Mum really was. Her maintenance payments were contingent on us both keeping quiet about Lady Marsham, Countess of Hadleigh, now being a cleaner, and her son, the Viscount Fenchurch, a scruffy village schoolboy – not that either of us had any interest in useless titles. My father also insisted that we not use his family name. So my mother called herself Mrs Julie Dixon, her maiden name, and I was her son, Robert. If anyone asked, her ex-husband had left us and gone abroad.

We couldn’t afford a car, so we had to cycle everywhere; me to school and my friends’ houses, her to her cleaning jobs. We got by.

* * *

I grew into a shy, nervous child, probably because of my parents’ hostilities and our subsequent deprivation. I was small for my age, and delicate. I mostly kept myself to myself. Like Damon Runyon’s Seldom Seen Kid, I had a ‘most retiring disposition’, my teacher said.

I had no close friends. The exception was Susie; amazing, vivacious, clever, beautiful Susie. We met at age eleven in our first year at secondary school. At first we were rivals as the two cleverest kids in the class, forever trying to outdo each other. Then puberty came along and I suddenly noticed how beautiful she was. To my surprise, she also seemed to forget our rivalry around that time. She actually suggested we work together on a school science project, saying that if she teamed up with anyone else, she knew she’d end up doing all the work. At least I would be capable of pulling my weight.

I did – that and more. I found myself searching for ways to impress her, which I knew she found hilarious. Every now and then I’d catch her watching me – nothing like as often as I gazed at her – but with something in her look that gave me hope. I fancied her rotten, but didn’t dare make any moves on her. I valued our friendship too much, and anyway I couldn’t imagine her fancying me. We won the project competition by a country mile.

For my fifteenth birthday, my mother scraped enough cash together to throw me a small party, just four boys and four girls at our little house, with a barbecue in the shared back garden. I blew out all the candles on my birthday cake and Susie kissed me. It was the best day of my life. Afterwards I tentatively asked her out. At fifteen I couldn’t offer more than a trip to the cinema and a chaste snack somewhere afterwards. We saw a lot of films that year and got through a lot of pizzas and milkshakes.

Susie was Miss Popular at school; good at sports; good at everything. She had lots of friends but regularly reassured me that she had no actual boyfriends. I didn’t dare ask if that included me, because I couldn’t have borne it if she’d laughed and said that of course it did. But not long after my sixteenth birthday we found ourselves in bed together. I’m still not sure how it happened, but I think it was mostly her idea. We were both virgins and the sex was a bit hit-and-miss on that occasion, but we had a wonderful time exploring each other. I was ecstatic. It was repeated when circumstances permitted. But no long-term promises were made.

We went to university together. Susie studied Law. I did Maths. We were at different colleges but fortunately not too far apart. Though we moved in different circles, and had different friends, we met regularly and were in and out of each other’s rooms all the time. We spent most evenings together, and would often end up in bed.

When not studying she devoted herself to getting her Blue for Women’s hockey. So my Saturday afternoons were reserved for watching her play. I was her most enthusiastic supporter, even though I now saw less of her as she was often busy training. She got her first Blue in her second year and captained the side in her third.

She persuaded me to try amateur dramatics, in the hope it would help me overcome my crippling shyness. It worked in a way, but probably not how Susie had intended. Acting let me disappear; I could hide out as somebody else. I went for character parts where I could wear exotic costumes, wigs and make-up. As long as no one could tell it was me, I could function. I could never have got the big ‘leading-man’ parts anyway; my stature and baby-face looks were against me.

I had no problems learning lines, and people said I gave decent performances. We did some modern stuff in which I played various grotesques. We did a festival of Dickens extracts in which I was heavily made up as Fagin, Magwitch and Marley’s Ghost. But my biggest triumph was as Lady Bracknell in Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. It wasn’t unusual for this great part to be played by men – David Suchet, Geoffrey Rush, Brian Bedford, Gyles Brandreth, even Stephen Fry have all done it.

Despite the expense of the costumes, it was no modern dress effort. I would be in full Victorian drag, which was quite a challenge (especially the corset), but it’s a marvellous part and I loved doing it. When I was fully dressed, bewigged and made up, I was completely unrecognisable. No one could tell I was a man, let alone Robert Dixon. I tried to lift my voice to the top of my range and managed to sound like a stern older lady.

I was surprised to find I had no inhibitions about dressing as a woman. It was just a role in a comedy. No one outside the cast – and Susie, of course – knew me as Robert. I could really let myself go.

The hardest part was learning to sit, stand and move like a middle-aged woman. The rigid Victorian underwear and the cumbersome dresses helped, but I had never realised how very different a woman’s gestures and mannerisms are. The director found an expert in feminine movement to coach me. Her name was Alice Parr. I’ve no idea where he dug her up. She was a real slave driver but she knew her stuff. She drilled me mercilessly. Her commands lodged in my brain and I found myself repeating them in my sleep.

“Little steps! Think dainty! Hands out for balance! Cock those wrists! Wiggle that caboose! Clasp your hands in front of you under your bust! Sit up straight!”

Sitting up straight turned out to be the easiest order to obey. I had no alternative in my horrendous corset.

Eventually I found myself moving like a woman outside rehearsals, when I was trying to be Robert, which Susie found hilarious. She assured me with a grin that the end result was totally convincing. I moved just like a woman in every way.

After the last performance, we were in the bar and one of her friends came up to say hello.

“So what did you think of the show?” Susie asked her.

“It was really good,” she said, “and the girl who played Lady Bracknell was brilliant.”

She obviously hadn’t bought a programme – or maybe she thought ‘Rob’ was short for Roberta?

“Oh but…” Susie began to say. She was keen to get me the credit she thought I deserved.

“Yes, she was, wasn’t she?” I interrupted. “It’s a pity she couldn’t stay for the party.”

After a few more favourable comments about the production her friend drifted off.

“Honestly, Rob,” Susie expostulated. “We’re really going to have to do something about your shyness.”

“Yes, dear,” I said happily, wondering how many other people had been fooled.

Susie also persuaded – OK, ordered – me to try the student debating society. For my maiden speech I was required to propose the repeal of the Human Rights Act. I spent ages researching the topic. Susie helped me prepare. I thought it was something of an ‘open goal’ as English Common Law provided citizens with all the rights they needed, and the only effect of the Act seemed to be to make it impossible to deport terrorists and violent criminals. Susie took me through my text, word for word; asked me lots of penetrating questions so I’d be ready for hostile feedback; and generally did her best to boost my confidence.

It didn’t work. When the Speaker called my name, I rose to my feet, mumbled the first few lines inaudibly… and froze completely. I had to sit down again to peals of mocking laughter. All of the university’s ‘woke’ lefties quickly shouted the motion down and I resolved never to try and speak in public again.

* * *

After Cambridge Susie and I moved back to the village and our parents’ houses. She joined Wainwrights, a local firm of solicitors, for her vocational training. She would do the Legal Practice Course for a Postgraduate Diploma. This is the final stage for becoming a solicitor, providing a bridge between academic study and training in a law firm. The best candidates – and Susie was clearly in that category – could pass this in a year.

I got a teaching job at the local school. I wasn’t very good at it; I found standing up in front of thirty children only marginally less frightening than speaking to a similar number of adults. I began to worry that teaching might not be a good choice of career for me, but struggled to visualise an alternative.

Nevertheless the next year was a very happy one for us. We worked and played hard. Susie made it into the County Hockey team, which again kept her busy with training and matches. I went to all her home games. There was talk of an England trial next year.

Still determined to cure me of my shyness, Susie insisted that I audition for our local amateur dramatic society, LADS. We were both a little surprised when the avant-garde Director cast me as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. It wasn’t an all-male production, but it’s a comic role. She is a bawdy, overly talkative, and humorous character, and of course would have been played by a man in the Elizabethan theatre. My earlier training in feminine movement came in useful. I called Alice Parr for a quick refresher course. This time she also taught me how to curtsey, which I didn’t have to do as Lady Bracknell.

I enjoyed getting under the skin of this gossipy old woman. Again, it was important to me that I would be unrecognisable in costume. That wasn’t a problem. Polly Whitmore, the wardrobe mistress, was really good. She padded me out to the shape of a plump middle-aged nursemaid and covered me from head to toe in a wimple, a floor-length peasant dress, and a bib apron.

I persuaded the Director to list me as ‘Marsha Roberts’ in the programme. The show was a success and only those who knew me were aware that ‘Marsha’ was a male.

“You were great,” said Susie in the dressing room after the last performance. “Completely convincing. Great female voice – all shrill and fussy. But I really don’t understand how you can be so good on stage but tongue-tied in real life.”

“That’s precisely why,” I said, stepping out of my dress. “This isn’t real life.” I indicated the padded feminine shapewear underneath. “Someone else has written what I have to say. I can pretend to be the Nurse or Fagin or Lady Bracknell, and I’m happy – as long as no one knows it’s me.”

* * *

Susie and I saw each other nearly every day now, and often spent the night together. l couldn’t believe my luck. I was sure it couldn’t last.

One fine Spring evening, I was sitting at Susie’s Mum’s dining table marking exercise books. Susie was splayed out across an armchair, swotting for her exams (which everyone but she herself knew she’d walk). I was just admiring the sumptuous curves of her breasts, Year 9’s algebra homework forgotten, when suddenly she looked up. She had realised I was watching her.

“What?” she said.

“Oh nothing.”

“Ah,” she said. “I thought you might have wanted to say something.”

“Oh, er, no.”

She sighed, a sigh with a slight edge of frustration.

“I’m just wondering how much longer I have to wait,” she said.

“Wait for what?”

“For you to ask me to marry you. What’s the hold-up?”

I put my red biro down. I glanced at the door nervously. Our mothers, who were good friends, were in the kitchen, chatting.

“B-but we’ve never talked about… marriage?” I stuttered.

“About time we did then, don’t you think?” she said crisply. “What’s the matter? Don’t you want to marry me?”

“More than anything, but it never occurred to me that you’d want to marry me. I mean, I’ve nothing to offer you…”

“Oh!” she sighed in frustration. “For a clever guy you can be infuriatingly dense sometimes.” She changed tack. “Why did you settle for a teaching job in a tiny village? You got a First. You could have been a high flier at an investment bank, or an actuary, or something in IT or some other high-tech industry.”

“I needed to be here to look after Mum.”

“Rubbish! And don’t let her hear you say that. She’d rather die than think she was holding you back. She’s barely fifty and as fit as a flea, and you could easily commute from here to London anyway. It’s only about forty minutes.”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “Anyway, why did you settle here? You could be working for one of the big City Solicitors.”

“I don’t think so. I’m good, but I’m not that good. I only got a 2-1, you know. Anyway…”

“What?”

“Oh you can be such a pain sometimes! I want to be where you are, stupid!”

I was in shock. I couldn’t imagine living without her, and I lived in perpetual fear that she’d meet someone tall and good-looking and fall in love, and I’d lose her. But I’d never dared…

“We don’t actually have to get married, of course, not if you don’t want to,” she said, “but I think we should make some sort of proper commitment to each other, don’t you?” She threw her law books down on the floor. “How is it that we’ve been friends and lovers for ten years now,” she said, “but we’ve never even said we were ‘exclusive’?”

She looked at me expectantly. I would have to say something. I couldn’t expect her to do it all…

“You could have anyone you want,” I burbled.

“So did you think I was only screwing you till somebody better came along?” She smiled softly.

What came out next was the concern that had been forefront in my mind all this time.

“I’ve loved you to distraction since we were fifteen.” She smiled. Her smile was like Aphrodite, probably. “Puberty made you a raving beauty,” I stumbled on, “but it didn’t do me any favours. I hardly even grew any taller afterwards…”

I sounded like a moron even to myself.

“Idiot! That doesn’t matter to women. Men may be bowled over by a girl’s appearance but women look deeper. Well most women do anyway. You and I… we fit together. We want the same things. Each of us always knows what the other is thinking. We even…”

“…finish each other’s sentences,” I said, with a grin.

She laughed. I got up and went over to her. I knelt by the armchair and put my arms around her and kissed her with every fibre of my being.

“Will you marry me?” I said nervously, still scared that this was just another of her jokes, and that she would laugh in my face.

“I’m busy today,” she said with a grin. “How’s tomorrow for you?”

She leapt to her feet, grabbed my hand, and dragged me into the kitchen. The ladies looked up at the sudden interruption to their gossiping. For a moment nobody spoke. Then my mother smiled, with a meaningful look at Susie’s mum.

“About bloody time,” she said.

* * *

Neither my mother’s house nor Susie’s parents’ place was big enough for another couple, so we found a little flat to rent in the village while we started saving to buy our own place.

Susie’s Dad, George, was a paramedic, and very good at his job. He saved many lives. Indeed he could have been a doctor in Accident & Emergency, if his parents had encouraged him to go to university. So they were better off than we were but not by much. It wouldn’t be a big wedding, but we didn’t care.

We invited my father but he chose not to come. His RSVP was polite but formal. I hadn’t expected anything else, and his absence on the day was, if anything, a relief.

Susie knew nothing of my heritage. She knew that our family history was a painful subject, especially for my mother. I never lied to her about my father and she never asked. It didn’t matter anyway; I had no expectations of anything from him – if he even was my father. I never saw him and I was no more welcome at the Hall than my mother was. I knew next to nothing of his circumstances.

My mother believed he had a new family. While cycling around on her cleaning jobs in the various Estate houses and tied cottages, she had seen an expensively dressed woman screeching down the country lanes in a five-year old Audi convertible. Apparently the new mistress of the Hall expected any farm vehicles she might encounter to get out of her way, perhaps by driving into the hedgerow.

She sometime had a surly teenager with her. At Mum’s behest I made discreet enquiries, but whoever he was he didn’t attend the local school. Presumably he went to some private place; maybe he boarded.

Well, good luck to them both. As long as Mum’s little maintenance payment arrived in her bank account every month, it was none of our business. Anyway we were totally focused on our wedding plans.

* * *

We were married in early May, and were no sooner back from our honeymoon (a week in Teignmouth on the Devon coast over half-term), than we heard the news. My father had died of a heart attack – in bed. What he was doing there (if not sleeping) is not recorded, but it was the middle of the afternoon, so... He was only fifty-six but he hadn’t looked after himself. He was a smoker and a heavy drinker. My mother sniffled a little when she heard the news, but she was mostly worried that we’d had the last maintenance payment.

It was therefore a surprise to be invited to the reading of the will. The invitation was to my mother and myself, but my new bride, the trainee solicitor, insisted on coming along. The Executor, a solicitor from a rival firm, made no objection.

Susie had lots of questions for me first.

“I thought your father was abroad?” she began.

“No, that’s just what my mother let everyone think. They separated when I was little, and they’ve had nothing to do with each other since.”

“So, tell me about him,” she persisted. “Where did he live? Is he rich? Did he remarry?”

“You should ask Mum really,” I said. “It’s her story, not mine.”

“But he’s your father!”

“Ah…”

She saw the uncomfortable look on my face.

“What?”

“The man who’s just died was certainly my mother’s husband, or ex-husband, at least,” I sighed. “Whether he was my father is… moot.”

“Oh, I see.”

“By the time I was conceived, he and my mother were no longer ‘exclusive’, as you put it, if they ever were. And that’s why I can’t tell you any more.”

Susie had gone very quiet. “That explains a lot about you,” she said.

She had a sympathetic look on her face, though I wasn’t quite sure what she was sympathising with me about.

“I suggest you wait and see what happens at the reading of the will,” I said. “Then maybe Mum will tell you more afterwards.”

* * *

The reading was to be at ten o’clock the following Monday morning in the solicitor’s offices. I had to ask my headmaster for the morning off. At half-past nine the three of us packed into Susie’s Mini Clubman and set off for town, not knowing what to expect, but fearing the worst.

When we got there, we were directed to the conference room. A harassed-looking solicitor was seated at a desk in a big bay window. He was surrounded by papers which a junior clerk was busily shuffling. The seating for the potential beneficiaries and their hangers-on was arranged in three rows with four chairs in each row. The front two rows were already occupied when we arrived, so we sat at the back.

Prominent at the front was a very elegant woman in a smart navy-blue dress and matching jacket. She wore lots of expensive-looking jewellery. My mother recognised her as the thoughtless Audi driver. She was accompanied by an arrogant-looking, overweight youth of about fifteen, and a large, menacing man with a broken nose. There were two men and two ladies in the second row. Their clothes were much plainer than those of the toffs in front of them.

The solicitor was small, bald and bespectacled, just as a solicitor should be. I waited to see if he was pompous as well, which would complete the check list. He called us to order – pompously.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he began. My name is Geoffrey Smythe. I am the sole Executor of the late Earl’s will.”

This was the first time Susie had heard my maybe-father’s title mentioned. I felt her stiffen beside me.

“As you may or may not know, that is a little unusual,” Smythe continued. “Normally a close member of the family would serve as an additional Executor, but I gather that in this case…”

He suddenly realised that he was talking himself into a tight corner. He could hardly say that the Earl didn’t trust anyone in his family.

“…Um, that is not the case,” he finished lamely. He continued with a harrumph to conceal his embarrassment. “Now, legally I am not required to reveal the contents of the will until after Grant of Probate. This is in case unforeseen debts come to light during the process of assessing the estate. However I do have to notify all potential beneficiaries of the demise of the deceased…”

He was going a little heavy on the ‘pompous’ now, I thought.

“…which of course, I have done; and beneficiaries can request sight of the will, as some of you have.”

We hadn’t, but he was indicating the smug group on the front row.

“And since Probate is likely to be delayed for some time in this particular case, I thought it only fair to invite all beneficiaries to this briefing.”

Interesting. I wondered why it was ‘likely to be delayed’. And apparently this was to be a ‘briefing’ rather than a reading. Did he not intend to read the will then?

“The will itself is couched in the usual legal terms,” Smythe went on. “I drew it up myself and it’s not complicated. However the late Earl also drafted a short message, a sort of layman’s explanation of his wishes, which he required his Executor – that is, me – to read out first. So I propose to do that. It may then be superfluous to read the will itself.”

He paused and smiled at the increasingly impatient gathering. Nobody smiled back. He harrumphed again and reached for a brown A4 envelope from his pile. Something else then occurred to him.

“I should perhaps say that it’s not unusual for a deceased person to include a personal statement addressed to his beneficiaries. In this case – against my advice – the Earl insisted on sealing this message without running it by me. So I don’t know what’s in here.” He waved the envelope up high. “Sometimes such messages can be a little… er… inflammatory. I sincerely hope that will not be the case here, but…”

He paused again. Inflammatory, eh? Was this boring morning going to turn out to be fun after all?

“In any case,” Smythe continued, “if the personal statement is not consistent with the will, it will be the will that has legal force…”

He realised that the natives were getting restless. He finally ceased prevaricating and tore open the envelope. He extracted a single sheet of A4 paper. He scanned it briefly, frowned, and began to read.

“I, Peregrine St John De Vere Marsham, fifth Earl of Hadleigh, being of sound mind, etc, etc.” He paused and looked up at us again. “It actually says that: ‘etc, etc’.”

Beside me Susie drew in a sharp breath when she heard the deceased’s full name and titles. No one else reacted. He continued.

“I’ve been a pretty rotten Earl by any measure…”

There were no signs of demurral from anyone present. The elegant lady was nodding.

“I haven’t tried to manage the Estate or the house. I’ve left that to others; to Bill Johnson, my superb Estate Manager, and Harold, who has looked after the Hall for me. I’ve just had a good time and spent the money on wine, women and song. Well, it’s my money, after all.

“…I know I never made it easy for Bill, or Harold or my two excellent maids, Martha and Helga. I just hope the four of them will forgive my temper and thoughtlessness. In case they don’t, I’m leaving them £10,000 each to make amends.”

The woman on the front row drew a sharp breath. I couldn’t see her face from where I was sitting, but I suspected she was angry. That was £40,000 she had probably assumed was going her way. In contrast, the people in the second row seemed more than happy. I heard the elder of the two ladies tell the other that the old boy had indeed been a crotchety old bastard, but he had shown he was a generous employer in the end. So, well done, Dad.

“I have just three more things to say,” the solicitor continued on my father’s behalf. “Firstly, to my current live-in companion, Eleanor – assuming that I haven’t yet kicked you out, along with your useless son. After all, we haven’t slept together for more than five years, and have both been getting our pleasures elsewhere. Anyway, I hope you’ve been salting a little money away from the housekeeping, m’dear, because you’re not getting another penny out of me. You also need to get out of the house sharpish. I doubt you and the new owner will get along – and don’t take any of my paintings or furniture with you. Smythe is a dozy old git and a pretty useless brief…”

Smythe couldn’t help but pause in surprise and anger. He must have missed that phrase in his brief glance through earlier. He steeled himself to continue.

“…but he has a full inventory of the Hall’s contents and he is under instructions to check it’s all present and correct before the new owner moves in.”

Smythe stopped again and smiled apologetically at the lady on the front row. She looked pretty steamed. He continued reading.

“I do acknowledge the fat lump is my son. In fact, that’s the only reason I’ve allowed the two of you to stick around – which I’m sure is exactly what you intended when you let yourself get pregnant – but he’s a bastard in both senses of the word, and he can’t inherit the title or the Estate which goes with it. And I’m not inclined to fund his self-indulgent lifestyle. The lazy little sod can get a job.”

There were some interesting noises coming from the elegant woman now. They were somewhere between tears of anguish and howls of anger. The thug beside her offered her a handkerchief but she waved it away and continued snuffling loudly.

“Secondly, despite all the whining of Eleanor and her equally greedy predecessors, I never divorced Julie, so she is now probably the owner of the Hall and everything else. And that’s fair enough, because she’s the only woman I ever loved, even though we could barely stand the sight of each other by the end. Also, I know she didn’t marry me for my money. It was the sex, and by Heaven was she good at it! Best of the lot by far.”

My mother was now blushing the deepest red I had ever seen, but she couldn’t keep a happy smile from her lips. On my other side, Susie was shaking with silent laughter.

“Respect!” she muttered to me. She and Mum had always got on well.

“You see, Jools, scandal wasn’t the real reason why I wouldn’t allow a divorce,” Smythe continued reading. “I’m sure you’ve been better off without me since we separated, but hopefully you’ll be better off still, now that I’m gone. I say you’re probably the new owner, because it all depends on the status of your son, Robert. So he’s going to have to have that paternity test you always refused to allow. If he is my son, he is the new Lord Marsham, sixth Earl of Hadleigh, and the owner of the Estate and everything in it. If not, he’s just another bastard and the whole shooting match goes to you. Sadly, when you die that will then be the end of the Hadleighs, because I have no other heirs and I’m absolutely certain I have no more bastards. I’m only sorry that I didn’t get everything settled properly before I died. But why should I care about that now? I’m dead.”

I realised why Smythe had been looking harassed when we came in. He knew what was in the will, though not the contents of my father’s personal statement, and he knew the current incumbent and her offspring were going to be mightily disappointed.

There was a lot of hubbub now. Everyone was talking at once, and most of them were turning round to look at us on the back row; the old retainers with amusement and some interest, Eleanor and her companions with undisguised hostility.

“This is unfair!” Eleanor was screaming. “It must be an old will. We never expected Perry to die so young. He would have changed his will if he’d lived longer. I kept asking him about it…”

“The will and the personal statement are both quite recent actually,” Smythe shrugged, as politely as he could. “Early March this year, to be precise.”

I wondered if that meant that the old man knew his end was near. From the tone of the letter it didn’t seem at all likely that he had any intention of changing his will in Eleanor’s favour. In any case everyone knew it made no difference now.

“Does this mean you’re rich now?” Susie asked quietly.

Before I could answer, the solicitor called for hush and continued reading.

“And the third thing I have to say is that there’s no money left. I spent it all. Sorry – not sorry.”

“Does that answer your question?” I whispered to Susie.

“Perhaps he isn’t your father,” she said. “You don’t seem to take after him at all.”

“Were you worried I might maintain a harem of concubines if I’m the new Earl?”

She sniggered. “Actually I wasn’t worried about that at all.”

Smythe had stopped reading and put the paper back in the brown envelope.

“That’s the end of the statement,” he said. “In the will there’s a lot of legal stuff about gifting valuables like paintings, first editions, and so on, to his heir as personal chattels, to avoid or minimise inheritance tax, but I won’t bore you with any of that. Does anyone have any questions?”

The hubbub redoubled. Eleanor was screeching at ever-increasing volume. She leapt to her feet and demanded to know how she could contest the will.

“Even if he didn’t want to leave anything to me, he can’t have wanted to disinherit his son!”

“Actually he could, and quite explicitly did, My Lady… er, I mean Mrs… er, Madam…”

So Eleanor had got people calling her ‘Your Ladyship’, had she? Well she wasn’t the Countess, and apparently she wasn’t a ‘Mrs’ either.

“…the actual will is completely consistent with the Earl’s personal statement, and in my professional opinion, it’s iron-clad,” Smythe continued. “Nevertheless, if you want to contest it, you will have to appoint another solicitor to act for you. As Executors, obviously this firm can’t. I can recommend someone if you wish. But you should be aware that any such challenge would be expensive and would almost certainly fail. Also the proceedings would take some considerable time and the costs of defending the will would diminish the Estate, even if you won.”

I remembered the Jarndyce versus Jarndyce case in Dickens’ Bleak House, which we had to plough through at school.

Eleanor collapsed back into her seat, sobbing. But the worst – from her point of view – was yet to come.

“For now, I’m afraid you must return to the Hall, pack your personal belongings, and vacate the premises as soon as possible. Lady Marsham…” He indicated my mother. “…is fully entitled to take possession immediately, irrespective of the outcome of Probate or her son’s paternity test. She is the widow of the deceased; the couple were only separated, not divorced. She doesn’t need the will to establish her rights, only her marriage certificate.”

When the noise died down, Eleanor stormed out (ignoring us completely), followed listlessly by her son and the unidentified thug, who was muttering something about ‘squatters’ rights’.

Very reasonably, the four retainers wanted to know whether there would be enough money left for their legacies. Smythe said he thought so, but there could be no guarantees until after Probate. They would probably have to wait several months, in his opinion.

My mother put up her hand and asked, “So how do we go about getting a paternity test done?”

Smythe undertook to arrange that and we fixed an appointment for late Thursday morning when I had a free period. The technician from the accredited laboratory they used in such cases would be in the office then. In the meantime, we should expect to be able to take possession of the Hall within a day or two. He would telephone when it was ready for us.

That seemed to be the end of the questions. The four servants came up. I had been too young to remember them when we were thrown out of the Hall, but of course my mother knew them all well. The youngest was Martha. She was a plump, matronly woman, with a kind, open face. She was obviously in her Sunday best, a white crepe dress with a red and green floral pattern. She wore a short blue jacket to cover her shoulders but which clearly would never fasten across her generous bust. I guessed she was in her early forties, but she might have been a little younger. From what I’d gathered, a life of service wasn’t conducive to maintaining one’s youth and beauty. The others were much older.

“Congratulations, Lady Marsham,” Martha said to my mother, with a smile and a deferential dip.

“Thank you, Martha,” Mum said, clearly a little taken aback by the unfamiliar form of address. “It’s lovely to see you again. Will you be able to stay on at the Hall, at least for a while?” Martha nodded happily. “And Bill, Helga and Harold too, of course.”

“I’d be happy to carry on, My Lady,” said Bill, “at least until you’ve made other arrangements.”

My mother turned to the others.

“I’m afraid the Earl let Helga and me go a couple of months since, My Lady,” said Harold, in his broad Norfolk accent. “I believe he needed to save money. He’s been managing with just Martha as all-round housekeeper and Bill as Estate Manager for a while now.” My mother looked concerned. “No, no, it’s quite all right, Ma’am. We’re both past retirement age. We have our pensions and his kind legacy – assuming there’s enough left in the pot after Probate.”

“I’ll return to the Hall today, Ma’am,” said Martha, putting her coat on. “I can start to get things ready for you.”

By which I assume she meant, ‘I’ll keep an eye on Eleanor and stop her from nicking stuff’.

* * *

Mum and Susie were bubbling with excitement as we drove back to our village. Mum couldn’t wait to tell Esme. I was excited too, but I also had a troubling sense of unease. I was afraid that my quiet life as a nonentity schoolteacher was about to come to an abrupt end. The limelight beckoned – Earls tend to be public figures, after all – and I would need to find ways to avoid it.

My mother was quick to insist that all three of us should expect to move into the Hall. It was big enough for her and us to have a wing each, sharing the ground floor rooms. Even then both wings had three storeys and we were never likely to use the top floor at all.

Mum said that we should give notice on our flat to save money. She would call an Estate Agent to get her little house valued and ask how much she could charge if she decided to rent it out rather than sell it. Would she need to change her will, she wondered? No, I was already her only beneficiary. It was just that now I would inherit her few belongings when she died and maybe the Estate as well – assuming it wasn’t mine already. But nothing was guaranteed if I turned out not to be my father’s son. I might get the Estate, if there were no other contending heirs, but I certainly wouldn’t get the title then.

But we persuaded Mum not to make too many life-changing decisions until we’d looked around the Hall and checked out the finances. Surely Smythe would have at least a preliminary estimate of how much the Estate was worth?

When we got back Susie dragged me straight round to her parents’ place to share the news.

“I’m gonna be a Countess!” she announced, proudly.

Her Mum and Dad were speechless.

“But that’s only if I’m not a bastard,” I added.

I only hoped Susie wouldn’t be too disappointed if I was. Her parents looked even more puzzled.

* * *

Nothing much happened from our point of view in the next few days. There was no telephone call from Smythe. We assumed there had been a hitch in ‘persuading’ Eleanor and son to vacate.

On the Thursday morning the three of us returned to Smythe’s office for the paternity test. This turned out to be something of a non-event. The bespectacled technician, who was called Dorothy, was a friendly and competent lady in a white coat. She scraped what looked like a long cotton bud around the inside of my mouth. When she decided she had gathered enough of my cheek cells, she dropped the little stick in a tube and sealed it. Then she repeated the whole exercise ‘just in case’.

My mother asked her whether this would prove whether I was the Earl’s son or not.

“A DNA paternity test tells us the ‘probability of parentage’,” Dorothy said. “It will be zero if the alleged parent and child are not biologically related, and typically 99.99% when they are. That’s always enough for the courts.”

“Not 100%?” I asked.

Dorothy shook her head. “Some very rare individuals, known as ‘chimeras’, have more than one set of genes,” she said. “This can lead to a false negative result if their reproductive tissue has a different genetic make-up from the tissue sample. But I’m sure we don’t have to worry about that. This is the best technology we have for determining parentage.”

She was packing up her equipment now.

“I persuaded the old Earl to give a sample of his DNA several months ago when he signed his will, and I saw how important the paternity test would be,” said Smythe to us. “You’ll be able to make the comparison easily, won’t you?” he asked Dorothy.

“Yes, we still have the deceased’s sample on file,” she said. “I’m off back to the lab now. We should have an answer for you by close of play tomorrow at the latest.”

After Dorothy had left, Smythe offered refreshments and the four of us sat down at his conference table to discuss where we were with the Estate. I still had an hour before I needed to be back for afternoon school.

“I’m sorry things haven’t moved as quickly as I’d hoped,” Smythe began. “Eleanor - Miss Beckett - has been more difficult than I’d anticipated.”

“I sympathise actually,” said my mother. “After all, the Hall has been her home for more than fifteen years, hasn’t it?” Smythe nodded. “And Perry treated her very badly.”

“Not as badly as he treated you,” I said.

“Er, yes,” said Smythe. For a solicitor he was surprisingly easily embarrassed by the errant behaviour of his clients. “But you don’t need to be too sympathetic toward Miss Beckett,” he said. “I saw plenty of evidence that she was gradually salting cash away into her own account – always small sums, but it will have amounted to tens of thousands over the years. I kept warning the Earl about her sticky fingers, but he didn’t seem to care. Anyway, I’m sure she’ll be able to fend for herself and her son.”

He got up and fetched a file from his desk. He was flipping through it as he rejoined us.

“I took the precaution of sending bailiffs to the Hall to secure the property on the morning of the briefing,” he said. “When Eleanor and her son got back, they were allowed to pack several suitcases with their personal property: clothes, cosmetics, games, videos, books, and so on. They each had a mobile phone and a laptop. But the bailiffs prevented them from removing anything else. They also demanded Eleanor’s car keys and they had to call a taxi to leave.

“Unfortunately, there were long arguments about what had been personal gifts from the Earl, and what was Estate property to which they had no right. The inventory the Earl mentioned in his personal statement was a big help, of course, and Martha was on hand to say what she remembered, but that still left many disputed items. Some of them may genuinely be personal stuff, worthless to anyone else, but some of the things she wanted were much more valuable.

“Jewellery in particular was a big problem. The Earl had given Eleanor some quite expensive pieces, and Martha remembered the occasions – birthdays and so on – and she supported her claims for those, but Eleanor also tried to claim some Marsham family heirlooms and we couldn’t accept that. His Lordship let her wear some of them at various formal events over the years but he always made sure they went back in the safe afterwards. The Earl had his failings as we know, but he was no fool. The bailiffs had quite a job getting the stuff off her. They had to threaten her with the police.”

“So what are you going to do about the disputed items?” my mother asked.

“Well, I’m afraid you will have to decide on everything, as the only clear heir, at least for the moment.”

“Ha! Eleanor won’t like that!”

“Well, she’ll just have to take the Estate to court then. That can’t happen till after Probate, and I doubt she’ll want to take the financial risk, knowing that she’ll probably lose. I suggest you let her have a few items from the disputed pile – anything you don’t want and that isn’t too valuable – and that will enable her to save face, and maybe bring the whole sordid mess to an end.”

That sounded like good advice.

“All right then,” Mum said, “but she’s not having that sports car. I fancy that for myself, assuming I can pass my test...”

Yes, I would have to learn to drive too. I couldn’t continue to rely on Susie as the only driver in the family.

“What about the money?” I asked. “Bank accounts? Credit cards?”

“The Earl never gave Eleanor access to his own or the Estate’s accounts. He made regular payments into her personal bank account – what he called her ‘housekeeping money’. He was under no contractual obligation to do that, so as Executor I was legally required to stop the payments until after Probate. You’ll notice I had to stop your maintenance too, for the same reason.”

“That big guy who was with her at the briefing…” began Susie.

“Her brother,” said Smythe. “Nasty piece of work. Well known to the police, I believe.”

“Which probably explains why they caved in when the bailiffs threatened to call the cops,” I suggested.

“Indeed,” Smythe confirmed.

“I heard him muttering something about ‘squatters’ rights’,” I said. “Could there be anything in that? She had lived there for fifteen years.”

“No, no,” Smythe shook his head. “Squatters’ rights only apply to properties that have been standing empty. The Earl occupied the premises until his death.”

Susie was nodding. Her training had obviously covered this question.

“The fact that Eleanor and her son lived there for a long period is irrelevant,” she said. “Anyone who originally enters a property with the permission of the landlord is not a squatter. In law, they were the Earl’s guests, not squatters.”

Smythe nodded approvingly. We chatted for a little longer. He was friendly, helpful and supportive – he obviously wanted the Hadleigh Estate to continue as his client. But he wouldn’t be drawn on the state of our finances. There were too many unknowns at the moment, he said. He could only say that the Estate was solvent as far as he knew. Bill would have been in touch if that were not the case.

“Unfortunately, you didn’t have a joint account with your husband, My Lady. So I’m afraid you can’t access his funds any more than Eleanor could, at least until after Probate. I, as Executor, will manage the Estate’s finances until then, with Bill Johnson’s help, of course. In theory, I should be charging you rent if you choose to live in the Hall, to maximise the Estate’s revenues, but that would be ridiculous, as there is no mortgage and you – one of you – will be the sole beneficiary anyway.”

All that meant that Susie and I would need to continue to work at our various jobs to support ourselves, though we would save the cost of renting our flat. We agreed that my mother had cleaned her last house. But she decided not to sell her old home. That was mainly for sentimental reasons, but the rental income would be enough for her needs.

We arranged to meet at the Hall at ten on Saturday morning with the intention of taking ownership. Smythe was confident that my status would have been resolved by then, one way or the other. I was in two minds about the title. I was happy with my life, especially now Susie was a full-time part of it. Did I really want to be an Earl?

* * *

Smythe telephoned just after I got back from school on Friday afternoon. The lab had confirmed that Perry Marsham was indeed my father and I was now Robert, Lord Marsham, sixth Earl of Hadleigh.

Susie was now the Countess, Lady Marsham. My mother would be the Dowager Countess. We went straight round to give her the good news, which she received with relief.

“I’m only sorry I didn’t get it done years ago,” she said, “but I really wasn’t confident. I was seeing a couple of other guys around that time, and I was afraid that your father would cut us off without a penny if you weren’t his.”

She was embarrassed about her chequered past. We hastened to sympathise.

“I don’t suppose it would have made any difference anyway,” she said with a sigh. “There was no way Perry would have taken me back – or that I would have gone. Though I suppose he might have wanted to bring you in as the heir.”

“I wouldn’t have gone without you,” I said, “and I’m very glad with how it turned out. Just think, I would never have met Susie if I lived in the Hall. Dad would probably have sent me off to some horrendous boarding school.”

Susie gave me an affectionate squeeze.

“I don’t think I would have fitted in with life as an Earl’s son,” I continued. “Come to that, I’m not at all sure I’ll be any good as an Earl now.”

“Well, you can’t be any worse than your father,” Mum said.

“You’ll be fine, babe,” said Susie loyally.

* * *

We had dinner with Susie’s Mum and Dad that evening. They were delighted with our news.

“Does this mean you can sit in the House of Lords?” George asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “My father didn’t.”

“There are only places for ninety-two hereditary peers,” said Susie, who had been looking it up, “and you have to be sponsored by one of the main parties, or be elected as a cross-bench peer.”

“And I’m not interested in politics anyway,” I added.

“What do I call Susie now?” her mother asked as we sat down.

“Well, ‘Susie’, of course!” laughed my wife, who may or may not have appreciated the purpose of the question.

“Shouldn’t it be ‘Your Grace’?” Janet persisted, tongue-in-cheek.

“That’s Dukes and Duchesses,” I said, playing along. “The first time you address her on any occasion, you say ‘Lady Hadleigh’; thereafter it’s ‘My Lady’ or ‘Ma’am’, if you prefer.”

Susie had gone scarlet. Her mother and I both laughed.

“Would My Lady like more chips?” Janet said.

“Ketchup, M’Lady?” said her Dad.

“Shut up, peasants,” said Susan, Lady Marsham, Countess of Hadleigh.