Read The Kilternan Legacy for Free Online Page B

the will, and I’ve a letter here for you which your great-aunt directed me to hand you personally,” and I received a square envelope of heavy paper. “And here”—he was passing me another long, legal-feeling document—“is the trust-fund report.”
    “Trust fund?”
    “Yes, and it ought to more than settle the death duties. We were exceedingly lucky with the appraisals, despite the fact that your great-aunt’s property had appreciated a good deal over the past few years. The duties could have been atrocious, so I’m very relieved that the fund should prove ample.” He saw my amazement and grinned. “I’m sure it’s a common enough practice in the States too, Mrs. Teasey. Provided the trust is set up, as this one was, five years prior to decease, the money is tax-free.”
    “Excuse me, you mean I’ve been the heir that long?”
    Mr. Noonan smiled very kindly. “Yes, Mrs. Teasey, you have. Certainly ever since I took over your great-aunt’s affairs, seven years ago.”
    “Well!” The twins breathed out “Wows!”
    “Mrs. Teasey? Don’t ever feel that you have usurped anyone else’s claims.”
    “Well, it was a great surprise to me. I never knew my great-aunt at all. I mean …”
    “She knew about you. And she had good reasons for leaving her”—he smiled again, with mischief in his eyes—“her queendom to you. Now, we haven’t received the exact figure for the death duties yet. They must be paid within this year, but not to worry. You’ve the trust.”
    “Then it’s unlikely that I’d have to sell the property to satisfy the duties?” And why were there no supplies in the house?
    He looked startled. “Good Lord, no. That was the whole purpose of the trust fund.”
    “Is the property intrinsically valuable, Mr. Noonan?”
    “Yes, quite.” He riffled some papers.
    “I don’t need the exact figure. I was just asking because Mr. Kelley—”
    “Brian Kelley?” There was surprise as well as steel in Mr. Noonan’s query.
    “Yes. He was most insistent about seeing me.”
    “Did you?” Mr. Noonan’s hands were suspended in his paper search.
    “No. I decided against it. I didn’t like his looks. Nor his insistence.”
    Relief smoothed the crows’-feet from the corners of Mr. Noonan’s eyes. “How the devil did he know you were in town? You only arrived yesterday morning.”
    “I wouldn’t know,” I said, although all three of us had a fair idea from the pleading look in the receptionist’s eyes. She had been the motorcyclist with the keys to my … queendom.
    “If it had been at all possible, Mrs. Teasey, I would have met you at the airport. But you gave me no warning of your arrival.” Mr. Noonan rattled the papers before him in a testy fashion.
    “The children had finished school, there were seats on a flight, and so … we just came.”
    “As well you did. All things being equal, you’d best take possession of the house instantly. I mean by that, physical possession. There is a variety of conflicting interests.”
    “One of them named Kerrigan?” I asked. He dropped the papers and slapped both palms against the desk, staring at me with amazement.
    “Kelley
and
Kerrigan?”
    “Hmmm. I assume that they’re both prime contenders?”
    He cleared his throat and said, with a slight, unhappy smile, “Essentially but not actually. To be blunt, Mrs. Teasey, almost every one of your great-aunt’s adult relatives, and she had innumerable, believes that he or she should have been left the estate rather than yourself.”
    “Me too.”
    “Your great-aunt knew what she was doing, and, believe me, no matter what you might hear to the contrary, had every right to dispose of her property and possessions as she wished.” He was so emphatic that I was instantly more apprehensive. Teddie always said that I have no powers of dissembling, which he thought remarkable, since I had acted. He never could understand that I was playing a particular part then, whereas I was just me off