Too Many Cousins

Sansil, Ltd., whose name is known wherever artificial silk clothing is worn.
Harvey had written six names in a row at the bottom of his genealogical tree. Screening the pad from Mile Boulanger’s interested eye, he ran his pencil through three of the names, and put a query mark against her own.
“And now,” he said, “tell me something about the root of the trouble—your step-great-grandmother.”
Cecile’s brooding air became definitely sultry. Her dark eyes glowed, and her mouth turned down in a bitter line.
“It has been like a poison running through the family. She and the money. Our money. We have always been thinking of it. All of us. It’s natural, isn’t it? All of us cousins, and our fathers and mothers, and their fathers and mothers, all feeling that this money ought to be ours, and wondering when this woman was going to die. . . . ”
Cecile ground out her cigarette as though she were grinding the face of her step-great-grandmother. Then she went on more quietly. No doubt, she said, the first generation, her great-uncle Martin and her grandmother, Alice Dresser, scarcely expected to benefit by the trust fund, their stepmother being so much the younger. And in the beginning they were very comfortably off themselves. But when things went wrong, both died poor because she would not help them. Of the next generation, it seemed that Euphemia Ardmore and her brother Ceoffrey in their turn asked her to do something for their children, and were similarly rebuffed. Finally, Euphemia’s daughter, Vivien, when ill and out of work, and later Cecile herself, on her father’s behalf—his salary had been paid from Paris, and the fall of France left him almost penniless—put their pride in their pockets and wrote to the ex-housekeeper, now in her sixties. All they got for humiliating themselves were two abominable letters. “She said things about France. Horrible things! She said we betrayed our friends . . . ” Cecile’s sallow cheeks were flushed: words began to pour out. “You can’t wonder we hate her. A housekeeper! Treating us like that! Refusing us a share of money that is in trust for us. She’s no better than a thief!”
She caught Mrs. Tuke’s eye, and checked herself, biting her lip, breathing fast, the angry colour flaming in her face. Mr. Tuke looked at her with detached interest.
“No, I don’t wonder that you hate her,” he agreed. “But even housekeepers have been known to possess bowels of compassion. It looks as though she hates all of you. And if so, why? Have you and your cousins given her any cause, or is she visiting the sins of the fathers down to your generation?” Gecile shrugged. “Oh, well, my grandmother and my great-uncle were not pleased when their father married again. And the way he left his money did not please them either. Do you wonder at that, Mr. Tuke?”
“No. Unwise of them to show their resentment, though.” She shrugged again. “Of course, they did show it. My mother told me. For example, when they met this woman, after the marriage, they went on treating her as if she was the housekeeper, and nothing more. Old Mr. Shearsby was angry. But that is what she was, after all. Many old men marry their housekeepers, so that they can be cared for. . . .”
“Possibly she did not look at it in that way. When her step-children, later on, came begging for help, it is not surprising that she enjoyed hitting back. The case of the later generations is different. I am not suggesting that the lady has a nice character, and antipathies are apt to grow on one with age. What else do you know about her?” Cecile seemed to know very little. The lady’s name had been Helen Scarlett. She was not a lady, in the social sense. Emile Boulanger had often told his daughter that old Rutland Shearsby made three mistakes—he married beneath him, he never expected his second wife to outlive his grandchildren, and he thought the family business would go on making money for ever. After his death, his widow sold the big house in Lancaster Gate and for many years led a restless life at hotels in south coast watering places. For the past two decades, however, she had been settled with a companion in a flat in Chelsea. She had not now very long to live. She suffered from some incurable disease, and her mind was failing. Her doctor gave her another few months —perhaps until next year. These and other recent news Cecile had got from her cousin Blanche Porteous. It seemed that the wickedness of her step-great-grandmother had been even more of an idee fixe with Blanche than with the rest of the cousins. She had always been poor, and had resented it bitterly. She somehow scraped acquaintance with old Mrs. Shearsby’s companion, and had some little piece of information about the Chelsea household every time Cecile met her.
“One or two stray questions,” Harvey said at the end of this. “Apparently your great-grandfather’s estate was not seriously affected by the failure of the business?”
“He lost a good deal of money,” Cecile replied. “But the business was not bankrupt. Something was saved. And he had large investments outside it.”
“Who were the executors and trustees of the will?”
“That woman”—Cecile seemed to shrink from naming her bete noir—“and great-grandfather’s bank manager. When he died, she appointed her brother in his place. She had the power to do so, though it seems all wrong. Suppose——”
“You need not worry. They can’t touch the trust fund.” Harvey looked down at the pad on his knee. Cecile, her nervousness and awe of him abated, was studying his marked and diabolic features—the dark hair coming to a point over his forehead, the dark eyebrows forming a flattened V, the other inverted V drawn by the deep-etched lines from his nostrils to the corners of his sardonic mouth. The resemblance to stage creations of Mephistopheles was striking.
He looked up at