Free Child's Play by Reginald Hill Page B

gone out and now he relit it.
'But you were reconciled with your uncle's family to some extent,' prompted Goodenough.
Huby laughed and said, 'I thought so. Our dad died in 1958. Uncle Sam came to the funeral. I talked to him, man to man. Well, it weren't my quarrel. Me and Ruby got invited to tea a short while after. That were a frosty affair, I tell you. But I said to myself, I can thole frost if it's going to bring brass. I even started selling Lomas ales in the pub. Me dad must've turned in his grave! Then just as I felt I were getting on champion with uncle Sam, what does he do but keel over and die, not a six-month after our dad! Well, her ladyship got the lot, not a penny for any bugger else. But fair do's, I said. It were hers by right. And didn't she get hold of me after the funeral and say it'd been her Sam's particular wish that this new friendliness between our families should continue and she'd like me and Ruby to come to tea? But she'd not changed, not her!'
'What do you mean?' said Goodenough.
'Guilt! That's all it was. Like she knew she'd buggered her lad up, now she must've wondered if she'd helped push Sam into the grave. All right, it sounds daft. But why'd she do it, else? More than five-and-twenty years of having us to tea once a month. For what? I'll tell you for what, from my point of view. Gruff-of-sodding-Green-dale, that's what!'
He banged his pipe against the wall so hard he left a mark in the plaster.
Goodenough said, 'I sympathize with you, believe me.'
'Do you now? Well, that's good on you. But you've not come all this way to sympathize, have you? What are you, any road? Some kind of lawyer?'
'To some extent,' smiled Goodenough who, under
parental misdirection, had in fact studied law instead of the veterinary science he would have preferred. When the chance had come of a poorly paid organizational job with PAWS, he had leapt at it, and in a dozen years he had helped build it up from a rather ramshackle semi-amateur body to one of the top animal charities. Large legacies like Mrs Huby's were rare, and it was his frustration at the thought of waiting all those years as much as advice from the Society's official legal advisers that had made him choose this course of action.
'Let me explain,' he said. 'We at PAWS are naturally eager to get our share of the estate sooner rather than later. To do this, we'll need to challenge the will in court and get Alexander Huby's unlikely claim put aside. You follow me?'
'You want the brass now,' said Huby. 'I can see that. What's it to do wi' me?'
'To maximize our chances of success we need to keep things simple as possible. One thing is that all three beneficiary organizations must act in concert. I've got CODRO's consent to go ahead in their name and while I'm up here, I intend sounding out these Women For Empire people.
'The second and more important is for the judge to be presented with a clear line of vision. He must be able to see that the only possible hindrance to our collecting the money in 2015 is the return of Alexander Huby, which we will then persuade him is so unlikely as to be negligible.'
Huby had been listening closely.
'What other hindrance could there be?' he asked.
'You!' said Goodenough. 'And Mrs Windibanks. You're the two closest relatives. In fact, I believe you occupy precisely the same relationship with the deceased . . .'
'What? She told you that, did she? Bloody liar!' cried Huby indignantly. The old lass were my auntie. Windypants is nowt but a sort of cousin, well removed!'
'In matters of this kind, it's blood relationships that count,' said Goodenough crisply. 'Mrs Huby was your aunt only by marriage. Mrs Windibanks's father was her cousin on the Lomas side, just as your father was on the Huby side. That's the relationship that matters. What I would like from you, Mr Huby, is a waiver, acknowledging that you will not be making any claim on Mrs Huby's estate, now or ever.'
The pipe hit the wall with such force, the bowl cracked wide.