Free We All Killed Grandma by Fredric Brown Page A

the thousand out of my share, since yours means that much to you. It just looked like a good chance to try to make you kick in.”
    I looked across the desk at Mr. Hennig. “You can work it, can’t you, so she’ll get the money and think it’s coming from the estate, and not from me?”
    “Of course. Here is the stipulation for you to sign, Rod. I have two of them made out. It will be necessary for Arch to sign one to enable me to advance you money, should you wish any, before final settlement of the estate.”
    “I don’t think I’ll need any of it sooner.”
    “Perhaps not, but it might be well to provide for the contingency now, while you are signing one yourself.
Quid pro quo.
There is always a possibility of illness or accident putting you in need of an advance. And another reason—final settlement cannot be made until the end of a year’s time, and if any complications arise it might take longer. So if you wish Mrs. Trent to receive her ‘bequest’ without waiting that long, it will have to be in the form of an advance to you against the estate. That is a thousand dollar advance you’ll want in any case.”
    “Of course,” I said. “You’ll sign one, Arch, if I will?”
    “Sure,” Arch said.
    Hennig handed him a paper similar to the one I was holding. He said, “Ah—gentlemen, you will please notice Clause Three. It is necessary for me to insert that for my own protection, as executor, in case—ah—You each agree not to hold the estate, or me personally, liable for any sums advanced to the other if, for any reason, the will is set aside by the court.”
    Arch asked, “Is there any possibility of that? Any reasonable possibility, I mean.”
    “Only one that I can think of—and that a very remote contingency.
Extremely
remote, I might say, in this case.” He looked embarrassed. “The law provides that no one may benefit financially by a crime which he commits. A will is therefore declared invalid in so far as it applies to a beneficiary who may be convicted of killing his benefactor.”
    “You mean,” I asked, “that if I were convicted of killing Grandma Tuttle, I couldn’t inherit from her? And that Arch would get all of the estate?”
    “You would not inherit. As for Archer getting all of the estate, it is highly probable that the court would so rule,since he is the only other survivor. And vice versa, of course.”
    Mentally I thanked him for the “vice versa” after-thought. Arch had been in Chicago at the time Grandma Tuttle had died.
    Arch looked at me and I looked back. Then he leaned forward on the desk and signed his stipulation. I signed mine; I didn’t have to wonder what he was wondering.
    Hennig took the papers from us and blotted them carefully. He pushed a button on his desk and a secretary came in. He said, “Miss Burdock, please make out two checks for me to sign. One to Mr. Archer Britten for two thousand dollars, one to Mr. Roderick Britten for one thousand. Both charged against the Tuttle estate.”
    He said to me, as the secretary was leaving, “If you’ll just endorse your check back to me, Rod, I’ll see that Mrs. Trent gets the money, and that she thinks it a bequest.”
    “Thanks,” I told him. “How is the estate shaping up?”
    “Fine. There’s not time for all the bills to be in yet, and I haven’t figured the exact amount of the inheritance taxes, but I think that the amount I originally estimated may have been conservative. From here it looks as though each of you should have at least twenty thousand coming, possibly several thousand more than that. It depends, in part, on how much the house will bring.” He laced his fingers together across his chest and leaned back in his swivel chair. “You understand, Mrs. Tuttle didn’t own the house outright; only an equity, the rest was mortgaged. She kept it that way purposely in order to have as much investment capital as possible. We may get anywhere from twenty to thirty thousand dollars for the