PUFFIN BOOKS
Natasha’s Will
Joan Lingard was born in Edinburgh, but grew up in Belfast where she lived until she was eighteen. She began writing when she was eleven, and has never wanted to be anything other than a writer. She is the author of more than twenty novels for young people and thirteen for adults. Joan Lingard has three grown-up daughters and five grandchildren, and lives in Edinburgh with her Latvian/Canadian husband.
Some other books by Joan Lingard
The Kevin and Sadie Books (in reading order)
THE TWELFTH DAY OF JULY
ACROSS THE BARRICADES
INTO EXILE
A PROPER PLACE
HOSTAGES TO FORTUNE
TUG OF WAR
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
DARK SHADOWS
LIZZIE’S LEAVING
RAGS AND RICHES
Joan Lingard
PUFFIN BOOKS
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published 2000
14
Text copyright © Joan Lingard, 2000
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-14-192809-8
For Lindsey Fraser
In 1917 St Petersburg was known as Petrograd, but in order to avoid confusion, I have named it St Petersburg throughout.
The day the black Mercedes came purring up the drive they had no idea that their lives were about to be blown apart.
‘Mum!’ yelled Sonya. ‘Visitors!’
Her mother, Anna, had been bent over the carrots in the kitchen garden. Now she straightened her back and pushed her hair from her eyes with a grubby hand. ‘B&Bs?’ she queried hopefully.
‘Possibly,’ said Sonya, squinting into the sun. The car was long and sleekly black. The owner of such a car would be more likely to go to a posh hotel than to be looking for bed and breakfast in a family house. But one never knew. People were unpredictable, as her mother often said. And theirs was a very nice house, even though it might not be as grand as it once was.
‘How many?’ asked Anna. Her daughter’s eyes were sharper than hers.
‘Two, I think.’ There didn’t seem to be anyone on the back seat.
‘Male and female?’
‘No, two men.’
‘Two men?’
Like her mother, Sonya hoped that they would be customers for their B&B. They were badly in need of the money. The bureau drawer was stuffed full of unpaid bills. Since Natasha’s death three months ago, they’d been having a hard struggle to stay afloat. It was she who had paid most of the bills.
Her brother, Alex, who had also heard the car, emerged from the stable holding a bucket of horse feed. They had only one horse, Tobias, and he was getting on. Once there would have been half a dozen horses in the stable. Long before their time. When Natasha’s husband, Alasdair, was alive.
The car pulled up in front of the house. Sonya ran across the lawn to meet it; Alex came from the stable. They reached the car simultaneously.
The two men climbed out. Their limbs seemed to be stiff, as if they had driven a long way. The driver twitched his shoulders and rubbed the small of his back. He was dressed in fawnish-brown tweed with a cap to match; his passenger wore a dark, pinstripe suit.
‘Hi!’ It was Sonya who greeted them. She was the one in the family always readiest to talk. Alex liked to stand back until he had summed people up.
‘Good afternoon,’ said the man in the pinstripe suit. He had a very smooth, even voice.
‘Can I help you? Are you interested in our B&B?’
They had a notice on the gate at the foot of the drive, with a Scottish Tourist Board recommendation of three crowns. The men would have passed it. They were also featured in a booklet about bed and breakfast in the Highlands.
The tweedy one was surveying the landscape, letting his eyes sweep down over the lawn to the loch. ‘Nice situation,’ he commented. He seemed to be speaking more to himself than to them.
‘It’s fantastic,’ enthused Sonya. ‘We love it. You can watch the sun set over the water on fine evenings. Two of our guest bedrooms look over the loch.’
But the man was no longer admiring the view. He had put his back to it and was scrutinizing the front of the house. It was a large, well-proportioned building in grey stone, dating back to the early part of the eighteenth century.
‘Needs a bit of work doing to it,’ his companion observed. ‘The windowsills haven’t been painted in a while. Guttering needs attention. Maybe even the roof. Been allowed to go rather, the whole place, I would imagine.’
‘The old girl probably didn’t bother about it much in her later years. She was ninety odd, you know.’
Sonya felt herself bristling. Had he meant Natasha? Who did he think he was to refer to her as ‘the old girl’!
‘It’s a fine house, though,’ said pinstripe. ‘Excellent example of its era, I would say. A most desirable property.’
Property! That was the first note to strike a chill into their hearts. Brother and sister turned to look at each other. Alex’s frown was black.
‘Do you want to speak to our mother?’ he asked.
‘Or your father,’ said tweedy.
Sonya looked up. ‘Here comes our mother now,’ she said. Anna would have taken time to wash her hands at the outside pump and tidy her hair. ‘She’s been in the vegetable garden,’ Sonya went on, feeling a need to fill the silence before their mother arrived to take over. ‘We grow all our own vegetables organically.’ She let her voice trail away. She had a feeling the men weren’t interested in their organic vegetables.
Their mother was smiling as she approached. It would be the last time she would smile for some time.
‘Good afternoon,’ she said to the men. ‘I’m Anna McKinnon.’ She extended a clean hand.
The tweedy one took it. ‘Boris Malenkov,’ he said with a small nod of his head.
Boris Malenkov! That gave them their second jolt. Hadn’t that been the surname of Natasha’s cousin Kyril? She had lost touch with him many years ago. They’d never got on, she’d said, and they’d had some sort of row in the end.
‘I am the son of Natasha’s cousin Kyril Malenkov,’ announced Boris, confirming their suspicions. He turned to his pinstriped companion. ‘And this is Mr Hatton-Flitch, my legal adviser.’
Legal adviser?
Anna and Mr Hatton-Flitch shook hands and he declared himself delighted to meet her. For a moment, she was unable to find her voice, then she rallied to introduce the children, ‘My son, Alex, and my daughter, Sonya.’
Boris gave them each a brief nod. They said nothing, but watched him carefully. He was eyeing Mr Hatton-Flitch, while giving a meaningful cough. He was clearly becoming impatient to get down to business. For business must be what had brought him and his pinstriped companion here. They had not come for the B&B or to admire the view over the Atlantic Ocean.
‘How long have you been tenants here?’ asked the lawyer.
‘We’re not tenants exactly,’ said Anna.
‘No?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘So how –?’ He let the question hang in the air.
‘Shall we go inside?’ suggested Anna.
‘After you,’ said Boris.
Anna led the way up the steps, through the open door, into the wide, spacious hall. ‘Duncan!’ she called.
The children’s father appeared from the kitchen at the end of the hall. He manoeuvred his wheelchair deftly over the parquet floor, avoiding the elaborate curved legs of a mahogany armoire and the grandfather clock.
The two visitors looked taken aback at the sight of the chair, but they recovered quickly to participate in the introductions. In turn, each of the men bent their backs to shake Duncan’s hand.
They then all went into the small sitting room to the right of the front door. This was their family room. Sonya wondered that her mother had not taken the visitors into the more formal drawing room. But perhaps she wanted to show the men that this was a family room. And a family house.
‘Excuse the mess,’ said Anna, lifting a pile of magazines from one chair, a book from another. A jigsaw, half done, lay on the hexagonal table in the window. ‘Do sit down. Can we offer you anything? Tea, coffee, sherry?’
‘A small sherry would be welcome,’ said Mr Hatton-Flitch.
Alex fetched the sherry decanter and four small crystal glasses from the dining room. He set them on the low coffee table in front of his father, who poured the drinks.
‘Edinburgh crystal,’ said Anna, noticing how Boris held his glass up against the light. She flicked her finger against the side of her own glass. It made a little pinging sound. ‘Proof positive! The real thing. Slainte! That’s “Cheers” in Gaelic,’ she added. The glasses had been one of Natasha’s many wedding presents.
They drank.
Boris made a rasping sound at the back of his throat, which he quickly turned back into another cough, putting his hand up to his mouth to cover it. Then he said, with a quick glance at Alex and Sonya, ‘I wonder, perhaps, since we have business to discuss, if it might be better –’
‘Alex and Sonya can stay and hear whatever it is you have to say,’ said Duncan. ‘We don’t have secrets from them. Not many, at any rate!’ he added with a smile.
‘So you’ve not been tenants here?’ prompted Mr Hatton-Flitch.
‘We were friends of Natasha’s,’ said Anna.
‘Ah, friends,’ said the lawyer with a little smile.
‘My grandmother and Natasha were friends from childhood. After Natasha’s husband, Alasdair, died, my mother, who had just been widowed herself, came here to live with her.’
‘As a companion?’
‘To keep her company. But she was not paid to do so. As I said, there was a family connection. My mother was half-Russian. And then, eight years ago, when she died, we moved in to help take care of Natasha. She had bad arthritis and couldn’t look after herself.’
Mr Hatton-Flitch put the tips of his fingers together in steeple fashion. ‘All this is news, of course, to Mr Malenkov. You must realize that he is her next-of-kin? And as far as we can ascertain, Mr and Mrs McKinnon, the late Mrs Natasha Fleming died intestate. That is, without leaving a will.’
‘We understand what intestate means,’ said Anna.
‘Quite. Mr Malenkov, therefore, as her next-of-kin and only surviving relative, is her inheritor.’
The family was quiet. They had feared something like this might happen when they hadn’t been able to find a will.
‘Do you plan to put us out of our house?’ asked Sonya.
‘Now I wouldn’t put it quite like that –’
‘How would you put it?’ said Duncan, his dark eyes on fire. His hands gripped the armrests of his chair.
‘I am extremely sorry, Mr McKinnon, especially since –’
‘Especially since I am confined to a wheelchair? Well, you can forget your sympathy! I don’t need it. But my family do. My wife has known this house since she was a child. When Natasha was ill my wife nursed her and would not allow her to go into hospital.’
‘I am sure we can offer you some compensation for that.’
‘We don’t want compensation. That does not interest us. We want to keep our home!’
‘It’s ours!’ cried Sonya. ‘Natasha said she was leaving it to us. She told me she was! She put it in her will. She wanted us to live on here after her.’
‘Where is the will then?’ asked Mr Hatton-Flitch, turning his hands palms upward as if ready to receive it. His hands looked thin and dry. ‘None has been registered. We have just come from the sheriff court where we have lodged Mr Malenkov’s claim to the estate.’
They had searched the house for the will; they had looked in every cupboard and every drawer in every room. They had looked under the mattresses and under the carpets. Anna had even opened up the back of the grandfather clock.
‘We were Natasha’s family,’ said Sonya. ‘All she had. He wasn’t!’ She looked over at Boris. ‘He never even met her. Or came to her funeral.’ At the remembrance of the funeral she burst into tears. Her mother put her arm round her.
‘Mr Malenkov was not aware of his relative’s decease until afterwards,’ said the lawyer. ‘A friend sent him a copy of the death notice in The Scotsman.’ The notice had read: ‘Natasha Fleming, née Denisova, late of St Petersburg and Paris.’ Boris’s friend must have recognized the family name of Denisov. It had been a prominent family in the old St Petersburg, before the Russian revolution of 1917.
‘We will help you find other accommodation when the time comes,’ said Boris. ‘I’m very sorry, but I intend to go ahead and claim my inheritance. You couldn’t expect me just to give it up to you?’
‘No, I suppose we couldn’t,’ agreed Anna. ‘That would be a lot to ask for.’
‘Do you intend to live here yourself, Mr Malenkov?’ Duncan asked the question politely, with no hint of the aggression he must be feeling.
‘Well, no, that wouldn’t be possible. I live in London. That is where my business interests lie.’
‘We might be able to arrange a deal whereby you could purchase the house from Mr Malenkov,’ said Mr Hatton-Flitch.
‘We’re not in the property-buying market, I’m afraid. We have no capital.’ Duncan shrugged. ‘Regrettably.’ His accident three years back had left him unable to carry on with his occupation. He’d been a deep sea diver. He had been held partly responsible for the accident – he’d had flu and shouldn’t have gone out at all, that had been his mistake – and so he had not received a very large amount in compensation. It was then that the family had started doing bed and breakfast, to help eke out their income. Natasha had had some money, enough to cover the expenses of the house, but not much more. And since her death that money had been frozen, on account of no will having been found. If only they could find the will!
Anna turned to Boris. ‘Perhaps we could lease the house from you? If you could see your way to letting us have it for not too high a rent?’
His lawyer answered again for him. ‘I’m afraid Mr Malenkov wishes to realize the capital. It is his right.’
‘Right?’ Alex spoke for the first time since they’d come into the room. ‘What kind of right would it be evicting us? Against the wishes of Natasha?’
‘It is a legal right, I’m afraid,’ said Mr Hatton-Flitch apologetically. ‘And how do we know what the wishes of Mrs Fleming actually were? We only have your word…’
‘Do you think we’re lying then?’ demanded Sonya. ‘That we’ve made it up?’
‘Sonya!’ reproved her father quietly.
‘I wonder,’ said Mr Hatton-Flitch, rising to his feet, ‘if you would mind if we took a look around? You see, we shall have to arrange for an estate agent to make an evaluation of the property and its contents.’
‘Contents?’ repeated Sonya.
‘You must understand that if Mr Malenkov inherits, the contents of the house would also belong to him. Would you care to accompany us round the house, Mrs McKinnon? I think it might be best if you came with us on your own.’
‘Well, Dad couldn’t very well come, could he?’ said Sonya.
‘Hush, Sonya, that has nothing to do with it!’ Her mother spoke sharply.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered. Her father hated to be pleaded for as a special case. Since his accident, he had been determined to lead as normal a life as possible. He did work at home on his computer, but of course he didn’t earn as much as he had when he was diving. He didn’t earn very much at all. Their mother was a skilled weaver and she earned a little money that way, but again, not an awful lot. So although their B&B trade was only seasonal, it was enough to make the difference and help them survive.
‘Shall we start upstairs?’ said Anna.
The two men followed her out of the room. Alex closed the door behind them.
‘I’m beginning to wonder whether Natasha ever made a will,’ said Duncan.
‘I’m sure she did!’ declared Sonya. ‘She wouldn’t have said so if she hadn’t.’ She had been especially close to Natasha and had been devastated when she’d died, even though Natasha had been in her nineties and Sonya knew that she’d lived a good and a long life. It had been a turbulent and dramatic life too, until she’d met Alasdair Fleming and he’d brought her to Scotland as his bride. In her last year she’d spent hours recalling it and telling Sonya her stories.
They heard footsteps overhead. The men must be with Anna in the upstairs drawing room.
‘Will he be allowed to take everything?’ asked Sonya sadly. ‘All the pictures and the furniture? And the books? But a lot of the books are ours! And the pictures.’
‘I’m sure your mother will point that out,’ said Duncan.
‘It’s not even as if Boris needs any of it. I bet he’s got loads of money. Look at his car!’
‘Need doesn’t come into it, I’m afraid, love,’ said her father.
Sonya was unable to sit down while the men were overhead. Snooping about amongst their things! For, no matter what the law said, they were theirs. When they heard feet coming back down the stairs she went to the door and opened it.
The men were looking at the grandfather clock.
‘That’s a very nice piece,’ murmured Mr Hatton-Flitch, making a note of it in his book. ‘Swiss, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Made in Zurich. Early eighteenth century, I would think,’ said Boris, lightly tapping the clock’s face. ‘Maybe even late seventeenth.’
‘Armoire,’ said Mr Hatton-Flitch, turning his attention to the next piece of furniture, a cupboard. ‘Mahogany. Fine condition. She had an eye for a good antique, your cousin.’
‘These antiques were all heirlooms from her husband’s side of the family,’ stressed Anna. ‘They didn’t come from St Petersburg.’ Not much had come from St Petersburg. The family had fled with only what they could carry.
Mr Hatton-Flitch moved on to the pictures. He noted them down. Then they were ready to ‘do’ the sitting room. Their eyes did a quick assessment, seeking out items of value. They weren’t going to bother with the twenty inch TV or the battered settee or the cheap hi-fi in the corner or the worn rug in front of the fireplace. However, Mr Hatton-Flitch’s interest was taken by a sewing basket sitting on top of the sideboard.
‘That looks a nice little item! It has a very Russian look to it. I would imagine it came from St Petersburg.’
The basket was elaborate, made of wicker and furbished with damask and satin. Small seed pearls rimmed its edges.
‘That’s mine!’ cried Sonya.
‘Natasha gave it to her,’ added her father. ‘For her twelfth birthday.’
The lawyer raised the lid. On the inside of it the word ‘Natasha’ was embroidered in pink silk, the colour now a little faded. ‘How pretty,’ he murmured. He took out some ribbons and set them aside. How dare he poke around inside her box? Sonya felt rage building up inside her.
‘Look at this, Boris!’ Mr Hatton-Flitch held a small, silver thimble up to the light.
‘That’s mine too,’ said Sonya. She wanted to go and snatch her thimble from his hand.
Boris had gone to look. The men’s heads were bent over the little object. This was no ordinary thimble and it had never been used for sewing.
‘It’s encrusted with tiny rubies and pearls!’ exclaimed Boris.
‘Real rubies,’ said Mr Hatton-Flitch, bringing the thimble up closer to his eyes. ‘Valuable, I would think. I daresay it also came from St Petersburg. They made some very fine things there prior to the revolution.’
‘Natasha gave it to Sonya as a christening present,’ said Duncan.
‘Do you have proof of that?’ asked the lawyer. ‘I mean, the basket is one thing. Worth a bit, probably, but the thimble must be worth a great deal more.’
‘How could we have proof?’ said Anna. ‘Natasha is dead. She’s the only one who could confirm it. Apart from the four of us. So I’m afraid you will have to take our word for it.’
Sonya was trembling. Surely they wouldn’t be able to take the thimble! She prized that above everything else Natasha had given her, next to the sewing basket itself. Natasha herself had been given the thimble as a christening present. Her christening had sounded like something out of a fairy tale, with everyone bringing small, exquisite presents and gathering round the baby’s white satin-lined crib. The Denisov family had lived in a palace overlooking the river Neva. Natasha’s father had been a prince. That hadn’t meant they’d been members of the royal family of the Tsar. Natasha had told them that there were quite a lot of princes in St Petersburg at that time. They had been members of the aristocracy, however, and they’d had numerous servants and kept two carriages. At the time of her birth in 1906, no one had foreseen the revolution that would sweep everything away and reduce the family to poverty.