Miss Whittaker knew London, of course. She had trained at the Royal Free. That meant she would know Bloomsbury better than any other district. For nobody knew better than Parker how rarely Londoners move out of their own particular little orbit. Unless, of course, she had at some time during her time at the hospital been recommended to a solicitor in another quarter, the chances were that she would have gone to a solicitor in the Bloomsbury or Holborn district.
Unfortunately for Parker, this is a quarter which swarms with solicitors. Gray’s Inn Road, Gray’s Inn itself, Bedford Row, Holborn, Lincoln’s Inn—the brass plates grow all about as thick as blackberries.
Which was why Parker was feeling so hot, tired and fed-up that June afternoon.
With an impatient grunt he pushed away his eggy plate, paid-at-the-desk-please, and crossed the road towards Bedford Row, which he had marked down as his portion for the afternoon.
He started at the first solicitor’s he came to, which happened to be the office of one J. F. Trigg. He was lucky. The youth in the outer office informed him that Mr. Trigg had just returned from lunch, was disengaged, and would see him. Would he walk in?
Mr. Trigg was a pleasant, fresh-faced man in his early forties. He begged Mr. Parker to be seated and asked what he could do for him.
For the thirty-seventh time, Parker started on the opening gambit which he had devised to suit his purpose.
“I am only temporarily in London, Mr. Trigg, and finding I needed legal advice, I was recommended to you by a man I met in a restaurant. He did give me his name, but it has escaped me, and anyway, it’s of no great importance, is it? The point is this. My wife and I have come up to Town to see her great-aunt, who is in a very bad way. In fact, she isn’t expected to live.
“Well, now, the old lady has always been fond of my wife, don’t you see, and it has always been an understood thing that Mrs. Parker was to come into her money when she died. It’s quite a tidy bit, and we have been—I won’t say looking forward to it, but in a kind of mild way counting on it as something for us to retire upon later on. You understand. There aren’t any other relations at all, so, though the old lady has often talked about making a will, we didn’t worry much, one way or the other, because we took it for granted my wife would come in for anything there was. But we were talking about it to a friend yesterday, and he took us rather aback by saying that there was a new law or something, and that if my wife’s great-aunt hadn’t made a will we shouldn’t get anything at all. I think he said it would all go to the Crown. I didn’t think that could be right and told him so, but my wife is a bit nervous—there are the children to be considered, you see—and she urged me to get legal advice, because her great-aunt may go off at any minute, and we don’t know whether there is a will or not. Now, how does a great-niece stand under the new arrangements?”
“The point has not been made very clear,” said Mr. Trigg, “but my advice to you is, to find out whether a will has been made and if not, to get one made without delay if the testatrix is capable of making one. Otherwise I think there is a very real danger of your wife’s losing her inheritance.”