Will and Testament // Sequel to the Rosie Grey series

Chapter Thirty

A pin dropping to the floor could have been heard a mile away.

I readjusted my position on the crutches and stared at Father who looked a tad too stunned to make any comment. His eyes were wide and I could almost see his brain working overtime to try and process what I said. Uncle Christopher looked less stunned and more mildly impressed, although I didn't know why since I hadn't put forward any form of case just yet. Mother just looked tired, not that I could blame her. It had been a long few weeks.

"We've been over this, Izzy. We can't prove that Mother did anything wrong," Father said.

"No," I said, hopping into the room, "but we can prove that the will Mr Greenway read isn't the most up to date will and we can probably prove the will he does have wasn't signed by Grandfather which makes it invalid."

"I'm curious to know where this is going," Uncle Christopher said. "Go on, Izzy, what's your case?"

I grinned. "On the day the will was read out, Father said that it had been dated from February, but Marsh said that he took Grandfather to Mr Greenway's office the day before he left for Ireland."

"That doesn't prove that he made any changes to his will, just that he went to Mr Greenway's office."

"Except that Grandfather told me that was what he went to do. He said he wanted to make adjustments just in case something happened with the ship, which had been the reason why he didn't want to go in the first place. The will he made at the start of the month is more recent, so if we can find it, whatever is written on the one in February is thrown out the window. That, and I don't think the February will is Father's anyway."

"But we need to find the will he made at the start of the month and hope that it doesn't say the same thing. If Mr Greenway is somehow involved in it, as I assume you are getting at here, then he probably disposed of the April will." Father said.

"Grandfather kept a copy of everything in the house."

Father sighed and shook his head. "We've been through everything, we didn't find any documentation like that."

He had a point. Through packing up the house for moving out, no additional paperwork had been found other than documents he had to sign for work. If he had a secondary copy of a will, we would have found it by now but it appeared to have disappeared into thin air. At least we had the other documentation he signed, though. We can prove that Grandfather didn't sign the will if we compare the signature on the documentation to his signature on the will.

That would make the February will invalid, but it didn't answer the question about what would happen to Grandfather's estate. We needed the other will to confirm what Grandfather really wanted to do with his estate, but we would have to find it first and I knew that would be difficult. There were only a few hours left before he had to hand over the keys to Mr Greenway so Grandmother would have access to the house and that we needed more time.

Father turned and directed his attention towards the portrait of Grandfather that had yet to be moved. I wished I could talk to him, ask Grandfather where he had put the will so that we might be able to save the house, his house. He would know what to do, then again, if he were still here, we wouldn't be facing such a big uncertainty about the future of the house.

"We might not have the most recent will, not yet anyway, but we have the documentation he did sign that can be compared to his signature on the will Mr Greenway has," I said.

"That's true. Any proof that he didn't sign the will would make it invalid anyway and might buy you some time to find the correct one," Uncle Christopher said.