STALKER

Chapter 113 - 19th and 20th June

19th

It's 3 am and I desperately want to scream hallelujah but I can't. I want to wake up Weirdo but I can't...patience Timothy patience, only a day or two more to wait. Weirdo has been a good sport carrying most of the workload this week. The poor bugger has been holding the fort while I've been jumping back and forth to Venice and London all week. He hasn't complained about me being distracted or getting to bed every night in the early hours or not at all. I kept telling him it was for a good cause and he'd mumble "another one of your secrets...I know I know... I've been through this a few times now ."   I wanted to say that it was a surprise, not a secret, and a great one at that but I kept my mouth shut.   I was trying to make sure that no problems arose at this late stage of my plan. The obsessive control freak part of my nature had temporarily taken over.  Depending on where you stand, it's either God or the Devil is in the detail but in make case, it's both. I'm covering every scenario I can imagine.

I've just finished a call with the lawyer from Schoones & Sons, the modern version of the law firm Hoopers and Schoones and after almost a year of fart-arsing around, I finally have what I want.

Mr. Frasier from Schoones and Sons, who sat so close to his computer while we skyped that his shiny pink round face filled the entire screen of my laptop; happily informed me in lawspeak that I am now the owner of the Palazzo San Gabriele.   His firm has a unique pedigree and made my plan possible. In 1727 the firm had already existed for almost 100 years, handed down from father to son and then sold off to new owners. My research told me it was the longest continuously running law firm in the UK and that they had, over the centuries acquired an impressive archive of legal and genealogical documents. The company's longevity made it possible for the firm to act as the custodians in the Estate of the Marchess Alvise Contarini's very peculiar, Mr. Frasier's words, Secondary Will and its single bequest to an unnamed beneficiary.

I won't bore you with the legal jargon, I only understand a fraction of it anyway, basically, Alvise created a secondary Last Will and Testament, separate from his hereditary one which passed on his Title and the Contarini family fortune, home, etc to his heirs. Back in those days, the Secondary Will was used in most cases to provide the official mistress and their illegitimate children an inheritance, discreetly. Other times it was a belated payment of a debt. This type of contract was rare but not unheard of.  Similar to a Tontine.

To Alvise, San Gabriele was his haven, he loved it. When I told him I wanted to buy it and asked if he would put his name to the purchase of the property he agreed without hesitation. I promised he and Giacomo would have the run of the place for their lifetime and then eventually it would pass to me or my descendants. I gathered a fortune over time, enough to purchase the building and Mr. Sweep created the unambiguous document that survived a revolution, the dissolution of a kingdom, world wars, depressions, and the creation and abolition of laws over centuries.  The document had to stand the test of time.  The Will's single bequest was open-ended,  specifying an unnamed person who only had to present a copy of the document to identify themselves as the beneficiary. No time limit was set for the discharge of the Will or any other proof required. I did that a week ago...apparently to everyone's surprise at Schoones.

The lawyers I had lined up in Sydney got to work immediately and contacted their English counterparts. Mr. Frasier said the news had caused such a stir in their offices that all other work stopped for the day. The Will had over time acquired a strange reputation, stories had embellished reality and became folklore.  Frasier's cheeks turned a brighter shade of pink and he winked at me through the screen when he said that the building was reported to be haunted. his chubby cheeks positively wobbled with excitement when he told me lights and music had been heard coming from the Palazzo and people tended to stay away from it.    Guess who the ghost was...LOL...I had to laugh at that.