Skulduggery Pleasant- Daughter Of Darkness

THE WILL P2

"Now can we get started?" Beryl snapped.

The solicitor, a short man named Mr Fedgewick, with a girth and appearance of a sweaty bowling ball, tried smiling. "We still have one more person to wait on," he said and Fergus's eyes bulged.

"Who?" he demanded. "There cant be anyone else, we are the only siblings Gordon had. Who is it? It's not some charity, is it? I've never trusted charities. They always

want something from you."

"It's, It's not not a charity," Mr Fedgewick said. "He did say, however, that he might be a little late."

"Who said?" Roselyn's father asked, and the solicitor looked down at the file open before him.

"A most unusual name, this," he said. "It seems we are waiting on a Mr Skulduggery Pleasant."

"Well who on earth is that?' asked Beryl, irritated. "He sounds like a, he sounds like a ...

Fergus what does he sound like?"

"He sounds like a weirdo," Fergus said, glaring at Fedgewick. "He's not a weirdo, is he?" "I really couldn't say," Fedgewick answered,

his paltry excuse for a smile failing miserably under the glares he was getting from Fergus and Beryl. "But I'm sure he'll be along soon."

Fergus frowned narrowing his beady eyes as much as was possible. "How are you sure?" Fedgewick faltered, unable to offer a reason, and then the door opened and a man in a tan overcoat entered the room.

"Sorry I'm late," he said, closing the door behind him, "It was unavoidable I'm afraid."

Everyone in the room stared at him, stared at the scarf and the gloves and the sunglasses and the wild fuzzy hair. It was a glorious day outside, certainly not the kind of weather to be wrapped up like this. Roselyn looked closer at the hair. From this distance, It didn't even seem real.

The solicitor cleared his throat. "Um, you are Skulduggery pleasant?" "At your service," the man said. Roselyn could listen to that voice all day. Her mother, uncertain as she was, had smiled her greetings, but her father was looking at him with an experssion of wariness she had never seen on his face before. After a moment the expression left him and he nodded politely and looked back to Mr Fedgewick, Fergus and Beryl were still staring.

"Do you have something wrong with your face?" Beryl asked, Roselyn glared at Beryl's Rude comment, Fedgweick cleared his throat again. "OK then, let's get down to business, now that we're all here, Excellent. Good. This, of course, being a last will and testament of Gordon Edgley, revised last almost one year ago, Gordon has been a client of mine for the past twenty years, and in that time I got to know him well, so let me pass on to you, his family and, and friend, my deepest, deepest-"

"Yes yes yes." Fergus interrupted, waving his hand in the air. "Can we just skip this part? We're already running behind schedule. Let's go to the part where we get stuff. Who gets the house? And who gets the villa?"

"Who gets the fortune?" beryl asked, leaning forward in her seat.

"The royalties." Fergus said. "Who gets the royalties from the books?"

Roselyn like Stephanie glanced at Skulduggery Pleasant from the corner of her eye. He was standing back against the wall, hands in his pockets, looking at the solicitor.Well, he seemed to be looking at the solicitor; with those sunglasses he could have been looking anywhere. She returned her gaze to Fedgewick as he picked up a page from his desk and read from it.

"To my brother Fergus and his beautiful wife Beryl," he read, And Roselyn and Stephanie did their best to hide their grins, "I leave my car, and my boat, and a gift."